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For dark loves, dark jokes and dark thoughts.

I have spun through enough relationships and flings to make 2016 jealous of my psychological wreckage. Last weekend, I sat in a gastropub while my date, the bartender, and I slyly competed for each other’s attention and rode out the daggers in each other’s eyes.

Patrons watched us watch each other like we were bulls in a stadium. D’Angelo’s soprano in “Lady,” I can tell they’re looking at us, echoed through the high ceiling and artisanal light fixtures. These moments can as be nourishing as they can be destructive. A doctor once recommended that I take mood stabilizers but there was something that worked better — music.

The chimes and thumps framing the vengeance in Jai Paul’s BTSTU (opening with three incantations, don’t fuck with me) are like the ones we heard from Rishi Rich in the 90’s and into the millennium. And Bally Jagpal produced a track about lovers losing each other to outside marriages.

Those dark, lyrical moments are here to stay. There’s a lushness in these tracks that make our bodies move and our souls lap. They reveal the murderous depths of our desire. They situate us in the crevices of our love and hatefulness.

We’re falling headlong into the new year. 2017 looks like a slick glimmer on an old wall, a hard brush stroke with frayed and tapered edges grading a bit softer, speaking to anything but quietudes or the dimming and flickering out of guttural cries. This playlist is a sonic imagination of how a heart and body may be conversing right now.