Friday, January 7, 2022

• Jonathan Coleclough, Casino (disc 1)
• J.S. Bach, Great Organ Works (Peter Hurford, organ) (disc 1)
• Olivier Messiaen, Complete Organ Works (Olivier Latry, organ) (disc 1)
• Jim O’Rourke, Sleep Like It’s Winter
• Oren Ambarchi & Jim O’Rourke, Indeed
• Günter Müller & Jim O’Rourke, Slow Motion
• Henry Kaiser & Jim O’Rourke, Tomorrow Knows Where You Live
• Keiji Haino / Jim O’Rourke / Oren Ambarchi, Tea Time for Those Determined to Completely Exhaust Every Bit of This Body They’ve Been Given
• Jandek, Ready for the House
• Peg Leg Sam, Going Train Blues
• Grateful Dead, Europe ’72 (disc 1)
• Joni Mitchell, Archives Volume 1: The Early Years (1963–1967) (disc 4)

In today’s listening we have great organ works, and we have complete organ works. How about completely great organ works? Messiaen’s “La nativité du seigneur” (1935) is epic and... completely great. (It is grandiose, but I don’t see a problem there.)

Downloaded the entire Joni Mitchell set (five discs) just to hear her sing “Eastern Rain”, because I love the Fairport Convention cover version so much. Mitchell never recorded the song on her own albums. The live versions here are fine, but really: listen to the Fairport Convention version, with Sandy Denny singing.

Jim O’Rourke talks about the creative process behind Sleep Like It’s Winter (2017) in some depth in this interview:

There was one version that was going to have drums on it but it didn’t work. So there’s a hard-drive full of this stuff with drums on it that will rust away. […] In my memory, all the failed versions are sort of mixed up in it. […] I learned a lot of what it wasn’t, but I don’t know if I learned what it is...