December's recommended listening

Here goes a post pub winter top ten...will try and keep this a monthly thing for those interested! Anyone out there still buying music..?

1. Fleetwood Mac - Bare Trees LP.
Top winter listening, the simmer before the boil of Rumours, as rewarding but more pastoral (and hairy).
Great cover art too.

2. Talk Talk- The Colour Of Spring LP.
Going through a mad Talk Talk phase right now, total 80's production on this album but sounds tight and right in the year 2008. Mark Hollis I salute you! What the hell is he doing now though? Loved his first solo LP, 4 Men With Beards reissued it on vinyl a couple of years back. RECOMMENDED.

3.Burzum- Filosofem LP.
Bit of a mad jump from 80's pop cum introspective to Norwegian church burners but you've got to adjust your filters to wide, right? THE black metal LP in my book though haven't explored the genre fully (but how much better can it get!?). Total fuzz/buzz guitars over satanic head nodding beats recorded with no guitar amp, cheap prison issue synth and apparently walkman headphones as a mike....go figure. Total winter listening, cutting through the frost like a 5,000 husky led sled at
-100 degrees mph.

4. Hatchback- Colours Of The Sun CD.
Dont know where to start with this one except that I've hammered this album over the last month. Balearic? Cosmic?...I have trouble genre-fying this LP but it's fantastic. A pal, and methinks, musical soul mate of Sorcerer (the self proclaimed 'motorik George Benson") Also who's White Magic LP I recommend strongly... Final track (16+minutes) is a standout!

5. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago LP.
Ok, I'm really riding on the Uncut/Mojo hem here but to be honest I reacted against the 'endorsed by adult music mags thing' by ignoring it. Cue a few months later and it's got under my skin, thanks to my girlfriend's repeated plays.I like the chap behind it, he likes venison stew and so do I. Good eatin'.

6. Hush Arbors-Hush Arbors LP.
My exceptionally good friend Graham and I had the pleasure of dj-ing at the launch of this LP in a local east London boozer of late, and were eagerly awaiting said gig after imbibing the LP for a fist full of weeks. A spellbinding gig and drinks and dances were had and I havent got sick of repeated listens to the LP yet. Out on Thurston 'Sonic' Moore's label Ecstatic Peace, one to add to your Christmas list fer sure. Go get it!

7. Camper Van Beethoven - Telephone Free Landslide Victory.
A real LP from my past here that I've only very recently got around to re-buying and re-listening to. I've been stuck on CVB's version of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk LP for years and kind of eclipsed their own compositions for me. A recent dig into their first 2 LPs brings delights first tickled by my 'if it's weird, indie and American, I'm in' fancy at the time. X years on and it still sounds unique. Seriously one of the most underrated eclectic oddball pop American bands of the latter part of the 20th century.
Investigate.

8. Yellow Moon Band- S/T LP.
Hats off to Jo and Danny, loved the sevens and great to hear them in an album context on this long player on Static Caravan (great label, google it!) Again on heavy rotation at Monsterism HQ and featured on Fred Deakin's Nu Balearica mix CD. Who would have thunk it? The +8 in the mix. Folk/prog/gettin-it-together-in-the-country/jam-tasms galore. x

9. Judee Sill - Judee Sill.
Let's not fuck around here, this is the female-singer-songwriter-honeycomb core! Bit of a late comer to her music but when I heard it on first listen, it felt like a long lost album of a friend knocking on your door. A sorry tale is the life of poor Judee, jail time, prostitution and addiction peppered her short life but somehow this first LP of quasi-mystical-christian content was documented and sounds like nothing else. Classical, almost baroque passages rub up with pedal steel and folk guitar that never fail to melt my woes.

10. Brain Machine - Brain Machine LP
Coming in at number 10 is the mysterious duo of J Trippe and G Zen's Brain Machine project. Deep, expansive, Micronesia-centric modulations communicate with mind and body lapping at the toes, on a deserted black beach.