A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them. (This weekly feature was previously titled Current Listens. The name’s been updated for clarity’s sake.)
This week, some recent favorites to which I keep returning:
▰ Helena Ford’s Songs for Organ and Synth: an album of stately court music for our hybrid analog-digital present.
▰ The Sounds of the Sounds of Science is a full album of instrumentals from the acclaimed indie rock band Yo La Tengo. The pieces were composed to accompany aquatic documentary shorts by the filmmaker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989). The music is more rock-like but no less atmospheric than the experimental tracks the band released earlier this year.
▰ Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been entertaining pandemic-era listeners with solo performances, under the Songs of Comfort banner. The latest, uploaded today, is the theme composed by Ennio Morricone for the 1998 film The Legend of 1900.