Quality Music Albums to Listen to During Your Self-Quarantine
One of the main aims of nodmusik.com is to provide you with quality music. After some weeks full of intensive listening moments, we’re back with a blog post to give you some quality music albums to vibe out to. Here we present some quality music albums for all your socially distanced needs spotlighting tunes that you should keep on repeat.
Despite the reality of what we’re all going through amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there is something profoundly communal about this experience. We all spend time in solitary at our homes and consume the same online content to distract us from the problem, and this serves a dual purpose of keeping us connected.
Besides that, the pandemic has caused something positive. The world is taking one deep breath. So, what if this is an opportunity for each of us to do the same? To stop, even for a short moment, and find something really beautiful in this moment. And to give it our full attention.
One of our joys during quarantine period has been to go through our favorite albums. We don’t often find time to listen through an album and notice all the minute details of sounds and stories. Recently, during long stretches at home, unable to see friends or family and travel that often, we’ve turned to album approach to keep our mind focused on a package of art, an album so to say, for a period of time. One album is uplifting for when the constant negative news and colleague talks leaves us emotionally negative. Another is melancholic, nostalgic and emotive from a time when the world was more amazing.
1. Lazy Sunday
Morcheeba are Skye Edwards and Ross Godfrey. After more than 10 million sales across 8 albums, the The British trip-hop pioneers released their most recent album ‘Blaze Away’ in June 2018 – bringing the tally to 9. They formed the band along with Ross’ brother Paul in 1995 and have toured the world multiple times to the delight of their fans over the last two decades. Skye has one of the most recognisable voices on the planet, hearing her smooth, effortless tone teamed with Ross’ psychedelic guitar is an unforgettable, spellbinding experience.
Why Don’t You Dance (2017) – Eckhardt And The House
The music of Eckhardt And The House can be best described as vintage pop. Eckhardt And The House is the brainchild of Rik Elstgeest known in The Netherlands as a producer for a variety of projects, his latest being Mass Electric together with his producer buddy’s Bo Koek and Gerry Arling.
2. Jazzy Monday
Illusions (2013) – Ibrahim Maalouf
A pioneering figure in the world of contemporary jazz thanks to his fusion of pop, soul, electro, hip-hop, and French chansons with the music of his Lebanese roots, Ibrahim Maalouf is widely regarded as one of the most gifted trumpeters of his generation.
At Home (2005) – Avishai Cohen
Jazz bassist, composer and singer, Avishai Cohen plays a sophisticated mix of post-bop and contemporary jazz infused with Middle Eastern traditions.
3. Rock Tuesday
The nameless lineup that became Atoms for Peace made its public debut at Los Angeles, California’s Echoplex on October 2, 2009. Thom Yorke, joined by longtime Radiohead associate Nigel Godrich (Ultraísta) and Flea (Red Hot Chili Peppers), as well as session veterans Joey Waronker (also of Ultraísta) and Mauro Refosco (Forro in the Dark), performed the entirety of Yorke’s 2006 album The Eraser and some fresh material, including a song titled “Judge Jury and Executioner.” Additional Los Angeles dates, a brief tour across the U.S., and an appearance at Coachella followed through 2010.
Since their formation in Croydon, South London in 1994, Archive have operated as masters of their own destiny, eschewing prevailing trends for a more unique musical blend of their own. Founding members Darius Keeler and Danny Griffiths, who had previously worked together in pioneering drum & bass outfit Genaside II, joined forces with South London rapper Rosko John, and Iranian-born singer Roya Arab for 1996’s trip-hop tinged and critically acclaimed debut album, Londinium.
4. World Music Wednesday
Ronroco (1998) – Gustavo Santaolalla
Over the course of several decades, Gustavo Santaolalla has been recognized as a gifted multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, and composer. He has enjoyed a multi-phased career that took him from his home country of Argentina to the United States, Mexico City, and back to Los Angeles. His storied journey includes Grammy and Oscar wins, and the respect of the entire movie and music industries for his artistic accomplishments. Some of his Oscar-winning scores include Brokeback Mountain, The Motorcycle Diaries, Babel, and August: Osage County, as well as Grammy wins for his production work with Julietta Venegas, Cafe Tacuba and several others. His score for the video game The Last of Us also won awards from the video game industry. His solo albums, notably Camino and Ronroco, were also nominated for Grammys.
The Astounding Eyes Of Rita (2009) – Anouar Brahem
The role of the Arabic, lute-like, stringed instrument, the oud, has been revolutionized through the playing of Anouar Brahem. While used in the past to accompany vocalists, the oud is used by Brahem as an imaginative solo instrument. In 1988, Tunisian newspaper Tunis-Hebdo wrote, “If we had to elect the musician of the ’80s, we would have, without the least hesitation, chosen Anouar Brahem.” Brahem has composed numerous pieces for such films and musical theater productions such as Sabots en Or, Bezness, Halfaouine, and Les Silences Du Palais. He collaborated with Maurice Bejart on the ballet Thalassa Mare Nostrum, and with Gabriel Yared on the Costa-Gravas film Hanna K.
5. Progressive Rock Thursday
In Absentia (2002) – Porcupine Tree
Though he initially came to wider attention (at least in the U.K.) with No-Man, his long-running collaboration with Tim Bowness throughout the ’90s, singer/guitarist Steven Wilson gained as much of a reputation for Porcupine Tree. Embracing and exploring prog rock inspirations while always keeping an ear out for newer musical connections, thus sidestepping the pointless revivalism of many of the band’s peers, Porcupine Tree has created some noteworthy albums and songs over the years, continuing full-strength into the new millennium.
Blackwater Park (2001) – Opeth
Since their arrival in 1990 as the self-proclaimed “most evil band in the world,” Sweden’s Opeth have become one of the most influential heavy metal groups in all of Northern Europe. Though their musical beginning was rooted in occult-saturated, doomy death metal, as evidenced by 1995’s Orchid and the following year’s Morningrise, by the time they issued 1998’s globally acclaimed My Arms, Your Hearse, they were already threading progressive elements into their music. As the band’s individuals grew musically and personnel shifted, their approach and sonic palette expanded. 2001’s groundbreaking Blackwater Park may have drawn heat from purist death metal fans and critics, but global prog-metal fans championed it.
6. Up-Tempo Electronic Friday
Parts of Life (2018) – Paul Kalkbrenner
Berlin’s Paul Kalkbrenner is a unique international talent. In fact, with seven studio albums and more than 2.3 million Facebook fans, he is one of techno’s biggest superstars. In a time where the big drops of EDM (Electronic Dance Music) and cake-throwing DJs seem to reign supreme, Paul Kalkbrenner is keeping his cool. He trusts on his remarkable talent as a producer and live act—no added artificial flashiness needed. He can rave with the best of them, and raise his arms to full dancefloor delirium, but his head will never spin right off.
Ben Böhmer‘s childhood was minted by musical fulfillment through learning the piano, the trumpet and growing up under the influence of many different musical genres. It wasn’t until years later, that he came to electronic music through experiments with synthesizers and became a producer. His live sets are an absolute highlight as he improvises around his own productions which have appeared on such esteemed labels as Anjunadeep, Keller Rec., or Sacrebleu.
7. Down-Tempo Electronic Saturday
Sunrise From The Treetops (2014) – Hinkstep
Hinkstep is the alias of the Swedish audio engineer and musician Jonas Tegenfeldt who became interested in music in a very young age when he started to play drums. The artist followed a musical journey beginning with rock and metal to drum and bass, continuing with trip-hop and finally, finding his own niche in the elysian fields of psychedelia. While his music has been previously identified as psychill or psybient, compositions such as “Aldrig Mer” make the artist’s genre something that is hard to pin down due to his unique sound and eclectic beats. Mixing classical psybient tunes with a strong, yet gentle emotional core, the artist has been making music since 2005 with this alias and has been under constant progression since then.
Ott is a British record producer and musician who has worked with Sinéad O’Connor, Embrace, The Orb, and Brian Eno, and has achieved recognition since 2002 for his own psychedelic dub tracks and his collaborations with Simon Posford (Hallucinogen / Shpongle). He has released two albums on Twisted Records: Blumenkraft (2003), Skylon (2008) and two albums on Ottsonic: Mir (2011) and Fairchildren (2015).
8. Amazing Moments Sunday
All Melody (2018) – Nils Frahm
Nils Frahm had an early introduction to music, learning the piano throughout his childhood. It was through this that Nils began to immerse himself in the styles of classical pianists from previous generations as well as the music of contemporary composers, before forging his own musical path through composition. Today Nils Frahm continues to work as an accomplished composer, producer and celebrated performer from his Berlin-based studio at the renowned Funkhaus.
re:member (2018) – Ólafur Arnalds
Icelandic composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer Ólafur Arnalds earned a reputation in the late 2000s for blending luminous neo-classical works with subtle elements of post-rock, pop, and electronic music, recording a series of highly regarded releases for the Erased Tapes label, including 2007’s Eulogy for Evolution and …And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness. In addition to forming the experimental techno duo Kiasmos with Faroese-Icelandic minimalist Janus Rasmussen, he also branched out into film and television soundtracks, earning acclaim for his scores to the films Another Happy Day and Gimme Shelter as well as the BBC series Broadchurch.
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