The Sunday Digest 077
Nothing The Cranberries can't fix.
Welcome to The Sunday Digest — a free Sunday newsletter featuring long (and some short) reads, original columns, things I’ve saved over the last week, relaxing playlists, episodes releases, exclusive product drops, and more. Yes, you can reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you. Or, if podcasts are more your speed on Sundays, we’ve got that too.
Sunday Read: What’s the secret to the perfect restaurant soundtrack?
by Ajesh Patalay for The Financial Times
If there’s anything I love, it’s setting the mood with a good timely playlist. While my resume goes all the way back to making tapes with songs recorded from the radio, I then graduated to burning CDs with the horribly-installed burner I forced my parents to put in our Gateway.
These days, I spend more time on playlists than I’d like to admit. Yes, I’m the type who makes custom graphics for them as well. No, I’m not necessarily proud.
This week’s Sunday Read is about something adjacent to this passion: the soundtrack at restaurants. Sent to me by my good friend Phil from Lunch Reads, here’s a taste:
Experts say good music in restaurants should be like good design. You don’t necessarily want to notice it. Arman Naféei is former musical director for all André Balazs’ hotels, including Chateau Marmont and Chiltern Firehouse, and now curates music for venues such as Le Sirenuse in Positano, the Kulm Hotel St Moritz and Loulou in Paris. He likens good sound design to a shadow: it should never lead, only follow. “Let the space and energy of people dictate,” he says. He mentions the garden restaurant at Chateau Marmont, where for years there was no music: “Older customers prefer no sound, especially in the US.” In a bid to “adapt to the times”, music was gradually introduced, starting about seven years ago in the smoking area: “Initially I used bird sounds, as the area resembles a little jungle at night,” he says. “Later I brought in ’50s exotica jazz in a nod to old Hollywood composers like Martin Denny, followed by more up-tempo blues”, as the area became more of a drinking-smoking-flirting scene.
Read in full here.
See my playlists here.
The Sunday Haiku: Oh, my life is changing everyday.
Silence, deafening.
Siri, play “The Cranberries,”
Okay, that’s better.
Work In Progress: A Weekend in the Garden
My dad visited this weekend and — in a turn of events I didn’t see coming — we spent most of the weekend thinking about the garden. Running to pick up supplies, figuring out what to get for lunch, doing a little work while listening to some music, and maybe shutting things down around happy hour.
I needed help setting up our garden for success, and he knew it. Luckily for me, I was in the hands of an expert who didn’t put much on my plate.
It was simple.
And it was just about as good of a weekend as I could’ve ever asked for.
New Episode › Retail Therapy 068: Black Tie & Outdoor Voices
Riding the momentum from the quarterly In/Out episode from last week, we dip into some topics that desperately needed our attention this week: Will's getting trolled by one of his favorite design accounts on Twitter, Barrett's update on dressing nice, the downfall of Austin's own Outdoor Voices, black tie pain points (and flexes), some articles of interest, wishlist items, and more.
Listen to Retail Therapy on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (see above), and anywhere else podcasts are found.
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