This flurry of My Bloody Valentine activity has sent me back to mbv for the first time in ages. Turns out it's a fantastic album. It doesn't reach the heights of Loveless, but then again what does?

How do you get readership & engagement for your blog? I get fed up with the lack of views. Spent the best part of a day writing a blog about a band, v complimentary review of their new album. Tagged them in my socials so they knew about it, but they didn't repost it to their thousands of followers.

I reviewed the new Naked Lunch album, Lights and a Slight Taste of Death.

If you're one of those lucky people discovering the wonders of Peter Hammill's Charisma/Virgin back catalogue via the recently released box set, I humbly recommend my On Track book as a listener's guide. A deep dive into every album and song ever recorded by the man.

"I cannot abide cruelty to living creatures." "I'm a creature, you can abide it to me." "You're not living." RIP Prunella Scales.

Over on the Henry Cow fan page on fb – the fan page! – I've encountered one of the vanishingly rare "free improvisation isn't actual music" blokes. He's complaining that the music on the forthcoming Henry Now live album will be the sound of them "pissing about".

The Formless Irregular, a massive and eyebrow-raising book collecting the visual art of Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, just landed. I've kind of lost touch with NWW's output in recent years, so this looks like the perfect opportunity to get reacquainted.

New Necks album is really hitting the spot today. Four long tracks, all of them keepers but this one is the highlight for me.

Wordle 1,577 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 (total fluke, never happened to me before and probably never will again. I pick a different starter word every day.)

New Substack post: in the footsteps of Tony Harrison.

#cassunday Cultural Amnesia, Did You Hear The Music (2025) – great, quirky post-punk electronic songs. Limited run of 100 copies, only a few left so don't sleep if you want one of these.

So many inexcusable typos and howlers on the outer box of the new Peter Hammill box set. Clearly this wasn't checked by a fan (i.e. me) or they would never have slipped through. These detract from an otherwise superb package. Universal (or PH himself!) should employ me as a proof-reader next time.

Another extraordinary concert tonight by Peter Hammill at the Royal Festival Hall. Such riveting power, passion and intensity.

Went on a pilgrimage to Holbeck cemetery in Beeston, Leeds, to find Tony Harrison's family grave as mentioned in 'v.' He was right – I did have to search quite hard. But I found it.

My first Peter Hammill concert in eight years tonight in Manchester. He's still as brave, gripping and emotionally acute as ever. Highlights were The Siren Song, The Lie and a desolate A Way Out.

"This graveyard on the brink of Beeston Hill’s/the place I may well rest if there's a spot/under the rose roots and the daffodils/by which dad dignified the family plot." I hope he makes it there, and that I make a pilgrimage there one day.

Despite not having a Yorkshire accent, a few years ago I recorded myself reading Tony Harrison's 'v.'

The Sound Projector Magazine 2006 to 2008 (Edited by Ed Pinsent, UK) – Found on this afternoon’s clean-up… what a top retrospective read… I suspect I got these from viennesewaltz.bsky.social – U would appear to be in here… please to see the soundprojector.bsky.social still exists 😉

I met Tony Harrison on two occasions. The first was at Salisbury Arts Centre where my 6th form English teacher had organised a reading by him. The first and only time I heard him read poems like Long Distance II and Continuous, so beautiful and sad. I'll never forget the awed silence in the room.

Very sad to hear of the death of Tony Harrison, England's greatest post-war poet.

Always sad to see the end of the cricket season, as it signals the true end of summer. Hampshire are in the one-day final today and were ticking over nicely at 106-1 until rain stopped play.

This photo of Philip Glass, critic John Rockwell, Brian Eno, musician Leroy Jenkins and Robert Fripp has been doing the rounds on Facebook. It was apparently taken at The Kitchen in NYC in 1979 and is obviously some kind of panel discussion, but no-one seems to know what the occasion was.

I must admit though, I'm kind of conflicted on Bailey. I admire the artistry, the technique and the attitude, but I find him hard to listen to on CD. I can happily put on an Evan Parker solo disc and groove away to his headspinning improvs, but I don't derive much pleasure from listening to DB.

This R4 profile of Derek Bailey is worth listening to, particularly the bit at 23 mins where Stewart Lee mercilessly skewers Matthew Parris' ignorant, philistine response to Bailey's music:

Happy 90th birthday to Arvo Pärt (pronounced like parrot without the O, not like paert). Very happy to get this signed edition a while back.

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is probably the only double album that really would have worked better as a single album. In fact you don't even need to compile it from the whole thing – the 3rd and 4th sides are essentially redundant.

Up to episode 3 of The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Absolutely compelling TV, the three timeline structure works incredibly well and the scripts find new things to say about the horrors of POW camps which is no mean achievement.

#cassunday Here's the cassette included with the monumental :zoviet*france: @zovietfrance.org Châsse ∴ 34CD box set on Vinyl on Demand.

Strange song called Need A Ride on the otherwise excellent new Kathleen Edwards album. Great tune, but the lyric gripes that “people get worked up” about baseball hats and uniforms. The meaning’s unclear, but it seems likely she’s referring to MAGA hats and police uniforms. (1/3)

Here's a previously uncirculated full concert by the Schlippenbach Trio (Alex von Schlippenbach, Evan Parker & Paul Lovens) at an Italian jazz festival in 1991. The last ten minutes or so of this video seems to be of the trio soundchecking earlier in the day.

New Les Rallizes Dénudés archival live release from 1976 is hitting the spot today. A year out from the epochal '77 Live recording, same line-up but sounding quite different, cleaner and proggier but just as aggressive. Sound quality is hit and miss but it's a miracle this even exists.

Second-hand bookshop swoop in Brighton last week yielded this fine crop of slim volumes. In the battle of the 'H' poets you can keep your Hughes and Heaney. It's Harrison and Hill that speak to me.

Barbara Hepworth's 'Construction (Crucifixion)' at Salisbury Cathedral. When I was a pompous teenager I found this in a sorry state in a neglected corner of the Close and wrote to the Salisbury Journal to that effect. (1/2)

Watching Hampshire play at the Rose Bowl. Currently ticking over nicely at 51 without loss after 9 overs.

Quick visit to the town where I grew up. Never tire of this sight.

Thame Town Council seem to have most of the possibilities covered.

Visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford today for the first time. Highlights were the Pre-Raphaelites, Turners, Uccello's Hunt in the Forest & the flawless Messiah Stradivarius.

Van der Graaf Generator frontman Peter Hammill is to have his Charisma and Virgin Records output remastered and released as a 20-disc box set. www.facebook.com/LouderPosts Read about his discography in Peter Hammill On Track, available from @burningshed or wherever you buy your books #peterhammill

Been to the Barbara Hepworth museum in St Ives. A weighty, hulking beauty to these mighty sculptures.

Everyone says this is a must-read but I couldn't see the point of it at all, sorry. Page after page of unfunny storytelling that led nowhere. Who killed Shade? Is Kinbote King Charles? Who is Gradus? Who cares? Not me, that's for sure.

Been to Tate St Ives for the first time in many years. Great temporary exhibition by Liliane Lijn.

Boggling at the quality of workmanship that went into the new @zovietfrance.org Chasse ∴ CD box set on Vinyl on Demand. The music's not bad either.

RIP Robert Wilson. The 2012 revival of Einstein on the Beach at the Barbican was an overwhelming theatrical and musical experience. I also have vivid memories of his installation 'HG', which I saw at the Clink Prison in London in 1995.

I only saw Derek Bailey once, at the Klinker Club in north London on a hot evening in August 2000. I got Derek to sign a CD for me. I can't recall the name of the pub where the gig took place, and the bandcamp page for this live release doesn't help. Still, it's great to have a document of the gig.

A couple of things I noticed when zooming in on the unboxing photo. 2 discs Live in Kansas City 1978 is presumably the essential Skeletons of Songs bootleg, best PH live recording ever. And Close As This is misnamed As Close As This on the CD label – hope this is corrected in the finished product.

Growing up in Hampshire in the late 70s I was lucky to see Barry Richards in his prime, often in a fearsome opening partnership with Gordon Greenidge. These books help me keep those memories alive.

Somehow I don't think the Festival Hall is going to get many takers for this.

Admittedly I haven't been keeping up with Nurse With Wound in recent years, but I'm surprised by how quickly the presale for The Formless Irregular sold out. 40 copies of the collector's edition at £850 a pop and 250 of the deluxe at £150 each is a tidy sum by anyone's reckoning.

I bumped into John Cooper Clarke as he was coming out of the ladies' loo at Bunjie's off Charing Cross Rd. "Highly irregular, I know," drawled the stick-thin performance poet.