The Third Monthly Report: March 2016

By this point, 2016 has started to develop its true character, mainly based on famous people dying and political and religious extremism: halcyon days! Ah well, never mind, I’ve listened to, looked at and read lots of things which passed the time pleasantly and helped…

The First Monthly Report: January 2016

  Along with some tragic deaths, abysmal weather and so forth, 2016 began with lots of good stuff, some of it inevitably acquired at christmas, like for instance… FREZNO by Tony Stamolis (Process Books, 2008) Frezno is great partly because photographer Tony Stamolis’ hometown Fresno is, or appears…

Play for Today: 9th January 2016

  Today’s playlist is mainly stuff that has been playing since Christmastime, so it’s probably longer than it will usually be: Brian Eno – Before and After Science (1977) Eno’s last collection of somewhat alien-sounding ‘songs’, definitely good, but compared to his first few it’s a bit all over the…

PLAY FOR TODAY

An irregular series, being in the nature of a kind of playlist, ‘now playing’ or similar item, with or without further comment, perhaps to be interpreted as recommendatory, but of course entirely subjective in nature…

WAIT! Best releases of 2015; those glaring omissions in full*

*disclaimer; not in full I somehow forgot these eminently worthy records when compiling my end of year list and I couldn’t leave them out. So much for brevity! Gentlemans Pistols – Hustler’s Row (Nuclear Blast) ‘Retro’ without being an exercise in pure nostalgia, Hustler’s Row was that rare…

Inevitably, the releases of the year 2015 (part three)

Onwards with more of the best new releases of 2015, as usual in no order, but with the first mentioned especially worthy of earspace… Oblivionized – Life Is A Struggle, Give Up (Secret Law Records) Oblivionized spent the years 2008 – 2013 or so building a…

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2015 (part one)

I don’t know yet how many releases of the year I have,  so I am just going to do them in sets of five (or thereabouts) over a few days. I don’t think I have an overall ‘album of the year’ for 2015 so instead I’ll…