Lockdown Listening Diary
Sounds Good
As soon as we went into lockdown – again – I noticed something different about the music I was listening to. Or something different about how I felt about the things I listened to. I started drawing connections, noticing fluke associations and coincidences. Music is in my life every day and nearly all day. If I’m driving somewhere I have music on. If I’m walking somewhere it’s music in my ears (or maybe a podcast). If I’m working at the computer I’ve got headphones in or a tab on my browser is playing something (Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp). Or the record player is on…
It’s just how it’s always been.
But this week we were sent home (again). And that’s fine. It’s for the best. It was decisive. And we need to play by the rules. These rules are going to save us – once again – from an invisible enemy.
I lined up my list of reading material.
And then I immediately noticed that the things I was listening to took on a deeper resonance. Music is a balm. It’s often there in my life to soothe, to calm – I listen to a lot of soundtracks, jazz, ambient and instrumental music. It’s the background in my ears when writing, reading, working…and in recent years I’ve found drifting off to music a nice (and sometimes necessary) way to ensure a decent sleep.
I wanted to share some of these things I’ve discovered – or re-discovered (and in some cases heard differently) this week. You might know them already, but if you don’t, they might be nice new discoveries for you.
Stephen King’s The Stand Original Television Soundtrack
Not the recent Amazon Prime series, but the original TV miniseries. I’ve got a T-shirt of The Stand book cover, I’m reading the graphic novel set, I’m listening to a huge King podcast with multiple episodes dedicated to The Stand. So on the night before we went into lockdown I listened to this music – maybe for the first time ever. Certainly for the first time in the quarter-century since I watched this long-long movie. The music is great. It tells its own wee story. And The Stand – as you might guess from current obsession with it – feels very prescient. Never more relevant.
Ennio Morricone – The Mission Soundtrack
If a day goes by when I don’t listen to Ennio Morricone, then the next day certainly doesn’t. The Maestro made so many great movie soundtracks that I’m still finding them. But top of the list of the ones I know so well and always return to is The Mission. It is almost Religious Experience Music. Listening to The Mission under lockdown felt like the hug I needed.
Thomas Newman – The Little Things Soundtrack
Alright, this one was “work”, in that I was writing a review of it. Thomas Newman is a very safe pair of hands, one of the great film composers of the last 30 years. So much so that I still sought out this music after watching the film (garbage!) The music – very similar in places to Cliff Martinez and Clint Mansell (two of my absolute favourites) has been part of this week’s security blanket too.
Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest
First work from home day. First musical choice. I just randomly clicked on it. It has been a while since I’ve played it and a while since I’ve listened to anything by Boards. There was a time (but it was 20 years ago – OMG!) when they were just my absolute go-to. As soon as I started listening to this on Wednesday it felt like the music took on a different tone. The weight of the album’s title and the cover image. Back to Stephen King’s The Stand again in some sense.
John Foxx + Harold Budd – Translucence + Drift Music
Across the last decade this has been one of my favourite ambient albums. A drift-off-to-sleep album. One that I do listen to during the day too – the sort of aural wallpaper that can slip on almost unnoticed, but once you’ve spent time with it you’ll know how truly special it is. It’s been helping me to sleep at night again this week.
Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain
There was a time when I listened to almost nothing but Miles Davis (that time, incidentally, was most of 1997 and a fair bit of 1998). I collected up everything I could find and had hundreds of bootlegs on top of all of the official CD releases. Now I carry almost nothing by Miles – my iPod with about 120 Miles Davis albums and compilations was stolen as part of a home invasion a few years back. Since then I’ve never replaced Miles in my collection. So it was another random button-press to hit on this album. And wow, I was transported. This is total third-place music: part jazz, part classical, part something else entirely. And it was a nice place to be taken back to. The waft and drift of the opening feeling never more powerful, never more perfect.
I’ve been re-arranging my records – looking to sell a lot of them. And I’m trying to put all the movie soundtracks together. That meant raiding the “classical section” for this. Purists might laugh at this being in a classical section, but purists can jump. This was my proper introduction to the magic of Mozart – the master melodicist. I haven’t played through the soundtrack in many years, but just yesterday I listened to it twice. Once for luck. Twice for comfort.
Cliff Martinez – Traffic Soundtrack
I mentioned Martinez earlier – and he’s popped up in this newsletter before (and will again). He’s one of my favourite modern film composers. And this is the album that really hooked me in. (Loved the film too). Actually Traffic was the movie that really hooked me into Steven Soderbergh’s work too. I’d been watching most of his movies before this, but this was the one I went to purely because of the director’s name. Same with buying the soundtrack. I knew Martinez (mostly through prior work with Soderbergh) and this was when I used his name as the reason to buy the soundtrack. I so deeply loved this score. And when I listened to this just yesterday I felt its themes – isolation, fear – and seemed to even read into some of the titles for the musical cues.
John Tavener created modern religious, choral works. Hardly ever my bag. But just recently – the last few years – I’ve found the god in music. And listened out for god in music. God with a lower-case ‘g’ by the way. I keep him in the music. If you allow him further into your life there’s no judgement from me at all – just as I’ll hope there’s none from you when it comes to me leaving him in and around the songs, the hymns, the odes…I felt his presence when listening to this though. That’s for certain.
So there are some albums you might not have heard – and some artists you might not have heard of, and there’s even a couple of films mentioned providing a bit of bonus homework if you’re anything like me. And maybe we can both hope that’s not the case at all. You deserve at least a fighting chance after all.
I’ve included the full album in each case – do give some of them a whirl. And for your weekend in lockdown I’ve made a special version of the regular Something For The Weekend playlist. A lockdown-edition that feeds from the same sort of vibes I’ve been finding in these albums above. But hopefully the playlist stretches wider, and should certainly feature a few names familiar and a few more that might well be brand new to you.
I share most of the things I’m listening to - in a sort of diary form I guess - on my Off The Tracks Facebook page and my Instagram. You can get to both and find all my other things (the podcast, e-books, my poetry volume etc) by click here on this Linktree.
Again, take care of yourself and any and all in your bubble. And share your favourite lockdown listening below for even more recommendations.
Kia Kaha
