Just listening to Peter Gabriel 3 (the one with the melting face) for the first time in a very very long time. This is one of those records that I first heard as a young teenager discovering a lot of music for the first time. When I first heard it I remember getting shivers up my spine and its doing the same thing now. Superb.
I am currently listening to Sex,Age & Death by Bob Geldof. It is suprisingly good. IN fact I would go so far as to say Very good. Well there you go.
Work and lack of sleep create a gap and then you get out of practice of posting. Oh well time to get back into the swing of things.
Work is taking up the majority of my energy at the moment – customers, a release and new opportunities for the company are lurking just out of reach at the moment and an uneasy sense of hope. This is one thing you learn in business – things always take much longer than you think they well. Always.
I got to see Chris Morris’s superb My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117. Most people will know Morris’s work from Brass Eye and The Day Today but he is also responsible for the strange, disturbing and dream like Jam (tv) and Blue Jam (radio). My wrongs is a short film (~12 minutes) taken from one of the radio monologues. The main character is a hapless man led astray by a dog and later on a baby that talk to him. Morris’s humour ranges high and low – from the Beckettian absurdity of the central character to the childish fun taken in saying rude words and the comedic contradictions of Monty Python. Its not for everyone but if you like this kind of thing this is a must see.
I’ve being working on my music a lot more and I’ve dusted off my Micro Modular. I havent’ really used it for a while and its great fun to be programming it again. I have spent more time making noises than music though. Milo really likes all my synths and things as well – he stands at the end of the desk where he can just reach the end keys or switches patches on the modular.
Music wise I’ve been listening to a lot of Bill Nelson. I have no idea why this guy is not more widely know. Highly prolific (he wrote 150-200 songs for his current wife when he was courting her) he produces quirky pop songs that are quirky and catchy in equal measure. Continuing on my exploration of offbeat English pop – I have also discovered they highly idiosyncratic Robert Wyatt.
Having Milo removes a large amount of my reading time but I am currently reading Brain of the Firm by Stafford Beer. I have been meaning to read this book since I was a teenager and have owned it for many years now so its good to be actually getting down to reading it. No doubt I will have more comments when I have read a bit more.
As is often the way this week has been mostly interrupted by Teeth. Milo of course gets to sleep when he wants to (not that he does very often) and had a marathon 14 hour stint last night to make up for the sleep he lost over the last week. I am however still trying to catch up – nearly there though as this web entry should indicate.
Actually I have been very busy as well. We are coming up to a release at work and that is always a busy time.
Music has been working its way back into my life again. I have decided to embark on a “getting up to speed” project much like the one that resulted in the 2001ep. Basically this involves sitting down in my studio at regular intervals – at least once or twice a week and writing a track in one sitting. I’ve done 3 so far although last nights is going to be chucked away. Its quite pleasing to work like this – no conceptual work, no pressure – just working on my musical skills. I suspect I will release a selection of these works at some point.
Because I’ve been doing a lot of programming at work I’ve done very little work on the PD externals I am working on. Which is annoying because I need them.
It was Milo’s first birthday this weekend. Obviously he didn’t know what was going on but he loved getting lots of new things and seems to have had a good weekend.
Despite that we have lived in out current house for nearly a year now the cats I still got hiding places that I don’t know where they are. The cats are shutdown stairs at night so we can leave Milo’s bedroom door open and so they need rounding up. Last night I found Roo (whose real name is Finzi) easily but Freud was no where to be seen. After 20 minutes of searching high and low I had gotten to the point of wondering if he’d got outside and was standing in the back garden when I turned round and there he was looking at me out of the window as though he had been there all the time. Perhaps cats have access to the other 8 dimensions predicted by string theory – it would certainly explain a lot.
When we where out walking at Cramond yesterday we saw the Invincible a ship that I had the day off school to go and see being launched. (not the best story in the world I admit but it means something to me…)
I read the Dirk Gently part of the Salmon of Doubt at the weekend. This turns out to be a number of chapters – some of which are clearly unrelated. Although fragmented and unfinished they do underline what a sad loss the death of Douglas Adams was. It seems odd to me that the book was not published as a book of essays (which it is) and the fiction stuff included as appendices. I guess they thought they might sell more this way.
I've spent the last few hours listening to Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. These two bands (although Psychic TV is really several bands) where massively influential in their time.
I was lucky enough to see PTV in my first year at Uni on 12th February 1986 at the Warehouse in Leeds. The only bands I had really seen before uni where the likes of Marillion, Peter Gabriel and Jethro Tull so the bands I got to see that year really opened my eyes. The PTV gig was looking back one of the strangest - naked pierced people on stage, Genesis P-Orridge kissing people in the front row, projectors, noise, chaos...
Listening back over the cd's its clear that they really had something special - there is a large amount of crap as you will find with any band that records and puts out almost everything (whilst under the influence of copious amounts of drugs to boot) they do but there are moments of absolute brilliance - the start of PTV Live at the berlin wall, Dreams Less Sweet, 20 Jazz Funk Greats and more.
Its also interesting how they "productised" their output utilising all sorts of commercial strategies in the release of their music particularly compared to how all music is seen this way now and has yet somehow lost its soul.
Genesis P'Orridge is a deeply strange man but has been responsible for some extraordinary music.
This has been one of those weeks. I feel like I have been running round like a headless chicken all week and when I look back I have actually achieved very little at all. Bugger is all I can say to that.
On of the things contributing to this is the inordinate amount of time I have spent stuck in traffic this week. The big fire in Glasgow last week has caused sauchiehall street to be closed and the A8 is still all dug up and a major bottle neck. Added to the snow and a couple of traffic incidents I have spent too much time in my car when I should have been somewhere else. Grrrr.
On the plus side I have found a solution to the minor problems I was having in the development work I am doing. One of those pleasing solutions that leave you with much less code at the end than when you started with. This may seem odd to a non programmer but what it means is that a lot of highly specific code has been turned into more flexible generic code. Which is easier to work with, easier to maintain and more often than not more elegant.
I watched some of the Tony Blair Newsnight interview last night. Its clear that Tony Blair is lying about his reasons – the whole Al-Queda links, the evidence etc. What is not clear is why. It’s a huge risk for him and when the first British casualties start coming in you just know that the tabloids will be baying for his blood. Its very hard to fight a war when your own people do not support you. So he is risking his position to fight this war and for reasons he is unable or unwilling to articulate. Curious.
Music wise lots of XTC and some Bill Nelson and mention must be made of Marion and Geoff. This series is brilliantly written and performed and just a joy to watch. Compared to a lot of the more American style comedy on television the lack of exposition, and the way humour is allowed to gently emerge instead of being pounded out, is very refreshing indeed.
Been tinkering with bits and pieces of music stuff again this week but I haven’t had time to bring anything to fruition as yet.