Friends, it’s that special time of year. I write to you from Colorado, which is almost always where I am when I send these things out. This year’s playlist (mix?) was completed earlier today and I wanted to get it to you as quickly as possible. It’s fresh and hot. Sure to keep you warm through the polar super vortex or whatever they’re calling the global climate change-induced record setting weather that’s happening throughout the country.

I posted some further commentary about the process of creating these playlists on Twitter today, but I’ll save you from having to visit that hell site and just share it with you here. If you’ve received these playlists in the past, you may notice I generally try and limit myself to a max of 25 tracks. Constraints are good. I could create a playlist for everything I listened to in 2022 and it would probably be fun to listen to, but I get a lot of enjoyment from the refining process. My thirst for new music continues to be unquenchable. Music that isn’t from the current year is, I’m guessing, maybe around 20% of my listening any given year. That said, I love discovering older music that I immediately connect with. Jazz Raga by Gábor Szabó is one such example from this year (thanks Ian Rogers).

I listen to A LOT of instrumental music – Jazz and all sorts of electronic music, almost none of it dance-y. I bought a lot more music on Bandcamp this year than any previous year. I really appreciate the curation that happens there, which is unlike most other services. I hope you find something new to love. There’s not much I enjoy more than turning people on to music they would not have otherwise found. Tell me what I missed.

Oh, one last note about the cover photo, a crop of the photo you see at the beginning of this email. Every summer in the After Times, we’ve made a road trip to Colorado. Each of those road trips have produced covers for these playlists. This year was no different. In fact, this year was the exact same location as last year, only from a different angle.

🤘Brad