No. 01

5 songs worth your attention this week — October 22nd, 2025

Welcome to Queue, a weekly dispatch of five songs that I think are worth your attention. With each edition, I’ll update the weekly playlist (follow here), while the archive playlist (follow here) will keep a running collection of every song shared so far.

Each week, I’ll gather five songs that cut through the noise. Expect new releases that merit a closer listen, deep cuts and forgotten gems unearthed from the far corners of Spotify, and the occasional classic revisited with renewed perspective.

This is music for the discerning listener, for those who value discovery over endless scroll. Each entry includes brief notes or context, offering not just sound but the story of how a track found its way here and why it deserves a place in your ears. Mostly, I hope these songs make you pause, listen closer, and, with any luck, feel something.

Note: Since this is the first one, I’ve gone a little deeper than I will in future editions. Going forward, you can expect quick, easy reads with five songs and a few short love notes from me each week.

FUNDAMENTAL
1. Love Is Overtaking Me by Arthur Russell (Love Is Overtaking Me, released 2008)

It feels only fitting to begin this journey with my favorite song of all time, by an artist I’ve revisited almost daily since I was a teenager. If you don’t know Arthur Russell, now you do. He was a singular queer musician who emerged from New York’s downtown scene in the mid-1970s and passed away from AIDS-related complications in 1992. A cellist, composer, singer-songwriter, Buddhist, disco producer, and restless experimenter, he spent his life chasing a unique brand of musical honesty that has long outlasted his physical form.

Russell’s influence extends far beyond the avant-garde and disco worlds he helped shape. His music lingers in the unlikeliest corners of modern sound, including indie pop, ambient electronica, lo-fi folk, modern classical, and underground hip-hop. Each reflects his devotion to honesty over perfection and emotion over convention. His songs were often unfinished but never incomplete, carrying a trembling intimacy that still feels alive decades later. Dev Hynes once said, “The longest I go without listening to him is two days; it’s him, Michael Jackson, Philip Glass.” That about sums it up.

This song captures Russell’s tender folk-pop side. It’s a love song disguised as a diary entry: unguarded, ephemeral, and tenderly human. Like falling for someone while the world softens around you. Or maybe it’s the sound of driving upstate with a new love, the windows down, the future seeming wide open. Which, coincidentally, I may be doing this weekend.

Good for sitting in the passenger seat, montage scenes, walking home with a smile.

RECENT RELEASE
2. Selenge by Céline Dessberg (Single, released 2025)

Céline Dessberg sounds like Dorothy Ashby reimagined somewhere between Mongolia and France: seamless blend of cosmic jazz and Mongolian folk, infused with an unmistakably Parisian coolness. On Selenge, presumably named after the province in northern Mongolia, her yatga (a traditional Mongolian harp) shimmers against warm, unhurried percussion. The result is elegant, lively, and inherently cinematic. Very Wes-Anderson-Hotel-Lounge-Type-Shit. We love.

Good for dinner parties, sex, most situations in which you’d light a candle.

REMASTER
3. Genshi by Susumu Yokota (Sakura 2025 Remaster, released this month)

Susumu Yokota was a Japanese electronic composer who moved fluidly between ambient, house, and experimental sound. A cult figure in Tokyo’s club scene before finding wider recognition in Europe, his albums Sakura and Grinning Cat became landmarks for ambient and downtempo collectors. Genshi, originally released in the late 1990s and remastered in 2025, captures his fascination with the elemental pulse beneath all sound, now revealed in striking clarity thanks to the remaster. The piece balances stillness and motion, clearing the air without ever fading into it. It’s my Xanax substitute.

Good for calm focus, exercise, alone time.

FUNDAMENTAL
4. Pink Litmus Paper Shirt by R. Stevie Moore (Glad Music, released 1986)

One of the more under-appreciated figures in modern pop experimentation is R. Stevie Moore. I think of him as the eccentric older brother of the DIY/lo-fi/bedroom movement in pop and rock, blending humor, experimentation, and obscure references into music that’s intentionally only about 50 percent tolerable. He described this track as “the musical embodiment of a fake unreleased Beatles song invented by Martin Lewis,” a playful homage that masks a sense of alienation and fatigue in modern life. Beneath the whimsy, it’s a clever reflection on emotional disconnection, and somehow, I think of it every time I leave my desk for a quick lunch.

Good for Saturday afternoons, walking around aimlessly, eating greasy food.

RECENT RELEASE
5. Ніці / Nici by СОЮЗ (KROK, releasing this week)

We should all be keeping our eye on СОЮЗ (also known as SOYUZ), the Belarus-born collective led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Alex Chumak. Founded in Minsk with Mikita Arlou and later joined by Polish musicians Albert Karch and Igor Wiśniewski after relocating to Warsaw in 2022, the group blends jazz, folk, ambient, and cinematic pop into music that feels both intimate and borderless. In the studio, Chumak shapes meticulously layered compositions that draw from classical and global traditions, while the live quartet reimagines them through improvisation. Their forthcoming album KROK, written primarily in Belarusian, marks a subtle act of poetic reclamation. Its single “Ніці / Nici” drifts between dream and waking thought, where soft guitar phasing, understated bass, and sweeping strings carry Chumak’s voice through the space between closeness and distance. What the kids might call vibey.

Good for cooking dinner, reading, dusk.

A special thank you to Payton Carson for bringing this logo and visual identity to life. Hire him. He’s good.

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