This is a Recording

My favourite album of last year was Fatigue by L'Rain. I can't recall how I first heard about it - did I read a review and then seek it out? Did I catch one of its tracks played on the radio? Had the YouTube algorithm, in its finite wisdom, suggested something from it? I suspect my first introduction to it was on-line, and took place about this time last year. By whatever means I made its acquaintance, I fell under its spell almost immediately. Even so, I hesitated for a short time before buying, as it was not made available on CD. It irked me to spend more on a larger disc when I might otherwise have paid less on a smaller one. I don't think there's any special benefit derived from its being on the older medium - if anything, some tracks (such as the opening 'Fly, Die', which begins with snatches of music - overlain by noises of sirens, gunfire and helicopters - punctuated by brief silences) might have had slightly more impact in digital form. Tightfisted qu...

Richard Dawson can look like a folk singer: one bearded man with an acoustic guitar, albeit an amplified one, and can sometimes sound like a bit like one too. His playing, though, owes as much to avant-garde free improvisation as it does to traditional fingerpicking & strumming, while the subject-matter of his fascinating lyrics can incorporate historical events, mundane contemporary references, and the surreal or fantastical. The overall effect is a singular one, and not readily categorisable. I first heard him in late 2014, when his song 'The Vile Stuff'' (drawn from his fourth album Nothing Important ) was played on BBC 6 Music. Not completely sold, but curious, I looked on-line and found a  YouTube clip of him performing 'Black Dog in the Sky' - and that reeled me in. This song formed part of a 2011 album The Magic Bridge , which, conveniently, was re-issued in 2015 as interest in his music grew. I ordered a CD copy of it.  'Black Dog in the Sky' co...

This LP comes with a fold-out poster on which there are instructions on how to "Build Your Own Pop-Up Construction to Hold your Music Tapes Recording" (namely the CD you're encouraged to make of the downloadable versions of the songs), with part of the poster itself intended to be cut out and used in said Construction. The list of additional supplies the would-be hobbyist will need is: "one small acorn; a warm iron; scissors; a piece of stiff paper; glue". Among the instuctions is: "Draw a tiny musical note on your acorn". It's so very twee, as, to some extent, is the music, but it's also decidedly weird. Tweird , perhaps. My belated discovery of the "Elephant 6" artists' work about fifteen years ago did not extend to The Music Tapes. Only last year did I happen to stray into their eccentric world. Music Tapes For Clouds And Tornadoes is unusual with respect to both its instrumentation and recording. The musical saw and the banjo...

Like John Cale in the UK and Irmin Schmidt in Germany, the Swedish musician Bo Anders Persson was much inspired by the American avant-garde, and in particular by the early minimalism of Terry Riley. His first group, initially called Pärson Sound, had made some recordings in 1967 and '68, but these didn't see daylight until the 21st century. Soon afterwards though, the band's name having changed to International Harvester, a debut album was forthcoming in '68 on a Finnish label: Sov Gott Rose-Marie : "sov gott" meaning "sleep well".  This album, along with the Pärson Sound recordings, and the follow-up record Hemåt (i.e. "Homeward", for which the band's name changed again, this time to Harvester), were all released on CD in 2001. My copy is one of these re-issues, but I didn't obtain it until considerably later. It wasn't until 2010 that I even became aware of Pärson Sound and its offshoots (having, for most of the previous dec...

Some mis-steps delayed my gaining a proper appreciation of Can. I'd heard their name mentioned more than once as influential innovators, but had no idea what was what in their back catalogue. The first thing of theirs I acquired was a cassette copy of Delay 1968 , which I don't think I was quite ready for; nor, in any case, is it their finest work. I'd evidently persuaded myself that their early stuff must be the best, as, six or seven years later I tried again, picking up Monster Movie on CD, and also the Unlimited Edition compilation.  The former, I thought, was more like it, though it still didn't quite hit the spot I'd hoped it might. A further seven or eight years passed before I happened to hear the track 'Future Days', which I loved, prompting me to buy the then-new SACD issue of the album with the same name. This was around the same time I'd belatedly discovered NEU!, Cluster, et al. I ordered a copy of Ege Bamyasi soon after. And there, with...

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 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...

The release of The Damned's version of 'Alone Again Or' would doubtless have prompted someone on the radio to blow the dust off the original & broadcast that too: I don't think I was aware of the song before then. In the same time-frame, I would have read about Forever Changes in a book I never bought (as mentioned a few days ago). My curiosity was piqued. Another couple of years passed, however, before I found and bought a copy of the album on cassette. There are works of art that encompass both the sublime and the ridiculous: I think Forever Changes is just such an opus. On one hand it begins with the singularly lovely 'Alone Again Or' and ends with the glorious 'You Set The Scene'; on the other hand along the way there's the drippy earnestness of 'Andmoreagain' and 'Old Man', not to mention the infamous opening lyrics of 'Live and Let Live'. I don't think I ever owned Forever Changes on CD, so when I received a ...

My introduction to Jane Weaver came in 2014 on hearing the tracks 'Don't Take My Soul' and 'Mission Desire' on the radio, both from this album, The Silver Globe . It was only after I'd acquired her follow-up album Modern Kosmology in late 2017, however, that I came back to buy this one too. It's a record that was inspired in part by the movie On The Silver Globe , the work of Polish director Andrzej Żuławski - a controversial and troubled project begun in the mid-'70s but only released in 1988. I'd been oblivious to Weaver's prior career ( The Silver Globe is her sixth solo album), but it comes across as the work of a confident artist having already hit her stride. Style-wise, one reviewer described it as "krautrock-tinged, synth rock, space-disco pop opera". It is certainly psychedelic, while not too 'far out', being well-grounded with propulsive grooves and catchy melodies. It has more pronounced Anglo-European influences th...

I didn't buy MGMT's Oracular Spectacular : I liked the singles from it but not so much as to tempt me to part with my money. I did gather together some spare change, however, for Congratulations . I'd heard and loved 'Flash Delirium' and 'It's Working': it was probably seeing the video for the former not long after the album's release in 2010 that prompted me to purchase. I don't love the album as a whole. Apart from the two tracks that first caught my ear I'm more or less lukewarm about much of the rest. 'Song for Dan Treacy' and 'Brian Eno' are pleasant enough; 'Someone's Missing' builds from a nondescript opening to a satisfying conclusion; the 12-minute 'Siberian Breaks' has some good parts and some aimless ones. Despite that, it has so far made the cut every time I've culled my collection to free up some shelf-space. I have it on a CD I would have ordered from Amazon. It's a well-packaged item ...

The internet as it was in 2003 alerted me to the existence of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, and, when I fell in love with that album myself the following year, the internet further explained that it had come out of something called the 'Elephant 6 Collective', an umbrella in whose shade numerous bands hand flourished, one of the most notable of them being The Olivia Tremor Control. Curious, I sought out the OTC albums on CD, acquiring them in reverse order, getting the second (and to my mind, the better) of them first. I fell for Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One too. It's determinedly psychedelic record where Beach Boys and Beatles-inspired melodies and harmonies alternate with (or are overlain by) musique concrète- style tape manipulations, and where the lyrics recount a longing for, and a striving towards the otherworldly. I loved the songs but the sound quality on the CD left something to be desired: I imagined that may have been attribu...

I'd been intrigued by the reviews I'd read of Aphex Twin's music, but don't think I'd heard as much as a note of it before I bought my first CD of his (the Donkey Rhubarb EP). This more than exceeded my indistinct expectations and indeed knocked my socks off, so I was eager to hear more. Next up, purchased in mid '97 or so when I was still in Italy, was Selected Ambient Works Volume II .  Described by its creator as "like standing in a power station on acid," it is certainly hair-raising and potentially disorienting, although, when not in quite the right frame of mind for it, it's also not without its longueurs. Unlike my other Aphex Twin discs this one is still in reasonably good condition, as the right frame of mind only came along relatively infrequently, and then less often again as the decades wore on. When I play it nowadays, I'll tend to skip past quite a few of the tracks and stick to my old favourites. With all the tracks but one bein...

Broadcast: the name of this band was, for me, actively off-putting. If it conjured up any kind of associations, they were anodyne ones. While I'd read about them any number of times, it was only after the release of their collaborative album Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age in 2009 that I began to investigate their work, and to realise what I'd been missing out on. Not much more than a year after that came the desperately sad news that their singer Trish Keenan had died. Having first obtained their music by way of file-sharing, there did't seem any great hurry to buy their albums on physical media, but, at length, I did the right thing and acquired the three studio albums on CD, beginning with 2000's The Noise Made by People . It often happens that I'm attracted to music with a cooler emotional temperature, and Broadcast's sound strikes me as particularly chilly, and also - figuratively - sharp-edged, metallic and bright - ...