The Living Music List #28: On Our Wonderful Life
Saying farewell to 2024 with gratitude for the people in my life
Currently listening to: Auld Lang Syne (from IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE [1946])
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is my favorite Christmas movie. It’s also one of the most touching movies I’ve seen, period. Spoilers, but since it’s from nearly 80 years ago, I think you can indulge me here if you haven’t seen it: This clip is the ending of the film, when the main character George Bailey has arrived home to see his many friends and colleagues there to donate money that his uncle and business partner had misplaced earlier in the film. George owns a building and loan association and a housing project, but has barely managed to keep the B&L solvent through a loan. His uncle’s loss of the money ($8000, or around $130,000 today) throws everything he’s worked for into doubt and may lead to his arrest, causing George to contemplate suicide. A supernatural encounter with an angel helps George see what would be the poor state of his community if he never existed (throughout the film, it’s made clear that George is a very selfless man who has helped many people and is admired by nearly everyone in town). It all comes full circle when George wishes for his life back and returns home to find the whole town there willingly giving him more than enough money to replace what was lost. George’s younger brother Harry toasts him as “the richest man in town.” George’s angel has also left him a message with a reminder: “Remember no man is a failure who has friends.”
Reflection
Hello, friend.
I hope you are warm and well in this final epilogue of the year. This will be my final letter to you in 2024, and a short one, but I look forward to writing to you again in the new year.
It’s hard to believe we have less than a week left until we’re all toasting champagne and watching fireworks, or eating 12 grapes as the bell tolls, or simply counting down the seconds until nothing real really happens. It’s funny how momentous our holidays feel simply because we decided on a certain date or time to mark them. New Year’s Eve is perhaps the most momentous of all—the changing over of one year into the next.
In some ways, everything feels new in the new year, at least for a little while. The renewed cycle of months provides a convenient excuse to restore our faith in the possibility of change, whether in ourselves or the world. We shrug off our failures and shortcomings with the belief we can try again, the belief that we can change for the better.
Soon enough, though, we remember that certain things never seem to change. Some of our resolutions taper off. We go back to our jobs (if we were lucky enough to take a break from them) and restart other responsibilites, often with a similar amount of dread. Wars still rage around the globe despite all the singing about giving peace a chance during the recent holidays.
Sorry, I’m not trying to be a downer here, friend. Maybe I’m just setting my own expectations a little early this time around, to be less focused on specific resolutions and goals and more on general gratitude.
In last week’s letter, I wrote to you about the things I’ve been able to consistently accomplish over the course of this year. One of those was this newsletter—a letter that I’m now addressing to many more friends than I had at the start of 2024.
This coming year, I want to continue to appreciate the people first and foremost. I want to meet more artists, hear their songs, and get to know who they are beyond the music. I want to meet more folks who run small music labels and spend their lives helping to promote the works of other indepedent artists without much, if any, financial reward. I want to connect with my readers and ask them why the hell they keep reading these letters of mine.
Above all, I want to help connect others, to be a bridge to new music and new projects, and to facilitate new beginnings.
In a way, this is a resolution, but I’m thinking of it more like a guiding principle. It feels far greater to me than a simple New Year’s resolution. It’s a reminder of why I’m continuously committing to writing to you—I hope someone out there reads my words and remembers they are anything but alone.
That’s probably what most writers want to accomplish, isn’t it? Writing is all about connection. It’s putting your thoughts and feelings and beliefs and dreams and fears and desires out there for everyone to see and hopefully think, I get it.
For me, music has been a central part of this endeavor, of course. I’m not just sharing my words, but some music I think is worth listening to, hoping it’ll result in a double whammy for my readers—I hope you feel seen by both me and the music (and vice versa).
None of us are ever truly alone in this world. We are bound together as humans, like it or not. We will always be compelled to stay together by our collective humanity than our differences and selfishness can pull us apart. This remains true as the years change, but it’s important to remember during these times of transition when we often question the purpose and meaning of our lives being so confronted with the passage of time and the relative mutability of the world and ourselves.
I hope you have all enjoyed receiving my letters thus far. I’ve very much enjoyed writing to you, meeting some of you, and listening to your music. Here’s to a new year of more connection, more humanity, more peace, and more music that makes us remember why we love music and each other.
I’ll see you again in 2025, friend.
Paid Subscriptions Are Now Live + FREE Discord Access (Limited Time)
Hello again, friend.
Thank you for reading today’s post. I hope you enjoyed the reflection—and I hope you are looking forward to starting fresh in your own way in 2025.
I’m excited to share that I am now offering paid subscriptions to Hum, Buzz, & Hiss!
Part of the greatness of Substack as a platform is it’s paid subscription capabilities enabling writers to earn some extra cash or even a living for their work (as writers should). Part of my ethos here at Hum, Buzz, & Hiss is also that great new music shouldn’t be gatekept by money (the recommendations, I mean—I always encourage listeners to support the musicians by paying for their work on Bandcamp whenever possible). That’s why weekly issues of my The Living Music List series will always be free and public.
As I wrote about today, though, I also believe in the importance of making meaningful connections with other humans. That’s why the primary benefit of becoming a paying subscriber of HB&H will be access to the new Hum, Buzz, & Hiss Community Discord Server. There are already a few founding members in the HB&H Discord and I’m really looking forward to inviting more readers in!
As a thanks to all of you who have been among my first subscribers in the first year of HB&H, I’m going to send out an email to all current free subscribers with an invitation to the Discord community. That means, for the 325+ of you who have already subscribed for free as of December 27, 2024, you can join the Discord community for free for a limited time. I really hope you’ll consider joining us there to continue to connect more personally.
I’ll go into more details of paid subscriptions in a separate one-off post soon, but for now, here are the initial benefits you’ll get as a paid subscriber heading into 2025:
Lifetime access to the HB&H Discord Community Server: Even if you only pay for one month, you’ll be able to stick around in the Discord as long as you’d like. Here, you will be able to promote your own work and chat with other artists, label owners, listeners, and readers of the newsletter. This will also be a place where I share even more fun stuff with you, including:
exclusive playlists
additional music recommendations
custom music recommendations by request
AMAs with artists/labels
ambient resources (eg, lists of places to find ambient music, labels I follow, etc.)
and more!
A free e-book copy of my poetry book Shifting Senses, Lifting Lenses: A Book of Poems and Songs (because why not!)
Occasional one-off posts that will be for paying subscribers only (these may be more in-depth interviews with artists, album reviews, or something else)
I have some other ideas in mind that will be announced in the near future… stay tuned!
And maybe, hopefully, you feel at least a little good supporting me and my work on this publication :)
Music Recommendations
Okay, advertisement over! Here’s my final list of new music recommendations for 2024! FYI: It’s been a quiet couple of weeks to end the year in terms of mainstream records, so I’m only providing an ambient list this week.
Happy listening!
The Living Music List—Ambient
Note: All of the below ambient projects are available for purchase on Bandcamp.
Dark Ambient of 2024 by Cryo Chamber (compilation / dark ambient) [Cryo Chamber / Bandcamp]
WINTERLORE by Laura Cannell (EP / neoclassical, electroacoustic) [Brawl Records / Bandcamp]
never too late by Ian Hawgood & David Cordero (EP / drone) [Home Normal / Bandcamp]
Substance by Kenroku Park (album / dark ambient, noise) [Neotantra / Bandcamp]
the first light of winter (one hour environment) by tom eaton (longform single / drone, meditative) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Night City by State Azure (longform single / drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]
homework - year 9 by Various Artists (compilation / variety of subgenres, including: drone, field recordings, experimental, dark ambient) [taâlem / Bandcamp]
Protracted Silence by 58918012 (album / drone, dark ambient) [Independent / Bandcamp]
Certain Path by zakè, From Overseas, & City of Dawn (album / ambient piano, drone) [Independent / Bandcamp]
That’s all for this week’s issue. Thank you for reading. Until next time.
Your friend,
Melted Form
Remember to listen to the hum, buzz, & hiss of the world around you—there is music to be heard there.
Read the previous issue of The Living Music List:
Afterword—Let’s Get In Touch
Are you an artist, a label owner, or a member of the press? Want to share an in-depth feature of your upcoming release, an advertisement, or a guest post for a future Hum, Buzz, & Hiss issue? Get in touch with me at meltedform@gmail.com. As always, I would love to hear and recommend your music, especially if it’s new and ambient/electronic/experimental.
