I’m on the road this week and that means I’m loading up some music for long days in the airport and longer nights in the air. I have a long tradition of putting albums on my phone and when I decide to listen to some music finding nothing that I like. It’s annoying and predictable. I want to continue to my dive into the Miles Davis discography with two classic expressions of Miles electric period: Bitches Brew and Live-Evil. I’ve blogged about both recently and found the 1970 Cellar Door…
Trust me #115 What Difference Does It Make by The SmithsNick Grimshaw played What Difference Does It Make? by The Smiths on his 6Music show last month. Hearing the song blasting out of my car speakers while driving through the rain caused me to appreciate it even more. I often get that feeling whenever I hear something on the radio, especially in the car. I immediately made a mental note to write a blog on the song.The Smith had formed less than 2-years previously, when Marr showed up at…
A bit later than I would’ve liked (so it goes), the April 2026 playlist has landed! Featuring a bunch of good music from the past month or so as well as some miscellaneous older songs I’ve also been enjoying lately. Cape Crush, Prism Shores, Teen Suicide, and Sacred Heart Academy have two songs on this playlist. The Blackburns have three. Here is where you can listen to the playlist on various streaming services: Spotify (missing four songs), Tidal (missing three). Be sure to check out previous…
Here's In the Way on SoundCloud or YouTube, my latest one-take improved musical performance. I need a better name for these; "jam" feels reductive but maybe I am being too snooty in rejecting that term.
Bonus link: here is Cal Tjader’s Wikipedia page.
I often wake up with a random song as an earworm – and now I note them down for your enjoyment. This morning it was D:Ream with Things Can Only Get Better Reply by email
On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all. ▰ This track, “Steel Mill,” is a taste of the forthcoming Daniel Lanois album, Belladonna Nocturne, due out June 19. The core band is Lanois (piano, pedal steel, and “dub orchestration”), D’Angelo veteran Jermaine Holmes, and bassist Jim Wilson, of Rollins Band. In addition to drummer…
On Mixtape (2026) "We can dress it up however we like, but the truth is that Mixtape is a vibes-driven experience riding high on some kind of media nostalgia. It is an on-rails narrative experience where you do some light exploration of a sleepy little woodland town among a group of three friends who are sitting on three different versions of the razor’s edge of adulthood, and the thing that pulls you through that narrative is a series of songs arranged into a mixtape that sets the mood for…
Wonderfully carved metallic left-field techno three-tracker from London’s Leaches (real name Jack Reardon). This EP is an example of where a hardware rig can really take techno into more captivating territory. It’s a cliché to say that getting out-of-the-box makes music more “organic”–plenty of artists are capable of gorgeous, vibrant texture in a DAW–but there’s something to be said for the way machines (or instruments) invite both expression and experimentation. Maybe it’s the limitations…
All bangers, but my instinct is this question overlaps perfectly with “what’s the most iconic iPod commercial song” which is Are You Gonna Be My Girl bsky.app/profile/t…
Wonderful words by the ever erudite Adam Turner. The new 6-track Coyote album, The Higher The Sky, The Deeper The Ocean, landed recently, almost a year after its predecessor, Wailing To The Yellow Dawn. These two long-players follow a pair of similar releases from the Notts duo, Everything Moves, Nothing Rests from 2022 and Hurry Up And Live from 2024. All four sets share a similar space and feel, with aptly and expertly selected vocal samples, rich and deep Coyote dub basslines, Balearic…
Alliums ahoy! Some striking white ones in the Orchard in Grantchester on Friday afternoon. Quote of the Day “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Picasso Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Louis Armstrong | What A Wonderful World Link The BBC put on a wonderful — and moving — celebration of David Attenborough’s 100th birth in the Albert Hall on Friday night, which ended with a recording of him reading the lyrics of this song against a backdrop of clips from his…
I have been training in powerlifting for a year and just competed in a national federation meet, so OpenPowerlifting is a meaningful open source project to me. It is not just a website with rankings. It is also a public dataset that people use to analyze the sport, build tools, and even publish research. Seeing the list of papers, presentations, and projects built on top of the data made that very clear to me. That combination is hard to beat: a project connected to one of my interests, useful…
I can’t read this label without hearing Boycie’s voice in my head.
Hands Up anyone who thought Boards of Canada were from Canada?Ah......only me it seems!?Two smart-arsed Scottish brothers....no not Black Scottish, they were actually proper brothers,as in genetically brothers from the same mother.Well that's as Funky as it gets i'm afraid, as we are gently lulled to sleep by a myriad of rejected downtempo leftfield LP fillers recorded from 1991 to 1995. If you made it through this without going into a coma, then I shall hold back on the Bored of Canada…
Andy Emler pianoClaude Tchamitchian double bassEric Echampard drumsRecorded July 17-18 and mixed July 21-22, 2026, by Gérard de Haro at Studios La BuissonneMastering by Nicolas Baillard at La Buissonne Mastering StudiosSteinway grand piano prepared and tuned by Sylvain CharlesProduced by La Compagnie aime l’air, license to La Buissonne LabelArtistic director Gérard de Haro for La Buissonne LabelRelease date: March 20, 2026 The second release on the La Buissonne label for 2026 returns to the…
I recently started listening to Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (read by Meryl Streep, no less) and quickly decided to pause. I don’t know how much of the novel is about putting on a production of Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder, but even if it is only the opening chapters, I was feeling very at sea. Patchett obviously assumes knowledge of this play which I absolutely didn’t have. Am I right in saying that Our Town is a staple of American high school productions? I’ve heard it referenced plenty of…
"Dentist!" by Steve Martin, Michelle Weeks, Tichina Arnold & Tisha Campbell Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Post one of your favorite Broadway songs. I think it's very fitting as it is Mother's Day at the time of this writing. She said "My boy, I think someday You'll find a way to make your natural tendencies pay" you'll be a dentist I feel bad for other people who take this role as I always envision Steve Martin doing it and yelling Oh, Mama!. View…
My maths is not very good at the best of times, but if Alien Ant Farm formed in 1996, then this year is their thirtieth anniversary as a band. That’s a long time to hold down the same job, but as this song – and the gloriously macabre Creeptoons animation that goes with it – shows, the band can still pump out a banger after three decades. The end of that sentence sounds a little bit rude, reading it back, but no innuendo was intended, promise. Some people are calling Reason a return to form (or…
Three versions of the song made famous by Billie Holiday - all three covers released within three years of each otherLydia Lunch was firstThen Billy Mackenzie (personally I always found it a rather lumpy obtrusion in Sulk)Then Marc AlmondActually there was a fourth cover within that timespan: Elvis Costello recorded a version in 1981 (but twas only released much later as part of a Trust reissue)The original was composed by Rezső Seress in 1933 as "Vége a Világnak" which translates as "The World…
Photo of Josh Dun and Tyler Joseph from their Facebook account. Twenty One Pilots remain at #1 for a second week with “Drag Path”, while MISSIO hold at #2 again after spending a week at #1. Chicago-based Brigitte Calls Me Baby moves up two to #3 with their exhilarating “Slumber Party”, and Northern Virginia singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Talk in Waves also advances two spots to #4 with his heartfelt “Waiting for Me”. Entering the top 10 are “Different Kind Of Love” by Young the…
Best Record of 2001: Day 35 Good morning! Today we’re taking a look at De La Soul’s AOI: Bionix. Note: As many of you saw, I recently wrote about a Best Record of 2001 challenge and noted that I’d be writing some of these up. The plan is to do quick hits on each first-round matchup and post them directly to the page. Some will be longer, some won’t, and some might just be a handful of sentences. There’ll probably be a few typos. We’ll also have a few guest posts along the way, so make sure to…
Today, the singer-songwriter Donovan, a man not given to understating his contribution to popular music, celebrates his 80th birthday. A while back, on the occasion of another Donovan birthday, I wrote this: 'Today is the 67th birthday of that titan of troubadours, Donovan. Singer-songwriter, poet, mystic, visionary, man of letters, musical and psychedelic pioneer, Donovan was the most influential figure of his time, entirely changing the course of music history. Without him, the Beatles would…
Hey people! Today I’d like to share with you a set of three harp tunes performed by Welsh triple harp player Robin Huw Bowen, and the thing all these three pieces have in common is a connection to Meirionnydd, or Merionethshire, a region in North Wales. Two of them, as you can tell from the title of this post, have been inspired by cuckoos, which seems fitting, as today earlier in the morning was the first time this year that my Dad and I heard a cuckoo around here. The first of these pieces,…
"Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" by The 5th Dimension Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. Post one of your favorite Broadway songs. - Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In by The 5th Dimension I'm sticking with the mainstream on this one. This was the most successful Broadway hit of the rock era. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile
Madrid, day 5.
My mum mentioned to me recently that she went to a jazz club in Luton at the TUC Hall in Church Street around 1960, which got me searching the archive. Its seems that the town, like many other parts of the country, experienced a jazz boom in the late 1950s with several weekly clubs running.In 1958 the New Orleans Jazz Club was running a Sunday night 'Jazz at the Dome' at the Cresta Dome Ballroom in Alma Street, while the New Luton Jazz Club was happening every Thursday at the TUC Hall. Over the…
Goodness, but it's been glorious out there in the parish lately.The combination of all those months of heavy rain earlier in the year - and the spell of cloudless skies and midsummer heat in late April - resulted in a virulent verdancy I've never seen before.What did the poet say? The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook
A favorite Booker Ervin. View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize In the words of Marty McFly; this is heavy. Have some great albums by Booker Ervin, but still some left to try and find. This was one of the ones I was looking for, until just yesterday when I bought it from a local shop. Top condition 1st pressing with the Prestige trident at 3 o’clock, which was only released in stereo and…
