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Your working day…in music

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Over the past twelve months I, like lots of you, have been able to make music a much more important part of my working day. Inbetween Zoom calls the stereo is on in my front room/office and I’ve evolved a listening pattern that helps me focus while also keeping me musically interested. Absolutely no ‘Working Acoustic Mellow Piano Focus’ playlists from Spotify.

The first thing on is always classical. After working through Tom Service’s 50 Symphonies list, and after complete Mahler and Sibelius symphony cycles it’s now a lot of Bach Sonatas and Partitas.

Then it’s jazz – Count Basie, EST, Ellington, Shorter – instrumental and nothing too way out there (or ‘Squonk’ as we say in our house)

After that I’m ready for something a bit more ‘focus’ – so longform electronica such as Underworld, Thievery Corporation is often the last thing before lunch.

In the afternoon I’m ready for vocals so it might be a bit of Specials, Surfjan Stevens or Stars (am on the ‘S’ artists at the moment).

Then as energy and focus wane I’m prepared to trade slight distraction for energy, Thin Lizzy, Sonic Youth, Weller or some Crazy Horse can help me eke out » Continue Reading.

Not On Spotify

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The recent threads on Vinyl and CD versus streaming threw up a number of considerations, but several object-heads talked about the fact that they owned the music and that no-one could take it away from them was really important. Five years ago the discussion would have been dominated by the artists who weren’t on Spotify. Since then the last big hold-outs: Floyd, AC/DC, Swift, Zeppelin, Beatles have all taken the green dot shilling. But the question’s still valid, and was raised. Today, when I played Lloyd Coxson’s King of Dub Rock and realised that only volume one was on Spotify. A quick check on my itunes (yes, still digital but I do own the files at least) revealed that yes vol 2 was Not On Spotify. So here we go, your nominations for the Not On Spotify awards.

I’ll kick off with some obvious categories. The Spotify licensing and royalties model clearly doesn’t work at all for compilations. Ace Records – whose excellent Stax Funk series I am currently enjoying – are barely represented. Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures only exists as the somewhat melancholic user playlists.

Even worse than compilations (where at least you can reconstruct the album) » Continue Reading.

Kindle monthly deals for April

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It’s a very strong month for sci-fi, and some good stuff in thrillers and Non-Fiction. Not much in the classics and contemporary fiction veins, but I think overall a good month for Kindle bargains and most people could spend a fiver fruitfully. As ever, there are other bargains for prices as extortionate as £2.99 but I try and stick to the 99p limit.

Detective and Thrillers Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey – classic detective story about the true fate of Richard III

The Nine Taylors – Dorothy L Sayers First of the Lord Peter Wimsy series – Golden Age Detective fiction

Prussian Blue – Philip Kerr Much-loved Bernie Gunther no 2. For those new to these Bernie is in the Berlin police in twenties – forties Berlin and so the novels explore police procedurals during the Nazi era.

Non Fiction The Age of Football: The Global Game in the Twenty-first Century by David Goldblatt Mammoth investigation into the last 20 years of the game. As a City fan I am not expecting us to come out of it well.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien Vietnam war classic.

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safar Froer I like this writer » Continue Reading.

Blogger Takeunder

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@el-hombre-malo gathers us round the the virtual fire monthly to compare notes on our cultural consumptiion, and naturally we tend to the positive. So here’s a space to tend to the negative: what have you given up on, Did Not Finish, removed from your Netflix watchlist, baled out of, and so on. To get you started I have decided life is too short this month for:

Midnight Sky DOA scifi clunker from Clooney. After 30 minutes the entire rest of the film is crushingly obvious. A combination of lazy plotting that appears to rip off Wall-E, Clooney’s Old Man and the Ice act, and a perky mute girl who appears to rassle grandpa out of his grumpiness while they face a series of barriers to save… oh it’s just lazy, dull and obvious. Do the producers expect us to believe that a mother who is part of the final exodus of all humanity from earth would leave her 8-year old behind because she believed the ‘I think she went ahead on the ship in front of us’ line. Baled after 30 minutes.

Another Life Scifi royalty Katee Sackhoff is onboard a ship chasing the origin of a » Continue Reading.

Skyward Inn

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Author:Alicia Whiteley

There are so many original elements to this novel it’s hard to know where to start. The sci-fi trope it starts with is the ‘friendly invasion’. Earth discovers intelligent life on Qita, and its inhabitants in turn surrender completely to the human invasion of their world. However, Whiteley sets the vast majority of her novel in Devon and the title invites comparison to the Du Maurier West Country classic. After a tour of duty to Qita Jem, owner of the Skyward Inn, runs her establishment with her son Fosse, and Qitan Islay who provides the pub with its ‘brew’ – a Qitan drink with seriously hallucinogenic properties. Their part of the West country is in the Protectorate – a society that eschews high technology and contact with the rest of humanity. Outsiders – a second Qitan, and a family seeking to move into a vacant property, set in motion a chain of events that shakes the Protectorate and forces Fosse to flee.

Whiteley takes her time to create the Protectorate society and her principal characters, and the first half of the novel proceeds at a leisurely pace. Jem in particular is an exceptionally well-drawn character, both rooted in » Continue Reading.

Your Kindle bargains for March

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So it’s nearly mid-March and I can only plead work and family stuff distracting me from the vital task of your Kindle 99p bargains. Hey, who knows this may well be old hat in a few months time as we rush from gig to theatre show to pub and back again with nary a thought of picking up the Kindle until we sink exhausted to our beds. But until then….

LITERATURE Faces In The Water – Janet Frame. The author’s descent through psychiatric institutions

Don Quixote – very long and in a dependable Penguin Classics edition.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes – again in a dependable edition.

NOVELS

Offshore – Penelope Fitzgerald. Booker-prize winning chronicle of a houseboat community in London.

A Spell of Winter – Helen Dunmore

Postcards from the Edge – Carrie Fisher

Between the Assassinations – Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger

THRILLERS

Lupin by Maurice Le Blanc – a big Netflix hit, the ‘gentleman thief’ and French answer to Sherlock Holmes.

Robichaux by James Lee Burke – Burke’s style is not for me, but his bayou-heavy thrillers have lots of fans around here I know.

NONFICTION

Backstage Passes – Life on the wildside with David » Continue Reading.

Transcendent Kingdom

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Author:Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi’s first novel, Homegoing, made a huge stir five years ago. It followed two descending lines of a Ghananian woman over several centuries – crossing from colonial Africa to America and from slavery to the present day. Me, I felt it dominated by structure and theme, and just as we had felt familiar with one group of characters their chapter ended and we moved on another generation. I wondered what she’d do next. This, her second novel, is immensely more satisfying. It has a tight focus on Gifty – a Ghanian-American neuroscientist researcher, her mother and her brother Nana. Through two timelines we follow Gifty’s relationship with her deeply depressed mother in present day Stanford, and with her mother and brother twenty years previously in Alabama. Their father, Chin-Chin Man, initially accompanies them to America but returns to Ghana. Gifty is a completely realised character both as a 28-year old scientist and carer for her mother, and as a girl helpless to prevent tragedy enveloping her family. It is a novel that explores religious belief, opioid addiction. and above all how we try and fix the things that have happened to us that we are helpless to » Continue Reading.

PSA Jab Update: 55’s now included

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got my text this morning – not 56 until October – and booked both appointments online for the Cricket Ground down the road, so hoping to combine the 2nd jab on 1 June with a sleepy county match. Just like Kate Bush tickets the first time I tried to book I got ‘one of your scheduled appointment times is now not available’ and had to go back 3 steps, but hey go go NHS.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan recommendations plese

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Ms Moles has spent lockdown partly doing deep dives on artists – listening to one artists albums on repeat until she is confident she knows their work well. Having done Radiohead the logical next step is of course….Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But where (via Spotify) to start? Suggestions for essential albums, compilations or playlists please. She tells me ‘maybe ten hours worth’ is what we’re aiming for.

Just how good is Nick Cave?

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I think that the new Nick Cave album deserves a little more than ‘there’s a new one out, it’s really good’. Just listened and it is. If you count the two Birthday Party albums (or swap these out for Grinderman 1 and 2) it is his twentieth studio album, over a forty-one year career. Time perhaps to take stock.

Firstly, as a singer-songwriter the company he is keeping now is surely the very first rank: Dylan, Young, Bowie, Prince, Cohen, Mitchell, Morrison, Springsteen, King. He might only sell a fraction of the records these folk did (and Cohen was hardly a radio-friendly unit shifter) but since when has that mattered? Personally, as a post-punk child, I would place his twenty albums above Cohen and King, and though very different the equal of Mitchell, Morrison and Springsteen. I am aware these are some of the Aword’s holiest sites, but hey hear me out.

Secondly, the consistency. Twenty albums in and has he made a genuinely bad album? A few tread water definitely – Henry’s Dream and Nocturama are perhaps the first that come to mind. The Lyre of Orpheus/Abbatoir Dreams is certainly divisive. Some opt for the Cave descending into » Continue Reading.

Purgatory Mount

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Author:Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts’ work often has a big concept upfront: Snow (what the snow just keeps falling); By Light Alone (what if people could photosynthesise through their hair); Gradisil (what would orbital habitats be like if they organised as a country). So…this opens on a generation starship. Fantastic, Roberts’ take on this trope. Then they arrive at their destination pretty damn quickly, and there’s a Big Dumb Object waiting. Great, Roberts’ take on the inscrutable alien BDO. Hold that coffee. We’re winding back from the far future to around ten years from now.

The story-within-a-story takes place in a US where the worst 2020 predictions of the death of democracy, informal warfare, and gun-nuttery have progressed ten-fold. Which is in many ways a shame as the elements of Roberts’ post-Trump apocalypse feel less original than the first far future section of this novel. Weaponised neonicotinoids, iphones plugging directly into people, artificial intelligence, shadowy and paranoid government agencies, malware, VPNs…it’s a convincing mix of horrors, but not quite on the level of On (idea: what if gravity operated at 90 degrees).

This is not to say that the central section of Purgatory Mount is not a satisfying read. It » Continue Reading.

Your Amazon February Kindle Bargains

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After the January prices outage I’ve kept the list under review, and these appear to be stable discounts…so at 99p until the end of February here are your 99p Kindle deals.

NON-FICTION Louise Wener – Just For One Day. The Inbetweener hitmaker and novelist recalls her life as a B-grade Britpop legend. Rachel Deloache – My Friend Anna. Loved the podcast on the Fake Heiress © this is her rich friend’s side of the story Pete Paphides – Broken Greek – much loved pop writer’s backstory Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test – a journey through the madness backstory

SCIFI Sue Burke – Semiosis – have this on my to-read list. Peter F Hamilton – Pandora’s Star. If you are wondering where to start with Hamilton this is less daunting (slightly) than the Nights Dawn trilogy, being one of two. The world of Ozzie and Nigel, the relentless Paula and the truly alien MorningLightMountain may be my favourite of his.

Arkady Martine – A Memory of Empire – big award-winner, have this on my to read list.

FICTION Doris Lessing – The Golden Notebook. Forbidding. Would appreciate someone pitching on its behalf. Michael Chabon – Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and » Continue Reading.

A River Called Time

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Author:Courttia Newman

Courttia Newman has written a novel in which lots goes on. It’s an alternative future history of London and by implication the UK and Africa too. There’s family history, romance and revolution, multiverses and astral projection. At times there’s so much going on that you wonder whether Newman can keep a hold on all the strands he’s set in motion.

We start in a dystopian future London – in which the city is divided into two. Makriss is a talented student whose excellence buys him a Golden Ticket from the outer lands into the Ark, the city within a city populated by the elite. Fast forward a few years and Makriss is a journalist writing puff pieces, playing up the ferocity of protesters in the lowest ranks of the Ark and writing pieces supporting the regime. Gradually, through a combination of wanting to impress girls, and political debate, he is sucked into an underground uprising.

If this sounds so dystopia so normal Newman throws in some pretty unique themes into the mix. The first is a complete decolonisation of Britain and Africa: in this London African culture, cosmology and religion are as natural as Christianity. So complete is » Continue Reading.

Your Kindle bargains for January – sort of

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Ok something is happening with Kindle deals. I had a bumper monthly list, as per normal, ready to go when 48 hours ago almost all the prices reverted to normal levels. What’s left is this:

Puckoon – Prime Spike. The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga. Booker Prize winner and shortly to get the Netflix treatment. An Ice-Cream War – William Boyd. Frequent author on this list, one of his better-known novels. Count of Monte Cristo – Dumas. Penguin Classic Translation.

Also yesterday’s daily deal looked very like todays. Something is shifting in the world of Amazon. Gather these 99ps while ye may.

Your Kindle bargains for December – lateish

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Kicked by the kind concern of @jaygee, I must admit that the pickings were somewhat thin this month I was not hugely motivated. Some of these have also been on the Monthly Deal within the last 12 months. But here we go, all at 99p until 2022:

THRILLERS Archangel by Robert Harris. Big fan of Fatherland, never read anything else of his. Siberian Dilemma by Martin Cruz-Smith. Renko is regularly on these lists, this is number 9 which may mean diminishing returns. A Delicate Truth by John Le Carre – on my Kindle from the last time, not yet read.

NOVELS Stars and Bars by William Boyd – an early novel, probably a good thing. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth – perfect on the Kindle, unless you want to give up a good chunk of your shelves.

CLASSICS (only Penguin Classics = decent translation/edition) War and Peace – as A Suitable Boy Letters from a Stoic – Seneca

SCIFI This is how you lose the time war – Gladstone and El-Mohtar – lauded queer epistolatory scifi romance novella. I will probably give this a go. Cage of Souls – Adrian Tchiakovsky. I won’t, but he is » Continue Reading.

The Arrest

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Author:Jonathan Lethem

Or How We Got Along After The Wifi Went Down. The Arrest is an ambiguous utopia/dystopia in which advanced technology – from the internet to cars and guns – has all stopped working. At its simplest this is Lethem’s entry into the crowded canon of The Road, Station Eleven, Oryx and Crake and so on. As an avowed scifi reader Lethem also gives strong callbacks to post-apocalyptic classics such as Philip K. Dick’s Dr Bloodmoney and Walter M. Miller’s Canticle for Leibowitz.

Unlike the irradiated hellholes, biological swamps or fascist regimes of many of these, Lethem’s post-tech life – seen through the eyes of unreliable narrator Journeyman AKA former Hollywood screenwriter Sandy – is not so bad. Shorn of distractions such as Netflix and international travel, a small community in Maine ekes out a pretty sweet existence in which piles of sausages and hearty soups round the fire are the chief joys of life. Just as he was a journeyman writer Before The Fall – a polisher and fixer-upper of scripts – so he is now the Journeyman, assisting the butcher (bank manager pre-Arrest) and delivering parcels across the peninsula. The farmers – led by Sandy’s sister Maddie, » Continue Reading.

Kindle monthly deals for November

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Your Amazon monthly deals for November. I should have more time as there is now literally nothing to do outside except running, cycling and Sainsburys. All on at 99p except the superb Davidson which will set you back £2.49p.

Thrillers and Detective Barbera Vine – The Birthday Party – AKA Ruth Rendell, in her psychological thriller mode. Lionel Davidson – Kolymnsky Heights – breaking my 99p price point for this, quite simply one of the best straight thrillers written, the equal of the best of Deighton or Forsyth. A writer now quite forgotten, but this is just brilliant. Philip Kerr – Metropolis – another from the author and a prequel to the Gunther novels, set in 1928 Germany. His last sadly.

Non-Fiction Paul Hilburn – Paul Simon Joan Didion – Year of Magical Thinking. Not an easy read, but she is incapable of writing a bad sentence. Her story of the year after her husband died suddenly.

Classics Boccacio – The Decameron – in a Penguin Classics. Big commitment. Dodie Smith – I Capture the Castle – never read this and now will. JG Farrell – Troubles – a left-field choice for the ITV Sunday 9pm costume drama slot recently.

» Continue Reading.

Your Grand Lockdown Listening Projects

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Inspired by a few comments in the latest blogger takeover, and some homethoughts here on how to get through Lockdown II: the confused one, can we have your mammoth quests. To kick you off here are two of mine: get through every Prince studio album that I’ve not listened to – at least 27, possibly as many as 33. So far have done the four he did prior to 1999. By album two you could absolutely hear what a star he was going to be. Ahead lies Graffiti Bridge, Crystal Ball, Batman…

The second I started before, but am steaming ahead and on track to finish. The Guardian’s classical music critic of a decade ago, Tom Service, wrote a guide to the 50 Essential Symphonies. While Mahler, Beethoven and Sibelius aren’t new on these ears I have made some fabulous discoveries including Nielsen, Bruckner John Adams and William Walton. Some turkeys: Elliot Carter is a step to far for me, and Rachmaninov and Tchiakovsky I am prepared to leave for another time. So, your grand listening projects please.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/series/50-greatest-symphonies?page=3

Squeeze and Springsteen – it’s the Special Songwriting Relationship

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So I was playing up The Junction (early singles purchase – purple vinyl) for the umpteenth time when it hit me like a bolt from the blue….it’s the British River. Or rather, as it predates the title track of Bruce’s, The River is the American Up the Junction. What? I hear you say. Are you crazy. What can those amiable sarf Lundun rockers possibly have in the common with the Born in the USA hitmaker. Well…

Working-class kid hooks up with teenage sweetheart…..

Me and Mary we met in high school When she was just seventeen

I never thought it would happen With me and the girl from Clapham

Brief bliss brings unintended consequences…..

Then I got Mary pregnant And man that was all she wrote

She said she’d seen a doctor And nothing now could stop her

Faced with imminent fatherhood our narrator has to grow up fast and earn some money:

I got a job working construction For the Johnstown company

I got a job with Stanley He said I’d come in handy

But dreams of married and family happiness are shattered as the two grow inexorably apart:

Now I just act like I don’t remember Mary acts » Continue Reading.

Kindle monthly deals for October

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After a few lean months it is bumper Monthly Deals month, with good choices in all my usual reporting areas. As ever a personal and partial selection of stuff I am keen to read, or have read and can recommend. On until the end of October, apologies for the delay.

Classics The Masque of the Red Death and other stories – reliable Penguin classics edition Barry Hines – A Kestrel for a Knave – adapted for the classic film Anthony Powell – A Dance to the Music of Time novels 1-3. I am now on book 10 of this unmatched 12-volume sequence. The first three volumes lay the groundwork for 4-9 which are just brilliant. They are not for everyone and always teeter on the edge of parody, but I would urge anyone to give them a go. The Penguin book of Ghost Stories Robert Graves – The Greek Myths

Non-fiction Ben Folds – A Dream of Lightning Bugs – mmmm Afterword catnip Stewart Lee – March of the Lemmings – mmmm Afterword catnip

Sci-fi Temi Oh – Do You Dream of Terra Two? Marina J. Lostetter – Noumenon These are two well-reviewed novels I am very happy are on » Continue Reading.

The Ministry for the Future

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Author:Kim Stanley Robinson

The future history novel is a very specific type of science fiction: relying on a narrative rather than a plot. It’s desperately unfashionable and since Wells and Stapledon novelists have made their histories implicit and revealed through action and plot rather than attempting to write a ‘history of the future’. Kim Stanley Robinson’s work, especially his Mars series, might be seen as tiptoing into this arena. Now with The Ministry of the Future he’s dived straight in. The ecological and political themes that have always driven his work are now front and centre as he tracks the history of the earth over the next thirty years.

The novel starts with an apocalyptic event: an extreme heat event in India that kills millions. Virtually the only survivor is Frank, an American aid worker. He is one of only two characters who have what could be called a storyline. The other is Mary, an Irish politician who is chosen to head the titular Ministry, brought into being in Switzerland to advocate for the generations not yet born in decision-making that affects the planet’s sustainability. Their paths cross when Frank, radicalised by his experience, kidnaps Mary to impress upon her » Continue Reading.

CD Swap: Kick off is now

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CD Swap is now go: this is the official kick-off post for this autumn’s edition. Thanks to @mike-h myself and @kid-dynamite are back in the saddle as your genial hosts. So what’s the theme you ask? The future. Take it any which way you like. For those new to the ways of the swap here are those rules in full:

1 Sign up by the closing date by just letting us know in the comments to this post. Sign up for CD swapThe Future closes on October 18th. 2 We will then pair everyone up with two other people – you compile a CD (more later) and post it to two others. So post two out, get two back. You swap your addresses via DMs so no-one except your pairs need know you live at Platform 8 1/2. 3 Your CD: one CD only. 12 tracks only. Theme: The Future. Please rip your files without track or artist names so your partners can listen without prejudice. Artwork is up to you. MP3 tag is a free PC programme that allows you to strip all the artwork and info from your MP3 file. 4 DM us your track » Continue Reading.

Your Kindle bargains for September

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Here’s my highly personal selection of what’s on on at 99p or thereabouts during September:

Literary Fiction A Manual for Cleaning Women – Lucia Berlin – cult short story writer recently rediscovered, in the Carver/Ford/Munro/Oates vein Empire Falls – Richard Russo – not sure I am up for 800 pages but it won the Pulitzer…doesn’t help I confuse him with SF writer Richard Paul Russo. What a Carve Up! Jonathan Coe – justly celebrated dissection of Thatcherite England, which Coe keeps returning to with diminishing returns Milkman – Anna Burns – breaking my 99p rule for this, recent Booker winner is £2.49 and one of the best novels written over the last 20 years. For the first 30 pages you wonder what is going on and how you can read on, for the next 200 it has you by the short and curlies.

Classics Very slim pickings. The Master and Margarita – Bulgakov – lots of his at 99p. I find this one quite hard going, but really enjoyed Heart of a Dog.

Non Fiction The Pigeon Tunnel – Le Carre – his autobiography A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush – Eric Newby – classic travel writing Wishful Drinking » Continue Reading.

Ten Thousand Light Years from Home

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Author:James Tiptree Jnr.

James Tiptree Junior – real name Alice Sheldon, had such an extraordinary life, working for Army Intelligence and the CIA; careers in both painting and writing; that who she was and how she wrote is in danger of overshadowing what she wrote. This collection is a great reminder of her unique tone, and her pivotal place in sci-fi history, linking the fifties magazine style with the new wave of the sixties. Which is a way of saying that the stories here are quite diverse, and while some still pack an almighty punch others have dated.

The ones that work least successfully are a group of stories in which hard-bitten but whip-smart professionals deal with alien invasions, fixes on the galaxy’s gambling world, and the travails of trans galactic parcel deliveries. ‘Birth of A Salesman’ and ‘Faithful to Thee…’ projects a fifties world of club cars, trilbys, FedEx and PanAm into the far future. These aim for satire but too often descend into whimsy.

Then there’s a group of stories where she much more successfully flips the conventions: Beam Us Home takes the stranger in a strange land story and – as Michael Faber’s Under the Skin would » Continue Reading.