Nine Feet Underground

Welcome back my friends (“...to the show that never ends”)… January’s long list pretty much chose itself – I already had five albums in mind before I started the blog.  There’s always a ton of oldies I want to listen to (off the top of my head…a couple of early Robert Wyatt “solo” albums, a compilation of the Tangerine Dream Virgin albums, recent reissues / compilations from dub reggae masters Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Scientist, the early Mothers of Invention albums, the first album by Deuter and a bunch of “krautrock” albums from Popol Vuh, Cluster (them again!) and Amon Duul II blah blah blah!) so that’s never a problem, but I couldn’t think of anything new worth investigating for February.  So I took a look around and at first pass wished I hadn’t – there is so much new stuff, but hang on - half the albums I’d like to hear aren’t released until mid- to late-February and so aren’t available to hear online yet! Suddenly the prospect of a very long March long list emerges along with

Funny old world! I’ve been listening to these five albums (you remember, the latest from The National, Salem, Oneohtrix Point Never and Wire plus an oldie, Cluster ’71 by Cluster) since the start of January and my thoughts about almost all of them have changed several times.  At least I didn’t rush out and buy them all: chalk one up to the experiment! I had planned to write an interim posting of thoughts on the albums so far, but in fact time has overtaken me: this post announces the winner of the January album of the month instead. Before announcing the winner, what of the other albums? King Night the debut album from Salem : I had high hopes for this one. I like it. It has the sort of ‘dark’ sounds I find appealing, but if anything it’s just not dark enough. Nevertheless it has quite a unique sound somewhere on the fringes of dubstep, dark core drum ‘n bass and industrial electronica, much of it slowed down to a crawl.  On the basis of ‘King Night’ I’ll keep a look out for the nex