Jul. 22, 2011
Your rails, your fins, your thin paper wings Second Toughest in the Infants (STITI) is the second album by Underworld, released in 1995. This was just ahead of the mania caused by the .NUXX version of Born Slippy appearing on the Trainspotting soundtrack a little later. Born Slippy itself, the blippy techno confection released between their début Dubnobasswithmyheadman and this album. STITI then is very much the calm before the storm and features a band (in the truest sense, which is unusual among electronic acts) in full flow.
Tags: Understated Classics, Underworld, Music, Eleven, Electronic
Jul. 19, 2011
Reading a few articles about the recent launch of Google+, a few things hit home. Google tends to launch a product that works and not always one that is perfect or finished (like, say, Apple). Sometimes it takes them several iterations to get right. They love the beta tag. In fact, I think it was Google (or possibly Flickr) that made me aware of the concept of beta software.
Along these line I thought about this blog and its one year anniversary.
Tags: Ideas, Self Improvement, Eleven
Jul. 12, 2011
Just as with the understated classics I want to set out my stall early on that good movies are good enough. Both Betty Blue and today’s choice The Jungle Book are never going to win any sort of consensus prize for the best movies ever made but they are really good. They also have a personal history attached that makes them worth writing about.
When I was younger both my sisters would be given VHS copies of Disney movies at a rate of about two a year, one for Christmas and one at their birthday.
Tags: Lists, Films, The Jungle Book, Animation, Eleven
Jul. 2, 2011
When I was growing up a framed print of a map hung on the wall in the hallway. It was one of my favourite things, littered with strange latin names and with Vs where Us should have been. The outlines of the continents and countries were all familiar and yet slightly distorted, becoming more recognisable around the shores of western Europe.
I don’t know the provenance of that map print but at some point it got taken to the charity shop and replaced by Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Tags: Ideas, Maps, Eleven
Jun. 30, 2011
I have had the sort of month that is not conducive to listening to much new music. Therefore this month’s post is only going to consider two new albums and two albums that I have bought behind time. Because of various bits of stress and poor mood, I have ended up going back and taking refuge in some old favourites and not listening to new stuff. At other points I have also gone back to the Fleet Foxes’ album that I wrote about last month, which has grown on me even more since.
Tags: Music, Album Digest, June, Bon Iver, Death Cab for Cutie, Battles, Lykke Li, BT, Eleven
Jun. 24, 2011
It was the artwork that got me interested in Tubular Bells II. Rendering Trevor Key’s wonderful icon of the twisted tubular bell in yellow and blue made it all the more mysterious. Seeing it one day in Woolworth’s in Leigh Park back in 1992 aroused my curiosity. The huge display must have been part of the massive publicity drive for the album. Despite dwindling sales for his albums at that time, a sequel to Tubular Bells represented a huge potential for sales.
Tags: Understated Classics, Mike Oldfield, Music, Rock, Eleven
Jun. 22, 2011
What’s your favourite number?
I was ambivalent on this issue until a few months ago until I came across the following quirky result: if you start with the prime number 41 and then add 2 you get 43, which is also prime and then if you add 4 to 43, you get 47: also prime. And this continues to produce prime numbers if you add successive multiples of two to your running total, UNTIL… you get to the 41st number in this sequence, which is 41 squared.
Tags: Fun, Maths, Eleven, Primes, Forty One
Jun. 21, 2011
No man is an island (not any more) You are tracked pretty much everywhere you go. CCTV, the GPS on your phone or the signals sent by your more primitive model to the masts to keep in touch with the network. Your cash withdrawals, your purchases in Tesco and your journeys on public transport all add to the picture of where you are. If you drive, your sat nav will hold clues to where you have been and, if you disappear, where you might have gone to.
Tags: J. G. Ballard, Books, Reading Projects, Science Fiction, Eleven
May. 31, 2011
Four albums this month:
Kate Bush Director’s Cut Africa Hitech 93 Million Miles Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues TV On The Radio Nine Types of Light There is a pleasing red hue to all the covers this month. I had time to write four full reviews of the major albums I listened to. Like last month I have included a video at the foot of each review. Enjoy!
Kate Bush Director’s Cut Director’s Cut is not a new album from Kate Bush but a collection of re-visits to old songs, four from The Sensual World (1989) and seven from [The Red Shoes](http://en.
Tags: Music, Album Digest, May, Kate Bush, Africa Hitech, Fleet Foxes, TV on the Radio, Eleven
May. 6, 2011
Background Tiger Bay is Saint Etienne’s third album and I think it is among their best. It was released in June 1994 on Heavenly records. I first owned a copy in 1998 when I picked it up while living in halls as an undergraduate. The reason for including this album in the understated classics series is the same as for Second Light by Dreadzone: it marries traditional forms to newer electronic music1.
Tags: Understated Classics, Saint Etienne, Music, Pop, Electronic, Eleven
May. 5, 2011
The other day while writing some rather self-pitying notes in my blog book (yes, I handwrite all this rubbish before I go to bed at night!) I came up with some useless superheroes, or rather the only superheroes that a washed-up guy in his early thirties could hope to be. Because I haven’t got any ideas for “five things on the fifth” this month, I decided to flesh out a few of these.
Tags: Fun, Lists, Eleven
Apr. 30, 2011
Album of the month: Mirrorwriting by Jamie Woon Jamie Woon was brought to my attention late last year by Pitchfork who wrote an article about the video for lead single Night Air. I’ve put that video down below because I think that it is very good, a simple well executed and the tune itself is brilliant, probably my favourite individual track of 2010. It’s a downtempo tune full of dark spaces and empty beats, full of nocturnal promise and mystery.
Tags: Music, Album Digest, April, Jamie Woon, Young Knives, Katy B, Elbow, Fabric, Eleven