luscious listening

I seem to spend more time thinking about blog posts I’m going to write than actually writing them, as demon time gets in the way. This one has been brewing for a long time, ever since the end of November last year. I was working on a month-long musical series with Donal Dineen for his Small Hours show on Today FM called Fresh Air (all sessions still available to listen back to here) and the month brought so much new music to my ears that I’m still trying to recover. But still, wonderful new albums keep coming; I bought Four Tet’s – There is Love in You (on vinyl with free mp3 download! love this) and Beach House – Teen Dream today, so I think it’s case of getting theses songs out of me before I forget.

The premise of Fresh Air was simple and brilliant; Donal selected a series of the finest irish sound makers producing fresh new music and invited them on to the radio show to chat about their process, or their loves, or their inspirations, or all three. They often played live and always brought in some of their very own fresh air- tunes they loved- be they new, or new to Donal. Of course that resulted in a multitude of new must-listen-to tracks and artists every night that I was scrabbling to list (for the fresh air blog- so I do have a clickable list), but it’s interesting to see which ones have really stayed with me since then.

Some took me off on tangents of discovery. The blues selection that Jeremy (R.S.A.G) brought in reminded me of how much I loved Muddy Waters and Howlin’Wolf, and how I’d always planned on listening to more blues to really get a handle on it. My dad loves the blues and I’d listened to a ton of it growing up, but I’d never really sat back down and listened to it. I asked him to pick a couple of the seminal tracks for me to make a start, and he ended up giving me an amazing list of over 400 tracks from one of the earliest blues recordings of the 1920′s up to Rock and Roll and beyond, right up to the present day. How amazing! and how much I’m loving taking my time through it. But this is what happens, a song choice flickers a memory that can take you off on a whole little journey of discovery.

But back to the point…of the ones that were new to me, here are the ones that I had to buy immediately, and can’t stop listening to. Some of these aren’t strictly artists’choices- some Donal played a lot during that period, or out on the road for the live gigs, but here they are. my little joys that closed 2009.

(song name brings you to a listen-able stream- or head to the end of the post where I’ve embedded a soundcloud set of all 11 tracks)

Wave Machines - Keep the Lights On

You’ve got The Love - Florence + The Machine (XX remix)

Blackmagic - Jose James (Joy Orbison remix)

Twice – Little Dragon