The best discoveries are the stumbling, inadvertent kind. In the ladies' today, I was speaking with a producer from Ideas; she'd ended up using a track from Nico Muhly's lovely new CD for a talk by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The Muhly had found its way to her desk via another producer I'd given it to, a fellow working on a classical show; the record made its way into my life when I was in New York, where a friend at Ipecac thrust his friend's CD into my hands as I was leaving. For the Ideas producer, this was a last minute choice and she marvelled at how well it had worked. I had meant to tell her, instead of busying myself drying my hands - with music, it is always like this.

Songs are for trading and telling, like secrets. Making their way from one pocket to another; and you can never be sure about into whose life you've sent a song. Tonight's show contains a few secrets that I want share with you, and if you like the work of the artist I'm profiling tonight, please do pass it on to others. I'm pleased with what we did today; I think it's my favourite show so far.

Derrick Denholm is an artist who sometimes lives in Vancouver and sometimes Prince George. He makes things. He is somewhat out of step with the times. He doesn't have a label, or a myspace page. He sends CDs out into the world, sometimes not even bearing his name, and they find their way he hopes to the right ears. He admits to being a total hack on the accordion, but he's fallen in love with the sounds buried in its keys and bellows and buttons. He's flirted with the hurdy-gurdy and the Swedish keyed-fiddle (the magical object above). He's just made a CD called Norsk Drag; I encountered it my first weekend here in Montreal, while combing through the new releases in the CJLO music library. It's been my favourite discovery of the month, and fairly instantly has catapulted itself to my best-of list for 2006.

[MP3] DSD - I Resort To Books

Tonight: in a few of his own words (and keys and buttons): Derrick Denholm aka DSD with cuts from his newest little masterpiece, Norsk Drag, and a few more from his earlier record, New Old Folklör.

In total accidental and beautiful synchronicity, my friend Bryndis profiled him here.