Echo and the Bunnymen ‘Crocodiles’ - it must be at least ten years since I last played this stone classic debut album. I never dug it more than now;
Epic Soundtracks ‘Rise Above’ - simple, charming songs gently rendered by the Swell Maps legend. Inhabits a similar half asleep world to Skip Spence’s wacked-out meisterwork ‘Oar’, but less lysergically. RIP, Kevin;
Neil Young & Crazy Horse ‘Toast’ - still enjoying a fine record released two decades too late. ‘Boom Boom Boom’ is a masterpiece;
Porcupine Tree ‘Closure/Continuation’ - I refer to my earlier comments re this album. Please try to hear it;
Tangerine Dream ‘Cyclone’ - an album with vocals (well half of it anyway) is something of an anomaly in the Tangs’ vast back catalogue, but I’ve always loved it - even in 1978 when I’d temporarily dissed any band without short hair;
Keith Jarrett ‘Sapporo’ - from the sprawling, intermittently brilliant ‘Sun Bear Concerts’;
Beethoven: Symphony no.2 (LCP/Norrington) - probably the best performance of Norrington’s somewhat overrated first Beethoven symphony cycle IMHO;
Brahms: Symphony no.1 (LCP/Norrington) - this is much better. Norrington isn’t afraid to play Brahms’ tempo marking as they’re written: a rare thing in my experience, and for once period strings don’t grate in such a late work as this;
Beethoven: Symphony no.6/Mozart : Violin Concerto no.3 (w.Francescatti)/Wagner: Flying Dutchman Ov/Bruckner: Symphony no.9 (all Columbia SO/Walter) - satisfying programme of recordings from Bruno Walter’s late 50s indian summer;
Beethoven: Symphony no.9 ‘Choral’ (LSO/Stokowski) - how I first heard this monumental work as an eight year old (see pic), and still something of a benchmark recording for me;
Beethoven: Piano Sonata in A, Op.101 (Daniel Barenboim) - Barenboim’s latest (2019) recording of this underrated late sonata sings like a bird.
Enjoy your week, friends.
Dave x
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