July 14, 2022

Introducing "Assorted Gems"

Not much to introduce here, really. "Assorted Gems" will be my heading for musings on full-length albums, musings that are not part of any other greater project or series. Emphasis will be on full-length albums, but then, why not be flexible? I could imagine live albums appearing under this heading too. EPs? I don't listen to many, but maybe. Bootlegged live shows? Yeah, could be. But then, since exactly 94.826% of my listening is to studio albums, played in full, the emphasis falls right back on, yes indeed, full-length albums.

I'd been thinking about making and annotating a list of my personal Top 100 Albums, but when I started work on it, back in January of this year, I found the process agonizing: and I mean just the selection, let alone the ranking! 

So, to some degree, "Assorted Gems" is a cop-out. On the other hand, I won't need to waste time justifying why I like this or that album more than a hundred or more great others that didn't make the list. A top hundred list has room for exactly that many; an occasional commentary on assorted gems can accommodate many more, and the gems can be gathered from a wider landscape, too. Plus, I think the looseness and spontaneity of the form can do the writing good.

I may still opt, down the line, to do a post with short write-ups about my current Top 25 or Top 33 or something. There does exist a certain dividing line between blindingly brilliant albums, and blindingly brilliant albums that mean the world to me...

No comments:

Post a Comment

Translation: A Night on the Third Planet (Morio Agata)

My months of Takashi Matsumoto study led me, as was bound to happen, to the four albums he produced in that mysterious gray area between Hap...