02/24 - I'm There And I'm Also Not There

The wind is battling the sea and the house is creaking at the seams. I've been listening to a lot of instrumental music in the studio lately, so here is a largely wordless top 5 for hunkering down in February:

André 3000 - That Night In Hawaii When I Turned Into A Panther And Started Making These Low Register Purring Tones That I Couldn't Control... Shit Was Wild   

Trust Mr Ice Cold to make an on paper bizarre move and follow up a solid hip hop career with an ambient flute record, and then make it actually good! A true artist. Gorgeous sounds to discover gradually and one of my new favourite albums for slumbering on the bus to. And the live performance is a must watch:

 

Hedvig Mollestad - Kittiwakes in Gust

The perfect track for this weather. No kittiwakes in sight yet, but a couple of weeks I actually had them swooping by in the strait.

 

 

Kramer - Or Perhaps You Imagined It All   

This is the time of the year when I catch with last year's releases. This album's a standout with gorgeously produced, hard to place, dance music. Expect more tracks from this on future lists.

 

 

Emeka Ogboh - Verbal Drift    

Fantastic album of sound collages made up of field recordings from bus stations in Lagos set to beats. Transports me back to when I travelled in Ghana as a 20-something and spent hours waiting for departures in rural squares with tro-tro-stations. Good times.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Rings of Saturn

It took me a while to get round to Skeleton Tree. Back when it was released in 2016 I felt like it was almost overpowered by its tragic backstory, and I resisted listening to it for a long time as it felt almost unfair/exploitative that the death of Arthur Cave became interwoven with a music release. But lately I've found my own way into these looping elegies. This song especially awakens something gut-wrenchingly nostalgic to me, with old feelings just out of reach signalling back to me about what's lost with age.