Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory - Elements Of Light

An album, literally, with bells on! As with the last couple of entries, it's instrumental, electronica, with the exception of the bells! I'm starting to feel that this blog needs some noodley, 10 minute guitar wig out or some earnest singer songwriter emoting all over the place but the shuffle refuses to give us that at the moment. This album comes from a very different place to that of the Boards of Canada, which invites (compels?) you to pay it some attention. Elements of Light comes from a more dance (house?) orientated tradition. The use of the bells give the album and overall feeling of warmth but its so warm and smooth I find it a bit soporific, the inclusion of two tracks clocking in at 12 and 17 minutes, respectively, doesn't help either. It's a nice album (damning with faint praise maybe?) but  I think the best thing to do with this is either to dance, gentlely, to it or to have it on in the back ground while you do something else. At least that way you can stay awake.

Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest

Another album from the last year. If you're ever looking for a definition of the description "Bleak Beauty" listen to this. Like a lot of the stuff I've been listening to recently it's electronic and, largely, instrumental, with the exception of a few sampled, hard to discern, voices. It's great and reminds me of 80s film sound track for something like Escape from New York Friday 13th or Halloween . It's one of those albums that keeps on giving. Every time you listen you hear something new.

John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts

I love John Grant and this is probably my favourite album of 2013. It's, pretty much, perfect. Musically, there's icey 80s electronica combined with darkly humourous, self depreciating, almost self loathing, lyrics which give the album its heart. It's not as instant as his first, solo, album but in some ways, the fact that it takes a little more time and effort to get into, in comparison, makes it, ultimately more rewarding. And its got Sinead O'Connor doing backing vocals!

Kuedo-Severant

After my "meh" reaction to the Arcade Fire album from my last post I felt like I needed to listen to and blog about something more positive just so that I could maintain the momentum of writing. Therefore I deliberately chose this album, rather than let shuffle choose for me because I've listened to it often at least in comparison to most of the stuff included in this blog.

In addition to Heavy Metal, my other seminal influence is electronic music from the 80s like Yazoo, Human League and Kraftwerk and this album has echoes of that period.

I believe, in terms of genre, it's what  "The Kids" call "Chillwave" . It's almost entirely instrumental and, to my ear, sounds like Kraftwerk gave Vangelis a hand at writing the music for Blade Runner while, at the same time, inventing Drum & Bass in Brian Eno's studio while he made Music for Airports.

Frankly, I love it. The titles for each piece, I can't call them songs, are pretty obscure such as "Ascension Phase and, my favourite, "Visioning Shared Tomorrows". However, the lack of a narrative actually draws you into the music rather than excludes you. There's space that allows you to really listen and engage with what's going on in the piece. This is a treat and gives a jaded pair of ears a real lift.