Now playing Spectrum by Sonic Boom

The 11 min album version of The Time is Come Today has reasonable grounds to be the defining masterpiece of the psychedelic 60s: captures LSD in all its despairing, joyful, frightening & fun majesty, throwing Hendrix, Dylan et al into a swirlingly weird pot. m.youtube.com/watch?v=hIqw...

This is fun

Alternative History: The first VU album hit 500,000 streams but no one bought their album or came to their gigs and they all became looksmaxxers on X to pay for their sunglasses.

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade and Grogu.

Well, I liked this, and definitely admired its construction but didn’t love it like I thought I would. I think it was maybe too funny for me.

Christopher Nolan not including Stavros in his version of The Odyssey is testament to his utter contempt for Ancient Greek culture, art and pronunciation

Mm. This shit is so annoying. Techno didn’t need to grow up - I think you mean it ‘needed’ to be liked by people who didn’t do drugs and didn’t like dancing. www.theguardian.com/music/2017/j...

And more or less every page is like this

Just found a seller on Vinted that was only selling American Psycho & a Roger Moore autobiography. I feel one day this could be significant, somehow.

@rapideyeelectro.bsky.social : They don’t let the intensity dip; they just hurl themselves at their instruments & search for each others’ groove. They find it, & then they keep going. We want them to. .. the audience are finding their inner head-banger #gnod #livemusic freq.org.uk/reviews/gnod...

Really liked Penance & the collection of short stories was pretty good but never got around to Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts until now. Fairly rips along, so far. 📚💙

Wimpy Menus are hauntological now.

I know the Met Gala is for charity and all that but couldn’t all the celebs just set up a direct debit for OXFAM or something and put their nice dresses on and go and push a trolley around ALDI?

I tried to get to grips with the mighty Guttersnipe’s new album. It’s an ugly-beauty.

Charity shop find today. Beautiful book of Literary Prefaces, edited and illustrated by Alastair Gray - beautifully typeset in red and black throughout. Even the errata slip is a little apologetic poem

I went to a gig in Bristol & I wrote things about it.

Interesting phenomena emerge when you think of which tunes leap out at you for these prompts: a lot of it almost quintessentially teenage music, as you’d expect & ALL of it is oldish because ‘favourite’ songs have had to endure A LOT of over playing without losing their magic

Coil - circles of mania Dead Kennedys - California Uber Alles The Cure - Plainsong Sharon van Etten - 17 The Phantom - Love Me Orbital - Chime Marie Davidson - work it Helmut Teubner - where are the children Underworld - Rez/Cowgirl Spacemen 3 - revolution

Okay, so I’ve written a novel. It’s a sprawling multi-character paranoiac story set in the hinterlands of the Psychedelic Duelling scene in the late 80s West Country. Who knows any Literary Agents? 💙📚

Listening to Qujaku’s self-titled (first?) album as a soundtrack to my commute & now I’m expecting my day to be full of shimmering intensity & glacial movement. Can but hope. qujaku.bandcamp.com/album/qujaku

Houellebecq world gets a step closer… www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-bo...

It probably wouldn’t make my Top 200 albums but I put the Beastie Boys Ill Communication on while driving & I doubt there’s a album more capable of eliciting Proust’s ‘Madeline’ moment… every other car seemed to be blaring this in the Summer of 94 m.youtube.com/watch?v=2PKp...

Was listening to GBOA yesterday & was surprised how great it still sounded…

I went to a gig and wrote down some things about it. I’m going to another one tonight.

This is by no means independently verified, peer-reviewed research but I’m almost certain that, over the last ten or so years, Tesla drivers have gone from really happy (with themselves), borderline-smug people to some of the most concerningly angry, frustrated and anxious people on the road.

Well, inexplicably never got around to this one in my callow youth so I think it’s time for Nabokov’s Pale Fire…

I know there are complex geopolitical & economic machinations, global environmental disaster, the veer towards fascism & the threat of AI but couldn’t SOME of this be sorted by a return to a universe where music weeklies gave out free 7”s every now and then?

Under very weird conditions - rare tropical fever, almost died - at 5ish years old, I saw Barbarella; specifically the bit with Duran Duran & the ‘Excessive Machine’. Formative.

Rarely get any good charity shop finds these days but got all of these from one shop today…

What? Can’t believe the Lithuanian sperm farmers release is out & I didn’t know. Must be all this payola shit about Boards of Canada & Geese clogging my timeline…

Oh wow. I read the book years ago & knew about this movie but never realised they were linked.

Zero interest in Geese but seems weird to single them out as the result of industry-led PR / marketing / payola or whatever - do you REALLY think your favourite festival regular DJ / band just turned out that way because they were IRRESISTABLY GOOD? Was it REALLY word-of-mouth that got them there?

I feel like if we all stopped believing in Alamy it would eventually disappear.

Only about half way through but depressing that Houellebecq feels more like realism as every year passes. Very much ‘not for everyone’ but also grimly fascinating.

Holiday reading is this short, devastating, fictionalisation of various meetings between the Nazis & foreign dignitaries in the lead up to WW2. Eric Vuillard’s Prix Goncourt wining The Order of the Day. It’s probably all true.

Listening to Boards of Canada. In the universe where all the guys who got REALLY into BoC instead got into Coil… things might have got interesting.

Rewatching The Last Seduction (1994) for the first time since it was at the cinema. Perhaps one of the most 90s movies ever but still holds up and Linda Fiorentino is perhaps the hottest anyone has ever been. Also: I need a cigarette.

Talking about a collapse of the music economy as though that wasn't something that happened already in the distant past. "what if we stopped buying music" bitter lol

Love finding notes in second-hand books. This one was in The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.

Now playing Circle, the album by Boom Bip & Doseone. Leaf were putting out some great stuff around this time & I loved the whole Anticon crew. This somehow sounds even better than it did at the time. m.youtube.com/watch?v=eyAo...

Watched The Exterminating Angel last night. Wow. I love all of Bunuel’s films but I hadn’t seen this one & now I think it might be my favourite. Can’t think of a director that skewers class so effectively

Just finished Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata & was reminded of a time long ago when all I seemed to read was lightly strange, short #books about nothing & maybe everything. Still like this kind of thing.

Another clip from the Centrala gig.

We ended our Centrala set with a bit of William Blake, just to calm things down a bit - thankyou to Emily for the footage

A minute of our set at @centralaspace.bsky.social

New release Fri 27th March — Stars of the Wayside — live partly improvised set from a record shop (The Beat and Track in Sherborne). Artwork by the genius @zekeclough.bsky.social mastered by audio hero @redredpaw.bsky.social Released by purveyors of fine electronic wares @castlesinspace.bsky.social

Watched the Sting version of Brimstone & Treacle last night & it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Felt the need to play this yesterday. Somehow very much of it’s time AND really now. Nostalgia does weird things to your ears

Reminder that if you’re in Brum on Sunday we’re playing at this amazing little event - huge market of electronic gadgets & instrument builders beforehand (including the maniacal machines of our own @farmerglitch.bsky.social ) & then sweaty psychedelic goodness afterwards. Fun for all the family.