The Underground of Happiness

I decided to do something a little bit different this year. Instead of a bunch of overtly Christmas tunes (much as I love them) I thought I’d do a more general winter theme. (By the way you can find several Christmas playlists from years past on the site if that’s your thing.) So this is a version of winter music. What’s that says you. Music with a sense of time passing. A sense of coming to the end of something. The year obviously but maybe something else too. Some music references the time of year explicitly either in titles or in lyrics. Or the weather we associate with winter in our northern hemisphere. In other cases it’s something in the arrangement. The spareness maybe conjuring up a bare frozen landscape. Take Laura Cannell’s double recorder for example. Or the massive string drones of Slow Moving Clouds . There is meditation in it. Observation of the world and its effect on our selves. And a certain strangeness at times. The alienation of it...

A great collection to mark 10 years of the Manchester-based label featuring 25 artists who have graced its releases over that time. My own personal highlights are – the beautiful delicate cello lines of Andy Nice the bracing pre-modern overbowed violin swells of Laura Cannell the compelling folk narratives of The Doomed Bird of Providence the wonderful loops and samples of Sone Institute building guitar slides and phrases with birdsong and electronic pulses. It warms the heart and the ears that this label is alive in the world. LESSONS by Various Artists

Every week the radio show is a series of mixes, usually a sequence of mini-mixes, 3 or 4 song runs put together to fill an hour. Every now and again though, a bunch of music comes together on my radar, drawn from albums sent to me as well as my own listening habits. Over the last few months I’ve noticed an amount of striking and powerful instrumental music coming together in this orbit I call The Underground of Happiness . All of this has received an airing on the show at some point, but given that I only have 1 hour per week to play with live on air, I thought it would be good to give some of this music an extra platform. Firstly, as you would expect, these are all instrumental pieces, which is to say they don’t contain vocals (although Polar Bear flirt with humming at one stage in ‘No more goodbyes’). In fact, most of these artists are what you would call either exclusively or largely instrumental artists. The cellist Julia Kent for example, exploring the outer reaches of her inst...

Just the way it fell but a bit of a 1980s theme this week. The new Creation Records box set is out on Cherry Red and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy (thanks Ricky). It covers 1983 and 1984, the first two years of the label, and how great it is to hear gems like The Pastels & The Loft . Cardiacs are also being reissued, from 1984, and The Go Betweens from the same year, well we don't need an excuse. Also some winter themes - Laura Cannell , arresting Laura Cannell remixed by Lutine , haunting C Duncan , fantastic misty dream pop Jóhann Jóhannsson , slow moving grandeur Slow Moving Clouds , stringed majesty. And Mikael Tariverdiev , wonderful Russian film music from the 1960s. More on these pages. Dec 1 2015 w Sea Pinks,The Drink,Laura Cannell,Jóhann Jóhannnsson,Go Betweens,Cardiacs++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com w...

Autumn music to start the show this week, the classic bittersweet hymn to the changing of the seasons from The Kinks - trumpets, backwards tape, Sunday roast, the whole lot. C Duncan dreaming of winter and Pure Bathing Culture praying for rain. Some excellent drone material in the next section - Owensie with a flamenco guitar flavour, The Leaf Library giving a nod to Yo La Tengo (shakers), Steeple Remove pumping out the motorik jams. Arresting pastoral tones from Laura Cannell ; deep folk from Finland/Ireland by Slow Moving Clouds . And gorgeous chamber pop with a Peeping Tom edge from Paperface . More on these pages. Nov 3 2015 w/ Pure Bathing Culture,SPLH,Owensie,Steeple Remove,HeCTA++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 376 Tues Nov 3 2015 11.00am-12.0...

Another singular Front & Follow release from the English multi-instrumentalist Laura Cannell . The instrument on show in this track is the remarkable sounding double recorder, which seems to combine notes from different registers. The best comparison I can think of is the uilleann pipes with the drone operating underneath the melody line. The effect is something between medieval music and the freaked folk of The Wicker Man soundtrack. A rural sound certainly, a cousin of birdsong but with bracing notes of dissonance. This from the press release sums it up nicely. Tapping the potent rural landscape and long-dormant musical modes, this album encompasses both wild animal calls and long forgotten liturgical chords, which drawn through Laura’s music seem to originate from the same ahistorical place. It’s tremendous and is guaranteed to make you forget about social media for a while. *This second album track showcases Laura’s other main instrument, the violin, ag...