‘…I’m just another watercolor
In a washed-out sky…’

In part one.

It all started when I bought a Chet Baker album, which was titled the most important album of 1964/5, I thought that was so clever, clever enough to adopt and to revive the idea and in 2007, I compiled my (302′s) most important album of the year. That album had an after hours jazz feel and was worthy of the boast and is still one of my favourite selections.

In 2008 I repeated the feat, this time, my world was filled with Mancini, I wanted to throw a cocktail party, the music needed to be a blend of exotica and cool, martini cool but it also had to reflect a good quality Saturday night with friends and that made it ambitious. I’m still not convinced I got it right but I’m not going worry about it, it’s out there to be enjoyed and will make a great cocktail party better.

This year, I started to combine a few tracks, there never seemed to be enough of a thread to turn those songs into a project. Eventually I relooked at some of the tracks in this loose track Itunes folder and thought about an order, and as I was doing that I thought about an early edition of the best album of 2009 and pieced together something of a proof.

It wasn’t bad.

It stayed in the car for a week and then I decided that it somehow needed something extra and I abandoned it for a while, as I was caught up in an Indie frame of mind.

Then this weekend I deconstructed the sequence and resequenced it and made a few additions together with a few notable subtractions and out popped 302′s the most important album of 2009 (until there’s another take).