David Sylvian has been working out on these minimalist reaches of the sound universe since his ‘blemish’ album. This set of variations brings a fractured coherence to the experiment which generates a whole new experience. This is not a remix album – typically they are derivative of the original. Instead, using the original source material a completely new mood piece is created. Impressive.

I’ve been listening to Sylvian’s music since the mid-70s when I first heard ‘Quiet Life’ by Japan. What an immense journey to reach the point of this album. And it’s a journey I have thoroughly enjoyed following with him.

It is fantastic to hear a musician who continues to explore and push out the boundaries.

“And the radio falls silent
But for short bursts of static
And she sleeps in a house
That once too had a name”

1. Porcupine Tree – The Incident

Already reviewed this. It’s their best album to date. The range of music and variety from intense to melodic.

2. David Sylvian – Manafon

Review coming – music that requires effort to listen to. Worth it for the pay-back.

3. Jonsi & Alex- Riceboy Sleeps

Best ambient album I have heard in a while.

4. The Duckworth Lewis Method – The Duckworth Lewis Method

An album about cricket from two Irishmen! Neil Hannon from Divine Comedy shows what a great lyricist he is. It’s ELO meets 10CC.

5. Madness – The Liberty of Norton Folgate

A concept album from Madness – whatever next. Great tunes and a massive track to finish the album.

6. Bach – Mass in B Minor

Listening to this is like a marvellous antidote to modern living.

7. Porcupine Tree – Stupid Dream

An older album by the band – not as good as the new one, but great tunes and it really rocks.

8. A-ha – Foot of the mountain

I’ve always loved the music of A-ha. This new album by them is a return to form (a cliche I know, but it is!)

9. Jan Garbarek Group -Dresden

If you search for Garbarek in this blog you’ll find earlier reviews including a live concert I saw. This new double live album is wonderful. Eberhard Weber is still not around, due to having had a stroke, but this new line-up produce great music.

10. Keith Jarrett – Testament: Paris / London

ECM go from strength to strength. This is a live triple CD of two concerts. Spontaneous composition / improvisation. Beautiful melodies plucked out of the air by Jarrett.

1. Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum

I have their first two albums – I love the way their music is developing. The psychedelia of this one particularly attracts me. The track ‘Fire’ brought the crowd to their feet at Glastonbury.

2. Eels – Meet the Eels: Volume 1

I loved ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ when it came out. This is a retrospective which shows just how talented Mark Oliver Everett (E) is! A great songwriter.

3. No-Man – Schoolyard Ghosts

I’ve been following this band for a while – this recent album is stunning. Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) makes great music and Tim Bowness sings in a beautifully fragile voice with great lyrics.

4 . Jon Hassell – Last Night the Moon Came Dropping its Clothes in the Street

The unique path that is Jon Hassell continues to become more mesmeric and spell-binding! The use of the studio as an instrument is becoming more astounding in his work.

5. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

It’s like Neil Young starting again – with a broken heart and an acoustic guitar.

6. Steven Wilson – Insurgentes

Wilson’s solo album has fantastic big tracks with great guitar work and frequent collapses into brain-shattering noise. He really understands how to shift from beauty to chaos.

7. Tom Waits – Small Change

Early album – I’m gradually buying up the back-catalogue whilst waiting for the new one!

8. Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Fourth album shows how tight their music is – a three piece with soul and prog all mixed up.

9. Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires

Reminds me of A Certain Ratio meets Jamiroquai (the good bits of each!) I love the innocent energy and infectious dance-ability of this album.

10. Antony and the Johnsons – The Crying Light

OK, everyone says about the voice, but what about the stunning album cover, the arrangements and the range of this album. In a world carved out for itself.

• The Guillemots – Through the Windowpane
• Badly Drawn Boy – Born in the UK
• Duke Special – Songs from the Deep Forest
• Tracy Thorn – Out of the Wood
• Porcupine Tree – Fear of a Blank Planet
• Rush – Snakes & Arrows

This is a post on the run, so no detail. But, go explore – you won’t be disappointed…

The music which is forming the soundtrack for my life at the moment is:

1. Nine Horses – Money for all

I bought the original album ‘Snow Borne Sorrow’ a while back when it came out. This new release is a mixture of new tracks (3 of them) and remixes of tracks from the album. David Sylvian works well in the mix with Steve Jansen and Burnt Friedman. It’s a CD which slowly burns into your memory banks and demands replays.

2. Tom Waits – Orphans

This had such amazing reviews, that I couldn’t wait to get hold of a copy. I got it for Christmas, and have been dipping into it ever since. Three hours of Tom Waits, meandering all over his various muscial styles, voices and topics. The third CD is probably the weirdest (saying something where Waits is concerned!) as it mixes stories, poems and soundtrack outtakes. The whole CD set is a mammoth thing which surprisingly hangs together.

3. Ketil Bjornstad /David Darling – Epigraphs

This is a stunning album of improvisations between piano and cello. It shifts from modern ambient, cool jazz to echoes of Bach and Mozart. Great music for thinking and creating.

4. Joanna Newsom – Ys

It’s an epic album, full of stories and threads of ideas. The orchestration by Van Dyke Parks is amazing and the whole thing is a labryinth which reveals new secrets on each listen.

5. Joanna Newsom – The Milk Eyed Mender

Well, the new album took me into the first one. This is a much starker arrangement. Her voice is somewhere between Bjork, Kate Bush and Tori Amos. But it has its own unique territory too! I love the lyrics, and I love the arrangements for each song.

6. Badly Drawn Boy – About a Boy

I know he has a new album out – and no, I haven’t heard it yet. But I saw the film of which this is the soundtrack again recently, and was drawn back to this album. Damon Gough carves out his own furrow. But above all else, he writes great melodies. I absolutely love the song ‘Silent Sigh’, used at a particularly painful moment in the film.

7. Fennesz – Endless Summer

I came to Fennesz’s work through a collaboration he did with David Sylvian. He is a guitarist and laptop improviser from Austria. This album is truly beautiful – it rises gently out of a backround of noise and captures you like a stunning sunrise on a crisp morning.

8. John Cale – Black Acetate

An eclectic mix of styles, some killer riffs and a giant bag of seething energy. And the production is stunning. I’m not particularly precious about production values – but this one just reaches out of the speakers and grabs you by the throat.

9. Paul Weller – Stanley Road

I’m not sure how I missed this when it first came out. Last year I bought the anniversary edition and have listened to it so many times since. What a classic album!

10. Sigur Ros – Takk

I know I have chosen this album before on this blog, but it really does tease out new things on each listen. Earlier this week I spent an evening listening really carefully to it through headphones and there is so much going on in the mix that I hadn’t heard before.

1. Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis

I have been looking for this album for years. It is the only solo album to date, by the singer from Talk Talk. The later albums by Talk Talk before they split up took them further into the avant garde and painfully beautiful yet minimal sounds. This album continues that journey. The lyrics are sparse, the arrangements stunningly unusual. The use of guitar and piano fragments is haunting. I can’t stop listening to it – and continue to muse over the lyrics and the overall atmosphere which is evoked by this music.

2. Thom Yorke – The Eraser

This new album by the singer from Radiohead could almost be companion album to the Mark Hollis one. Except that, where Hollis has a clear focus on acoustic instruments, Yorke uses electronics and laptop for his pre-occupations. The lyrics are similarly oblique. The voice is beautiful. Great voices in modern music always push forward without any sense of the self-conscious. There are some beatiful melodies on this album. Try the title track or ‘And it rained all night’ to see what I mean. Love it!

3. Clap your hands say yeah – Clap you hands say yeah

I really like this album, in spite of the first track which sounds like some demented circus act. Sometimes I wonder whether anyone ever says to bands, don’t use that as the first track, otherwise people might get no further. This is the case with so many REM records – they begin with a ‘difficult’ track! Anyway, this album settles down into a great sound, somewhere between Talking Heads and Pere Ubu. They also sound very like The Arcade Fire on some tracks, in the way that they wind up through a track, gathering momentum. At times the singer Alec Ounsworth sounds unnervingly like David Byrne. It’s an album well worth a listen, and I particularly like the fact that it is about the length of an old vinyl album. Too many albums go on for too long these days…

Other albums I’m listening to, that I have already written about:

4. The Open – Statues

5. Sigur Ros – Takk

Click here for Friday Playlist 1

The Open – Statues

The Liverpool band’s second album begins with a track recorded in deepest Wales – yearning trumpet and a voice that comes from god knows where. This is a classic track called ‘forever’ which is one of the best album openers I have heard in ages. The second track takes us into more familiar Liverpool music scene. But the rest of the album which was recorded in France, is full of surprises. There’s prog rock, radiohead, jazz and straight-ahead pop. It’s a great album which grows with each play. Their first album “The Silent hours” is one of the best first albums I have heard in years.

Doves – Lost Souls

I’ve spent the last few months working my way backwards through the Doves’ back catalogue. This, their first album from 2000, is fantastic.

Neil Young – Prairie Wind

This is taking a bit of playtime to get to – I have problems with the sound of country, and this album is full of steel guitar. Great songs, as you’d expect. Neil Young reacting to the health scare he experienced in the middle of working on the album. Sometimes the albums that stay on the playlist are the ones that aren’t instant –this could be one of those.

Robert Fripp – Love cannot bear

I love the soundscape albums of Fripp, and this one is the best yet. It gathers tracks from across the years, each a live track from the USA. The result is a journey of immense emotional intensity.

Nitin Sawhney – Philtre

World travelling from the UK – a stunning melding of influences. This is the fourth album by Sawhney that I have bought recently. I find his music fascinating. Sometimes you hear music and think that it sounds like a soundtrack and lacks the visuals of a film. With Sawhney it sounds like a soundtrack that doesn’t need a film.

Also listening to:

The Tears – Here come the tears
Morrissey – Vauxhall and I
Sigur Rós – Takk
The Jam – Snap!
Paul Weller – Stanley Road

1. David Sylvian – The Good Son vs The Only Daughter

Remixes of the ‘blemish’ album – remarkably coherent, total retakes on some tracks, warmth brought to some of the more stark pieces from the original album.

2. Porcupine Tree – Stars Die

A 2-CD retrospective.

3. Harold Budd – Avalon Sutra

Double album – been on my playlist for a while now. Keeps haunting me.

4. Harold Budd – The Pavilion of Dreams

The first album I heard by Budd – still love it after all these years.

5. Brian Eno – Another Day on Earth

Eno does voices after so long – great depth that keeps coming through on each listen.

6. Fripp & Eno – The Equatorial Stars

Great for easing those tensions…

7. Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland

I just love listening to someone push the boundaries, and those melodies, hooks, riffs!

8. Iarla O’Lionnaird – Invisible Fields

The singer from Afro Celts. Third solo album – a work of great late night beauty.

9. Jonny Greenwood – Bodysong

I love the jazz blasts on this – and the classical pieces – incredibly diverse.

10. Tom Waits – Alice: the complete demos

Great to hear this alongside the original album – the ‘interlude’ pieces are intriguing, and the singing is fantastic, often very funny.

1. Jon Hassell – Maarifa Street

I bought this a few weeks ago, and it has been on the player regularly since. It seeps into your consciousness. This is his best album in years – I love the reconstruction of live and studio sounds. Different things lurk up out of the mix each time I listen.

2. John Foxx / Harold Budd – Translucence / Drift Music

This one has been a regular play each time I sit down to work. The best ambient piano-based music I have heard in a long time. The second CD has fantastic blurred sound passages.

3. Brian Eno – Glitterbug

The album that was never released, because Eno sent the tapes to Jah Wobble who made ‘Spinner’. I like both albums for different reasons. This one was a soundtrack to a Derek Jarman movie.

4. Jon Hassell – Live in Nice 1997

Taken from a radio broadcast – fantastic music. Hassell live is every bit as exciting as Hassell in the studio.

5. The Coral – The Invisible Invasion

A local band – got the album for Father’s Day last weekend. A great mix of 60s beat, Teardrop Explodes and Echo & the Bunnymen. Really catchy hooks in each song, and a heap of unusual endings.