Accord­ing to their web­site, each mem­ber of The Builders and the Butch­ers is orig­i­nal­ly from Anchor­age, Alas­ka and migrat­ed sep­a­rate­ly to Port­land, Ore­gon to start a career in music. Port­land, nowa­days, is what Seat­tle was in the 1980’s: a con­sis­tent gen­er­a­tor of good new music.  Read more »

22568. (Giuseppe Ver­di) Aïda [selec­tions; d. Per­lea; Milanov, Bar­bi­eri, Bjoerling]
22569. (Bad­ly Drawn Boy) Born in the U.K.
22570. (Stel­la May­hew) Stel­la May­hew: Pri­vate Com­pi­la­tion [8 items] Read more »

22529. (Alcest) Sou­venirs D’un Autre Monde
22530. (Musi­ca Antigua, d. Eduar­do Panaguia [group] ) Canti­gas de Jeres
22531. (Ali Akbar Khan) Raga Mian Ki Todi Read more »

Loves­li­escrush­ing is an inter­est­ing lo-fi ambi­ent band based in Tuc­son. They pro­duce some pleas­ant­ly eerie sounds with gui­tars (Scott Cortez), soft vocals (Melis­sa Arpin-Duim­stra) and var­i­ous uncon­ven­tion­al noise-mak­ers. There’s a bit of the spir­it of 1950’s exper­i­men­tal and aleatoric art music, and def­i­nite influ­ences of Ein­stürzende Neubaut­en and My Bloody Valen­tine, but I think they’ve craft­ed a suf­fi­cient­ly dis­tinc­tive sound of their own. Appar­ent­ly, they’ve been around for quite awhile, out­side of my ken. The 2010 album I have, GIRL.ECHO.SUNS.VEILS, makes me want to dig up their ear­li­er work.

22441. (Bad­ly Drawn Boy) About a Boy
22442. (Guil­laume de Machaut) Qui n’aroit autre deport, lai for voice
22443. (Guil­laume de Machaut) Liement me deport par sam­blant, vire­lai for voice Read more »

This is one of my favourite albums from the glam rock era of the ear­ly sev­en­ties. Mott the Hoople was an ill-starred band from Here­ford­shire that was saved from obscu­ri­ty by the time­ly gift of a song, “All the Young Dudes” by David Bowie, who also pro­duced the album. It’s a sol­id play, through and through. As well as the fine title song, it has one of the three best ver­sions of “Sweet Jane,” the band’s own “One of the Boys,” “Sea Dri­ver,” and “Ready for Love,” all sat­is­fy­ing songs. At heart, the band was a low-key R&B com­bo that did not fit com­fort­ably into the heav­i­ly arranged glam style. I don’t know if this album has any sta­tus as an offi­cial rock “clas­sic”, but it has always remained in my plea­sure play­ing reper­toire. I’ve just acquired the 2006 remas­tered reis­sue, with sev­en bonus tracks.

I only feel the urge to lis­ten to dub­step occa­sion­al­ly. A lot of the stuff out there seems to be assem­bled from instruc­tions, like Ikea fur­ni­ture ― “lock­step” some­time seems a more appro­pri­ate genre name. Nobody can say that about the two albums by Bur­ial (aka William Bevin): Bur­ial (2006) and Untrue (2007). The rythms don’t feel math­e­mat­i­cal­ly locked in. They have a lit­tle bit of wig­gle room. While I pre­fer Untrue, of the two, either one would be suit­able to demon­strate to a doubter that dub­step can be emo­tion­al­ly satisfying.

Howard Han­son’s sym­phonies lan­guished in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty until, short­ly before he died, a move­ment of his sec­ond sym­pho­ny was used by Rid­ley Scott for the clos­ing cred­its of the film Alien. Since then, his music has been in demand. This shows just how acci­den­tal the rise and fall of musi­cal rep­u­ta­tions can be. A Swedish-Amer­i­can from Nebras­ka, Han­son com­posed in a rel­a­tive­ly tra­di­tion­al style, lit­tle influ­enced by the aca­d­e­m­ic trends of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Musi­cal sophis­ti­cates wrote him off as an anachro­nism. A recent book by Wal­ter Sim­mons that dis­cuss­es his work, as well as that of oth­er “Neo-Roman­tic” Amer­i­cans like Ernst Bloch, Samuel Bar­ber, and Paul Cre­ston, is apt­ly enti­tled Voice in the Wilder­ness. Read more »

22348. (Dave Brubeck Quar­tet) Jazz at Oberlin
22349. (Voodoo Glow Skulls) Firme
22350. Sri Lan­ka — Musiques Rit­uelles Et Religieuses Read more »