Top 50 Albums of 1976

Here we are, back in 1976, a year in which I celebrated my 9^th Birthday and also the year that Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the CN tower in Toronto, Canada is completed and is the tallest free standing structure in the world. The first commercial Concorde flights take off during January of 1976 as a regular passenger service began. “Rocky”, “Taxi Driver” and “All the Presidents Men” are in the cinema and on TV we have new episodes of “The Six Million Dollar Man”, “Kojak” and “M*A*S*H” from the U.S and home grown shows such as “The Old Grey Whistle Test”, “Are You Being Served?”, “Superstars”,“The Tomorrow People”, “Tiswas”, “Jim’ll Fix It”, “Space: 1999” and “The Sweeney”. I never liked Jim’ll Fix It, even from an early age Jimmy Saville creeped me out, but Superstars, won every year by Kevin Keegan, was great.

It was an interesting year in music for me as, being only 9, I would mostly only hear what was on the radio and, for the most part, that would be 45’s, which were somewhat at odds with the albums from this year that I have in my top 50. The top selling 45’s of 1976 were:

1	Save Your Kisses for Me	Brotherhood of Man
2	Don’t Go Breaking My Heart	Elton John and Kiki Dee
3	Mississippi	Pussycat
4	Dancing Queen	ABBA
5	A Little Bit More	Dr Hook
6	If You Leave Me Now	Chicago
7	Fernando	ABBA
8	I Love to Love (But My Baby Loves to Dance)	Tina Charles
9	The Roussos Phenomenon EP	Demis Roussos
10	December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)	The Four Seasons
11	Under the Moon of Love	Showaddywaddy
12	You to Me Are Everything	The Real Thing
13	Forever and Ever	Slik
14	Sailing	Rod Stewart
15	Young Hearts Run Free	Candi Staton
16	The Combine Harvester (Brand New Key)	The Wurzels
17	When Forever Has Gone	Demis Roussos
18	Jungle Rock	Hank Mizell
19	Can’t Get By Without You	The Real Thing
20	You Make Me Feel Like Dancing	Leo Sayer

The number 1 selling 45 by Brotherhood of Man was this years Eurovision Song Contest winner and was truly horrible. As it’s listed I Think it wise to take this opportunity to include a video of The Combine Harvester (Brand New Key) by The Wurzels as it is one of the greatest songs ever put to vinyl:

Now let’s begin the actual top 50 albums of 1976 according to me.

50	Terry Reid	Seed of Memory
49	J.J. Cale	Troubadour
48	Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers	Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
47	Kiss	Destroyer
46	Lou Reed	Rock and Roll Heart
45	UFO	No Heavy Petting
44	Ennio Morricone	Novecento
43	Max Romeo	War In Babylon
42	Thin Lizzy	Jailbreak
41	Bunny Wailer	Blackheart Man
40	Boston	Boston
39	Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers	Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
38	King Tubby & Yabby You	King Tubby’s Prophesy of Dub
37	Peter Tosh	Legalize It
36	Patti Smith Group	Radio Ethiopia
35	La Düsseldorf	La Düsseldorf
34	Parliament	The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein
33	Fela Kuti & Africa 70	Zombie
32	Burning Spear	Man In The Hills
31	Tangerine Dream	Stratosfear
30	Black Sabbath	Technical Ecstasy
29	Lynyrd Skynyrd	Gimme Back My Bullets
28	Vangelis	Albedo 0.39
27	Stanley Clarke	School Days
26	Fela & Africa 70	Kalakuta Show
25	Miles Davis	Water Babies

24. Abba – Arrival. Now I know there will be people out there amongst my vast readership of up to 3 people who will be suprised by this at number 25, however, despite what one might think of ABBA there is no denying that they were massive and this is the source album for Dancing Queen, Knowing Me, Knowing You and Money, Money, Money, which I can’t deny enjoying as a 9 year old listening to the radio. 

23. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – The Roaring Silence. We had this at home and I was always intrigued by the cover. I didn’t know at the time that there was a Springsteen cover on it, because I had no clue as to who Springsteen was, but Blinded by the Light is the best track on the album by far.

22. Emmylou Harris – Elite Hotel. This would never have been anywhere near a top 10,000 had I not picked it up for £1 or so at a used record store this year. It won a Grammy or something like that I think, but I’d never paid any attention to her really. Here version of The Beatles Here, There and Everywhere is quite lovely. 

21. Blondie – Blondie. It’s not Parallel Lines, but the pre-cursor to it and contains tracks that are much rougher but are a clear indicator, in hindsight, as to what was to come.

20.  Rush – 2112. This album has probably slowly slipped out of favour with me over the years, from top 3 all the way down to where it is now at 20. There are a number of reasons for this, such as familiarity, age, the fact that it’s all bollocks really. I do still love it but just don’t feel about it now the way I did when I was a kid. 

19. The Upsetters – Super Ape. It’s only recently that I’ve really started listening to Dub & Reggae and its an adventure with there being so much to discover. This album is relatively new to me but I absolutely love it, it’s Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry of course so no surprise there, the guy is a genius of the genre.

18/17 AC/DC – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap/ High Voltage. Two classic AC/DC albums from the Bon Scott era. Not much to choose between them really but I did anyway. 

16. Joan Armatrading – Joan Armatrading. This is a fantastic album and it’s easy to forget the impact and importance she had in British music, in 1976, Robin Denselow wrote in The Guardian that the album “showed that we now have a black artist in Britain with the same sort of vocal range, originality (in fact even greater originality in terms of musical influences) and lyrical sensitivity” as Joni Mitchell.

15. Genesis – Wind and Wuthering. There were 2 albums released in 1976, both post Peter Gabriel and while I like them both this one falls slightly short of the other, although, it is, in many ways much fuller musically. So on another day I may well switch them around depending on my mood.

14. Electric Light Orchestra – A New World Record. Jeff Lynne is a great song writer and it is on this album that I think he really found his feet. Songs like Telephone Line and Livin’ Thing still stand up to scrutiny all these years later.

13. Wings – At The Speed Of Sound. My favourite Wings album and one of two that I owned as a kid, the other being the live album ‘Over America’ which we had on two cassettes, one was mine and the other was my brothers. I think this album was a high point in McCartneys post-Beatles career. 

12. Ted Nugent – Free For All. Another album that I had as a kid and it wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought it would be like Cat Scratch Fever but it isn’t at all, which turned out to be a good thing as it is much, much better.

11. Genesis – A Trick Of The Tail. The second appearance by Genesis and, in my opinion, the better of the two albums released in 1976. 

10. Bob Marley – Rastaman Vibration. The eighth studio album by the Bob Marley and the Wailers, the album was a great success in the US, becoming the first Bob Marley release to reach the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart (peaking at number 8). Marley is only credited as writer on one of the songs having named family and friends as the writers to avoid contractual disputes with his publishing company.

9. The Eagles – Hotel California. It was, of course, a huge album and that can’t be ignored, but I may be guilty of including it so highly just because it was. Overall, as a complete album, I don’t think it works that well but it does have several really good tracks.

8. Led Zeppelin – Presence. Though not considered to be their greatest work I’ve always been really fond of it and find it quite an achievement considering it was recorded in 18 days and Robert Plant had to sing from a wheelchair as he was recovering from a car accident.

7. Queen – A Day At The Races. This was the period that I thought Queen were at their most relevant, from the self titled debut to 1978’s Jazz, they had a run of 7 albums that showed development and growth and then, well, they became a pop act and I lost almost all interest in them.

6. Joni Mitchell – Hejira. An album of great writing that asks many questions but provides few answers, concentrating instead on the search, the journey for answers rather than any conclusions. Mitchell rarely disappoints and despite much criticism of her move to a more jazzy sound, backed by the fretless bass of Jaco Pastorius, time has taught us that her musical direction decisions are superior to those of reviewers.

5. Stevie Wonder – Songs In The Key Of Life. At this point in his career Wonder was overflowing with creativity and this can be seen in the e.p that was included with the double LP just to get all his songs in. Considered by many to be the greatest album ever, including Elton John and George Michael, it isn’t perfect, but it’s approaching it.

4. Steely Dan – The Royal Scam. The fifth studio album by Steely Dan, featuring more prominent guitar work than the previous album, Katy Lied, which had been the first without founding guitarist Jeff Baxter. Steely Dan never made a bad album, just different degrees of excellence.

3. The Ramones – The Ramones. Historical significance does play rather a large part in the Ramones being up here at number 3 as it influenced so very much that I like that came after it. Clocking in at less than 30 minutes it isn’t long, but it’s impact is still felt.

2. David Bowie – Station To Station. Blending funk and krautrock, romantic balladry and occultism, this album has been described as “simultaneously one of Bowie’s most accessible albums and his most impenetrable”. It was the pre-cursor to the ‘Berlin Trilogy’ and already pointed towards those three albums.

1 Bob Dylan – Desire. I used to have 2 Bob Dylan albums, the other one was (Live) ‘At Budokan’, so ‘Desire’ was played a lot, well, when you consider I probably had 60 or 70 albums at the time the choices were somewhat limited, certainly compared to today. The repeated listening count is off the scale so the songs on this album are carved into my bones and, even though I know it is not the best Dylan album, it’s the best Dylan album.

Written February 22nd 2015 – Sometime in the 80’s (I think it was 1987) I saw Bob Dylan at the NEC in Birmingham. It was a little odd as the support act, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, did a long set that lasted about an hour and a half and then Dylan came on with the Heartbreakers as his backing band and did about an hour. At the time I was a bit disappointed, but I have subsequently managed to get a bootleg recording of the gig and it is a much better gig than I remember it being. I think that one of the reasons is that I was listening to ‘Desire’ a lot at the time and they didn’t play a single track from it, so it was my own expectations that were at fault more than anything.

And that is my top albums of 1976, feel free to disagree with me, because I disagree with myself most of the time.

David Sylvian – 4 Re-Releases

Tattooed across my forehead is the word ‘Sucker‘. Or at least it should be for I most certainty am one. I had absolutely no intention of buying any of the 4 albums I bought at the weekend, I was actually looking for one album by Steven Wilson, which they didn’t have, when I saw, on the wall, 4 David Sylvian Albums, re-released, all lined up and looking quite lovely.

I made the snap decision to get all 4 and, very quickly, I was walking back to the car with my purchases in a carrier bag at my side. It was at this point I remembered I already had a copy of ‘Brilliant Trees‘ and, technically, I also have a copy of ‘Secrets of the Beehive‘ although it is on cassette, I don’t know where it is, and even if I did I have nothing to play it on, but still, I do have a copy already. These releases are all remastered and have different covers, so the question is, do I regret my snap decision to buy all 4? The answer is, no, not really. Well, perhaps I did a little at first but I’ve made peace with it now having played them all several times.

Somebody made a video on these 4 releases already, which really appeals to my laziness, so here it is:

Brilliant Trees

So, Brilliant Trees, released in 1984 shortly after the demise of Japan, brought together some top musicians to collaborate on what can be seen as Sylvian announcing that he’s just fine without the rest of Japan thank you very much.

Line-up / Musicians
– David Sylvian / vocals, guitar, synthesizer, treated piano, percussion, tapes, co-producer
With:
– Holger Czukay / guitar, French horn, voice
– Ronny Drayton / guitar (1,4)
– Phil Palmer / guitar (2,4)
– Richard Barbieri / synthesizer (1,5)
– Steve Nye / synthesizer & piano (3,4), co-producer & mixing
– Ryuichi Sakamoto / synthesizer & piano (4,5,7)
– Kenny Wheeler / flugelhorn (2,3)
– Mark Isham / trumpet (4)
– Jon Hassell / trumpet (5,7)
– Wayne Brathwaite / bass (1,4)
– Danny Thompson / double bass (2)
– Steve Jansen / percussion, drums, synthesizer

As the next thing to be released after Japan’s ‘Tin Drum’ (excluding the live album ‘Oil on Canvas’) it seems a natural progression and not far removed from what one may have expected as a next release. There is the obvious connection with Sylvian’s vocal of course but it still has the sonic feel, at least to a noticeable degree, of the album that had gone before. What it does do is add some new sonic elements and continue Sylvian’s forward momentum.

I’ve read a number of times, from people who liked Japan, that they couldn’t get on with this album or most of his solo work, well I urge them to try again, particularly in regards to ‘Brilliant Trees’ as it is a wonderful set of songs.

Alchemy An Index of Possibilities

Well this is an entirely different kettle of fish. I’d never heard it, or even of it before but had some expectations of what I was about to listen to. None of those expectations were fulfilled. It is pretty experimental and contains no obvious Sylvian vocals. I like ambient, Krautrock, experimental music and there is much here that I can get into, but I find that it isn’t cohesive at times.

Line-up / Musicians

– David Sylvian / guitar, keyboards, digital percussion (5), synth & programming (7), tapes, co-producer

With:
– Robert Fripp / guitar (5)
– Masami Tsuchiya / guitar (5)
– Ryuichi Sakamoto / piano & strings (5)
– John Taylor / piano (7)
– Stuart Bruce / programming (7)
– Jon Hassell / trumpet (1-4)
– Kenny Wheeler / flugelhorn (5)
– Percy Jones / fretless bass (1-4)
– Steve Jansen / drums & keyboards (1-4), percussion
– Holger Czukay / radio (1-4), dictaphone (5)

That last chap there, Holger Czukay, was a founding member of Can, in case you were wondering, and Sylvian went on to work with him again.

Preparations For A Journey, above, is a short documentary that accompanied the short film “Steel Cathedrals” on the Japanese only laser disc. The documentary follows David’s brief work with Polaroid montages, which lead to his book “Perspectives” and an exhibition at Hamiltons gallery in London.

I don’t dislike the album at all, I just feel, when listening to it, that it can be a little disjointed and it needs a Can like bass groove or something similar in places. In fairness this is not a proper second solo release but a collection of tracks from various projects.

Gone To Earth

For his third (second really) solo album, David Sylvian assembled a fine collection of musicians, including his former Japan band-mates plus Robert Fripp, Bill Nelson, B.J. Cole and producer Steve Nye. The result is very much an album of two halves. The first two sides of this double contain some of Sylvians best work while the second two are somewhere in the ambient genre.

I was listening to ‘River Man’ just now, not the Nick Drake song, and was suddenly struck by the resemblance between its opening bars and those of ‘Don’t Give Up’ by Peter Gabriel from the SO album. Interestingly, both were released in 1986, though I’m not suggesting plagiarism on either part.

There are some rather long tracks on the first disc, such as ‘Wave’ which clocks in at over 9 minutes, as is “Before the Bullfight‘ but they don’t drag as Sylvian builds a mood so well that, if you let yourself fall into it, it can carry you away.

I do rather like the ambient album though I tend to ignore the track names and just listen to it as 1 track on each side as they can be somewhat indistinguishable from each other. It is less experimentally disjointed than the previous release and, while not challenging, is very listenable if you are in the mood for it.

Line-up / Musicians

– David Sylvian / vocals, keyboards, guitar, electronics (1), Fx (2), co-producer

With:
– Robert Fripp / guitar (1,4-7,13,17-20), electronics (4-7) 
– Bill Nelson / electric (3,5,7,8,16) & acoustic (3,9) guitars 
– Phil Palmer / acoustic guitar (1)
– B.J. Cole / pedal steel guitar (7,12)
– John Taylor / piano (2)
– Steve Nye / piano (10), co-producer, mixing
– Kenny Wheeler / flugelhorn (2,3)
– Harry Beckett / flugelhorn (5)
– Mel Collins / soprano saxophone (6,7,18)
– Ian Maidman / bass
– Steve Jansen / percussion, drums, sampled bass (6,18)
– Richard Barbieri / Fx (3,5)

Secrets Of The Beehive

This is one of my favourite albums, not just by Sylvian but generally. I played the cassette a lot and find the tracks really very accessible. For reasons that I am quite unable to grasp, possibly because I’m actually a psychopath and don’t know it, I love the lyrics to “The Boy With The Gun”

He knows well his wicked ways
A course of bitterness
A grudge held from his childhood days
As if life had loved him less
Reading down his list of names
He ticks them one by one
He points the barrel at the sky
Firing shots off at the sun

“I am the law and I am the King
I am the wisdom, listen to me sing”

He carves out the victim’s names
In the wooden butt of the gun
He leans well back against the tree
He knows his Kingdom’s come
He’ll breath a sigh self satisfied
The work is in good hands
He shoots the coins into the air
And follows where the money lands

“I am the law and I am the King
I am the wisdom, listen to me sing”

He pauses at the city’s edge
Of hellfire and of stone
He summons up the devil there
To give him courage of his own
He’ll free the sinners of deceit
They’ll hear his name and run
His justice is his own reward
Measured out beneath the sun

“I am the law and I am the King
I am the wisdom, listen to me sing”

And my name’s on the gun

I’m not entirely sure why but I find the experience of listening to these songs as Autumnal, they just have that feel about them, they speak to me of endings perhaps. I found one official video, for the song ‘Orpheus’, although ‘Let the Happiness In’ was also a single, there either wasn’t an official video or I have just failed miserably in finding it.

So that’s the 4 albums. I guess I ask myself if I feel enriched by owning these and listening to them and I have to say I do. It has also re-connected me with the earlier Japan albums, which have had a spin this week and reminds me that there wasn’t much like them at the time, or since.

Brilliant Trees 9/10
Alchemy 6.5/10
Gone To Earth 8/10
Secrets of the Beehive 9.2/10

Methyl Ethel – Oh Inhuman Spectacle

A few months ago I was visiting my son, who is attending University in London, and found myself with a little bit of time to have a wander around with the help of a phone app that contains the locations of record shops. The furthest I walked to was Flashback, and it was also the best. I only browsed downstairs as that was where the used vinyl was but there’s plenty upstairs to have a look through as well. Here are some images of it:

I had a vague memory of hearing Methyl Ethyl on Radio 6 and I think I’d liked it so when I saw the album in excellent condition I thought I’d give it a go. I think it was £8, or around there, certainly not much more than that.

I have since listened to it repeatedly and it is very much a grower. I’ve gone from liking it to loving it, which is better than loving it immediately and then growing tired of it Slow burners seem to have a longer listening life.

Methyl Ethyl are essentially one man, Jake Webb, who hails from Perth, a fairly isolated part of the planet that somehow managed to also give us Sleepy Jackson/Empire of the Sun in the form of Luke Steele and Kevin Parker of Tame Impala. On this album, his debut, Webb handles all of the instrumentation and production and a good job he did of it as well.

Reviews at the time of release in 2016 were reasonably positive, aggregating up to somewhere around the 70-75% mark but I would go slightly higher than that as often reviewers don’t get to give an album the time it sometimes needs to be fully absorbed. My own personal experience of this was with Rockbird by Debbie Harry, released in 1996. The reviews I read were really positive, ‘A return to form’ and all that sort of guff. I bought it. I didn’t like it much despite wanting to and despite repeated listenings, it wasn’t a return to form.

This on the other hand is a great debut that showcases a number of different avenues that they could take and while a couple of the tracks seem a little incomplete I can’t hold that against it because I like those well enough also.

I Bought 4 used albums from Flashback on the day and these are they:

Lump – Lump

The third record from the Rough Trade subscription was probably my favourite so far, by Lump, and also the third in a row by somebody I’d never heard of, well, almost. Lump are Laura Marling and Mike Lindsay (founding member of Tunng). 

I actually received this last year but am just getting around to mentioning it. Also, my payment card expired so I haven’t received anything from Rough Trade for a while,  but I updated my details this week so something will be on the way soon. In the meantime I’ll try and catch up with the ones I have received.

I was reading The Guardian and it had this really good paragraph about the album (though not much longer you can read the rest of their review here)

“With its piping flutes and stilted acoustic guitar, opener Late to the Flight is reminiscent of an old children’s TV theme tune; later songs are characterised by twinkling synths, twanging guitars and undercurrents of odd rattling. Over this backdrop, Marling sings about lucid dreaming, smiley-face T-shirts, yoga poses and all manner of psychedelic tropes without ever seeming hackneyed or overblown, her voice shifting between choral sweetness, sibilant sprechgesang and a throaty drawl. Whereas her solo work has veered toward Americana, here Marling sounds satisfyingly British both in delivery and lyricism – on Late to the Flight she calls someone a “tart”; May I Be the Light centres around a ditty about making beds that recalls Pam Ayres poems and the limericks of Edward Lear.“

I had to look up ‘Sprechgesang’, apparently it is – a style of dramatic vocalisation intermediate between speech and song. Then I looked up ‘Sibilant’ – making or characterised by a hissing sound. Now it makes more sense. 

The hairy cover star is pretty cool and makes its way into both the videos made for songs from the album, presumably what amount to ‘Singles’ nowadays. 

In case you are wondering, the character in the video is virtual, created using motion capture of dancer Emiliano Larea. How they do this stuff with these newfangled computer thingies is really rather beyond me.

As with all the Rough Trade vinyl editions they are limited in some way, in this case, my copy is orange vinyl and very nice it is too. I remember seeing Lump on Jools Holland and thinking that it sounded pretty interesting but didn’t connect anything until I was looking through youtube and saw it again, which is what made that track instantly familiar when I first played the album. While on youtube finding the two videos further up the page, I stumbled across one I hadn’t seen which didn’t have the hairy fellow in it, so that was a bonus as it is new to me:

For completeness I’ve added the Jools Holland performance:

I have no idea if there will ever be a second album but this first one is a really interesting listen and I hope they do resurrect the project and put out some new work in the future.

8.5/10

Record Store Day 2019

On April 13th 2019 Record Store Day rolls around again. I found myself scrolling through the full alphabetical list of available releases hoping there was nothing there that I absolutely had to have, I got to F. Now there has to be something inherently wrong to be looking at a list of records and not wanting to find anything so I took a little time to consider why I felt this way, the answer was threefold:

1. Inconvenience – Last year I arrived in the early hours of the morning at the record store to find myself far back in the queue. I was there for several hours and didn’t get my top two picks (still don’t have them).

2. Expense – There are probably 20 albums on the list that I’d be happy to buy, That’s going to work out at between four to five hundred pounds, which I don’t have right now and is more than I’ve ever spent in 1 hit on records.

3. Disappointment – It’s inevitable. The one year I managed to pick up everything I was hoping for I had to resort to ebay and paid 3 times the list price, which I don’t plan on doing again.

This time I have 5 top picks, which are:

The Future Sound of London – Yage 2019

In 1986 iconic group The Future Sound of London released the UK Top 40 chart album “Dead Cities”, from which came a track “Yage”. Such has been the interest in this masterpiece of electronica over the years that the guys have been back into the studio to revisit it. Here, on this limited edition, individually numbered LP press exclusively for 2019′ s Record Store Day comes the results. “Yage 2019” takes the core of the original and rebuilds it. All together there are eleven tracks reconstructions and interpretations, woven together (as FSOL do) into a 42 minute dreamscape journey across the 2 sides of vinyl. Only 1000 copies of this release will be pressed on vinyl.

Gorillaz – The Fall

The Fall is the fourth studio album by British virtual band Gorillaz. The album was officially announced on 20 December 2010 as a holiday gift to fans. The Fall was first released on 25 December 2010 to stream for free on the Gorillaz website, only available as a download for paying members of the band’ s Sub-Division club, a premium access campaign the band ran throughout 2010. The album features fewer guest artists than previous Gorillaz albums; collaborators include Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of The Clash and Bobby Womack. 1 x 140g 12″ colour tbc vinyl album for RSD 2019.

Max Richter – La Prima Linea

First Release on Vinyl Limited Numbered Edition on Transparent Red Vinyl Italian director Renato de Maria’ s 2009 crime drama La Prima Linea (The Front Line) takes us back to the late seventies and the home-grown Italian terrorist cell of the same name. Based on the real memoirs of a Prima Linea member, Sergio Segio (played by Riccardo Scamarcio) the militant underground organisation employs violence to achieve their political ends and ultimately to attempt to free Sergio’ s lover, Susanna, from prison.The beautiful and melancholic soundtrack is instantly recognisable as Max Richter’ s work, making its debut here on vinyl for Record Store Day. Richter is a respected composer in his own right, having accumulated a large fanbase for his studio albums (Memoryhouse, The Blue Notebooks and most recently, Sleep). He has also won multiple awards and nominations for his soundtracks including Waltz With Bashir, Lore, The Leftovers and most recently Mary Queen of Scots.To accompany this release, Silva Screen have pressed a limited edition of Max Richter’ s “The Leftovers” on Transparent Red Vinyl which is currently available.

Sigur Rós – Variations on Darkness

Soundtrack to a series of choreographed performances from the Iceland Dance Company, originally commissioned for Sigur Rós’ s Nordur og nidur festival at Christmas 2017. Choreographer Valdimar Johansson was granted access to unreleased Sigur Rós material, as well as multitracks of chosen songs from the band’ s catalogue, and personally created a score of high Nordic drama. “The best thing we’ ve done in ages,” said Jonsi on hearing Variations On Darkness for the first time. Vinyl exclusive to Record Store Day. Limited edition on black heavyweight 12″ vinyl. Spinned sleeve with printed with special inks.

Sigur Rós – Lunar Halo 22″

Soundtrack to brand new dance work by leading Taiwanese choreographer Tsung-lung, being premiered in Taipei to coincide with Record Store Day. Cheng Tsung-Lung chose his favourite music from throughout Sigur Rós’ s career, which was then twisted, bent and broken, and finally added to in the band’ s Reykjavik studio to create a new perspective for the Cloud Gate dance company. Vinyl exclusive to Record Store Day. Limited edition on black heavyweight 12″ vinyl. Spinned sleeve with printed with special inks.

The List

Click to access rsd19-releases-printable-120319.pdf

Even more charity store shopping

I haven’t been able to update much so far this year as I still don’t have my MacBook back, and it doesn’t seem likely that I will ever see it again. The temporary solution of lending it to my son appears to have become a permanent one.

Anyway, I’ve been charity store shopping for CD’s on quite a regular basis this year and have been buying CD’s that I would normally not consider. At 3 for £1 it makes it easier to do that. One listen at 33p and you’ve pretty much made your money back, sort of. So here are the ones I picked up yesterday on a trawl of 7 shops.

Going to the same charity shops repeatedly does have diminishing returns so whenever I go to a new town, or somewhere I don’t often go, then popping in to shops I don’t get to go to often is becoming a must. Part of the reason is that an album, a vinyl one, can be anywhere from £15 to £30 whereas the CD’s above were £11 for all of them so for te moment, while I am perhaps not as flush as usual, they are a useful alternative and fulfil my slightly obsessive need for new music.

Artist	Title
Eurythmics	Peace
Andrea Bocelli	Sogno
Beth Orton	Trailer Park
Shawn Colvin	A Few Small Repairs
Foals	Antidotes
Tom McRae	Just Like Blood
Disclosure (3)	Settle
Everything But The Girl	Walking Wounded
Emeli Sande	Our Version Of Events
Fleet Foxes	Fleet Foxes
Kaiser Chiefs	Employment
Bloc Party	Silent Alarm Remixed
Goldfrapp	Supernature
Elbow	The Seldom Seen Kid
Robert Plant | Alison Krauss	Raising Sand
Battles	Mirrored
Skunk Anansie	Paranoid & Sunburnt
Eurythmics	Greatest Hits
Boards Of Canada	Music Has The Right To Children
Boards Of Canada	The Campfire Headphase
The Chemical Brothers	Remixes
LCD Soundsystem	This Is Happening
Crystal Castles	Crystal Castles (II)
James Brown	Sex Machine: The Very Best Of James Brown
Leon Bridges	Coming Home
Morcheeba	Big Calm
The Glimmers	DJ-Kicks
Crystal Castles	Crystal Castles
Aphex Twin	Drukqs
Alanis Morissette	Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie
Keane	Under The Iron Sea
Ryan Adams	1989
The Glimmers	FabricLive.31

Your F***ing Sunny Day (Episode 43 – Heroes)

Songs, that in my head relate somehow to heroes, whether in the song itself or in some tenuous link that was good enough reason for me to include it.