His recordings tread sincerely along paths laden with dusty timbres, diffuse synthesizer, and soaring string textures tinted by the muted glow of a cloudy analog sky above. On The Time it Takes, Goldmund’s newest book of aural polaroids, Kenniff somehow manages to deepen the emotionality of his already affecting project, creating a space in which to unfold the sorrows of a troubling age and revel in the hope and beauty that follow thereafter. In this sense, The Time it Takes tackles grief head-on, unadorned by themes of escapism or pastorality, and marks another entry in an impressively consistent body of work... 

...As if we needed convincing, Kenniff further proves his skill of crafting sound-design vignettes that are personal, private, and hushed, yet simultaneously grand, colossal, and profound. Nostalgia sometimes suffers the role of low hanging fruit for the marketing world, or worse, a symptom of the stunted development of a generation facing backward in a world that moves unrelentingly forward. But instead of engaging in reductive and culpable pastiche, Kenniff dispels any notions of nostalgia’s counterproductivity by using our collective memory as just another brush to paint with, thereby wresting his music from any linear cultural timeline. To that end there are few artistic voices as distinct as Goldmund’s. Magically conjuring grandeur from only a few simple ingredients (piano, synthesizer, reverb, and a little more) Kenniff’s sound has become so universal that you'd be forgiven for not knowing who it belongs to. Knock offs be damned, every Goldmund recording is cut from an inimitable fabric woven out of emotional realism, honesty, vivid imagination, and skillful restraint." - Boomkat

Her first album in four years, and her debut on Ninja Tune, Healing Is A Miracle feels like an out-and-out distillation of that line of thought. Inspired, title and all, by how the body heals itself – the so-called ‘miracle’ of the title – it’s a sublime panacea at a time when entertaining anything resembling hope almost feels tempting of reproach.

As is Barwick’s wont, not least on 2016’s Will, the slow crest and fall of Healing Is A Miracle isn’t so much a journey as a full-scale rove far beyond. Like being softly guided by the hand, behind the veil and yonder, opener ‘Inspirit’ has all the widescreen oomph of the THX Deep Note, only stretched to four minutes of swarming ambience. “Open our heart, it's in your head,” Barwick repeatedly incants. Saturated in spacious room reverb, and sat above clement drones à la latter day Stars of the Lid, these seven words, simple yet purposely obscured, double up as a vivid opening canticle.

Recorded in the wake of a move from New York, where she had lived for sixteen years, to Los Angeles, Healing is a Miracle is easily Barwick's most intimate – and intentioned – foray in years. Having said that her move to the West Coast was informed by a need for a place that “inspired joy and delight again,” Barwick’s fourth album feels like a transliteration of one person reconnecting to the source. “It was emotional,” she said, “because I was recording music that was just from the heart, that wasn’t for an ‘assignment’ or project. It brought me to tears a little.” - The Quietus

Freed from Waits’ gravelly, way-down-in-the-hole brogue, his female interpreters discover dramatic new shapes and colors within them. Were the songs not almost literally cut from the same cloth, one might worry that the range were too wide, rather than marveling at the adaptability of the songs and their singers...

...Such fine material in the hands of skilled interpreters is a delight. It isn’t even necessary to be familiar with the originals to enjoy this collection. There’s hardly a bad apple in the dozen and the sequencing seems to amplify the songs’ dogged, hopeful mien. If there’s a quibble, it’s that five of the 12 tracks are from “Mule Variations,” which feels like too much given the breadth, quality and depth of Waits’ catalog.

This is such a terrific effort, it would not be surprising if it spawns a raft of imitators. Given the present-day wealth of talented female singers, it seems obvious to reinterpret a variety of feted male artists from a feminine perspective. “Women Sing Waits” sets the idea off to an inspiring start." - Variety

What we are presented with here is thus both an extended bibliography that provides clues to the meanings of some of Bowie’s songs and a set of recommendations, a handy starter for the autodidact, an escape route, as O’Connell puts it, “into other people, other perspectives, other consciousnesses”. And if tackled these books will, he promises, take you “out of yourself, only to put you back there infinitely enriched.”...

...There are plenty of surprises here such as his love for true crime classics like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and travel narratives such as Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines. We learn more about Bowie’s friendships with writers like Hanif Kureishi and William Boyd. It’s also good to be reminded that Bowie loved a laugh and rated Keith Waterhouse. Humour features strongly with Viz, Private Eye, and Spike Milligan’s Puckoon all making the cut...

...To the books themselves: O’Connell does a fine job in summarising plots and arguments whilst doubling up with explanations linking the titles to key Bowie reference points. Take Lolita for example where Nabokov’s comment that an author’s best audience “is the person he sees in his shaving mirror every morning” reflecting back Bowie’s rueful observation about the Tonight album: “all my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience”.

This book celebrates the fact that, in O’Connell’s words, “Bowie’s work might have been inauthentic … but only rarely, in moments of personal or professional crisis, was it insincere”. This book is sincere, a work of love. O’Connell and Bowie signpost you to other great books and as such these tips seem ideal for the young. Teachers should lobby to get this on the National Curriculum." - The Quietus

Our selection from Bowie's bookshelf (with more on the way):

"A

Jamerson arrived in Detroit in high school from his native Edisto Island in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, the state’s southeastern coastal region distinct for its geography and culture, of which Charleston is the main city. Here is a land rich in musical innovators. Listen to Alice Wine at home in Johns Island, who first shared the lyrics “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize,” an update of the hymn “Hold On” that became the famous civil rights anthem (track 21). Or Charlie McAlister, a singer-songwriter who created homemade ditties such as “Paradise” (track 9), with its wholly original sound. Or rapper and activist Benny Starr, whose song “Resurrection” (track 23) opens with a reflection on the landscape: “Where I grew up . . . water had such a profound impact on our traditions and the culture—what we ate, how we lived. Water is a life force, is rebirth and renewal. It’s real spiritual.” Like all of the country’s major Atlantic ports, Charleston County is American cultural bedrock. 

It is fitting that this Southern Music Issue (the Oxford American’s twenty-first) devoted to South Carolina should come in 2019, as the nation moves to better recognize the tragic anniversary of the first sale of enslaved Africans on American soil, in August of 1619. About forty percent of the enslaved people brought to America came through Charleston; today most African Americans have roots in the city (some estimates go as high as eighty percent). Or to put a finer point on it, as Joshunda Sanders writes in this issue, “No Black person has a family tree that has not been pruned by slavery.” Acknowledging, parsing, and reckoning with this history is the prominent theme of this South Carolina music issue—as is celebrating the immense wealth of cultural heritage that has sprung from this small, proud place. Sanders’s very next line is equally as telling: “But just because some of my history is unknowable didn’t keep me from trying to do the spiritual work of reclamation.” 

Other writers dig similar ground, mining South Carolina music history for fresh insight. John Jeremiah Sullivan tracks the Stono Rebellion of 1739 and the consequence of the colony’s subsequent banning of drums. Zandria F. Robinson listens to Ranky Tanky, whose music is “a crash course in Southern lessons and logic, wrapped well in sound.” Mark Powell revisits modern Spartanburg and its homegrown icons the Marshall Tucker Band. Sarah Bryan offers a memoir of old Myrtle Beach. The incomparable poet Nikky Finney memorializes the love shared between blueswomen Clara Smith, “Queen of the Moaners,” and her mentee and partner Josephine Baker. And Jon Kirby chronicles the other life of our cover star, Lake City–native Dr. Ronald McNair, a famous astronaut who was also a devoted and accomplished saxophonist. 

One of the joys of the state-themed format of our Southern Music Issue series is having the opportunity to elevate lesser known artists alongside local luminaries. What an honor to hear among these many voices of South Carolina those like Charleston’s Bill Wilson, who released his first album at age seventy-six last year (track 22) and Columbia’s Aaron Graves, lead singer of Those Lavender Whales (track 11), who tragically died of brain cancer this year, at thirty-three. 

Today, James Jamerson is considered an unparalleled bassist and pop composer (in its “100 Greatest” special issue, Bass Player magazine ranks him No. 1), a legacy he didn’t live to see recognized. It is in the spirit of Jamerson and his secrets that we present here a small cross-section of the ingenuity and influence South Carolina musicians are due. It begins with a contemporary band hailing from the Lowcountry, Ranky Tanky—named for a Gullah expression meaning something like “get funky”—a reclamation-reimagination project of the highest order, whose music is the perfect tone-setter for this issue. Cue track 1..." - Oxford American

"15 years on from both Dave Godin’s death and his fourth volume of Deep Soul Treasures, Kent has compiled a further 25 tracks using titles chosen by Dave for future projects in the series. Many are recordings he wanted from day one of the Treasures concept, but licensing quirks made them unavailable until now. The Emotions’ Somebody New, Helena Ferguson’s Where Is The Party, George Jackson’s My Desires Are Getting The Best Of Me and others are tracks he had wanted to include from the outset. As usual there is an Eddie and Ernie offering and a release associated with Larry Banks and his musical family’s work; Larry’s nephew has contributed the note. The Banks’ track is actually previously unreleased; Kenny Carter’s reading of I’m Not The One which he wrote with Larry Banks and recorded first. It was shelved when his LP project fell through and Larry’s version was later issued on Kapp and featured on the first Treasures CD.

I turned it up loud and let the warmth of it flow all around me – and it transported me to a place I didn't even know I wanted to go.

Something about that loose tangle of electric and acoustic guitars, the swinging heft of the bass, those distant constellations of piano notes, the subtle smack of drums, slightly behind the beat.

When it got to the end, I didn't want to break the spell, so I just had to play the whole damn thing all over again." Stuff