Listening Club - 25th March 2012

Hello again!

First up, thanks to everyone that participated last week - The album, as you all now know, was "Chimes Of Freedom - The Songs Of Bob Dylan" (or rather about a quarter of it ;). Plenty of unexpected voices, and yeah, sorry about the Sting.

Anyways, hopefully this week's selection won't bring us any death threats... ;) So with that in mind, I'll hand over to @jayesofine to introduce it:

"Coming from a small town before the world joined together on electrical highways, the options for cool music were luckily improved by being only 70 miles from London and two club nights that ran through the eighties called Olivia’s and Cindy’s. The element connecting them was a DJ called Bruce and the fact that there was nowhere else to go if you weren't one of the towns Gary’s or Sharon’s (or casuals or scallies as they are known elsewhere).

Every week Bruce would play a selection of Goth, Indie, Acid House, Punk, Rare Groove, Hip Hop and everything else that wasn’t regularly appearing in the TOTP charts. Every week the clans dotted around the edge of the dance floor would wait for their turn on the dance floor, their turn to strut their tribal dance. Some people saw it as an inconvenience waiting for their songs to be played, others, musical sponges like me would quite often stay after the Goth set to bop to the indie, then rave it up to the AAAAcccciiiiid all with Bruce saying his catch phrase of ‘Alright Punters’ over the microphone.

This aesthetic has stayed with me and I find albums that cross genres far more exciting than just listen to purest indie, house or whatever. In fact it’s the ‘whatever’ or ‘what is that’ that appeals to me most.

Hopefully this album, something I discovered a year ago, contains that aesthetic and will bring together fans from all genres.

Or it might just be a bit shit and a waste of your Sunday evening…

…you decide!

PS. Where ever you are DJ Bruce I owe you a lot."

Download link is here (direct dropbox zip file), or there's a stream available on Mixcloud here.

Kick off time this week (and until late September) is 8pm BST (GMT+1) - Yes, after a quick online vote, we've decided to jump forward with the seasons. Hopefully that doesn't upset your planning.

As always, search #listeningclub and follow @listeningclub to see what's going on... as you should know by now, the best comment, as picked by Jaye, will get the chance to select next week's album.

See you at 8...

The Listening Club - 18th March 2012

Hello everyone.

Forgive the sparse look, just wanted a simple way to get some info up - this will do for now, will make it look nicer if needs be...

Anyways, welcome to The Listening Club, I'm Eric, and I live here, and it's my honour to kick this into touch.

To quickly explain why I've decided to do this, well, I'll pin the blame on the actual album I'm offering as the instigator! It's a new (2012) compilation album, and not something that I would have chosen to listen to, had it not fallen in my lap. Someone said, do you want a copy of this, so I said, "Yeah, sure, might be fun". I reckoned that I'd like some company to shoot the shit while listening, and a few tweets later... well, here you are.

Right.

I have one small apology/explaination to make before playback.

Unfortunately the album that picked itself, and kicked off this whole thing, is far too long to offer to you all in total - I don't want to keep you here till midnight (yeah, it's that long). Truth be told, I thought it was long, but not quite as long as it actually is. (You may have guessed it by now ;)

Rats.

So.... in the interests of your harmony and sanity, I've edited it down to an hours worth. A shame for me, because I didn't actually want to listen to it before tonight, but needs be. I've dug the (whole) hole, so I should fill it.

Don't worry, it's still worth it.

Now... I've assembled a download here (85MB) for your temporary listening use. I haven't tagged or titled the tracks, so if you're feeling adventurous, and I hope you are, just cue it up and hit play at 8pm GMT (clock here). I think listening blind will make it more fun!

There is a text file included with full details of what you'll be listening to, so if you really really have to know in advance, read it. I'd rather you didn't... but I'm not going to stop you (don't shout it from the rooftops tho, if you do, so others can still play along) - I'd like to keep rules to a minimum, but I prefer blind listening - It's more adventurous, open minded, listen without prejudice etc...  In future weeks, It's up to whoever picks to decide if they want to reveal or not...

Similarly, there's also a Spotify playlist version here if you don't want to download, but obviously you'll see the tracklist!

Either way, it's your choice. Whatever you choose to do, thanks for coming along, give it a try, tweet comments with the #listeningclub hashtag and I hope you're looking forward to the coming selections as much as I am - I can't wait to hear what you all have up your sleeves!

Much love,

EK

PS Obviously, if you have any problems grabbing or opening the file, tweet to @listeningclub - don't post comments here, I won't be looking for them. kthxbai!