Episode 37: On thresholds, quiet resistance, and the patience to keep listening.

Le Salon indie de Mitxoda: Episode 37 (January 9, 2026)

Some weeks begin with music. Some begin with what the world insists we carry.

2026 has barely started, and yet it already feels loud. The kind of loud that doesn’t come from celebration, but from the constant drip of anxious information, avoidable dramas, and decisions made far above our heads, so far, in fact, that their logic becomes difficult to grasp from down here.

Today, I couldn’t ignore one specific moment that haunted the day: an hommage paid to the victims of the Crans-Montana fire in Switzerland. When tragedies return as anniversaries, ceremonies, names read aloud, they remind us of something uncomfortable: time keeps moving even when meaning doesn’t keep up. We learn the dates. We learn the numbers. We learn the headlines. But the human weight behind them never becomes “normal.” It simply becomes part of the background noise, unless we choose to stop and listen properly.

And that is, maybe, the quiet mission of this Salon: to resist the flattening of everything into content. To refuse the world as a feed. To make room for attention again, slow attention, human attention. Not the kind that reacts instantly, but the kind that stays with what it hears.

Because some events don’t just “happen.” They change the shape of a life. They create a before and an after, a threshold you cross without realizing it at first. Sometimes it’s a catastrophe. Sometimes it’s a smaller fracture. But the feeling is similar: you wake up and you sense that you’re standing on the other side of something, and nothing will ever be exactly the same.

That is why this episode carries the idea of the portal. Not as fantasy, but as reality: the invisible doorway we pass through when a personal world shifts, or when the collective world reminds us it can burn, collapse, or erupt overnight. In those moments, we discover how fragile our assumptions were, and how precious our ordinary days truly are.

So what do we do with all of that?

We don’t “fix” it with a playlist. That would be dishonest. Music is not a solution. But music can be a shelter, a mirror, a protest, a hand on the shoulder, a deep breath at the right moment. It can help us process what words can’t hold. It can help us remember that sensitivity is not weakness, it’s a form of intelligence.

In this episode, you’ll hear songs that feel like inner weather, songs that raise their voice against leaders who keep choosing war, songs that drift into electronic night-scapes, and songs that simply hold space for emotion without demanding explanations. You’ll also hear collaborations, because even in dark times, artists keep reaching across borders, languages, and genres to build something together. That matters. Quietly, but deeply.

And between those moments, I’m also thinking of absence, of artists who go silent, of messages that remain unanswered, of the fragile thread of connection we sometimes lose without knowing why. Justin Ride is one of them. In a world obsessed with constant output, silence can mean many things. Sometimes it’s distance. Sometimes it’s burnout. Sometimes it’s simply life. We can’t always know. But we can keep a place open, without turning it into a story we invent.

So here we are. In the Salon. You can move the chair, add cushions, pour a tea, dim the lights. This is not a race. This is not a performance. It’s a shared listening space, built on patience, and on the stubborn belief that attention still matters.

Thank you to every artist who sends music through mitxoda.be/submit, and to the radios that keep this show alive: the live broadcast on OTAT247, and the rebroadcasts on MyIndieRadio (France) and ZeneRulett Radio (Hungary).

And if you feel like taking part: the Top 100 Indie is live at mitxoda.be/top100. One vote per week, one track only. Slow by design. Choose with your heart.

I wish you a gentle weekend, or a calm week ahead if you’re listening later.
See you next week, in the Salon indie de Mitxoda.

Playlist — Episode 37 (January 9, 2026)

• Mitxoda — Patience
• Nick Luddite — Elemental
• Minna Ora — Freeze
• Phillip Foxley — Pictures
• Mike Stollen — Hidden Emotions
• Jodan Music — The Gunfight
• Andrew Russell, Michael Gutierrez-May, Nadine de Macedo — Toward Tomorrow
• Nadine de Macedo feat. Roman Wreden — A.L.E.X.
• The Sanctity Of Crows feat. Hollow Words — Second Sun
• Hideclose — Haunted View
• pMad — Blood
• The Fods — What
• Spendo — Standing in the Rain
• J&M Band — Daft Sensible
• Enter.me — It’s Only Sex
• The Electrozixx — Electric Waves
• Gengvej, Mitxoda — Echo Plastique (Into Deep Mix)
• CRED — meaning
• Justin Ride — Red Light
• Disrupted Being — News
• No Ordinary Fish — DJ Song
• Perpacity — The Zoo
• Mitxoda — Desertland
• The Creeping Candies — Things have changed
• State of Anguish — If Only
• Isa-Aura — Mon BGM
• Belle Morte — Jorōgumo

Listen again on Mixcloud