Though I listen to music in all the ways one listens to music nowadays, I still have a preference for CDs.

So colour me old-fashioned, stuck in my ways and ultimately, distressingly conservative.

Sure I assemble playlists, stream ‘curated' collections, download with codes and have 800 LPs to admire.

But – sorry to be so staggeringly unfashionable – I prefer the ease of a CD.

And amongst the CDs regularly littering a large proportion of the carpet here at The Watusi Country Club is a section I call ‘Difficult Music'.

The Difficult Music pile started a few years back when I realised I was increasingly missing out on great stuff because of the sheer volume of music arriving.

Difficult Music is stuff that I struggle with but which has been so highly praised elsewhere that there must be gold in them there hills waiting to be mined.

Some albums are simply so dense or so complicated that you have to make an effort to get inside them and get the best from them.

This isn't an approach favoured by everybody. If you argue that music should be an escapist pleasure then I wouldn't even try to disagree.

But music can be many things and since it has been a major part of my life for so long – dammit! - I'm not about to let some challenging CD defeat me. I will listen to it until I like it. Or, failing that, at least until I vaguely understand it.

Soused

One example from the pile is the late Scott Walker's final album, Soused. I like Scott Walker and particularly the epic weirdness he explored after casting aside his pop prince credentials. Soused finds Walker backed by an LA band specialising in grunge soundscapes. Their name is, and I kid you not, Sunn O))). Please don't ask me to pronounce it.

On Soused, Sunn O))) create huge beds of feedback and undecipherable noise while Walker sings alarming and obscure lyrics in an operatic tenor. The album also contains subliminal messaging and other techniques.

In the track Brando there are binaural beats, oscillating at 37Hz, a frequency that can produce feelings of anxiety and arousal, as well as paranoia.

On Herod 2014 there are super-slowed reversed vocals that state ‘Once went the chicken, all fell before the peeled-off batter.'

And the weirdest track, Bull, which features Walker repeatedly yelling ‘Bump the beaky', apparently contains slowed backwards masking of the line ‘Here, puss! Here Puss-puss! Here puss-puss-pussy!'

It been a couple of years and y'know I'm beginning to really get into it...

Sun kil moon

But one man's meat is another man's poison. Last week saw Sun Kil Moon at Auckland's Tuning Fork.

It's essentially a one-man-band and that man is Mark Kozelek. Now I love Mark Kozelek but I realise from the horrified looks on friends' faces whenever I play his music that they definitely consider it ‘Difficult'.

Certainly his most recent double CD (most of his CDs are doubles), I Also Want To Die In New Orleans, contains ‘challenging' stuff. The second CD is essentially a mumbled 25 minute spoken word piece over several different musical beds. Most of the first CD is similar. But these are, on closer inspection, carefully crafted, complicated poems, perhaps confusing but absolutely deliberate.

He's also prolific: one album this year, two last year, four in 2017, most of which are long double CDs.

I listened to that latest one many times before I really understood most of the songs but it was worth it and the concert was all the better, a stunning performance lasting for more than three hours of solid spoken word poetry and wry crowd interaction backed only by a keyboard player.

And leaving aside Difficult Music and staying at The Tuning Fork, Justin Townes Earle, son of Steve, is returning to play there in August and the pre-sale starts on Ticketmaster today (May 31). He has a new album out this week, The Saint Of Lost Causes, which is simply brilliant. If Americana is your bag then this is definitely your concert.