Gradual Light ~ A b'day mixtape from GFP & friends

Over the past year or so, as GoldFlakePaint has found its footing as something looser, something more unmoored and occasional, it's been the monthly mixes and radio shows that have kept things ticking along. They might not always come with words attached, or additional context, but they're a spotlight of sorts. And I love making them, spending hours curating the songs, and then weaving them all together myself and handing them over to you.

Pulling this new mixtape together, I discovered that on Mixcloud alone, GFP mixes have just past the 2 million(!) mark for the minutes you've all spent listening to them, across almost 100,000 individual plays. I gave up looking at such stats a long time ago, but it's nice to occasionally remember that real people – you! – are out there, paying attention, spending time here. Thank you, for that. Sincerely.

To celebrate GFP turning 16 (which you can read a little more about here), I wanted to make an extra special mixtape. So, I sent a brief message to a few artists that GFP has been lucky enough to cross paths with over the years, with one simple request: to offer one beautiful song, and a few words to go alongside.

What came back was as rich and absorbing and poignant and thrilling as the work these people have given us, as listeners, over the years. And so here, all songs and sentiments side by side, are those choices – presented as one beautiful mixtape; a birthday gift to you, from me and some friends.

I think it's one of my favourite things I've ever published, since we launched in 2010, and I sincerely hope you enjoy listening and reading along.

Thank you to everyone involved; check it out below.

Gradual Light // A mixtape from GoldFlakePaint & Friends...

Old Amica - Dunes
(as chosen by me)

I made a rule that, for my own choice here, I couldn't select a song from any of the other artists who have kindly helped curate this mixtape, which was a silly thing to do because every single one of them has made my very favourite music over the past 16 years of GFP.

While the behind-the-scenes preparation for this post I was listening to The Antlers' Burst Apart LP, given that our anniversaries fall closely together (Burst Apart turned 15 years old just a few days ago). It's an album that viscerally reminds me of a very specific time in my life, finding my feet in a new city, in a new life, with this funny little blog just beginning to carve out a space for itself after a year of sharing songs. It was probably the most exciting time of my life, and I found so many artist and labels that either appeared and disappeared in a flash, and plenty more that lingered and got absorbed into my story, GFP's story.

One such band was Old Amica, a Swedish duo who make beautifully textured ambient/folk music. Dunes was the opening track on one of the GFP Bandcamp compilations we used to release back in those days. It's still one of my favourite pieces of music, and a perfect opening track for any mixtape. Old Amica are still making beautiful music to this day, and I highly suggest spending some good time within their back catalogue.

This song will always remind me of change, really good change; o f a whole world opening up in front of my eyes.

~

Robin Holcomb - Deliver Me
(as chosen by Michael Cormier-O’Leary of Friendship, Hour)

To celebrate 16 years of Gold Flake Paint, I’ve shared my favorite recorded performance of Robin Holcomb’s ‘Deliver Me’ from her 2024 release One Way Or Another: Volume Two. Robin Holcomb came up in the 80s as part of New York’s improvised music scene alongside John Zorn and Bill Frisell. She’s always had an alchemical ability combine the folk tradition of her native North Carolina with complex harmony, nuanced song structure, and oblique poetry. She signed to Elektra in the early 90s, releasing two singular songwriter albums that ultimately didn’t reach a wider audience. Her subsequent recordings—made for Nonesuch Records and Zorn’s Tzadik imprint—diverged from her songwriter material by highlighting her prowess as a composer and improviser.

I adore the One Way or Another albums because they demonstrate how alive Holcomb’s songs still are 30 years on from their original releases. Performed solo at a grand piano, there is an arresting intimacy to these performances compared to their studio counterparts. ‘Deliver Me’ has always been a beautiful song, but this particular performance is so greatly elevated by the sensation being in the same room as her. “The light is only perfect for a very short time” lives in my mind like a mote of dust only revealed by the light of an open window.

~

Jenny Hval - Lay Down
(as chosen by Nandi Rose of Half Waif)

I’ve been listening to Jenny Hval since her Rockettothesky days. Her music has always struck me as part fairytale, part funhouse. Magical and strange, a mirror that you walk through into a warped and beautiful world. “Lay down”, the first track off the gorgeously titled and arranged Iris Silver Mist, is no exception. I love the huge, shambling drums, grooving unhurriedly. I love the minor chord that comes midway through the chorus, a shadow darkening the surface, a slight ache at the center of all that tenderness. 

I love the classic Hval observation, sung simply but not unkindly—the same way a stranger once said it to me in a New York City subway station: “you have bled through your jeans.” This song unfurls like an open clamshell—Hval’s voice a pearl, the wide synths a wash of glittering seawater. Samples of wind and water and birdsong carry the listener down into the depths of her diaphanous world—“down in the deep where your love comes from”—and it’s a place I want to stay for a while.

~

Masha Qrella - I Want You To Know
(as chosen by Sara Beth Tomberlin)

My friend Mari showed this record to me last year. It instantly became the soundtrack for my year. So many weird and cool choices on this record that was released in 2002?? But this song… the lag on the kick drum! the processed(?) guitar(?). The sounds are excellent. Her phrasing is also very unique, inspiring! Dig in. And Masha, if you are out there reading this, I admire you very much and hope to meet you one day and ask a bunch of annoying questions about this record...

~

Arthur Russell - Love Is Overtaking Me
(as chosen by Ella Williams of Squirrel Flower)

This song makes me float. I first heard it 3 years ago in the summer. I was biking around Chicago every day, blasting this song on repeat, floating, soaring, sinking like the sun, rising like the moon. Arthur has my heart. Every time I fall in love it feels like this song. Glowing & expansive.

~

Donny Hathaway - A Song For You
(as chosen by Peter Silberman of The Antlers)

Happy sweet 16 to GFP. So wild to have been doing it so long! My choice for a beautiful song would be Donny Hathaway's version of "A Song For You". I fell in love with it a little over ten years ago and used to listen to it all the time. I think it's just one of the most beautiful recordings ever made, an absolutely incredible vocal performance, and so intensely sad to me considering Donny's fate.

I forgot about it for several years, and then heard it again recently while watching the first season of Euphoria, where the entire song plays over a deeply emotional montage. The line "I love you in a place where there's no space or time" might be one of my favorite lyrics, and even though Donny didn't write it, the way he inhabits the song makes it his.

~

Hannah McKittrick - Utensil
(as chosen by Angie McMahon)

Some days call for a window cigarette, where I sit at my bedroom window with one (!) cheeky cigarette and play my window cigarette playlist. This song is at the top of list. I can hear the sky in this recording, and Hannah’s voice summons me into a soft meditative state where I can come back to myself.

I love her angelic tone, her poetry, her reverence for the small things which are actually the big things. It feels like someone taking your hand and reminding you where to find magic.

~

Feist - Forever Before
(as chosen by Indigo Sparke)

This is ‘Forever Before’ by Feist ~ touching on the tender and aching beauty of motherhood. This one hits home for me right now. Surrendering to the fear and fearlessness of every breath.

~

Sandro Perri - In Another Life
(as chosen by John Ross of Wild Pink)

My song is Sandro Perri’s ‘In Another Life’. It’s a refuge for me. I have listened to it on repeat for hours at a time and it never gets old. The textures he works with feel like stepping into a floaty new world. In fact, that whole album is very important to me.

~

Bobby Bare - Streets of Baltimore
(as chosen by Owen Ashworth of Advance Base)

I choose Bobby Bare's 1966 recording of "Streets of Baltimore" as my beautiful song. "Streets of Baltimore" was written by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard in 1966. It's a country song that tells the story of a married man who makes his wife's dream come true by moving their life from Tennessee to Baltimore. Their relationship falls apart as the wife becomes more enamored with the city's nightlife until the man moves back to Tennessee alone, leaving his wife to her exciting new life in Baltimore. There's a simple elegance to the lyric's linear narrative, the concrete details it shares and the turbulent relationship that's only hinted at. 

My favorite verse is right in the middle: 
I got myself a factory job
I ran an old machine
I bought a little cottage
in a neighborhood serene
yet every night
when I came home
with every muscle sore
she would drag me through
the streets of Baltimore

Tompall Glaser released his own recording of "Streets of Baltimore" with his group The Glaser Brothers in late 1966 but Bobby Bare beat him to the record shops by a couple of months. It would be easy to mistake one  recording for the other on first listen: both feature smooth baritone vocals over classic "Nashville sound" shuffle arrangements, but Bare's version features a hard-panned tack piano motif and a recitation, both of which I love. Glaser's version expands the lyrics with an extra verse that mostly feels redundant compared to the ultra efficiency of the Bare version. The song has been covered many times since and most versions favor the Bare edit of the lyrics. It's a perfectly told story that thrills in its succinctness and leaves plenty of room for the listener's imagination. It's exactly what a country song should be.

~

Fadi Tabbal - Music for arcs and diameters
(as chosen by Julia Sabra of Postcards, Snakeskin)

One of my favorite tracks of all time, by a close friend and collaborator. I don’t know how Fadi manages to express so much with so little. His music transcends space and time, and moves me to my core. Pure beauty and tenderness in a 5-minute ambient track.

~

Bob Dylan - Abandoned Love
(as chosen by Johanna Samuels)

I come back to this song about once a year, and it so happens to be that time of year. I think the lyrics are the most Dylan ever. I think it’s a cut from the “Desire” sessions? Could be wrong. But I love the mind movie he creates and how he captures the devastating consequences that ego and vanity bring into love and how that’s the conundrum of humanity.

I love the production, the drum sound with that little bit of verb. Most of all, as always with Dylan… it’s about the lyrics, which I always go to first when I love a song. It reminds me of the movie “Les Enfants du Paradis” by Michel Carné. 

Everybody’s wearing a disguise
To hide what they’ve got left behind their eyes
But me I can’t cover what I am
Wherever the children go
I follow them.

~

JFDR - My Work
(as chosen by Gia Margaret)

I listened to this song a lot when it came out in 2020 and ever since has become a comfort song when I need. When this “work” that I do takes over aspects of my life (to a fault, at times) and I need a reminder/ I’m not alone in it. I think it captures a feeling I’ve never been able to articulate about being an artist. You really feel change within yourself and it’s hard and nagging. Then to feel compelled to document whatever that shift is AND that the process also frees your mind if you sit down to do it.

She captures the escapism and isolation too. I don’t know, I think JFDR nailed this unique feeling through this song. I love the repetition of the lyric “I stare into nothing and slow down my thoughts and I turn off the light and get on with my work”. It’s a thing we are compelled to do and perpetually question at the same time. This is my interpretation of the song at least. I cherish it. “On with my work. On with my work”. ❤️

~

The Bad Plus - Giant
(as chosen by Noah Weinman of Runnner)

My (first) choice is Giant by the Bad Plus. The bassline is obviously the centerpiece of the song and so hypnotic and gorgeous but it’s always that first moment when he deviates from the main melody that makes me melt. Like releasing tension I didn’t even know was there. I have tickets to see them on their farewell tour this year and I’m praying I get to hear it live one more time.

~

Michael Hurley - Wildgeeses
(as chosen by Liza Victoria of Lisa/Liza)

The first song the comes to mind for me is Micheal Hurley’s Wildgeeses. For me this song speaks to something of grief and something of letting go. To add too much more interpretation than that would be a disservice.

It’s hard not to hear wild geese and hear this song come to mind. It’s one of those songs that speaks in the hearts language. 

“It’s only in the wildness can you name her,
it’s only in the wildness, can you tame her.”

~

Cindytalk - Snowkiss
(as chosen by Christopher Barnes of Gem Club)

I sought out Cindytalk after hearing Cinder Sharp’s voice on the first the first This Mortal Coil Record (It'll End in Tears). Snowkisss has, incidentally, a bit of that early 4AD atmosphere, but what’s remarkable is how it manages to completely suspend time with so little — piano, tape loops, bass guitar, and Sharp’s voice. It sounds exactly like you would think: cold, dissolving, intimate but also strangely luminous.

~

Elina Dunn & Rob Luft - Cammina Cammina
(as chosen by Eric Hillman of Foreign Fields)

When I think of GFP, I think of quiet elegance. Finding the small moments that capture you and give you the space to fall in deep. With that in mind I would love for listeners to find a moment with 'Cammina Cammina'. As with most simple songs, the beauty is in the details here. Listen to the way the vocal performance is strong yet vulnerable. Listen to the choices made in the guitar. A simple song, but not at all by-the-book. Elegant, beautiful. GFP forever.

~

My Kappa Roots - Fleeting Like Etain
(as chosen by Gareth David of Los Campesinos!)

This is a song that’s had a grip on me for the duration of GFP’s life, and I’ve no recollection of how it came into mine. I’ve a CD-R release of it in a cardboard sleeve, that I might have been gifted at a gig a long time ago. By now I seldom listen to the song, I can’t allow myself to but I also don’t need to as I know it inside out. A couple of times each year I’ll gravitate to it like solstice. 

Its refrain of “we’re not born of the stars above, we are but fleeting moments in the sun” encapsulates a certain melancholy I’ve always carried with me, but its pay off of “there is no higher glory, just a quiet human end” comforts me every time.

~

Eliza Niemi - Dusty
(as chosen by Charlotte Cornfield)

Eliza is brilliant songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Toronto. I have always loved her songs but when I heard this one it knocked me out. It’s just so clever and touching and hook-y and funny. A beautiful celebration of friendship and community. From the opening line, “I was up all night reading your old articles” to “she’s my Gordon Lightfoot/ she can read my mind” to “In the solipsism of it all I got friendship.”

10/10 stunner of a tune for me.

~

Billy Joel - And So It Goes
(as chosen by Leif Vollebek)

I think I first heard this song watching an episode of Ricky Gervais’ Extras. There is something unbelievably transcendent about this song: the lyrics, the melody, the chords, the recording itself. It’s solo Billy Joel, playing both synth and piano. A Leonard Cohen spirituality with a Bonnie Raitt “I Can’t Make You Love Me” heartbreak.

~

Lauren Dillen - One More For The Road
(as chosen by Emily Hines)

This song puts me in another place instantly. I love this particular melancholy.

~

Alice Coltrane - Going Home
(as chosen by Eva Liu of mui zyu)

This piece of music always stops me in my tracks, the gospel chords are so moving and performed with such expression you can’t look (/hear) away. I also love the free organ and harp wanderings.

It really feels like ‘going home’ to me in so many ways, it’s like the end of a significant formative journey where you’re returning home in your new self, with potentially some tragedy and heartache, but also a strong sense of hope.

~

Dear Nora - The Lonesome Border, Pt. 1
(as chosen by Cassandra Jenkins)

While much of modern life, especially in America, is concerned with political lines, and how they’re controlled, Dear Nora’s “The Lonesome Border Pt. 1” turns a border into a simile for mapping frontiers of the psyche. There is something inevitable, and daunting, about personal growth: the passage is rarely sure-footed, surfacing grief, shame, frustration, and the vulnerability that transformation asks of us. It’s a time-honored cross borne by the songwriter, as in Leonard Cohen’s “In My Secret Life,” which speaks to the journey’s endless nature: “I’ll be marching through the morning / Marching through the night / Moving ’cross the borders of my secret life.” In Dear Nora’s portrayal, borders are “as unmoveable” as mountains, and their crossing is not so much a calling as a “curse,” rendering the passage all the more alienating. 

Metamorphosis often materializes before we have fully grasped it, appearing like a distant mountain ahead of us as we begin the work of navigating it. Before we can orient ourselves in our new form, we’re faced with leaving behind the self we’ve outgrown. Perhaps my reading of “Lonesome Border” is partly due to a mondegreen—I’ve always misheard the word “loom” as “bloom” in the lyric “I sense the change in me / It loomed like a curse,” which evoked an image of constantly flowering plains—the fragile efflorescence mirroring, even mocking, ours. My biggest life-changing events, especially those I longed for, have asked me to open myself to change while simultaneously mourning the pain it took to get there. This song, and its companionship, have made the trek less lonesome. 

I wonder if it’s human nature to draw hard lines, and to what extent it’s wired into the limbic system like fight-or-flight. If imperial borders are built from fear, explicitly to prevent movement, then it is our responsibility as humans to slowly dismantle them—culturally, politically, and emotionally—in search of a more expansive way of living alongside one another. That collective pursuit begins on the smallest scale with the individual, and our enduring willingness to be changed by the world around us. As Dear Nora suggests, there’s no better, or stranger, time than the present. 

I know it’s gonna be a strange time
Well it can’t possibly be any stranger
Than the present
’Cause now it is said there’s a change
And I sense the change in me
It loomed like a curse
And I thought of it as a mountain there
Thought of it as a lonesome border
And I know we’re gonna last a long time
But I can’t help but need to live from minute to minute
’Cause now it is said there’s a change
And I sense the change in me
It loomed like a curse
And I thought of it as a mountain there
Thought of it as a lonesome border
As impossible 
As unmoveable

Thank you to all the curators for their time and craft.

~

Listen to Gradual Light on Mixcloud here