A year in music: eight random things from 2018

Now in its third year, dear reader, this is Niluccio on noise's entirely unnecessary musical ragbag, the place where I just shove down a few things about music and hope for the best.

Most momentous decision taken

Undoubtedly it was the decision to undertake a once-in-a-lifetime (I hope) refurbishment of all my records. Refurbishment? Yeah, brand-spanking-new plastic sleeves for the lot, with millions of new paper sleeves for my singles. Took me ages. Why did I bother? I explain here.

Old wine in new bottles: the re-sleeving operation

Things most obviously over-purchased

Books about music. I must have bought about 15 music books this year (though nearly all second-hand), several of them rather large things. The slightly alarming end-result is that the gap between music books that I own and music books that I own and have also read just got wider. Will I ever read Peter Hook's Substance? Dunno. Maybe. Or maybe I was hoping for something more ... hoping for something else.

Music listened to

On top of the stuff I've probably blogged about already and the music I've stuck in my boring old podcasts, these are some of the things I've listened to a fair bit this year:

Thurst, Alienation - infectious Pavement-esque slacker-garage stuff

Young Echo, Here - breathless, stoned, near-death dub

Things Disappear - Lee Kirk Fagan's abstract house/jazz/chilled disco radio sets

Dark Thoughts, With You - an epic melodic hardcore song played neither time that I saw them live during 2018

Twinkle Brothers, Never Get Burn - heavy roots/dub classic

Drunken Palms, Easy Love - epic slow-burner, a cross between New Order and Sinead O'Connor

Blood Sisters, Ring My Bell - wonderful steppers-style remake

Hamer - ie, the noise at three of their tear-it-up Hawkwind-doing-The-Damned gigs

Oof, 3.08 Night Bus - slinky minimal pop

Business Dudes, live recording of a song called something like "The 201"

Mature Raver - Aphex Twin's huge Soundcloud dump of electronic oddments

Almost anything on Bokeh Versions

They're all absolutely excellent. Check them out.

Most impulsive purchases

Not quite impulse-buying, but I did find myself carting off surprising quantities of 99p 12"s and LPs from a certain east London record shop where they're also selling things like a second-hand copy of Pulp's Different Class for a mere £119.99. Bargain! Fave buys: a 12" of Kenneth Sherman's Why Can't We Live Together and the Low/Dirty Three's In The Fishtank LP with a label mis-pressed on one side meaning you can only play one out of this side's three songs (which makes it, er, a limited edition). In addition, I repeated last year's somewhat impulsive buying splurge in a sale from an online seller - this time Gringo records. Only the second time in my life I've done this (bought records and CDs online), I've now twice in the space of a year broken my 31-year-old rule of Never Buying New Musical Product. I'm fast becoming a mindless consumer.

Some product

Most shocking jettisoning of music

Going in the opposite direction, 2018 saw me ditch my entire stash of classical records. The lot! Have some sympathy for the symphonies! I explain why here.

Most difficult decision of my non-DJing career

In line with those (moderately) amusing "I am not a DJ" t-shirts you see around these days, I became a non-DJ during 2018. Or rather, after seven straight years of pretending to be a DJ I'm currently on a six-month (so far) lay-off from my painfully amateur between-the-bands-as-they-noisily-get ready-to-play-in-a-small-Brixton-venue DJing. There are REASONS for this. Yes, reasons. But I'm not ruling out a glorious return to the decks in the near future ...

Best things found (and lost) in the street

No books or CDs this year, unfortunately, but I did find an electric piano and nearly found a pair of decent 100W speakers. Or rather, I did find the latter, chatted to the couple disposing of them ("we're moving out, we haven't got room, they work perfectly"), and went back in my car to get them only to find them cruelly scooped up by another music scavenger. Blatant robbery!

From Smith to Shelley

Like last year, this post was going to be "seven random things from 2018" but as I was bashing it out news of Pete Shelley's death emerged. So an extra one. The year (sort of) began with Mark E Smith's death (I blogged about The Fall afterwards here) and is now drawing to a close with Shelley's demise. Two great figures of punk/post-punk, both (roughly) Mancunians and both significant figures in my own musical - and erstwhile Manchester-based - life (another music in a different student kitchen). We're all getting old, we're all dying. Time to play some more music before it's too late  ...