This year's shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize was announced on 22nd July. The prize celebrates albums by artists from the UK and Ireland released in the qualifying year. According to its website it is "the music equivalent to the Booker Prize for literature and the Turner Prize for art". Allowing for some understandable self-promotion…Read more Mercury Music Prize 2021
2020s
Rabbit Hole
Cyberspace is full of holes - rabbit holes that lead to wierd and wonderful places. From the familiar safe haven of Spotify I suddenly found myself tumbling through the subterranean halls of pop music, immersed in the stream of a recent release with hardly a sniff of hip hop. How wierd is that? The sounds…Read more Rabbit Hole
Straight Path
Save every tree as if it's the last Let's go travelling today. We'll take the Straight Path all the way to Lahore in Pakistan. There we will meet a band called Jaubi that amalgamates Indian classical music with western jazz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0K_h1K0T2s This track sounds very much like something by Alice Coltrane. The scales and the…Read more Straight Path
Hania Rani
The video below turned up in my Hubzilla feed last week. It was titled "Hania Rani - Live from Studio S2" and it was tagged #piano and #electronicmusic. There was no other description. The tags I understood but the names of the artist and the studio meant nothing to me, so clicking on the link…Read more Hania Rani
Your Power
When this song came up in my Hubzilla feed I could guess from the title that it is about the abuse of power. But who, I wondered, is it addressed to? Is Billie Eilish admonishing a loved one, berating a political leader or even condemning a whole society? But the Crotchety ears were tuned to…Read more Your Power
Just the Same
We don't do repeats on this blog. But today the Selection Sub-Committee has chosen an old song from Gentle Giant, a band that featured here in 2015. Although the song is from the 1975 album, Free Hand, this version has had the magical Steven Wilson remix treatment, making it as clear as a glass bell…Read more Just the Same
Isolation
Fed up with Covid restrictions? Longing to get back to the old normal? Well, here's an album that will put a spring in your step and banish those isolation blues to the musty pages of the history books. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_laIbzhC50SwNk5dui0F639xGE9D0jpy2c The Backstage is a band born in adversity. When Steve Hackett's U.S. tour was cancelled last…Read more Isolation
Flown
Burning Shed is inviting pre-orders for CD and vinyl versions of Flown, the debut album by the Norwegian trio, Dim Gray. They list the band as "art rockers" and describe the album thus: The music on Flown combines strings-infused chamber pop, dark indie folk and grandiose art rock. An ambitious musical statement [...] in the vein of…Read more Flown
Lucky Dip
Hear My VoiceLiquid EvolutionLord It's a FeelingThe Gift of LoveClocks For this post I'm offering an assortment of easy-on-the ear pieces: three songs and two instrumentals. Click on the images above to enlarge the picture; click the caption to go to the corresponding YouTube video. Alternatively, all five pieces have been collected as both a…Read more Lucky Dip
Pianocean
Today we will be sailing with an ocean-going piano. With the piano we will take a yacht called Lady Flow, a pianist, singer and songwriter called Marieke Huysmans-Berthou and a cat, whose name I do not know. Together they have created a project called Pianocean, sailing from port to port, meeting the locals and putting…Read more Pianocean
Crotchety Man 