Tref’s Pick:

Excelsis, A Dark Noel

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Noel-Vol-Various-Artists/dp/B000000BE0

I bought this several years ago and listen to it every year. It’s a very oddball thing for me, and most definitely one of the odder Christmas albums that I know of. It’s more odd for me because I have unusual and very opposite tastes in music. It was about 6 or 7 years ago that I stopped listening to music composed after the “age of enlightenment.” To me that’s around the year 1800 and the transition from late Classical/Rococo into the Romantic period of western music. I prefer even older “early music.” As of late, I’ve been adding back in some rare exceptions that postdate 1800. This is one of them. It’s a personal holiday tradition for me :-)

Excelsis, A Dark Noel is a compilation of traditional holiday songs done by various gothic music artists. It really gets you into the mood of these long dark nights of winter. This isn’t the screaming, heavy metal type of Goth. It’s the more ethereal, orchestral and sometimes techno side of that genre. Most of the songs are more traditional European holiday classics (like Silent Night), and not so much the Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer ones more typical of American pop culture.