Summer Music

After a brief period of seasonal hesitation, Lady Summer has finally come around to my stretch of the woods, sprinkling the weather forecasts of the coming months with promises of long and sunny days, warm nights as well as blooming, verdant parks that can put a smile on even the most grizzled city dweller's face.

As for music, summers have always been the season for upbeat, positive music that puts warmth in your heart as you enjoy chilled rosé while watching the late sunset from your balcony or fire in your feet as you go on to dance the warm nights away on white beaches with water glittering under the stars.

_{Assorted summer moods from my phone camera}

The laziness of the hot summer days and the frantic nights of dancing partying that is the duality of summer manifests itself in its music: It is the season for the summertime club bangers and the happy pop song hits about love and optimism; the time of year where the rhythms and styles of music from the hotter climates move south along the warm winds and infiltrate the airwaves of the Northern climates, that are normally dominated by slower, colder and more serious sounds.

We have to look to the genius of Pink Floyd for some of the songs I think capture the lazy aspect of summer the best. The first being the guitar ballad Grantchester Medows from Ummagumma, one of Pink Floyd's oldest and most obscure albums. It opens with the sounds of birds chirping before the simple, almost sleepy guitar melody is slowly being faded in followed by lyrics that describe a beautiful summer day lying on Grantchester Meadows. The refrain goes:

Hear the lark and harken to the barking of the dog fox gone to ground
See the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water
And a river of green is sliding unseen beneath the trees
Laughing as it passes through the endless summer making for the sea
_{Written by Roger Waters. Lyrics from AZLyrics}

These lyrics, and especially the part of the chorus mentioning the endless summer along with the interspersed sound effects of running water and a barking fox to me perfectly convey the feeling of a green, flowery meadow on a sunny day during high summer.

We are not ready to leave the lazy summer days or Pink Floyd behind just yet. Green Is The Colour from the soundtrack to the movie More is one of the few romantic Pink Floyd song, that with its theme and instrumentation greatly captures the giddy feeling of the summer flirt, and while I discussed Fat Old Sun in some detail in my Pink Floyd post it deserves mention here as a great summer song as well.

_{Ummagumma album cover by Hipgnosis - picture from Wikipedia}

When the evening approaches and the frosty beers you have been using to quench your thirst in the heat starts to get to your head, the need for up-tempo music to move your body to rises rapidly. One of the genres of music that is most closely associated with the hot, sensual and dance-y aspects of summer is undoubtedly the Brazilian samba, and the Japanese electropop duo Capsule has a very distinct retro-electronic take on the samba in their song Beautiful Hour from their album NEXUS-2060. This take on the samba is quirky and garish in a 60's way, like how a samba would sound in an early Bond villain'ss space station and is a song that is hard for me to sit down while listening to.

_{NEXUS-260 album cover - picture from Discogs}

For the pure essence of electronic dance, there is no getting around the trance genre, and while trance is best enjoyed in lengthy mixes while dancing on a beach during a hot summer night, Dittany by Neelix stand out to me as one of the quintessential (psy)trance tracks of summer. The music carries the energy and instills the hypnotic, uplifting feeling that the genre is known for, but the the climax of Dittany offers some evocative spoken word lyrics as well:

In this cool Midenglish summer
I go to the cupboard
Take out the brown paper bag of Dittany
You gave me in Athens
Finally driving to your place in the hills
Melissia
I told you I wanted to sit in your chairs
Drink tea from your cups
Look out at your view
And then you made me tea of Dittany
_{Lyrics by Neelix (I think?)}

I first encountered this song in a psytrance mix made by one of my good friends a particularly hot summer during a time in my life where seemed possible and I still have a lot of summer memories of wild, exuberant freedom attached to this mix and to this song.

I want to end on a somewhat melancholic note on top of all the meaty summer BBQ and cool, sugary drinks. Sometimes, the summer is not quite there yet. Maybe this year's summer weather is leaving a lot to be desired; maybe summer vacation is still some ways away or maybe the summer is coming to an end and your summer flirt are returning to his or her home far away, instilling a sense of longing - for the summer to be or the summer that was. For that feeling, there is no song better than Weezer's Island in the Sun, a song about dreaming you and your loved one away to a tropical paradise where you can get lost and forget your worries.

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Thank you for reading this entry in my series on seasonal music! Please leave let me know about your favourite summer music in the comments and check out my other posts on Spring music and Winter music as well.

Following bands and artists where discussed in this post:

• Pink Floyd
• Capsule
• Neelix
• Weezer

I do not own any of this music. If you enjoyed any of the music shared in this post, I strongly encourage you to support these artists by purchasing their works and if trance is your thing, please check out my friend Naz's Soundcloud for lots of great trance mixes