Please read my question… this is not a thread about music you like.
After buying and consuming music for around 46 years now… I am pretty tapped out finding unknown recordings and stuff that really excites me. I just had a fabulous find:
Bonnie Raitt & Lowell George with John Hammond - Ultrasonic Studios 1972
This is a live radio broadcast from WLIR radio and recently released in 2014. I discovered this a few weeks ago on YouTube… so you can check out the full CD there. Bonnie was 23 for this broadcast and had two records out. What a voice. The recording is not exactly high fidelity, has a ton of tape hiss, and there are few stings out of tune here and there… but I don’t care. Is she playing slide on a Dobro? No rehearsals…they are making it up as the go. Nice.
So what about you? What was your last “find” that really surprised you?
I have been buying a lot of records. My collection was zero a year ago and I’m just breaking 100. A lot of my vinyl purchases are focused around sound fidelity, realism, soundscapes.
One record I particularly enjoy is called Persuasive Percussion by Terry Snyder and The All Stars.
I was listening to a bunch of suggested stuff on youtube after looking for and finding some really nice progressive rock. At some point they had me listening to Lainey Schooltree, Heterotopia. Wow, was she good! She had a web site and I wanted to be able to here this on something other than the computer speakers at work so I ordered a copy of it and her first CD. I’ll say the first CD didn’t do much for me but Heterotopia was everything I could have hoped for and more. The writing, the performance, the attention to recording were all way better than average. On top of that, the CD came with a hand signed letter of thanks. No, I don’t know her. This is not a plug but if you’re curious, check her out on Youtube. If you’re a prog rock fan like me, I bet you order a copy. I’ll order her upcoming, Patreon as soon as it’s available.
In the “goth art-rock” genre, Agnes Obel has been a wonderful discovery for me. https://www.agnesobel.com/
In the category of “unclassifiable,” the improvisational group Dans Le Arbre has been getting a lot of repeat play time, very unusual soundscapes (and quite an interesting demo disc for your system.) https://danslesarbres.net/release/ They certainly challenge traditional expectations of musical development, harmony, and melody.
I’m in a similar boat. Being a musician and music enthusiast in general, I find myself listing to the same stuff over and over so I can truly absorb and appreciate what has been recorded. As a result I find it hard sometimes to find new music and when I do it takes time for me to start truly appreciating it.
Anyway, to your question, the last thing I found that really blew my mind was Nils Lofgren. He was the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen who did some solo acoustic stuff.
The recordings are excellent and the the whilst it took me a while to get on the hook, he has recently become one of my favorite artists and go-to tracks when fiddling with my system or testing new components.
I recommend people have a listen to the song Keith Don’t go. Its fantastic and really works well on my system.
A friend introduced me to a band called The Hu. They are a group of Mongolian throat singers that are in to heavy metal. I listened to one song on YouTube and promptly ordered their CD. Haven’t received it yet but definitely excited.
this lot are a north german band, they play medieval instruments, drums and pipes mostly, but it, too, is kinda heavy rock (as it might have been played in the middle ages).
found it on facebook of all places, and got in touch to buy a CD directly from them. great stuff
So I found a band named Hameln from Czech Republic on Bandcamp, but they don’t seem to match your description. Do you have a link I can go to and check them out? Thanks!
Don’t know if this meets your criteria, but here is a group I stumbled upon based out of Germany.
Given the eclectic nature of the music on the two live recordings I recently ordered on CD*, I think the international (e.g., western and central Europe) make up of the band makes them incredibly interesting if nothing else. They have been around a while but they are brand new to me:
