Harry's Top 10 Breathtaking Songs Playlist

I decided I should make a playlist all of a sudden. I was listening to a track by This Will Destroy You and I just all of a sudden felt like sharing a bunch of songs that are good for the heart. This is actually what I mean by breathtaking, that it is deep and reflective, very chill and laid back.

I couldn't have refereed to the playlist as top 10 chillout or ambient or other stuff like that cause most of it isn't even electrnica at all. There's really a lot of semantics and volatile rules involved with genres and sub-genres of music; so many terms and classifications. So instead I just decided to call it whatever adjective I feel fits it most: breathtaking. It's the type that you want to listen to and appreciate and just bask in the presence of the sound waves. They're all just very warm and pleasant and soothing.

I even wish I could just put all the videos and not have to write words or descriptions anymore but Hubpages requires me to do so. So you don't really have read what I have to say about them and preferably just lay back, listen, and appreciate some really beautiful music.

You don't even have to know how to speak Icelandic language in order to appreciate the music of Sigur Ros. This is actually my favorite live version of this song cause I think it's the one that's at almost perfect memory. Maybe it's cos the BBC documentary of some sort that featured this song sounds too studio-ish while this one is more live sounding giving you the feeling of being right there in that same room--basking in the beauty and harmony of the music.

It's just such a beautiful song. It's one of my favorite songs of theirs. They actually have a documentary called Heima where they just play their songs and show videos of Iceland. It's really beautiful stuff. You should check it out if you haven't already.

Frome Iceland, we go to my home country here in the Philippines. Up Dharma Down is a local band here and they have a lot of beautiful chill and relaxed vibe songs. Very deep and refelctive at the same time.

I was actually able to watch this version live during one of their mall tours. The album version actually has lyrics and is equally as good. But somehow I prefer this one, I'm guessing. But anyways, their album bipolar, the most recent one, I think, is really my favorite and is very diverse. It's like a great mixture of electronica concepts combined with rock. And not to mention, watching them live is just so heavenly. Armi Millare's vocals is just so captivating.

This song is really just close to my heart. Many times when my heart or mind is troubled, I listen to this band. Very soothing and relaxing stuff. The imagery of the song is just so brilliant and it takes you away to a beautiful place. It's almost like a contradiction, like being bittersweet, painful yet soothing at the same time. It's just really a wonderful experience and as you may have noticed I can't explain it in words. 

I actually got this band from my girlfriend. I borrowed her iTouch one time and saw that she had this playlist full of chill music. This was the first track. And let me tell you, I didn't even bother listening to the other tracks in the playlist. I just played this song over and over. It's really so beautifully arranged. Makes think that music is really all about arrangement or design, only instead of spaces there are silences, and these brilliant artists design that silence with harmony and melodic beauty.

Lojik is actually just a fairly new artist. There was actually another video of this on youtube with better quality but it got taken out. I actually just discovered him in soundcloud. It's raelly amazing how he mixes elements of chillout, dubstep, downtempo, and others to form his amazing music. It's really somethign that chilled, as in literally, it makes me feel like it's dubstep that's slowed down and ice-cold, frozen at certain extents, very cool and smooth. I can't believe the other one with better quality got taken out. But eitherway, why not checkout his other stuff on YouTube or in his soundcloud account. I'll edit this right away as soon as someone uploads a better quality version.

I love how she's using Ableton Live in this live performance. I've actually already featured her in my article on using Ableton in Looping or Sampling article.

I actually read an interview of her in Keyboard Magazine, where she talks about how she really studied orchestration and is very educated when it comes to music. She also produces all her music on her own (well, I'm sure she gets some assistance) but mostly she just edits and makes her own music on her mac using Apple Logic, a music production software. But as we can see on her live performance here she also uses Ableton Live.

All versions of this song are really brilliant and almost equally beautiful. The thing is I have an obvious bias toward dubstep. This mix is just so orgasmic and I find that the use of that word is even an understatement. It's just so smooth and sexy and brilliantly arranged. From the build-up all the way to the drop and all the way to the end it's just so pleasurable.

Kudos to Grifta for making a brilliant mix of an already brilliant track. That's usually a hard thing to do. Many times when something is remixed it can get destroyed or become unfaithful to the original version. But this one does it justice, in my opinion. 

We go local again on this one. I don't mean to brag but I've actually hung out with Basti Artadi because his wife is my friend's sister. As in I've drank with this guy and have eaten max's fried chicken with this guy. I was even there in his wedding. I swear on my life. Well, anyway, it's quite a shame that they've stopped making music as a band but I think individually they all still have projects here and there but I think Basti now wants to be family mode since he has kids now.

This is really one of their most beautiful songs and it really fits the critieria of this playlist for being breathtaking and the lyrics are really just so deep and hits the spot. I think the girl singing with him is the girl from Kulay, another band from the Philippines, if I remember correctly. The whole acoustica set is actually breathtaking and you should check them out!

Of course this is the most biased thing ever, but hey it's my playlist so leave me alone. This is a breathtaking cover of the beautiful and inspiring Adrienne Nicole Bernal. I really love this cover and was listening to it over and over yesterday. She has other covers and other works over at her online portfolio you should check them out.

Of course, just like with the other playlist I made, top 10 electronic music tracks that will send you to heaven, it can't be a complete without me including one of my songs since I'm egotistical like that. No really though, maybe it's because I'm the one who made this song and I really find it breathtaking because I can super relate to it (well duh I made the song). It's really very close to my heart. I've always likened it to Jonas in the book "The Giver" and how it "receives" all my worries and anxieties and buries all the evil memories deep into the abyss of my subconscious mind.