Apparently, I buy too many records

My wife Helen, like every other woman i've ever lived with, believes that I buy too many records.

Which, as every record-buying man knows, is a ridiculous belief.

I will concede, however, that I do indeed buy a lot of records and that I don't afford them the same amount of listens and attention that I did 20 or 30 years ago.

To this end, I have decided to blog about the records that I buy, in order to help my appreciation of them - and perhaps to show Helen that I don't buy that many records after all.

Because i'm crap with deadlines the blog posts will be sporadic and probably be about a month or 2 behind but that's just the way i am! The posts will not necessarily be actual reviews (most likely comments, at best) and will generally be pretty damn short due to the reasons outlined above. As a writer in a previous existence i have decided not to worry about writing as art in the pieces but, instead, to attempt to convey feeling over semantic (and often grammatic) perfection.

And 'OCRB'? It stands for 'Obsessive Compulsive Record Buying' - a little known mental health affliction that is potentially damaging to the bank account but ultimately life-affirming. It is sad.......but a nice form of sad.

Saturday 14 May 2011

Julianna Barwick: The Magic Place (Asthmatic Kitty)

I'm pretty sure there's the odd piano note on here but, apart from that, the whole sound is Barwick's voice swooping and looping like a choir of angels who have come to remove you from this mortal coil. The last 4AD-esq term of reference was deliberate as any part of this haunting album could've been a short integral piece of the 3 TMC albums.

Let me try to explain the sound here, it's a bit tricky and i read the term 'indie Enya' in a review somewhere and that has stuck in my head as it's not entirely incorrect. So, here goes: take the whole cocteau twins collection and remove all traces of instrumentation, so you are left with Elizabeth Fraser's voice and nowt else. Now cut the vocal track into little bits so that you have no discernible words (even the seemingly invented ones that EF used to fill Cocteau albums with) and reassemble in tone order, so that the sound moves up and down the scales. Now multitrack this sound again and again until you have a choir of tones that move and reshape with each other, similar to some of Panda Bear's music but much less grating.

That's what this sounds like.

And a bit like an indie Enya as well.
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