In recent years I have been dependent on “the algorithm” to suggest bands and music I’d like. To be fair Youtube Music and Apple Music do a bloody good job of it. I’m not sure how the algorithm works but I suspect it looks at what you like, looks at what other people who like the music you like listen to, then shoves a whole list of stuff you’ve probably never heard of in your face. This is, of course, dependent on a few things: –
- Having musical friends who stick to the same music streaming service
- Liking songs
- having ears
- your friends, or your friend's friends liking the same or similar style or class of music as you
Happily I am not on Spotty Fie for…reasons <insert suspicous monkey gif>…but sadly I only have about 4 friends on Apple Music so sometimes it gets a bit too repetitive (one of my Apple Music friends is really into dark wave so it’s quite nice to get stuff suggested by the algorithm that I might never dare to listen to normally) if you want to add me you can here – https://music.apple.com/profile/stegzy
Anyway, Shearwater is one of the bands that were dangled in front of my ears a couple of years ago. At the time I was trying to be smooth in a typical childless middle aged GenXer way and trying my best to stay relevant to the scenes around me. Quite often the algorithm will throw up stuff based on style or genre and I guess my, at the time, penchant for downbeat psychedelic hipster music was at its peak and so Shearwater surfaced.
I’d originally downloaded their album Jet Plane and Oxbow (2016), after seeing the band play their song Backchannels on the KEXP Youtube channel. I loved their style; tight, percussive and lyrically intelligent. As a result of a few listens Apple Music then threw Dread Sovereign from Animal Joy (2012) at me. Why hadn’t I heard them before? I wondered. Probably because I’d not ticked the right algo boxes.
Tight, haunting and well…just like a sheet of paper with fountain pen written words being inserted into your head. Shearwater are one of those bands I really need to pay more attention to.
Another victim of digital music proliferation and the great music heist of 2000. Los Angeles band Sugarplum Fairies’ final effort, SPF21 Altar Songs 1998-2021, released before Benny and Sylvia went their separate ways. Like a sad public divorce – the passion is there but the spark…just doing the motions.
The band was my most favourite discovery from Peoplesound – Sugarplum Fairies – sadly disbanding in 2021 but reforming later sans Ben Bohm – Silvia continued but the sound had changed, as to be expected. I’m not entirely sure what Altar Songs is supposed to be. There are remixes and reproductions of old classic songs and songs I’m not entirely familiar with but Apple Music classifies it as a compilation album so I’ll go with that.
Sure the compilation gives a good scope of what the band’s original sound was like and the direction they were heading but as an entry point, I’d still go for Flake which was their first album, especially if it’s dreamy college folk you’re after with songs about unhealthy relationships with college English professors and drug addiction.
It pains me to listen to this album knowing how they once were. They were just getting airtime, songs were appearing in soundtracks for TV shows and occasionally little mentions of them would appear across web media. All very very sad.
Oxford’s Hieronymus are another band I discovered through Peoplesound later discovering they were a little bigger than they first appeared but then virtually disappearing. I don’t really know that much about them. They’re tight, they performed around the Oxford gig circuits, released Alone in This Tree in 2003 followed up with Save the Day in 2006 and yeah…that’s it. Victims of both digital music proliferation and the early noughties great music heist.
I’m not sure who, possibly former work colleague Tim Worthington, recently lamented on social media how the advent of the Great Download Free-for-All and accessibility to an unstructured, unguided global catalogue of music often meant that up and coming bands came and faded immediately from memory citing the likes of Gravenhurst, Clearlake and Madasun as examples of bands who were everywhere then seemingly vanishing from cultural memory.
I guess Hieronymus was a victim of that time too. In “normal” times, they would have sky rocketed – NME, Music Maker and even Just Seventeen would have featured them. Now perhaps only those who saw them play in the Three Horseshoes in Witney might vaguely recall them, discovering the bands CD they bought out of support when clearing out the junkroom.
The tracks on Alone in this Tree are better produced than the 40% of tracks that were released on the Peoplesound sampler I originally owned. Lyrically, there’s a level of perverse humour, musically a really great blend of influences such as Blondie and Transvision Vamp but toned down to dreamy levels. My all time favourite song is Clueless – a lyrical tour de force about either a dog being abandoned or one overly devoted half of a relationship who is in an abusive relationship.
Sadly all that remains of the band online are a few videos on Youtube, this album, their other album Save the Day, a mention in local music press and an entry in the abc directory which links to their long disabled website. It doesn’t help that their band name has poor SEO clashing with at least two other international bands using derivatives of the name Hieronymus but at least there’s the music project entry you are reading right now.
I don’t know what it is, but whenever I hear All Saints or Sugababes I feel grimy. That whole harmonising sexy girls with lip gloss thing from the 90s just made me feel…uncomfortable and grimy.
Perhaps it’s me.
I wouldn’t say I was overtly prudish in any way – hey if you like that kind of thing that’s just fine but leave me alone with my fish fingers and lettuces – just the whole aesthetic – the videos with their soft focus close ups, the close mic-singing with ASMR, the needy clingy lyrics sung with vocal fry – it just makes me feel uneasy, at risk – like I’m being preyed on, stalked or trapped in a room with a over enthusiastic nymphomaniac who won’t take no for an answer. Perhaps I over analyse these things but I’m 100% certain that if the aesthetic was reversed there would be stern letters written to the police and I don’t mean Gordon Sumner and his pals.
All Saints by All Saints is the British girl band’s first album – released roughly around the time that the Spice Girls were menacing music and popular culture around the world – was seen as strong. The line-up then was Mel Blatt, Shaznay Lewis and the Appleton sisters Natalie and Nicole, founding member Simone Rainford having left the band by the time the album was launched. Later, the band would go on to release four other albums with mixed success, the difficult second album Saints & Sinners reaching number 1 in the UK album charts.
At the height of their popularity It was fairly difficult to watch or listen to any public service broadcast without seeing the girls, in various revealing modes of dress, promoting their works. Typical to bands of their ilk differences of opinion, changes in direction, solo work and intense public glare – especially from grimy sleazy toilet paper tabloids – lead to fractures. Four splits and three reunions culminated in one final album (to date) and tour with their male counterparts, Westlife.
I’ve no idea why this album is in my library. I guess there’s a couple of songs on it that summon me back to the noughties. But Jeez, noughties music was bollocks wasn’t it?
Rotary Connection’s Aladdin, released in 1968 lay unlistened to in my music library for several years. I can’t actually remember ever listening to it before and I believe that I had actually deleted it in one of the pre-music project tidyups.
But wow. What a first listen I had.
It’s kind of like a concept album but, I don’t think it is intentionally. The songs are like they have been ripped from a Broadway show like Hair or straight from a long forgotten film akin to Barbarella – only Aladdin.
Aladdin is the band’s second album, the first being the eponymous Rotary Connection – they only released 6 albums in their time. Hailing from Chicago the band blends rock, pop and soul with a psychedelic feel. I’m fairly certain any contemporary TV show or film trying to set a 1960’s scene with music would use a bit of Rotary Connection.
The band has echoes of This Mortal Coil in that the band was formed by a label, Chess Records, to showcase talent. Only this time the musicians Bobby Simms, Mitch Aliotta and Ken Venegas were recruited from little known band Proper Strangers, seasoned with session musicians, Judy Hauff and the then receptionist Minnie Ripperton – whom you might know as the mother of US SNL’s Maya Rudolph.
These guys captured the sound of an era and I don’t think they get enough recognition. And that’s just from a few listens to this album…
So something bollocks happened between the last entry and this one. I had been mooching about on my PC exploring a box of old hard drives I had come across which contained quite a lot of music that had, for what ever reason known only to Apple Music, removed itself from my Apple Music Library. I copied some of what I found into my iTunes – album by album – before I got bored and tried to move several at once.
Bad mistake.
In doing so, iTunes decided to rejig my library, import folders from my usual drives that I had excluded and retag around about 100 albums to be under the tags VARIOUS ARTISTS and the album GOTHIC EROTICA .
Great.
I rage quit and did not dare look at my PC’s iTunes library again for several months until such time as I had completely forgotten what I’d done, logged back in and knackered up my library even more.
Even then it took me the best part of a year to get back to some normality. In the process of re-tagging well over 1000 tracks I started to notice I had albums I had no idea that I had – moreover albums I’d never even heard of before. One such album was Afflatus by The Polyphonic Spree
Afflatus was released in 2021 which kind of indicates to me that this isn’t one I’d downloaded back in the grand old days of YoHoHoery. I can only assume that Apple Music added it out of generosity – something I’ve noticed has happened a fair bit since the great Tagging Disaster of 2025. Never the less, the album is in the library so it must be included in the music project.
The album comprises of 10 tracks – all slightly jollified Spreesque cover versions of songs such as the Bee Gee’s Could It Be Magic and Rush’s Spirit of Radio. I’m not certain if it’s because the moment of cheesy tambourine clapping uplifting music has passed, much in the same way that long haired hippy “we’re all entering a new spiritual age” 1960s music did by the 1980s or if its just a terrible album – but Afflatus really does set the cringe glands on edge.
I don’t know, to me it just feels like the band lost a little “something” after Fragile Army but I can’t really put my finger – or ear – on it.
Long time readers will recall the very first album write up in the project being Lemon Jelly’s ‘64-‘95and how much has changed since then, musically, globally and culturally. Just listening to this, their first album released in 2000, brings back memories of an almost alien world- no social media as such, no 9-11 paranoia, no politically induced panic attacks and no mediascape flooded with copycats.
I say that about the copycats because around the time of release, former acquaintance Ray Pulling (Hi if you’re reading this) and I often tried to mix up similar sounds using his eclectic sound production “suite” and either my Amiga1200 or a PC – whatever was working/more portable at the time and situation – in which ever location we could be bothered to set up/be in.
But of course we never released anything, instead idled the time away chatting shit and eventually fell out over conflicting morality issues. So when Lemon Jelly started putting out much better finely polished stuff it was easier to just consume that than fart about in Qbase or whatever free sampling software came with that month’s PC Format magazine.
The album is itself highly regarded and is borrowed from stylistically by later and contemporary artists such as Bent , Zero 7 and Twofish and again, a reminder of something awesome British culture used to produce before lazy saccharinly insipid industry approved AI driven cookie cutter “culture by numbers” ruined it for everyone.
It seems like an age since we last heard from nineties French trip-hopping electronauts Air on the Music Project. Indeed it feels like an age since we heard any new music output from the band.
A major player in my personal soundtrack to the nineties along with Portishead, Bent and Massive Attack, Air were pretty much in most 1990’s twentysomethings record collections somewhere. They broke ground with the extra special Moon Safari then, after a flurry of mostly ignored albums, flashed up in 2012 with this nod to Georges Méliès silent epic – A Trip To the Moon before disappearing in a puff of pretention and a best-of-compilation.
A great shame really as I was quite fond of the guys and I did go and actually buy their stuff rather than download and steal evaluate.
Le Luci Di Hessdalen [The Hessdalen Lights]1 released in 2004 is the seventh(?) release of Argine (Queen) an Italian Neo-folk band formed in 1992.
I became aware of them after hearing them on the Looking For Europe Neofolk compendium where the track In Silenzio, which is on Le Luci Di Hessdalen, appears. It has that weird “I’ve heard this before somewhere” vibe, possibly it was on the radio in the UK once? I don’t know.
However on that vibe alone, I was convinced to “obtain” the album during the Great Internet Download Free-for-All of the early noughties. On further investigation though, I became more convinced that I’d heard a few other tracks too such as Lamento Funebre and Punti Invisibili– Absolutely no idea why, where or by what means. But the more I listen, the more I’m convinced I was subjected to the album some time in 2004.
1The Hessdalen Lights are a recurring aerial light thing in the Hessdalen Valley in Norway. Some attribute them to UFOs but most scientists attribute them to a reaction with a rare earth element with oxygen. For more info see Wikipedia
In the year 2000, the internet was fledgling and untrustworthy and magazines were still a thing. While wanting to attract the vast untapped market of the non-sex obsessed laid back single male twenty something professional demographic, some magazine publishers chucked buckets of cash at producing magazines aimed at them.
Yes, FHM was a thing but that was more laddish than most men felt comfortable with reading in public, with covers often boardering on the pornographic. Esquire was often too sophisticated – aimed at those confident in their presense and appearance. Empire was just about films and GQ had that metrosexual vibe that just didnt appeal to a lot of heteronormative types. Later bridged the gap – stylish, hip, with a cheeky undertone of implied sauce. It was the reading matter for gents who just wanted to stay in touch with what was cool in the world and how to portray that coolness without looking like a catalogue model or an overtly sculpted waxwork with clearly coded sexuality markers.
I loved Later. It appealed to me. I still have copies of every edition of the magazine mouldering in my loft along. It spoke to men like me and offered a guiding hand in the puzzling world of business, style and culture. It’s sad that the publication ended and more sad that nothing really replaced it. Sadly, it seems, people don’t read magazines the way they did preferring social media, websites, podcasts and Substacks instead
Perhaps the most prized possession from this time of my life along with the magazines themselves, are the free CDs that came with the publications. Two Serve Chilled volumes were released over the lifetime of the magazine, with two Later Lounge volumes.
The CDs were compilations of cool, hip music from across the ages, that would delight and provide the owner with that sense of “Hey I listen to cool hip quality music”. It was the kind of music you could pop on at a dinner party or perhaps after the night out at the club to impress that young lady you had brought back to the pad – stylishly decorated of course thanks to the guidance from the magazine .
Later Lounge Volume 1 latched onto that late nineties/early noughties 60’s revival vibe heralded by the likes of Oceans Eleven, Austin Powers and the remastering of old Michael Caine films. Not a great hit with me, I was far too dirty old goth by this time, but there was some Herbie Hancock, who’s music had already passed my ears on yet another Compilation cassete/CD conversion, the erroneously named Seventies Shit.
If ever I wanted to out hipster Hipster Nick, I’d whack this on, put on a cravat and moan about “bloody beatniks” and now you too can pretend to be a lounge lizard by playing the entire playlist via the magic of Youtube below 🙂
Later: The Later Lounge Volume 2 [#661]
Later Lounge Volume 2 came some months later. I think possibly after Serve Chilled but definately after Later Lounge 1 and Serve Chilled 2. I think by this point Later, as a magazine, had become a little flaky. Not as stylish as it once was, perhaps the chaps in the office had been told there and then that the magazine’s days were numbered. Either way, I felt then that there wasn’t as much thought put into this particular compilation. However, with more mature ears, I can now appreciate fully what sort of vibe they were trying to create.
If you fancied pretending to be some 1970’s caberet club owner with your over priced cigars, chest hair and ladykiller white shoes – you know the kind of way you wouldn’t have dressed to impress in the year 2000 – driving through the rain soaked streets of a cosmopolitan and exotic city like say….Bradford (Detroit being too far away)…in your vinyl roof Ford Cortina Mk1 (1973 Oldsmobiles are too big for UK roads)….then this is the compilation for you.
Again, I’ve recreated it on Youtube because I love doing this kind of thing. I should really do a podcast but you know…it’s no good if it’s just me talking….
Later: Serve Chilled Volume 1 [#662]
Serve Chilled Volume 1 became the soundtrack to the early noughties for me. I had multiple copies made to play on my car stereo to accompany long car journeys to and from Yorkshire and I also had it ripped to MP3 when I got my Creative Jukebox 2. I cannot politely express how much I loved this compilation and still do.
A soundtrack to every summer trip to Wales, Brighton, Yorkshire and beyond with Mrs Gnomepants v1.0 who, I hope, reads this and remembers the music as well as I do.
Finally the December 2000 edition carried Volume 2 of the Serve Chilled compilations. Blissful audio earwashes to carry away the winter chills and return memories of warm summers in Ibiza. However I wasn’t an Ibiza kind of youth prefering more sedate trips to Wales over roudy lads weeks away getting STDs, drunk and regrettable tattoos so this just makes me think of driving through Snowdonia.
Track #
Track Name
Artist
1
Sunshine of Your Love (Bigga Batucada Mix)
Rockers Hifi Meet Ella Fitzgerald
2
Fusions Alright
Royksopp
3
Recipe fro the Perfect Afro
Feature Cast
4
Harry the Guitar
Dr Rubber Funk
5
Happiness (Ashley Beedles West Coast Beach Bossa Vocal Mix)
I recently worked with a guy who bore an uncanny resembelance to Colin Meloy, the lead singer of The Decemberists. He had no idea who Colin Meloy was and, for a young chap, was surprisingly lacking in music knowledge. I’d like to think that me purposefully calling him Colin or Mr Meloy either drove him to hating me outright or that it encouraged him to look into his look-a-like and perhaps on a musical path of self discovery.
That was in 2020, the year of the virus, when the world turned on its head and stability seemed like a memory. Indeed, only a few years previous in 2018, I had gone to Leeds with Mrs Gnomepants to see the band, something I’d really looked forward to, only to come down with a really bad bout of flu on the day. Like “get me to bed now I’m not well at all” bad. I still went to the gig though. It was great fun. But before that I’d really no idea what the Decemberists looked like or sounded like live. But now I know and I’m bloody glad I did go. Their support, Hop-a-long were good too.
The King is Dead is the next album chronologically from Hazards of Love which, if you’ve forgotten or missed it, I talked about here some time back. Look I’m a busy guy you know? I’m fifty next year, I have to work and do actual grown up shit these days so if I fall behind in my various content outputs its not because I don’t care, its because I can never find the time ok? I’d even do this as a podcast if I had someone to do it with me! Anyway, The King is Dead isn’t as catchy as previous Decemberist albums in my opinion. Its odd but the Decemberists sub-reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Decemberists/) did a Redditors vote for the best album and I seem to remember this one fareing quite well. Perhaps I’m just not a typical Decemberists fan?
Audibly, this album is very close in style to what Mike Scott’s The Waterboys were trying to achive in the Fisherman’s Blues days. Indeed, you can also detect influences of This is the Sea in previous Decemberist materials come to think of it. Happily though, the Decemberists dont go down the Room to Roam route and still churn out some good albums, which, hopefully we’ll see here when I get to them….
When I began this music project in 2013 I was in a different place. I had a little more time on my hands than now, and I posted regularly to Livejournal. My intitial stance was that unawtil the project was completed there would be an out right embargo on new purchases until the project was complete.
Well 10 years is a long time to go without new music and I was bound to slip up. So when I was able to grab this on Apple Music, I was swift to do so. That’s right, King Con is a recent addition to my library and so is most of Winston’s catalogue. I’d first heard her, like most people in the UK, on the television advert for Tacky Micks well I think it was Tacky Micks. It may have been Next or some other tat vendor. It was a jaunty tune that had you slapping your thigh and cheerfully whistling along and you’d often catch people singing it in the office or whistling it in the town centre. However, what amused me most of all was the fact that the song used was about oral sex. But hey ho, thats the way it goes in marketing.
This aside, the whole album is a good old pop album, a mostly undiscovered classic with some really good tracks and I’m often surprised Winston’s career didnt sky rocket on the back of it. But I guess with all careers, you can shine bright but if you are shrouded by life things and stumble over those hiccups that we’re sent along the way, you can fall off the ledge. Take it from one who knows. But do you know what? She’s still pushing out content, albeit an EP here and there and every one is a banging tune.
I highly recommend Alex Winston. She’s talented and has a very distinctive sound.
So I heard Tanya Donelly play on some compilation CD I had, can’t remember what one it was, and thought to myself: “Hey, here’s a singer with a distinctive sound, I’d like to know more”.
I jumped on the next 86 bus into Liverpool City Centre, marched down Church Street and entered the palace of musical wonder that was HMV. I then flicked through the CD racks for D. No Donelly. Did the same for T incase some div had misfiled. No Tanya Donelly. Repeated this in Virgin and any other record store I could find. Nada.
During the Great Internet Download Free for All, I’d scour the listings on Usenet for Donelly and also come up with nothing. Then, a passing comment with someone, I forget who, asked if I had tried B for Belly. Belly? I asked. Yes Belly! What, Belly, the band from the early to mid 90s who did Feed the Tree and was somehow linked to 4AD records? Yes, they said, the very same.
I hadn’t. I had no idea that Tanya Donelly was part, if not lead singer with Belly. Punched Belly into my Usenet browser and Blam! There was Belly. I listened to a few tracks, decided I liked a few tracks, continued to listen to those few tracks and never beyond the album itself.
Sad that.
This is what stealing music did to my generation. We became super saturated with media and it stopped us absorbing the true sound. Moreover, streaming music and CDs killed the beating heart, the album. The ease of just playing the tracks we liked instead of sitting through the whole thing to get to the track we liked – that became the using a spoon to eat your roast potatoes of music.
Having first heard two tracks from this album on Complete Mike Oldfield and having a teaser clip for the 1984 film on an old video cassette, I was keen to see this film. However this was in a time when films rarely made their way to TV at an acceptable time and there was no internets or Nutflux and Jeff Bezos was still scrounging $1 from his pals to buy a pack of Twinkies. So it wasn’t until probably the mid-90s when I eventually caught this film tucked away late one night on Channel 4. By which time I was holed up in my stinky little bachelor pad trying to make £140 last a month.
The Bruce Robinson directed film The Killing Fields starred Julian Sands, John Malkovich and Haing S Ngor and is a harrowing account of journalists Sydney Schanburg and Dith Pran’s experiences in Cambodia during the rise of the Kamer Rouge in the 1970s. If you ever want to see how quickly things can go to shit in a country, especially in a part of the world where there is dodgy goings on conducted by Western forces and the impact these actions can have on a people, then The Killing Fields is your required viewing. It’s what made me want to do Journalism at University.
The soundtrack, however, is by Mike Oldfield and was specifically written for the film on his Fairlight CMI, it is almost as atmospheric and as chilling as the film itself.
In Happy Days fandom it is often agreed that the moment Fonz water skis over a shark the decline in the quality of the show began. Some argue that the appearance of a poundshop Bertie Basset like villan marks the end of “quality” in Doctor Who.
Me? I ascertain that 1997s Open Your Eyes is where the rot began to set in for Yes. Others say Union, or 90125. But Open Your Eyes is where its at. A terrible album, yet to make an appearance on the Music Project.
Fortunately the albums following the release of Open Your Eyes showed how much of a driving force Steve Howe could be in the band. Having lost Rabin to music production and realising that Sherwood was better as a producer than a performer, the albums that followed: The Ladder and House of Blues, showed that the band when it consisted of Wakeman, White, Anderson, Squire and Howe could bash out some amazing tunes. Think Tormato, Going for the One and Tales from Topographic Oceans.
However this 2001 release on the Castle label, described as a compilation of studio tracks from the Keys to Ascensionalbums, not only showed what the band was capable of when they weren’t trying to recapture the Lonely Heart era without Rabin or Horn as a guiding hand. But it also sowed the seeds for the albums to follow.
There are some really catchy tunes on this album and I am often surprised that I don’t listen to it more often. The track Mind Drive is a banging tune and Be the One has foreshadows of Magnification floating around it. The album also features Children of the Light which credits Vangelis as one of the writers. This truly is an album from Yes’ renaissance – capturing and blending all the bits and sounds that made the bands post-Bruford line up often referred to as the classic line up.
Sadly, in 2001, my ears were elsewhere. The Great Download was starting to begin and I was discovering new genres, new sounds and new aural pleasures. Music was becoming freely available and visits to Virgin and HMV were beginning to wane. It wouldn’t be until a chance visit to the fledgling Yes website that the realisation there were new albums available AND A TOUR on the horizon that I realised that there was new stuff for me out there.
One lesson to learn when curating a large collection of music is to make regular backups. Last week I had to make an emergency restore of my Mac’s OS which meant having to resort to a backup from the iCloud. Unfortunately, this meant that only the files I’ve managed to upload via my very slow 21st Century rural broadband or those matched via iTunes are currently available for me to listen to. Indeed, today’s album, Islands, is not available on iTunes and my iCloud library does not have the files uploaded, which is a shame. Fortunately, I did manage to listen and pencil together a brief draft of observations for today’s entry but it means there may be a slight decline in posting regularity for the next couple of weeks. Please stay with me though!
Good old “x for £xx” deals. If it wasn’t for “x CDs for £xx” deals my music library would probably have been very sparse and I’d have a lot of money. I first obtained Oldfield’s Islands on CD during a 3 for £20 deal at the Virgin Megastore in Liverpool (now Claus Ohlson) in the early nineties, I think I was still at school.
When Islands was released, computer graphics were, by today’s standards, a little bit shit. But that didn’t stop artists like Mike Oldfield from using visual media to add to their output. So when I came across the music video that accompanied this album, Wind Chimes, I was blown away. “WOW!” I would say, “Look at the detail on that vector graphic!” something I would struggle to recreate on my Commodore 64 even if I had the right programme to do something like that.
So a career in computer graphics passed me by because the technology I had to hand was insufficient to help tease me towards such an occupation. The self-realisation that already older people are often better at things than you is a big train not to miss.
The Wind Chimes is the long piece in this album and is riven with melodies, rhythms and motifs with a heavy eastern and international influences pretty much like most Avante Garde and artistic music of the time (see also the African influences in Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe). The other tracks are songs performed by the likes of Bonny “Total Eclipse” Tyler and Kevin “Nick Drake” Ayres. Also, curiously, Yes alumni Geoff Downes and Enigma’s Micheal Cretu also assisted with the production which just sends chills down my spine as trying to visualise the way my music tastes are connected is what inspired this whole project in the first place.
If you are enjoying this project, please share and tell your social media pals. Publicity is key to any successful blog or online project. I’m not asking for cash and I’m not asking for fame, just an appreciative readership.
A four volume compilation of various works by the band Dead Can Dance.
Being a bit of a DCD nerd, I couldn’t turn my nose up at this. Sure I have most of the tracks already on other albums but there are some tracks on here that aren’t available on conventional releases.
Radio recordings and rare songs appear here along with the foetal essence of some well known DCD songs. It also came with a DVD of the live Toward the Within concert which will appear here on the music project in a few years time.
Cammell Laird Social Club is possibly one of my most favourite albums. Not only is it a sly dig at Buena Vista Social Club but it’s possibly the finest bit of musical wit and whimsy that has ever existed.
People say that pop stars today have no regard for decency or the effect they’ll have on the youth. Similarly, people say that music these days is a load of shite. The same people say that songs today have too many sexual connotations and nothing in the way of political vitriol or appeasement of folk culture.
In one of those odd little moments of synchronicity the day my beloved asked me to write about this it was mentioned in a book I was reading ‘the unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ where a bridge by a West Country pub is credited with being the inspiration behind the name. This may not be true, but Paul Simon is well known for his affection for England (and his English girlfriend who couldn’t face life in the limelight).
This album takes me back to my father’s office, filled with his diving treasures, a fascinating roll- top desk my mother later worked at (with an old cheque book in pounds shillings and pence in the drawer) and his drawing table where he would draft out plans. Oh, and the hi-fi, a futuristic silver thing that played my favourites on a Saturday morning when I wasn’t listening to Junior Choice with Tony Blackburn and Arnold the dog (woof woof) on the radio.
This album is exactly what I’m doing the Music Project for.
My music collection is so vast it is impossible for me to have listened to every single album. The point of this project is to listen, filter and discuss with others what the albums mean to me, them and the rest of history. It is also there for me to delete albums that I have no wish to listen to again. However it is also there for me to discover albums I didn’t know I had. This is like that.
Bodkin is a gem. A prize in Prog-ism. Heavy in Hammond organ. Crazy drug inspired lyrics and wild wild instrument solo breaks. What more could a prog fan want?
Bodkin were a Scottish progressive rock band from the 1970s Doug Rome (Hammond organ), Mick Riddle (guitar), Bill Anderson (bass), Dick Sneddon on drums and Zeik Hume on vocals. A smooth mix of dirty blues (much like the Groundhogs) and Heavy Prog (King Crimson). Unique sound. An absolute pleasure to listen to and almost akin to Thotch
Unfortunately, Bodkin is the only album Bodkin made and it leaves you wanting more. Considering I heard this for the first time the other week, the album has already gone up my personal charts and nuzzled itself between Illusions on A Double Dimple (Triumvirat) and Animals(Pink Floyd).
Sometimes I wonder if anyone is still actually reading these entries as I persevere to listen to my album collection in alphabetical order. But do you know? Part of me like to think that long forgotten LJ flisters might still be reading or random people might be coming across these posts many years into the future on WordPress. I also like to think that this is kind of a historical record and in a far off distant future scores of academics and philosophers are debating not only what I meant by vampiresses with comedy inflatable breasts but also why did I have such a massive cock collection of music and were people actually interested in this and if so why?
Ritual purposes.
Simple.
Anyway, as I plunge on through the “A”s missing out only a couple of two track EPs as they don’t really count as full albums (If you’re really interested they are “Abandoner” by some bloke out of Porcupine Tree and “Absence and Plenum” by Lux Interna who none of you will have heard of anyway. I was also wearing my khaki short sleeved shirt and there are 7 cards in the card holder on the mantelpiece) we arrive at an unusual choice.
I’d never heard of Santana until they appeared on a soundtrack for a film I liked. So as I liked one of their tracks I did my usual thing of downloading their entire back catalogue. Yes. It was getting a bit silly doing that. Anyway, Abraxas contains Black Magic Woman and Oye Como Va which always makes me feel like I should be in some seedy Spanish restaurant in the 1980s. Surrounded by bullet ridden corpses having just survived a Spanish Mafia attack by hiding behind the fake plastic plant in the corner.
Every so often I come across a band in my library and I think “How the hell did I ever get this?”
Twilight Garden are one of those bands.
They are a curious cross of Depeche Mode, the Cure and maybe a tiny bit of Bauhaus. Lots of echoey guitar, forlorn vocals and the kind of production that makes it sound like they’re recording in some disused quarry. In the rain. After a group of smack head punks from the 80’s have been and daubed the walls with political slogans.
Perhaps they recorded in the foot tunnel depicted in their album cover?
One lesson to learn when curating a large collection of music is to make regular backups. Last week I had to make an emergency restore of my Mac’s OS which meant having to resort to a backup from the iCloud. Unfortunately, this meant that only the files I’ve managed to upload via my very slow 21st Century rural broadband or those matched via iTunes are currently available for me to listen to. Indeed, today’s album, Islands, is not available on iTunes and my iCloud library does not have the files uploaded, which is a shame. Fortunately, I did manage to listen and pencil together a brief draft of observations for today’s entry but it means there may be a slight decline in posting regularity for the next couple of weeks. Please stay with me though!
Cammel Laird Social Club – 
Bridge over troubled waters – Simon and Garfunkel
Abraxas by Santana
Stegzy's Music Project 
Animal Joy – Shearwater [#678]
by stegzyIn recent years I have been dependent on “the algorithm” to suggest bands and music I’d like. To be fair Youtube Music and Apple Music do a bloody good job of it. I’m not sure how the algorithm works but I suspect it looks at what you like, looks at what other people who like the music you like listen to, then shoves a whole list of stuff you’ve probably never heard of in your face. This is, of course, dependent on a few things: –
Happily I am not on Spotty Fie for…reasons <insert suspicous monkey gif>…but sadly I only have about 4 friends on Apple Music so sometimes it gets a bit too repetitive (one of my Apple Music friends is really into dark wave so it’s quite nice to get stuff suggested by the algorithm that I might never dare to listen to normally) if you want to add me you can here – https://music.apple.com/profile/stegzy
Anyway, Shearwater is one of the bands that were dangled in front of my ears a couple of years ago. At the time I was trying to be smooth in a typical childless middle aged GenXer way and trying my best to stay relevant to the scenes around me. Quite often the algorithm will throw up stuff based on style or genre and I guess my, at the time, penchant for downbeat psychedelic hipster music was at its peak and so Shearwater surfaced.
I’d originally downloaded their album Jet Plane and Oxbow (2016), after seeing the band play their song Backchannels on the KEXP Youtube channel. I loved their style; tight, percussive and lyrically intelligent. As a result of a few listens Apple Music then threw Dread Sovereign from Animal Joy (2012) at me. Why hadn’t I heard them before? I wondered. Probably because I’d not ticked the right algo boxes.
Tight, haunting and well…just like a sheet of paper with fountain pen written words being inserted into your head. Shearwater are one of those bands I really need to pay more attention to.
Available on Apple Music – https://music.apple.com/gb/album/animal-joy-bonus-track-version/497460455
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2012 Indie Rock Shearwater Sub Pop