First off, my apologies for chronic lack of blog action thus far in 2020. I have a hefty backlog of mixes and radio playlists which are basically ready to go, and which I’d been planning to post here early this year, but - technology hassles have done a number on my ability to prepare ‘em for public consumption, and I’ve lacked the time & inclination to undertake the wrestling with second-rate sound-editing applications and file converters which is now necessary to make this happen.

But, equally, this failure has resulted at least in part from the fact that what little computer-time I do have has instead been taken up with deep scoop bandcamp trawls and wallet-damaging scrambles for verge-of-selling-out vinyl - and let me tell ya folks, things have been frantic recently on that score.

I don’t know about you, but in recent years, I’ve fallen into a pattern wherein I’ve tended to find that the first few months of the year pretty slow-going in terms of new music. For blogging etc purposes, I keep a list of everything I buy/acquire/listen to, and after a few months of trudging back and forth through the cold listening to, I don’t know, The Faces or something equally moribund, I’ve often found myself scanning said list as the daffodils begin popping up and the birds start singing in early March-ish, thinking “hmm, the cupboard is bare – must make more of an effort!”

Not so this year however, as all-seeing 2020 vision has brought forth a veritable embarrassment of riches. Indeed, great stuff has been piling up so quickly since the new year, I can barely keep track of it. Aforementioned cupboard is full of cherry-glazed puddings and exotic pastries and fucking marzipan as far as the eye can see, and it’s only bloody mid-February! Anyone else out there feeling similar, or is it just me?

Admittedly, most of this exciting new listening seems to clustered around a few specific genre sweet spots – new school jazz, metal of various stripes and woodsy, neo-hippie U.S. psychedelia - and there are, inevitably, some latterly discovered 2019 leftovers still lurking in the woodpile, but, here at Stereo Sanctity, we SPIT upon such marginal distinctions of form/aesthetics and chronology, so it will be my pleasure to arbitrarily mix it all up for you in the weeks to come.

Initially, my plan was to cram all my recent discoveries together into a couple of “First Quarter Report” round-up posts, but I ended up writing quite a bit about some of them, so decided in the end it would be more appropriate to post them up here as individual album reviews. The first of these will be up TOMORROW, and all being well I’ll follow up with another post EVERY THREE-FOUR DAYS until I run out of steam, so, if you’re in need of some fab gear to help you get clocked in (or clocked out) for what promises, in its non-musical aspects, to be a singularly grim and vile annum, even by recent standards – look no further, friend. In terms of the humble turntable at least, New Decade is ON.

Labels: series intros