lost and found in translation

“Nothing was to be seen of the Castle hill; fog and darkness surrounded it; not even the faintest glimmer of light was present to suggest that the Castle was there.” Franz Kafka, The Castle, translated by Jon Calame & Seth Rogoff, 2014, Vitalis Verlag

“The Castle hill was hidden veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a castle was there.” Franz Kafka, The Castle, translated by Willa & Edwin Muir, 1930, my edition Penguin Modern Classics, 1984

The Castle (Penguin, 1984) vs The Castle, (Vitalis, 2014)

I have a possibly bad habit of buying multiple copies of books I love, if I see them for a good price with a cover that I like and don’t already have. Fairly often, I won’t ever read the new-to-me edition unless I happen to be in the mood for that particular book at the time of the purchase, because after all, it’s the same book. Or at least it usually is. I’ve had my 1984 Penguin Modern Classics paperback of Kafka’s The Castle for decades, though it was already second hand when I bought it. I first read the book at high school, a falling-to-bits old hardback from the school library. I have no idea which edition that was, but when I read it again in my early 20s, the novel seemed just as I remembered. That school version was almost certainly some edition the 1930 translation by the fascinating Scottish couple Willa and Edwin Muir, since they were the first translators of Kafka in English and theirs was and to some extent still is the standard version. Indeed, the couple introduced Kafka and his particular aura to the English-reading world; which is quite a big deal when you think about it.

Recently, in a charity shop, I came across a copy of The Castle that I hadn’t seen before, with a cover I was immediately drawn to. It’s from 2014 and though it’s in English it’s was put out by by Vitalis books, a publisher which, judging by its Wikipedia entry, sounds uniquely suited to the works of Kafka, a German-speaking Czech Jew who was raised in a Yiddish-speaking household:

Vitalis Publishing is the only German literary publisher in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1993 by Austrian-born physician and medical historian Harald Salfellner, it harks back to the cultural heyday of the fin de siècle before 1914, a period of shared German, Czech, and Jewish influence. The publishing program features Czech (Jan Neruda, Božena Němcová), German (Gustav Meyrink, Rainer Maria Rilke), Jewish (Oskar Wiener, Oskar Baum), and Austrian (Adalbert Stifter, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach) authors as common representatives of Bohemian literature.

My old Penguin paperback of The Castle, which features two chapters not included in the original 1930 UK edition (which were separately translated by Eithne Wilkins & Ernst Kaiser), is from of my least favourite stylistic phase of the Penguin Modern Classics series. In that point in the early 80s, the spines, in a nostalgic nod to the classic early (orange and white) days of Penguin. It does have a nice cover illustration, by Elizabeth Pyle, but otherwise the design is a little drab. The book is 298 pages of fairly small but readable print. The Vitalis edition is far more stylish and the cover artwork uses a beautifully evocative photograph of (Bohemian?) “Peasant women” from 1918 and a photograph of Friedland (or Frýdlant) castle in Czechia. The type looks around the same size as the Penguin edition, but though the book is slightly bigger than the Penguin, it has 382 pages.

Even allowing for the fact that the Vitalis Castle includes nice, dark, moody and scratchy illustrations by Karel Hruška, it’s a noticeably longer book, and the reason for that is revealed in the two quotes at the top of the page. The Muirs’ prose – like Edwin Muir’s poetry – is terse and spare, but also flexible and evocative. It’s the “voice” that Kafka has had for me since I was a teenager. It also has the benefit – or at least I think it’s a benefit, more later – of having been translated close to Kafka’s own time. When that first British edition of The Castle was published and Edwin Muir wrote in his introduction “Franz Kafka’s name, as far as I can discover, is almost unknown to English readers,” he was talking about an author who had only been dead for six years, and the book itself had only been in print in Kafka’s own language for four years.

Calame and Rogoff’s writing is slightly more lyrical to my ears/eyes, a little more long-winded, but in its way just as precise. I very much appreciate the two semi-colons in the first sentence of the passage above. The cumulative effect of their translation is a book which feels familiar but gently different. Another comparison, this time the opening of chapter 10:

“K. stepped out into the windswept street and peered into the darkness.” (Willa & Edwin Muir)
versus
“K. stepped outside onto the wildly windswept steps and peered into the darkness.” (Calame and Rogoff)

Which is the better sentence is just a matter of taste; the Muir version doesn’t feel especially superior to me, but on the other hand it does feel more ‘Kafka-esque’ – but is it? And what about this, from the end of chapter 15?

“And he pressed her hand cordially once more as he swung himself on to the wall of the neighbouring garden.” (Muirs)
versus
“He was still pressing her hand fervently as he swung himself onto the fence of the neighbouring garden.” (C&R)

Well; ‘cordially’ and ‘fervently’ are two very different things aren’t they? To me, that word choice significantly changes the tone of the passage. And this time, it’s the modern version that feels more redolent of Kafka as I think of him; which isn’t the same as saying it’s a better translation of the original text.
I have no idea whether it impacted on Calame and Rogoff or not, but modern translations of Kafka are made in a world where ‘Kafka-esque’ is a thing, and where Kafka himself – both his image, with those big, dark, suspicion-filled eyes and the hypersensitive personality from his personal writings, prone to intense feelings of harassment and persecution – colour how we see his work. The Trial in particular feels like that persona, that image, shaped into a novel, and surely anybody embarking on a new translation of the book could be uninfluenced by its familiar Kafka-ness, regardless of how faithful or otherwise they were to the original text.

Faith and Faithfulness

witty (if dated) wordplay in Asterix

There’s a mystery to what faithfulness means in translation – Google translate and AI are perfectly capable of making word-for-word translations of texts, but they seem somehow unable to make living, readable prose out of them. When I think of books that I’ve only ever read in translation (and I’ve never read more than a few pages in any language other than English or Scots, alas), going all the way back to childhood and the Asterix (René Goscinny, trans. Anthea Bell & Derek Hockridge) and Tintin (Hergé – Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper & Michael Turner) series’, I realise how much of the character of those books is owed to their translations. In those particular cases the translations seem almost miraculously good. To capture witty wordplay, puns etc while also keeping the original narrative flowing is a formidable skill. I can’t help thinking that if I read literal translations of those books, or learned to read French myself (let’s not get carried away) and read the originals, I would only discover a new respect for both the translators and the original authors.

wordy whimsy in Tintin

Translating from one language to another seems like it should be a practical rather than artistic thing, but the extent to which Kafka’s work is ‘Kafka-esque’ in English is in some ways a choice, and as time goes on more and more choices are available to the translator of any text. The obvious choices – whether to be true, word-for-word, to an author’s text, or to their ‘voice’ and atmosphere, whether to provide a faithful translation or a ‘good read’ have always been there. But with the passing of time and arguably just as important, is the decision of whether to make a novel or piece of writing true to its time and place or to our own. This isn’t a small thing, it’s both the readability and the character of a book. The right thing to do presumably varies from book to book, but in my experience, you don’t really know what you prefer until you come across something you don’t like.

Dostoevsky presented as a trashy airport novel (with no translator credit)

With The Castle, although the more modern text felt different to me, it wasn’t a difference that spoiled or significantly altered my enjoyment of the book, it was just something I noticed. But those translation choices can be jarring. A recent example of this came when reading two novels by the Finnish author Arto Paasilinna – The Year of the Hare (1975) and The Howling Miller (1981). Both were (which I find obscurely annoying) translated into English from French translations rather than from Finnish, but while The Howling Miller (which I read first) was written in straightforward, simple and clear English prose which felt a bit basic, but entirely appropriate to the subject, the translator of The Year of the Hare made the (completely valid) decision to translate the casual, slang-filled prose of the French translation (and presumably the Finnish original) into supposedly modern and slang-filled British English, which was deeply irritating and also damaged the integrity of the novel. Standard phrases like “bloody hell” or whatever are one thing; so familiar as to seem timeless and universal. But more slang dates quickly, is often generationally specific and can be weirdly embarrassing to read, if it’s not your slang.

Even worse in narrative terms, using regionally specific terms when you don’t change the distinctively ‘foreign’ names of characters or the setting of a book can give a feeling of unreality to the whole text. Quite possibly it’s just me, but reading a passage where a character called Kaarlo Vatanen, living in rural Finland, refers to having “twenty quid” in his pocket is kind of like reading Crime and Punishment and coming across something like “Shit! It’s the pigs!” hollered Raskolnikov. Don’t do that please.

But even though I didn’t like the idiom the translator used for The Year of the Hare, the arguments for doing it are pretty sound. When adapting a foreign, unfamiliar book for a new audience, making it accessible is clearly important. That novel was published in 1975 and implicitly set in that period, so there’s nothing technically wrong with writing it in modern, slangy English, except that it’s not set in Britain and so it feels wrong to pedants. Related but probably more difficult is translating a classic novel into modern English. I’m not really a Dickens fan, but when I think of the few books of his that I’ve read, his prose seems inseparable from his stories and from his period. Does that mean that Tolstoy or Zola’s works should be translated into “Victorian” English? Annoying as that might well be, I’m tempted to say that for me, the answer is yes.

Positives and negatives

It’s a different kind of translation, but making books into films brings these kinds of questions into focus. There have been several film adaptation of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, but for all of their virtues, if you return to Wells’s novel it seems obvious within the first few pages that though it’s eminently adaptable, a film of the novel set in 1898 would be far better (but presumably ridiculously expensive to make) than the existing versions. Similarly, no adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four has quite captured the stark, bracing post-war, entirely British greyness (in a good way) of Orwell’s prose. It’s that tone, as much as anything, that people think of as “Orwellian,” even though outside of Nineteen Eighty-Four and (to a far lesser extent) Animal Farm, it’s really not the usual tone of his writing.

The other dystopian novel frequently paired with Nineteen Eighty-Four is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, but despite the relative closeness of age, class and education of Orwell (born 1903) and Huxley (born 1894), they could hardly be tonally farther apart. As someone who first read and loved Huxley’s earlier, satirical social comedies like Antic Hay  (1923) and Point Counter Point (1928), the thing that struck me most when I first read Brave New World (1932) is how similar it is in its prose. Although, unlike The War of the Worlds but like Nineteen Eighty-Four, it’s set in the future, any film of it should really be set in a 1930s future and have a slightly old fashioned, ‘Boy’s Own adventure’ flavour which seems completely at odds with the book’s grim dystopian reputation. When reading the novel, its tone (which feels more post-WW1 1920s than pre-WW2 1930s), feels entirely natural and is a part of what makes the book so readable. But is it that tone there in modern foreign translations of the book? Possibly not, and when you think about it, why would it be?

The Bible and the Bloody Countess

John Donne: a portrait of the poet as a young dandy

As anyone who has had to “do” Shakespeare at school – or who likes reading him – will know, 16th/17th century writers had a respect for and love of puns that is far removed from their current status as vessels of knowingly lame humour (that said, ‘brave new world’ is from Shakespeare, isn’t it?). It’s sad that that love of wordplay has become so debased, because even though I personally do love puns even just as lame humour, it means we have to consciously think or analyse in order to appreciate the breadth of allusions and associations and therefore feelings that a writer could evoke in their readership (or a playwright in their audience) without having to labour a point.

Partly, it was easier to pun meaningfully before spelling was fully standardised. When John Donne wrote The Sun Rising* , it was risqué in the mild way it still is – the poet is complaining about the sunrise because he doesn’t want he and his girlfriend to have to get out of bed – but also in a far more daring way. To a Jacobean audience the sun (or sunne, or sonne) rising would automatically create an association with the son (of God) rising, a pun that transforms and strengthens the meaning of the poem, since, then as now (or more than now), the earthly representatives of God were not especially keen on young unmarried couples lying in bed together.

*published in 1633 but necessarily written earlier – he died in 1631 – and probably quite a lot earlier since he was known as a poet in his youth but a priest and preacher from 1615

And that textual richness just the intended meanings and associations – but as language evolves so does meaning, and so, whether one likes it or not, do associations. Since the 1960s, seeing the title The Sun Rising may well make people think of Rolf Harris’s 1960 novelty pop hit Sun Arise – a kind of well-intentioned but not unproblematic pastiche of Aboriginal Australian music that was a big hit all over the English-speaking world. Harris’s subsequent career as a popular children’s entertainer and, latterly, a hugely unpopular sexual predator make the already iffy song even more dubious, but even that creates its own set of unexpected cultural associations. Back in 1971, before settling definitively on a kind of bad taste, pantomime horror modus operandi, the American rock band Alice Cooper (then the name of both the singer and band) experimented with a kind of general absurdist, transgressive approach. To that end, on their third (but first commercially successful) album Love It To Death, alongside paeans to troubled teendom (I’m Eighteen, Is It My Body?) and old horror movies (The Ballad of Dwight Frye), the band recorded an amusingly straight-faced cover of Sun Arise, just to be smartasses. Only 40 years later did the song, turn out to be a masterstroke that unexpectedly fit in with their macabre and tasteless raison d’être after all; patience is a virtue, clearly.

But anyway, the idea of translating The Sun Rising, with even its intended meaning intact, into a language that doesn’t share common roots and words with English makes me think of Philip Larkin saying* (wrongly, I think) “A writer can have only one language, if language is going to mean anything to him.” It makes sense in a way – there can be an impersonal quality, especially when reading poetry in translation, that makes lots of translations feel the same, not that that’s always a bad thing necessarily.

*in a 1982 interview with Robert Phillips in the Paris Review (Philip Larkin, Required Writing, p.69)

Another Penguin Classics book I love is the 1965 collection Poems of the Late T’ang, in which A.C. Graham translates the works of seven Chinese poets whose lives span more than a century, from 712 to 858 AD. In his introduction, Graham stresses the differences between poets, contrasting the ‘bare, bleak style’ of Meng Chiao (751 – 814) with the ‘strange and daring’ poetry of Meng Chiao’s friend Han Yü (768 – 824) but although I love both, I don’t really find a huge tonal difference between them (just to quote the first examples of each that he publishes):

Above the gorges one thread of sky:
Cascades in the gorges twine a thousand cords
(opening lines of Sadness of the Gorges)

And

A frosty wind harries the wu-t’ung, (parasol tree)
The crowded leaves stick wilting to the tree
(opening lines of Autumn Thoughts)

It might just be me, but I don’t even detect major differences between the poetry of between Tu Fu, writing in the 750s or 60s –

The autumn wastes are each day wilder:
Cold in the river the blue sky stirs
(opening lines of The Autumn Wastes)

and Li Shang-Yin, who was writing almost a century later:

The East wind sighs, the fine rains come:
Beyond the pool of waterlilies, the noise of faint thunder.
(Untitled)

I wouldn’t expect poets in English to write this similarly, but of course the words I am reading are AC Graham’s and not Tu Fu’s or Meng Chiao’s. These are beautiful poems and if there’s a deficiency in them it’s mine, not the poets’ and certainly not the translator’s. In poetry that’s this compressed and distilled there must be a whole world of meaning, allusion and subtlety – the sort of thing I can see (when forced to think about it) in Donne – that AC Graham was aware of but could only explain in footnotes and appendices. And I’m sure that’s exactly what Philip Larkin referred to in his strictures about language – but if a writer can have only truly have one language, “if language is going to mean anything to him,” what about translators, who are almost always also writers in their own right? And what about unusual cases like JRR Tolkien or Anthony Burgess?

Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange is one of my favourite novels – it’s also the product, very obviously, of someone who could speak and think, fluently, in a lot of languages – ten is the number he usually gave, ‘with bits and pieces of others’. Burgess created the book’s slang, Nadsat, in order to write about ‘the youth’ in a way that didn’t date like real slang and it definitely worked. Rightly, I think, Burgess didn’t want a glossary of Nadsat terms in the book. Although some publishers have added one anyway, the book works far better if the reader just immerses themselves in the narrator’s voice and his disorienting world. But Burgess was only human, and in perhaps the novel’s weakest moment (because it takes us out of that world) he couldn’t resist pointing out that the language his young narrator Alex speaks isn’t just whimsy on the part of the author:

Quaint,’ said Dr Brodsky, like smiling, ‘the dialect of the tribe. Do you know anything of its provenance, Branom?
Odd bits of rhyming slang,’ said Branom, who did not look quite so much like a friend any more. ‘A bit of gipsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav. Propaganda. Subliminal penetration.’
All right, all right, all right,’ said Dr Brodsky, like impatient and not interested any more.

I’ve always felt that Brodsky’s impatience is really Burgess’s mild embarrassment at finding himself pointing out how clever he is, but who knows? How A Clockwork Orange works in translation I can’t imagine, especially in countries with the Slavic languages Burgess borrows from, but I can imagine it must be both a joy and a nightmare to translate.

I hope those for the sake of its readers that who tackle A Clockwork Orange come up with words as horribly effective as Burgess’s. When Alex and his gang (yes, I know they are his droogs) come across a rival gang attacking a child, Alex says that they were “just getting ready to do something on a weepy young devotchka they had there, not more than ten, she creeching away but with her platties still on,” The word “creeching” is clearly just “screeching” without the s, but somehow it seems harsher, more intense, implying a rawness related as much to a croak as a screech; Burgess knew what he was doing. So, in his very different way, did Tolkien, another linguist, who gives the cultures and places of Middle Earth their individual, believable textures via languages that draw on real prototypes in the same way as Burgess’s Nadsat does. It’s also worth comparing Tolkien’s beautifully translated Beowulf with Seamus Heaney’s very different, but equally beautiful one. Both writers have a reverence for the original text and their interpretations are similar enough to suggest fidelity to the original – but they are also different enough to demonstrate just how flexible language can be.

That flexibility suggests that no text is truly beyond translation, and the fact that fictional cultures can be realistically portrayed by the words they and their creators use hints at the power inherent in language. Like any power, it can be used in negative ways as well as good ones. Translations can, or at least could, be withheld when it was felt expedient to do so, though the internet has probably made that more difficult. It seems trivial, but something that was (up until the 1960s I’d guess) fairly common and which I’ve occasionally come across in older books, are translations of foreign texts where the narrative lapses into its original language – it even occasionally into French in books actually written in English – when the writing becomes ‘obscene.’

trashy 70s paperback of non-trashy 50s meditative biography

An example that springs to mind, because I have it, is the 1957 biography of the notorious medieval Hungarian Countess Erzsébet Bathory, by the surrealist poet Valentine Penrose (nee Hugo). In its English translation – by the also somewhat notorious Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi – Penrose’s text is rendered into sensual English, except, that is when Bathory’s predatory exploits against young peasant women in her orbit become too explicit, at which point the text falls back into French. No doubt the publisher, John Calder – who specialised in avant-garde literature and especially previously banned books – was wary of obscenity charges, which he would later fall foul of with Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book and Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. Ironically, my 1970s NEL edition, though by design a trashy, titillating paperback, reproduces the Calder text, elisions and all. (It also features a lazy, sensationalist blurb on the cover which reveals that the publisher didn’t know that Valentine Penrose was a woman, which is unnerving).

But even if British publishers were self-censoring for mostly legal reasons, the clear lesson that comes from old editions of transgressive texts is that those with a classical education – that is, the upper classes, who routinely learned Latin, Greek and French at school, but only they – could be entrusted to read all the sex and violence they liked. I’m in two minds over whether the reason for that is the literally patronising one of ‘protecting the children’ or the more generally patronising one that the upper class could be trusted with that kind of thing but the more animalistic and irrational the lower classes might be led astray by it. Either way it’s kind of ironic, given that centuries earlier, the impetus for publishing anything at all in English was to allow the expanding literate population to read the Bible in their own language.

And if the translation of a modern text into modern English can create variations as different as a cordial vs a fervent hand-hold* imagine the pitfalls inherent in making the translation of an ancient text central to a modern civilisation. And not just ‘an ancient text’ but a collection of various ancient texts, partly written in obscure and difficult language. And add to that that key books of the text purport to be eye-witness accounts which are however written in Greek, but reporting on sermons and parables originally delivered in spoken Aramaic.

*if that seems trivial, imagine receiving an invitation to some kind of gathering that begins, “you are cordially invited to… versus “you are fervently invited to…” The second would seem a little alarming to me

We’re used to the fact that almost everything in the Bible is open to interpretation, partly because by now ‘the Christian church’ is actually hundreds of Christian churches, each with its own version of what the Bible means, and that’s just talking about the Bible as it is now, regardless of how accurately modern translations relate to the original text, or how accurately the original text relates to the events it describes. It doesn’t take much reading to discover that things as fundamental to the faith as the monotheistic nature of the Old Testament god, or the Virgin birth in the New Testament are dependent on translations which may be approximate rather than precise. Just as one example, writers – both scholarly and crank-ish – have observed that the word used to describe Mary’s state, “parthenos” in ancient Greek texts generally refers only to a young woman and not necessarily, not even usually, a virgin. Getting into murkier waters, it’s therefore been credibly suggested (by Jane Schaberg, among many others) that in the Gospels God therefore only blesses Mary’s pregnancy, rather than causing it himself. Credibly, that is, if one’s main issue with the story of Jesus is the Virgin birth, rather than the existence of God in the first place.

possibly less begetting and smiting in this bible

But however one chooses to interpret it, interpretation is required when looking at events which have come down to us in much the same way as Homer’s Odyssey, and with as many different voices involved along the way. Even if one takes the Bible at face value – notoriously difficult, in its contradictory entirety – and accepts it as truth, it’s a problematic text, to say the least. The Gospels were written down by followers of Jesus – who they knew personally, and worshipped – in the aftermath of his early death. For parts pre-dating their association with him, they are presumably relying for some parts on accounts given to them by the man himself. These would be based on his own memories of his youth and childhood, but for the circumstances of his own birth thirty-three years earlier, he presumably only had the accounts of his parents (whether earthly or divine) to rely on. Unless Jesus spoke Greek (I feel like they would have mentioned it if he had), those memories were then translated into a different language with different allusions and associations from his own, before being subjected to centuries of edits and deletions, only later being given ‘authoritative’ editions (different ones for different countries and sects), each of them offering its own, rather than the definitive truth.

So, whether we are reading Homer or Ovid or the Gospel of St Luke, or The Castle, or Asterix the Legionary in English, we are reading an adaptation, a work imagined into existence by more than one writer and if we’re lucky it’s Willa and Edwin Muir or Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge. If we’re not so lucky we may end up inadvertently worshipping a false idol or something and, who knows, even facing eternal damnation if you believe in such things. It’s an important job.

credit where its due: the translators get (almost) equal billing with the authors

Play For Today: long overdue catch-up, spring 2025

Kind of shocked to discover that I haven’t done any of my once-regular Play for Today roundups since 2019! Last time around, rather than doing a proper playlist, I just mentioned some interesting things that had come my way (that I didn’t review for any magazines or websites), so I’ll do that again, possibly interspersed with things I’ve been playing a lot (in fact not; maybe later). These are all from the past few months and I haven’t necessarily given them the time they deserve, but I think they’re all worth a listen…

NECHOCHWEN – spelewithiipi (Nordvis Produktion)

I loved Nechochwen’s Heart of Akamon and was quite shocked to find it’s now a decade old. They’ve released good music since then, notably a split album with Panopticon, but spelewithiipi (catchy name!) really reminded me of just how much I loved Heart of Akamon. For those who haven’t come across them, Nechochwen are an acoustic dark folk band (sometimes including metal elements, I kind of prefer when they don’t but it’s all good) that explores (as they put it) ‘the indigenous roots and history of the Upper Ohio River Valley.’ Their music is autumnal and haunting, and I love the imagery too. spelewithiipi is a beautiful album, and it’ll sound even better later in the year.

GHOST WORLD – Armadillo Café (Svart Records)

Ghost World have made some of my favourite albums; I was immediately smitten with their 2017 debut album, which was my album of the year that year and at first the 2018 follow-up, Spin was disappointing to me, but ultimately went on to be one of my all-time (so far) favourite albums, so there’s some kind of lesson there. Anyway, Armadillo Café is an odd, whimsical but lovely concept album that so far is taking longer for me to absorb, but it’s full of good tunes and I’m confident that I’ll end up loving it without even noticing again.

VERSATILE – Les litanies du vide (Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions)

Hmm. I gave this a go because, despite the fact that industrial metal is one of my least favourite genres of music in the world, Swiss black metal has a special place in my heart and LADLO is a very dependable label. And..? Well, not exactly my cup of tea, but it’s good, there’s a nice chaotic, noisy atmosphere and it reminded me at times of Abigor (who I do like) and Blacklodge (who I occasionally like). The atmospheres and the choral bits are really cool and the noisy stuff with sirens etc is impressively alarming, though not nice if you have a headache.

Kati Rán – LYS (10 Year Anniversary) (Svart Records)

More ‘dark folk’ (“Nordic/Pagan” this time, though Kati herself is Dutch I think) – LYS is an album that I very much enjoyed when it came out and then pretty much forgot about, so it’s nice to hear it again and find that it really is lovely. She’s an amazing multi-instrumentalist and even though I have no idea if the music would sound at all familiar to the Nordic peoples of centuries ago, I feel like it evokes those ancient times and cultures perfectly for a modern audience (i.e. me). The follow-up, ‘SÁLA’ came out last year and I still didn’t get around to hearing it, but now that I’ve had this reminder I will

BOOTSY COLLINS – Album of the Year #1 Funkateer (Bootzilla/Roc Nation)

I reviewed this for Spectrum Culture so won’t say much about it here, but in these tense and miserable times, Bootsy’s indefatigable enthusiasm and uplifting silliness are more welcome than ever. Plus it’s just a really good album. The man’s a genius.

 

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2018

 

It’s that time of year again; I’ve had to make some end-of-year lists for various places, so this will be a short-ish version. 2018, like most years, has been a year full of terrible and excellent music and mostly there’s no difference between the two except for the ears hearing it.

But anyway, because I’ve decided to limit my own list here to things I haven’t seen represented on as many other peoples’ lists as I feel I should have so far. Here are a few…

Ghost WorldSpin (Svart Records)

If you’re a regular reader you may remember that Ghost World’s self-titled album was one of my albums of the year last year. That album was a completely unexpected neo-grunge masterpiece – all the more unexpected as I don’t look back especially fondly on grunge in general; but the combination of great tunes, punky energy and the heartbreaking teenage melancholy of singer/guitarist Liisa’s performances make the comparison to 90s grunge kind of pointless; this wasn’t nostalgic pastiche, it was a vital, new band playing their hearts out. Spin, is a great, but very different album. This time Liisa & co aren’t playing grungy music at all, although the album still stylistically indebted to earlier eras. In their publicity, Svart Records claim – not wrongly – that Spin looks back to the guitar pop of The Byrds and Big Star, but to my ears, it has more of the feel of the 80s/90s UK indie bands who were themselves indebted to those bands; either way, it’s an album full of the same kind of catchy, melancholy pop songs as the debut, only without the frazzled guitars. At its best – like the beautifully miserable earworm ‘Nightgown‘ (which brings back my teenage years vividly, if that’s a good thing) its every part the equal of its predecessor, even if it’s less of a bolt from the blue.

 

Just Like This – Faceless (Rorex Records)

I don’t remember how I first came across Rorex Records, a Japanese label run by Eifonen, an experimental musician who has a hand in many or most of the label’s extremely eclectic releases. When going through the label’s releases it feels like overall there’s a focus on experimental electronica and drone, but then something completely random and different – bizarre lo-fi rap, noise rock or mutated jazz. Just Like This is different again; minimalist, clean piano and vocals exercises – sometimes beautifully melodic, sometimes awkward, but always clean, clear and beautiful, even at its most alien. Can’t vouch for the lyrics (they are in Japanese) but I think it’s lovely.

Tunjum – Deidades Del Inframundo  (Dunkelheit Produktionen)

Back in August when it was released, I didn’t really expect this dusty, gloomy, antediluvian Peruvian death metal album to be in this kind of list, but it stayed with me.

It’s the whole package; there’s something about the crude, hewn-from-rock quality of the monolithic riffs, the majestically rust-encrusted bass tone and frontwoman/drummer Kultarr’s brutal roar, plus the perfectly apt artwork that makes it satisfying long after many ‘better’ albums have worn out their welcome.

Phantoms v Fire – Swim (Hypersoma Records)

I wrote about this at length here, so will try not to repeat myself. I first heard Swim back in January and am still listening to it in December. Slightly woozy electronica, often with a lo-fi Ryuichi Sakamoto-meets-Vangelis feel, it’s ‘retro’ without being nostalgic, full of wistful, poignant atmospheres and familiar-but-elusive tunes that feel half-remember from childhood. I really love it; in fact if I had to choose (but I don’t) this might be my favourite album of the year.

There’s an extended version of Swim which I was initially slightly dismissive of (hate it when people mess with albums I think are perfect already), but actually it’s the version I listen to now.

Slidhr – The Futile Fires Of Man (Ván Records)

There was lots of good, but not lots of great black metal around in 2018, but the spirit-sapping second album by Ireland/Iceland’s Slidhr was one of the great ones.

Best heard as a whole, the album is a relentless blast through furious, cavernous darkness, melodic enough to to be memorable and affecting, but with a distinctive, bitter taste that doesn’t exactly leave one wanting more; an odd recommendation but there it is.

 

 

and now for 2019…

 

Inevitably, the releases of the year 2017 (part one)

 

I’ve been thinking about the releases of the year for the past few weeks and made some (naturally very similar) lists for various places, so I thought I’d begin my countdown of releases of the year (as usual, in no order) here with some worthy things that I somehow overlooked/forgot about when compiling my other lists. So just to start…

Quinta – The Quick Of The Heart (Peeler Records)

Quinta – The Quick of the Heart

Released back in July, The Quick Of The Heart is a beautiful and magical album that took a while to grow on me, but that has stayed with me through the many ups and downs of a year that was often not much fun. Quinta is a multi-instrumentalist and member of the experimental string quartet Collectress (whose superb 2014 album Mondegreen was my release of the year back then) and this album ranges from minimalistic piano pieces to lushly arranged songs, all with their own unique, delicate atmosphere. The album is more song-oriented than I expected, and the fresh, breezily unorthodox tunes are both accessible and unusual. The Quick Of The Heart is one of those albums that creates its own discrete sound world, quite unlike anything else I can think of; a lovely, refreshing record.

Recommended track: A Tutorial For Little Karen

Julie’s HaircutInvocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin (Rocket Recordings)

Julie’s Haircut – Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin

This great album was released back in February, far back enough, in fact that I thought it was out last year. While I like some psych/spacerock/krautrock type stuff, the problem with the genre (if you can call it that) for me is that it can be completely immersive and thrilling or, if not feeling it, extremely boring. Italian band Julie’s Haircut are not immune to the latter kind of non-hypnotic meandering, but when they are good they’re great and there is far more good stuff on this album than filler.

 

Recommended track: Zukunft

 

Jesca HoopMemories Are Now (Sub Pop)

Jesca Hoop – Memories Are Now

Again, released at the beginning of the year and so escaping my lists until now, Jesca Hoop’s latest album is a superbly focussed set of songs grounded in folk, Americana and experimental pop. Any way of describing it makes it sound more complicated than it is, and the most obvious points of comparison (she occasionally sounds a bit like Kate Bush) are a bit misleading; but it’s a really good album.

 

 

Recommended track – Unsaid

Zeal & Ardor The Devil Is Fine (self-release)

Zeal & Ardor – the Devil Is Fine

Z&A’s black metal-infused blues or whatever you want to call it is one of the strangest-sounding (as a description), but at the same time most accessible (as music) melanges of styles I’ve come across; unholy gospel music that gets better and stranger every time I hear it.

 

 

 

 

Recommended track: Blood In The River

IslajaTarrantulla (Svart Records)

Islaja – Tarrantulla

I didn’t really realise I liked this album a lot until songs from it kept popping into my head at random times after I’d given it a few listens. Over the last few weeks though, the slightly queasy mix of experimental synth pop, honking sax, Blade Runner-atmospherics and alternately fragile and vocoder-heavy vocals has proved extremely addictive; I like it a lot.

 

 

 

Recommended track: Sun luona taas

 

and more later…

Play For Today – Current Playlist 26th June 2017

 

As seems so often to be the case, I am  & have been working very slowly, with many distractions, on various relatively substantial bits of writing, but playlists are easy and fun to do, so here’s a sort of roundup of some of the stuff I’ve been listening to so far this summer, which, now that I look at it, makes summer 2017 seem a somewhat bleak and haunted time. Ho hum.

One of the key points of this playlist is that, in an effort to make myself listen to different things rather than the same old stuff, I filled my mp3 player with things I either didn’t know or hadn’t really listened to, with very mixed results. Inevitably, I ended up removing most of the stuff and replacing it with things I definitely like, but some of the things in this list are survivors from the experiment.

Pekko Käppi & K:H:H:L – Matilda (Svart Records)

pekko-käppi-matilda-cover

This is mostly a pretty cool dirty psychedelic rock album by Finland’s foremost player of the bowed lyre, Pekko Käppi and his band, but although I enjoyed it, it mostly washed over me until one track, Hullu Tyttö (‘crazy girl’, or so Google informs me) popped up in a shuffle at a low enough volume that I couldn’t tell that the vocals were in Finnish. A beautifully mournful and soothing bit of rained-on, hungover sounding Americana (I thought maybe something by The Band or, at a push a late Byrds track I didn’t remember had snuck onto my playlist. But it turned out to be Pekko Käppi & co, and in fact, out of the context of heavy psychedelic garage rock his lyre playing (sonically very much like a hardanger fiddle on this song) really shines. The whole album is good, but Hullu Tyttö is by far my favourite track on it.

Staying with Finland (and indeed Svart Records), I’ve been listening to this since the beginning of the year and as I’ve lived with it, it’s gone from being a good album with a couple of great songs to one of the best albums I’ve heard this year:

Ghost World – Ghost World (Svart Records)

Ghost World

Again, an album I like despite the fact that it’s not really my cup of tea. It’s not that I didn’t like grunge the first time around (I liked quite a lot of it early on, especially Babes in Toyland, Mudhoney and Screaming Trees, early Soundgarden  plus odd songs by Sebadoh, Afghan Whigs, Buffalo Tom etc), but there are few genres or fashions that I have gone off of so quickly and feel so little nostalgia for. But if there is a category that Ghost World fits into, it’s grunge. And it’s great, if noisy, catchy, adolescent-sounding angsty rock is your thing. It’s not my thing, but I love this anyway; it’s like Dinosaur Jr with a female singer (Liisa, vocals/guitar,) who is utterly fantastic.

Televisio – Televisio (Ektro Records, releases July 14th)

Televisio-_Televisio_3000px

Yet more Finnish music, Televisio’s slightly primitive and clunky electronica is made by the duo I. Larjosto (synths/drums) and Jussi Lehtisalo of Circle (synths) and, in the manner of primitive electronic music since the dawn of time, it has a strangely soulful quality.

https://soundcloud.com/ektrorecords/televisio-kakkonen

Thy Worshipper – Popiół (Introibo ad altare Dei) (reissue, Arachnophobia Records)

thy-worshiper-popiol-introibo-ad-altare-dei

From Finland to Poland, Thy Worshiper’s 1996 classic is pretty much everything that haters of mid-late 90s black metal hate; as melodic as it is heavy, replete with acoustic passages, symphonic bits, female vocals etc etc; and it’s great. They may not be as big as Behemoth, or as notorious as Graveland, but Thy Worshiper have great tunes, excellent musicianship and above all, intensely melancholy atmospheres that make this album a perfect showcase for the virtues of grandiose, late-blooming 90s black metal.

Blue Öyster Cult – Spectres (Columbia Records, 1977)

BlueOysterCultSpectres

I got the Blue Öyster Cult Complete Columbia Albums box set a few years ago without having to pay for it. At 16 discs, it’s a whole lotta BÖC and it’s fair to say I’ve never really gotten to know it all yet, to say the least. Having the albums on my mp3 player, naturally their songs started to pop up on shuffle all too often, but occasionally in a revelatory kind of way. I always quite liked the band and knew a handful of their songs quite well. But one day the song Fireworks – a supremely catchy and – as is their way – slightly creepy piece of shiny rock that should have been a single surprised me and I decided to check out its album, Spectres in detail. It turned out I already knew the intentionally moronic-but-fun anthem Godzilla, the even more moronic but less fun R.U. Ready 2 Rock and a couple of the other tracks. None were quite as good as Fireworks, but most had some of its baleful charm. Bearing in mind the disclaimer that I like 70s hard rock bands like Black Sabbath and Kiss, this is a brilliantly polished album that combines the intelligence, goofiness, mystery and riffs that gave the BÖC their own distinct aura and charm. It’s a good one.

Wreche – Wreche (Fragile Branch Records)

wreche - cover

One of the strangest, but strongest debut albums I’ve heard for a long time, US duo Wreche manage to take the guitars out of black metal (and replace them with a piano), without losing any of the essence of the form. An intense, evocative, disturbing and in its way, desolately beautiful album, perfectly realised.

And that may be enough for now.

 

Belated weekly update: If You Want To Feel…

So, I’m taking far too long faffing with the more (relatively) substantial things I’ve been working on, so in the meantime I will try to reinstate the weekly updates. Just to stop the whole thing becoming too repetitive, this one is in a very slightly different format from the usual playlist etc (though not massively different to be honest). So anyway; here are some things…

If You Want To Feel… slightly heartbroken, in a teenage kind of way…

Listen to – American Anymen + Lise – Oui EP

American Anymen + LIse - Oui EP
American Anymen + LIse – Oui EP

I love this beautiful little release. It’s a lovely collection of wistful, charming songs that reminded me in various ways of Daniel Johnston, Bright Eyes, Jad Fair, BMX Bandits and other groups whose work is similarly uncluttered and direct. People label this kind of thing twee, but if it is then I guess my feelings are twee, too. Oh – and this is available for FREE! 


 

 

If You Want To Feel… like you belong to the Multiverse…

Ethel Moorhead
Ethel Moorhead

Find out what was going on in your local area, in a period that interests you. It’s easy and fun, unless of course you find it difficult & boring. Previously I have read about The Beatles in Kirkcaldy (a surreal thought) but I was recently reading about about the local activities of the suffragette movement and discovered several things that I felt I should have known for years. Not only was a local railway station which I have been to many times rebuilt in 1913 after being burned down in (allegedly) a suffragette attack, but, more definitely, the prominent suffragette, Ethel Moorhead, has very local (to me) connections. She left her childhood home in Dundee to study as a painter in the studios of Whistler & Alphonse Mucha – which is interesting enough – but a few years later, after joining the WSPU, she was arrested many times, being subjected to the usual sadistic treatment under the ‘Cat & Mouse Act’.  After one of her lesser offences, she was locked up in a jail (nowadays just offices) that I walk past almost every day. She then proceeded to wreck the bathroom and flood the building. This happened in the town where I went to High School, but the (mostly very good) history teachers I had either didn’t know about it, or didn’t think it worth telling the pupils about. And yet, knowing this kind of thing makes history far more vivid and alive (and paradoxically ghostly) than the kind of standard issue textbook things that are (or were; not been to school for years) usually taught. Incidentally, I think the school really should have explained the horrors of the Cat & Mouse act. Saying women on hunger strike were ‘force-fed’  is not untrue, but doesn’t really capture just what the authorities were doing; especially here in Scotland.

 If You Want To Feel… like the 80s cyberpunk future  is still the future

Listen to – Anvil StrykezAnvil Strykez

Anvil Strykez
Anvil Strykez

I have written a review of this great album for Echoes and Dust so won’t say much here. But if you were living in an early William Gibson novel, or the kind of 80s cartoon that is at least 50% chase or fight sequences, this would be the soundtrack

 

 

 

 

If You Want To Feel…like simple concern for your fellow human beings is less important than political ideology

Look at every major political party in the UK right now. If however, you don’t want to feel that way, look at the many people and institutions fighting for the rights of people of all kinds and trying to improve the lives of people and make your own opinion known. There are probably more people fighting and campaigning for human rights and equality than at any time in the history of the western world; this is a good thing. One of the saddest things about UK politics in 2017 is that there are many such people even within the main parties; but on the whole, their voices are being made subordinate to the political aims of those parties.

If You Want To Feel… like the internet is like all the encyclopaedias in the world, only better 

Sign up for some of the many great newsletters put out for free on the web. Your interests may not be the same as mine, but I have never yet had a single newsletter from any of these without finding something of interest:

Messy Nessy – this site covers so many areas; culture, pop culture, history, art, architecture, society – and its regular newsletter is great

The New Yorker – you already know what The New Yorker is – brilliant journalism, politics, art, culture, cinema, fiction, you name it; they recently had an unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald story for christ’s sake! For free!

FEMigré – Vonny Moyes’ blog is fairly new, but has already built up an extremely thoughtful & considered series of articles, looking at society & the world from a feminist viewpoint, which challenges not only the cultural status quo, but dogma of all kinds.

Gail Carriger’s Monthly Chirrup – mainly for fans of Miss Carriger’s books perhaps, but in addition to news relating to her steampunk fiction, the Chirrup often takes in Victoriana of all kinds, fashion and humour and is highly entertaining in its own right.

Zero Tolerance Magazine – okay, I write for ZT, but the newsletter includes lots of extreme metal-related news/offers etc as well as keeping readers up to date with the ZT blog

Museums & Galleries – most really good museums & galleries have worthwhile newsletters, the Tate & V&A etc are good but one of my favourites is The National Museum of Women in the Arts which has links to their excellent blog as well as the usual updates etc

If You Want To Feel… like you’ve run a marathon while being hit over the head with a hammer – but in a good way

Listen to Never – Demo 2017

Never - Demo 2017
Never – Demo 2017

Never are a punk band from Brighton and play intense, cathartic & exhilarating hardcore/noise-ish music with lots of heart. It makes you feel better by making you feel worse

 

 

 

 

 

If You Want To Feel… like the music scene in 2017 is as vibrant and essential as it always is, here’s a current playlist – why break with tradition entirely?

Ghost World – Ghost World (Svart Records)

ghost

 archetypically teenage neo-grunge, Finland’s Ghost World have made a fine debut album which, incidentally, includes my favourite ‘ooh’s of the year so far (on the track ‘Drain’, if you’re interested)

 

 

 

 

The Moon & The Nightspirit – Metanoia (Prophecy Productions)

TMATNS-MetanoiaBundle

Hungarian pagan folk music which is probably as influenced by fantasy as by actual folk traditions; but it’s a lovely, slightly spooky and thankfully not very cheesy album nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

Ummagma – Winter Tale/Frequency

ummag

Ummagma’s almost unclassifiable* mix of dreampop, shoegaze, ambient electronica, synthpop etc etc (*see?) is at its best on the Frequency EP, a collection of extremely fresh and delicate but never throwaway tunes made with the collaboration of luminaries such as Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins & OMD’s Malcolm Holmes. Winter Tale is jointly credited to Ummagma and equally-unclassifiable (or maybe not)  dreampop pioneers A.R. Kane; and  it sounds like both groups, which should please anyone who likes to float on a dreamy cushion of beautiful, harmonious noise.

 

 

 

wildcard: Coldfells – Coldfells (Bindrune Recordings/Eihwaz Recordings)

coldfells_Cover2

I’m not actually sure how much I like this yet; rough, harsh, Thorns-like black metal/doom with strangely melodic choruses. Hmm. A few listens in and the riffs and rough bits are great – the choruses take some getting used to, in this context though. But interesting and I’m sticking with it, so definitely not a thumbs-down.

 

 

 

Current Reading: I’ve been on an Orwell bender of late; currently reading his diaries, which are alternately great and dull, as one might expect of something that is in part a record of how many eggs his hens are laying etc.

Also –

  • The Vorticists (ed. Mark Antliffe & VIvien Greene)
  • Gail Carriger – The Finishing School (series)
  • Samuel Beckett (shorter prose works)
  • Steffen Kverneland – Munch
  • The New European (newspaper)

Current Viewing:

  • The Last Kingdom (series 2, BBC)
  • Logan (pretty good, if ridiculously violent & bleak)
  • Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Hitchcock masterpiece with Joseph Cotten at his charmingly sinister best

So anyway, enough for now? Until next time!

Play For Today – Current Playlist 8th February 2017

 

The world is not making me very happy at present (my thoughts on all that are covered to an extent here, so I won’t go on about it) – but I am still enjoying music at least, so here’s a selection of things that are currently sounding good to me:

Diamanda Galás and John Paul Jones – The Sporting Life (Mute, 1994) – I always find it surprising that a vocalist as completely extreme and melodramatic as Diamanda Galás can be as straightforwardly moving as she (sometimes) is – pretty pop by her standards, but a great album, with John Paul Jones creating perfect settings for that amazing voice.

Apokrifna Realnos
Apokrifna Realnos

Apokrifna Realnost – Na Rekah Vavilonskih (AnnapurnA Productions, coming March 2017) –  I would never have expected to love an album of archaic ritualistic/devotional music clandestinely recorded in Macedonia in the late 80s; but there you have it. It’s unsettling & deeply beautiful.

Teksti-TV 666 – 1, 2, 3 (Svart Records, 2016) The Finnish guitar-overlords are credited with playing a weird amalgam of punk, rock, shoegaze, krautrock etc; and I suppose they do, but the songs on this album are, underneath the noise and strangeness, pretty catchy indie rock that I wouldn’t expect to like but really do – it’s a great album.

Sauron – The Baltic Fog (Wheelwright Productions, reissue 2017) I wrote at length about this great Polish black metal release for Echoes and Dust, so won’t say much here. But it has all the atmosphere you’d expect from mid-90s black metal and some good tunes.

Heavy Tiger – Glitter (Wild Kingdom Records, 2017) – Very easy to like Swedish rock that is (lazy comparison) like The Ramones meets The Donnas with added glam attitude (plus good songs)

Heavy Tiger by Niclas Brunzell
Heavy Tiger by Niclas Brunzell

Blake Babies – Innocence & Experience (Mammoth Records, 1993) – On the whole I prefer Juliana Hatfield solo, but this compilation of the Blake Babies is pretty great.

David Bowie – Station to Station (RCA, 1975) – One of my favourite albums, this just seems to get better and better. Even if it just consisted of the supremely creepy title track & Word on a Wing it would be one of the best things Bowie ever recorded.

Makaya McCraven – In The Moment Deluxe Edition (International Anthem, 2016) – There’s so much amazing music in the 28 tracks here, plus literally some of the best drumming I’ve ever heard; superlative, brilliant jazz.

Tom Waits – The Heart of Saturday Night (Asylum, 1974) – Unsettling times sometimes call for comforting music, and this warm, funny, poetic and melancholy album is one of my favourites.

If I Could Kill Myself – Ballads of the Broken (self-release, 2017) – If you are unconvinced by (or just despise) depressive black metal this will probably not change your mind. Lo-fi, raw and revelling in the miserable characteristics of the genre, it’s not (and I assume isn’t meant to be) subtle, but has atmosphere and good tunes aplenty.

 

kills

Play For Today – Current Playlist 3rd January 2017

 

A new year, a (slightly) new look, yet another playlist! This time, things I am listening to as the year begins, including (naturally) some things that I got for Christmas…

patti-smith-resized

  1. Patti Smith – Radio Ethiopia (Arista, 1976)

2. IC Rex – Tulen jumalat (Saturnal, 2017)

3. Aidan Baker w. Claire Brentnall – Delirious Things (Gizeh Records, 2017)

4. Kristin Hersh – The Grotto (4AD, 2003)

5. Jeff Parker – The New Breed (International Anthem, 2016)

6. Scott Walker  – Pola X (soundtrack, Barclay Records, 1999)

polaq

 

7. Wardruna – Runaljod; gap var Ginnunga (Indie Recordings, 2009)

8. Hardingrock – Grimen (Candlelight Records, 2007)

9. Endalok – Úr Draumheimi Viðurstyggðar Signal Rex, 2017)

10. A Tree Grows – Wau Wau Water (Rufftone Records, 2016)

11. Kristin Hersh – Crooked (Throwing Music, 2010)

12. The Beach Boys – Holland (Brother/Reprise, 1973)

13. Ela Orleans – Circles of Upper and Lower Hell (Night School Records, 2016)

14. Julie’s Haircut – Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin (Rocket Recordings, 2017)

15. Yurei – Night Vision (Adversum, 2012)

16. Jesca Hoop – Memories Are Now (Sub-Pop, 2017)

17. Christine Ott, Tabu (Gizeh Records, 2016)

18. The Veldt – In A Quiet Room (Leonard Skully Records, 2017)

The Veldt by Christopher Harold Wells
The Veldt by Christopher Harold Wells

19. Kiss – Dynasty (Casablanca, 1979)

20. Heikki Sarmanto Serious Music Ensemble – The Helsinki Tapes Vol 2 (Svart Records, 2016)

Play For Today – Playlist December 9th 2016

1. Jesca Hoop – Memories Are Now (Sub Pop, Feb 2017)  

Not listened to it many times yet, but the forthcoming album from singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop is sounding pretty good so far

jescahoop
photo: Laura Guy

2. David Bowie – Diamond Dogs (RCA, 1974)

The death throes of Bowie’s glam period are infinitely more interesting (to me) than the Ziggy era, I love this album.

3. Bethlehem – Bethlehem (Prophecy Productions, 2016)

Stunning return to form for Germany’s ‘dark metal’ overlords.

4. The History of Colour TV – Something Like Eternity  (Cranes Records/Weird Books, 2017)

The third album by Berlin indie/shoegaze/noise rock trio The History of Colour TV has some powerfully Sonic Youth-like squalling as well as some really good tunes.

5. Ma Rainey – Black Eye Blues (1930)

maHeartbreakingly sad but also funny and rebellious blues performance by one of my favourite blues singers, with brilliant guitar playing by Tampa Red

6. Heikki Sarmanto Serious Music Ensemble – The Helsinki Tapes, Vol 1, 2 & 3 (Svart Records)

Great, previously unreleased live recordings from the Finnish jazz scene. I was initially a bit disappointed when a singer appeared on some of the recordings, but in fact ‘The Pawn‘ from Vol 2  (featuring Maija Hapuoja) is a moody ‘Riders on the Storm‘-esque masterpiece.

7. Daniel Land – In Love With A Ghost (2016)

Much as I hate the term ‘dream pop’, it does suit a lot of the lovely, gently melancholy music on this album

8. Baby Tears – Succubus Slides (Choice Records, 2016)

Cool and unusual hip hop/trap type stuff, she has a style that is not quite like anything else (disclaimer – that I know of)

9. Isasa – Los Días (La Castanya, 2016)

The second album by Spanish guitarist Isasa has a mellow, slightly hungover charm, it’s spare, basic sound, accentuating his beautiful guitar playing and the atmospheric power of the tunes.

10. Tom Waits – Nighthawks At The Diner (Asylum, 1976)

One of my favourite Tom Waits albums, a funny, boozy and cheerfully melancholy live album (albeit recorded in somewhat contrived surroundings) I hadn’t listened to it for ages but I love it just as much as always.

11. 11Paranoias – Reliquary For A Dreamed Of World (Ritual Productions, 2016)

Forbiddingly sludgy and somewhat psychedelic doom with, crucially, great songwriting to make it more than just a cool sound – an addictive album.

12. Effie – Pressure (2016)

I was sent the promo of this single in the spring and just never got around to listening to it because I assumed it wouldn’t be my cup of tea; and it isn’t really. But it’s pretty good r’n’b/pop really, and she’s got a very cool voice.

13. Mithras – On Strange Loops (Willowtip Records, 2016)

Supercharged progressive death metal, maybe their finest album to date

14. The Fall – Grotesque (After The Gramme) (Rough Trade, 1980)

Maybe my favourite Fall album (definitely one of my favourites; so many great tunes, best of all ‘Gramme Friday‘, ‘Impression of J. Temperance‘, ‘Container Drivers’ – actually they are nearly all great.

15. The Staple Singers – Will The Circle Be Unbroken (Buddha Records, 1969)

Re-release of some of the family’s early gospel recordings, incredibly soulful and atmospheric.

staple