A Walk Without a Map
Ramblings Music was never intended to be a guide to what you should listen to.
There are already plenty of those.
This is something slightly different: a record of wandering.
Music has always made more sense to me when I stop trying to organise it properly. Genres are useful labels on shelves, but they become rather less useful once the music starts playing. Kraftwerk can sit beside Goat. ABBA can rub shoulders with Iron Maiden. Thelonious Monk can be followed by Tim Curry, Marc Moulin or something released last Friday by somebody I had never heard of before breakfast.
The connection does not always need to be obvious.
Sometimes the connection is simply curiosity.
That is really what Ramblings Music is about. Following one record into another. Finding an unfamiliar artist because somebody produced an album, played on a session, influenced somebody else, came from the same city, or simply appeared at precisely the right moment.
There will be reviews here, although probably not reviews in the traditional sense. I am less interested in deciding whether an album deserves seven, eight or nine imaginary points than in asking a much more useful question:
Did it make me want to keep listening?
Some records will lead to histories. Some will lead to places. Some will lead to other records. Occasionally they may lead absolutely nowhere — and that is perfectly acceptable too.
The companions who appear around these pages will have their own opinions. They will disagree. They will become distracted. Darwin, naturally, will insist that everything belongs together because it all makes noise.
He may have a point.
Think of this, then, not as a music publication but as a walking journal.
There is a path.
I simply have no intention of staying on it.
Ramblings Music 