Welcome and Statement of Purpose

Welcome to QXN! First, I owe you a little explanation of why this blog exists. I am an avid music collector – I am also a rather eccentric music collector. The latter statement has not always been true. In the past, it was my practice to make large lists of what were considered by various persons to be "essential" or "important" albums. I would then proceed to obsessively track down and collect these albums. This practice continued for many years, and I amassed a large collection of "essential" albums. At some point I realized that, apart from some broad stylistic distinctions, most albums that make the list of "essentials" are essentially the same. With a few exceptions, the critical "essentials" are albums that have had some formative influence on Western popular music or that represent a culminating zenith in Western popular music. This type of myopic collecting ultimately produces a rich library of music from the same narrow stream; Though the "essentials" of Western pop may be fine examples of the tradition, they represent only a microscopic cross-section of the wonderful music that has been captured since the dawn of recorded sound.

In recent years this obvious realization has inspired in me a very different sort of music scavenging. Rather than seeking a list of essentials, I now seek the unusual, unheard, obscure, unappreciated, unknown music of the world. I eschew the new record bins in favour of the dusty discount bin, abandoned in the corner. I frequent antique stores, thrift shops, and flea markets as often as record stores. My gaze is immediately drawn to the novel and bizarre. If I've never heard of the record label, that's probably good news. If I can't read a single word of the liner notes, then I get my wallet handy. I'm no longer interested in hearing the records that most people agree are great. I'm interested in hearing the full swath of human music and finding the great records that no one knew existed. This blog provides an outlet for me to share some of my more notable finds with like-minded persons who possess the Googling skills to find me.

I don't promise to post regularly. In fact, I can almost promise that I won't. I am a husband and a grad student, thus my free time is minimal. However, I will try to post often enough to keep things interesting. Still, I don't like deadlines (who does?), so I fully intend to post if and when I feel like it and have the time. Progress will be slow, but over time I should be able to build up an interesting collection of unusual record reviews. I will also try to include a little history of the artist(s) and genre(s) being highlighted if I have the time and am able to locate resources in English (for some albums this will be very difficult). Enough preliminary details, I'm tired of writing. I hope that you find something enjoyable here.