One of the best things about working on a slow moving boat, as I have been for the last week, is that I can listen closely to music that I have bought, or been sent, that has only had the most perfunctory listen so far. Here is a small collection of what I have been mostly listening to recently. There are some familiar faces, and some you may not have heard of as yet, but they’re all worthy of your attention.
First off we have a song which became the first thing I played in the morning, with a few more listens to pick me up during the day. Sent to me by those nice people at Flowers in the Dustbin (go to flowersinthedustbin.org), it’s exactly the type of song I want to hear on the radio, and I have become mildly obsessed by it. It is called Cigarette Smuggling by Mummy Short Arms. What’s it like? Well have a listen. Surely it’s worth 3.52 minutes of your time to find out if you feel the same way about it as I do:
Next we have the new album by Sparrow and the Workshop, Spitting Daggers. I was a huge fan of their previous album Crystals Falls, and Spitting Daggers has yet to grab me in quite the same way, but it’s early days and they seem incapable of making anything less than a wonderful noise. This is Snakes in the Grass:
Daniel Parry, otherwise known as Dalyrimple Goes Wrong, sent me a link to his EP For Shut Eyes, which you can download for free here dalyrimplegoeswrong.bandcamp. Made over a mere five days in his Edinburgh flat, For Shut Eyes doesn’t really have any right to be as good as it is. There are shades of early New Order and The Duritti Column and it makes for lovely late night listening. Anyone who can make a song called It Stinks in Here Like Fetid Brain sound so gentle and melodic is all right by me. Have an aural gander:
Now I’m going to go back, way back, well to the mid-nineties at least. I dug out a couple of early Boards of Canada albums to listen to, and realised it had been far to long. This is Twoism from the album of the same name:
Finally we have Your Young Voice from King Creosote and John Hopkins’ album Diamond Mine which had somehow passed me by, and which I was alerted to by my old neighbour Peter Ross who put it forward as a contender for album of the year. Having listened to only a few of the songs so far I would say he definitely has a point: