The Omniscient Mussel

Introducing: Now Playing

This is a feature intended to give you, dear reader, an idea of what delights are floating around OM headquarters. Generally Miss Mussel has to resist going into the music shop altogether to ensure that she does not consign herself to a month of tuna on white on the back of the Complete Brahms Chamber Music and several ballet DVDs.

The solution to this minor self-control breakdown is the Naxos Music Library. Sure, the label is often maligned for its use of cut rate Eastern European bands but it’s really the best thing for those who need access to recordings just to hear how something goes. While Miss Mussel was at music college, she was pimped out on occasion to record obscure music for the label. This is quite a common practice and was sold to us as an important part of our education. Seeing as she was only a student, Miss Mussel had trouble understanding the pedagogic usefulness of recording something no one would ever listen to for free and on the weekend. Ah, the folly of youth.

Possible slave labour aside, this online repository still represents wealth of easily accessible music. Subscriptions can be had for a scandalous $150 per year for near CD quality playback or $225 for the real McCoy. With over 240,000 tracks available from dozens of independent labels worldwide, how can a person possibly go wrong?

Of course, Miss Mussel does occasionally experience a complete and total failure of will power and has therefore acquired quite a substantial physical record collection. iTunes are being eyed warily across the schoolyard much like the kids who smoked in high school. Miss Mussel remains now as she was then: desperate to be cool but secretly terrified that it’s the first step on the road straight to miserable poverty and early onset wrinkles.

If you have a recording you would like Miss Mussel to review, please send her an email and she will happily supply details for the post.