On the Beach

Song: On the Beach
Artist: Dinka
Album: Tales of the Sun






As the summer winds down I've been trying to go through my playlists and see if there was anything I missed WeCasting that I really enjoyed.  There really isn't all THAT much (it's been an all-Gaga Summer mostly) but I forgot about this album, Dinka's "Tales of the Sun," which was on rotation a lot in the office, and when I wanted a little "background" music.

In general, I kind of loathe the term "background music" because there just isn't much of that type of music that I identify with.  If music is on... how can you NOT be listening and taking it all in?  But I can own up to a little ambient at night or in the AM, and after several years of hanging out at gay pool destinations, I have succumbed to enjoying what I used to describe as "faceless gay house music."  Ugh.

And that is exactly what Dinka's music is... background beats, mostly instrumental, it is upbeat, but yet still could be considered background music.  Really, not my typical thing.  But this album, after listening to it since June, began to feel like a journey, an hour-plus journey through different summer moods.  Sometimes it even bordered on New Age-ish house-fusion ("Campfire") and yet remains a consistent solid listen.

Like jazz (but not like jazz at all) certain types of house music becomes unrecognizable to me.  A song or album could go on for fifteen minutes without hearing much of a change... just not the type of thing I gravitate toward.  But hanging by a pool this summer and hearing this, yes faceless beat-heavy music, I realized that it's okay to have a little background less attention-grabbing music on the right occasion. (JUST like jazz!) I'm not ready to dig in and find what's best or even different when it comes to this genre, so when I came across Dinka, and "Tales of the Sun" it became my go-to for this type of music.

So readers... if you have been searching all summer for that perfect hour-plus of "faceless gay house music," here you go!  But really, it's better than all of that... and with song titles like "On the Beach," "Great Barrier Reef," and of course the title track... you realize this was built as a summer album.

Well, like a lot of ummm... faceless gay house music, I could find very little about Dinka.  They have a MySpace page, though I don't think it's even been updated since the release of this album.  The more I dig I see Dinka described as "progressive house," which is what I thought Deadmau5 was... and they sound nothing alike.  I guess I'm just a house novice.

Summer's almost over, but the groove can last forever! ;)

Enjoy.

On the Beach

Reach for Me

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