April albums

If you follow me on Twitter (@benjammin22) you'll have noticed me chart a course through 100 albums in the course of April, and this blog aims to reveal the results and discoveries of the quest, which has proved rewarding and sometimes insightful. The idea for it came from a musicOMH writer Gareth Ware (whose own odyssey can be tracked at @musicismyradar) and from John Murphy (@john_murphy1) who personalized the exercise by listening to 100 albums that he either loved or which had pertinent lifelong memories.

Albums are like that, I suppose, and if they're good or meaningful have the potential to conjure up whole lifetimes in one listen. They act as vivid reminders like any good photo album, only with extra – for often the emotional link between the music and the life event is impossible to ignore. Either that or a good album acts as that alone, a marker of quality in an art form overrun with attempts to achieve legendary status in the form.

For my own quest through 100 April albums I decided that each should be new to me, and that each artist or composer could only be represented once in the exercise. I chose them pretty much as the mood took me, and didn’t include compilations or albums I heard that had already passed my ears before. It was a chance to catch up with some of 2012’s new releases, to try out completely new things on the strength of cover or reviews alone, or to take a lucky dip in to the CD collection and haul out something I'd not listened to before. And there are far too many of those examples!

The other rule was the once started, the album had to be completed there and then, and this wasn’t always as easy as it sounded. Sometimes when an ambient album was selected late at night it was easy, but when busy techno threatened to take over my head on a flight to Budapest (thanks to u-ziq), some flurries of instrumentation nearly compromised our neighbour relations (Au) or some particularly dark and vigorous vocal beat boxing marred my preparation for a suited and booted dinner one Saturday night, the exercise became one of endurance not enjoyment.

It showed me too that there are times – even in London – where silence, the music that has no sound or pitch, is underrated and even totally necessary. It reminded me of the need to actually step away from music now and again – which I will do when on holiday next week – so that the reacquaintance is fresh and involving once again.

So, enough of the personal aspects – what and who were the winners in the hundred? A difficult one to summarise, but there have been some wonderful moments which I will try and capture. The first was Lovelock's 'Burning Feeling', the massive and anthemic first track from his first album of the same name, booming through the headphones on my walk down the hill at 7am on a Monday morning. I had expected something far more chilled, but arrived at the bus stop with a smile on my face.

Secondly, in the middle of a busy office, the sleights of electronic instrumentation forming Pole's '1' – beautifully crafted techno that proved very easy to work to. Then the thrill of Van Halen rediscovering what made them so good in the 1970s, returning to their original sound and singer, closely followed by Whitesnake achieving something equally thrilling.

Classical music was embraced by April Albums too, and took up its familiar position in my life either at each end of the day or when seeking something to keep me alert at work. For some reason Czech music played a big part in the month, perhaps for the spring like qualities of the Novak, Dvorak, Janacek and Stamitz that I ended up listening to.

There were some forgettable albums too, but those tended to be the ones that were OK but didn't inspire a reaction. I’m afraid these included the new Best Coast album, We Have Band, Ellen and the Escapades and Neil Finn. But the beauty of this is that not all albums make their mark on first listen, and my favourite of all – Super Furry Animals' Guerrilla – was a grower that I didn't like to begin with. That experience has told me never to write off a long player on first listen, so I haven't dismissed those offerings yet.