May 2013
1 post
“One musical instrument appears in nearly every programme: the concert hall....”
– Robert Jourdain from Music, The Brain, and Ecstacy
April 2013
2 posts
1 tag
March 2013
1 post
“If somebody asks you what’s the smartest species or who’s the...”
– Brian Hare - http://brianhare.net/
January 2013
2 posts
3 tags
12-for-12: Appendix
A month ago I posted my year-end-list/stealth-manifesto, and I’ve noticed a few trends:
There seems to be more brass than usual. This, in the year I started to learn the cornet. This is clearly a) the cause b) an effect c) sheer coincidence d) some unquantifiable combination of the above.
The list veers heavily to the folkier end of the spectrum.
Despite listening a lot of radio (3-4...
1 tag
The Sorcerer’s Intern
featuring my Mum on...
December 2012
14 posts
3 tags
1/12: The Fire Eater by Kaki King
One thing comes after another. I’ve tried to sequence this list with some sense of flow (albeit not as tightly/forced as last year) because music is never static - how each moment flows to the next is usually more important than what happening in any given moment.
Kaki King is an extraordinarily accomplished technical guitarist, watching her play, it’s a joy to see the dazzling...
5 tags
2/12: The Morris Man Cometh from The North Sea...
Ok, I promise to stop complaining about my own one-track rule after this, but context is important. It’s why I prefer albums to singles. It’s why I still buy hard copies. It’s why I’m writing these.
North Sea Scrolls has done a lot to create context for itself: a concept album with spoken word introductions/narrations, an accompanying time-line, paintings, and live shows...
5 tags
3/12: The Walkers Lament by Legba & Sons
My favourite part of the Matrix series is the haunted/glitching house segment of the Animatrix. It managed to be quiet and beautiful while remaining completely faithful to the rules of a world more obviously tuned for hectic thrills.
The Walkers Lament pulls off a similar trick, embedding a moment of stillness and beauty into a zombie apocalypse. A post apocalyptic folk ballad capturing the...
5 tags
4/12: Dawn Chorus by Beth Orton
I can’t help but think Call Me The Breeze is the wrong choice of single from Sugaring Season. Oh, it’s a lovely tune and I can see why it might be considered an easy entry point (especially in a market where Laura Marlin has been successful), but: Beth Orton is one of my absolute favourite singers and, from an album that acts as an broad yet subtle showcase for her voice, it’s a...
5 tags
5/12: Dorcus by Kemper Norton
One difficulty in selecting individual songs is losing a sense of context. In the case of Dorcus, that loss is especially severe because its position on this list has a lot to do with how I first heard it.
It was a month of strange gigs, one of which was a night of electronic musicians, mostly sitting and poking at electronic musical instruments. Heck, one laptop musician may well have pressed...
5 tags
6/12: Illuminations ג by Quetev Meriri
“Weird/strange/odd/not-normal” is only an insult from someone scared of new things.
At the very least it should be neutral, but personally I love that feeling of acclimatising my brain to the unfamiliar. Which I mention because I’m struggling to find a more precise description for Quetev Meriri than beautifully strange. A conclusion doubtless accentuated by the fact I don’t speak...
1 tag
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7/12: The Coventry Carol by Madam
There are two main kinds of Christmas song: one is tinsel and stockings, excitement and bright colours; the other is curled in front of a fire on a cold night, a full belly and a glass of mulled wine. Madam’s interpretation of the Coventry Carol is certainly the later, although I think someone’s spiked the wine.
<a...
5 tags
8/12: King Of Rome by The Unthanks
Diversions Vol. 2 is a warm, effortlessly moving album combining the folk tradition and charm of the Unthanks with the rich, expansive sound of Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band. If I had to pick one song, and I do (it’s the rules), it would have to be the utterly magnificent King Of Rome.
Musically stunning and emotionally moving, it’s a truly wonderful song about a somewhat...
5 tags
9/12: Kaksi by Lepistö and Lehti
There are few things as satisfying as musicians who know their instruments and each other well enough to let the music go wherever it wants without fear. That golden point where each musician is worthy of centre stage, but never slips into the realm of overbearing ego likely to trample the emergent beauty of a heartfelt collaboration.
Lepistö and Lehti push their instruments far and wide...
5 tags
10/12: Class by The Indelicates
It’s bad enough having a bloated proportion of Etonites in government, without business, finance and culture improbably dominated by private schools. It’s bad enough the top universities were overloaded with privilege before fees, without setting a price disparity that forces a financial taint into the heart of education. It’s bad enough that elites naturally favour their own...
5 tags
11/12: This Charming Lady by Maggie8
The Smiths are a deeply important band to me, having influenced me at a deeply formative stage, so hearing a cover version always fills me with trepidation: will this live up to the music I love? Maggie8 go a step further and write a song that takes This Charming Man as a starting point and builds something new from it.
<a...
4 tags
12/12: Poetry Nights In Valhalla by Yair Yona
Creating music has, inevitably, affected the way I listen to music. People frequently mention the hyper-analytical aspect (often as a complaint, which baffles me) but it also drives my tastes, drawing me to people who are already working with ideas I want to work with. Music I love to listen to inspires what I want to play which influences what I want to listen to which itself inspires what I want...
1 tag
In Love With A Robot
A song of technophillia in...
October 2012
2 posts
2 tags
[At some point I realised half the text messages I send are general alerts/confirmations where the content is irrelevent. With that in mind, the following was inflicted on Vish over several months.]
I was on a quiet walk, sometime late last night, when a bald man handed me the corpse of a brown bear. Inside its putrid, maggot infested lungs rested a sapphire spider that glistened in the pale...
1 tag
Swirl
Sometimes, I’ll make a quick...
September 2012
1 post
“In the last ten years, we’ve discovered two previously unknown species of human....”
– Warren Ellis » How To See The Future
Ellis on fine form. This whole essay is Important Reading.
August 2012
1 post
1 tag
July 2012
4 posts
“I’ve got 38 years of experience, so I’m capable of making something...”
– Patricio Guzmán
My usual response to a film with mixed merits is to describe it as “…interesting”, yet, in the case of Nostalgia For The Light, that would be misleading.
Patricio Guzmán accumulated a lot of strong material - beautiful shots of the Atacama desert, mesmerising...
3 tags
Driving Blindfolded (stripped down session...
1 tag
1 tag
Ed “Hasgotno” Balls MP (The Democracy...
June 2012
2 posts
3 tags
Crossroads & Illusions (acoustic session...
2 tags
At The End Of The Ninth Year
Instrumental...
May 2012
7 posts
2 tags
1 tag
3 tags
WatchOf the musical projects I’m currently involved in, Existence Zero probably hauled me furthest from my comfort zone. Metal is hardly a genre central to my musical style; and yet, Definitions Of A Heresy is very much a PLANETS SHALL BURN AND THE STARS WILL RESONATE WITH THE ROAR OF COSMIC WAR METAL sort of EP. Fortunately, I have very talented friends: Vish (project mastermind, also bassist...
2 tags
ooo, isn’t 2012 fuckin’ lovely
by...
“You know what’s interesting? You musician guys count up, “One, two,...”
– Buzz Aldrin
1 tag
“There is no natural law or official quota that means you have to do nothing but...”
– Warren Ellis
April 2012
2 posts
“For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning...”
– The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy
Douglas Adams
2 tags
March 2012
1 post
1 tag
February 2012
1 post
2 tags
The Hovering Clown (Rough)
Rough recording of a...
January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
December 2011
13 posts
4 tags
1/11: I Know I'm Biased, But It IS Really Good...
Look: if you thought I was going to end on anything other than a bit of shameless self promotion then you’re even madder than you look. But this was always supposed to be a vague list defined solely by things I love: and I really love Visions.
&amp;lt;a href=”http://playingincircles.bandcamp.com/album/visions”...
3 tags
2/11: Plate. The. Fuck. Up.
Luke Haines, whose cohesively sprawling, ambitious, rather moving and proper fucking clever album, 9 ½ Psychedelic Meditations On British Wrestling In the 1970s & Early ’80s, spins such a disjointed web of musical and nostalgic themes before performing the near impossible by tying everything together, that it would have been a very strong contender for album of the year had this been a...
4 tags
3/11: 6 Years Ago, The World Ended
For 144 weeks (plus the occasional skip) Fridays meant Freakangels. A post-apocolyptic webcomic about a society trying to survive comfortably, starring a strange family and featuring some of the most evocative depictions of psychic abilities in a medium obsessed with superpeople.
Filled to the brim with the level of brilliant dialogue, interesting ideas and compelling twists I expect from Warren...
4 tags
4/11: Live Long And Prosper
Cat Vincent has done a lot of writing about hyperreal religions, creating your own mythology and the life altering impact of fiction. He’s been detailing his personal philosophy in the Guttershaman series, begun the Mason Lang Film Club and recently had a piece on the (rather creepy) Slenderman published in Darklore magazine. All fascinating, and well worth a look, but one essay on a...
4 tags
5/11: Just when you thought it was safe to go back...
Space Shark by Chris G has its own twist on single page webcomics, spinning an epic sci-fi adventure by isolating the most potent moments of the narrative to form a slightly disjointed but rich and rewarding world. Also, it is set in space and the “hero” is a shark.
This year saw fantastic use of colour pushed further on already eye-popping visual style, with lots of texture and splatter. Each...
4 tags
6/11: Phew! That Was A Busy Twenty Minutes.
Jamie Smart’s longform webcomic Corporate Skull kicked off in high style: with cavemen, shit suicides and the splatteriest photocopier incident of the year. It’s been getting progressively more mental and looks like it’s going to get even better. I’ve been enjoying it so much I felt compelled to draw my first bit of fanart for absolutely ages.
The screen is a less than...
4 tags
6.5/11: Merry Christmas!
Christmas day means repeats, right? Good thing too, because some brilliant stuff is always going to be left off a list like this. Fortunately, I can sneak in a list I wrote in July, which (still won’t make the list complete, but) does cover a couple of serious omissions, and everybody will forgive this blatant piece of cheating because it’s Christmas! Proper choice tomorrow…
For...
