The back room has been taken over by synthesizers and today I began my
mission to really get to grips with my toys and work out some sort of
set for the gig in April. It mostly went well. there was a period
right in the middle of the afternoon where it all came together really
nicely into a big looping post-industrial jam and i got completely lost
in it. One of the main problems I'm facing is I'm too uptight about the
gadgetry. I'm so used to working incredibly slowly and self editing
and correcting that when I take myself out of that mode I'm too
conscious of the 'mistakes' or rather I should probably call them the
unexpected little outbursts. Still, there's a month to go and I'll have
plenty of opportunities between now and then to find my path.
Spent this evening typing up the reviews for the next issue of WWR
which, all being well, will be online tomorrow (Sunday) or Monday. I
was hoping to have some of the new features in place this issue but the
inspection that I talked about in the last post got in the way of me
chasing that and so neither of them have happened yet.
peace
Ian
Showing posts with label reviewing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviewing. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 March 2013
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
This is your brain on drug awareness training
Today I spent several fairly long seeming hours (mostly because i really wanted to be home having a much needed lie-in) in compulsory drugs awareness training run by the police for the college.
Apparently Swansea is a mephedrone and heroin riddled hellhole with a growing cocaine problem.
it was a fairly downbeat start to the day that pretty much sucked all the colour out of it. am home now drinking Earl Grey and listening to Moljebka Pvlse wrapping the universe within their cosmic drone.
Also, mine and Darren Tate's new album 'Tangletree' is out now and available via Quiet World.
peace
ian
Apparently Swansea is a mephedrone and heroin riddled hellhole with a growing cocaine problem.
it was a fairly downbeat start to the day that pretty much sucked all the colour out of it. am home now drinking Earl Grey and listening to Moljebka Pvlse wrapping the universe within their cosmic drone.
Also, mine and Darren Tate's new album 'Tangletree' is out now and available via Quiet World.
peace
ian
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
i'm and old folkie me...
...except I'm not. really not actually. i try and like it but i fail every time.it's not all folk music. truly it's just the British varieties. I'm not biased in this. i dislike all four countries worth equally. there are.bits and pieces here and there that i don't mind but on the whole it moves me not.
quite why then I'm working my way through the 600 pages of Electric Eden is confusing even to me. 273 pages in and i am enjoying it though. i was a Wire subscriber for about 11 years and so Rob Young's writing was something i knew well, the subject seemed interesting enough but that subtitle was the clincher. close enough to sounding like some sort of Coil type musical mysticism reference to haul me in. that axis of music are certainly going to make an appearance (current 93 mostly i suspect) but i am a long way off them at the moment.
as i said I'm thoroughly enjoying it even though i keep trying out the different artists / songs he references and none have done it for me yet. also, while it says 'Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music' it does so far seem more like an exploration of English music but i have 300 odd pages to go and this may well change.
so, tonight some more reading and a little bit of reviewing. there's a Dog Hallucination EP playing in the background as i type this, after that it'll be the Sempervirent album on Gruenrekorder. it's a hard old life i tells ya.
IanH
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
un-wandering
just back from a short break to Glastonbury. Was far too tired to really enjoy myself, i lost count of the times I suddenly felt myself toppling over sideways, but it was nice to get away from the house especially as I forgot (genuinely forgot) to take my work file with me so couldn't do any essay work or marking.
am back now and working on some reviews. just wrote one for a Christopher McFall album and currently listening to Simon Whetham's album on Unfathomless.
Mostly though I've been restlessly pottering with stuff all evening.
bout now though I'm very tired and I should probably go to bed.
am back now and working on some reviews. just wrote one for a Christopher McFall album and currently listening to Simon Whetham's album on Unfathomless.
Mostly though I've been restlessly pottering with stuff all evening.
bout now though I'm very tired and I should probably go to bed.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
no more classes
for the next two months.
As of today I am officially on holiday until September. That doesn't mean I've no work on - i have plenty - but it does mean I've got time to relax a bit, go for some walks, read some books and write some reviews.
huge apologies to everyone with regard to WWR this last year but this new job brought with it a whole host of responsibilities and headaches and I knew it would screw with parts of my life but it also brought with it extra cash. I'm not money motivated but the last few years have been difficult here so this was a much needed boost. The next year will be just as busy as the last but hopefully having done it for a year I'll be more prepared for it.
I've already sketched out a few reviews and will spend the next week listening and scribbling furiously. Expect a new issue probably on the weekend of the 23rd of this month.
Peace
Ian
As of today I am officially on holiday until September. That doesn't mean I've no work on - i have plenty - but it does mean I've got time to relax a bit, go for some walks, read some books and write some reviews.
huge apologies to everyone with regard to WWR this last year but this new job brought with it a whole host of responsibilities and headaches and I knew it would screw with parts of my life but it also brought with it extra cash. I'm not money motivated but the last few years have been difficult here so this was a much needed boost. The next year will be just as busy as the last but hopefully having done it for a year I'll be more prepared for it.
I've already sketched out a few reviews and will spend the next week listening and scribbling furiously. Expect a new issue probably on the weekend of the 23rd of this month.
Peace
Ian
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
starting to come out of hibernation
Hello my friends
after a suitably slow summer of avoidance of anything that felt even remotely like work i'm starting to get back in the swing and doing things again.
i've spent most of the last 3 months with my head buried in a succession of books and it's been a lot of fun. i'll put some vague write-ups about some of them below.
WWR is in limbo until i can get a new seedee player as mine decided to die on me the other week. it's the fourth player i've trashed in the last 3 years which probably speak volumes about how much i use them.
in the next month or so there should be a couple of new albums from me. the long awaited collaboration with Banks Bailey is imminent - i just need to make some tweaks to the sleeve design - and very soon will see the split cassette on Agharta with Andreas Brandal. I've only heard snatches of his music through his myspace so it'll be interesting to catch some more.
peace
ian
these aren't really reviews so much as things i put on the board at Whitechapel. so if they seem oddly worded that's why...
I've just, as in 5 minutes ago, finished 'The Warlord of the Air' by Michael Moorcock. It was fantastic. It's been a while since i enjoyed anything quite so much. Barstable (the protagonist) is a slightly dim man with a moral compass that points straight ahead. Moorcock takes him on a journey to the heart of his misconceptions regarding the steam-driven 'utopia' he has found himself in in a way that is realistic, believable and wonderously fantastical. I have the other two waiting to be read but i'm going to eke them out over what remains of my holiday.
Michael Moorcock's The Land Leviathan. the second in his oswald bastable steampunk series was, whilst not being the airship and anarchist laden romp of the first (The Warlord of the Air), still a fine way to spend the day. This one spent more time on world building than on plot development which made for a nice gear change but i'm hoping the third will be a combination of the two.
Richard Brautigan - The Hawkline Monster. I love Brautigan. I read his In Watermelon Sugar way back in my stoned youth and loved the unrepentant hippie utopianism of it. Trout Fishing in America (probably his most famous) came next and was also wonderful but in a more poetical Beat manner. The Hawkline Monster is on the surface a more straightforward novel where two killers are hired by Miss Hawkline to kill the monster that lives in the caves under the house. Such a mudane plot was never going to satisfy Brautigan though and things soon take a side-step. For me though it's the gracefulness and the dance of his prose that is the real joy.
have finally finished Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. It turned out to be a proper windbag of a novel. Endlessly impressed by it's own intelligence without ever really putting that intelligence to work in a meaningful way. By the halfway point i found myself referring to it as Lud-In-The-Mud as a result of the effort involved in wading through the sticky morass of the authors prose. I think there was a pretty nifty little tale in there somewhere but her writing style was distinctly lacking in any sort of wit or melody and as such it never ceased being an effort to keep my attention on the page.
have just finished The Osiris Ritual by George Mann, the second of his Newbury & Hobbes Steampunk mysteries. I thought the first (The Affinity Bridge) was a fun, if a little flawed, romp through a fog-ridden london that mixed zombies, robots and airships into an entertaining neo-victorian thriller. It's recommended for those looking for a more than satisfyingly pulp steampunk fix.
this second one wasn't as good as it's predecessor. The plot was a little rushed and lacked grandeur and scope but mostly i think he sacrificed too much of the world-building that was so well done in the first. I heartily approved of how naturalistic he allows the newly emerging technology to feel but half the joy (for me at least) of this sort of genre fiction lies in how the author interweaves technology and the subsequent cultural and societal changes into the narrative. i felt like i didn't learn anything new about the universe he's created and without that it may as well have been set (to an extent) in our own victorian era.
That said though, Mann has an engaging style and the book was a fun, fast-paced read with a third volume still to come.
after a suitably slow summer of avoidance of anything that felt even remotely like work i'm starting to get back in the swing and doing things again.
i've spent most of the last 3 months with my head buried in a succession of books and it's been a lot of fun. i'll put some vague write-ups about some of them below.
WWR is in limbo until i can get a new seedee player as mine decided to die on me the other week. it's the fourth player i've trashed in the last 3 years which probably speak volumes about how much i use them.
in the next month or so there should be a couple of new albums from me. the long awaited collaboration with Banks Bailey is imminent - i just need to make some tweaks to the sleeve design - and very soon will see the split cassette on Agharta with Andreas Brandal. I've only heard snatches of his music through his myspace so it'll be interesting to catch some more.
peace
ian
these aren't really reviews so much as things i put on the board at Whitechapel. so if they seem oddly worded that's why...
I've just, as in 5 minutes ago, finished 'The Warlord of the Air' by Michael Moorcock. It was fantastic. It's been a while since i enjoyed anything quite so much. Barstable (the protagonist) is a slightly dim man with a moral compass that points straight ahead. Moorcock takes him on a journey to the heart of his misconceptions regarding the steam-driven 'utopia' he has found himself in in a way that is realistic, believable and wonderously fantastical. I have the other two waiting to be read but i'm going to eke them out over what remains of my holiday.
Michael Moorcock's The Land Leviathan. the second in his oswald bastable steampunk series was, whilst not being the airship and anarchist laden romp of the first (The Warlord of the Air), still a fine way to spend the day. This one spent more time on world building than on plot development which made for a nice gear change but i'm hoping the third will be a combination of the two.
Richard Brautigan - The Hawkline Monster. I love Brautigan. I read his In Watermelon Sugar way back in my stoned youth and loved the unrepentant hippie utopianism of it. Trout Fishing in America (probably his most famous) came next and was also wonderful but in a more poetical Beat manner. The Hawkline Monster is on the surface a more straightforward novel where two killers are hired by Miss Hawkline to kill the monster that lives in the caves under the house. Such a mudane plot was never going to satisfy Brautigan though and things soon take a side-step. For me though it's the gracefulness and the dance of his prose that is the real joy.
have finally finished Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirrlees. It turned out to be a proper windbag of a novel. Endlessly impressed by it's own intelligence without ever really putting that intelligence to work in a meaningful way. By the halfway point i found myself referring to it as Lud-In-The-Mud as a result of the effort involved in wading through the sticky morass of the authors prose. I think there was a pretty nifty little tale in there somewhere but her writing style was distinctly lacking in any sort of wit or melody and as such it never ceased being an effort to keep my attention on the page.
have just finished The Osiris Ritual by George Mann, the second of his Newbury & Hobbes Steampunk mysteries. I thought the first (The Affinity Bridge) was a fun, if a little flawed, romp through a fog-ridden london that mixed zombies, robots and airships into an entertaining neo-victorian thriller. It's recommended for those looking for a more than satisfyingly pulp steampunk fix.
this second one wasn't as good as it's predecessor. The plot was a little rushed and lacked grandeur and scope but mostly i think he sacrificed too much of the world-building that was so well done in the first. I heartily approved of how naturalistic he allows the newly emerging technology to feel but half the joy (for me at least) of this sort of genre fiction lies in how the author interweaves technology and the subsequent cultural and societal changes into the narrative. i felt like i didn't learn anything new about the universe he's created and without that it may as well have been set (to an extent) in our own victorian era.
That said though, Mann has an engaging style and the book was a fun, fast-paced read with a third volume still to come.
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