My latest favourite album: Island Songs, the neo-classical Icelandic genius of pianist Ólafur Arnalds.
And this is one of my favourite tracks from that favourite album, Particles:
Vocals from Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir, lead vocalist with Of Monsters And Men.
Hats off to the violinists in this one. Not much elbow room on that staircase.
Particles is on my Inspired By 6 Spotify playlist. Please share and follow.
I may have mentioned these things before, but not together, and even if I have, it deserves repeating.
First thing: I listen to BBC 6 Music at lot. I’m right in their target demographic, so they suit me and I suit them. Symbiotic, innit?
Second thing: I’m (still) really enjoying Spotify. I love having the flexibility to think of a song and just listen to it, there and then. I recognise that this has been something that’s been around elsewhere (and even here) for a while. But because Spotify is new here it still feels a bit like living in the future.
Now, I have tied these two things together in a wonderful marriage by starting a public playlist called “inspired by 6”.
What I do is to listen to BBC 6 Music all day and each time they play an amazing song (rather than just a really good song), I quickly add it to the playlist. Therefore, what’s currently on there is a collection of more than eighty songs which are the best of what’s available on the best radio station around.
All according to me, at least.
Great for solo listening, background listening or appearing cool (to that certain demographic) at a party.
If you are on Spotify, you can listen and follow the constantly-evolving playlist by clicking the clever little box above or here. You’ll need to be a member of Spotify too, obviously, but I’m told that there’s more than just me on there, so maybe it’s for you too.
It was probably somewhere around 45 minutes into the BBC 6 Music morning show yesterday that it suddenly dawned on me that the presenter (do we still call them “DJ”s?) had played banger after banger after banger.
No, not sausages or sketchy cars. Some top tunes.
It was at that point that I tweeted about it. I surely couldn’t have been the only one who had noticed this amazing sequence. Those of you willing to do the hard yards having clicked through on that link will note that it was retweeted by the show account and by “DJ” Tom Ravenscroft himself, by the way.
Fame, innit?
The thing is, the pressure was then on. Surely Tom couldn’t keep it going, filling 3 hours with barely a foot placed incorrectly? It stands to reason that it can’t come that close to perfection, right? Right.
But no, he only went and did it.
I’ve said before (often) that BBC 6 Music is my spiritual home as far as music listening goes. So it makes sense that as a listener, I would generally enjoy the majority of the music played on there. But that doesn’t mean that I like every song. That would be ridiculous.
So to line up 40+ songs of which I liked… well… 40+ of them, must be some sort of record.
No. Pun. Intended.
I’d hate you to miss out on this incredible show, themed around nothing other than the 6 Music playlist and Mr Ravenscroft’s very good taste, and I’d hate to forget just which songs made me feel this way, so I (roughly) PDF’d the show page for posterity.
And, because words are nothing (in this context) without music, I popped it on a Spotify playlist for you (and me) as well.
Ideally, ignore the Shuffle Play option and listen to it all as Nature Tom intended.
I can’t help with Mogwai’s Party in the Dark (6 Music Live at Maida Vale 2017), Skee Mask’s Rev8617 or lié’s Fill It Up because Spotify doesn’t have those tracks available. But you get the idea.
I don’t often run as far as rampant hyperbole. In fact, I usually shy away from any such nonsense. But this might have been the best radio show that I have ever listened to.
Enjoy.
Well… Indie/Britpop and anything else that I fancied actually.
You may recognise a few songs from previous blog posts.
Dive into (a bit of) my musical world here:
Link.
Have fun.
I may have sorted out my music issues.
If I was looking for some sign or other to push in any given direction, it came with Spotify’s official entry into the SA music market earlier this week.
Of course, there have always been ways of enjoying Spotify on your devices in SA, but it’s so much easier now that it’s all street-legal. And Spotify was always going to be gold medal, given that a lot of the BBC 6 Music stuff is regularly uploaded onto playlists on the platform.
I’ve only subscribed to three playlists so far, but wow – the algorithm has got me all sussed out already.
I lobbed on a bit of Eels while I was writing yesterday’s blog post (probably just to chill out a bit) and when that had finished, Spotify followed it up with some stuff it thought I might like. And it got it right, time after time:
Eels – The Deconstruction [audio video]
Supergrass – Feel Alright [glastonbury 2004]
Beck – Dear Life [lyric video]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth [live at google]
Belle and Sebastian – The Boy With The Arab Strap [video]
Elbow – One Day Like This [video]
PJ Harvey – Shame [video]
Richard Hawley – Heart Of Oak [video filmed near Sheffield]
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots [glastonbury 2003 (I was there, front row)]
Dandy Warhols – Bohemian Like You [my blog post]
I could go on… it did – admirably selecting suitable banger after suitable banger. And yes, I’ve added links so you can enjoy some quality music too.
This might even be a great start to my first Spotify playlist*.
Thing is, there’s not a huge amount of information that I have (knowingly) given Spotify in order for it to have got things so right so often in such a short time. So I’m not sure what it’s been looking at and listening to to get my tastes bang on.
But hey, if completely forgoing my privacy and opening my digital soul to scrutiny and subsequent analysis results in this sort of musical perfection, I’m all for it.
UPDATE: Obviously, I made a playlist. See here