A little late getting it out, but once again starting another year of Recommended Albums, where I pick around 10 records from each month and write a little memorable description about them. I’ve been doing this since 2016 – I ain’t stopping now!
We’ve got everything from booming doom, to moving groove, to snazzy jazz. It’s the hits! Check it out below along with a few song favorites as well.
Another discovery in my time trawling the internet for buried gems of the 1980s. On this occasion I’m brought to France, I think, with singer Cida Desvarieux + her album Cida, released in 1984. There’s not much I can find about this record, but what I CAN say about it is that it’s supremely groovy. I mean it.
Dan Deacon’s “Sheathed Wings” has been really doing it for me on my running playlist, so I thought I’d share it here for anyone who had forgotten since 2015 or needs a new spark plug in their rotation.
It’s been a year already. We need some meditative, instrumental guitar pieces to help us recalibrate. Ryan Dugre is here. His new EP Look See is out February 18 via Ruination Records and has definitely reset my internal monologues in the short time I’ve spent with it early on.
Phew! We got some hotness on our hands. Irish producer Lighght has a new club and techno-focused LP, Seodra, coming March 4 via Doom Trip Records. I was previously familiar with Lighght’s 2021 album Holy Endings, which is much different than what we’re hearing here. 2021’s album was slower, and comprised of spine-tingling field recordings and auditory hallucinations. I’m trying to not just say “it was an ambient album”. This time around? Hoo-wee: it’s got volume, it’s got tempo, it’s got snap.
Gotta give a quick shout out to one of my favorite rising indie pop acts, Night Palace (fka Avery Leigh’s Night Palace). A friend & rare reader of the blog Tori tipped me to their song “Into the Wake, Mystified” in late 2020, and it eventually found its way onto favorite playlists, Ochre Overture, a dreamy lens into shoegaze, folk, drone and ambient with a little bit of grooves thrown in. They’ve got their debut album Diving Rings coming April 1st and I’m PUMPED – so let’s dive into one of the newest singles!
Another bookmark I’ve placed on my journey through 80s albums, Nyssa Musique appeared on my radar after seeing many trusted sources hype this record up as something special. While it may not be mind-blowing, their one record Comme Au Moulin is a fantastic record in the canon of weirdo jazz, “non-western” rhythms + textures and modern minimal composition.
One of the magic motifs that occur when you’re constantly ingesting new music is that sometimes you’ll listen to an unassuming record once and find it pleasant enough to listen to again at a later date. Once the later date arrives you find it even better than the last time you listened, and the time in between corresponding listens becomes shorter and shorter. Are you following? This happened to me with the 2021 You’ll Never Get To Heaven album, Wave Your Moonlight Hat for the Snowfall Train, a record I was not anticipating in any way and happened to check out on a whim, only to get lost in its tender limbs and cloudy atmosphere.
Alabaster dePlume, aka Gus Fairbairn, is releasing a fantastic double album GOLD – Go Forward In The Courage Of Your Love on April 1 via International Anthem, following his healing 2020 LP For Cy & Lee, which I woefully lacked coverage of at the time but trust me, I listened! It’s great! This new music is great too!
Warm Visions 