Elevator Music

Elevator Music - music that elevates my heart and soul, and boy have I been in need of a lift since the shock to my system of leaving the EU..

I seem to be making the transition to digital music this year. With my wish-list increasing dramatically over the last couple of years the price of CDs against the download price has been brought into focus. Space is also a consideration.

I’ve been methodically recording my CD collection onto a HDD to use in the car and have filled in a few holes in the collection digitally where a complete album would not have been of interest. Any recommendations tend to get a good Spotify listen before I add them to the wish-list. There will undoubtedly be groups I will always buy everything released on whatever format they are available but with a resurgence in vinyl I have lately been buying the album on that format and getting a download code to add to my HDD. Must get a second HDD to back up the first though!

There may be a fault in my logic here. I would love to continue to support the artists I adore and am happy therefore to always buy my music but I do wonder how much they get of the price I pay, does it differ by format? Buying directly from the band / artist is similarly preferable for me because of that. 

Having catalogued my collection, which I drastically reduced about three years ago, mainly through selling on CD singles, I will have another cull once I have everything on the HDD and backed up. Curiously, I am in two minds about the limited edition CDs I have, the odd shaped cover and the like; are they likely to get me a better price or should I keep them for their uniqueness? Again, with certain artists the question answers itself but if I can fund the wish-list in its entirety that would be very exciting.

Anyway, with the first half of 2016 slipping away here’s my list of the most exhilarating finds this year (in some sort of order):

Breathless - Three Times and Waving

Blonde Redhead - Misery Is A Butterfly 

Poliça - United Crushers

And Also The Trees - Born Into The Waves 

Son Lux - Bones

London Grammar - If You Wait

Desaparecidos - Payola 

Son Lux - Lanterns

Kirk Brandon - Anthology

Killing Joke - What’s This For..? 

Son Lux - Strange Forms E.P. 

Daughter - Not To Disappear

Cuba - Leap of Faith

Kera - 1 by 1

Paul Haig - The Warp of Pure Fun

Metronomy - Love Letters

Lovisa Samuelsson - Main Magma Chamber

It's another little thing

Grumble mumble number two for this week. As you know I love my gigs. Over the last few weeks there have been several although I did skip one I'm afraid. Anyway, highlight for me was Polica down in Hove, very good indeedy!

Really enjoyed The Naked & Famous at Shepherd's Bush Empire and Bastille at Somerset House. Not quite as enthralling were Daughter, also out in the open air. Perhaps my expectations were out of kilter, unusual that! Never mind. It certainly wasn't bad and I still love them dearly too, probably more than the others in this paragraph.

The downside though, has been the lighting for these gigs. Some of it was interesting, new to me, different, and I can appreciate that. But on the whole the lighting was too much, too many lights, too bright. I've come to see a band play live, not a bunch of silhouettes, you know? I want to be able to see expressions of singers living their lyrics, of guitarists being carried off on their music, of sweaty drummers beating the hell out of their kit. I love seeing the knowing moments the musicians share, how they interact with faces in the crowd, damn it, even their nervousness. I love all these human elements of gigs.

Mr lighting engineer. I'm impressed at how well you've managed to use the latest technology to do a million things at once. Get over it though, or perhaps you could go into large even firework displays? Let me see the people you're supposed to be lighting for me. Give me an atmosphere, don't blind me with strobes that really add nothing to a gig. Show me subtlety, see if you do that for me, please?