I have friends (you know who you are) that pay a lot of attention to new music that comes out every month, week, or even day. For a time I felt like I was a slacker for not being able to keep up. I would find myself defaulting back to records that I’ve loved for years, or even decades, and would feel overwhelmed at all of the new music that is released and available all of the time. At some point along the path, I decided to accept how my brain works. There are certain albums that truly light me up, without question. I know (almost immediately) when I hear them, and I’m drawn back to them over and over again. If I give a new album a few spins and there’s no spark, it’s really hard for me to want to listen to it. As a result, I find myself listening to a relatively limited catalog, and I listen to that catalog over and over again.
Sometimes the “spark” albums come from very unexpected places. Earlier this year, and somewhat out of nowhere, I came across an album that has truly become a daily listen. It was through a Bandcamp notification of a new release; the kind of notification that goes directly to the Updates tab in my Gmail and is hardly ever seen. Even when I do see those notifications I almost never click on them. Almost.
Back in June, I clicked on the notification for Ian Hawgood’s 2018 release Hikari on