guest post: ‘one thousand one hundred and one’ by Matthew Xavier Corrigan

In the first guest post for the site, Matthew Xavier Corrigan reflects on five entire years of cataloguing the music he listened to, tracing an outline of the life he lived.

Colm Cahalane

20 Jan 2025 — 14 min read

Thrilled to reveal the first guest post in this site's little run so far, from one of my dearest friends, Matthew Xavier Corrigan. He's taught me much over the years, as an artist, as a colleague, as the director of the River Runs Round festival, and many other journeys. I have prodded him to start a newsletter of his own. He would hate that I'm plugging his music here, but this is my paragraph, pal.

While Fourth Best's primary focus so far has been on Irish music, my aim with this website has more to do with encouraging careful listening. To encourage people to build networks of context between their favourite pieces of music and to share those stories with others. It's why I encourage people to think more deeply about the deleterious impact of streaming platforms, to think deeply about what our music festivals can be, and why I can't do a simple Album of the Year piece without losing myself in an attempt at data journalism.

I owe the existence of this stage to Matthew - he planned the original event that inspired this website. Over the years we've talked in depth about the founding themes and ideas of this website, trying out new ways of releasing music and making our voices heard. He has inspired and encouraged me every step of the way. I hope that by sharing this insight into his relationship with music, you find a spark in there.

The floor's all yours, boss.

one thousand
one hundred
and one

matthew xavier corrigan

Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing.
Seneca

I listened to one thousand one hundred and one albums in the five years between January 20th 2020 and January 20th 2025. The goal was one thousand eight hundred and eight. Over these five years, I have kept digital records of these records. One album a day, most days.

232 Pages.
92,828 Words.
1101 Albums (plus change).

I have no recollection of why I started this process.

At this anniversary, I wonder - what does one do with such an artefact? What have I learned? Is there an interesting, compelling point I can make with this information? I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to have gleaned some great, divine wisdom. I also can’t share the full documents, as they’re completely littered with personal information and diary-like passages that I’d rather keep to myself for now. Instead, I’d like to share with you some of the entries and fragments of memory that matter to me, hidden in this daunting catalogue of time and behaviour.

2020

I didn’t write down any thoughts about what I was listening to this year, but I did listen, tracking 330 albums, 9 EPs, and 1 ‘Mix’ (The Kiwi Sound by Conducta). Although I had yet to start cataloguing my thoughts on records, in May I began notating my favourite track from each record. An extract from that era looks like this -

[25/05/2020] - Joy Postell - Diaspora (2018) -- FT: ‘Water’
[26/05/2020] - Dope Body - Home Body (2020) -- FT: ‘Johnny Bag of Smoke’
[27/05/2020] - Uncommon Nasa - New York Telephone (2014) -- FT: ‘The Stakes’
[28/05/2020] - Floating Points - Crush (2019) -- FT: ‘Sea-Watch’

[etc]

Record number one was Itekoma Hits, a decade-deep album from Japanese punk madhouse Otoboke Beaver. I was standing on the corner of High Street and Capwell Road in Turners Cross, Cork City. I was twenty one, in my third year of college, and wielding an instrument to make sense of my undefined adulthood. I remember the weather, the light, much as I remember walking down Father Mathew Quay a week later listening to Orville Peck’s Pony, or Again by Oneohtrix Point Never, sleepless on a flight to Tokyo Narita from Schipol.

On the 28th of March, I listened to Cenizas by Nicolas Jaar, the record ending with me hovering. We’d been worrying. In this record, there was nothing to worry about.

HAIM’s Women in Music pt.III appears three times this year. I first listened to it on the 2nd of August, and felt so compelled that I started a new section towards the bottom of the document to take notes on it. Later, that December, I set out to spend a month relistening to records and taking detailed notes (it only half worked out) and this record was revisited. If you haven’t listened to it - do.

2021

I don’t remember much about my life in 2021. I turned 23 in London and went to a Young Warrior dub show in the Goldsmiths student’s union with my friends. We drank a lot of tonic wine and got on random buses, eventually making it to the club long after it closed. Lo, the folly of youth. That day, I listened to Doo-Wops and Hooligans by Bruno Mars, and I thought it was… fine!

*(left to right) me, Jack, Alex. The fateful day described above.*

This was the year I finished my undergrad and (for better or worse) jumped straight into an MA. However, that cannot overwrite maybe the most important part of that year - four months spent working long weeks in the warehouse of a barcode-scanner factory. I also listened to 350 albums.

The time in the warehouse was perfect. I mean no disrespect to any other employer of mine when I say I have never loved a job more (except maybe my time as a docent at a maritime museum in Manhattan, recounting boat facts to smiling Americans in the dizzy summer heat). Hauling boxes from shelf to shelf to production, digging up missing parts, all the time listening to Olafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, Jon Hopkins, Traxman. Magical.

When looking for entries of note this year, I find another reason for why I am slow to make the original documents public - I’m not interested in publicly criticising music. That’s a vocation, one which I do not have. For this reason, I’ve redacted details on the following entry, which I do feel need to talk about anyway -

[13/10/2021] - [redacted artist] - [redacted album] (2021) - album

NOTES: This album was so boring I actually turned it off during [redacted] because it started making me nauseous.

The deepest sin is boring. At scale, the amount of life one can lose to homogeneity is devastating. I’d always prefer a bad record. Something that will fire off a spark, somehow. The sensation of boredom, disengagement and apathy curdles as panic; to date this is the only record I documented as having not finished.

In a shattering of linearity, I came back to this document at the end of 2023 to find albums to listen to again, forgotten favourites, mystery classics. In the process, I added a myriad of mundane notes about various albums. There is one such note that sticks out, unlike the others, attached to The Armed’s ULTRAPOP:

[22/12/2021] - The Armed - ‘ULTRAPOP’ (2021) - album [x]

NOTES: This fucking banged. Really great record, and in my life at just the right time too. An album I can run to.

do you remember it? running through turners cross, a car parked at a roundabout. a house you haven’t been to in over a year. a person somewhere behind you. how much of that time have you forgotten? are you only remembering it now?

Time is a creature.

2022

A big drop off. At least 133 albums, a lot of walls of text with albums nestled in them, EPs, implications of listening.

It’s tough to look down the barrel of a strange time in your life. Part of what makes the original documents unshareable for me is this year, collapses in the process and personal writing.

I axed the list on the 16th of April, not touching it until July, at which stage I wrote

I know I was still listening to music during these times, these massive glaring omissions that take up a huge chunk of this year. Honestly, I think I might have been listening to more than ever. While I was forgiving myself, somewhere between the tabula rasa and what I would come to name ‘2023 mk.2’, I shaved my head and moved to a bungalow on a peninsula in Kerry, Ireland’s South West. While I was there I mostly listened to Kevin Morby’s Sundowner and looked at the sea from the front garden.

*The view from the front garden, Ballinskelligs, Kerry.* photo: Mollie Murphy

Between September and the end of the year, I took to writing informal, plain text diary entries about the music I was listening to: a tired and dreary process that lost its charm but got the job done until the year closed. Although I have no idea exactly what I was listening to at this time (I’m not exactly specific), the informality seems fitting for a year of mystery.

2023

My least prolific year by a stretch - at least 96 records, but very detailed notes and much more expansive note taking including more diary style writing about general music discovery, more time dedicated towards listening to the radio, and some very brazen messing with the system and days of listening to multiple records, followed by longer instalments of re-listening to those records.

Of course, not every entry was detailed. Sometimes I know when the memory of a time will be more important than anything I could write. Sometimes a record speaks for itself. Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want To Turn Into You was released the day I flew to Prague for a month. The plan was to finish producing an EP I was working on. I’d never spent that long abroad before. I wound up getting incomprehensibly sick, dragging myself to the nearby ‘Bageterie Boulevard’ and eating the same sandwich, the same soup. If I close my eyes, I can still taste it. I worked on music in a fever, lying down to rest, playing chess on my phone and listening to this album full volume, bouncing off the high ceilings of the apartment I was staying in. When I got better, I would walk aimlessly for miles and miles, before meeting new and old friends in a central cantina to drink vodka and lose at cards

I first listened to Geese’s 3D Country sitting in the passenger seat of a friend’s WW2-era Land Rover, choking on engine fumes and blaring it through a bluetooth speaker. Safe to say it didn’t have the intended impact. I don’t even seem to have kept a record of it, but I tried again later down the line, and clearly fell deeply in love with it. I mention it once in one of the more ‘diary entry’ portions of this year. This is directly opposed to the scores of albums I’ve poured my heart out about at first listen over the years, only to totally abandon when the high wears off.

I spent 10 days in Japan in October listening to the dizzying contrasts of Ryuichi Sakomoto and underscores, flying through the countryside on bullet trains. On the 9th of October I went walking alone through Kyoto at dusk, getting quickly lost in a sunless network of narrow streets and low buildings. During that trip to Japan, I was taking particular care to spend time listening to my environment rather than having music playing all the time. I heard music coming from a park, and I followed it. What I initially thought was a small speaker somewhere nearby lead me deeper, past buildings, sparse market stalls, and growing crowds until I realised I was actually approaching a much larger soundsystem. By some twist of fate, I had stumbled onto Kyoto Ongaku Hakurankai, a music festival, in Umekōji Park. I watched from outside the fence, enjoying the music, watching the people, browsing food vendors and getting myself a small curry. I took a slow commuter train to the station to head back to Tokyo, smiling the whole way.

*I can’t believe this is the only photo I took.*

9-10-2023 / 9th October 2023

The journey to and from Kyoto. Early morning and late night bullet trains. Relistened to Wallsocket.

Stumbled into Kyoto Ongaku Hakurankai, some kind of music showcase festival in a park, and had what can only be described as a very, very important evening

I have no idea why I was writing the dates like that.

2024

183 albums, plus a vague number of gigs, EPs, radio sessions and more.

An immense return to form, 2024 saw me come back to the format I had driven in 2021 of album and notes, although it wasn’t until February when I started writing again.

The first album I have taken note of listening while I was living in New York was Souvenirs by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, listened to on the 28th of February. This was an intense way to start. I immediately became overwhelmed by the power of the music and the depth of her story. I spent a full day sitting in my bedroom in Brooklyn, lost online until my girlfriend got home.

That marks the general trend of my listening in much of 2024 - incredibly detailed note taking and getting into the weeds around artists and their history. I also devoted significant time to the music made by friends and acquaintances - Niamh Regan’s Come As You Are, Quinn Devlin’s ‘Pair of Threes’, Rory Sweeney’s ‘Irish Hash Mafia’, all incredible and enthusiastic recommendations. In the rush to let the world in, it can be easy to ignore what makes proximity special, the unique joy of something made by a friend, speaking with them, knowing their music. That’s a nice feeling, and not to be lost in the mists.

In March, I began a profound love affair with Bill Evans’s You Must Believe In Spring. I was writing a short story for my cousin, a 30th birthday present, a milestone installment in our memorylong tradition of writing each other cryptic birthday cards. I would listen to it on walks, on trains, standing on bridges, sitting in cafés. This album was completely married to a pretty important time in my life, where I was seriously worried about getting a job in time to satisfy my visa requirements alongside completely unseriously writing an absurdist short story. When I listen to it now, I smile. Chapter 4, a monologue from my bizarre self insert, begins like this -

*A view from the M platform at Myrtle-Wyckoff, the train I got to work for much of my time in NYC*

This record also prompted, I believe, the addition of the below to the end of the document. I have no recollection of writing it or what kind of mental state I was in at the time, officer.

points of order
Jazz In The Evenings

I like to listen to Jazz in the evenings. Maybe some You Must Believe In Spring by Bill Evans, or perhaps a touch of Chet Baker. It’s a glass of Montepulciano with your dinner. It’s a book that fits right in one hand so the other hand can hold a glass or a mug. It’s the slice of fresh, white baguette sliding along the oil and sauce pooled seductively at the base of your bowl. It’s art and it’s science - it’s love and it’s mischief.

Music From Lil’ Brown by Africa, which I listened to on the 22nd of May, is a strange and very good record. It’s only half obscure, having gotten a 2014 remaster, but research into this album yields odd sources and unusual elements. The whole thing oscillates between a hazy, LA psychedelia and a more traditional doo-wop sound that makes this record, while very interesting and obviously fun to make, a bit of a mess in terms of consistency. Largely, this feels to me like cuts by a bunch of dudes who were having fun and maybe getting a little label advance along the way. The cover and name are seemingly obvious references to The Band’s record Music From Big Pink, released the year before. It’s funny to me that that album was recorded so closely to and in reference to an album that would go on to have generational relevance and see a success that lasts this long. A little joke, mostly among friends, that has survived for over half a century.

At the very least I have this record to thank for finding Marv Goldberg and his insane website.

2025 & Closing thoughts

This year so far has been dedicated to Soul music, and at time of writing that has been 9 albums. Marvin Gaye, Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Curtis Mayfield. Going forward I’d like to spend more time segmenting away and truly exploring a sound and a context. I’m still listening to other music (I’m listening to Nicolas Jaar’s 12 minute remix of What Kind of Man by Florence + The Machine right now), but that’s what I’m documenting.

I’m pretty aware at this stage (and have been for much of the process) that albums are not the most intuitive way to stay genuinely informed of what’s happening in music today, or what has happened in the past. Classical music, electronic music (particularly a lot of dance and club-focused music) and DIY offerings don’t typically come packaged as albums, not in their truest form, to name a few. The only answer I’ve been able to find is to listen to more music. Do the album a day, but do the singles too, check the Night Bass website, scrounge Soundcloud, blogs, whatever works.

I spent a week in April of 2021 doing what I called ‘Classical Listening’, where I started listening to music in what we typically call the ‘classical’ idiom, listening to piano suites, concertos, sifting through everything from Ravel to Monteverdi to John Cage. A week is not enough for this, and I knew it at the time. This has not been my only foray to this end, listening to Monteverdi’s Primo Libro De Madrigali as performed by Delicatae Musicae in April of 2024 (which I loved) in lieu of a more typical ‘album’ and various albums of modern takes on baroque suites and so on. It will take dedicated time and effort to learn more about finding definitive versions, distinguishing between them, and how to truly listen to this music - time I have yet to spend, to my shame.

I’m more forgiving with myself about missing days now. While in the past I would have maybe listened to two albums the day after missing an entry, or gotten trapped in a guilt spiral that divorced me from the documents entirely, I am now simply honest with myself in my notes about why I missed a day. It’s more insightful.

Would I recommend doing this? I certainly think actual investment in music, listening multiple times, engaging with the material that surrounds an artist or project is far more important than listening to a lot of music. I still relisten to records, and spend more time every day revisiting music I’ve heard before than I spent engaging with new material, particularly recently.

I don’t really have answers, just recommendations.

*at Castleshane Waterfall, Monaghan.* Photo: Mollie Murphy

Twenty Randomly Selected Recommendations

Since 2021, I have put [x] next to records I love. I searched [x] in the document and scrolled through a random number of times and these were the first twenty records to jump out (excluding records I’ve already mentioned above). Enjoy!