We recently asked Markus Mehr if he’d be so kind as to make a mixtape for us of his favourite tunes. What we got was a wonderfully eclectic mix below that has been on high rotation in the Hidden Shoal office since it arrived. There’s something incredibly satisfying hearing Taylor Deupree, The Beach Boys, Philip Jeck and Andy Williams share the sound stage. If only this could happen live! Check it all out over at the Hidden Shoal blog then head to the Hidden Shoal Store to stream Mehr's stunning releases [...]
Two mix tapes in one week? Why, you must be the luckiest children on all the Internet! This should be a busy and exciting week, as I'll be leaving in a few hours to cover the NAB Show in Vegas. If you don't know what NAB is, well, you're not alone. I didn't really know [...]
My review of The Tapeworm label's Unleashed In The East event, featuring Philip Jeck, Randy Gibson, Cathi Unsworth and more, is now up over at The Liminal.
My review of The Tapeworm label's Unleashed In The East event, featuring Philip Jeck, Randy Gibson, Cathi Unsworth and more, is now up over at The Liminal.
Ik heb al talloze festivals bezocht, maar pas in het weekeinde van 3, 4 en 5 december was voor het eerst een ATP festival aan de beurt ( All Tomorrow’s Parties ). De zogeheten Nightmare before christmas ging gelukkig door, ondanks de overvloedige sneeuwval in Engeland. In het Butlins Holiday Centre in Minehead was geen sneeuwvlok te bekennen, slechts binnendruppelende bezoekers, pakweg 5000, die zich bij de balie aanmelden om het door curatoren Godspeed You! Black Emperor samengestelde programma te ondergaan. Godspeed zelf zou drie keer spelen, naast meer dan 40 andere artiesten. Mijn eerste kennismaking [...]
We've got Philip Jeck playing live on the gLASSsHRIMP radio show tonight. Yes, THE Philip Jeck. Amazing, I know. He'll also be chatting to us about his recent work and bringing in some of his favourite records to play, in advance of his appearance at Cafe Oto on Thursday for the Tapeworm's Unleashed In The East gig. Tune in to Resonance 104.4FM at 9.30pm if you are in London, otherwise stream it from the internet here .
The novelist and poet Gilbert Sorrentino once visited Louis Zukofsky, best known as the author of the monumental epic poem 'A' . The conversation eventually turned to Zukofsky's equally-epic study Bottom: On Shakespeare . The aging Modernist asked Sorrentino if he'd like to see his notes for the book. At 470 pages, with a 232 page accompanying volume of music by his wife Celia, Bottom was one of the longest studies of the bard to date. Sorrentino's astonishment at the opportunity turned to shock when Zukofsky handed him nothing more than a dozen or so index [...]
The SS Deutschland set off from Bremerhaven, Germany, on 4 December 1875. Headed for New York via Southampton, it ran aground in a blizzard on the Kentish Knock, a shoal situated about 30 miles east of the Thames estuary. 78 of its passengers died when the ship broke up in the storm, including five Franciscan nuns who were fleeing Germany after the passing of the anti-Catholic Falk laws (the graves of four of those can be found in Leytonstone cemetery, only a few miles from the parish in which I currently sit). The English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins (who lived [...]
Philip Jeck? Performing live AND playing and talking about some of his favourite records with Touch's Jon Wozencroft? FOR FREE? Not an invitation I was likely to turn down. Actually, as I'll probably be returning to the subject of his An Ark For The Listener soon, I'm not going to dwell too much on his performance (as it was based on many of the themes from that new album). Really I'm posting this to a) Give me a chance to put up the photo above, which I really like b) Plug the last weekend of the Anti-Design [...]
Just look at some of the headliners at this year's North Sea Jazz Festival: Norah Jones. Earth, Wind & Fire. Macy Gray. Diana Krall. Jools Holland and His Sodding Rhythm & Blues Orchestra. You're probably already wondering what on earth possessed me to get the bus, train, tube, train, ferry, train and Metro from London [...]
The London-based promoter- and concert arranger Arctic Circle has made an exclusive and free 13 track MP3 sampler, "Bubbly Blue and Green" , to celebrate a four-day festival in the halls of Kings Place in London from 24th to 27th February . The festival is influenced by shipwrecks, rivers, waves and lighthouses, so you can expect four days of eclectic "water music". The mp3 sampler includes songs from the bands who are playing on the festival, and it features beautiful music for the more relaxed and thoughtful moments of the day from Hauschka, [...]
Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego The Sinking of the Titanic (Touch, 2007) Composed decades ago, this live recording of Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of The Titanic as performed by Bryars along with the chamber ensemble Alter Ego and experimental turntablist Philip Jeck affected me so deeply that I couldn’t imagine leaving it off this list. As a single track extending past one hour, the performance is one of the few of such a length that has demanded consistent, repeated listens from me. I can't help but tear up at its power. [...]
Touch's series of Atmospheres events, of which this is the third installment, has an increasingly loosely-framed agenda to explore the sounds of the natural world. In previous years they have set up camp in the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth, with its fine old trees and historic garden. The move across town to Dalston, [...]
At the start of this concert Chris Watson told that "everyone likes honeybees", but I don't. There, I've said it. I know how important they are to our fragile ecosystem, and can probably talk for, ooooh, tens of seconds about their declining population, but I won't bring myself to love them until they drop their [...]
In case you've forgotten, today is the longest day of the year. That doesn't mean it just feels like the longest day of the year, but that it is the day with the most hours/minutes of sunlight. Plus, doesn't every single day feel like the longest day ever to you? Well, it does to me. Nicci and I dined at the Mission Cantina on Sunset late last night, and let me tell you - their menu is awesome. It's small, since the setting is more pub-like than restaurant-like, but the food was ridiculously good. I'll review it in [...]
It's been a while from me, have had a lot of work on at day job Bad Idea , and also been doing some writing for the Guardian's music blog among other things; latest on that is about PIAIL fave Johnny Jewel . Prior to that I wrote about Gavin Bryars's piece The Sinking Of The Titanic - I interviewed both Bryars and Titanic performer Philip Jeck for it and jolly nice they both were too. Read that feature here . Me and Jen went to see Titanic performed as part of Touch's night at the Roundhouse last week, alongside [...]
I was intending to start this review with something about the golden age of passenger transport, linking the building of the Titanic to the heyday of the steam engine via the Roundhouse's original function as an engine shed. However I discovered that when the Titanic sank in 1912, the Roundhouse was in fact being used [...]
If you're reading this then you've probably got end of year lists coming out of your ears by now. So rather than go over those albums which have been bandied about, we will endorse said well-loved music (Fleet Foxes, MGMT, TVOTR, Bon Iver), and respond with a few lesser appreciated albums and tracks. What we noted about 2008 was a decline in end of year lists agreement with each other; more obscurities have crept their way onto EOY lists, marking a tidal shift in listening habits away from the album. So here's five records that we could both agree are awesome and (sometimes) [...]
LMYE recently shook the hand of modest genius. Having sat through a pretty woeful support act to deliver a fierce, deep masterclass in layering & reducing drones & scraps of found sound, Philip Jeck only allowed himself to thank someone for having helped him out with some forgotten leads. After that performance he'd have been entitled to punch the air, whoop & big himself up MC-style ... Pax [ YSI ] (from Stoke [...]
Mp3 | Passions - Emergency Mp3 | Daft Punk - Technologic [ Vitalic mix ] Mp3 | Vive la Fete - la Route [ Black Strobe mix ] Mp3 | Lcd Soundsystem - Tribulations [ Tiga's Out Of The Trance Closet Mix ] Mp3 | Tiga and Zyntherius - Sunglasses At Night [ Alter Ego mix ] Mp3 | Goldfrapp - Ride a White Horse [ Ewan Pearson disco odyssey parts 1 and 2 ] Mp3 | Justice vs Simian [...]
Hidden Shoal Recordings
Swan Fungus
mapsadaisical
Ketelmuziek
The Line Of Best Fit
Eardrums Music
Forest Gospel
play it as it lays
Lend Me Your Ears
Audiopleasures
Disclosure – When A Fire Starts to Burn
Tricky – False Idols
Top 10 MP3s of the Week (5/24)
Daft Punk: When anonymity goes wrong
MAILBAG
