tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253297662024-03-14T01:20:33.408-07:00enormous yesLeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.comBlogger190125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-47377386297870290732011-01-18T08:28:00.000-08:002011-01-19T02:10:06.954-08:00What I listened to in 2010This is what Last FM says I listened to most last year, and I'm not about to argue.<br /><br />1. <b>Laura Viers — </b><i style="font-weight: bold; ">July Flame</i>. <div><br />All this endless beauty:</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/iLilpPtY2JU?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/iLilpPtY2JU?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>2. Arcade Fire — <i>The Suburbs</i></b></div><div><br />My second favourite album of 2010? OK, I take it back, I will argue with LastFM: the album had at least four great songs, but the number of times I fell asleep on the train only to find it still playing when I woke up suggests it was on bloated side.</div><div><br />Anyway, here's one the great songs:<br /><br /></div><div><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5Euj9f3gdyM?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5Euj9f3gdyM?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>3. John Grant — <i>Queen of Denmark</i></b></div><div><br />Very obviously the best music that Midlake made in 2010.</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Jn31Jc8LMFM?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Jn31Jc8LMFM?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></div><div><br /><b>4. Sun Kil Moon — <i>April</i></b><br /><br /></div><div>Screw you, Last FM: <i>this</i> was my album of the year. Favourite non-Chester memory of 2010: walking across my local golf course at night, accompanied only by <i>April</i>, falling snow and foxes appearing like ghosts in the distance. </div><div><br /></div><div><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WO7M5unW0wA?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WO7M5unW0wA?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>5. Sun Kil Moon — <i>Admiral Fell Promises</i></b><br /><br /></div><div>More of the same, which obviously made it one of the albums of the year.<br /><br /><b>6. The xx</b><br /><br /></div><div>Very much the year before last. Which didn't stop me listening to it practically incessantly.<br /><br /><b>7. Bonobo — <i>Black Sands</i></b><br /><br /></div><div>On our first day in Spain, this album played on a non-stop loop as we decanted our minds by the pool.<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ua2loiGHZ38?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ua2loiGHZ38?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>8. Biosphere — <i>Wireless</i></b><br /><br /></div><div>You know how music's often too musical? This works as a refreshing ear-sorbet:<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DYDGK5dFqvc?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DYDGK5dFqvc?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><b>9. Tame Impala — Innerspeaker</b><br /><br /></div><div>Because it was delicious to imagine an alternative history of the Beatles where George went all West Coast.<br /><br /></div><div><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-F2e9fmYL7Y?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-F2e9fmYL7Y?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></div><div><br /></div><div><b>10 Laura Marling — <i>I Speak Because I Can</i></b><br /><br /></div><div>It grew on me.</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JvwWzcLfH-k?fs=1&hl=en_GB"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JvwWzcLfH-k?fs=1&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-30081168746879638832009-12-21T04:17:00.001-08:002010-03-12T01:28:35.282-08:00The Decade in Music #13: The Ting Tings, "That's Not My Name"Sometimes when you're cooking, whether it's crushing the cashews, slicing the garlic or just chopping the chicken, one simply has to <span style="font-style:italic;">funk it out</span>; otherwise, what would be the point? Mere sustenance can achieved by the inhalation of Pringles. I make it my life's mission to introduce dance-cooking to the masses.<br /><br />Happily, our current kitchen in Hanwell is large enough to permit a certain amount of righteous shaking of the tail-feathers.<br /><br />The song that got our kitchen rocking most in 2009 <span style="font-style:italic;">had</span> to be the Ting Tings' "That's Not My Name". Now, I'm not a girl and no-one ever calls me darling, much to my chagrin. So you might say there's something faintly ridiculous about me shaking my rump and singing along to an anthem of female empowerment. <br /><br />Yeah, you might say it, and with good cause. But I would say TUSH! and FIE! I ignore you and say, get outta my kitchen, dude's gotta <span style="font-style:italic;">strut</span>. This is a classic:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TxbwEVgF1zo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TxbwEVgF1zo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />[Lee was not harmed in the making of this post.]Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-70449589291638856372009-12-20T14:41:00.001-08:002009-12-21T03:38:52.683-08:00The Decade in Music #12: Kylie Minogue, "Slow (Chemical Brothers remix)While it's true that I was dying with excitement to get to Australia, one thing that I could really do without, in fact, the one thing that gave me significant pause if not the outright heebie-jeebies, was Australia's reputation as the Mecca for all the world's most brutish and downright evil arachnids. If you're a young and up-and-coming spider who wants to make it as a really first-class terrorist, you know you have to go to Australia and earn your stripes. The stories are legion: the redbacks that apparently like nothing more than hiding in toilets to get first dibs on a tourist's arse; the huntsman, a spider the size of a small but malevolent dog, that likes to hide in a car's sun visor so that it can fall into laps, the better to cause maximal cardiac arrest; the white-tail, a spider with a bite that, according to popular lore, causes one's skin to <span style="font-style: italic;">go black and die</span>; <span style="font-style:italic;">Atrax robustus</span>, the Sydney funnel-web, infamous for falling into swimming pools and <span style="font-style:italic;">not dying</span> or climbing into babies' cribs and into urban myth.<br /><br />But my years in Oz were notable for a complete lack of encounters with our eight-legged f(r)iends. This I achieved by the simple expedient of living half way up a tower block. Job done. The only spiders I saw were the stupendously large and comically evil golden orb weavers, slinging giant webs across the cliff tops of Clovelly. If you're so inclined, you can see a <a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2008/10/so-why-did-you-leave-australia-again.html">picture of such a spider</a> — eating a <span style="font-style: italic;">bird</span>. Yes: a bird. <br /><br />But my first encounter with a live huntsman is fixed in my memory. I was staying in a friend of a friend's flat, moving between Clovelly and Balmain by way of Newtown. Unlike the bracing airs of the Clovelly and Balmain, Newtown has the air of a reclaimed swamp: there's something oppressive and more than a little fetid about it. Anyway, I would use their office to listen to music on their giant PC while they were at work. One day, I was strewn across their giant leather seat, I came face to face with a huntsman on the wall. How it stayed attached to the wall was a feat of natural engineering that baffles me still; surely it weighed as much as a small grapefruit. I sat riveted for 20 minutes, willing the spider to move and break my trance. It did not move. I managed to back out of the room in a cold sweat, then ran round the house trying in vain to get my sang-froid back. When, in order that I might get a better look at my adversary, I willed myself to poke my head round the corner, it had completely vanished. I wonder if you've ever read <a href="http://bit.ly/7smqmf">Julio Cortazar's wonderful short story, "House Taken Over"</a><a href="http://bit.ly/7smqmf">?</a> It's about a couple who gradually are confined to one half of their house, then a single room, by undescribed assailants or invaders. Eventually they are forced to leave:<br /><span style="font-size:12pt;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:11pt;">Before we left, I felt terrible; I locked the front door up tight and tossed the key down the sewer. It wouldn't do to have some poor devil</span><span style="font-size:11pt;"> decide to go in and rob the house, at that hour and with the house taken over.</span></blockquote>That was pretty much how I felt about that room, and then that house. In practically no time, I was safely installed in a Potts Point antiseptic tower block with nothing more horrifying to worry about than the odd roach and the unceasing and implacable mosquito.<br /><br />What's this got to do with Kylie Minogue? Honestly, not a great deal. But the track I was listening to, and greatly enjoying, at the moment of this momentous encounter with a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/03/comment.comment1">mobile nightmare unit</a>, was the fantastic Chemical Brothers remix of Kylie Minogue's "Slow". And that's enough to get it into my list. Enjoy (but don't think of a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WY8M-B78ko">giant huntsman</a> while so doing):<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/NpNQkDSP8kc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/NpNQkDSP8kc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-46419714752932326432009-12-16T11:48:00.000-08:002010-03-12T01:31:31.072-08:00The Decade in Music #11: Elbow "Grounds For Divorce"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/Syj-KZNqCNI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/Qq7xKHHXIFs/s1600-h/420353159_3004662d43_o.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/Syj-KZNqCNI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/Qq7xKHHXIFs/s400/420353159_3004662d43_o.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415858006433335506" border="0" /></a>My band of the decade has to be Elbow. I’m a hopeless fanboy when it comes to Radiohead but, like any obsession that sometimes translates into a state of anxiety ("but <span style="font-style: italic;">why</span> don’t you like them? What do you mean "Pyramid Song isn't the greatest single recording of the last ten years?" etc), I'm often driving to exasperation. But Bury's finest and loveliest have been nothing but an amber-scented bath of delight.<br /><br />I was there when they held the Camden Falcon hypnotised in 2000. I chatted to Guy when they came in to be interviewed for MP3tv.com. I was there, obsessively checking and rechecking the Sydney branch of HMV for a copy of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cast_of_Thousands"><span style="font-style: italic;">Cast of Thousands</span></a>, many months after its UK release. I've recounted here my bizarre dream of meeting <a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2008/09/dream-again-nobody-understands.html">Guy at a garden party</a> (I know, I know: tell a dream, lose a reader). I've regularly eased into the soothing bath of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/garvey/">Garvey's Finest Hour</a>. But now, when I think of the Elbow, the following story immediately comes to mind.<br /><br />It’s 2006, and a boutique music festival called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playground_Weekender_Festival">Playground Weekender</a> has just been launched in the splendid surroundings of the Hawkesbury River, an hour or so outside of Sydney. Splendid? Ridiculously lush would be more accurate. Siuated on a sheltered bend in the river and overhung on one side by mossy cliffs that afforded the site's only shade, it was a long way from the concrete nightmare that’s The Big Day Out, not least because of the gigantic kangaroos that would nose around the tents.<br /><br />The festival had been set up by a couple of English chancers, and they in turn promoted it mostly around the hostels of Kings Cross. The upshot of this unintentionally niche marketing campaign was two-fold. Firstly, backpackers, largely British, were over-represented. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Milat_%28serial_killer%29">Ivan Millat</a> would have had a field day). And since the good burghers of Sydney had failed to show any enthusiasm for this upstart affair, the festival was nowhere near its capacity. Which was perfect: you could set out your picnic blanket in the sun, get a cheap jug of mojitos and listen to Tom Middleton play a totally zonked set of mid-afternoon psychedelic classics.<br /><br />So we had this spectacular site and its bands more or less to ourselves. It was a great line-up too. Laurent Garnier, Tom Middleton, The Avalanches on DJing duties. The White Lies, The Presets, !!! playing live. The incongruous highlight, since they barely fit the electro-rock template, was Elbow. Now, I’m not saying Guy seemed chemically altered. He was just looking very very <span style="font-style: italic;">happy</span>. So happy, in fact, that during some blissed-out mid-section, he wandered down to the front row and kissed a bunch of girls. Including Shana. On the lips, mind. The full works, if you please. Whenever she now recounts this story, Shana gets a kind of misty, faraway look, like she’s auditioning for Cate Blanchett's role in <span style="font-style: italic;">Lord of the Rings</span>.<br /><br />Elbow played one new song that night, and I didn’t think a great deal of it. Lots of clanging, Guy enthusiastically hitting things, and then some big dumb blues riff. Boring. The song later turned out to be "Grounds for Divorce", and I could barely have been more wrong if I'd tried.<br /><br />Here’s a quite wonderful version of "Grounds for Divorce" recorded with the BBC Orchestra.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/IdmwHljfN4Q&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/IdmwHljfN4Q&hl=en_GB&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />Here’s our Flickrset from the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrleeward/sets/72157594586815964/">Playground Weekender</a>. Interesting note: seems I once had a tan.Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-60555205260855440712009-12-16T06:37:00.000-08:002009-12-16T07:47:04.562-08:00The Music of The Decade #10: Portal's GLaDOSWarning: this song is from a computer game. Don't say you weren't told....<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y6ljFaKRTrI&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Y6ljFaKRTrI&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />This exceptionally lovely song came from the very end of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_%28video_game%29"><span style="font-style: italic;">Portal</span></a>, one of the games of the decade. Throughout the game, GLaDOS has revealed herself to be one neurotic, untrustworthy, cynical and deeply psychopathic computer. It was a shame that you had to be concentrating elsewhere during the final confrontation, because more than anything you just want to listen to her wheedle, rant and fulminate. “Well you found me. Congratulations. Was it worth it? Because the only thing you’ve managed to break so far is my heart”:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mgP4kT5-9Cc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mgP4kT5-9Cc&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Come the game’s ending, we got two things. A: the cake. <a href="http://ui26.gamespot.com/825/cakelie_2.jpg">Rumours of its nonexistence</a> were circulating but there it was, with a little candle and everything; B: this rather beautiful song, the melody to which was subtly prefigured in a tinny bossanova style on the little transistor found in the fugitive’s cell. Some game endings are so crappy–that means you <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock">Bioshock</a>—that you feel hollowed out by the wasted hours. But this was unexpectedly touching, a sweet touch in a game full of them. I mean, just listen to this compilation of the gun turret’s voices:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CKVuPUY9D-A&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CKVuPUY9D-A&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-37822610405837533302009-12-15T01:57:00.000-08:002009-12-15T08:26:12.706-08:00The Music of the Decade #9: LCD Soundsystem, "Someone Great"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SxeOPFTJRyI/AAAAAAAAAZI/vl7jKussiok/s1600-h/lcd-soundsystem-artwork.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SxeOPFTJRyI/AAAAAAAAAZI/vl7jKussiok/s400/lcd-soundsystem-artwork.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410949867080599330" border="0" /></a>Well yeah, <span style="font-style: italic;">of course</span>, everyone loved "Losing My Edge" It's still ludicrously fresh and hilarious and just a bit painful. While I would like to be able say that this ode to hipsterism and its discontents was awfully close to home, that would be an almighty fib: when this song came out the last thing I was doing was hanging out with the Sydney-side cool kids. In fact, mostly I was just hanging out with <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrleeward/271230242/">Cordy</a>, one of my very favourite girls in the world, taking in the sun and harbour air.<br /><br />When the fuss had died down, we were left with "Someone Great". How to write a wrenching but glowing song about grief without so much as a minor chord? Like this.<br /><br />The lyrics are wrenchingly uneuphemistic and desperately moving. The only hint of self-pity allowed is when the singer bitterly notes that the weather hasn't had the good grace to be sympathetically gloomy:<br /><br />The worst is all the lovely weather,<br />I'm sad, it's not raining.<br />The coffee isn't even bitter,<br />Because, what's the difference?<br /><br />Buy LCD Soundsytem's <span style="font-style: italic;">Sound of Silver</span> [<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sound-Silver-LCD-Soundsystem/dp/B000M3452Y">UK</a>/<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Silver-LCD-Soundsystem/dp/B000M3452Y">US</a>]<br /><br />"Someone Great":<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TIChw-9ggyo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TIChw-9ggyo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-31833358550757167822009-12-14T06:27:00.000-08:002009-12-15T06:40:26.766-08:00The Decade in Music #8: Beth Gibbons & Rustin' Man, Out of Season<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/Sx0RRxy-9XI/AAAAAAAAAZg/nzT3ORTwYVE/s1600-h/beth-gibbons-rustin-man2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 399px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/Sx0RRxy-9XI/AAAAAAAAAZg/nzT3ORTwYVE/s400/beth-gibbons-rustin-man2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412501324291831154" border="0" /></a>The second half of 2002 was spent in the unexpectedly not-at-all unpleasant surroundings of Walthamstow Village. In one memorable day in August, I had moved all my worldly possessions from N16 to a new place in E17 and then, after nothing more stimulating than a brew with new flatchap Will, I went back into town for B's memorable stagdo in Shoreditch. It was a busy day.<br /><br />When I think of this time, the music I hear, rather incongrously, is the supremely melancholic <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=6&ved=0CCQQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FOut_of_Season&ei=0Z0nS6fLFdO64QaD2O2jDQ&usg=AFQjCNF6Y8TmFnRyxw5oZKw1QIT_UB7nVQ&sig2=KSV7Y8jEDi0bOAfmiXQsSQ"><span style="font-style: italic;">Out Of Season</span></a> by Beth Gibbons and Rustin' Man.<br /><br />It just so happened that Will, who's now head of press at EMI, was friends with Mr Paul Webb (aka Rustin' Man), a member of the cherished Talk Talk, and he (Will) would come home from what sounded like jolly hunting trips in the country, excitedly chattering about a new record which he claimed was going to be "the greatest record ever made". Should it need saying that that's exactly the sort of hype to put me off for life? So when I finally heard the record, I naturally loved "Mysteries" and "Tom the Model" but I largely ignored the rest of the album, thinking it was barely-there and wintry, too sketched, too skeletal.<br /><br />But Lee! Don't you love music with those qualities? Yes, and that sound you here is me slapping my forehead repeatedly. <span style="font-style: italic;">Out of Season </span>uncannily effectively splits the difference between late Talk Talk, Nick Drake and Portishead. It frontloads the aforementioned songs and keeps its real secrets for those who can get past the big numbers. Hunker down the record and you're rewarded with little gems that make "Tom the Model" seem like a gauche barn-burner: mournful torch songs ("Romance"); the sort of fire-lit folk that Goldfrapp hinted at on their last album ("Drake").<br /><br />Buy <span style="font-style: italic;">Out of Season</span> [<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2FOut-Season-Beth-Gibbons-Rustin%2Fdp%2FB00006ZSAD&ei=0Z0nS6fLFdO64QaD2O2jDQ&usg=AFQjCNG-DdpQHr46DlZek67-KpuL6mpCpA&sig2=4N4hBarCxkJ_QFV2q4FaEA">UK</a>/<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=5&ved=0CCIQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FOut-Season-Beth-Gibbons-Rustin%2Fdp%2FB00006ZSAD&ei=vZ0nS6XLM5SA4Qao_aGjDQ&usg=AFQjCNH80_DFl2Ubls9-YV29PQkhgtupvg&sig2=JvEGxPEmlgNxSMYsHwvTQw">US</a>]<br /><br />"Drake"<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zLbMc2bDrSY&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zLbMc2bDrSY&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-63662734247979518622009-12-07T11:19:00.000-08:002009-12-08T04:06:47.102-08:00The Decade in Music #7: Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/Sx4-juccnQI/AAAAAAAAAZw/jDcowapCUEc/s1600-h/ryan-adams-heartbreaker_l.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/Sx4-juccnQI/AAAAAAAAAZw/jDcowapCUEc/s400/ryan-adams-heartbreaker_l.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412832585629605122" border="0" /></a>Here's Clive James on Sydney Harbour:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Sydney Harbour remains one of the Earth's truly beautiful places. Apart from the startling Manhattanisation of its business district, the city was more or less as I remembered it, except that for the twenty-one years I lived there I never really appreciated it — one of the big things that can be said in favour of going back, partly offsetting the even bigger things that can be said for remaining an expatriate once you have become one.<br /><br /> The late Kenneth Slessor, in his prose as much as in his poetry, probably came nearest to evoking the sheer pulchritude of Sydney harbour. But finally the place is too multifarious to be captured by the pen. Sydney is like Venice without the architecture, but with more of the sea: the merchant ships sail right into town. In Venice you never see big ships — they are all over at Mestre, the industrial sector. In Sydney big ships loom at the ends of city streets. They are parked all over the place, tied up to the countless wharves in the scores of inlets (‘You could hide a thousand ships of the line in here,' a British admiral observed long ago) or just moored to a buoy in mid-harbour, riding high. At the International Terminal at Circular Quay, the liners in which my generation of the self-exiled left for Europe still tie up: from the Harbour Bridge you can look down at the farewell parties raging on their decks. Most important, the ferries are still on the harbour. Nothing like as frequent as they once were, but still there — the perfect way of getting to and from work." <span style="font-weight: bold;">Clive James, Postcard from Sydney</span><br /></blockquote><br /> For the first few month of my life in Australia, I worked in North Sydney, which meant catching the ferry to and from Balmain. The job, though I was grateful for it, was awful beyond words; but the daily journey! The details of it are etched in my memory: the waters of the harbour, glittering in the morning light, criss-crossed by boats of all sizes and speeds; that moment when the immensity of the Harbour Bridge came into view and you had to suck in your breath.<br /><br /> This was also the time that I finally heard Ryan Adam's Heartbreaker and fell for it completely. I would sit on the wooden platform at the North Shore ferry point, listening to "Oh My Sweet Carolina" and try to guess which of the distant twinkling lights were going to turn into my ride home.<br /><br />"Oh My Sweet Carolina"<br /><p></p><p><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/eMZYRvDvgT4&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/eMZYRvDvgT4&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></p><p>Buy <span style="font-style: italic;">Heartbreaker </span>[<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.co.uk%2FHeartbreaker-Ryan-Adams%2Fdp%2FB00004YRZD&ei=EkAeS_LDOM6l4QaX5q3fCg&usg=AFQjCNFgPz_785P0TaLLpdHOtwzgRqx0JQ&sig2=FvuZlCrIyZX1exiMwTjKMg">UK</a>/<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&ved=0CAkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHeartbreaker-Ryan-Adams%2Fdp%2FB00004XSKU&ei=8z8eS8LHNsP14AaywNzdCg&usg=AFQjCNEIGVCkV4khW1KHMimFCsh4iY58SA&sig2=qKravmYLPHa2dT0ra9HePA">US</a>]</p>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-52253031995417657172009-12-03T03:24:00.000-08:002009-12-04T07:10:56.072-08:00The Decade in Music #6: Royksopp, "What Else Is There? (Trentemøller remix)Well of course there are too many contenders for dance remix of the decade. That’s just ridiculous right? I suppose the decent thing here would be to attempt a scholarly post on how MP3 blogs made the discovery of new remixes a thing of almost indecent ease.<br /><br />I could talk about The Knife’s superb Heartbeats, which is unendingly fantastic for so many reasons: that crypto-atheistic chorus: “To call for hands of above to lean on/Wouldn’t be good enough for me, no”; the enigmatic lyrics of the middle-eight: “And you, you knew the hands of the devil/and you kept us awake with wolves’ teeth”. While the original sounds like something from A-Ha’s junkie brethren and <em>José González</em>’s finger-picked guitar version is silkily beautiful. But no rational argument can be made that Rex the Dog’s remix is not king. Here it is:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1MtjgVQemcM&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1MtjgVQemcM&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Remix of the year though? Not quite. What about something from Stuart Price in his Thin White Duke guise? I lost count of the number of superb makeovers he delivered over the last few years. Unfeasibly massive reworkings of Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Missy Elliott; and this, my personal favourite, Fischerspooner’s “Just Let Go”. Playing that on headphones transformed my otherwise bucolic walk to work across the calm green expanse of the Domain into a harrowing flashback of some deeply wrong night in a Taylor Square club.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/W2n8R9xUqsU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W2n8R9xUqsU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Points must also be awarded here for that ticking clock which also made an appearance in his production of Madonna’s “Hung Up” and his remix of Gwen Stefani’s “What You Waiting For?”<br /><br />But the following remix is the only one that made Marshall H hijack my stereo at one in the morning and crank it to maximum volume for the duration. That I didn't get ejected the next morning still seems a minor miracle. Maybe they were grooving too. The track was also played at carnage volume on car journeys across desolate parts of NSW.<br /><br />It’s the Trentemøller remix of Royksopp’s "What Else Is There?" There's so much going on here. Karin's skipping voice as the breakdown comes; those New Order guitars; that ugly five-note riff that anchors the song. Listen:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/r1JFJ5yWE3Y&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/r1JFJ5yWE3Y&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-55360117882727367732009-12-02T03:20:00.000-08:002009-12-04T02:15:44.174-08:00The Decade in Music #5: Dominik Eulberg, Kreucht and Fleucht<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SxeU6v7v68I/AAAAAAAAAZQ/MlrmRsT0ajU/s1600-h/2005-Kreucht-u-Fleucht.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 350px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SxeU6v7v68I/AAAAAAAAAZQ/MlrmRsT0ajU/s400/2005-Kreucht-u-Fleucht.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410957214329334722" border="0" /></a>"[…]I found that getting high often left me feeling apprehensive, hypercritical of myself, and prone to an unwelcome awareness of my life as nothing but a pile of botched and unfinished tasks. Over the course of these pot years I graduated from college, got a master’s degree, wrote a number of novels, paid my bills and my taxes, etc. I was never arrested, never got into any kind of trouble, never broke anything that could not be repaired. Mostly it had been fun, sometimes hugely; sometimes not at all. Marijuana could intensify the sunshine of a perfect summer day, but it could also deepen the gloom of a wintry afternoon; it had bred false camaraderies and drawn my attention to deep flaws and fault lines when what mattered—what matters so often in the course of everyday human life—were the surfaces and the joins." <span>Michael Chabon</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, Manhood for Amateurs</span>, 2009, p. 34-35<br /><br />For much the same reasons as Chabon's, I gave up the smoke completely one day in 2006. We’d just returned to Sydney from a trip to California. It was a glorious sunny day and, although I felt some depression about the end of a fabulous holiday exploring Yosemite and Big Sur, everything was more or less just swell. What followed, from a cursory toke, was two or three hours of the most debilitating mental agitation; what I suppose we must call paranoia, even though the word does faint justice– it's more like being forced to look at yourself and everyone you know through a microscope fitted with distorting horror lenses. Enough was enough.<br /><br />The album we were listening to that day was Dominik Eulberg’s <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Dominik-Eulberg-Kreucht-Fleucht/release/50745"><span style="font-style: italic;">Kreucht and Fleucht</span></a>, which means, according to this <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2937-kreucht-fleucht/">Pitchfork review</a>, something like “creeping and flying”. Before the agitation took hold, I can remember being awed by the glistening polar textures of disc one. It was a fresh reminder of just how miraculous music could strike you in, let's say, the <span style="font-style: italic;">right mood</span>: the apparent perception of new dimensions and details, how freshly scrubbed the sound could seem; the sheer awesomeness of it all. I can dimly remember how the strange chants and mechanical clanking of tracks like “Leuchtturm (Wighnomy's Polarzipper Remix)” took on an oppressive air of creeping Lovecraftian dread: like witnessing some ancient tribe in the dead of the jungle night, in the midst of some unspeakable ritual. Yeah, it was <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>good.<br /><br />The Flying disc, which I listened to quite a bit later, is the more trancey, with fantastic tracks like Holden & Thompson "Come To Me (Last Version)" and Chaten and Hopen's "An Area (Hrdvision remix)" building a crescendo of deeply fucked-up techno with vocal samples morphing from the sensual to the incoherent precisely evoking a night out, the streaks and smears of club lights behind the eyelids. But it’s still just possible for me to glimpse, between the seamlessly dovetailed beats and the architectural detailing, something vertiginous and cold and dark.<br /><br />Buy Kreucht and Fleucht [<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kreucht-Fleucht-Dominik-Eulberg/dp/B000AYQKQ4">UK</a>]<br /><br />Here are a couple of beauties from Disc Two:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kpUMAjfvlGA&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kpUMAjfvlGA&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xipvzy2pmDo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xipvzy2pmDo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-66073246568246110712009-11-30T10:45:00.000-08:002009-12-01T07:57:01.518-08:00The Decade in Music #4: The Divine Comedy, Absent Friends<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SxUzgaW0mEI/AAAAAAAAAY4/BQ8Qfh1GSKY/s1600/2342-absent-friends.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SxUzgaW0mEI/AAAAAAAAAY4/BQ8Qfh1GSKY/s400/2342-absent-friends.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410287159279392834" border="0" /></a>So we've had one <a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/decade-in-music-1-elliott-smith-figure.html">break-up record</a>. Apologies: here's another one. But the gap between Elliott Smith's <span style="font-style: italic;">Figure 8</span> and the Divine Comedy's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absent_Friends_%28The_Divine_Comedy_album%29"><span style="font-style: italic;">Absent Friends</span></a> can be measured in light years. If the first is a black mirror, the second weighs far less heavy on the heart.<br /><br />Before we get to <span style="font-style: italic;">Absent Friends</span>, let's look at <span style="font-style: italic;">Regeneration</span>, the album that finally convinced this Divine sceptic.<br /><br />In my imagination, I’m swimming against the tide; taking a stand, if I can mix the metaphor, against received opinion. Of course, this is largely fatuous bollocks. Mostly I'm just behind the times. <span style="font-style: italic;">Regeneration </span>is a case in point.<br /><br />Just about everyone I knew who'd had a good word for Neil Hannon's archrock project now seemed suddenly united in their disapprobation of <span style="font-style: italic;">Regeneration; </span>shocked<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>, hating the way it too eagerly threw off the fine smoking jacket of the preceding records and took up the Hoary Plaid of Rock. The wit and suavity had been ditched, or so they said, in favour of clod-hopping guitars and hairdos that could be politely called umkempt. Worse, they could only hear, in Nigel Godrich’s portentously atmospheric production, a cut-price Radiohead. And what were the songs even <span style="font-style: italic;">about</span>? Previously, Neil Hannon would have sung about, I don't know, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiBI3A2WcrE&feature=related">National Express </a>or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhiYRByPaQ0">hay fever</a> or somesuch. Now he seemed to be singing about his <span style="font-style: italic;">feelings</span>. This would never do—oh dear me no. So, <span style="font-style: italic;">Regeneration </span>= Bad.<br /><br />Which is where I shuffle in. Where long-time fans were choking on the stifling atmospheres, I was breathing in something delicious and quickly realising this was an album to which I could give a piece of my heart. I ended up listening to this album more in 2001 than I did any record except Elbow's <span style="font-style: italic;">Asleep in the Back</span>.<br /><br />Fast forward to late Australian summer of 2004. The end of a thing: I've just moved out of our water-side flat in Balmain to an apartment overlooking Sydney harbour (plus) that also houses an accountant (negative). A traumatic move by any measure: I'd moved to Australia for love, but that was over, and hear I was moving from west to east with just clothes, some books, and a few CDs for company. Including <span style="font-style: italic;">Absent Friends</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Absent Friends</span> is Neil Hannon's masterpiece. It's a spring of melancholic positivity. Even when it flirts with outright sentimentality, I forgive it completely. If I recall, none of the songs address heartbreak per se. But the songs have a new directness and romantic sweep. "Come Home Billy Bird" brings back the wit, being a comic travelogue closing with a triumphant final line.<br /><br />Listen to the best song, "Our Mutual Friend”. The music yearns and swells like a particularly swooning Hovis ad, even while the lyrical details stay touchingly ordinary:<br /><br />On our friend’s settee<br />She told me that she really liked me<br />And I said, “Cool. The feeling’s mutual”.<br />We played old 45s<br />I said, “It’s like the soundtrack to our lives”<br />She said, “True, it’s not unusual”<br /><br />This record was my constant companion during these hesitant weeks. Because what I remember most of this time alone in Potts Point is the feeling of possibility. Listening to this record and gazing out across a strange and beautiful city in late summer light, I was sure of only thing: it would all come good in time.<br /><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1_LfaG8eeb8&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"></object>Buy <span style="font-style: italic;">Regeneration</span> [<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Regeneration-Divine-Comedy/dp/B000059N0N">UK</a>/<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Regeneration-Divine-Comedy/dp/B000059N0N/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1259681769&sr=1-4">US</a>]<br />Buy <span style="font-style: italic;">Absent Friends</span> [<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Absent-Friends-Divine-Comedy/dp/B00014TJUC">UK</a>/<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Absent-Friends-Divine-Comedy/dp/B0001Z36PK/ref=ntt_mus_ep_dpi_6">US</a>]Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-66844305098197801942009-11-20T03:45:00.000-08:002009-11-20T11:13:27.096-08:00The Decade in Music #3: Electroclash<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SwaCELVy7AI/AAAAAAAAAYg/StkUUDmB9uw/s1600/107335_l_0.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SwaCELVy7AI/AAAAAAAAAYg/StkUUDmB9uw/s400/107335_l_0.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406151410980154370" border="0" /></a>It's 2002, and I find myself entirely seduced by the genre they're calling Electroclash — a genre that's going to vanish quicker than you can say "I too would like wear my sunglasses at night."<br /><br />Now, I suppose it’s just about conceivable that we’ll be having a nu-electro movement in a year or so. But the accelerating atomisation of dance music suggests otherwise. And who'd want it back?<br /><br />But back then, I fell hard. I mean, what wasn’t wasn't to like? Frosty mittel-European vocals from bored models? Check. Spangly covers of obscure 80s classics. Definitely. Super-trebly synths? Par for the course.<br /><br />First came the love: That'd be <span style="font-style: italic;">Kittenz & Thee Glitz</span> from Felix Da Housecat. The genre's great albums can be enumerated on the fingers of one silvery mitten and, in truth, I’m not sure that even <span style="font-style: italic;">Kittenz</span> counts as great. But the first five or six songs are a blueprint that not even Felix could improve upon. “Harlot”, “Walk With Me” and “Silver Screen Shower Scene” are among the scene’s ur-songs, dirty synthy poseurs all of them, strutting and pouting and full of gakky disdain like a singing Helmut Newton photo.<br /><br />The affair levels out: we go to a house-party, science postgraduate students, somewhere out East. I see fit to commandeer the stereo and replace whatever anaemic nonsense they’re playing with a hardcore electro-clash compilation, featuring the wondrous “Sunglasses at Night” from Tiga and Zyntherius, the disturbing “Rippin’ Kittin” (<a href="http://50songs10years.blogspot.com/2009/11/8-rippin-kittin-golden-boy-with-miss.html">Jude Rogers has more here</a>) from Miss Kitten and the Golden Boy and, um... not a great deal else that's worth remembering. Oddly, the popularity and good vibes I had thought to generate were not forthcoming. People can be so fickle right?<br /><br />It’s all over: Fischerspooner, handed somewhere in the precinct of a million quid by Ministry of Sound, did two great things early on before buggering off into an amyl-scented fug. One was "Emerge", a bona-fide classic. The second was their where-you-there? gig at the Arches in London. Six songs, all mimed to a backing track. Costume changes for each song. Fake blood. Wind machines. Strobes. The sort of ambition that seemed to vanish in the middle years of the British musical decade.<br /><br />Electroclash as a genre was eagerly retired, even as its DNA metastasised into the chart mainstream. They'd be better and harder dance music later in the decade. But for the time there, these songs were my irresitably sexy shiny baubles of fun.<br /><br />Here's "Emerge":<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nvsLpYpuu64&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nvsLpYpuu64&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Here's "Rippin Kittin":<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bIucZB4IlDc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bIucZB4IlDc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />And "Sunglasses at Night":<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fw6k0kMVcCI&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fw6k0kMVcCI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-28585108774219977282009-11-19T01:58:00.000-08:002009-11-20T03:18:25.218-08:00The Decade in Music #2: Samuel Barber and John Adams<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SwZ672eNTWI/AAAAAAAAAYY/LousUdIhZVo/s1600/B0002JNLNM.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 356px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SwZ672eNTWI/AAAAAAAAAYY/LousUdIhZVo/s400/B0002JNLNM.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406143571357945186" border="0" /></a>2001. I'm the editor at the ill-fated Network Of The World in lovely Chiswick. It's basically a TV station producing daily music packages. Being a TV station, our open-plan office has massive plasma screen everywhere. Normally they're showing our own output: sports shows, tech, games, something called life which consisted of, um, whales. It's all a bit blurry.<br /><br />So I'm working at our ridiculously high-powered PCs, fighting the temptation to get back on Napster, when I become aware that the office has emptied. Then I see that’s not quite right: everyone's gathered around the chief designer's dual monitors. Not being one of nature’s joiners and sort of just assuming they're all watching some viral video or other, I ignore the commotion.<br /><br />My interest is only piqued when some sort of collective laugh or gasp issues from the group. OK, you've got me, I think. I get up and go take a look. I’m confused: I don’t immediately see what’s so interesting about a plume of smoke billowing from the World Trade Center.<br /><br />And so it was that the afternoon unfolded, surreally, nightmarishly, numbly. Back at my desk, IMing friends and paranoically imagining highjacked planes crossing the Atlantic, we watch the iconic collapse on the huge plasma screens. That night, on the way to something or other, conversation is stilted: we’re numb. Only the debut of Blue Planet on the BBC is some kind of respite. The permanence of nature is a comforting message. But beyond horror, emotion was hard to come by.<br /><br />It was, of all things, the Last Night of the Proms that helped unfreeze me and bought some measure of cathartic sadness. It so happened that Proms that year had been especially dedicated to American music. Leonard Slatkin, an American citizen himself, was conducting a hastily revised programme, dropping the jingoism for something more reflective. In tribute to the victims, there was a minute’s silence. Then played Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Slatkin’s face says it all.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wjvVqtffz7I&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wjvVqtffz7I&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Some years later in Sydney, I went to the Opera House to hear a performance of John Adams' <span style="font-style: italic;">On The Transmigration of Souls</span>. Especially composed to commemorate the attacks, the piece featured speakers set around the auditorium playing verbal fragments from letters found in the wreckage. The effect was to give a human face to those otherwise incomprehensible weeks.<br /><br />So, not pop music. Nevertheless, two of the most intense musical experiences of my decade.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/S6nrJ3ByzzE&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/S6nrJ3ByzzE&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Buy <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/John-Adams-Transmigration-Souls-Composer/dp/B0002JNLNM">On The Transmigration of Souls</a><br /></span>.<br />An <a href="http://www.earbox.com/W-transmigration.html">interview with John Adams</a> on the composition of the piece.Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-57169350854834101872009-11-16T08:55:00.000-08:002009-11-17T03:23:26.760-08:00The Decade in Music #1: Elliott Smith, Figure 8<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SwErlMyNFfI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/99uYG3Bj_zA/s1600/Elliott_smith_figure_8_cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 391px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SwErlMyNFfI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/99uYG3Bj_zA/s400/Elliott_smith_figure_8_cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404648945908258290" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Release date (UK): April 18th, 2000</span><br /><br />Ah 2000, I hardly remember you. And for that, I’m mostly grateful.<br /><br />Where 1999 had been a fabulous year of adventures and hi-jinks — London! — the first year of the new century, the early part at least, was mostly a bust.<br /><br />At the tailend of 1999, I embroiled myself in what was in hindsight an disastrous relationship with someone who, as I later discovered, was rather more attracted to hard drugs than she was to me. Whoops! She left for Barcelona on May Day 2000: the day we voted in Ken Livingstone as the Mayor of London: naturally I was distraught.<br /><br />Which is were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_8_%28album%29"><span style="font-style: italic;">Figure 8</span></a> came in. I’d first heard the lo-fi version of Elliott Smith in 1997, on a cassette from a friend over from Portland. As 2000 came around, I would have said my favourite album was <span style="font-style: italic;">XO</span>, a masterpiece of guitar playing, waltz-time balladry and almost baroque pop harmonising. (I’m still no nearer to replicating the amazing beauty of “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWkOTPFGbeg">Independence Day</a>” or “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogg2RbPypug">Tomorrow Tomorrow</a>” on guitar today. Slow down!).<br /><br />But<span style="font-style: italic;"> Figure 8</span> seemed from the first to be over-stuffed, too rich, lacking the killer songs, too long. But, post-heartbreak, the album stood revealed as somehow written about, and sung to, me. How was such a thing possible? Listen: “Everything Reminds Me of Her”. Already the title. And then: “I never really had a problem because of leaving: But everything reminds me of her, this evening”.<br /><br />Listening again today, all that emotional turmoil long since forgotten, it seems a trick of the light, or, at any rate, of the heart. It's not a depressing album by any measure. And knowing what we know about Elliott and his own misery, the record is ultimately hopeful. The middle eight of “In The Lost Of Found” has, to a great swell of strings: “day breaks every morning when he wakes and thinks of you”. And, right at the end, the direct devastation of “I Better Be Quiet Now”.<br /><br />While the decade would never be so raw again, I can listen to this album, a record which made a profound connection at a dark time, and just about detect the aftershocks of those narcissistic pre 9/11 days.<br /><br />Buy <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Figure-8-Elliott-Smith/dp/B00004S6GL"><span style="font-style: italic;">Figure 8</span> from Amazon</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.sweetadeline.net/">Sweet Adeline, the best Elliott Smith site.</a><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2tsLfPsYOXQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2tsLfPsYOXQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-43034567967704644802009-11-16T02:42:00.001-08:002009-12-17T06:31:28.509-08:00My Decade in Music: The Best Songs and Albums of the 2000sWell that's ten years done almost done with. Ten years of happy and heartbreak, of England and Australia, of dancing and chilling and hands-in-the-airing. Of listening to music on CD then MP3 player, then iPod. Of listening to albums entire to shuffling between playlists. From buying the odd record to obsessively scouring the MP3 blogs. From Napster to iTunes to Spotify. Can I shape the last ten years, after all only my third full decade of listening to music, into something with even the faintest accordance with my slippery memory. Let's give it a go.<br /><br />Now, it’s so easy, isn’t it, it’s just <span style="font-style: italic;">so</span> easy to scoff at those websites and magazines that have decided to publish their lists of the top albums of our splintering age, only to then have the likes of you and me point and laugh and tweet our outraged hilarity at the notion of, say, a Bob Dylan album anywhere near the top 50.<br /><br />But what would make my list? Freed from having to meet demographic expectations and unrequired to satisfy a massive or medium or even discernable readership, I’ve compiled a list of the albums and tracks that have meant the most to me over the last ten years of my life, that have soundtracked my stately passage from an immature 25 to a marginally more rounded 35.<br /><br />Some of the following selections may not even have been released during the decade but hey: I'm in charge, right? One thing that’ll be immediately obvious: despite my fond opinion of myself as a listener with an ear-thumb in every flavour of sonic pie (wait: is that disgusting? Or delicious?), the blunt fact is that my tastes aren’t particularly catholic. Hip hop, jazz, metal, you name it, they're all conspicuously under-represented. I can only plead honesty: if the selection strikes you as revealing a shockingly prejudiced quasi-bigotted, Phil Collinsy collection of records, well... you've got me.<br /><br />One other thing: this list is more or less in chronological order. If life is just long enough to write this in the first place, it’s not quite long enough to put these records into order of preference. And anyway, would it really be fair to compare a record I've loved for almost ten years with something released only in 2009? Course not.<br /><br />OK. Let’s get on with it. I'll try to publish a new piece every day. Let's start as the new century gets under way....<br /><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/decade-in-music-1-elliott-smith-figure.html">1: Elliott Smith, Figure 8</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/decade-in-music-2-samuel-barber-and.html">2: Samuel Barber and John Adams</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/decade-in-music-3-electroclash.html">3: Electroclash: Felix da Housecat, Miss Kitten and Fischerspooner</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/01/decade-in-music-4-divine-comedy-absent.html">4: The Divine Comedy, Absent Friends</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/12/decade-in-music-5-dominik-eulberg.html">5: Dominik Eulberg, Kreucht and Fleucht</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/12/decade-in-music-6-royksopp-what-else-is.html">6: Royksopp, "What Else Is There? (Trentemøller remix)</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/decade-in-music-7-ryan-adams.html">7: Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/12/decade-in-music-7-beth-gibbons-rustin.html">8: Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Out Of Season</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/12/music-of-decade-6-lcd-soundsystem.html"><http: com="" 2009="" 12="" html="">9: </http:>LCD Soundsystem, "Someone Great"</a><br /><http: com="" 2009="" 12="" html=""><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/12/music-of-decade-10-portals-glados.html">10: <span style="font-style: italic;">Portal</span>'s GLaDOS song</a><br /><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/11/decade-in-music-7-ryan-adams.html"></a><a href="http://enormousyes.blogspot.com/2009/12/decade-in-music-11-elbow-grounds-for.html">11: Elbow, "Grounds for Divorce"</a><br /></http:>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-19011963637364668372009-10-01T01:01:00.000-07:002009-10-01T01:05:06.338-07:00Mistaken For StrangersI've always loved this song. The lyrics just keep getting better:<br /><blockquote>You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends<br />When you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery Citibank lights<br />Arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under.<br />Oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over -<br />Surprise, surprise! They wouldn't wannna watch<br />Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.</blockquote><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/y_5FJe6lJI8&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/y_5FJe6lJI8&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-87158581548591028642009-08-28T02:17:00.000-07:002009-08-28T02:48:26.787-07:00God in the QuadJames Wood in the New Yorker writes about the new academic defense of religion, principally Terry Eagleton's largely incoherent attack on Dawkins <span style="font-style:italic;">et al</span>. Annoyingly the piece is behind a subscription wall, so I can't link to it, but it's well worth a read. <br /><br />This quote struck me:<br /><br />"When the pianist Andras Schiff says, as he did recently, that , while Beethoven is human, "Mozart was sent from Heaven, he's not one of us," is he merely making use of a post-religious language, or is an actually religious language using him? ABolishing the category of the religious robs non-believers of some surplus of the inexpressible; it forbids the contrails of uncertainty to pass over our lives. What is most repellent about the new atheism is its intolerant certainty; it is always noon in Dawkin's world, and the sun of science an liberal positivism is shining brassily, casting no shadows."<br /><br /><a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/">Why Evolution is True</a> has no truck with such <a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-new-yorker-takes-a-swipe-at-everyone/">fine shading</a>.Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-14869177107254060282009-08-27T11:20:00.000-07:002009-08-27T11:22:04.957-07:00One Night To Speed Up TruthLord knows how I missed this.<br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/367xrDKsfN4&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/367xrDKsfN4&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-76438642407771740542009-08-27T11:04:00.000-07:002009-08-27T11:12:24.493-07:00Mew - No More Stories<div>Discovering an undiscovered hankering for Danish proglite, I've been feeling Mew's <i>No More Stories</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here comes music journalism: there's a song called "Silas the Magic Car". With a children's choir. Mmm.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah, <i>exactly</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here's the video for the first single, "Introducing Palace Players", a song angular in much the same manner as the Giant's Causeway, but with a brilliant little video:</div><div><br /></div><div><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/866YVD2_DRk&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/866YVD2_DRk&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br /></div><div><br /></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-78184746129355746952009-08-18T06:03:00.000-07:002009-08-19T00:49:08.603-07:00Leviathan, or The Whale<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SousOvkSsvI/AAAAAAAAAYI/oymWPbG9M2w/s1600-h/mobydick.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 263px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SousOvkSsvI/AAAAAAAAAYI/oymWPbG9M2w/s320/mobydick.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371576349856281330" /></a><br />High on the list of books I must read this decade, certainly much higher than any number of gloomy Russians or periphrastic Frenchmen, is Melville's <i>Moby Dick</i>. It was James Wood's essay, unpromisingly titled "The All and the If: God and Metaphor in Melville" that got me hooked on this shaggy mammal story. The way Woods tell it, Melville is second only to Shakespeare in his awesome attempt to encircle a world with a mad effusion of words. I've tried before, only to be done in by the awesome tedium of that chapter-long sermon which, I'm ashamed to say, occurs before our heroes have even left the land.<br /><br />Clearly I'm just going to have to skip the damn thing, having just read Philip Hoare' quite wonderful <i>Leviathan, or the Whale</i>. The book, an intoxicating hybrid, mixes W.G. Sebald's gloomy peregrinations and gnomic musings with a bloody history of whaling. Hoare, depressed by the murk of London and the death of his mother, travels to New England and meditates upon the obscure biology of the sperm whale, describing how a great American industry was founded upon the wholesale slaughter of this fabulous beast. We see just how uniquely dangerous the life of a whaling Nantucketer really was, as they rowed in their tiny boats to the Whale's blind side, hoping to harpoon it before it panicked and stove in their puny vessel. We also follow the feckless Herman Melville, the new <i>enfant terrible</i> of American letters who's hoping to write a great adventure novel but who instead meets Nathaniel Hawthorne and is gripped by the transcendental fever that would elevate <i>Moby Dick</i> from the merely picturesque into a new American mythic.<div><br />We've killed hundreds of thousands of sperm whales in the last three centuries. Whale oil has been used in surprising ways, even lubricating the moving parts of the Voyager satellite. Here's a video where the balance is, however fleetingly, redressed:</div><div><br /></div><div><div><object width="420" height="339"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x396go_sperm-whale-attack_news&autoPlay=1&related=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x396go_sperm-whale-attack_news&autoPlay=1&related=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="339" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br /><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x396go_sperm-whale-attack_news&autoPlay=1&related=1">Sperm whale attack</a></b><br /><i>by <a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/dmars72">dmars72</a></i></div></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-71474565422736882592009-08-14T05:13:00.000-07:002009-08-14T05:14:41.709-07:00Carol BrownThey said it wasn't as good as the first season. Pfft. 'They". They know nothing.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; white-space: pre; "><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/1cGoDns8wTA&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1cGoDns8wTA&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object></span><br /><div><br /></div></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-23448880724496549382009-08-13T06:39:00.001-07:002009-08-14T01:02:31.243-07:00Arcadia<img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 272px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s6_B05xvr98/SoQXw1GhuLI/AAAAAAAAAYA/8RsJ9irNCq4/s400/murayama_15.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369442783388088498" /><div>We saw Tom Stoppard's <i>Arcadia</i> last night. I don't need to tell you that it's a wonderfully mind-bending couple of hour that touches on literary authenticity, 18th trends in gardening, the second law of thermodynamics, Lord Byron and his devilish ways, the heat death of the universe, iterated equations and much else besides. <div><br /></div><div>Iterated equations? Yes. Feed X into equation, get Y. Let Y be the next X and repeat. From such humble beginnings can come all the patterns of nature. For instance, take a look at these truly extraordinary computer generated <a href="http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/inorganic-flora/">flowers</a>:</div></div>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-81053522122821693852009-08-13T01:06:00.000-07:002009-08-13T01:07:37.318-07:00This dance is like a weaponA new song played at Latitude:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bmbg3Z0x6jQ&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bmbg3Z0x6jQ&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-58794007916498548372009-08-12T09:49:00.000-07:002009-08-12T09:50:04.950-07:00múm "11 songs to drown in a lake to"<object height="107" width="100%"><param name="movie" value="http://a1.soundcloud.com/player.swf?g=wi&url=http%3A//soundcloud.com/seaninsound/11-songs-to-drown-to-a-mum-mixtape"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="107" src="http://a1.soundcloud.com/player.swf?g=wi&url=http%3A//soundcloud.com/seaninsound/11-songs-to-drown-to-a-mum-mixtape" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%" wmode="transparent"></embed></object><a href="http://soundcloud.com/seaninsound/11-songs-to-drown-to-a-mum-mixtape/">"11 songs to drown to" - a múm mixtape</a> by <a href="seaninsound">seaninsound</a>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25329766.post-91393641856069883032009-08-11T07:52:00.000-07:002009-08-11T07:53:42.930-07:00From <a href="http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/08/narrowing-the-options.html">Normblog</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>The claim made by Richard Dawkins, and mentioned by Martin in passing here, 'that imposing parental beliefs on children is a form of child abuse' surely merits some clarifying explanation before we assent to it. It is, of course, easy as well as necessary to draw a distinction between putting a belief to children in a way that makes it plain to them that there are alternatives to, questions about, disagreements over it, and insisting on the belief as the sole unchallengeable truth. There's a difference between trying to educate children in a spirit that encourages interest in the world and finding out about it, on the one hand, and indoctrination, on the other. However, teaching people anything at all must involve putting across some points, beliefs, theses, in a more favourable light than others. If nothing else, education in a non-doctrinaire spirit means explaining the different modes of holding a belief and why leaving them open to falsification in the light of counter-evidence or the demonstration of internal inconsistency is an intellectual virtue. Again, must we not discriminate better from worse as between maintaining some standards of personal cleanliness and not doing so, or between behaving with consideration and kindness and being rude and dishonest? More generally, educating children involves, willy-nilly, the imparting of moral beliefs. This cannot be done without the presentation of some things as good and others as less good or downright bad. Even done in a non-doctrinaire way, it must involve a degree of active direction. It's misleading, therefore, to pretend that only dogmatists and fanatics narrow the minds of their children to the available sum of human beliefs. Everybody does it to some extent. Socialization of any kind would be impossible without it. It begins with the teaching of language.</blockquote>Leehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10794389045046110917noreply@blogger.com0