Ten Records from 2014

Not sure if this is necessarily a “Top Ten” but it’s a list of sorts. These are the ten records that have left the biggest impact on me. I don’t want to call them the best records but rather the most interesting, arresting and memorable. This year has been a great year for music. Increasingly I think each year has such an exponential reach due to the ways that music can be released. This allows for so many paths, routes and side journeys, all of which are fun to explore.

Becoming Worldly. Henri Pierre Noel- Piano

Sometime in 2013 I was listening to the radio when on came a breeze of piano playing. At once I began to sway in the kitchen and as I kneaded dough I broke into a light dance. This is not necessarily an uncommon experience but the music was singular. It was funky, soulful and had a certain indefinable air.

By the end of the year the record, Henri Pierre Noel’s “Piano” was my favorite album of the year, new release or re-release. It opened up a whole new world of sounds, textures and avenues in my life that I’m only really starting to navigate.

Day 74: Madeleine Peyroux- Careless Love

One thing I’ve come to realize since moving to DC is that summers here can be absolutely brutal. They are just so stiflingly hot, which alone would be terrible but what is worse they are sappingly humid. Now there is a moment in the first days of summer where you first feel this power. Without being acclimatized it just withers away your energy and leaves you feeling completely drained. You are just left as a husk but a sweaty, tired and fatigued husk.

Today was that day for me, in fact it’s often this week in May and it’s always on the week when I take children to our local creek to conduct water testing. So we end up schlepping downhill to the creek investigating the macro-invertebrates found therein before walking the half mile back up the steep incline, in the exhaustive heat and humidity. Added to the long hours and energy sapping commitments to the school musical the creek testing leaves me just spent. In such a mood I need cool breezes, refreshing beers and breezy music.

Today “Careless Love” perfectly satisfied that need for calming, cooling and restorative music. It is just astoundingly light and spacey music that drifts over your ears unravelling the layers of stress and soothing your spirit. It is meditative and smooth music, the kind of jazz I always assumed that I hated.

Day 59: Buena Vista Social Club- Buena Vista Social Club

I’ve discussed this before but sometimes I find writing this blog a bit hard because I feel like a neophyte. I feel completely overwhelmed by writing about records that I know a million people understand far more than I do. I wonder if I’m qualified enough to discuss this music. I don’t understand the technicalities and the intricacies of the music.

You see I am not a very eclectic music collector in one sense. I am very… western. As you’ve probably noticed through this blog waaay over 85% of my record collection is British, Irish or American. Add to this a big Jamaican influence and you have the majority of my music taste. That said there are occasional Canadians (Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young), a few Africans (Ali Farka Toure etc), a couple of French players (Gainsbourg, Air etc), some krautrock (Krafwerk, Can) and a smattering of other nations (Jorge Ben or Seu Jorge from Brazil for example). This is just that I grew up listening to western music and can more readily identify with it. I am very rarely disappointed by world music but I just find it hard to delve in and get more than a surface level experience.

Further to this lack of global inclusivity my record collection is also overwhelmingly focused on popular music. I have many rock, indie, rap, pop and soul records but very few jazz or classical records. I suppose I do at least cover the blues and folk music fairly well but that doesn’t make up for my lack of jazz. This is something I hope to overcome as I work to learn more about different genres and expand my knowledge. However that process is hard as there is lots of jazz or samba or bhangra music that I vehemently dislike. This is true of rock but negotiating that process is easier as I have a working framework to guide my journey.

Anyway all of this is a disclaimer that I don’t really have technical, biographical or even experiential knowledge to talk about “Buena Vista Social Club” in any intellectual depth. But that is in a sense liberating. My enjoyment of this music is purely visceral. It is in a way less filtered, refined and intellectualized as my love of other records. It is much more organic. It is based on a simple connection to the music and the players as much as the technical importance of a record.