Radio LBB: Brendan Woithe's Playlist for the Music Fanatic

I'm a playlist fanatic. I picked up the habit from UK/NYC music supervisor Rebecca Grierson who Klang worked with for six or so years in pre-Covid times. She had thousands of playlists. I'm now not that far behind.

I quite like building lists around little stories and people, as well as genre and feeling. Back in 2016 or 2017, I was introduced to the amazing Gilles Peterson at a WeTransfer villa pool party at Cannes ad fest. He was DJing and Rebecca happened to have been his radio producer in another life at the BBC a few years before. The three of us chatted into the wee hours, well after the throngs had left.

Gilles had an unending passion for uncovering new grooves and world music. He had an incredible knowledge of jazz and soul and his infectious excitement filled the room when an artist was mentioned he didn't know about - although that was rare. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of music deeper than anyone else I've met.

Since that night, Worldwide FM (the internet station Gilles runs - go subscribe) has been on permanent rotation in my home and studio and car and phone and it keeps throwing up the most amazing tracks. I'm constantly flagging tracks that tickle my music brain in some way. I now have well over 30 hours of tracks in a single playlist, just from listening to Worldwide FM.

There's two tracks hidden in the list that feel like they belong but come from other little stories.

Check out “Calling” by Lawrence Pike and Cameron Deyell. I met Cam (guitarist) at the Adelaide Conservatorium waaaay back in 1995, and we have been mates and occasional musical collaborators ever since. Lawrence will be known to many in Sydney - both for playing in many bands, but also his amazing percussion compositions and many drum sessions for film, TV, and advertising scores. His were the first drum tracks we recorded at our new studios in Camperdown when we opened earlier this year. 

The second extra little track story comes from Gabriels. What a band! Back before Gabriels was a thing, one of the three members was director Ryan Hope, who I met in London through editor Ryan Boucher (now back in Sydney working at The Editors). We met doing a crazy little tattoo documentary called Skin through his then production company, Stamp, and later I had fun scoring a bunch of his ads. He's quite the talent, bouncing from producer to director and then relocating to LA and becoming a cinematographer of note before winning Grammys with Gabriels.

I like to think yacking with him in the edit suite about music software was the precursor to his journey to forming the Gabriels, but it's not in the slightest bit true.