Listening Is The New Words

There were a slew of good releases in the last couple of weeks, but it’s very much still a singles game until March. Luckily I’ve stumbled across a couple of gems from last year that I’m resurrecting from 2024 obscurity, alongside a fine slice of dance floor deviance. To be honest the lull suits me just fine as it’s my partners birthday tomorrow and I’m currently on a train to central Portugal to be force fed like a French goose by my mother in-law.

Well that was what I wrote at 7am on the morning of February 8th whilst on a train heading to Portugal’s centre, and here I am eight days later trying to finish what I started. Family, a couple of rare social moments, work, extracurricular activities and then exhaustion - to the extent I started to get some dizzy spells just got in the way, which has obviously made me reflect on what I’m doing with the newsletter.

I do a load of music discovery every week and have done for the last thirty years since I stopped travelling full time, it’s just a regular part of my life. I’ve built up a host of great filters and systems on various platforms which enables me make some sort of sense of the ridiculous amount of music that gets released (although to be fair most of it is crap) and discover exciting new or under appreciated artists - one of my main driving forces. But what I’m really struggling with is communicating those finds in a time efficient manner, and Substack is partly to blame.

I’m not a writer, I mean as soon as I left school I stopped writing unless it was necessary to get something done - do CVs and emails count? Even when I started blogging it was about sharing my enthusiasm, rather than insightful music criticism or literary endeavour. Sure,I can cobble an essay or two together, but it doesn’t half take some time, the editing the multiple re-edits especially.

Hell I don’t even know a lot about music. I can’t play an instrument and haven’t spent much time in studios hanging around musicians, instead I’ve relied on tidbits I’ve picked up by osmosis whilst indulging my passion. I’ve always vibed off music, and rarely consider why I like a piece of music let alone wonder about the bands choice of synths, and here I am on a writers platform trying to sound all knowledgeable, whilst learning to write in front of 2766 people. It’s been hard work and somewhat stressful.

It’s also been a great mental exercise. After just six months the words are flowing quicker, I’m not stressing as much about punctuation and I’ve noticed an increase in my mental sharpness, it’s genuinely been pronounced. If I finally find time to start reading books again rather than short form online articles I could be dangerous. Honestly, even if it’s just a couple of journal entries a week, I highly recommend that you get scribbling.

So what does this mean? It means I’ll still be recommending some great music and dropping a few thoughts on music related topics and life in general, but I won’t be writing as much as I’ve been trying to. My attempt at articulating thoughts about the music I love has been a valuable exercise, but moving forward I’m going to resort more to pithy paragraphs in an attempt to encourage you to hit play, which let’s face it, unless the writing is extraordinary, is what it’s all about. In fact I won’t complain if you skip my words, just hit play and make up your own mind. In recent years I’ve come to consider music reviews as a bit like looking at pictures of food, not nearly half as much fun as getting involved. They also taint and bias the listening experience, so I’ve given up on reading them. I still follow quite a few journalists whose taste I respect, just not for their writing.

So consider the newsletter as more of a handy filter to help dig through the modern music avalanche and unearth the good stuff. Listening is the new reading, or something like that.

I’d also written these three paragraphs last Saturday from respected music commentators backing up my contention that if you are going to stream music you shouldn’t be using Spotify.

First off is Substack residing

Darren Hemmings

from

Network Notes

, my favourite commentator on the intersection of music, tech and marketing who is searching for “a more emotionally affecting approach to listening to music“, and also cites “Spotify is actively working to distance you from your own music collection on its platform, forcing that down to the bottom of the main screen and instead trying to push podcasts, crappy playlists and now audiobooks on you instead.“

Next up is Darko Audio, my favourite (generally more affordable) audiophile Youtube channel who had growing frustrations with the sound quality, app aesthetics, clutter and royalty payments, but was finally pushed over the edge by the revelation from Liz Pelly’s (apparently excellent) new book on Spotify about their playlist padding by ghost musicians, where they game some of their most popular playlists with commissioned muzak to lower their royalty payments.

I know ditching apps can seem a bit like changing bank accounts - far too much of a hassle, but there are various apps that make the transition painless. Personally I used Soundiiz when I moved from Spotify to Tidal and at the click of a few buttons all my followed artists, saved albums and personal playlists magically appeared on Tidal. The app works for most streaming services except Apple Music, whose API is sadly lacking. If you’re still unsure but want to dip your toe in the water of a more ethical, better sounding streaming service then most streaming services offer free trials and Soundiiz is free to sign up to, you’ll be up and running in ten minutes.

Seaworthy & Matt Rösner - Deep Valley (12K)

(This longer review was also written whilst on the train)

The Bundanon is a stunning artistic retreat in New South Wales that was gifted to the Australian people in the 90s by respected artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne in the 1990s so artists could immerse themselves in its distinctive landscape. The culturally diverse estate has a Musicians Hut and that’s where Australian ambient artists Seaworthy and Matt Rösner found themselves for a week.

Seaworthy - Matt Rösner - Bundanon gallery

This is the third album from the duo celebrating the diverse Australian landscape, but it’s also fuelled by the somewhat ironic comment from Arthur Boyd, “You can’t own a landscape“, although to be fare he did sort of return his landscape to the public when he passed away.

Unsurprisingly given the history of the pair the recording is rich in the sounds of their surroundings. Where would ambient music be without the sound of birds? Fortunately though the feathered recordings here are an integral part of the soundscape rather than an ambient afterthought. The local waterway - the Shoalhaven River, and by the sound of it some of its minor tributaries also make an appearance, as do the sounds of some welcome precipitation pattering on a shelter. The recording is low key elemental with the sound of the wind sweeping over the sandtone cliffs, heath and woodlands also captured and carefully integrated.

Nature sounds are wonderful and all that, but they’re rather like that landscape photo from the peak you hiked up last Sunday - sadly unable to capture the full majesty of the view from the top. Don’t get me wrong the boys do their best, and that’s pretty darn good, but fortunately they add some electroacoustic elements to give this audio imagery added depth and vibrancy.

Oddly the electronics aren’t always pretty, sometimes sounding like the distant hum of industrial heating systems, but as with everything in this recording they’re honed and holistic. The icing on the cake though are the sounds of the piano and acoustic guitar. I can just imagine the guys at ease, sitting on the studio porch or nestled in the woodland looking around at the natural splendour, tuning into and being guided by the flora and fauna, the resultant melodic musing weaved into, rather than trying to dominate their surroundings. Honestly the album is great, tune in.

Euan Alexander Millar-McMeeken - All The Weather Of The Human Heart (Sleep In The Fire)

The keen eyed and early newsletter adopters might remember me raving on about the civic hall album, a collaboration between Craig Tattersall and Euan Alexander Millar-McMeeken, so why did no one tell me Millar-McMeeken had dropped an LP early in the year - come on people, help me out, I can’t do it all on my own.

Firstly that voice is back. OK so it’s not one singing coaches will be directing their students to, unless they’re teaching a class on vocal originality but I find it deeply moving and it’s fragile tones are the perfect vocal for the shifting, variously melancholic, bittersweet and heart wrenching electroacoustic and often audio ambiguous sands that they hover over. One for the late night head phone listeners.

Decius - Decius Vol. II (Splendour & Obedience) [The Leaf Label]

OK enough with the sofa soundtracks and melancholic minimalism, let’s get this party started. Say hello to DECIUS, new kids on the old school dance block, but damn they do it well. On a cursory listen Vol. 1 was more of a throwback, sulphate fuelled stomping affair for strobe lit basements, but volume 2 comes up to the main room of an underground club, keeps some of the Sheffield bleeps, acid house and proto-hardcore spirit, but ups the bounce and injects some New York Sound Factory sexiness. This could be just the old school rave tonic that the phone glued youth need to get off their arses and make sweating buckets on ecstasy great again.

Payfone - Wild Butterfly (Sweat Entertainment)

OK let’s keep the party rolling but slow the tempo, up the bump even further and increase the soul and funk. Say hello to Payfone, who have been realising one all killer no filler EP a year since 2013; I’m not joking every one is a winner. This digital release is their latest vinyl EP release from September last year, which is as dope as usual, but keep listening for Volume II which on a quick scan seems to be a choice collection of EP tracks from the last 12 years, some of which I believe haven’t been available to stream before. Whatever the ins and outs you really need to check these dudes out if deep nu-disco, slo-mo soulful house and Balearic chuggers are your thing.

Bhajan Bhoy - Bhoy On The Wire (Self Release)

Welcome to the Bandcamp underground. There is a ton of great music on Bandcamp that never sees the streaming platforms, and this is where you’ll find Bhajan Bhoy selling ultra limited vinyl runs and digital downloads of his music. His latest LP was recorded as a birthday gift for Steve Barker’s “On The Wire” radio show in April 2024, to thank him for 40 years of broadcasting ”simply the greatest radio show in the world” - quite a statement, and quite the gift.

Well that session is now available outside of the radio show and what a cosmic affair it is. His recordings all plough a peak time psychedelic furrow; from hazy interstellar ragas to lysergic dance music, hard out psychedelic rock and all sorts of kosmische mutations, but this new release is a pleasingly mellow affair that hovers around the ambient kosmische end of the drug addled musical spectrum, and is made all the more remarkable because he’s a one man band. Turn on, tune in a drop out.

Civilistjävel! - Följd (FELT)

I was instantly smitten by Civilistjävel!’s deep, smoky low frequency flexing take on the ambient condition when I discovered him in September last year, so it’s nice to see him coming through with another restless ambient voyage so soon, that variously flirts with pulsing dub, rhythmic noise, electroacoustic backed vocals and even sunnier new age territory on one track. If you need some music for late night urban wandering or late night tower block powwows.

SILVAN STRAUSS - FLUKIN' (Kabu Fire)

Silvan Strauss is a producer, drummer and German Jazz Prize Winner who loves a bit of hip hop and likes to nudge the boundaries. His first LP was a beat tape dream - think golden age hip hop beats with a modern lick of paint. On the new album the jazz gods won and he decided to lock a host of top notch collaborators including Joe Armon-Jones - whose June album I’m looking forward to immensely, in a studio for three days to see what happened. His trust was well rewarded with a constantly surprising selection of woozy wobblers, jazz licked head nodders, mushroom jazz, far out fusion, funktified grooves and conscious hip hop. This is one that will appeal equally to the old school hip hop appreciators and forward looking jazz jivers.