Auditioning New Releases
Came home fwith a dauntingly heavy carrierbagful of
CDs sent by pluggers, record companies and bands, and finally made a start
listening to them about 11pm on Good Friday night. ...The principle is to pull
five CDs from the pile our of their sleeves at random, load them into the
carousel without reading the labels, then sit down with pen, paper and the
remote control and start listening.
Came home from 6 Music on Thursday night with a
dauntingly heavy carrierbagful of CDs sent by pluggers, record companies and
bands, and finally made a start listening to them about 11pm on Good Friday
night.
There's always a large stack of discs to audition, and even on a good day only about one in three are even remotely suitable for our show. My old CD player was cursed with a slow-loading drive mechanism and you could easily spend as much time waiting for discs to get in and out of the machine as listening to the music. So some months ago I bought a 5-disc CD autochanger, which has doubled my listening throughput.
The fairest approach is to pull five CDs from the pile at random, load them into the carousel without reading the labels, then sit down with pen, paper and the remote control and start listening. This seems to me the only way to scrupulously judge what's in the grooves rather than what's on the sleeves. With fifty-plus albums waiting to be heard you have to be brutal and fast-forward about a minute into each track to see what it sounds like. It's usually obvious by that point if you're going to like a record or not.
The heartening thing is when a song leaps out of the speakers, grabs you by the throat with its brilliance and then turns out to a huge artist. "Irish Blood, English Heart" is one: you wouldn't have to ever have heard a note of Morrissey's music to be stopped dead by this arresting single and want to run out to spread the word. "Mass Destruction" from Faithless is another - tough music, passionate lyrics. No punches pulled.
It's cripplingly hard for established artists to renew their early daring and freshness album after album (stand up messrs Gallagher, Dylan, Ashcroft, Jagger, Jackson et al). That's why it's so wonderful when performers like Moz, Maxi and Rollo manage to pull it off. But alas disc after disc - by artists great and small - turns out to be dreary, derivative and dull. In all honesty many of my own records released over the past 29 years don't stand up well to this test either.
In a way, the most disheartening thing is when some lifeless, low-energy identikit indie droning or ambient warbling does turn out to be yet another of the unsigned bands you've never heard of. One does so want these lovingly produced home-made CDs to turn out to be The Dogs' bollocks - or indeed The Bees' knees. And very occasionally they are: Jay Spears and Toupé being two virtually unknown artists whose original, arresting records deliver a satisfying jolt to the system.
There's always a large stack of discs to audition, and even on a good day only about one in three are even remotely suitable for our show. My old CD player was cursed with a slow-loading drive mechanism and you could easily spend as much time waiting for discs to get in and out of the machine as listening to the music. So some months ago I bought a 5-disc CD autochanger, which has doubled my listening throughput.
The fairest approach is to pull five CDs from the pile at random, load them into the carousel without reading the labels, then sit down with pen, paper and the remote control and start listening. This seems to me the only way to scrupulously judge what's in the grooves rather than what's on the sleeves. With fifty-plus albums waiting to be heard you have to be brutal and fast-forward about a minute into each track to see what it sounds like. It's usually obvious by that point if you're going to like a record or not.
The heartening thing is when a song leaps out of the speakers, grabs you by the throat with its brilliance and then turns out to a huge artist. "Irish Blood, English Heart" is one: you wouldn't have to ever have heard a note of Morrissey's music to be stopped dead by this arresting single and want to run out to spread the word. "Mass Destruction" from Faithless is another - tough music, passionate lyrics. No punches pulled.
It's cripplingly hard for established artists to renew their early daring and freshness album after album (stand up messrs Gallagher, Dylan, Ashcroft, Jagger, Jackson et al). That's why it's so wonderful when performers like Moz, Maxi and Rollo manage to pull it off. But alas disc after disc - by artists great and small - turns out to be dreary, derivative and dull. In all honesty many of my own records released over the past 29 years don't stand up well to this test either.
In a way, the most disheartening thing is when some lifeless, low-energy identikit indie droning or ambient warbling does turn out to be yet another of the unsigned bands you've never heard of. One does so want these lovingly produced home-made CDs to turn out to be The Dogs' bollocks - or indeed The Bees' knees. And very occasionally they are: Jay Spears and Toupé being two virtually unknown artists whose original, arresting records deliver a satisfying jolt to the system.
Posted: Sat - April 10, 2004 at 01:15 am
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Published On: Apr 14, 2004 09:49 am
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Published On: Apr 14, 2004 09:49 am