So it's been a quiet week for music, which is a shame considering I must have over 30 albums to get through still filed under 'B'. It's been difficult to listen to much music at work this week because we've been so busy, and at home I've gone to bed early with a temperature a couple of nights this week, and then been out another 2. Anyway I'm off on holiday for a week from tomorrow, so hopefully I might be able to make up for the lack of listening over the weekend. It's been a strange listening week so far... I thought I'd try some of my old Drum and bass albums - Essential Drum & Bass 2 is on the Beechwood label in case you were wondering why it's filed under B. And actually, it's pretty awful for working to. I need something with a bit more variation to keep me going. Plus computer speakers were never known for their suitability of handling deep sub-basses and the like! So I thought I might go back to the Beastie Boys, and there are some awesome tracks on Ill Communication - "Sabotage", "Tough Guy", "Flute Loop", but there's a lot of filler on there too... I've enjoyed Biffy Clyro a lot today though. I also managed to get to hear some new music for the first time in a fortnight by borrowing Black Stone Cherry's eponymous debut album. It's kind of like Black Crowes if they'd listened to more Soundgarden. Good, especially at the beginning, but my interest kind of petered out towards the end of the album. I liked it enough to relisten to the first two tracks again mind you. The Baby Bird CD is brilliant. If all that you think of is "You're Gorgeous" then you should really go out and get one of his first 5 'home-brew' albums. They're lo-fi masterpieces, full of 2-3 minute snatches of dark brilliance. With the sheen of pop production, he lost the edginess that made him great. So today I returned to the aforementioned Biffy, and Belle & Sebastian who must be one of my most played artists ever, despite only owning the one album. I still want to get Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant if only for the awesome title. Tomorrow I must get round to Kate Bush and Bjork...
I'm looking forward to next week - The Cure, and also Nick Cave's latest album - DIG, LAZARUS, DIG!!! (caps intentional) which was released this monday just gone. Great timing!
Oh. My. Gosh. I have like a gazillion 'B' albums. Fortunately most of them are pretty good, but I don't think I'm going to get through them all this week. If I'd counted Poppy's Beautiful South and Barenaked Ladies CD's I would have been even more swamped! So in the end I decided that CD's belonging to other people are not to be used within this experiment. Unfortunately it means no Blur or Blink182, but I'm going to have to live with that!
Anyway today has been a Bowie day, in part cos I've been thinking about how they'll never make a third DI Gene Hunt series. What would they call it? To follow the pattern, it would have to be set in the 90's and named after an iconic Bowie song released in the 90's. So that's what? "Jump They Say"? "Hallo Spaceboy"? pffft.
I'm going to have to content myself with not necessarily listening to every CD under B this week, and just go with what i feel like. I fully intend to listen to the 'forgotten' albums though, and I made a start today with Bullet for My Valentine's The Poison which was again, better than expected. The first half of the album is particularly good, though it does eventually;y dissolve into too much nu-metal shoutyness without enough melodic riffage. Jeff and I saw them play Download a year or so ago and they did pretty much tear the place up. As usual, I kind of wish I'd seen them after a few more listens to the album...
The other thing about 'B' is that it seems to house an unusual amount of drum 'n' bass albums from my collection. So I'm starting those with the Roni Size project known as Breakbeat Era. It's very dubby with nice timestretched and shattered snares under a sultry female vocal. If you like "Brown paper bag" or early drum n bass, it's well worth a listen.
Most listens this week: 3 way tie between Ash: Trailer; Aqualung Still life; and Asian Dub Foundation: Community Music. Unexpected pleasure: a.c. acoustics: Victory Parts Song stuck in my head: "The Colour Line" by Asian Dub Foundation Least appreciated album: Avant Hard by Add (N) to X
It was a fun week. barely got any listening done at home over the weekend, in part cos we were out and about a lot. I'm enjoying it so far anyway, though it's weird to think I won't listen to any of those records for another 6 months. Already I've achieved one of my aims - to rediscover 'lost' or favourite albums. Next week should be fun with Biffy Clyro, Bowie, Beatles, Bloc Party etc.
Well, Afro-Celt Sound System were far more interesting than I remembered. That was the first album I've listened to this week that I bought during the six months I worked at HMV Cardiff. I should think I bought a good 40% of my CD collection during the time I worked there because of the generous staff discount. Listened to ADF again an enjoyed it once more, and VIctory Parts was alse good once more. I'm not growing bored of 'A' yet, thank goodness. Iwas getting fed up of the poorly resized images so I've widened the page to make room for them, and intend to redo the rest of the website at some point.
Well, yesterday was unusual as I only played one album, but by golly did I enjoy it. Asian Dub Foundation's Community Music is by far a better album than I recalled. Very contemporary sound, a real fusion of western and south asian sounds. It really fired me up and I would have turned it up loud had I been at home!
I enjoyed it so much i put it on again this morning, although my album playlist script seems to have lost it somewhere... might be a clock set wrong somewhere!
Today I also thoroughly enjoyed Arcade Fire, an album I only bought 2 weeks ago, and it's continuing to grow on me. I'll be sad to leave it for 25 weeks! Victory Parts sounded good today as well, not sure why... And Adam and the Ants was better than I recalled too, although the latter stuff (Puss in Boots, Strip etc) compares poorly to Stand and Deliver, Ant Music, Prince Charming, Goody-Two Shoes etc. I found an old Afro Celt Sound System Cd last night, so that will be on fairly early tomorrow morning but I don't hold out much hope for it. I remember it being very samey, with too much Celt and not enough Afro. Once that's played, I'll have played every 'A@ album at least once.
Ow. That was pretty unrelenting today. I was looking forward to listening to Victory parts again today, but after listening to a.c. acoustic's debut, Able treasury, there was no way I was going to manage it. Avant Hard by Add (N) to X is an album that has only ever had a maximum of 5 plays since I bought it some 9 years ago. I figured it must be worth another go, but it's a little too much like a load of chimps let loose in the Analogue Synth Museum. With Octopi on theremin.
Anyway, thank goodness for the blessed relief that Aqualung brought, I can see that CD clocking up a few more plays before the week is out, and I will probably try Avant Hard again, just in case it's a VERY slow grower...
So here's the basic rules of the Alphabet playlist:
Every week, for 26 weeks, the music that I choose to listen to will be performed by artists whom I would file under the same letter. Week 1 will be artists filed under A, week 2 will be artists filed under B etc. This will take me up to the week ending August 24th.
Unfortunately, radio is on frequently in our house, and I have no intention of forcing my ridiculous plan on other people if they would rather listen to the radio.
In order to minimise the effect this will have on the experiment, I will only listen to the radio if someone else chooses to turn it on, or if I listen to a speech-only program. At all other times I will turn the radio off and either play an album or listen to nothing.
Live gigs do not qualify for the A-Z restriction. (I have a ticket booked for Sebadoh in May, when I'll be listening to 'K'. This does mean I will have no pre-gig listening of their albums though. This is of particular note when you consider they are performing the entirety of their album Bubble and Scrape as part of the Don't Look Back concert series.)
Album artists are filed under my OWN alphabetical system. Most of these are fairly obvious. Solo artists (or artists whose name is the prominent band member are filed under surname). Unusual punctuations or characters are filed where possible under the vocalisation of the name, or failing that under the anglicised name for that character. The definite article is always dropped (with the exception of 'The The' of course). Some examples:
Artist name
Filed under
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
C
!!!
C (for chk chk chk)
The Cure
C
PJ Harvey
H
μ-ziq
M (for mu)
3 Inches of Blood
T
Compilations of various artists will be filed in alphabetical order of record label. This is unfortunate in some ways as it will slightly disturb the truly restrictive nature of the other rules, but I've always been an album man, believing that at least some thought goes into the sequence of tracks on an album. I only have a few compilations of this nature anyway, so I don't think it will disrupt the flow too much.
This post is liable to be edited as I think of more exceptions to the rules or difficult cases!
As I left the house this morning I grabbed every CD I could find whose artist would be filed under 'A'. I was pleased to discover some forgotten favourites and a couple of CD's I'd not heard more than twice. This could be an interesting week.
I'm trying hard not to start with my favourites, but it's proving difficult - maybe once I've gone round each of my favourites once I'll find it easier to listen to Adam Ant or Add N to X.
I've been out of the office today, or tidying it, so there's not been so much music on, and so far I've only put on a.c acoustic's Victory Parts and the debut mini-album by Ash Trailer. Both of them are album's which were fairly regularly on the turntable soon after they were bought, and yet I cannot remember the last time I played either of them. Victory Parts was particularly fun to listen to, reminding me of the two times I saw them as support, once for the Stereophonics and once for Placebo (you may remember Brian Molko wearing a T-Shirt labelled "Stunt Girl" during his TOTP appearance for Nancy Boy - that was an a.c. acoustics t-shirt!)
The thing with Trailer is that it's very raw - lacking the polish of later Ash releases, and all the better for it! It's heavier and less poppy than some of their stuff, but still retaining some great hooks and melodies. It also clearly reveals that the Nirvana gig Tim Wheeler attended was a clear inspiration to the band. Highly recommended.
There'll be more reflections, and stuff on the 'rules' of Alphabet Playlist over the week.
Well, I'm quite happy with the automatic display of my days listening. Was fun playing with a whole variety of stuff to get it working. I'll put down exactly how I've hacked it all together at some point.
I find it hard to think of interesting stuff to post on here daily, (cos let's face it, most of what i write is NOT interesting, and frankly, how interested are you in my listening habits? Not very, I suspect). SO I'm thinking up a theme for the blog, you know, something to do for the next few months that will mean there's something to post about most days.
I figured it would probably be something music based as that's something I spend time doing anyway, and the new auto-posting listening habits will help to support it. So, starting next week, albums that I listen to will solely be performed by artists whose names begin with A. The following week, artists filed under B, and so on... I'll be recording reflections and memories and critiques and basically noting down anything interesting that comes out of imposing this kind of restriction on my listening habits.
I'll come up with a breakdown of my album collection early next week, so I can predict the highs and lows. I already know that 'C' is going to be an ace week (Cure, Cranes, Nick Cave), and I currently own no albums that would qualify for the 'X' week (Xzibit? X-Ray Spex?). I'm going to impose a limit of buying no more than one album per week. Frankly I shan't be able to afford even that, so there's little to worry about there in the way of cheating. Not sure what to do about 3 Inches of Blood or !!! though.
