Once again, I credit last.fm for introducing me to Hanne Hukkelberg's music. The first thing I heard was her debut album, by way of a little ditty called 'Ease' which, like the album it came from, was a mostly light, whimsical affair.
However, the album to really catch my attention was this one, which I discovered a couple of years later. Three albums in, the fluffy Jazz-lite of 'Little Things' is replaced with a darker more experimental sound that incorporates elements of electronica, post-punk, indie rock and percussive found sound, resulting in a sonic brew that is deliciously unclassifiable. Imagine the ephemera of CocoRosie combined with the dissonance of Sonic Youth, the rawness of PJ Harvey's grittier moments and the idiosyncratic flair of Kate Bush, and you'll probably get the idea.
Either way, 'Blood...' managed to tick all the right boxes for me and became an album I played to death, and the songs 'Salt of the Earth', 'Crack' and closer 'Bygd Tyl By' (sung in Hukkelberg's native Norwegian) still give me goosebumps.
The follow up record 'Featherbrain', skirts the same territory in a more stripped down manner) and is also a good album, but for me, this is the preferred album, and one that's made a lasting impact.
You may have probably gathered from my other entries, but I'm very particular about when I play music. Summer music is for summer only, and the same applies for night music, rainy day music and so on. Sense Field falls squarely into the 'summer' category, but unfortunately, living in a country not particularly known for its sunshine, a lot of my summer music doesn't get played as much as it deserves.
UK summers are brief affairs, if you're lucky, you get a month's worth of nice weather spread across the odd weeks and days between June and August. I seem to recall summers being longer and hotter in my childhood, but from about 1998 onward, apart from the odd freak year, summers have been disappointing.
I keep telling myself that one day, I'll move to a sunnier climate.
Regarding Sense Field, I was introduced, once again by the same friend who rekindled my appreciation for the Pumpkins and turned me on to Archers of Loaf (even though I haven't seen this guy in nearly 13 years, he has a lot to answer for). It was during another smoke-filled session, during a brief lull in the music that he piped up with 'Sense Field'. The album he put on was 'Killed For Less', the record that follows this one. I was a little underwhelmed at first; what I heard sounded "meh", but it did grow on me, especially as the album went on, but it wasn't until I heard 'Building' (a few weeks later), that I was really impressed.
'Building' is comprised of 13, eminently tuneful, stirring songs that immediately get to the point and never fail to outstay their welcome (if anything, some end a little too soon). For me, it was very hard not to like this album. Hearing it recalls sunshine and simpler times and never fails to put me in a good mood, which is a big part of why it has managed to stay with me.
Some time in 2011, I learned that Helium frontwoman Mary Timony had recorded a number of solo albums. This discovery revived my interest in Helium's music and compelled me to seek out her solo efforts.
What fascinates me about Timony's music is her knack for crafting unusual and utterly bewitching compositions. Her tendency towards unconventional guitar tunings lends her songs an undefinable quality. One thing I always found particularly intriguing was her affinity towards medieval-esque melodies; this was something she only flirted with in Helium, but explored a lot more earnestly on her first two solo albums. As a result, both of these records sound like lo-fi indie rock as interpreted by someone from the Middle Ages.
I discovered 'Mountains', and the follow up 'The Golden Dove' around the same time and played them almost non-stop for nearly an entire year, and whilst 'The Golden Dove' is just as good as this album (if slightly more polished in terms of overall production), because 'Mountains' was my first foray into Timony's dark indie fairytale world, it's the one that's stayed with me the most. It also seemed to resonate perfectly with how I was feeling when I first heard it.
So, sometime in 2011, it was winter, nearing the end a year that felt like being repeatedly kicked in the nuts, in the midst of family troubles and relationship turbulence, my salvation came in threes. Another Murakami novel (this time, the recently released and utterly fantastic 1Q84), a new but valued friend whom I unwittingly found myself getting closer to than I ever anticipated, and this album. What sticks out in my mind is the synchronicitous cadence of these three happenings, and the poetic manner in which they had coalesced.
The night of 11/11/11, I had a strange night vision where I felt myself almost being tugged from my own body under that evening's full moon. The following day, I received a text from the aforementioned friend that served to draw her and I closer in subtle ways. It felt as though the night before, I'd stepped into a parallel world that presented an unexpected fork in the road. In 1Q84, I read of its main protagonist stepping into a parallel world, a world where a strange, ominous second moon hung in the sky. To this day, the medieval strings (lute?) that open 'Poison Moon' from 'Mountain' briefly take me back to that place in my mind, and the story itself. The poison moon of the song, recalling the second moon from the book, and the moon I slept under that November night. It was as though the book, this album and my life had somehow merged in a surreal kind of way that, with some irony, would not be out of place in a Murakami novel.
The book's second protagonist visited a strange town to re-align himself and evaluate his circumstances, I visited my friend (also out of town) as she helped me with some things. It was good having someone I could talk to so easily, it helped me re-align and evaluate my circumstances (we silently skirted on the edges of something more, but both knew it wouldn't be right). I listened to this album on the train home.
So basically, all of that was just an elaborate, and admittedly somewhat pretentious way of saying the album had a profound effect on me, seemingly resonating with things that were happening to me at the time. This is the main reason why this album has managed to stay with me.
Jazz isn't for everyone, and I'm not even going to pretend it's something I listen to a lot of. I dip in and out, and pretty much know what I like, but I'm no connoisseur. Like many lay folk, I find that Jazz can be too chaotic, too busy and very difficult to follow. However, it can also be fresh, multi-faceted and thoroughly engaging, and this album right here is a fine example of that, and when I discovered Alice Coltrane's music, I immediately realised this was the sort of Jazz I could quite easily get into, and I did.
'Journey' is a very short album (only 5 songs), but as the title suggests, those songs are journeys. The music possesses a transcendental, meditative quality (understandable given Coltrane's obvious spiritual leanings). The bass and droning sitar provide the backbone to Coltrane's mellifluous harp work which, in turn, is framed by the horns and flutes that adorn the mix.
After finding this album, I dug into the rest of Coltrane's discography, becoming an eager fan of her work. Again, hers is the sort of Jazz I can truly connect with, even at its most chaotic and even find her music more enjoyable than that of her more celebrated spouse.
Since discovering this album, I have journeyed into Satchidananda many, many times and will do many, many more.
Of course, everyone knows the story of how the band came to be, formed as it was from the ashes of Joy Division, and everyone knows at least one of their songs (probably 'Blue Monday'). It goes without saying that New Order has been incredibly prolific and influential, but the album that's stayed with me is this one, their very first post-Curtis recording.
Listening to 'Movement', you'd be forgiven for thinking it was Joy Division; at this point, they'd not yet forged their own identity, and Ian's ghost haunted the songs, clearly shaping the sound and feel of the album. It works for me because refines the band's Joy Division works whilst also offering a small glimpse of what lay ahead, its dark, gloomy vibe best suited to grey, overcast days.
The album clicked particularly as it reminded me of some of the material I was writing for the band I was in at the time (and that's before I'd even heard it). And so, I would find myself drawing upon it for inspiration.
I would later pick up a few other New Order albums, but this is the one I came back to the most. Again, it's nothing like the music they would go on to create, but for me, it is their most consistent (aside from Technique) and definitely an all-time favourite.
Sometime around 2002, a good 3 years after this, this was released, I became acquainted with the work of Mos Def for the first time. The tracks to first gain my attention were 'Umi Says', 'Mathematics' and 'Rock 'N Roll'. I'd heard the former at a party during a friend's DJ set at a party, and the other two tracks online somewhere, and bought the album on the strength of those songs.
However, it wasn't until around 2005-ish that I really started getting into the album, though. On my holiday to Japan that summer, I played it to death on my mp3 player, which is partly why I associate this album with sunshine (it just doesn't sound right in the winter or on cloudy days).
Whenever I hear 'Black on Both Sides', not only do I think of the summer, I think of parties, I think of when I used to drop songs from the album into my own DJ sets, of feeling almost indestructible walking the streets with it on my headphones. It is therefore unfortunate that none Mos Def's albums (with the exception of his Black Star collaboration with Talib Kweli) came anywhere close to this.
In spite of that, BOBS is, for me, a masterpiece of a record, an exceptional debut and an album that holds a lot of happy memories.
One of the things I love most about music is the way it can serve as a constant companion. For me, whatever I've been through in life -good or bad- music has always been there.
The latter part of 2004 (when this album was released) and the first half of 2005 were low points for me. A variety of personal circumstances had taken their toll, and as a result, I wasn't in a good place emotionally. I've never really been the sort of person to openly talk about things that are affecting me, so I kept most of what I was going through to myself. I would try to drink and smoke away the gloom, but that only got me so far. During that time, many evenings after work were spent in a quiet corner of a pub, nursing a pint while reading 'The Wind up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami (which is now one of my all-time favourite books). As with many of his novels, this book seemed to metaphorically reflect what I was going through on some level. It was one of the things that helped keep me sane during that dark period, another was 'The Lost Riots'.
Hope of the States took me by surprise. I encountered their first single 'Enemies/Friends' on a TV show, liked what I heard and kept a mental note. Some time later, I chanced upon 'Sadness on My Back' online somewhere as a downloadable mp3; I liked that too. I then learned of the album and I rushed out to get it.
My first impression was that whilst I enjoyed the music, I didn't like the singer's voice. He really sounded as though singing was a tremendous effort for him, and it grated on me, spoiling my enjoyment of the record. However, after repeated listens, my opinion shifted; the desperate earnestness in his delivery became the point, inextricably fused with the music itself and providing contrast to it. It's not that I grew to like his voice, but I saw the honest vulnerability as adding to the music rather than detracting from it.
As for the music itself, HOTS' grandiose chamber indie reminded me somewhat of 'Godspeed You Black Emperor': bruised, tremulous strings, sprinkled piano and taut, strangled guitars painted the soundscape, creating an emotional footprint, with vocalist Sam Herhily's voice underscoring the sense of struggle inferred by the music. Like the Murakami novel I was reading then, 'The Lost Riots' also resonated metaphorically. Whilst not the most cheerful of albums, it represented exactly where I was at the time, and how I felt, and for that reason, it offered comfort and healing in that way that only music can.
Hearing the album now, I am reminded of those grey months, but find myself looking back on them with a strange sense of fondness, which is testament to how this album helped me through.
