Unusual little-heard music to inspire creativity
Album of the Year: Cartoon Darkness by Amyl and the Sniffers
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Genre: Punk, Thrash Metal Label: Rough Trade Review in one word: Exhilarating I don’t often review music, yet as I clean my house, go on walks, work, have friends around, hang out with my partner or read books…well I’m constantly listening to something! So here it goes – my favourite album of 2024 dropped only a…
Underground Resistance: Detroit Techno as a Personal Revolution
Underground Resistance subverted the racist stereotype of the “black trouble-maker” and turned it on its head. Through their provocative, uplifting and joyful techno, Underground Resistance gave young black people with a different way of being and living: an empowering, positive, uplifting and autonomous way of seeing oneself in the world. This is perfectly expressed in…
Moondog: The enigmatic jazz wizard of post-war NYC
I came across Moon dog on one of those long and meandering trips through obscure music on YouTube. He was a true innovator and an avante-garde enigma. For one he looked like Gandalf or Hagrid. Aside from this, he also invented several new musical instruments including a small triangular instrument he called the Ooo and…
The art of Kulning: Night-scented stock are called in for the long summer evening
Kulning is an ancient, sweet and sorrowful form of Scandinavian music used to herd cows and goats back down from their high mountain pastures in parts of Norway and in certain provinces of Sweden, Jämtland and Härjedalen. In practical use since medieval times, the mysterious tones were also thought to be a deterrent to potential predators like wolves…
Awesome low-fi / house / ambient / psychedelic artists from New Zealand
Skip to the end for an amazing playlist of these artists on Youtube Aldous Harding From Christchurch, Aldous Harding is known throughout the world for her strange, unnerving stage presence and her delicate and yet raw brand of folk. She’s quite enigmatic and unlike any other artist. You may take a while to warm to…
Laid back self-isolation mix #1
Hi my friends. I am going to start doing semi-regular playlists of music that are laid back, joyful, soul warming. Music that will help you to get through hard times in self-isolation, particularly if you are separated from those you love, or if you are feeling lonely. These mixes will be eclectic styles – house,…
On silence and idleness
“Happiness is in the quiet, ordinary things. A table, a chair, a book with a paper-knife stuck between the pages. And the petal falling from the rose, and the light flickering as we sit silent.” Virginia Woolf, The Waves Time Moves Slow by Bad Bad Good “Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from…
Six of the best electronic and experimental channels on YouTube
Six of the best electronic and experimental channels on YouTube
An effervescent, mellow and energised summer playlist for 2020
Here’s a few cool albums I have been listening to lately. They have a nice beachy vibe, which is the kind of weather we are getting in Australia and New Zealand right now. Great background music for BBQS, on the headphones while sinking a few cold ones on the beach, while reading, and some of…
Album Review: Robohands ‘Green’
In case you have been living under a rock, Robohands is a UK jazz musician whose real name is Andy Baxter. His debut album Green which came out in mid-2018 is superb. With almost zero effort to promote the album, Robohands has grown in underground popularity getting over a million views on his album and…
Boring Yet interesting: Drone Music
Drone music doesn’t change much in tonality or tempo. The nature of this means that it can confuse some people and attract others. Unlike most other types of music, drone cultivates a unique emotional soundscape that allows people to sink deeply into it. Some drone music is less like a warm fuzzy hug and more…
Poetry and music from the film ‘Wings of Desire’ (Der Himmel uber Berlin)
One of my favourite films of all time is the Wim Wenders film The Wings of Desire known in German as Der Himmel uber Berlin. It won the Best Film at Cannes in 1987. Some of the magic of this film comes from the music (Nick Cave, U2), the acting (Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin) and…
Ambient Album Review: Place Language by Various Artists @RobGMacfarlane
Sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy this one. It’s a compilation album inspired by the themes and evocative words in celebrated nature writer Robert MacFarlane’s book Landmarks. The book focuses on showcasing poetic landscape words, gathered from the dialects of Britain and Ireland. The book Landmarks separates out words into types of…
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