In 2004 the great John Peel died. With him died what had been, up to that point, one of my main access points to exciting new music. I knew that I was particularly going to miss 'The Peel Sessions' of great bands playing live for his radio show, and also his annual roundup of favourite music known as 'The Festive 50'.
In 2005 I decided that I would commemorate his death by blending those two ideas with a collection of my favourite new music from that year called 'The Hanham Sessions'. There were two criteria - the music had to either have been released in the past year, or something that I and/or my wife Andria had seen in the past year. We shared the album with family and friends.
Since then it has become a bit of an annual tradition - over the years it expanded from one CD to two - helped enormously by the wonderful 6music and Marc Riley in particular.
A couple of years ago I collated all of the 'sessions' into Spotify playlists - one or two tracks aren't available, but most made it (and occasionally 'extras' that didn't fit on the CD have been added back in).
I have to admit that Andria's influence over the playlist has reduced as the years have gone on. I'll leave it to you to see if you can spot the difference (and to decide if things have improved or not...).
