Listen Back: The letter T
Time to take a trip to the letter T in the latest instalment of our alphabet-themed round-up of album recommendations
If you’ve been enjoying Boards Of Canada’s sprawling epic Inferno, then a trawl through the heyday of cut-ups should be your next listening project. Thought For Food (2002) by The Books is perhaps one of the most underrated of the era, overshadowed by more accessible entries from The Avalanches and their chart-topping ilk. A shame, because it’s a winding and unpredictable sound bank, combining Eastern folk instrumentation with a library of samples that alternate between anxiety-inducing and soothingly ambient. Its collages have the carefree air of channel surfing, where creaking doors give way to sustained notes from violins and onto Slint-adjacent gloom rock, spiralling outwards with the hypnotic inscrutability of a Rorschach painting.
And if you haven’t been enjoying Inferno, here’s something completely different: Tezeta (1975), a work of supple Ethiopian lounge jazz from the prolific Hailu Mergia & The Walias Band. Notoriously difficult to find since its initial pressing, the album was reissued in 2021 and has since gained a cult following for its loose rhythms and sprawling melodies from Mergia’s kitschy organ. Structurally there’s a lot going on here, but you’d never guess from its chirpy and immediately accessible composure.
Other T albums: A Theory Of /Cloud/ by Shrine Maiden (2025), These Actions Cannot Be Undone by Gentle Sinners (2022), Three Imaginary Boys by The Cure (1979).