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HARK! I HEAR MUSIC!


“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
- Victor Hugo

My posts on music in one handy go-to place, skipping the obituaries, the gig reviews and the Spotify playlists. (Too many, too ephemeral.)

TOP 50 ALBUMS:

My series on my personal favourite 50 albums (known to youngsters as CDs downloads) is not, it should be conceded, particularly well advanced just as yet. Watch this space for developments. (Probably.)

“FROM BARBARY TO HERE”: THE DARK ACHIEVEMENT OF JOHN CALE'S 'PARIS 1919'












AND BUBBLING UNDER...

Not in the top 50 but I still liked these tracks and albums enough to write about them. (Radio 1 DJs would use that phrase back in the day, for anything not in the charts.)

KATE BUSH’S ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS’ + ‘THE MAN WITH THE CHILD IN HIS EYES’

"FROM MY BLACK SPITFIRE TO MY FUNERAL BARGE": KATE BUSH'S 'LIONHEART'
Looking back at the classic Kate Bush ballad, taking in towers, Fairy Kings and the Battle of Britain along the way...

“Another New Year and too much beer...” Attila the Stockbroker's anti-war folk-punk classic, posted in timely style on New Year's Eve

Does this album belong alongside the classics of country? That became the question it asked itself.

An unusually spiky number from the arch-proggers' early album 'Trespass'

THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MIGHTY FALL:

The legendary post-punk band led by the inimitable Mark E Smith.

(Their first EP, 'Bingo Master's Breakout')
(...then first LP, 'Live At the Witch Trials'...)
(...the follow-up,'Dragnet'...)
(...the classic 'Grotesque After the Gramme'...)
(...more on 'Grotesque', and Smith's use of narrative in song...)
(...the mini-LP 'Slates' and Smith on the consequences of plagiarisation...)
(...the acclaimed album 'Hex Eduction Hour'...)
(...the... err... unusual sidestep of 'Room To Live'...)
(...'Perverted by Language', where tempos stretch and the band take to mythic time)

KRAUTROCK IST NICHT TOT:




(...and see under 'Top 50 Albums' for more...)

DAVID BOWIE:

A three-part look at at 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust'...




"ALL BEAR MY SEAL"- IN PRAISE OF BLACK SABBATH:

The master doom riffers captured in three parts, 1, 2 + 3

THOUGHTS ON PUNK:

With the focus more on the cultural and political effect of the legendary anarcho-punkers. (Because no-one even pretends to like their music any more.)

To punk's existential accounting, two was a crowd. Other people just breathed in useful air.

MUSIC IN GENERAL:

Ostensibly a gig review, but soon becoming a pontification on what minimalist music might be about with one of it's pioneers as a focus

In which minimalist musical commemorations of 9/11 are considered, before expanding into film and documentary and winding up as a partly political broadcast.

A self-confessed “nerdy rant about nomenclature” in what to call contemporary composition, illustrated with a rather fetching picture of Edgar Varese

Is Impro the prime musical mode? Some stuff I made up off the top of my head after going to a panel on the notion.

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