Sunday 23 June 2013

Increasing Work Load

It seems that the observation I made in my first post about the rate at which the size of my collection has increased continues to be true. When I started blogging in August last year, I had 381 albums. I just noticed that this has increased to 402 as of today. Given what's on my "wanted" list, this number will have increased again by the blogs' anniversary.

Saturday 22 June 2013

Bert Jansch - Avocet


I have been known to do a bit of bird watching on occasion. It's mainly restricted to my garden but I've had a couple of trips out recently and had the opportunity to see, both, Avocets and Ospreys  after which there's not much else you can do but listen to an album where all the pieces are named after birds, including Avocet and Osprey!!

 I've been listening to quite a bit of instrumental music in recent times anyway, which this album is. I love when musicians or composers attempts to describe "physical" things with their music, such as Gustav Holsts' Planets or  Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons and I suppose this is what Jansch attempts to do here. I'm not enough of a bird watcher to know how well he succeeds in describing the flights or behaviours of the various birds, (according to a couple of friends the best piece of music to do that is Ralph Vaughn Williams' Lark Ascending ) i just know he, along with Danny Thompson and Martin Jenkins, created a fantastic album with flashes of Folk and Jazz, reflecting on and expanding his work with Pentangle. My Favourite track is Kittiwake

Monday 17 June 2013

Alberta Cross - Broken Side of Time


I did the first posting for awhile last week so I thought I'd try and keep things going for a bit.I got this album from a friend I used to work with. We worked in different parts of the country but we'd meet up 3-4 times a year at training events etc and swap cd's we'd made for each other and try and out geek each other with our musical knowledge, apparently Bombay Bicycle Club aren't from Swansea after all, who knew?? Unfortunately he moved on and I haven't been able to find anyone, at work at least, with the requisite level of geekiness to replace this valuable source of new music.

Anyway, back to the album. It's fine, nothing earth shattering but nothing especially memorable either. I'm happy to listen to it if it shuffles on the ipod but I'm not sure I'd think to myself "wow, its ages since I listened to Alberta Cross , I must make the effort."

In terms of sound or genre, it's like Jane's Addiction channelling Bruce Springsteen. Which has some merits but only a few.

Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Sinead O'connor - How About I Be Me And You Be You

It's been a while since I've blogged and hadn't really thought of doing so again until I started listening to this today. I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Sinead since her first album The Lion and The Cobra but this is the first album I've owned for a few years.Frankly, it's pretty great.
Over all, the impression is of a album full of positivity and, even, humour e.g. The Wolf Is Getting Married.  But it wouldn't be a Sinead O'Connor album without delving into darker subjects such as the failure of the Catholic church to deal with the abuse scandal Take Off Your Shoes. There's a couple of covers in John Grant's "Queen of Denmark and Tim Buckley's "Song to The Siren." My personal favourite is Old Lady because its so full of joy.