Couldn't let this week go by without noting the sad passing of Arianna Forster (Ari Up, frontwoman of The Slits). The band were amongst the first to fuse punk rock with black music, especially reggae. Ari brought charisma and energy to their stage act.

There's a good tribute on The Guardian newspaper site:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/21/ari-up-obituary

And here's Ari & Co performing "Typical girls" in a London park:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyXGblps64M

Rest in peace.

This debut recording from Martino Vergnaghi blends traditional, even classical, elements with ambient electronica. Yet the blend is definitely his own. I ordered my copy through CD Baby and it arrived in good time and well packaged. Possibly too well-packaged - violence was considered in an effort to get at the contents!

The album opens quietly, yet confidently with If only I could reach …. Layers build up slowly and it soon sounds like he's got a whole orchestra in there. You need to remind yourself this is just one guy with a synthesizer. Lullaby makes for a logical…

Talking of acoustic indie artists, I was recommended to listen to Dan Arborise a while back. He's very like John Martyn in that he gets noises out of the acoustic guitar that I'm sure were never put in there. I'm sure there's a synthesizer and studio trickery involved, but that's fine by me. They're there to be used. His lyrics have been compared to Nick Drake. I'm not familiar with Drake so I couldn't say.

Anyway, it's a very nice sound he's got, mellow and floaty. Unfortunately, there's not much of it on Last as yet, so once again, I'd…

An update on the last post:

Found a video of Dom Coyote performing Sepia Memories at the Half Moon music pub in Putney, a venue I remember well from my time in London. The piece has a nice echo-ey feel and builds slowly. It calls for a wide range of vocal work from DC, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryi2iIEAgl4

There's some interesting things happening in acoustic music all of a sudden and an act that's caught my eye is Dom Coyote & Other Stories. I heard of them through my son who worked with them recently. We're both converts.

DC&OS play what I can only describe as acoustic indie-folk-rap. It sounds like it shouldn't work, yet it does. They integrate the different elements to produce a distinctive and attractive sound of their own. Their ain't much of their work available through LastFM yet, but check out the artists page if you think this might be your thing, or try…

I find Reggae music irresistible for some reason. Maybe it's the lolloping bass lines, the vocal harmonies or perhaps Reggae is just my natural rhythm? I've not really kept up with the scene, since the mid-80s, but there was so much good stuff recorded before that this might just be my best playlist yet. Test plays are certainly very encouraging! Ska features quite heavily as do commercially successful acts like Bob Marley and Eddie Grant. I dip a toe into roots reggae, too.

And another list - this is getting habit forming! This one is in complete contrast to Electric Blue, it's traditional folk and folk-rock stuff from around the British Isles. Like a lot of people, I like atmospheric "Celtick" stuff, but let's not forget traditional English music, too - especially as a lot uses the same tunes. This list takes a broad definition of the traditional, including folk and country-inspired acts like The Proclaimers, Runrig and Clannad. There's a good showing too from Steeleye Span and Richard & Linda Thompson. Some acts have only recently been introduced to me by Last.fm,…

A third playlist rolls off the production line. This was is dedicated to artrock acts like Bowie and Roxy Music and is expanding into ambient music where it sounds compatible with the list.

Enjoy!

Iced Green Tea. Cool, refreshing, complex, subtle and only a little bit posey - but in a good way :-). The image sums up my second playlist of some of the big names in cool jazz and jazz fusion. Cool jazz is a laid-back, spare sort of style that appeared in the mid-50s as a reaction to the hyperactive bebop-style that had gone before. Soloing is more restrained, more matched to the tune.

Jazz Fusion followed. Jazz musicians came to recognise that rock and r&b music wasn't going to go away and that there were things they could learn from…

My first playlist is now up and consists of the kind of people I was listening to in my early twenties, some were more pop and others more alternative but, all were'heavily influenced by the energy of the punk scene and trying to move on from there musically and lyrically.

There was a huge range of experiments going on and I consider myself lucky to have been young at such an interesting time for rock music. The list reflects my preference for the melodic, the well-produced and a decent lyric.

I've restricted my list to artists from my home area,…