Epicurean Cat
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Epicurean Cat
@epicurean-cat.bsky.social
260 followers 240 following 490 posts
Misanthropic humanist. Lost in nature when not lost in history
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I have a great love of that song, not just because it's Jackie Leven, but also because it mentions my home town of Huddersfield, and also what was, for many years, my local pub - The Slubbers Arms. Now, sadly, closed forever.
May 31, 2025 at 5:39 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 80: 2024 - Akaikurage - Kaiten Sekai
Akaikurage is the Japanese word for Red Jellyfish. The band of the same name are energetic, loud, uncompromising, have a Japanese punk attitude, and a motorik rhythm section. That's all I need to become a convert.
May 10, 2025 at 3:23 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 79: 2023 - Lankum - False Lankum
The 60s folk revival brought almost forgotten traditional music back into the awareness of contemporary audiences. Dusted down and rescued from old books, field recordings, chap books, and broadsides, a whole cultural medium was rescued from obscurity. Ongoing development within the genre added traditional music to more modern instrumentation, and folk rock was born. This, along with influences from the psychedelic era in the 60s and punk in the 70s, meant there was a healthy appetite from audiences for both live performance and studio recordings. Sadly, other than for a few of the more inspired artists, this had tailed off by the late 1980s and before the decade was out, 'folk' was often reduced to a genre populated by aspiring singer/songwriters playing acoustic guitars and frequently robbing the Richard Thompson songbook. Once the 21st century hit its stride, there was a revival of interest in the more esoteric bands of the earlier era, and the rediscovery of the 'dark folk' of previously overlooked bands like Trees, Comus, and Mr Fox. These bands influenced a new generation, and Irish band Lankum has definitely captured the darkness and the otherworldly spirit that the best of the genre always possessed. Or is, perhaps, possessed by.
May 8, 2025 at 11:08 PM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 78: 2022 - The Sadies - Colder Streams
For me, The Sadies are Canada's best band and are far too little known in much of the rest of the world. Their influences are psych, punk, country, alt country, rock, blues, and indie, and there are traces of all of it in their music. Two talented guitar players, great songwriting, fabulous live performances, and some great collaborations over their 28 year career. This release, Colder Streams, was sadly overshadowed by the early death from a heart condition, at the age of 48, of guitarist/singer Dallas Good. If you've never heard them, this album is a good place to start.
May 8, 2025 at 6:38 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 77: 2021 - Nick Waterhouse - Promenade Blue
This one took me by surprise in 2021. Someone on WFMU, I forget who it was, repeatedly played one of the tracks - it was the song Very Blue - and it just seeped into my subconscious. Checking out the rest of the album gave me more of the same feeling. I saw the sound described somewhere as 'modern oldies' and that's what it is. It's modern, but nostalgic. Nick Waterhouse has definitely got a handle on 60's sound and production techniques and created a really good record with this release.
May 7, 2025 at 2:38 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 76: 2020 - Big Blood - Do You Wanna Have a Skeleton Dream
As much a family collective as they are a band, Big Blood appeal to me in the same way as Natural Snow Buildings, Sun Ra, Moondog, etc, in that they are creative on their own terms, self reliant, and wholly independent of outside pressures. The music? I suppose weird psych country influenced folk would be a starting point, but it barely scratches the surface.
May 6, 2025 at 2:42 AM
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 75: 2019 - Mdou Moctar - Ilana: The Creator
Mdou Moctar is guitar player from Niger playing in a style often referred to as desert blue. This, his fifth album, but probably the first to be widely available, is an energetic and fiery combination of North African sounds mixed with almost psychedelic style jamming. Great on record, even better live.
May 5, 2025 at 3:58 AM
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#musicchallenge
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 74: 2018 - Françoise Hardy - Personne d'autre
Françoise Hardy is the only artist to feature twice in her own right in my posts on this challenge. Her first album - see day 18, 1962 - and this, her final album released in 2018. Personne d'autre is an album clearly written and sung by someone who knows their time on the planet is drawing to a close. Recorded in the period after she had already undergone treatment for cancer, this is an album of reflective songs, all bar one co-written and with Françoise providing the lyrics. The only cover is a version of Michel Berger's song Seras-tu là which, for me, is the most moving performance on a record of consistent and remarkable quality. Françoise Hardy never recorded again, and the cancer she was fighting finally killed her in 2024.
May 4, 2025 at 12:52 AM
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 73: 2017 - Richard Dawson - Peasant
Peasant sounds like the soundtrack to The Wicker Man re-made in the image of the Incredible String Band by the musical equivalent of Salvador Dali channelling Vincent van Gogh while on an absinthe binge.
May 3, 2025 at 7:18 AM
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#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 72: 2016 - David Bowie - Blackstar
Even for someone as relentlessly innovative as David Bowie, his final album and musical coda, Blackstar, is a stunningly creative ending. Many artists would be re-treading old ground by the time of their 26th studio album, but Bowie branches off onto yet another new direction with this release. It would be an amazing final album for anyone with a 50 year career behind them. But to do this knowing your life is also coming to an end is an amazing achievement.
May 1, 2025 at 11:38 PM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 71: 2015 - Kendrick Lamarr - To Pimp A Butterfly
I liked the early days of rap and hip hop. It was a break from traditional forms of making music, re-purposing samples taken from other songs, and building new material from them. Then, adding on political, social, or conscious lyrics on top seemed like a new avenue for creative exploration. Unfortunately, the era of the 'gangsta' took it, certainly for me, down a dead end. That's not to say there were no flashes of brilliance, but they were rare. To Pimp a Butterfly showed that creativity hadn't completely died in the early 21st century and shone brightly. It seemed to exist on its own terms, not trying to please an audience, nor trying to outdo the latest releases from rival contemporaries. It was just an artist with something to say, saying it and saying it well.
May 1, 2025 at 2:13 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 70: 2014 - Scott Walker & Sunn O))) - Soused
If German expressionist cinema of the 1920s could send an echo through the decades and be received as music, it would sound like this album. Light and dark, angular, partly hidden in shadow, and partly in blinding light. That's all.
April 30, 2025 at 4:08 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
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#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 69: 2013 - Éliane Radigue - Ψ 847
I first discovered the work of Éliane Radigue during a very deep dive into experimental electronic music, many years ago. My first listening experience was the 3 disc set of her minimalist compositions, Trilogie de la mort. Over three hours listening to an electronic sound being slowly manipulated, in tiny increments, can be a challenging listen. It can also be an immensely rewarding, relaxing, and meditative experience. Ψ 847 is a slightly different experience. It's still the nuanced manipulation of electronically sourced sounds, but it also has more varied textures, pulses, and tone variations. It was released as a two disc set featuring the same composition. One disc containing the studio recording and one disc has a recording performed live. If I had to describe it to someone, I'd probably say it was the sound you'd hear if you stepped outside of a broken-down rocketship as it floated aimlessly in space.
April 28, 2025 at 11:05 PM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 68: 2012 - Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill
I've always enjoyed Neil Young's music. Whether it's as a more reflective songwriter performing in a folk/country style, or whether it's him as a guitarist, building a slab of noise. Psychedelic Pill has both, but it's the long guitar jams that make this special for me.
April 28, 2025 at 6:08 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 67: 2011 - Starlicker - Double Demon
A trio consisting of cornet, vibes, and drums is going to have to think outside of the proverbial box when it comes to playing together. It's free improvisation based around frameworks of almost nothing, and occasionally, it takes a while for the musicians to find common ground, but when they do, they justify the time spent listening. For some reason, I keep thinking of the early days of Soft Machine playing live - probably the drummer, John Herndon, reminding me of Robert Wyatt's prowess in the days when he was still able to play a full kit.
April 27, 2025 at 1:01 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 66: 2010 Jaga Jazzist - One Armed Bandit
How to describe this? It's 1960's British TV detective show theme music as if it was played by the Sun Ra Arkestra after a binge listening session of the early 70s albums from Emerson Lake & Palmer. I like it.
April 25, 2025 at 11:15 PM
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#MusicSky 🎧
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#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 65: 2009 - Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions
By the mid 2000s, after being saturated in music for several decades, my tastes were broad enough to stretch beyond traditional forms, and into areas that are probably less about music and more about texture, sculptured sound, and the listening experience. I've never lost my love of music of all kinds, but sometimes, I want something that can reach into the subconscious and create a different kind of experience. Music like that of Philip Glass, the long pieces from Natural Snow Buildings, and the fluctuating sine waves of Eliane Radigue's three part composition Trilogie de la Mort, all do this for me. As does the sound of Sunn O))). It's not for everyone, but it can create a journey in my mind - a sensory experience triggered without drugs or without alcohol. And no hangover. I'm not too sure about the live experience, though. Ringing ears for days afterwards. I'll stay with the records and keep my hand on the volume control. It's probably an age thing.
April 25, 2025 at 12:45 AM
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 64: 2008 - Philip Glass - Glass Box
I'd intended avoiding any album that was a 'best of', a 'greatest hits', or a retrospective, but I'm making an exception for this collection of work from composer Philip Glass. It's a great way to sample a wide range of compositions, from his early minimalist works in the late 1960s, through a manageable length selection from his mammoth work, Einstein on the Beach - a full performance can last five hours - to his later works and film scores, including the fabulous Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi. My first experience of Philip Glass was hearing a selection from Einstein on the Beach, an experience that I found almost hypnotic as I became drawn into the multilayered repetition of the music and lyrics. It's not really surprising that many modern musicians have cited Philip Glass as an influence - Bowie, David Byrne, Eno, Tangerine Dream, and Mike Oldfield, to name just a small selection.
April 24, 2025 at 12:31 AM
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 63: 2007 -Burial - Untrue
"Gloomy, dystopian soundscapes" is how Allmusic describes the music of the UK's Burial. I'd agree. It's the soundtrack to a nighttime journey through a decaying 21st century Britain, stripped of its anachronistic pomp and ceremony, and left only with the bare urban wastelands predicted in the writing of J.G. Ballard, and foreshadowed 25 years earlier with the darkness of decaying cityscapes that saturated the music of Joy Division.
April 23, 2025 at 7:18 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
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#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 62: 2006 - Natural Snow Buildings - The Dance of the Moon and the Sun
The music on Natural Snow Buildings albums tend to alternate between short, fey, folk songs, and long, improvised drone/ambient instrumental pieces. The Paris based duo, Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, don't seem remotely concerned with any kind of commercial success, their releases being restricted to limited editions on small, obscure labels, some only as cassettes,some hand crafted, and one release being an edition of only one copy. They also released similar work individually, as Twinsistermoon, and as Isengrind.
April 22, 2025 at 5:48 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 61: 2005 - Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering
Vashti Bunyan released her first album in 1970. She recorded and released her second album 35 years later in 2005 after her initially ignored debut had finally been recognised and was gaining a cult following among those who heard it. The second album, Lookaftering, features contributions from Max Richter, Devendra Banhart, and Joanna,Newsom, among others. The sound and the songs are timeless, and both of her albums, along with a collection of her 1960s singles and demos, are essential listening to anyone interested in British folk music.
April 20, 2025 at 11:29 PM
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Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 60: 2004 - Joanna Newsome - The Milk Eyed Mender
People in contemporary music who have the harp as their primary instrument are something of a small and exclusive club. Breton musician Alan Stivell and Scotland's Savourna Stevenson are both considered as being folk musicians. Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane played jazz. So when Joanna Newsom released The Milk Eyed Mender in 2004, there was a significant increase in the number of non classical harp albums available. I'd consider it as having one foot in the folk genre and the other somewhere planted in the more quirky end of singer/songwriter. While definitely distinctive in style, it has charm, creativity, and is engagingly listenable.
April 20, 2025 at 2:26 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 59: 2003 - Runrig - Proterra
I liked Runrig all the way from their first Scots Gaelic language folk outing back in 1978, right through to the final concert in 2017. For this release, their twelfth, they collaborate with Brazilian based Scottish musician Paul Mounsey to create what is possibly their most fully realised project. Despite writing some classic songs in both folk and rock styles and with a live presence that was never less than exciting, their albums suffered some under production in the 1980s and some over production in the 1990s and the band only had occasional and sporadic success outside of their native Scotland. Line up changes in the late 1990s, including the loss of the lead singer, saw the band in decline, but this, released in 2003, was a definite return to a peak they were unable to sustain for their final two albums.
April 19, 2025 at 6:22 AM
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#MusicSky 🎧
#musicchallenge
#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 58: 2002 - The Butterflies of Love - The New Patient
There are many bands who have a great back catalogue and who were overlooked at the time and are forgotten today. The Butterflies of Love are one of them. Two albums were released in their home nation, America, and two were released on the UK independent Fortuna Pop. The sound of the band is typical late 1990s/early 2000s indie, chiming guitars, heartfelt vocals, slightly hesitant and not too polished. From my first discovery of them via their 1996 single release, Rob A Bank, to their final album release, for me, they couldn't put a foot wrong.
April 18, 2025 at 5:59 AM
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#80albums80years

Post one album for each year from 1945-2024 each day.

Day 57: 2001 - The Dirtbombs - Ultraglide in Black
Rising from the ashes of Detroit based punk legends, The Gories, and preceding the punk 'supergroup' Wolfmanhattan Project, guitarist and singer Mick Collins led the eclectic garage punk outfit, The Dirtbombs. This, their second release, is a tribute to the black music Collins listened to as he grew up. Consisting mostly of cover versions, there are some spirited performances on the album, the best of which, for me, are the versions of the Barry White song, I'm Qualified To Satisfy You, and a song which was released on the first solo album by Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, titled Ode To A Black Man.
April 17, 2025 at 5:20 AM