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I'm chuffed to bits that you like it, Ian! ☺️

Yes, this is my immediate reaction as well.

Btw - on his recent album(s), Matthew Halsall has a harpist - the sound works brilliantly in his music, &, having seen him live recently, I can also say...

https://youtu.be/NyydSocn5dM?feature=shared

Performing numbers from their new ep.

I sometimes wondered if Top Cat & aith01 were multis! - & here, your post made me check aith01 out, & it's been half a year since he's been around. He was part of the furniture in more recent times...

I am, by the by, very fond of books with variations of Bartleby in them. Bartlebooths recur throughout George Perec's books, & I think there's a Barnabooth in one (or more) of Alessandro Baricco's...

Well, I finally finished.

I read a few other novels along the way. And I followed a few other literary paths, that all seemed to lead to the centre, but really led away (Aeneid VI, Chaucer & Attar...

Much more of a surprise to discover that Simon Cowell might like decent music than Kate Moss...

Chuckling here at the thought of Mrs Caller advising Vincent Kompany & his coaching staff on the ways in which he needs to shore up the Burnley defence...I'm definitely seeing whiteboard, magnetic...

Off to see the great young Scottish pianist Fergus McCreadie with his trio in Bristol tomorrow evening - augmented by the Manchester Collective, which I think will be a very intriguing departure for...

Chris - I think Burnley offer an interesting comparison - do you think they'll stick by Kompany? - they won the Championship at such a canter last year, yet they've looked seriously underprepared for...

Ipswich were the best team I've seen at St James Park in years - they played us off the park, in a way that no other team has managed in a long time. But you would fear for them if they do get...

Just hearing Archie Gray's name always takes me back to Eddie Gray & Frankie Gray & the great Leeds teams of the early 70s, which seemed so chock-full of Scots (Harvey, McQueen, Bremner, Lorimer,...

Aye, he looked a class above, even when he was playing as a holding midfield player at age 16.

A real indictment of Chelski, that they essentially couldn't develop him (nor were they willing to...

What do you think of Ethan Ampadu? - was a pleasure, to say the least, watching him (& Ollie Watkins) close up as teenagers at Exeter City.

The mix/sound quality on the new record is excellent - it's a real pleasure to be able to listen to each of the instruments in such complex arrangements in such clarity.

Early listening doors, but...

Hmmm. Ok - I may hang in there. Low expectations mean a higher possibility of being pleasantly surprised!

It's a bus I will have jumped off before now...

(what's your take on this era of Can, Munster? - how does it stack in comparison to earlier iterations?)

I absolutely agree - LA Nights, Bullfrog, Close But Not Touching, Food for Your Soul & the revisited Tank, are standouts from the Works lps, & gesture towards a quite new musical direction that could...

He most certainly does not!

I watched this.

First things first: he's no Rael (from this parish)!

He has a very odd take on Pirates, which gets even odder when he's comparing it (unfavourably) with Memoirs (a piece I've...

I'm pretty much in agreement with you, Munster - but maybe even more impressed by it than you! I'm not a total Canhead, but I think this recording (especially when listened to alongside the [very...

Is that one of the little hints, or is it a big hint?! :)

Well, I managed to get through the Knox, which I have to say, was very disappointing - certainly didn't live up to the very positive reviews.

I've just started Little, Big — I'm only a few pages...

Well. We're none the wiser about the provenance of this recording from the liner notes (which actually make a virtue of the lack of info - about the only "virtue" one might otherwise discern in...

Looks like a few (if not all) of these are brewed in Ghent. I like the beers from the Gulden Draak brewery, & the Piraat is excellent.

The Golden Dragon itself sits high & proud atop the old...

On Presence, I think a number of the shorter tracks, especially Royal Orleans, Candy Store Rock & Hots on for Nowehere, are in the same sort of musical space as The Crunge on HOTH - a kind of dirty,...

"South Bound Suarez" is great! - it's got a brilliant rock & roll groove, Plant sings with totally evident delight, Page's wee solo is a joyous mess, Bonzo's bass pedal is insane, the break is pure...

I'm so pleased to hear you enjoyed the book, Lou - I think that she writes so engagingly.

It's worth checking out the Peel Sessions by The Slits, as well as the official records - they're a bit...

Agreed - Sweeting's obituary was particularly thin gruel. In some ways, it speaks to a more pervasive phenomenon - as if all of those right thinking right thinkers know that they have to be hip to...

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox.

I guess this fits into the "high fantasy" bracket. I got here via a combination of a Nina Allan review, in the wake of her partner, Christopher Priest, dying...

Poor Things is defintely heading towards the bizarre - plus, there's plenty of meta-textual stuff going on. I'd say that, if you enjoyed Lanark, you're likely to enjoy Poor Things (& vice versa)!

Looking forward to hearing how you get on with this - I absolutely loved it! (Steve Howe gets a walk on part too, if I recall aright).

No - I was recommending Lanark to Sunlight Caller, who'd just read Gray's Poor Things. I would say that Lanark is Gary's greatest (Graytest?!) work.

In relation to Priest - I'd missed his last one, which I think is called Airside - I believe it came out last year. It seems as if it's working closely with the great French director Chris Marker's...

Chris - Lanark.

;)

Sad to see that Christopher Priest has died - I think that I recall seeing a number of his books mentioned at various times on this thread.
...

I hate Facebook.

Emerson's claymation impersonation of Gabriel is a moment of genius - a whole nother career, right there, for the taking!

(I've always felt, listening to Emerson, that there's a kind of discomfort...

yes - fun is exactly the word for this! Jaxon's honks give it a bit of a VdGG feel - but other than that, it does seem like it's heading in a different musical direction. The two or three bridges...

I'd say that their more recent material is heading much more explicitly into the minimalist/serialist zone.

I'd start with Nik Bartsch's Ronin - the run of albums including Stoa, Holon, Llyria & then the live album from 2012 (all on ECM), is uniformly outstanding (unless you're already familiar with this...

I enjoyed reading this, Munster - thanks for the link. Simon Reynolds is, for the most part, a pretty astute writer - he gets the "culture", he gets the "theory", but he also gets the music.

I...

[I hope this is not taking the thread too much off topic]

This sounds very similar to my own father's upbringing, Chris - in a small tenement flat in the Northern side of Edinburgh (my mother's...

Aye, I heard it was the same story in Manchester, Chris...

Thanks for telling me about your dad's love for The Moonstone - I've been meaning to read it for years, & right now, I'm enjoying it...

The book is a joy, Chris - Gray is as inventive with the layouts of his books as Rhian Hughes - but he's also an artist on a different level of creative imagination & political seriousness.

I'm...

She was so brilliant - she played excellent music on Radio 1 throughout the 70s, then saved the Old Grey Whistle Test from the slow demise to which Bob Harris was condemning it, then became a key...

It is! - I believe the film is very good (I hope to see it in a week or two), but that it more or less entirely excises the Glasgow setting which is such an important part of the novel.

I was...

Currently rereading Poor Things by the great Scottish writer & artist, Alasdair Gray.

Ok - so I'm going to beg for a little leeway here...

One of the best albums released last year was carry them with us by the Scottish smallpipes phenomenon, Brìghde Chaimbeul, in collaboration...

Did you check out the Sancreed Kanon album from the Ronin Rhythm stable, Ian? - I think it's excellent, very much in the Ronin groove space, but also a bit freer instrumentally at times.

Watching Jools' Hootenanny with my kids when they were too young to go out & party...

In Edinburgh, everything closed at 2100 on hogmanay, including pubs, so there was nowhere for live music. But...

That's just bad manners, Duncan :O

...

That said - it's one of the real good things in life, to settle in with close friends & family, & to share time with good whisky - when good conversation...

Intriguing selection - looking forward to your reports!

I did!

It's fiery & floral - to be honest, it almost certainly needs a tot of water to temper it out.

I'll report back after further exploration!!

Cheers, Ian!!!

17371

Best wishes for the festive season!

My present from my kids - a version of the Glenfarclas 10, bottled at exactly 100° proof - one of a limited edition of just 300 bottles!
...

Of the gigs I saw this year, the following were particularly special:

Kokoroko at the South Bank in London - a lovely gig, which my kids had sorted out for my birthday. Even better - I met the...

Yes, it was her passing the prompted me to read this.

Possession by A. S. Byatt.

I have the Muckle Roe Hall lp on vinyl - it's a riot!

The Scottish scene is really vibrant, Munster - check out Matt Carmichael (Marram is excellent) & both of Fergus McCreadie's trio albums. I'm...