What is NAR?

I was at a Hi-Fi show in the Fall where, as I walked down one corridor, I heard the same band, playing the same track and not wholly in sync with each other from four successive rooms. It dawned on me at that moment that there had to be more than the apparent restrictive canon of show demo music. Rectifying this situation would involve not only tracking down and listening to new albums releases across a myriad of genres, but finding a most direct and non-labor intensive means of spreading the word.

Getting my ears and paws on the music would prove to be the less difficult labor of the two. Oddly enough I would appear to be well enough connected via my network with folks in the recorded music industry, so that was done and dusted. I toyed with a number of publishing vehicles, finally deciding upon setting up a Facebook Group entitled New Album Releases, aka NAR, and set about adding my like-minded friends who in turn invited theirs, much like a 1970’s shampoo commercial.

Never thinking it would last more than a few months, here we are a year later and by the 7th month it was obvious that I would need help from specialists to cover so much music, so I enlisted graduates and students from Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music. This arrangement is working out rather well. At the moment NAR has a second generalist besides me, and then in succession a Classical, Indian Film Score and Electronic/Experimental specialist to round things out. More sherpas as like to think of them will be added in the year.

The group was set up to be wholly informational and as such, the info flows one way. There is no commenting, no discussion, no trolling and apart from myself and the growing team members nobody else posts unless specifically invited so to do. In this manner, NAR does not detract from other groups. It exists to share new music that I and the team have listened to each week and adjudicate to be not only musically interesting but sonically appealing.

Here is the link to share: (everyone is free to join and invite others to do so):

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thenarp/