Where to start with Donovan
Start with The Sun Is A Very Magic Fellow — Hurdy Gurdy Man, 1968. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 14 Donovan tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 14 Donovan tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 14 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The collection leans hard on one record: 13 of the 14 tracks come from Hurdy Gurdy Man alone.
The years need a caveat: 14 of 14 dated tracks land in the 1960s and come from 2 records, while the rest come from elsewhere — the mark of a reissue carrying its own date rather than the music's. Read the year column below as the date on the copy in this room, not the date the music arrived in the world.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
The Sun Is A Very Magic Fellow — Hurdy Gurdy Man, 1968. Of the 14 Donovan tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the sparse end
You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond — Hear Me Now, 1965. The lowest density reading of any Donovan track in the room (35 out of 100). This is as far towards sparse as the collection goes.
If you want the wall end
Teas — Hurdy Gurdy Man, 1968. The highest density reading here, at 55 out of 100 — a 20-point swing across the collection towards wall.
Where Donovan sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Donovan's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 | 13 |
| Hear Me Now | 1965 | 1 |
Every Donovan track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond | Hear Me Now | 1965 |
| A Sunny Day | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| As I Recall It | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Get Thy Bearings | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Hi It's Been A Long Time | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Hurdy Gurdy Man | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Jennifer Juniper | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Peregrine | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Tangier | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| Teas | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| The Entertaining Of A Shy Girl | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| The River Song | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| The Sun Is A Very Magic Fellow | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
| West Indian Lady | Hurdy Gurdy Man | 1968 |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Donovan's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Bob Dylan — folk rock, 43 tracks
- Where to start with Lô Borges — mpb, 15 tracks
- Where to start with Bibio — electronic, 15 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Donovan as from the United Kingdom. Its contributors tag the artist folk, pop and rock. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Donovan tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 14, across 2 albums. 14 of them carry a date, running from 1965 to 1968. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 14 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 14 of these 14 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.