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2025 Music Discovery Award!!!


This had a few things that might have prevented me from discovering it:
1. I'm not a millennial
2. I have an aversion to influencers, photography (or fashion) used to promote classical music
3. Technically challenging pieces from Alkan often sound, sterile, or overly stylized and loose.

I had a minor revelation when I put away those biases and listened to this and the rest of the recording. Feels less like it was made for a studio or critique, and more like it was played for me standing beside the piano as a visiting guest. And I came to appreciate Le Festin d'Ésope in better way, and grew personally as an aging listener.
 
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My favourite album this year, not not necessarily my favourite song -


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If your tastes in music are less focused, open minded, genre agnostic and you want to find good, out of the mainstream stuff. I find this site very good because of a few things; 7-8000 short 1-2 paragraph reviews, very diverse content, and a good search engine. I have Qobuz and probably 80-90% of the titles are there. Start by reading a dozen pages to get a feel and then try the search box with the name of your favorite city or country, obscure genres that you like cumbia, fado, surf, highlife, etc. Even the main genre searches country, classical, jazz will bring in some nuggets. This year I have found these releases here at https://kfjc.org/music and Qobuz

Sings the bygone high lonesome sound in a falsetto, a more humorous less sardonic John Prine like witty lyrics throughout

Mathew Herbert, AKA Doktor Rockit, of a dozen movie soundtracks and electronica teams up with the soothing voice of Momoko Gill

Multi-national multi-instrumental European Jazz-Rock fusion band has a very integrated laid-back vibe throughout easy for the Jazz adverse

Phi-Psonics an acoustic combo keeping the Jazz improvisation alive without too much edge

Spanish and Portuguese Hip-Hop with very cool jazz accompaniment that may surprise haters of ether genres

Singing without words this is easy on the ears through the whole recording each song a little different
 
This is such an uplifting song….

 
Loving listening to these suggestions. Here's mine, it's a special one to me personally as the artist is a friend and I've been looking forward to this album for a good five years. There's a few well-known guests on here and amazing performances, but I won't name them as it's been fun recognising the voices and guitar solos by ear. :)
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https://soulshinemusic.bandcamp.com/track/parisian-rooftops

Edit: Just listening to it again and wow, that final climax...
 
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This is not my entry, since I posted that above.
However, I do like to tell all and sundry about Madison Cunningham, whose albums are exquisitely enjoyable. I didn't "get" her when she won the Grammy a couple of years ago, and then one evening a year or two later, I listened through her Grammy winning album, Revealer, beginning to end. I have played it a couple of dozen times since. Music that grows on you. Cunningham has the whole package: writes musically interesting and often catchy songs, plays guitar, sometimes in extraordinary ways, and has one of those "clear as a bell" alto (or maybe a mezzo) voices.
Cunningham released another album this year, from which I will include a performance below.
In addition, last year, she and Andrew Bird recorded a track by track complete cover of the somewhat obscure 70s album Buckingham-Nicks. (The album those two unknowns recorded before the rhythm section of Fleetwood Mac picked them up to record an eponymous first album and then "Rumours".) I have not had a lot of chance to air this one but I am told it's better than the original, which apparently is also quite good. I think Buckingham's guitar stylings might be an inspiration for Cunningham; they both play in highly original ways.
Anyway, you can't get a real sense of Madison Cunningham from one song, but maybe this will whet your appetite.
 
For some (sanctimonious) reason I always thought the members here were like me and appreciated music made by human beings playing actual instruments, not "music" made with computers and auto-tune. This recitation makes clear how wrong I was, and what a F-ing dinosaur I (proudly) am.
 
GD Fan said:
For some (sanctimonious) reason I always thought the members here were like me and appreciated music made by human beings playing actual instruments, not "music" made with computers and auto-tune. This recitation makes clear how wrong I was, and what a F-ing dinosaur I (proudly) am.
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This is exactly the criteria for the indie-folk list we've been producing each of the last 13 years. I have a separate thread on this in this section, and it might strike your fancy.
Every video shows the artist in performance, so no goofy artsy official videos or static images. I don't think it's all that old fashioned since we find 7 or 8000 new performance videos every year. We then publish a discovery list, 750 very good videos this year, and finally the top 40. These are all in indie-folk and adjacent genres, tending toward acoustic. No metal, and not much hard rock or rap, so, not for everybody.
The entire final playlist can be viewed like a concert, which is the main idea.
 
MonkeyKing said:
The simplicity of this song is something I love. Its the perfect turn off the lights and listen song and well engineered. There is a few videos of this, but this is the least distracting.

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FYI. Your video is listed as unavailable. I'm in Canada. Usually this means there's a copyright/licensing restriction to certain countries, like the US only.
 
Artsfols said:
FYI. Your video is listed as unavailable. I'm in Canada. Usually this means there's a copyright/licensing restriction to certain countries, like the US only.
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Sorry about that. Unfortunately, not something I could tell beforehand (or at least that I knew).
Here is the Apple Music link to the Song.
 
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