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At last….the CDswap you’ve been looking for all your life is here

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Yes this is the official kick-off and invitation post. This time @vulpes-vulpes has taken the role of ass-kicker in chief to me and @kid-dynamite to get our act together and another CDswap on the road. We have some interested parties and now we have a theme – which as it’s spring, as the pubs are properly open and hey even going to the cinema might be possible again, is NEW. The new, a new… even anew if you want to go Shakepearean. New Orleans, Neu!, new stuff it’s all good. We humbly invite you to join us for this round, in which by compiling twelve tracks on the chosen theme and posting them to two or three compadres, you will receive in return two or three CDs of anonymised musical goodness to rate or slate, while your groupees pass judgement on your efforts.

A full list of those we think want to take part this time round is included in the comments, but as this is the sign-up and kick-off post you are more than welcome to add yourself to the list. If the first paragraph leaves you baffled, full guidance » 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 » 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

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 » 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.

Acts whose catalogue rewards listening in reverse

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Niche post here, one for the cataloguers and tic merchants. I’m midway (R-S at the moment) through an alphabetical listen through of the CDs. While most artists I listen to in release order, there are some who beg to be listened to in reverse order, as the quality steadily climbs until the sunlit uplands of the debut is released. Two cases:

Oasis. The exemplar. Start with the desperate Dig out…, then onto the Will This Do of Don’t Believe and Heathen Chemistry…the flashes of the old in the rubble of Standing On…the overlong badly produced but at the core there’s a half-decent album of Be Here Now, then What’s the Story and Definitely Maybe. From the swamps to the summit, ever upwards.

Sisters of Mercy: Vision Thing (has Tony James), Floodland (some great tracks) First And Last (awesome) and Some Girls Wander… ok I slightly cheatred as SGWBM is a compilation, but the arrow-like ascent holds true.

There. I’ve shared. Minimum 4 albums, arbitrarily. Or if you want to start at the top, artists whose catalogue showed a straightline descent from glory to gruesome.

The Listening Project Nine: Filthy Belgians alert

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The latest in an occasional series mining the British Book of Hit Singles for obscure gold, crazy covers and brickbats. Not much text and lots of vintage Youtube clips. This week’s gold is from some Belgian producers producing a dance classic. Ah yes the 90s and 00s. No, the early 70s and here is frankly filthy Jungle Fever from the early 70s, years before Donna Summer and Lil Louis made moaning on the radio an art form. See how you get on, I think it’s fab. In the comments an earworm to ruin/make your day, two amazing vocal performances, a wikipedia dubious claim and of course the sound of a barrel being scraped (nothing as bad as supermodel week).

The Listening Project Eight: Supermodels week!

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Having unshackled myself from the weekly schedule, and posting when there is a sufficient range of gourmet delicacies from the British Book of Hit Singles…let’s go..it’s supermodels week, and it will not surprise you to know they do not feature in the delights discovered, but rather in the why oh why section in the comments. Here’s a proper singer with a proper pedigree, stepping out from James Brown’s band where she replaced Tammi Terrell, and a terrific stab of pop soul with a touch of the Motown beat. Crazy covers (well crazily awful this week), some nearly tracks of the week, and those supermodels in the comments.

The Listening Project Week Seven: Rounding up the B’s

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Ok what week is it? Week seven, week Ten? Anyway, better late than never (possibly) here are the hits and the misses of the rest of the B’s in the veritable British Book of Hit Singles. First up is a totally anonymous club banger. Anonymous as in who the hell are they? (puts on). Oh it’s this. Again, check out the bass line and the classic filter house sound. Brings to mind all those cartoon covers on the Hed Kandi compilations. Ah memories. In the comments some Crazy Covers and one quite gob-smackingly awful track from 1959.

The Listening Project Week Six: The Bass, oh the Bass. Such Bass.

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Week six takes us from Bizzi to Bowie in the British Book of Hit Singles. No actual Bowie, instead feast your ears on nearly 14 minutes of completely irresistable funky Chicago house from Lil’ Louis. You’ll know the main vocal hook from a thousand other tracks, but this is the motherlode, the original. Where has it been in my life, lodged between Black Machine and Black Riot in the British Book of Hit Singles. The last 5 minutes are non-stop bass nirvana, courtesy of one Gene Perez. Unknown to me, he was the foundation of lots of Masters of Work remixes and it’s no disservice to say that this could be a sample from the thumb of Bernard Edwards himself.

The Listening Project: British Book of Hit Singles Week 1

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It’s a fairly standard response in this place to the current situation – immerse yourself in a crazily large audio project. Then share your findings. So here’s mine, for this week at least. I own a copy of hits bible The British Book of Hit Singles – 18th edition, which is the penultimate in printed form (2004). So how’s about working through the whole shebang (about 500 pages) at a page a day. That should take me through the current scenario and out the other side.

Ground rules: it’ll be A-Z. Unfamiliar stuff only. So the whole page that is David Bowie can be skipped (see the ‘it’ll take about a year’)…er skip that as Rebel Never Gets Old reached no 47 in 2004. Need to hear that (don’t get too excited it’s a mashup but an official one).

The greatest hit is it. Not got time to listen to all of A – so clearly it’s their top 10 Hit Nothing and unless my curiosity is greatly piqued (reader it was not, generic late 90s Green Day punky rock) then in this case their other 9 top 75 smashes will remain for others to discover.

Nothing unfamiliar skipped » Continue Reading.