KUMO: The influence of a loved one

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The influence of a loved one

As the snow falls yet again I'm going through my iTunes and when it is cold I tend to move away from dance music and more towards the indie, or balearock as I have come to call it, section/file/whatever. To be honest, this post would never have had a chance of happening six years ago before I met my wife. I was deeply into techno and tech-house at the time with a bit of jazz here and there, and my collection was basically a huge pile of instrumental records that did very little but sounded great 'in the mix', stuff like Surgeon, Nils Hess, 16B and the like.

My wife, who has a huge record collection comprising everything from reggae to shoegaze, gave me a copy of David Bowie Young Americans, The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Marvin Gaye What's Goin' On on the first birthday of mine that we celebrated together. I was aware of Marvin Gaye but the rest were new to me and are just a bucket in the ocean of the amazing bands that she has gotten me into. My favourite record that she has gotten me into has to be Aretha Franklin Sings The Blues, which is a phenomenal record and start to finish is perfect. as you can tell Jeni's choices in music are impeccable and I'm determined to get her to take part in the One Hundred Project and will get round to locking her in the record room until she finishes it probably over spring break. It will be incredible, of that I have no doubt.

She is, to steal a line, my north, my south, my east and my west - she is everything that I could ever hope for in a partner and I look forward to growing old with her. She never reads this but if she does for some reason today then all I can is that I love you, Jeni. xx

Below are some of my current favourites and I particularly like the Miracle Fortress track from their superb album Five Roses, which you should seek out immediately if you haven't already.