Had a very uplifting and encouraging email this evening from Messrs A & H congratulating me on my review of their album! Really nice touch.
They have asked for permission to post the same on various forums across the 'net and if I agree, to use it as part of the sleevenotes for the promo copies going out to agencies etc in the next few weeks.

More than happy with that!

A bit self indulgent maybe, but I would like to pursue this in some sort of commercial way. Years ago I 'sold' a few commissions to help me through uni, including a couple of comments on Howard Jones gigs in the High Wycombe local papers. Not exactly prestigious, but very very cool at the time.
I've only posted one or two that I consider to be the better ones here, but every now and then I 'practise' by reviewing some of my CDs. Or via email to people who have sent me demos (most recently Corinne Lucy, The National Parks, Device, Ichabod Crane, Baby Dee)

Saoked again this morning, which caused a laugh when I turned up late for a meeting with a client to discuss their new logo. NOt our core activit, in fact far from it, but kind of an add-on as they are already customers of ours who now seem keen to take advantage of our new designer.

Mind you, so do I!...

We have had a few enquiries like this lately, Bizarrely enough including such luminaries as Fred. Olson Cruises, and John Lewis!! That's a really weird one. They are buying an advertising package at the terminals in the spring and want to have some kind of experiential campaign too which needs the support of some new graphics. You would have thought they would have agencies, brands, corporate artwork that just got rolled out but this would not seem to be the case. Its a local initiative, and the local stores want ot draw attention to themselves - especially when Liberty of the Seas is launched.
Plus we've been asked to consider tendering a price for wrapping the magazine dump bins at the Airport.

Not convinced that this is a direction we really want to go in, but as an added value package to exisitng clients it seems like an opportunity to run with.

Lovely.

Tonight it feels awkward up here now as Tx has already retired to bed with her returning problem and another bout of fatigue and exhaustion. was hoping for an evening together doing diddly-squit, but I suspect she's already asleep. Not even 9 o'clock yet

Enjoyed Buzzcocks yesterday. Simon Amstell has made it his own now and this is is his best series so far. Biggins has always had more to him than he let on, and now he is 'real' and not playing a caricature of himself it can only bring on more deserved respect.
And Robyn is gorgeous, which helps of course...

Not often I say this kind of thing about 'celebrities'. I don't even know what half of them look like!
Sad but true, but awareness of modern contemporary 'icons' and news and that is badly lacking. Football is the one with the round ball isn't it?
I'm hopeless.

It is however also true that there aren't a lot of people of the female camp that catch my eye these days as everyone strives to be other than they are and more like each other than is healthy. Perhaps that's what makes Robyn stand out. I'm still hooked on the breakthrough single 'Konichiwa Bitches' and enjoy her live show at Bestival now and then.

Blimey - where does this stuff come from sometimes.

And just for the sake of variety and because I was reminded of this by the J*nk r*c*iv*r stuff I have been playing all week tonight I am listening to

New Judas Huoratron, and
Rakamonie EP Robyn

Another Scandinavian. Confirming what I have felt for a year or more that this is the area that the best new music will emerge from over the next couple of years. Sweden, Norway and especially Finland.

But what do I know...

I particularly enjoy listening to music from artists I know nothing about and have never heard before. That experience is enhanced if the artist is undiscovered, unsigned and uncompromising. My desk is covered with unmarked CD-Rs that have arrived from nowhere in particular with just a stamp for company.

I also have a taste for music that I don't quite understand.
Like this.

J8/nk R*ce*v+r is absorbing, enthralling, irritating, simple, complex and stubbornly refuses to go where you expect it to; unfamiliar, and to Romantics like me with a mistrust and fear of sci-fi, it shouldn't even pass into the atmosphere of my green and pleasant world. But despite the reservations induced by A Message from the Exterminator I find myself waving, setting up satellite dishes in the forest, winding up gramophones and turning my head from one speaker to the other in confused anticipation.
It grates, bleeps and scratches its way into orbit and combines white noise with gentle melody in a way that shouldn't really work.
I don't even understand the track titles, but that's how I know they're good. 'The Cortex Department Room 23' is perfect Ballard, and one of the album's stand out tracks. Monotonous in the same way that the ocean isn't. Distant ships and muffled song. Bells KlingKlang-ing through the mist. Someone should be plucking a harp now, but instead they're annoying me with echoes, distortion and - and what exactly? There are so many reactions here. Am I annoyed? I think I was then for a minute. Must go back there. Not as lost as I feared I was going to get - remember that guitar chord, and turn left.
When you make music like this, Messrs App*r*tus and H*nd, how do you decide when a piece is finished? Perhaps Robin Guthrie, Harold Budd, Michel Rother or Edgar Froese could answer the same question. These are references, not comparisons. And who else shall go to the ball?

Here is the news. It's in the trees - it's coming. Komischemuzikmitbiospherics.

There are times when this sea of sound drifts dangerously close to melody and tune, when the Scary Monsters of Vangelis and even JMJ break the surface. But then I see dead people, and hear their voices, and I am reassured. The title track slides in on the oil from the ghost tanker rusting in the fjords, and Cosmic Nova Dust settles on what is now a moonscape. Perhaps this is futuristic after all - when industry and urbanisation finally get bored with each other. Or am I just pretending to see...?

Now I'm listening for all the references I've been told about and I just keep finding different ones. And sirens. Good link. I love this stuff. Sirens wailing in wartime streets; ego-sirens on emergency vehicles; sirens seducing sailors - all sending Messages to one another. Junk. Culture. White noise. White Arcades. Dancing.
And suddenly it's Celtic. That fjord is Bantry Bay. I knew there would be a harp in here somewhere! Just needed a good rummage.
There isn't? Oh. Must go back to that part too.

Frantically scribbling mental notes. Mapping the fog. Getting no nearer.
I don't understand Morse Code either, but there's a Gestalt thing hidden in here. The challenge is letting the musicians inspire you to keep looking.

Clever waymarking, that's their trick, but God knows how they do it.

© Birdsong 2008. Thanks to Mark