Wilfred Satty
Fieldhead – “This Train Is A Rainbow”
They Shook Hands For Hours
Listen to it all the way through. The closest reference point I have is perhaps Arovane’s earlier and more abstract albums, Autechre’s most accessible ones, or perhaps most closely, Tim Hecker’s excellent and atmospheric Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again. Fieldhead seems hard to pin down, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable album for anyone with the patience for, well, this sort of thing.
You may say it is not so easy to be wicked without ever being found out. Perhaps not; but great things are never easy.
Plato, The Republic (Adeimantus)
Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but light-heartedly they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears them victual in plenty, and on the mountains their oaks bear acorns upon the top and bees in the middle, and their sheep’s fleeces are heavy with wool.
Hesiod, Works and Days
We must endow our man with the full complement of injustice; we must allow him to have secured a spotless reputation for virtue while committing the blackest crimes; he must be able to retrieve any mistake, to defend himself with convincing eloquence if his misdeeds are denounced, and, when force is required, to bear down all opposition by his courage and strength and by his command of friends and money.
Plato, The Republic (Glaucon describing a paragon of injustice)
Jan Ladislav Dussek – Sonata for harp
Anna Lelkes, Harpist
There are other harp sonatas by Dussek (I believe), but this is my favorite. I can’t for the life of me figure out its opus number or whatever. It’s almost like an ultra-simplified tone poem — it evokes a lot of images but is light and enjoyable, not trying too hard.
Sir, no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
Samuel Johnson
Nudge – “Two Hands”
As Good As Gone
This atmospheric but slightly funky album reminds me of Rio En Medio’s Frontier, but a little less mysterious. It can be too background-y at times but I think that the flow of the music and its lack of jarring and unexpected sounds is to be credited for that.
Bad Google!
Doré, for Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Look at the detail in the big version.
Foma – “Seraphim Succubi”
Inverness
The best song off an uneven, but interesting album. These guys have a knack for changing their songs up subtly but meaningfully about halfway through, and this one is no exception. It’s also the song where the singer’s breathy voice and the traditional but well-wielded instrumentation hits the mark most completely.
“We have the Leader. We have the Army. We have the Party.”
Part of this experiment.
Cave – “Gamm”
Psychic Psummer
The rest of the album is harder to recommend, but “Gamm” proves that instrumental psychedelic rock has plenty of life in it. Good all the way through. The closer of this album, “Machines and Muscles,” is also excellent (and totally different).
Charlie Brooker on Creationism
Charlie Brooker on Creationism
“This is perhaps the most arrogant belief a human skull can contain without exploding. After all, God has far better things to do than creating self-important little species such as ours. He’s got wars, deaths, disasters and diseases to ignore for starters.”
But as a man of sense you must understand that the way to reconquest cannot be easy. Those who wish no change may sit hugging their scruples forever.
Gene Wolfe, The Claw of the Conciliator
Annals of Ulster (Bodleian Library)
Map of “Marconi’s Radio” by Secret Machines.
Bear in Heaven – “Beast in Peace”
Beast Rest Forth Mouth
It’s true what you’ve heard. This album is pretty great, and the opener is proof of that. They’ve got the vocals and instrumentation down pat, the drums (a non-standard kit) are big as hell, and they’ve got a self-interrupting song structure that really works. Man, the drums in this track really are just off the charts.
The theatre over, they would repair to some cloudy tavern, full of noise and smoke, and the glare of gaslight — redolent of the fragrant fumes of tobacco, gin, and porter, intermingled with the tempting odors of smoking kidneys, mutton-chops, beefsteaks, oysters, stewed cheese, toasted cheese, Welsh rabbits ; where those who are chained to the desk and the counter during the day, revel in the license of the hour, and eat, and drink, and smoke to the highest point either of excitement or stupefaction, and enter into all the slang of the day — of the turf, the ring, the cockpit, the theatres — and shake their sides at comic songs.
Samuel Warren, Ten Thousand A-Year