We love HUG. HUG are a new band that we reviewed recently, a review that you can read HERE. We saw them play live on a hill in Los Angeles in our local neighbourhood as the sun went down sat underneath a tree and I have to say it was a beautiful thing. They seem to be intentional people with good taste so we thought to fill in the background on HUG we would ask them for a playlist of music that inspired their ways. They came through and I have to say it opened a music portal for me last night around 11pm when going through their influences I didn't expect to go down. I especially loved Kazuhito Yamashita who you can watch below and seeing Jonny Nash on this list as an influence made us smile as not only is he a friend of the family watching how music travels can be a wonderful thing. Anyway, HUG are Gyan Riley, Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson and here are ten tracks that made them who they are.

Devendra Banhart #1
Crepuscule I&II by Tujiko Noriko

Perfectly bittersweet Sci Fi Ambient experience alongside the dreamiest cosmic “pop” songs you’ll ever hear! Something like a space lullaby for a dying star type of album, an incredibly skilled use of space (in all senses of the word) after a 1000 listens I am still surprised by new sounds on each track!

Devendra Banhart #2
Once Was Ours Forever by Jonny Nash

One of my favorite albums of all time … and it came out last year! This is some kind of miracle to me. Wow! New music can become a “favorite of all time.” I can't even begin to explain how inspiring and meaningful this is to me! Jonny is a master of subtly presenting some kind of dream time song, the secret song between the song…. It's incredible!

Devendra Banhart #3
Hanamichi - The Final Studio Recording Volume II by Masabumi Kikuchi

Legendary Japanese Pianist whose entire output is highly recommended (and varied, definitely transcends jazz or pushes it to extraordinary places, a true cosmonaut.) I chose this album because I was listening to it non stop while we were recording HUG and it has something of a miracle on it, or lets say, something I truly thought was impossible. Think of all the covers of Manha de Carnaval that the Black Orpheus soundtrack birthed, and here is the most beautiful version I’ve ever heard! Wow!

Devendra Banhart #4
Guamba by Gary Peacock

This one is definitely good for a long, hours and hours long hike, it already feels like traveling ….who knows what’s over the next pass, what’s at the top of that hill? Where will this side-trail lead? Put yer goretex on and head out the door, meditation on the go! He played with literally everyone of my favorite musicians (including Masabumi Kikuchi!) a real adventure of an album!

Devendra Banhart #5
Iroko – Omar Sosa & Tigana Santana

A deep and contemplative album that swims and slips away from any attempt to easily classify it. Tigana has one of my favorite voices in the universe, and Omars heart broken open astral traveling sonic scapes are the perfect support for Tiganas voice and vice versa!

Noah Georgeson #1
Midnight Cowboy - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

It’s got Harry Nilsson covering Fred Neil - what else do you need? But also, John Barry’s title theme is painfully melancholy and beautiful, thanks mostly to Toots Thieleman’s (not to be confused with Peter Thiel) chromatic harmonica playing. I feel like harmonica appreciation - especially chromatic harmonica - is at a historic low, but I’d like to change that. So I asked the best Icelandic chromatic harmonica player I’ve ever known to play on one of the songs on the HUG album.

Noah Georgeson #2
Andres Segovia - Bach

The Bach Chaconne is great and all, but I was never good enough to play it. Something on this album that I could play, though, was one of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ preludes. I always loved Villa-Lobos’ pieces because they were both compositionally rigorous and romantic - his music feels both european and brazilian to me. He’s like a 20th century Bach with an acai bowl. One simple trick he uses for his guitar pieces is this thing where you just make one chord shape with your hand, and then you just move it around to different places on the neck. This appeals to my laziness - no re-arranging of my fingers - and it also makes for some strange harmonies and voicings with the open strings. I’ve ripped this move off many times, including on the HUG album.

Noah Georgeson #3
Kazuhito Yamashita – Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition

I guess I’d consider this an indirect inspiration. Yamashita was a total madman - you’d have to be to even consider playing this piece on solo guitar. There were rumors that he played so wildly that all his fingernails would break off mid-performance and go flying into the audience. I’m inclined to believe them. Anyway, I got this on cassette as a teenager, and it blew me away - not in an entirely positive way, though. I loved it, but it also gave me the first inkling that I probably had neither the skill nor the fortitude to ever be as good as the playing I was hearing on this album. That inkling would later be confirmed, which forced me down a different path toward making all sorts of non-classical guitar music, such as HUG.

Gyan Riley #1
Tortoise - TNT

I was listening to this record a lot around the time we recorded HUG. It's a classic road trip spin, great perpetual motion energy that flows effortlessly from song to song without ever feeling repetitive. Really distinct interesting percussive elements and melodic hooks they had me humming along from the first listen. And they play the shit out of it live!

Gyan Riley #2
Khalifa Ould Eide & Dimi Mint Abba– Moorish Music From Mauritania

This is an album that appeared in our family home in my teens. I had never heard anything remotely like it before. Dimi Mint Abba's singing is so utterly soulful and raw, full of pain and beauty. I had also never heard an ardin before, the 14-string harp also played by her. Khalifa Ould Eide sings and plays electric guitar and the tidinit, a 4 string lute. I had listened to a lot of electric guitar and lute at this point in my life, but this was such a different approach to both instruments that I almost didn't even recognize them as such. The other thing I found mind-boggling was the effect of the rhythm. To my ears, it seemed cattywampus and lilting, often unable to be transcribed by western notation. I would listen to this album over and over, pulled into a trance by these beautifully unfamiliar sounds. This was the time in my life when I was especially drawn to all music containing the grit and high-energy aggressiveness of rock, metal, and punk. To me, this album has every bit as much of that as anything I've ever heard, just dressed up in different clothing.

So there you go. Ten tracks and so much gold... And as we are here to spread the word on music we love here's our favourite track on the HUG album... 'Homunculus in the Foliage'. It's magic.

'HUG' by HUG is out now. Head to Bandcamp HERE or your local record store to pick it up.