Anywhere On This Road

The series we’d hoped would run forever is over. Charlie Gillett's annual double-disc survey of his favourite sounds from the previous 12 months was an open-armed invitation into a world of music that might otherwise have slipped past unnoticed. But our guide is with us no more and Anywhere On This Road marks the series’ final volume, a set Charlie was working on when he died this March. If his ongoing illness reduced his actual travelling in recent years, it didn’t stymie his musical wanderlust, and these 36 tracks bear the postmarks of 34 different countries. From New Zealand to Nigeria, Serbia to South Korea, everything was measured by the same simple filter – no preconceptions and an open mind. Charlie was so often the DJ that introduced artists to you, a task that, via Anywhere On This Road, he's still managing to fulfil posthumously. Among big-hitters like Khaled, Staff Benda Bilili, Tinariwen and Seasick Steve nestle the likes of Madagascar's Razia Said, the musically slippery DVA from the Czech Republic and Lhasa de Sela (pictured below) from Canada, who also died this year.

The pick of this year's crop has to be The Very Best's dazzlingly technicolor ‘Warm Heart Of Africa’. A perfect Gillett international combo, its members hail from Malawi, Sweden and France (and they host a guest vocal from Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig). But it's the closing solo piano instrumental from Ethiopia's Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guébrou that provides the most emotional moment. It's a goosebump-raising way to sign off, a stately and majestic piece that perfectly salutes one of the most open-eared men ever to grace the planet's airwaves.