Never Mess Around Anymore

Is ambient sound experimentation and Christmas a good mix? I don't think so. But it hasn't stopped Banjo Or Freakout from releasing Christmas albums three years in a row. Maybe four. I haven't looked for 2012. As an avid music appreciator I can really get into the drastic reworking of holiday classics like "White Christmas", "Blue Christmas" and a completely unrecognizable (in a good way) "Jingle Bells". Taking song structure as a foundation to expand and explore with is the foundation of being an artist that considers themselves 'experimental'. Actually I think it's the textbook definition. So on that merit BoF deserves great credit and kudos and maybe even a juicy tangerine in his stocking.

But we are talking Christmas music here and there is a certain expectation of specific emotion to be derived from listening to it and not just being challenged aurally to a guessing game or the world's most challenging round of Name That Tune. So for that and that alone, I couldn't really dump all these tunes into my A-list, for the sole reason that I was sure it would cause an unmitigated dive for the NEXT button on the iPod and that, frankly, is the exact thing I'm trying to avoid by creating an A-list to begin with. That button should never even be breathed upon. 

So I'm afraid that I'm gonna give Xmas 2009 a big fat D. Maybe 2010 and 2011 will have better luck, but we'll probably have to wait another year or so to find out.

yay, christmas