Upholding the Vibe

About ten years ago, I found thedownbeat.org, a community devoted to music that, for me, was one of those #changeyourlife events. In addition to the playlist streaming from the site, there was a lively forum rich with recommendations on new music -- among others, the Hefner track that opens this set, and that sounds as excellent today as it did when I first heard it courtesy of thedownbeat.org.

One year a number of us arranged to meet at the Winter Music Conference in South Beach, and a few have continued to stay in touch over the decade. Of course, the website itself has long since been taken down, as the fact of streaming music came to have legal implications for site hosts. But for those of us who found a home and an inspiration there, losing the site created a mission to uphold the vibe ourselves, through whatever means we found available.

Big ups to Chad Pry and all the broken beat afficionados from 2001, the Golden Age of downtempo stylings.