Buy from Amazon
iron & wine & calexico - in the reins
Buy from Amazon
francoiz breut - une saison volee
Buy from Amazon
jeb loy nichols - now then (& the october ep on cd at last)
Buy from Amazon
ana d - morning becomes eclectic
& that about does it. the new brian eno has its moments as does the new benjamin biolay. the daniel lanois is cool but i prefer his pop song stuff. the bertrand bergalat was worth it for a few songs & a wonderful animated video that was inspired by the alfreda benge artwork on r. wyatt's ruth is stranger than richard lp. burnt friedman reinvented himself as a thirties swing band...interesting but not as cool as his neo-dub-jazz. i'd already paid the $ for the import 12"ers released on the stereolab box but the dvd was worth watching. the broken flowers soundtrack is great & i bought a couple cool mulatu astatke cds as a result. & ok, some of ryan adams new stuff is great too.
other than that i spent most of '05 obsessed with these things (again)... morricone, piccioni, etc. soundtracks, francoise hardy lps & more 60s - 70s brazil, bossa nova. some highlights as follows...
bruno nicolai - eugenia de sade '70
francois de roubaix - films of jose giovanni
odette lara
quarteto em cy
bossa cinematica encore
edda dell'orso - dream within a dream
seduction of piero piccioni
ennio morricone - high
ennio morricone - in love
quite frankly, i could choose better material for these italian soundtrack compilations. at least someone is paying attention to this stuff though.
i also stumbled onto the band lambchop. i don't know why i didn't try them sooner. awcmon/ no you cmon & is a woman are great!
not a banner year to be sure but plenty of wonderful music to be heard anyway... mm, cuba, ny