Best Albums of 2015 … So Far!
Posted by: osprey on 20 September 2015
This album was released already in April if I remember correctly. I bought it only recently though and have listened to it lot.
"Sound & Color is not an electronic record. But it is strange and mystical and unexpected—more Houses of the Holy than "Holy Cow". It’s got past lives and future people, traces of Curtis Mayfield, Erykah Badu, MC5, the Strokes. There’s a song called "Shoegaze" that could find a second home on the Rolling Stones’ Tattoo You. Bon Iver collaborator Rob Moose provides eerie string arrangements that slowly encroach on songs like ivy climbing up a fence while the band and co-producer Blake Mills tweak tones and rhythms to make guitars and drums and bass and keyboards sound genuinely exciting—fresh, even—in 2015. "
- Pitchfork
Are there any other 2015 releases you can nominate to the best of list for the year?
Highly Deadly Black Tarantula - Difficult to categorise and label. Fresh and uncompromising. Superb!
k posted:+1The guitar playing on that album is outstanding.He has got chops in abundance yet never overplays and the dialogue with Gomes is telepathic.Originally Posted by Peet:Just finished first round of listening but I think the new Carmen Gomes on Sound Liaison gets my vote. Stunning.
http://www.soundliaison.com/st...omes-inc-little-blue
Little Blue is a collection of songs that I feel strongly about. Songs of my youth that made an lingering impression and original compositions, some written a long time ago; some only recently.
They all deal with topics of everyday life that keeps my mind occupied: the choices we make, how we define ourselves and how we deal with life in general.
I was a reasonably happy but lonely kid. I felt myself an outsider, a bit different, maybe to a certain extend excluded. Making up for this, I locked myself in my room and listened to music, singing along with every song. I developed a taste for artists that were more ''deep''.... Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Neil Young. There was something in their voices that touched me, some emotion that I recognized.
I internalized all of Neil Young's lyrics; they made a huge impact on me and served as a heavy influence on the lyrics that I started writing myself. Billie's voice still tears me apart.
Growing up, I came across songs that stuck with me. Holding Back the years and Brass in Pocket for example. I strongly related to the lyrics. I could almost smell them. Songs about love in all it's splendour and compassion. Songs about addiction, inequality and loneliness. Songs about the eternal search for an answer. I’m a grown woman now, a mother, experienced, but still searching.
To sing a song I need to picture the story of the lyrics in my head; I have to feel them. If I can't feel them, I can't sing them. And how can I expect you to believe what I am singing if I don't feel it myself? So you can say that the songs on this album are very personal, very close.
Carmen Gomes
Maybe the most beautiful song on the album. I believe I can hear what they are describing in the album notes;
[quote]Every word and melodic phrase seems to appear from years of soul searching and life experience. Carmen Gomes knows just how much or little is needed to convey the right amount of feeling for a particular song. Although sometimes the amount of feeling and emotion that is needed is almost too much for Carmen herself. We had to call for break after the Little Girl Blue take because Carmen was in tears and overcome with emotions. You can hear the voice starting to break up towards the end of the song. [/qoute]
An outstanding live jazz piano solo. The recording was done originally for archival purposes without an intention of release.
I will think about which others, but this one definitely belongs on the list for 2015
"World music light" (but not as light as Graceland). Still easily accessible and just very, very good.
migo posted:
As long as music has existed it has been known to have spiritual and even healing powers.
The group Space Master Silence was started as a musical search party, traveling headfirst into the uncharted land of music, emotion and spirit.
The beautiful ambient-electronica-jazz soundscape City is the new album from Manchester guitarist and composer Stuart McCallum and his second studio album for Naim. City features a handful of seasoned musicians including McCallum on guitars, Robin Mullarkey, bass (ESKA, Roisin Murphy), Sean Foran (Trichotomy), Rhodes and Richard Spaven (Flying Lotus, José James) drums, synths and electronics.
Naim Label.http://www.naimlabel.com/
The real challenge for a musician
once he has mastered his instrument
learned all about harmony and rhythm
absorbed the music of the masters that came before him
and found his own voice
the real challenge is one that in itself sounds very simple
place yourself in complete service of the music at hand
and play only what the music is asking for
but as every musician will tell you this is the most difficult of all musical challenges.
So many musicians these days are emphasizing the improvisation at the cost of the melody, with the result that .....''you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to''...(Louis Armstrong)
Sound Liaison http://www.soundliaison.com/st...-witmer-trio-en-azul
Merry Christmas everybody.
There is a free track available from Stuart McCallum http://www.naimlabel.com/recor...he-Seventh-Tree.aspx
En AZUL and SPACEMASTERSILENCE are both on sale this week 50% or 33% off.
Soul: Curtis Harding - Soul Power
Not the best recorded one, but deep from the soul, brutally honest, pure, sung as he wants and not as aspected, not with the purpose to fit commercial expectations.
Maybe a nostaligic retrospectiv to a periode in music recording historie when sales are not the number #1 targed instead of emotions and conviction.
Jazz: Avishai Cohen - From Darkness
Rock: Steven Wilson - Hand.Cannot.Erase
Riverside:
Classical: Nothing impressiv IMHO
Records not from 2015, but I heard them a lot 2015:
2015 was an excellent year of new music releases & an opportunity to buy things new to my ears. I also managed to see many of the artists on my list in concert. Not purchased yet, but thrilling to see at the RAH was David Gilmour. One of my best years of 'live' music and still as exciting as it was, back in the Summer of 69' 
Anekdoten: Until The Ghosts Are Gone
Bent Knee: Live and Nearly Unplugged
Bent Knee: Shiny Eyed Babies
Bruce Soord: Bruce Soord
Courtney Swain: Monstre
Dylan Howe: Subterranean - New Designs on Bowie's Berlin
Firefly Burning: Skeleton Hill
Gavin Clark & Toydrum: Evangelist
Gavin Harrison: Cheating The Polygraph
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: 'Assunder, Sweet And Other Distress'
Godsticks: Emergence
Inna Zhelannaya: Cocoon
Jaga Jazzist: Starfire
King Crimson: U S A
Laura Marling: Short Movie
Lonely Robot: Please Come Home
Mandala: Midnight Twilight
Marika Hackman: We Slept At Last
North Sea Radio Orchestra: North Sea Radio Orchestra
North Sea Radio Orchestra: I A Moon
North Sea Radio Orchestra: Birds
O.R.K - Inflamed Rides
Sankt Otten: Engtanz Depression
SHINE: Sugarcane
Simon Steensland: A Farewell To Brains
Steven Wilson: Hand.Cannot.Erase
Sweet Billy Pilgrim: Motorcade Amnesiacs
The Blossom: The Shepherd's Calendar
The Staves: If I Was
Tim Bowness: Stupid Things That Mean The World
Troyka: Ornithophobia
Vennart: The Demon Joke
Wiliam D Drake: Revere Reach
musically I like 
and the cover is fantastic, but the drum sound bothers me a bit, a bit hyped.
But over all a very good album.
Recorded late 2015.....
