Solar Corona – Saint​-​Jean​-​de​-​Luz

That Julius Gabriel fella just keeps on delivering, no?

There aren’t many artists that predominantly produce instrumental music who nevertheless keep me interested. It’s a very difficult approach to music to do consistently well (albeit quite easy to adopt a phone-it-in approach). Whatever well he’s tapped, it is one deep well. I was very regularly feeling that ecstatic feeling I get when I listen to music that is so perfectly put together that it could be thought of as a self contained universe in its own right, albeit – and not actually paradoxically – also open-ended. Like life.

As is always the case when I sit down to do a post, my words dry up and lose any sparkle that I might have thought they had when they raced around my head. It’s not all bad, though. Just press play and enter the trance enfolded into the music – all the sparkle you’ll need is there. And we all need sparkle in these times.

 

 

Vanishing Twin – Dream by Numbers EP

There’s just so much music out there, and all of it makes sense to someone, even if only the creator (hello, me). Sometimes you just have to accept that you’ll never have time to grok it all and just give thanks for the nuggets you find that resonate with you. This one resonated with me.

I like their description of ‘dreamlike’ in their small paragraph that accompanies it. Neptune in Pisces and all that, and despite it being released three years ago is still just as accurate a description with the added bonus of the extended Capricorn season. (You’ll need to listen to the mammoth podcast linked if you want to know what that means, unless you already do).

I discovered this via Black Impulse, which I’d forgotten about and started to play catch up the other day. There’s an episode with guest presenters Robbie Judkins and Mia Kukathasan where the tracklisting is woefully incomplete. If anyone out there can tell me who tracks 1 and 3 are, I will be so grateful that I’ll, I don’t know, sing a song in celebration for you, or something. Those tunes are wondrous.

Related to how much great music there is, I had a thought a day or two ago about how great ideas so often get co-opted or (more usually) ignored, yet that is no reason not to keep having them. Indeed, there is no reason not to keep having them. I’ve found personally as I get older that the more I create, the more I create. That is deliberately tautological, but once you turn that tap on, it will keep flowing. So here’s my tip for 2020 – always keep your tap on. And obviously be good to each other but I know you’ll all do that, right?

Big Blood – Deep Maine

Big Blood return with a rather mellower offering than usual, but one still infused with their specialist production techniques (Caleb has the fortune to possess synesthesia).