New (ish) tunes

It’s funny that I felt the need to add to this stream of posts (I’m aware two really isn’t a stream yet but maybe I will add to it) when coincidentally I am again listening currently to the album by Ben Howard - I Forget Where We Were, two ish months later. The same titled song ended just as I opened up the text post box. Yesterday, I believe, two new albums arrived, or maybe one on sunday and one yesterday, on monday. The first being an album I have long, long admired on spotify, but finally decided to purchase despite the lack of cheap second hand copies for sale. Skipinnish’s 7th album titled The Seventh Wave. This album is bloody immense. Every part of it is intertwined with the ocean and pirate thoughts, and I love pirates. Although Bellowhead’s two albums Revival and Broadside, which I listened to religiously whilst I was watching Black Sails, Pirates of the Caribbean and also creating my graphic novel series about pirates in 2017, immediately conjure up my Black Sails inspired day dreams, where I am a pirate captain within the narrative, this album feels more airy, more present, and somewhat more joyful. Not that I don’t find Bellowheads music joyful, only that that joy comes from fantasy, dark and thick with plot and context as a suffering and mistreated pirate captain, whereas Skipinnish remains light and pure, I have thoughts only of dancing upon the waves when listening to it. Right now I am listening to Ben Howards Let’s Go Dancing and it was just spectacular. I have this one space I go sometimes (in my head) that I don’t try and visualise too much in fear that I will ruin the magic that appears with that image, but it is a space in the woods, a cabin type home, with a fire lit. Orange, forest green, browns. Like the scene from Wolverine when he is a lumberjack around the logs as well as the album cover for The National’s Sleep Well Beast. This image appears when listening to this song, I imagine dancing with someone I love in the warmth in front of big windows. Back to Skipinnish. Alive first gripped me, I imagined myself dancing the lindy-hop to this song with Toby. The Detectorists vibe. I listened to this album Intensely during my A-level revision time, and yet these songs do not seem tarnished, or to bring back memories of stress. It has surpassed that present, to being an album that lives for me in every present.Although I suppose I was not unhappy in the immediate sense during this period, I felt driven with purpose and my life was full. This might of helped. MacNabs set is one I listen to and dance to. HARD. its a true bop. The Island is beautiful I love to sing it, as well as Walking on the waves. This whole album is characterful and light blue. I love it. Thick and bold yet transparent and light. Amazing. A second album I bought more on a whim, Band of Horses - Everything All The Time. I listened to a couple tracks on spotify I believe, and decided to buy it, I managed to get it cheap second hand. I have so far listened to it once through, and found it unoffensive and easy listening. Perhaps this is as I was busy tidying whilst listening. I will of course keep listening until I can give it an informed opinion. This is something I failed to do with the Laura Marling albums, but I am sure they will have their time. My phone is now out of storage almost with no photos and few apps, so I will not be able to add these new albums to it with ease, which makes it difficult to familiarise myself with them, but I will add them to my iPod eventually. The Seventh Wave is terrific listening in the car. Loud and proudly folk. I am excited for my future with these artists and albums.

New tunes

After watching another old Mumford and Sons interview I decided to check out the album containing the song Marcus referred to as, I believe, an ‘old bobbly jumper’ of a track. Ben Howard’s album called I Forget Where We Were. (same as the song he spoke about) I bought the CD on amazon, second hand, and it arrived less than a week ago I reckon. BIG FAN. Gives me the same colours as Keane’s album ‘Hopes and Fears’. It’s currently playing on the sonos as I stand here at the kitchen counter, catching my breath still from my 21 minute (with a cool down during Si Tu Veux) solo dance session whilst listening to the 2016 M&Ss ep Johannesburg. LEGENDARY. At first, as I find with most albums when you listen to them for the first time straight through, I was worried that the songs were indistinguishable from each other. (back to Ben Howard) I have not got a musical mind, although I love music. However after having to stagnate in the car in the parking lot outside college for an hour whilst waiting for some photos to be printed, I found that I had unknowingly become familiar with many of the tracks and their individual vibes already. I also bought two Laura Marling albums around the same time and the one that arrived with it has been paired up in a playlist on my phone titled “Fresh In February” This album is called I Speak Because I Can, and I have not yet become as familiar with it. Of Ben Howard’s album I particularly like, at the moment, In Dreams. It feels dark, I have not heard the combination of chords/notes before it feels new and mystical. Like dreams should feel. It reminds me of these batch of runaway dreams I had a while ago where the trees in the woods behind my house became portals and homes. I like that. I also find myself attracted to She Treats Me Well, despite not really liking something about it? It must be a good song. Maybe I am too impatient and it is too long. I know it will become important to me nonetheless. Music has become something different to me now that I am no longer very unwell, I do not need to use it always as a tool to disassociate. I can enjoy it face value, I can enjoy it as it effects me in the present, not as it affects my constructed narratives as I lose time. This was a break through moment whilst listening to Twenty One Pilots album Blurryface, my kitchen sink moment, sat in the car on the way home from visiting the Grandparents in bournemouth. Car Radio started to play and I became present and felt so immensely powerful. It crushed my fear of concerts in that moment. I could feel myself elbowing the crowd just to bear witness to the music. This song Car Radio is my calm down from stress song, but I have not needed it in quite sometime. Crumbling grey where once was pink flesh and red. I Forget Where We Were is a country drive album, I want to one day share it with someone I love on a long car journey in the rain. Or wherever I am, because it does not have to be situated perfectly, romantically, to have effect. I am effect-able now, almost constantly now. A gift I never thought I would find.