This is a Recording

I didn't get into Deerhoof until after the release of their acclaimed 2005 album The Runners Four , but, for reasons lost to the mists of time, the first record of theirs I bought was Apple O´ from 2003: perhaps it was more readily-available via Amazon UK at that point, or just slightly cheaper. In any case, it made a favourable impression, and I obtained The Runners Four soon afterwards, along with the Green Cosmos EP. Allmusic reviewer Heather Phares wrote "As the title implies, Apple O' (my eye) revolves around the band's musings on love, sex, and creation". But is the last character in the title really an apostrophe, when, on the cover, it has the look of an acute accent? My theory is that the O´ in the title is an emoji-esque representation of a cartoon bomb ( Apple 💣), which happens to match up  with the title of track 6: 'Apple Bomb' - to my ears, the best song on the disc, a number that builds from delicate beginnings to an appropriately expl

If I hadn't all but stopped listening to the radio in the wake of the pandemic, I may well have found my way to this album sooner. As it was, its appearance on several best-of-2021 lists tempted me to take a listen, and what I heard induced me get it on CD. I think I bought it from the HMV in Cribbs Causeway back in January. It's a lovely thing: mellow songs with heartfelt lyrics, neatly packaged to sound at once classic and contemporary. For me it's front-loaded, with the more arresting songs on the first half of the album. I'm especially fond of 'Hurt' and 'Hope'. Here and there the mellowness skirts around the edges of blandness, but not off-puttingly so. The first track - the title track - is a short poem recited over  acoustic guitar and synthesizer chords. Although I can't say I love it as a poem, I do appreciate it as a confident statement of intent ahead of the songs that follow. The closing track, meanwhile ('Portra 400') joins the s

When I found a vinyl copy of Infected by The The in the wild last summer, I was in two minds as to whether I should bring it home or not. It's an album I liked and admired when it was new, enough that I bought it on cassette at the time. But it was never a record I unreservedly loved. I did bring it home and had the peculiar pleasure of hearing it all for the first time in what must have been at least twenty five years, if not thirty. Why then had I hesitated to pick it up? I doubted I'd revisit it - and, sure enough, since then I've yet to play the LP a second time. I had misgivings about the state-of-the-art mid-'80s production when it was still the mid-'80s. The songs still stand up pretty well, but I didn't always enjoy how they were dressed up, and nor do I now. The political concerns it addressed, sharply here; clumsily there; are largely still relevant, yet it's such a serious record, to the extent of being po-faced. My favourite tracks on it are &#

Although Caroline Shaw's composition 'Partita for 8 Voices' made waves when it won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Music, I didn't hear it until a few years afterwards. When I did, it made an immediate impression and I ordered a copy of the present CD, which at that point contained the only available recording of the piece. The album's eponymous title is that of the vocal ensemble for whom the 'Partita' was created, and of which Shaw is also a member. Perplexingly, the 'Partita' is presented out-of-sequence on the disc, and to hear it in its proper order involves listening to tracks 9, 11, 5 and 1 respectively: to my mind a bad and easily-avoidable decision. Perhaps it was ordered that way to guide the listener to pay more attention to the other pieces on the album, variously composed by William Brittelle, Judd Greenstein, Caleb Burhans, Sarah Kirkland Snider & Merrill Garbus, all unfamilar names to me except the last - some of whose work as tUnE-yAr

I bought Barafundle on CD when it was released: a little something Welsh while I was still in Rome. I'd become aware of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci a couple of years earlier, after the release of their Llanfwrog EP, when I heard the track 'Miss Trudy' on the radio, and had thereafter acquired a cassette copy of the Bwyd Time album. Barafundle is my favourite GZM record, hitting what is for me an ideal balance between the band's weird and whimsical sides. Barafundle Bay is an out-of-the-way beach in Pembrokeshire, and a few of the songs have an uncrowded sea-side feeling about them, including some of my favourites on the record, 'Starmoonsun' and 'Sometimes the Father is the Son', the former featuring a rare outing for the mediæval-style shawm on a pop/rock recording. Other favourite tracks of mine are 'Heywood Lane', 'Miniature Kingdoms' and 'Hwyl Fawr I Pawb'. Much as I usually enjoy this record, it doesn't suit every mood

I bought the Buena Vista Social Club album on CD the year after its release, with a great profusion of laudatory reviews having piqued my curiosity. I'd not had any significant encounters with Cuban music up to that point (nor indeed with Latin music in general) and at first hadn't imagined it would interest me.  As so very often, I was wrong, and I did enjoy it, if only half-heartedly on first acquaintance. It took repeated listenings over several years for me to better appreciate its many charms. A major part of the record's appeal for me is its atmosphere: expert musicians playing together in a big room with joyful spontaneity.  Initial favourite songs from it were the insistent 'El Cuarto de Tula' and the wistful 'Amor de Loca Juventud'. Nowadays I love the whole thing & it still gets a few outings every year - an excellent soundtrack for a warm summer evening.

Dire Straits were, for me, a band I ultimately heard too often. Brothers In Arms and the never-ending stream of singles therefrom were so ubiquitous that my prior affection for their music soured due to over-exposure. Before that, I had been a fan, with 'Romeo and Juliet' in particular having been one of my favourite songs when I was twelve. A less discriminating nine-year-old when 'Sultans of Swing' came out, it didn't make that same kind of impression, but I did like the song, and when I turned up a 7" copy of it last year, I gladly brought it home. Apparently the version on the single is longer than the one that ended up on the band's debut album, and some aficionados consider it superior. The B-side is 'Eastbound Train (Live Version)', a rather jaunty number about a figurative missed connection on public transport. Musically, it goes in a direction I think they were wise not to pursue much further.

Johann Sch o bert (not to be confused with Franz Sch u bert) was a composer and virtuoso keyboardist active in Paris in the 1760s. He is best remembered - when remembered at all - for his remarkable & lamentable demise: "Schobert went mushroom picking with his family [...] near Paris. He tried to have a local chef prepare them, but was told they were poisonous. After unsuccessfully trying again at a restaurant at Bois de Boulogne, and being incorrectly told by a doctor acquaintance of his that the mushrooms were edible, he decided to use them to make a soup at home. Schobert, his wife, all but one of their children, and his doctor friend died." The third quarter of the 18th century was roughly the period when the newfangled "piano forte" was supplanting the harpsichord as the default keyboard instrument. As with many new technologies, a variety of piano designs proliferated early in the instrument's history, before standardisation set in. One of the var

I loved this song when it was new. I would have first heard it on Janice Long's evening Radio 1 show. I don't recall if I'd heard their first single 'Trees and Flowers' but this, their one significant hit, was hard to avoid. I was glad to find the 7" in a charity shop last July. I doubt I would have made the connection between the fanfare motif in the song and the final movement of Sibelius' 5th Symphony if I hadn't read about it on wikipedia: but once that lightbulb had been switched on, the likeness has been obvious. With their distinctive look, a recognizable sound, and one of the best band-names of their era, they could have seen much greater success, but by all accounts they weren't a stable unit. The B-side, 'By The Sea' is less polished but is quite a strong song in its own right with a catchy bass-line and some interesting twangling string sounds.  

I only deigned to take notice of the The White Stripes hype in late 2001, several months after the release of White Blood Cells . Perhaps I'd read enough laudatory reviews of it; perhaps I'd seen the video for 'Hotel Yorba' on MTV2. I was enthused and delighted by the album: it's front loaded, with the opening four tracks charging out of the gate. 'Hotel Yorba' and 'Fell in Love With a Girl' were immediate favourites. Further along the running order, the sweetly sentimental 'We're Going To Be Friends' was another I loved. I bought Elephant as soon as it was released, and loved that too, but, by 2005, and Get Behind Me Satan my affection for them had began to cool. It's been a good few years since I played this one: I'll have to take it out for a drive and re-listen, then decide if I still need to keep a place for it on my shelves.  Updated later to add: having greatly enjoyed making its re-acquaintance, the CD stays!

Gabrel Fauré (like Martinů, mentioned recently ) is among the composers whose works I came to appreciate during my classical download binge of 2014/15. I became particularly fond of his two Piano Quartets and the first Piano Quintet. The second Quintet, and the works of ths composer's old age in general (the String Quartet, the Piano Trio, etc.) strike me as a little florid and over-ripe by comparison. Having said that, it's been a while since I heard it: who knows, another airing may yet change my mind. The version I have of the quintets is this 2009 Naxos CD performed by the Fine Arts Quartet joined by pianist Cristina Ortiz.  The first Quintet apparently had a very long gestation period, with some tentative first drafts made in 1887, but not completed until 1896, and not publicly performed until 1906. For all that, the piece has a seemingly spontaneous and natural flow which belies its difficult birth. The Adagio second movement is particularly lovely.

I have a vague recollection of first hearing schneider tm, aka German musician Dirk Dresselhaus, by way of a promotional compilation CD affixed to the cover of a magazine. The particular piece that caught my attention was 'Eiweiß', and, on the strength of my affection for that track, I bought Moist on CD. I'm not the biggest afficionado of electronic music, but I find this an absorbing and appealing album. The moody eponymous opening track seems to borrow something from the pioneering efforts of Cluster and their ilk, blended with more state-of-the-art ingredients (as of '98).  'Up-Tight' is uptempo & staccato, akin to an infeasibly rapid march, while 'Eiweiß' has a more liquid character with its rounded bleeps & bloops. 'Starfuck' includes buzzing electric noise and cyclically looped feedback combined to striking effect. There's a satisfying variety on the album. I also bought the second schenider tm release ( Zoomer ) but was much

Pye Records in the UK had a "Big Deal" series of four-track 12" EPs. Most brought together tracks by a single artist, but this one comprised four numbers first released on Stax Records. I've had it since 2015 or so. It would have been a local charity shop purchase. It's a quality item: Side A features (Theme From) 'Shaft' by Isaac Hayes and 'Who's Making Love' by Johnny Taylor, while on Side B are 'Private Number' by Judy Clay And William Bell, followed by Booker T & The MGs' classic 'Time Is Tight'. Tracks A1 and B2 are my particular favourites (both #4 hit singles in the UK), but the whole thing is a delight. I hadn't known until just now that Booker T. Jones produced and co-wrote 'Private Number', and that he, the MGs and Isaac Hayes all played on 'Who's Making Love'.

At the time of writing, this is my very latest addtion to Discogs: it's one of nine records I brought back from my last trip to Chepstow nineteen days ago: five were LPs, four were singles. I was aware that Was (Not Was) had recorded multiple songs under the title 'Out Come The Freaks', out of which I was only properly familiar with the one on their album What Up, Dog? I wondered if this might be one of the others so picked it up. If I'd taken longer than a moment to glance at the back cover, I could have seen that this was the 1987 version I already knew, here titled '(Stuck Inside Of Detroit With The) Out Come The Freaks (Again)' and not the 1981 original 'Out Come the Freaks' nor '(Return to the Valley of) Out Come the Freaks' (1983). Musically it still sounds good, but lyrically it hasn't aged terribly well. Aiming to be a sort of sardonic rogues' gallery, it comes across now as more of a sad reflection of its times. For example, in

I originally bought this album on CD in '09 when it was first released, excited to hear the first music from Circulatory System since their 2001 debut. At first listen I wasn't so fond of the harder-edged, more urgent sound on Signal Morning , but over time it grew on me, and I came to dearly love it.  Last year I set about 'upgrading' some of my Elephant 6 albums from CD to vinyl. While I'd never been fond of the digital release of Circulatory System the album, Signal Morning had always sounded great on CD, so buying that on vinyl was a gratuitous measure: I did so anyway, ordering a lightly used copy (on white vinyl) from a Discogs seller. The vinyl pressing comes across slightly differently than the CD had done: neither better nor worse, just not entirely the same. Each time I've played it I've listened right through with rapt attention. My favourite songs include 'Rocks And Stones', 'Overjoyed', 'Gold Will Stay', and the title t

Here's a recent acquisition, one of half a dozen late '70s/early '80s singles picked up in April from "Derek's Records" in Chepstow. I liked the song when it came out and still like it now. I see, courtesy of wikipedia, that Carnes had a long career and other successes besides this one. Having said that, I can't recall any other of her songs getting airplay in the UK, and I'm ignorant of the rest of her œuvre . One of the other singles I bought the same day was Smokey Robinson's 'Being With You'. I was entirely unaware until just now of Robinson having written that song with Carnes in mind, after having been much impressed by a version she'd performed of his track 'More Love'. "However, Robinson's then producer George Tobin insisted instead that he record and release the song himself" (wikipedia again), I also hadn't known of 'Bette Davis Eyes' being a cover, the original recorded in 1974 by its co-wri

I went through a phase, about eight years ago, when I downloaded (via less than fully legal means) a great quantity of classical music: so much of it, that I spent a full year just listening to it all, at the rate of an hour or two a day. One of the composers whose work caught my ear during that time was Bohislav Martinů, with pieces like his Nonets and the wonderful 'Fantasia for Theremin, Oboe, String Quartet and Piano' standing out in particular. Afterwards, trying to do the right thing, I began buying some of his music on CD, and, on a few occasions, was lucky enough to turn up an old LP of his work at a charity shop. The present disc, combining Martinů's 'Concerto for Oboe and Small Orchestra' with Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, I found at the Oxfam Books & Music shop in Cardiff. In Discogs I have my copy listed  as from the original 1963 pressing, but it could well be a later re-issue. The soloist is František Hanták, accompanied by the Brno State Ph

'Let Your Yeah Be Yeah' is one of two Trojan 7"s on my singles shelf. As it happens, the other one (Desmond Dekker's version of 'You Can Get It If You Really Want') is also a Jimmy Cliff composition. I picked them up in the course of the same visit to Chepstow last summer. The Pioneers, I just learned, were a vocal trio. Wikipedia tells me they had relocated from Jamaica to the UK in 1970, in the wake of their song 'Long Shot Kick The Bucket' finding success here. 'Let Your Yeah Be Yeah', released in '71, reached number 5 in the UK singles chart. The B-side 'More Love' isn't as good as a song, but provides a better showcase for the trio's impressive vocal abilities. Between them they cover a range from resonant baritone to piercing falsetto, and harmonize together beautifully.

Speak No Evil is one of a smallish number of jazz CDs I've bought at Kriminal Records, a stall in Newport market: - though it's been quite some time since I visited, so I'm not sure it's still there. Their vinyl prices, while by no means kriminal, were a little higher than I preferred to pay, so CDs it was. This is a copy of a '99 re-issue that cost me a few pounds. Highly-regarded by aficionados, rated by many as Shorter's finest outing as a leader, this is an album I find I sometimes love and other times don't: my response to it very much depends on my mood and the circumstances of the moment.  It's a cool and confident and dark and sinuous record with Shorter's striking compositions fleshed out by an all-star quintet. Straightforward hard-bop ingredients and more astringently avant-garde ones are mixed to great effect: with the proportions so well-judged that the resulting concoction is a heady one.

For my money, Antonín Dvořák's 'String Quintet No. 2 in G major' (Op. 77) is among the best of his lesser-known works. It was composed in 1875, a few years before the 'Slavonic Dances' became his first major hit, launching him into the compositional big-time. It wasn't published until 1888, by which time his international reputation was well-established. Unusually for a late-19th-century quintet, it's scored for two violins, viola, cello, and double bass. It's performed here by the Dvořák Quartet augmented by bassist František Pošta. I have it on a 1967 Supraphon LP: a re-issue of a recording first released five years earlier, so Discogs informs me. I think it may have been one of the several classical albums I've bought from the Oxfam shop in Thornbury. Originally in five movements, it was published without a slow 'Intermezzo' that would have been its second. The current second movement ('Scherzo. Allegro vivace') is probably the mos

Falling as it does between their effervescent earlier hits, and the moody darkness of their glory years, 'See You' is probably among the less sought-after Depeche Mode 45s, which might explain why it's the only one I've yet found in the wild. I've never been an outright fan of theirs, but have enjoyed several of their songs down the years, and recall having a fondness for this one as thirteen-year-old. Some may call it twee, but, nowadays, to me, it seems vaguely creepy: one could interpret it as a kind of stalker's lament. "And I won't even touch you", "But I swear I won't touch you" sound like remarks from the wrong side of a restraining order. "Well I know five years is a long time" - five years? where's he been exactly: prison? The B-side 'Now, This is Fun' isn't bad - it has a bit more going on musically than 'See You', but the vocals are oddly low in the mix and the overall effect is lacklustre.

There was no way I could have missed Aretha Frankin growing up. Not only were her classic songs still often on the radio, there were also (from a lower drawer, perhaps) her '80s tracks & the very popular collaborations with Annie Lennox and George Michael. Not to mention the references & tributes to her work from soul enthusiasts of all stripes, from Scritti Politti to The Blues Brothers. Even so, it wasn't until after her death that it very belatedly dawned on me exactly what a powerhouse & a glorious talent she'd been. Meanwhile I'd formed an appreciation for an older generation of singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington: so when I learned, not much more than a year ago, that Aretha had recorded a tribute to Dinah, I was keen to hear it, and ordered a used CD copy of Unforgettable from an ebay seller. It's a wonderful record. First released in '64, a few years before her move to Atlantic records allowed her to fully hit h

I first heard Terry Riley's In C when I picked up a copy of the 25th anniversary performance on CD back in the late '90s. That version I admired rather than loved - at over 75 minutes' duration it just went on a little too long for my taste, and I seldom listened all the way though. The piece's opening 'theme' (if that's even the right word), hooked its way into me, however, and not infrequently comes back into my mind. When I learned that a version had been recorded by a group of (mostly) Malian musicians around the time of the piece's 50th anniversary, under the umbrella of the Africa Express organisation co-founded by Damon Albarn, it immediately struck me as a great idea. Riley himself was reportedly delighted by it too, saying: "I was not quite prepared for such an incredible journey, hearing the soul of Africa in joyous flight over those 53 patterns of ‘In C’. This ensemble feeds the piece with ancient threads of musical wisdom and humanity

I first heard some of Khruangbin's music not long after the release of their debut album, but at that point it didn't grab me, nor did it on a number of other occasions thereafter when I heard it on the radio. What eventually turned my head and made me listen properly was seeing them play (as I recall it was this performance ), which is odd, as there's scant obvious showmanship involved, and yet they're mesmerising to watch. My eyes and ears newly opened, I ordered their then-current second album Con Todo El Mundo , and later, in 2020, its follow-up: Mordechai - both on CD. At first I wasn't sure if the newer record was an improvement on the one before, but, on further aquaintance, I grew to believe it was indeed a step up. I've heard it many times, but even now can only bring to mind a couple of its tunes from just looking at the track titles ('Time (You and I)' and 'Pelota'). I don't have strong favourites among the songs but rather enjoy

This is a 1962 performance by Alfred Brendel of Franz Schubert's Impromptus, Op. 90 & Op. 142 on a 1969 UK re-issue. Of Brendel, who would have been 31 at the time of the recording, the sleeve-notes say "he shows a particular preference for Mozart, and has been instrumental in bringing before the public unjustly neglected Schubert Sonatas" whereas nowadays he's probably best-known for his esteemed interpretations of the Beethoven Sonatas.   After a paragraph about Brendel, the notes, by an un-named author, discuss the Impromptus in some detail. Despite the unalike opus numbers assigned to the two groupings of four pieces, they were apparently all written in the same year: 1827. "These eight pieces", the sleeve-noter adds, "were the outcome of publishers' urgings and requests for 'short pieces, not too difficult, and in easy keys'". The term Impromptu is misleading here, we're told. with the pieces being "anything but imp

Having enjoyed some Quincy Jones's '50s and '60s big band arrangements for the likes of Dinah Washington and Frank Sinatra, I thought it just as well to check out an example of the the music released under his own name. Here, with his orchestra in 1961, is his sole release on the Impulse! label The Quintessence which I bought second-hand last year on CD. The orchestra sound fantastic, as one might expect when it featured such notable players as Freddie Hubbard, Clark Terry, Thad Jones, Curtis Fuller and Oliver Nelson, the last-named then on the verge of beginning his own career as a composer/conductor/arranger. Three of the tracks are Jones originals, with another two by his assistant, trombonist Billy Byers. The covers include the Benny Golson number 'Little Karen', and a high-octane version of Thelonious Monk's 'Straight, No Chaser'. Its eight tracks barely extending to half an hour, this is a short album, but an impeccably sharp one. The sleeve notes

I bought my 7" copy of Marianne Faithfull's rendition of 'As Tears Go By' a couple of years ago. Beyond just enjoying the song, I don't have any other opinions about it, and refer to wikipedia for the information that follows. It was one of Jagger & Richard's first compositions, in which they were aided by Stones manager Andrew 'Loog' Oldham. Richard recalls the pair initially taking a dim view of their handiwork: "We thought, what a terrible piece of tripe. We came out and played it to Andrew, and he said 'It's a hit.' We actually sold this stuff, and it actually made money. Mick and I were thinking, this is money for old rope!" Nor was Faithfull especially fond of the tune, originally earmarked as a B-side, but promoted after failed efforts to record a satisfactory take of Lionel Bart's 'I Don't Know (How To Tell You).' She has said "God knows how Mick and Keith wrote it or where it came from ... In a

I only seldom visit Cardiff, but when I do, the Oxfam Books and Music shop on St. Mary's Street is somewhere I'll try to look around if time permits. They often have interesting classical LPs in stock: for instance, I picked up this album, plus a disc with Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden' quartet on it for about £6 or £7 last summer. François Couperin's Premier Livre De Piéces De Clavecin was published in 1713, comprising five 'orders' (or suites) of pieces each of which shared a common key. This disc contains the Cinquiême Ordre in its entirety, that is the fifth (and last) of the 'orders' in that first book, which is in the key of A. These are prefaced by a 'Prélude', the fifth of eight presented in Couperin's 1716 treatise L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin . This is a 1980 recording on the Astrée label, performed by Blandine Verlet on a 1716 harpsichord made in Lyon by Pierre Donzelague. Lyon was also the venue for the recording.

I began buying music on cassette in the mid-'80s out of necessity: I couldn't afford a record-player, and I certainly couldn't afford a CD player. Cassette-players, however, were comparatively cheap, and, of course, tapes were compact & portable. When I was eventually able to switch to CD I didn't think twice about it and scarecely looked back: I sold or gave away all my tapes in '98 before an international move. Earlier this year I spotted a hi-fi cassette player in my local charity shop: a good-quality model in good shape. The third, fourth and fifth times I saw it there, still unclaimed, I started to think I might buy it, which, at the sixth or seventh time, I did. With the player plumbed in to my hi-fi, I needed something to play on it. My purchases included a few 'Best Of' compilations from an ebay seller, including this one, Galore , a 1995 retrospective of Kirsty MacColl's career up to that point. Its sound quality might best be termed 'ad