On my listening rotation, between December to January. Not even bothering to separate the genres. Free your mind, and the rest will follow…ha ha ha.
- George Michael. I watched Last Christmas which was a love song to all things George Michael, and that just awakened the 16 year old girl who warbled along to every song from Listen Without Prejudice and had a George Michael poster on her bedroom door. So guess what I was singing for two weeks and on my NYE?
- The Last Ship –– Sting. Easily one of my most listened albums in the past two years. I love how it revisits The Soul Cages and all of the elements I love best about Sting songs. Also on the NYE playlist. I still haven’t found any video recording of the musical, though…
- Songs From The Labyrinth — Sting. True story, I only properly listened to this last year, even if I’ve known for years he did this album. I was really excited when it was first released that he was working on it. I am a Dowland fangirl and a Sting fangirl. The happy confluence seemed brilliant. When I was in Australia, I did watch a documentary he did with Edin Karamazov about it. Anyway, last year I started listening to it and now I’m listening to it obsessively as I work on Can She Excuse My Wrongs and the Lachrimae Pavane.
- Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions. On my 2022 sleepytimes playlist since I do my best to switch my sleepytimes listening every now and then so I don’t get sick/desensitized to whatever I am listening to. Classical guitar music doesn’t work re putting me to sleep anymore because my brain starts going into analysis mode, trying to work out how things work, what can be transferred over to my practice etc. Argh!
- Mazzy Star, obvs. Everything Hope Sandoval touches is brilliant.
- Low. Also on my sleepytimes playlist. Nobody does slowcore like Low.
- Cocteau Twins. You know I default to Cocteau Twins.
- Harold Budd. Always default to Harold Budd.
- Depeche Mode. Some days you just gotta listen to Depeche Mode.
- Led Zeppelin.
- The New Pornographers.
- Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.
- Jose Gonzalez.
- Franz Ferdinand.
- The Shins.
- Roxy Music.
- Cigarettes After Sex. Perfect sleepytime music.
- Scarlatti, Albeniz, Takemitsu & Others: Works for Guitar — Ji Hyung Park (this is really good!)
- Julie Byrne.
- The All New Indie spotify playlist has some good stuff in January, as is evidenced by my past two mixtapes. New stuff from Mitski, Aldous Harding, Broken Social Scene etc.
- Bossa Nova! For some reason my workout music of choice. I walk happy when I listen to Bossa Nova.
- Discovered birp.fm playlists. This tickles my indie fancy.
- Ravel: Complete Works for Solo Piano — Bertrand Chamayou
- I also listen to the Spotify Classical New Releases every week but it’s an uneven selection. Some weeks are brilliant, some are just asinine.
- A whole lot of Martha Argerich. Brilliant pianist.
- Lucy Rose.
- Dvorak’s Rusalka.
- Some Handel and Bach.
- A whole lot of Ravel and Debussy.
- Noirin Ni Riain.
- Anuna.
- Maddy Prior.
- A whole lot of renaissance, medieval and early music.
- A whole lot of celtic and folk music.
- A whole lot of classical guitar music from luminaries such as Scott Tennant, Thu Le, Sean Shibe, Alexandra Whittingham, Stephanie Jones etc.