111 Albums to Take in to Isolation — Part One
I recently completed something of a unique trip to go and ‘find myself’. Upon reaching an isolated cabin, miles away from the nearest town, neighbours or wifi hotspot in a beautifully crisp (aka. fucking freezing) pine forest in Norway — I realised I had an opportunity.
As much as I try not to, I’ve fallen fowl of the temptation streaming has brought. I hadn’t been giving myself the time or space to really listen to albums regularly, to really connect with them from start to finish. Suddenly, I had that chance. Just me, the forest and nearly three weeks without human contact seemed the perfect time to reconnect with the form.
I listened exclusively to albums — beginning to end — for 111 albums (or 13 days if you prefer to deal in a more concrete version of time).
It wasn’t planned, but as it grew I realised there was a reason why I had listened to each album I had — it told a story about where I was and how I got to that point.
This is my reflection on that journey. Split in to eleven parts.
Beth Gibbons and Henry Górecki — Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (2019)
It was dark when I arrived, 10 miles away from where the boat left me, ceremonially carted down a road in to an empty cabin. A small fire lit the room somewhat, a lamp did the rest.
The music began and somehow it seemed to hang in the air. Symphony of Sorrowful Songs is not what you may have necessarily expected to come from a discography that includes 3 of the finest trip hop albums made — but it works. Cellos intertwine beautifully with Gibbon’s other wordly voice, both managing to sink in to the maelstrom and stand out from it at once. It deserves patience and gives back joy. It’s hard not to get lost.
Big Thief — U.F.O.F. (2019)
The sense of space continued but this time, the music didn’t become one with the surroundings, it highlighted it instead. It’s always hard to describe the impact music can have when you’re tired, slightly out of place and can hear nothing but that music — but if there’s an album to listen to in this situation it is U.F.O.F.
It’s no surprise this album will feature on many compilations of best albums of the 2019, at that point — it was still the best Big Thief album of the year, before Two Hands came along. It’s gorgeous, stylised, layered and perfectly executed.
Boards of Canada — Twoism (1995)
This may have been one of the albums I was less familiar with before listening . I can’t explain what tempted me away from my usual haunt of Tomorrow’s Harvest, but somehow it felt the right thing to do to close the night off.
It picks off perfectly where U.F.O.F. sets down and takes it to that next level. From the opening track it invites you to let it takes its time and draw you in to its mix of synths and drum machines. For something so electronic and lacking vocals, it manages to remain incredibly human.
Bob Dylan — Blonde on Blonde (1966)
Waking up meant sunlight so unfiltered, that it inspires you to move. This is lucky because the nearest shop was a 9 mile walk away, I had no food in the cabin and that’s not a sustainable position.
So I threw some clothes on, grabbed my headphones and walked outside. Blonde on Blonde sits perfectly as an accompaniment to doing something you both wish to do and not. The walk along the fjord was beautiful, but long, and made easier by the presence of a wisecracking friend in my ear named Dylan.
I’d been walking an hour when Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands began, the light was soft over the fjords and all I could think was I was hearing one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded.
Bon Iver — Bon Iver (2011)
An opening song can make or break an album — it really is the calling card of the experience left to be had and this is particularly effective on Bon Iver. I had many conversations about going to ‘do a Bon Iver’ on this trip, go isolate myself in the woods and come back with a perfectly crafted For Emma and a woodsman's beard.
But early on I realised the time would be reflective, but not sorrowful or wistful and for that reason I never had a need to listen to For Emma, but I had every need for Bon Iver. There remains something otherworldly about the quality of sound on Bon Iver — summed up perfectly by listening to Beth/Rest. By the time the album draws to this closing point, it’s hard to imagine the rest of the sounds that surround you not being bathed in love and reverb.
Damien Rice — My Favourite Faded Fantasy (2014)
The walk back took on a different tone to the initial journey. The fear of getting lost dissipated as I was now confident with the twists of the path that would get me home. I’d set my markers, knew my place in relation to them and with a full belly and a fuller rucksack — I got moving.
My Beautiful Faded Fantasy instantly feels different to Rice’s other work, more grandiose and spectacular. It’d be easy to feel that this would mean the songwriting took a back seat and became distant, however all the swills of strings and elongated songs only seem to help the words — more carefully chosen than before and more heavily loaded than their previous incarnations. Much like the contents of a now, much heavier rucksack.
Elbow — build a rocket boys! (2011)
There are different ways to be gentle in life. Guy Garvey manages to do it while slapping you hard on the back, nearly knocking you over, leaving an annoying sting but somehow making you feel completely and utterly secure and at ease.
build a rocket boys! is the real marvel of Mancunian music, it manages to capture all of what built the men that made it and the city they surround themselves with. While relatable to some, it will be woefully distant for others. The talk of causing havoc on residential streets are cute stories, but for me are a direct link to a point of my life that seems unachievable to replicate for me or any children I may have. Surrounded by the hills to one side, trees lining the slopes and the expanse of water to the other — I felt comfortable, easy and at home.
Kate Bush — 50 Words for Snow (2011)
I began reading. Quite what I read was nowhere near as systematic or considered as what I listened to, but was equally as revealing. Having brought nothing but empty notebooks with me to the fringes of the arctic circle, I was reliant on the books that were there to occupy me. I read every book in English I found.
50 Words for Snow may not be the work that gets remembered when people discuss Kate Bush, but it’s such a shame it isn’t. It is a mature and challenging album at points, but sonically beautiful. It feels more of a reflection of Bush’s later life than simply an album — someone so fundamentally wanted and unable to give. The voice of Stephen Fry counting down the 50 words almost felt like a countdown directed only at me at that point — deepnhidden, shovelcrusted, mountainsob, blown from a polar fur — I had a lot more time alone to go.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds —Ghosteen (2019)
It was only a matter of days after Ghosteen had been released that I began this. My first full listen actually came on the plane, bundled in clothes I couldn’t pack and sore from the weight of bags I managed to.
It fits a mould of a certain breed of artist, ones ready to eschew their core to make something more realistic and vulnerable and the way these albums seem to go (A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead being another example that comes to mind) is to lose the drums, the driven necessity to keep moving disappears so instead, they make you do something else. They make you stop.
I looked out over the mountains, a fire burning to heat a cold in a cabin that had built over months. I let the music absorb me in to the slight delusion I was entering but it managed to pull me right out. The drums re-appeared in the latter half of Hollywood and everything fell neatly in to place.
“It’s a long way to find, piece of mind”
Hollywood — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Susanne Sundfør — Music For People in Trouble (2017)
The first time I heard this album I was floored. I wasn’t ready and it came as such a shock to me that this wasn’t the pop magic Sundfør I’d heard before. It was darker, deeper and fundamentally different.
It was the only album I could think to follow Ghosteen. It’s restraint and simplicity made it the right kind of beauty to follow the emotional pounding of Ghosteen — double or nothing, right?
The sun had finally made its way across the water and fought through the trees — the night had come and this would be the point to stop. Until the next day.
