Every now and then, you happen upon a piece of music that just seems to resonate perfectly with you. It is almost always circumstantial: there is no guarantee that the same circumstances will align themselves again in order to have the same impact at some other point in your life. Yes, I am being overly sentimental and sappy, but boy, this tune is undeniably beautiful.

A Necklace of Wrens is a poem written by the late Irish poet, Michael Hartnett. It is sung here with sincerity and grace in its original Irish, accompanied simply by a piano and strings. Should there be a time in your life where a piece like this is able to resonate with you, be thankful for it, no matter what else is being hurled at you.

Not content with being an absolutely stellar platforming trilogy, the Donkey Kong Country series for the SNES had some utterly fantastic music. Back when I was a wee lad, it was mind-boggling to listen to the sheer variety and depth of the music emanating from the solitary TV speaker. Despite its limited hardware origins, the music still holds up today, which is why I present this particular track from Donkey Kong Country 2. It’s a rather soothing tune which is further accentuated by the muddiness of the MIDI instrumentation itself. Gives it a nice, lo-fi feel!

Darned if I’d know where you could buy this tune…

Electronic music is a tricky beast to get right. Get it wrong and it basically turns into incoherent noise. Get it right and you end up with stuff that’s wonderfully lucid and surreal, but catchy at the same time. Thankfully, this track sits firmly in the latter category, otherwise why would I be posting about it? Shame on you, possible person that thought otherwise!

Anyway, if the promise of delightful electronic music doesn’t get you going, how about infra-red projection and lasers? Mr. Meeble uses some kind of rad body suit while performing on stage (and in the video below), given it a funky kind of voxel look.