Dear Afterword brothers and sisters,

Here we go with my favourite 15 reissues and historical recordings so far in 2016. The list is rather reggae-heavy, because … well, because I like vintage 1970s reggae and dub, basically.

In the traditional style(e), we start with the lower ten…

Dear Afterword brothers and sisters,

Well, the first half of the year is just over, and I reckon I can put together a decent list of 25 Favourite albums with a 2016 release date that may be of interest to the Afterword community. I haven’t listed the albums in a strict 1 to 25 order, because many of them I haven’t really heard enough to judge fully yet. So often, a record’s qualities manifest themselves gradually, over a longer period.

I’ve just divided the albums into two groups: 10 favourites so far, in alphabetical order, with a few comments about each, and an additional 15 good‘uns, also in alphabetical order.

I’ll keep the compilations, reissues and historical recordings for another list.

To make things very exciting, we’ll start with the lower fifteen…

Here’s the list of my favourite Reissues and Archival Recordings for 2015.

I can say right away that this is in no way a ‘balanced’ list in terms of genres featured. When it comes to reissued albums or old live recordings, two types of music dominate my purchases: this list of 20 albums includes 8 reggae/dub releases and 6 live albums by Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead. Then there are two jazz albums, two West African albums and two ‘others’.

I found it impossible to put them in a straight 20 down to 1 ranking order, so I’m presenting nos 6 to 20 in alphabetical order, followed by the top 5, also in alphabetical order. I hope Afterworders will find something that’s of interest …

The duco01 top 40 Favourite New Albums of 2015 – Nos 40-21

Here are my 40 favourite new albums of 2015. Some of them I only received recently, and I haven’t really had time to digest them, so placing them in a 1 to 40 ranking list was pretty tricky. Back in my teens, 20s and 30s, almost all my favourite new albums of any year had vocals on them. They were basically albums of songs – pop, rock, folk, reggae, blues, country, world music. All with singing on them. Looking at this list now, I see that only about 12 or 13 of the 40 records have vocals on them. The rest are basically instrumental music, mainly in the ambient / modern classical / chamber jazz genres. I like these albums – of course I do – but I could sort of understand it if someone declared this list to be rather polite, sedate and overly cautious. There’s nothing here that’s going to rock your house to its foundations, if I can put it that way. Finally, I spend quite a bit of my time listening to classic 70s roots reggae and dub, and the music of Jerry Garcia » Continue Reading.