Here's one that I bet most of us weren't expecting: an album by former Radiohead drummer, Philip Selway. And an excelent one, at that. Mostly an acoustic affair, it manages to both impress us with the consistent quality of its songcraft and the emotion with which it is delivered. A keeper, then.

Galaxies away from the music his former band used to make, this is an album that feels homegrown and as a result, quite intimate. It's almost like the time had come to put out all those songs that he'd been keeping in his drawer that served as an escape to all the avant-garde musical explorations of his former day job. And we're all glad he did. At least I am. This is a very gentle sounding album, much in the vein of the one on the below post, its difference being on the musical ambients Selway manages to conjure, which are in turns mysterious and at times romantic.

Listen to The Witching Hour, the album closer.

Here's a band I've been warming to quite recently, norwegian duo Kings of Convenience. Paraphrasing Vanilla Sky, they had me at the Simon and Garfunkel vocal harmonies. I was literally and instantly hooked on their sweet sounds. And I've been rotating this, their second album - Riot On An Empty Street - quite heavily for the past few days.

Their main appeal is actually quite simple and straightforward. It stems for their exquisite talent in crafting the gentlest melodies I've heard in quite a long time. Because that's just what this is: a collection of gentle songs, gently sung by - yes, why not? - two very gentle men. It's the kind of record you put on a Sunday morning and slowly get into the groove of a new day, preferably spent at home cuddling your pet(s) and drinking latte in front of the TV or on the front porch.

As a taster, I leave you with Misread, one of my favorite tracks at the moment.

I've been listening to this wonderful song for days on end now and I still haven't tired myself of it. It's another of those cases where you find something truly sublime amidst a soundtrack noone's ever heard of before. In this case it's Riz Ortolani's soundtrack for Prosperi and Jacopetti's Addio Zio Tom a.k.a. Goodbye Uncle Tom, a powerful indictment of racism and suppression of human values made by the "godfathers" of the Mondo movie, a kind of exploitative documentary exposing some of the grossest things human beings are capable of.

It's actually one of the most schocking movies ever made and sometimes the message it wants to convey isn't quite that well translated into images like their author's would've wanted them to be but it's there for all to see and judge. The music however is glorious and that's always been the main paradox with maestro Ortolani: no matter the amount of gore and blood on display, the melodies he creates are always grandly romantic which, I personally think, only helps to stress their power by way of contrasting them.

The song I have here for you today is called Oh My Love and is sung by Katyna Ranieri. And it's wonderful. Take a listen.

I'm not trying to provoke any cosmic backlash unto me but the fact is that today is Equinox and here I am talking about a record by Oberon called Midsummer Night's Dream.

I just found it by simple hazard (I prefer to call it serendipity) and fell in love with it. It's extremely rare (I think only 150 original copies were made!) and it features some of the loveliest folk sounds you'll likely to hear in quite some time. For seasoned folk lovers, maybe you won't find here nothing new but in my opinion, it has that one ingredient that separates it from most of what you've heard so far: magic.

I especially like the treatment they made to one of Debussy's classic pieces: Syrinx. I could hear it ad eternum and imagine myself daydreaming in a meadow somewhere. Maybe I just will.

Lovely video for Headless Heroes' Just Like Honey. Very evocative of their own particular brand of sound. Stay safe.

One of the initial goals of this little blog was to kind of promote awareness to music that is often times underevaluated and unknown, while at the same time reevaluating that same music and getting the readers to listen to it with new ears. Today I bring to you something I'm quite sure only some of you have ever heard of. At least, I assume so.

Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants began its very life as a soundtrack for a documentary of the same name which in turn was based on a book of the same name. Plus, it had the very ungrateful task of following one of Wonder's high watermarks - Songs In The Key Of Life, which many consider to be his masterpiece. So, a difficult album case study. However, not only does it succeed beautifully in following that almost miraculously produced album, it even surpasses it at times, which is no mean feat at all from whichever angle you see it. And for as hard as I try to explain it here with mere words, you simply have to listen to it to fully understand just how far he was pushing his production and songwriting skills at the time. Sometimes, it feels like an aural orgasm, especially if you listen to it with your headphones on.

For proof, try the gorgeous Come Back As A Flower. See you soon.

Genre-hopper extraordinaire Ryuichi Sakamoto's Smoochy album is one I find myself listening to from time to time always with a renewed sense of wonder. It's almost like I keep finding new things about it everytime I listen to it.

And this is a crucial album if you want to find out what this man's music is all about and how it got where it is today. In it are the seeds of everything he went on to do, be it his electronic explorations with Alva Noto, his acoustic albums with piano and strings, or even his ongoing romance with bossa nova and other latin american music languages. It's all here.

I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite tracks - Bibo No Aozora - one that has been reworked by him in multiple ways in the past and always successfully, which only goes to prove just how simple in their complexity his songs really are. And in this lies his greatest gift. Enjoy it.