Elba Sessions

I’ve professed love for Slow Club already on these pages so I’ll just leave it at, I really liked Two Cousins from their recent album ‘Paradise’ so much so, it’s in my tracks of the year. Oh, and if you get the chance, seek out the acoustic version, it has a banjo’s in it.

The next offering in our ‘Tracks of The Year’ series comes courtesy of our furthest flung member Chris who is currently slumming it up in Toronto.

With this track there’s more than just a decent song, it’s packed with memories of trips through Boston, NYC and of course Paris. There’s reminiscence of friends, leaving parties and a new adventure.

We debate about what makes a track or indeed album of the year. Does it have to be the most technical and proficient piece of work? Something groundbreaking perhaps? Not for me, and nor it seems with Chris, there’s maybe a part of it that has to be well done and different but most of all, and I think this is my favourite things about music, it’s about the memories that it creates and emotions it stirs in you. Oh, and to leave you with a couple of Chris’ own words, “it’s a bloody good tune”

We make no secret of the fact that Le Reno Amps are one of our favourite bands here at Elba and we’re all pretty much in agreement that the intro of triumphant sounding horns and 80′s kraut-rock-esque duelling guitars make ‘Cottonmouth Rock’ one of our more memorable songs from 2011.

It’s taken from their latest long player ‘Appetite’

Oh, and you can also download this one too!

Cottonmouth Rock by Le Reno Amps by Armellodie

Today’s track comes from Glasgow-based Yusuf Azak. We’ve long been fans of Yusuf, from his self released free EP’s, to his debut long player ‘Turn On The Long Wire’ (Song, By Toad Records), we were delighted to hear that he would be releasing a free EP this year called Prizefighter. Swim is track two on said EP and I believe at the time I said that the track was making me melt. It really is that lovely. You can download the whole EP on Yusuf’s bandcamp page and hear Swim for yourself, below.

We love making lists here at Elba, so as well as our annual posts in December this year, we’ll intersperse the blog with some tracks that we each think are worthy to go in the history books as an ‘Elba Track of The Year’. They might be singles or they might be a hidden album track, but every one, in our book at least, is deemed worthy as we remember 2011…

I’ve found that the best way to explain why this track is here, is as follows…

A great track from a brilliant album with an excellent video to boot.

Call me a man of few words…

Track: The Copper Top
Album: Everything’s Getting Older

We love making lists here at Elba, so as well as our annual posts in December this year, we’ll intersperse the blog with some tracks that we each think are worthy to go in the history books as an ‘Elba Track of The Year’. They might be singles or they might be a hidden album track, but every one, in our book at least, is deemed worthy as we remember 2011…

Kicking off our tracks of the year, is Ringo Deathstarr, ‘So High’ which was taken from their album Colour Trip. The album lends itself fairly heavily to My Bloody Valentine but that’s not a particularly bad thing in my book. This is a fairly upbeat track and is track 3 on an album which early in 2011 was one of my favourite albums of the year.