Hello! My name is Aly Gillani (aka DJ Gilla) and I’m a music fan. This has manifested itself in many ways over the years. I’m the founder and A&R of First Word Records, a London-based record label focussed on music with soul. We’ve released music from acts including Children Of Zeus, Kaidi Tatham, Don Leisure and Allysha Joy and we were named Worldwide Awards Label of the Year by Gilles Peterson in 2018. As well as running the label I’ve worked in a range of roles in independent music across a 25 year career. A regular on the recently mothballed Worldwide FM, I currently host a WWFM segment on Japan’s J-Wave Radio for the daily Jam The Planet show. I also work for renowned music platform Bandcamp.
On January 1st 2021 I put a record on, something that I’ve done thousands of times since I started getting into music 40 or so years ago. A few hours earlier, as we counted down to the end of 2020, we’d heard the announcement that MF DOOM had died. I always like to kick off a new year with some good music and it felt right to listen to something of his, so I picked out the peerless Madvillainy from my record shelves. As the record spun I realised that although I’d listened to individual tracks on the album countless times in the 17 years since it was released I rarely listened to the whole thing, start to finish. As I flipped the LP over and ‘America’s Most Blunted’ filled the speakers I looked around the room at the thousands of records I had accumulated over the years. How often did I listen to them? I love music but how much time did I actually give to my most treasured of hobbies? The listening I did was more often scanning through digital releases when preparing for DJ gigs or radio shows - rarely listening to even a full song let alone a whole album.
I remembered how albums were so important for me growing up; learning the transitions from track-to-track and side-to-side to the millisecond. Poring over sleevenotes, re-reading reviews, scouring bargain bins in provincial record shops; soaking up as much information as I could in search of that magic surge of serotonin that can only come from hearing a great piece of music. I hadn’t made any new years resolutions so I tacitly pledged to listen to an album every day in 2021. I wrote a short post about this on Instagram and over the course of the day remembered how bad I am at following through on resolutions. It occurred to me that a bit of accountability would probably help, so on my 2nd post I committed to posting each of the records on my page.
After a year off I collated some of my favourite posts into a zine and I’m now back posting every day over on my Instagram page. Every week I’ll collate these posts into a newsletter that will be delivered to you on Sunday morning.
I hope you find some music that you love, and that you get in touch if there’s anything you think I’d enjoy based on what you read. Thanks for listening….
