So, who else but Jim?

Hi,

Given that we all share an enjoyment of Jim's music, and given his relatively eclectic approach to arranging and producing traditional material, I thought it might be interesting to talk about what else we like to listen to and see if there's any patterns, or any decent recommendations we can pick up off each other.

I use last.fm so I can tell you what my most listened-to artists are ...

#1 Jim Moray
#2 Curve - a 90's band that played a bizarre hybrid of aggressive alt-rock and techno.
#3 PJ Harvey - I'm sure you've all heard of PJ Harvey, alt-rock/prog-rock goddess
#4 Planxty - Seminal 70's Irish folk. I love the passion and energy (and the bagpipes) in the music.
#5 Steeleye Span - I'm sure you've all heard of Steeleye Span too
#6 First Aid Kit - Swedish "new folk" duo, not trad at all but utterly, beguilingly wonderful
#7 Mumford & Sons - UK "new folk" outfit who manage to make bluegrass sound anthemic
#8 Karine Polwart - I'm not a huge fan, really, but her album Fairest Floo'er was superb.
#9 Cocteau Twins - Psychedelic/dream-pop indie outfit with indecipherable vocals
#10 Underworld - Outstanding techno with (unusually) vocals

1 - Mike Oldfield. His album Ommadawn is my favourite piece of music ever, and what I want playing at my funeral.

2 - Kate Bush. Enough said

3 - Paul Mounsey. A mixture of Celtic folk and Brazilian rhythms, try his album Nahoo for starters.

4 - Athlete. Underrated rock band.

5 - Owl City. Seattle pop, broke through in 2010 with Fireflies, his album All Things Bright and Beautiful was my most played in 2011.

6 - The Fat Lady Sings. Sadly, defunct Irish rock from the 1990s.

7 - Nick Kelly. Lead singer of TFLS (above)

8 - Jónsi/Sigur Rós - Pretty much unclassifiable Icelandic group. Soundscapes is the only word that comes to mind at the moment.

9 - Kate Rusby. Just a darling!

10 - Mary Black. Irish folk-based singer, amazing voice, great to watch in concert.

Always room for ice cream
Always time for cake
So much chocolate, so little time

Great topic!

This is based on my subjective impression of what I listen to most, not lastfm or the ilk:

1. Furniture. 80s band, best known for their only top 30 hit "Brilliant Mind", although it wasn't really that typical of their output of melodramatic indie pop, with eclectic influences including punk, jazz, chanson and retro-soul. Two ex-Furniture members were behind the UNITE project that Jim was involved in.

2. Transglobal Underground. Furniture splinter band and purveyors of the finest panglobal dance music.

3. David Sylvian. Ex-lead singer of Japan, but if you haven't heard his solo stuff, don't let that put you off. Experimental singer-songwriter who has dipped his toe in everything from jazz to electronica. Simply lovely.

4. The Imagined Village.

5. Julian Cope. Ex-singer of 80s pop band The Teardrop Explodes, whose solo work just gets weirder and weirder.

If I tried to rank artists 6-10, tbh I'd be just pulling names out of a hat, but (in no particular order) I also list to the following quite a lot: Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Led Zeppelin, Buzzcocks, Eliza Carthy, Mumford and Sons, Afro-Celt Sound System, Kate Rusby, Duran Duran (hangs head in shame), Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller, Alison Moyet, Editors...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2012 02:45PM by shushapye.

1. Jim Moray
2. Mediaeval Baebes
3. Violent Femmes
4. Buddy Holly
5. Jackie Oates
6. Wheeler Street
7. NIN
8. All About Eve
9. Mozart
10. The Cramps

And then there are the things I will not publicly admit to.....

What a great idea! Here's my ten artists - not in any particular order (apart from Jim at number one!) but the artists I have listened to the most over the last few months:

1. Jim Moray
2. Damien O'Kane
3. Sam Amidon (recommended by Jim!)
4. Kate Rusby
5. Muse
6. Teddy Thompson
7. Dan Donnelly (solo and as Sonovagun)
8. Coldplay
9. Elbow
10. Two Steps From Hell (film and TV music production company - superb!)

(OK - I'm going to be cheeky and have an extra couple - my guilty pleasure - though I'm not sure if I should admit to this - Take That! And when I'm in the mood to just chill out and be completly mellow and relaxed, the film music of Thomas Newman!)

Anyone who was confused by my top 10 Jim tracks will probably be even more confused now ...

My top 10 LPs released in 2011 :

1. The Adrian McNally Band (I'm not being clever here, the forum software won't allow me to post their real name for some reason!)- Diversions Vol.1 - The U-thanks turn into King Crimson without Fripp's guitar volume 2.
2. The Adrian McNally Band - Last - The U-thanks turn into King Crimson without Fripp's guitar volume 1.
3. Elle Osborne - So Slowly Slowly Got She Up - vastly underrated, her previous LP in 1999 (yes, really) seemed to predict nu-folk in the same way that Diamond Dogs (Bowie) and Nadir's Big Chance (Peter Hammill) predicted punk. This LP is as radical as Sweet England in its way, once you adjust to the folkie quavering in her voice. I hope that she's not who Jim was referring to in his 'folk-voice' rant earlier in the year. Listen to it as if she's not a folk artist.
4. Men Diamler - Bring On The Empty Horses - Singer/songwriter who's since broken himself up !! Double CD that covers such a wide spectrum it's difficult to describe. Like the most accessible bits of Tom Waits perhaps, but that doesn't tell anything like the full story.
5. Various - Oak Ash Thorn - a veritable who's who of nu-folk, not a duff track on it, the only thing it lacks is something from Jim.
6. Trembling Bells - The Constant Pageant - after two ok LPs they've hit the jackpot here by being a prog band with a bit of folk rather than a folk band with a bit of prog.
7. Action Beat - Beatings - following on from the theory about an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters eventually producing the works of Shakespeare, it seems that seven 'slacker-rockers/grunge kids' can come up with King Crimson's Red. I doubt they'd be able to do it again if they tried for a hundred years.
8. The Suzukis - s/t - the best debut LP from a genuine punk band for years. The missing link between Sex Pistols and PIL where no missing link seemed to need to exist previously. (They don't sound like Oasis. They may look like Oasis, but they only sound like them in the ears of lazy critics).
9. Van Der Graaf Generator - A Grounding In Numbers - as a group (as opposed to Peter Hammill's K-Band material) it's the most commercial and accessible thing that they've done.
10. Eliza Carthy - Neptune, In The Stars (Wants His Bloody Pounds Of Fish) - been waiting 18 years for Eliza to produce a real gem (as opposed to just being very good) and at last here it is. Music hall, Morrissey and Madness, and that's just for starters.

My next ten are June Tabor, Lisa Hannigan, Art Brut, Gang Of Four, Chapel Club, Jim Causley, Lucy Ward, Monsters Build Mean Robots, Concerto Caledonia (including Jim), and Frank Turner.

I hadn't investigated Art Brut until Spencer The Writer appeared. Now I have and they're great. Thanks Jim.

bigsnitch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 3 - Paul Mounsey. A mixture of Celtic folk and
> Brazilian rhythms, try his album Nahoo for
> starters.

Been working my way through some of these that I didn't already know on Spotify. Really enjoyed Nahoo and NahooToo. Reminded me a bit of the work of techno-bagpiper Martyn Bennett, might be worth your while to check that out if you've not already heard it. Bothy Culture is a good place to start.

Forgot to add to my original list the Polish singer Grzegorz Turnau, whom I discovered in a misspent youth teaching English abroad and some of whose early stuff faintly reminds me of Jim (but then again, the most peculiar things remind me of other things, so don't take that as an indication of any real similarity!)

Aside from Jim, who's on 'heavy rotation', as they used to say, I've been listening to quite a lot of the following recently:

(in no particular order)

Amazing Blondel - renaissance / folk / rock from the early 1970s. Allmusic.com describe the LP Fantasia Lindum as "achingly beautiful" and they're spot on.

My Bloody Valentine - rumours of a new album have sent me back to Loveless, IMHO the greatest album of the 90s

Al Green - digging around on YouTube I came across a knockout video of the Rev doing Love & Happiness on Soul Train which inspired me to get hold of some of his early 70s albums, which are terrific.

Hall & Oates - the most underrated duo. Daryl Hall is still going strong and has gained a new lease of life via his Live from Daryl's House webshow, which features him duetting with a different guest (or guests) each month. Abandoned Luncheonette, from 1973, is probably my favourite album of theirs.

Sandy Denny - as a latecomer to folk music I'm still catching up on a lot of the classics but her first two solo albums are wonderful and I play them a lot.

Brad Mehldau - is it jazz? is it classical? who knows and, frankly, who cares? Highway Rider is one of my most-played albums of the last couple of years.

Miles Davis - I've always got some Miles on the go; at the moment it's his mysterious swampy period from about 1970. Not for everyone but I love it.

Ramases - obscure-ish proggy / folky stuff on the Vertigo label. Glass Top Coffin, from 1975, is a really other-wordly but immediately accessible album that has a mood of melancholy about it, almost elegiac at times. Ramases himself (aka Martin Raphael) died only 3 years later.