:(

Hmmm, not much going on here.

Spring Clean (Overdue)

I must do something about this page. It looks untidy and some of those links are out of date. Others need adding.

In the meantime, have a listen to this album. I'm really enjoying it at the moment (And you can listen to a not-as-good-as-the-CD quality version for free).
Rain - Cerulean Blue

When bagpuss goes to sleep . . .

. . . all his friends go to sleep . . .

.F. takes a nap.

Not posted here for ages, and I am too sleepy to do so at the moment. Which is twisted logic as I am doing just that. Back soon.

Spotify and other free music

Horrah! for Spotify, a great way to listen to loads of music whilst online. A simple search for artist, album or track does the trick, and double click to play. Lots of stuff on there as well. Although many of my more obscure tastes cannot be found, I have already played the likes of Abba, John Cage, Strawbs, Pet Shop Boys, Neu!, Handel, Ozric Tentacles, Nine Inch Nails, The Tiger Lillies and Renaissance, and that was just today. You do have to put up with the odd advert here and there (which is annoying when it happens between two continuous tracks) but hey! it's free (or you can pay to be advert free).

Talking of free, Free Albums Galore is a site dedicated to reviewing all those free downloads out there. Great to dip into.

Also Susan Matthews is putting a new track a day onto Myspace during March. (Note : Hopefully she will either host them elsewhere or release the lot on CD soon as I find Myspace annoying. Ages to load and then the tracks frequently don't play properly. And I've missed a few!) There have been some great moments in there, especially earlier tracks "hgfreak", "Broken" & "Babies In My Dream", which alas you can't hear any more.

Hunter Gatherer

Before I was interrupted by my images not displaying properly, I was going to mention how much the process of getting hold of music has changed over the years.

When I was a wee lad, it was into Boots, and down to the back of the store where the racks of records were stored. That's right, Boots used to sell music. Back then I was fascinated by the security cameras : black globes that hung from the ceiling with the lenses sticking out at all angles making them look like mechanical sea urchins, or the next alien foe to annoy Dr Who (Jon Pertwee in those days). If I saw one turning to follow me around the store, I gave it a cheery wave.

My first ever album was HOT HITS Vol. 19 (one of those compilation albums) which I bought with my first ever record token. It had the typical long leggy model on the front, posing with a croquet mallet which alarmed my Mum and it included that Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron song on it, which is why I bought it. This was followed up with The New Goodies LP. Surely there is no better version of "Wild Thing" than what The Goodies did, no sirree!

A couple of years later it was down to the shops again, this time the late Woolworths, for Abba LPs. Yep, I remember them the first time around. You can't beat a good old pop song. Not even with a large stick. Although if Pierce Brosnan was wielding the stick . . .

Thereafter I discovered that the only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud, so Motorhead's "No Sleep Til Hammersmith" along with Deep Purple's "Made In Japan" found a home. Two great live albums. I've never heard anything better by either band since. Rock
'n' Roll!

University beckoned and with it, lots of other peoples music, a tape library (cassettes! remember them?) and a rapid interest in Genesis (before they went poppy) and Tangerine Dream (before they went poppy). My parents obviously noticed that I came home in between terms with one bag of smelly washing and another of LPs, and then spent ages on Dad's steam powered "stereo unit" recording those LPs onto cassettes to take and play the following term. Result - my own hi-fi tower for my 18th birthday. My decline into the endless sea of aural delights had begun.

By now I had access to two cities, Sheffield (university) and Birmingham (nearest to home) both with the larger record stores like HMW and Virgin. More artists and albums than I could shake a stick at, even if I drank loads of coffee and invented a multiple stick shaking machine. Soon I was expanding into the second hand market to find long deleted albums by bands and artists that I wanted to hear. The Plastic Factory in Birmingham had a cellar that was stuffed with cardboard boxes full of vinyl : piled on top of (and beneath) rickety tables were entire back catalogues of some of the more interesting record labels. I'm sure that the more obscure the material you bought, the more respect the staff gave you (I once bought a Kate Bush single and it was basically tossed across the counter at me before the assistant, without saying a word, held out his hand for my cash. On one of my last trips there in the early 90s I bought the Psilotripitaka CD box set by Nurse With Wound and I'm surprised that the assistant didn't don white gloves to serve me, such was the care he went through to check all the contents were there before delicately placing into it the plastic bag and genuflecting when receiving my cash.) By now, discovering new music was like a hunt, you did your research and found out about an album you had to hear, you checked out the larger record shops, then the smaller back street shops full of collectibles and second hand items. You went to record fairs and tried the avoid the overpriced goodies, and finally put wanted ads in magazines like Record Collector. Eventually the item was found, perhaps a few years of first hearing about it.

Then came CDs.

They had been around for a few years, overpriced and stuck in the corner of record shops. A limited selection unless you were into Michael Jackson, Queen and Mozart. But the square footage of shop space they occupied slowly increased and the price gap between vinyl and CDs slowly decreased. In January 1990 after buying a copy of Pierre Favre and Tamia's "De La Nuit...Le Jour" on vinyl from mail order specialists "Ultima Thule" (and they're still going, hi guys!) and finding that the delicate nature of the music (silence plays a part in the music) was somewhat spoilt by the endless snap, crackle and pop, I made a decision. I gave up eating rice crispies. And I bought a CD player. The Favre/Tamia Lp was exchanged for a CD copy, and I started exploring different parts of the various shops. About this time a lot of long deleted albums started emerging on CD, in fact within the next 10 years almost everything could be obtained on CD, the Japanese especially liked reissuing long forgotten albums on very nice CDs with reproduction packaging. My buying was still either shops or mail order, but with so much readily available the hunting days were over. Also buying a house caused a cash shortage, and with albums generally being between £10 - £15, few albums were actually bought.

Then came the Internet.

Around 1997 having gained access to the webby wide world, I found that you could get hold of CDs a lot cheaper from the US or Canada, even when postage was added on. Also eBay provided lots of cheap second hand albums (and they were cheap back then, before all the power sellers took over and the rest of the country logged on). A new job in 1999 bought a better cash flow and my collection exploded. Vast amounts of music information was readily available and the actual music easy to get hold of at a decent price. In some ways it was all too easy. Did I appreciate the music more if I spent time and effort hunting and travelling, obtaining the album with scuffed sleeve but still decent quality vinyl, and playing it praying that their wasn't going to be an enormous POP right in the best part of the album? Now I could read about a band I hadn't heard of before, click a button, and sometimes as fast as the following day a CD plopped onto my front door mat. I don't think it does matter as far as the music goes, but my collection of LPs is something of a nostalgia fest whenever I go through them. When you have trudged down a busy high street with a delicate piece of vinyl battling against the gale force wind that is blowing the bag into other peoples knees before enduring the hour long bus journey home, you tend to spend more time gazing at the art work, the lyrics, and as such I am far more likely to know what the tracks are called from my vinyl days. Nowadays I know that the fourth track is great, but not necessarily know what it is called and I am sure there are some CDs whose booklet has never left the jewel case.

And now we have MP3s for instant downloads. You can usually find out was a band sounds like for free, watch a live performance for free, and make your mind up before downloading what you want, NOW! The technology for creating recorded music is more accessible to all and as such anybody who wants to make an album can do so, put it on the 'net and let people hear it. There are so many sources of free music that I couldn't possibly listen to it all before I die.

I have the entire world of music at my fingertips, now what shall I listen to . . .

163 days of music?

I am still spotting some errors in Amazon's MP3 data. The "longest"
track I have found so far is the following.



That's over 163 days long! Not bad for 79p :)

Spoonerism

I accidentally spoonerated the other day, and from now on a particular food stuff will always be called something else in our household.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce you to the delights of ...

Dalek Go Balls!

They exterminate your breath.

A'm a Amazon Man

Horrah! for Amazon finally letting us UK citizens get our paws on their huge supply of MP3s. There are some great bargains to be had like Laurie Anderson's United States Live boxed set for £9.99.

I've noticed a few errors however, check out the following.


That second track is rather long. And the album is available on CD! So that's a 30 inch diameter CD I guess.

Also there is some rather expensive applause.



I think that it should be a free download, but here they are charging you £9.49 for under a minute of applause!

Anyhow, getting the likes of Jethro Tull's "Thick As A Brick" for under £3 shows that despite some of the more expensive choices, there are plenty of great downloads to find.

PS. Any ideas why my images are appearing fuzzy?? (OK when you click on 'em!)
PPS. Sorted!!

Eggstremely quick?

A quick round-up.

On the 2nd January 2009 I saw Easter Eggs for sale in two separate supermarkets.
Next month it will be Halloween stuff, but be quick to buy, they need the space for Xmas 2009.

My eyesight is rather swiftly failing. I now have a pair of glasses for seeing things sharply over four feet away, like the back of lorries.

The drugs don't work. After being stuck on a variety of Prozak over Yule, I found it disrupted my sleep so much I ended up being a zombie. So bang goes that idea. I'll stick to plenty of water as it seems to be a great way to stay healthy.

I found a great source of music - WM Recordings
I am enjoying the Meanwhileproject.ltd album "Today Is Sunday" at the moment. It is described as "An electronic-organic-independent-pop-alternative-folk-ambient album, not more or less" and I have to agree, but delightful with it.

Top 10 - 2008!

I am decidedly average when it comes to writing, and my musical skills are zero. Even my triangle playing is out of tune, so I am hardly qualified to do album reviews. Way back in 1997 when I first had internet access and found that you could get free webspace at Geocities, I grabbed a bit of webspace and since I couldn't think what else to use it for, I started reviewing my album collection. Trouble is a few weeks and several reviews later the local Geocities leader (which they seemed to have) started emailing me demanding to know why I wasn't updating my site regularly (gee! I hadn't updated it for a whole week! Sorry Herr Kommandant, I wasn't glued to my computer.). I eventually told him to stick something somewhere and closed my Geocities account.
In 2001 having finally got a computer at home (my inner Luddite screamed) I resurrected my little review site and added smiley and growly faces and other "let's play around with HTML" things. I never got very far and eventually found George Starostin's great review site which made me think, what's the point in trying to compete with that!
So bang went my site again.

However having this blog has fired up my "I've just heard this album and want to say something about it" juices. Hence the odd album review that has appeared. So I am rather pleased that Susan Matthew liked my wee review of Hope-Bound enough to stick it in her review section. Encouragement! So even though I agree with that quote, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture", I will continue to endeavour to convert my strange blobby non-wordy thoughts about the music I hear into words, even if they do end up in a strange order and have little to do with the actual music.

Anyway, here is my top ten list of favourite albums that I heard for the first time in 2008. (As opposed to albums actually released in 2008 - I can't be arsed to check the year of release and anyway, this is my list). In no particular order . . .

Susan Matthews - Hope-Bound
Also enjoyed Axis Vein and bruiser a lot, plus the 40 minute radio mix
"Dreamscapes", but this remains my favourite. See review here.

Julian Cope - Black Sheep
His best so far this century. See what I said about it in September.

Camel - Mirage
An oldie but goodie.

Caravan - If I Could Do It All Over Again I'd Do It All Over You
Another oldie and more good stuff.

The Pineapple Thief - Tightly Unwound
Bang up to date, and a really great hook-laden album. A bit
early-Radiohead-lite, but in a good way.

Ayreon - 01011001
Let's take a bunch of music critics who hate Prog Rock and get them to
list all that is bad about it.
Now make an album based on that list and stick a flake in it. This is
the result. Consistently entertaining.

The Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
The best album inspired by fruit preserve ever.

Sunn O))) - White 2
The sound of that earthquake we had earlier in the year.

M83 - Saturdays = Youth
The joyous sound of being young, carefree and gazing at your shoes.

Espers - II
The gloomy sound of being young, carefree and gazing at your impending doom.


Bought to late to be included but it might have been:
Sigur Rós : Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

Best album that I already have but updated to CD this year:
Jethro Tull : Thick As A Brick

Track I think should be next years Eurovision Song Contest entry, but won't be:
Susan Matthews : Splinters

That's all for now.
Time to avoid that annoying time of year.

The 10 Minute Prog Rock Jelly Post

seem to be doing short snappy posts just lately, so let's expand a little
on that last post. . .

I was searching for reviews of the new Klaus Schulze & Lisa Gerrard album
Farscape when I came across a list of Fran Keylard's Rogues'
Gallery podcasts. And oh look, he played a track on this show here so
lets download it and have a listen. What, 4 hours long! Phew. I wonder what
these bands sound like . . .

Now I have to admit that modern prog rock has largely passed me by. I
enjoyed chunks of the genre from the 1970s, but I was a bit picky. For
instance when it comes to ELP's Tarkus, I actually prefer the likes of
Jeremy Bender to most of the title track. Stop mucking around lads
and play something decent! (OK the last quarter of side one is good; after
15 minutes of practise it should be.) But give me The Lamb Lies Down On
Broadway or Thick As A Brick any day. I kind of gave up on the
genre back in the 80s when the likes of Genesis and Jethro Tull were past
their best. (Ok, the synth-pop version of Genesis did knock out a few
great songs, but you need a bit of Gabs and Hackett to make the neck hairs
stand on end). I did try the first two Marillion albums but soon got bored
of them (both the band and Fish solo are still going and sound rather
decent from what I've heard so far). Krautrock and experimental music were
my in-thing by the 1990s, but I did note the general avoidance of the term
"prog rock" by bands who were actually progressive and quite definitely
"rock". The term did seem to have a bad smell, associated with half-hour
tracks about elves eating magic jelly, concept albums about aliens
invading Earth and turning humans into jelly or short tracks played in
13/pi time with impossible chords, usually played on instruments made of
jelly.

OK, so the jelly part is probably untrue, I'm suddenly fancying a nice bowl
of the wibbly-wobbly stuff. There is something about jelly that brings joy
to the dinner table and makes people like me digress. So get back on topic
Boolbar, or no jelly for you!

When it comes to music I don't care much for labels, apart from the labels
"I like this" and "I don't like that". Admittedly genres can help point me
in the right direction. For example the likes of R'n'B or modern Heavy
Metal tend to leave me cold so I may avoid music labelled as such, but even
so I can see that the best of those genres is still great music. It seems
now that the label "prog rock" means it sounds like it should be prog rock
even if it isn't actually progressive but it is just using familiar proggy
sounds and structures. Fair dos. I mean an oil painting is hardly
progressive art nowadays, but if it looks great then I'll hang it on my
wall.

So back to the podcast (show #256 if you are wondering) and initially it
dribbled in the background with the sort of heavier poppy rock that has
been around for a couple of decades now, but suddenly it caught my
attention with a bit of live Spock's Beard, continued to intrigue with
DeeExpus Project and kept me entertained until the end. Now I'm not saying
it's so good, I must rush out and buy lots of albums, but it was great
accompaniment to four hours of working at home. And the excellent new Elbow
material that was played has banished the rather piss-poor live performance
I saw them do 5 years ago. The Klaus Schulze & Lisa Gerrard new 30 minute
epic track that was played was typical modern Schulze, pretty and hypnotic
but kind of pointless, with typical Lisa Gerrard's wonderful wordless
warbling. (She might be singing about jelly I suppose, which would make it
wonderful wordless wibbly-wobbly warbling.) I'm not sure about it being
worthy of buying, from the reviews I have read the album has over two hours
of the duo doing much the same. Then again I wasn't too sure about the
earlier The Crime Of Suspense at first with Julia Messenger's
wonderful meaningless warbling over Schulze's pretty and hypnotic
keyboards, but I now enjoy its relaxing meanderings.


I have since downloaded a few other shows and some bands are definitely
worthy of attention like Von Hertzen Brothers, The Pineapple Thief and
Days Between Stations as well as the aforementioned Spock's Beard and
DeeExpus Project. With the likes of Radiohead, Muse, Elbow and (blimey!)
Kate Bush also appearing on the playlist I think I might be listening in
again.

As for The Pineapple Thief's track Different World, this is just the
sort of lengthy track I like. A bit of hardness, a bit of softness,
emotive vocals, folky elements, chunks of guitar, pounding drums, tweeting birds, strings and
memorable tunes. Great stuff! If I had a list of my favourite tracks of
around 10 minutes length then I'm sure it would get in.

Hmmm... lists... go on then, off the top of my head...

Genesis - The Musical Box
Current 93 - All The Stars Are Dead Now
Julian Cope - Safesurfer
Renaissance - A Trip To The Fair
Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Wildlife
Can - Future Days
Nurse With Wound - Nil By Mouth

.. oooh, I can feel a whole new post coming on. Meanwhile back to the jelly.

The Dividing Line.

I've been listening to some of the podcasts of The Rogues' Gallery on The Dividing Line. Lots of prog rock and modern "prog" rock. Great for use in the gym.
You can download podcasts here.

I am particulary fond of The Pineapple Thief's "Different World" at the moment. A really great track.

Susan Matthews - Splinters

Here is a video for a Susan Matthews track which is pleasing me at the moment :

DIY > 40

DIY causes backache, sore limbs, dust in eyes, cuts, bruises. Well it does once you get to your 40s. It seems that once the 30s are left behind, then your body really isn't designed to do much more than eat, sleep and suck boiled sweets (which I suddenly realised that I had started to do again). You appreciate a bit of warmth in the winter to avoid cramps, and a bit of cool in the summer to avoid heatstroke.
Policemen really do look far too young. You start to become grumpy about silly things; such as youngsters. You realise that you left University over half a lifetime ago. You fall asleep on the sofa again before "Later With Jules Holland" started.

Ignoring my grumps, I am glad that we seem to be getting an Autumn this year. I've always liked Spring and Autumn, and just lately, they both seem to be shrinking as we bounce straight from Winter to Summer and back again.

Washing Machine Repair Boolbar

Today I fixed our washing machine. With a little bit of internet searching, an eBay purchase of under £5 (inc. postage) and some cursing using a bent nail, I successfully got that drum rolling again. I never knew that playing with my model trains all those years ago would come in handy for diagnosing electric motors in laundry appliances.

Julian Cope - Black Sheep

Julian Cope - Black Sheep

Disc 1 : Return Of The Native

1 Come The Revolution
2 It's Too Late To Turn Back Now
3 These Things I Know
4 Psychedelic Odin
5 Blood Sacrifice
6 The Shipwreck Of St. Paul

Disc 2 : Return Of The Alternative

1 All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)
2 Feed My Rock 'n' Roll
3 Dhimmi Is Blue
4 The Black Sheep's Song
5 I Can Remember This Song

When I saw Cope perform live in 2000 he was on top form, presenting both his ideas and music in an entertaining style. Easily one of my top gigs ever. However Cope's recent offerings have not been very friendly. For someone who really wants to get his message across and educate the masses (back in 2000 he was aping Blair's "Education Education Education" soundbite), presenting it dosed in dense heavy rock and using lo-fi recordings of a rather ugly vocal style was hardly going to win any new converts.

However closer examination of 2005's Citizen Cain'd and follow up album Heavy Orgasm showed that Cope's ability to craft a pop hook was still intact, albeit hard to spot amidst the swirling mass of noise. Last year's You Gotta Problem With Me showed a move towards more accessible material and now we have Black Sheep, an album bursting with pop hooks, folky chants and generally less scary music. It sounds a bit like a stripped down 20 Mothers, with nods to Peggy Suicide and Fried thrown in. The gloom and anger of previous albums has been replaced with an almost joyous uplifting energy, Cope is back to entertaining and educating at the same time.

Like its predecessors the album is well packaged with a booklet stuffed with Cope's writing and poems with several photos of the leather clad Cope and co. looking like some 80s heavy metal band on holiday. The album is again split over 2 disks (just over half an hour each), just to give you that "get up to change the record over" feeling of yesteryear and a pee break. Or is Cope trying to give us all more exercise ?

It starts rather densely, perhaps showing a link back to the prior albums, and the ugly straining vocals are still in place. However under the rather sombre sound Come The Revolution is similar to 1990s Cope and slowly builds into a chanting singalong. A good start if somewhat average-Copewise. It's Too Late To Turn Back Now rocks a tad more, still with an over excited vocal style and still offering rather middling Cope excitement. Thing pick up with the next tracks. After a fake synth-pop start These Things I Know becomes a more folky sing-along similar to the excellent Woden from You Gotta Problem With Me and Psychedelic Odin is a great 5 minute song albeit with a 2 minute spoken coda with a damp squib of an ending. The first 5 minutes are still one of the highlights of the album however. Blood Sacrifice is one of those odd songs that Cope does so well, and The Shipwreck Of St. Paul sounds like Cope did his vocals while out on one of his travels, but the low-fi slightly distorted vocal suits the mood perfectly.

So far so good.

The second disk gets off to a cracking start. All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers) with its long baiting title is basically a great little pop song. OK, it is a Cope pop song and won't ever see any radio play, but it is darn catchy, even if that chorus is hard to get your gob around. Feed My Rock 'n' Roll starts off like a Misty's Big Adventure song before slowly cranking up the energy into ear-splitting territory. It's both hypnotic and fantastic! Dhimmi Is Blue is a slow number of remarkably simple construction, sounding like it escaped from Fried. Despite its 8 minute length it is rather gripping, almost moving in parts, and proves that Cope's material doesn't need layers of noise to work. The Black Sheep's Song is another odd song and rather charming, although it had to work hard to appeal to me over many listens. Things are finally wrapped up with the mellotron drenched I Can Remember This Song, sounding a bit like it escaped from the final section of 20 Mothers.

I have to admit it does take a few listens to get into this material, but it is a damn good Cope album, and currently my most played even with the CD juggling that entails.

Buy it now from Head Heritage.

If you haven't heard Julian Cope before then buy Peggy Suicide.

More Pink Penguins Please!

A quick round up of my search stats,
or "what are people expecting to find when they visit here",
or "let's make even more people come here looking for those thing and leave disappointed"

19% are looking for something to do with the album "Wee Tam and The Big Huge" by The Incredible String Band. I'm going to have to dig out my copy and review it properly. Trouble is I don't have a turntable to hand, I don't want to pay for two CDs at the moment, and a quick file sharing download just to hear it could result in a nasty letter. Bah.

16% Still lots of Kate Bush Aerial searches. And people looking for that "Pi Code" (haven't you cracked it yet?) Still the odd "pink penguin" as well. Did you know that Kate Bush's brothers used to listen to the Incredible String Band while painting the penguins pink?

9% Foritensum test results. No I'm not giving anything away. No I haven't finished it. There are clues in the Kate Bush track 'Pi' found on her album 'Aerial'.

5% bic crystal ballpoint pen. Especially in pink it seems. Whether the pen is pink or the ink is pink I'm not sure. Perhaps this has something to do with those pink penguins.

5% of people still can't work out why Genesis "Calling All Stations" is so bad. It does sound better with a pink bic crystal ballpoint pen in each ear. Or even a pink crystal penguin in each ear.

And I still get the important question "how many hamsters does it take to power a car?". The answer is contained in the Kate Bush track 'Pi' found on her album 'Aerial'.

Also inquiries asking after the "strange shoe shop downham market". I assume they mean the one reinforced externally with thousands of multi-coloured crocs (or so it seems.) And yes, that does include pink crocs.

Sorry

Once more I've confused Bill Bailey and Mitch Benn. Mitch Benn, I apologise for calling you Bill Bailey. Bill Bailey I apologise for accusing you of plagiarism. I must also apologise to Jeremy Clarkson for not crediting him with calling the Ka a 'teapot' and to the band 'Gong' for using their album title "flying teapot".

(Speaking of Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear is one of the funniest programs on the TV. It's a shame they spoil the show with the odd dull bit about cars and their fuel injected camshafts with turbo brake horse powered manifolds.)




Apologies also for all those people who have come to this blog searching for the Incredible String Band's album title "Wee Tam and The Big Huge" and not finding anything about said album ('cos I used the title in an earlier posting). Personally I love "The Big Huge" half for its general weirdness.Wee Tam is pretty good, but not up to the high standards of the first three ISB albums. So there.

And apologies in advance to all those coming to this post in the future expecting to find something about a sitcom featuring the huge star Ronnie Corbett. Sorry.

Apologies to the fish I ate last night, but you were rather tasty. Yum.

Apologies to all those who made and worked on the new X-Files movie for my next sentence. It wasn't very good. You've taken what would have been a run-of-the-mill TV episode, made it twice as long, added several holes in the plot and got rid of the "will they/won't they" excitement between the leading characters. Bah!

I must also apologise for my bus like tendencies in not posting for ages,then sending two at once.

Sorry.


Answers to spot the difference.

Part 1. Bill Bailey has a moustache, Mitch Benn has a beard.

Part 2. That is not my car in the top picture. My pointy hat isn't green.

Music, Hamless, teapots

Catching up ... and failing.

A quick thumbs up for Earth Monkey Productions, or "interesting music for free". Try the recent 50:50 compilation.

Tried to get tickets for Hamlet, and failed. Like everyone else. Nothing to do with "who" was in it of course. We just like Hamlet. No really.

My old car (Ford Ka = teapot) failed. Couldn't find a replacement second hand teapot for ages and nearly bought a grannymobile, but found a bargain second hand flying teapot (SportKa). Oddly it uses less fuel despite going like poo from a spade when provoked. Hopefully by the time I need another car the "eco-friendly" modern cars will be cheap and second hand.

Then comes the "Credit Crunch" and Bill Bailey steals my joke about it sounding like a breakfast cereal. Bastard.

The Latest 5 Albums Passing My Way

One More Grain : Isle Of Grain



You walk into a party and everyone in the room has a herring on their heads, except you. You feel out of place for a while, but because everyone is friendly and having a good time, the lack of fishy headwear is soon forgotten. That is a bit what listening to this album is like. It just doesn't sound right to begin with, the musical part of your brain is confused listening to this Krautrock-like music played by a jazz fusion band lead by a Mark E Smith-esque Lancastrian. However by the time the second track is under way, you are busy searching the web for piscean milliners.

Mmmmh, nice.

In some ways this album just shouldn't work and in one way it doesn't. It doesn't throw up catchy tunes or amazing slabs of sound and there isn't that much variation within any one track, so it could be said to be somewhat ignorable. Which doesn't explain why it is rather stuck in my CD player at the moment. Each track becomes its own little world in handy capsule form. The lyrics, delivered more as monologues rather than songs, are somewhat oddball with an interesting use of words and seem to float on the rich musical backing. The music is rather hard to place. I've already mentioned Krautrock and jazz, but folk and funk come to mind as well. If you want something along the lines of The Fall in ambient free-fall jazzy swirly joy then it does the trick.


Espers : Espers II



There is a problem with albums that start so well. The first two tracks on this album (Dead Queen, Widow's Weed) make the following ones seem rather under par, even though those tracks considered on their own are perfectly decent songs. There are a couple of tracks towards the end of the album (Mansfield And Cyclops, Dead King) that lift you back up to the same heights again, but the overall effect is still a dip in the middle. Shame, as it is a rather splendid album, if you like early 70s goth-folk-rock with nice female vocals (a bit Sandy Denny) with a bit of modern post-rock thrown in (like I do). Loads of different instruments create a dense sound, though some may find it too dirge-like to enjoy. The track titles are enough to get you down! But it is often the gloomiest music that makes you feel human and alive.

HTRK : Nostalgia



If you lurk around eBay or Amazon, you can snap up CDs cheaply. So having stuck this on my Amazon wish-list over a year ago, I was pleased to see it pop up cheaply on eBay. Plop! Snaffled it. I had no idea why I stuck it on the wish-list, I must have read something that made me go "wanna wanna". Anyway, this is apparently not an album, but a 7 track "let's release something to show we exist while we get around to releasing a album" type thingy. But hey, 7 tracks and over 36 minutes makes it pretty much an album by vinyl standards. Recorded live and crudely it sounds very raw and somewhat akin My Bloody Valentine or Garland era Cocteau Twins. Now if you want your vocals to sound like they are being sung by a female who has just been dragged out of bed with a mother of all hangovers and dumped in a cave then this is definitely for you.
Forget about any lyrics, the vocals are just another noise in the mix, along with the thump and grind of parent/neighbour/granny/partner/dog annoying music. It is almost unpleasant at times, but just about sneaks the right side of that knife-edge of fascination that makes you want to plunge deeper into the grime. I did find the relentless gloom rather hard to swallow the first time I heard it, and the sound pallette rather limited, but further listens have revealed an inventiveness making each track stand on its own. Whether they can expand on this on their first album proper remains to be heard.

Ashra : New Age Of Earth



After Ash Ra Temple collapsed, guitarist Manuel Gottsching tried his hand at Berlin School electronics, probably inspired by former band member Klaus Schulze. This album released in 1977 under a solo name of Ashra has warm synthesizers and occasional guitar creating the typical hypnotic grooves and ambient soundscapes that you'd expect from this era. It is a more tuneful and relaxing affair compared to similar releases by Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze, however I don't find it as interesting a listen as either of those two artists at their peak. If you find 70s Schulze too dark or slow and 70s T.Dream too experimental, then this may be the synth album for you. The two shorter but bouncier tracks Sunrain and Deep Distance sound to me like the sort of music that dolphins would happily dance to and Ocean of Tenderness could be the sort of thing that dolphins would listen to having knackered themselves dancing. The lengthy final track Nightdust starts out exploring similar territory to Klaus Schulze, i.e. a lengthy slow unfurling 10 minute intro, before ticking over into that knackered dolphin sound again.

Susan Matthews : Hope-Bound



It is always nice to have a little bit of connection with the artist when you purchase one of their albums. Whether buying a Jane Siberry album and finding in the package that she's written a postcard thanking you for supporting her, or buying a Julian Cope album and getting his wife calling you because that CD is out of stock, it all kind of makes the whole experience a bit more personal. Susan Matthews cuts her own CD-Rs, prints out her own artwork and then goes to the post office to send it to you herself, and that's enough to make me feel happy about it. (Yes I am quite easily pleased.) And it is only £3.98, including postage, so being cashless as I am, this seemed like a good buy. Oh, and the fact that musically it sounded like my cup of tea did come into the equation somewhere.

The more experimental type of music can often disappoint: for every album that sounds amazing, there is usually another that is tedious or annoyingly inpenitrable. Thankfully Susan stays the right side of the big sign saying "Failed - please try again". On the odd occasion during this album when I think that the stretchy monster is off to visit Mr. Point, the track ends and another begins. Horrah! Overall the music sort of lurks between Laurie Anderson and Nurse With Wound without actually treading on either of their toes. It is an odd mixture of the uplifting and harsh. Take A Decoy Performance with a dialogue suggesting domestic violence juxtaposed with audience cheering and what sounds like a conversation between grandfather clocks. Or the rather lovely near ambient Missing with a gloopy blobby backdrop of noise trying to bring chaos into beauty. The whole album remains fascinating right up to the lengthy Suffusion with its Nurse With Wound like sound loops collapsing into deep internal organ threatening drones, somewhat akin to Sunn o))). Susan's almost wordless vocals compliment most of the tracks like sweet kisses from that slightly weird Aunt that most of the family shun.

This is definately my favourite album of the moment, so I'm off to spend another £3.98, and so should you.