It’s a kind of a reviewers no-go to write something like “If you buy only two albums this year, let it be these”.
But in fact, if I could only recommend two albums to you, I’d recommend these two 2-CD compilation sets.
One is “For Nihon“ – curated by Keith ‘Goldmund’ Kenniff and his wife Hollie. This set has been available as digital download for some time, but I’ll be reviewing this later as I have to wait for the physical CD to arrive.
The other is called “Kanshin” and has been released this week.
Both these double CD-set present an unbelievable array of contemporary artists contributing their music to help raise money for the current recovery in Japan following March’s terrible earthquake.
“Kanshin“ is the result of the combined efforts of Daniel Crossley (Fluid Radio/Fluid Audio/Facture), Jonathan Lees (Hibernate/Rural Colours), with additional help from Ian Hazeldine (Cover art), Wil Bolton (Mastering) and Damian Valles (Digital distribution).
Their names may be as familiar as those of the contributing artists, indicating the ambient/soundscape music scene has become a close (but not closed) community in recent years. There’s even a direct link to the charity organisations that receive the funds, via Ian Hawgood (Home Normal label owner), who is living in Japan with his wife who is currently devoting her time to charity relief organisations.
“We felt that any funds we can send this way would probably have more of an immediate impact than donating via one of the larger UK charities.”
Maybe there is a slight irony in the fact that a community of artists that normally have serious difficulties getting any income at all from their activities gather together to raise charity funds.
But do not underestimate the power of this community (especially since you’re part of it yourself!)
“Kanshin” presents no less than 31 tracks – almost 2 1/2 hours of great music. I will not even begin to mention the contributing artists: below is a link to the bandcamp player, so you can stream all tracks on the album to hear for yourself.
There’s a lot of awesome music on this set, which would be one of the best releases this year even if it wasn’t related to the Japan recovery cause.
But for this cause, I would even have bought this CD set if it had been filled with silence only..