You know what I think is an entirely reasonable thing to do?
Buy this book:
And then for shits and giggles attempt to download each piece of music recommended and listen to them in order.
I’ve spent the past two days attempting to find and download music from The Medieval, Renaissance, and Elizabethan Ages (chapter 1) on Bittorrent. It is as easy to find as you might expect. Short term goal: I’m hoping that when I’m done this chapter, Enigma won’t be my only point of reference when I hear a Latin mass being sung.
It’s a 700 page book, it seems to average about five recommendations per page. At the rate of — at most — three pieces per week… well, this isn’t a project I expect to finish anytime soon.
Odd chord choices, lo-fi recording, abstract noise washes. These are the ingredients to the kind of music most of my art school friends were listening to in the mid-late 90s. I liked some of it, but much of it just sounded boring to me. I inherited this record when one of these art school friends moved to New York a couple years ago. The Sonora Pine is from 1996, and it sounds like it, but that’s not to say it doesn’t sound great. I doubt I would have liked it then, but my tastes have developed a little in the past 14 years. There is enough of a hook to these songs that you actually can find yourself swaying to them or tapping your foot. That’s the sort of connection I wasn’t able to make back then. Thanks, Angela, for leaving this record with me. Glad I finally got a chance to listen to it. Perfect music for lounging on the couch when you are stuck in the house on a snow day in the middle of the afternoon, which is lucky, because that’s exactly what today has been like.
ALSO: I’m not sure I’ve been clear, but my plan for The Month Of New Music is that I’m listening to 31 records from my vinyl collection that I haven’t heard yet. I listen to vinyl very differently than I do mp3s — which is my other main source of music. (I turn my CDs into mp3s when I want to listen to them) I don’t often listen to whole albums off the computer or iPod, but you really have no choice but to with vinyl. So, while I might gush over an album when I listen to it on one medium, I might totally ignore it in another. I also don’t often buy music I’ve never heard before on vinyl, unless it’s flea-market price. So, considering these factors, me listening to a month of new vinyl is a very interesting experiment, at least personally. It’s a hard thing to explain. I hope I’ve done at least a mediocre job of doing so.
You said.