First Thrashing Doves release for many many years - previously unavailable instrumental of Jesus on the Payroll, part of Paraíso: The True Sound of Ibiza, Rebirth Records. youtu.be/dwYpMIXXy6Q?...

"The company has agreed to pay authors about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement. "As best as we can tell, it's the largest copyright recovery ever," said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. "It is the first of its kind in the AI era."

On the same day in the Telegraph:

Despite his pretensions to the English gentry, HP Lovecraft's ancestry was mainly Welsh, which he discovered to his dismay. The correct spelling of Cthuthu is evidently 'Cwddlyddy'.

Knoll's Law of media accuracy: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge".

Rewatching LA Confidential last night and enjoying again Jerry Goldsmith’s lean, brutal score. At one point the strings metamorphose into the flies infesting the basement where corpses are stashed. A mere sound effect would never have had such phobic or poetic effect. Just masterful.

TV about modern Britain for modern Britain offering opportunity to take creative risks and vital experience in a rapidly shrinking industry. The other PSB channels should follow Channel 5’s lead and do the same. Low cost, huge benefits. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Lots of Telegraph writers ranting about Britain's spiral into despotism seem to have decamped to...the autocratic UAE. Via Private Eye

The Great Gate of Kiev sounding particularly magnificent from the Albert Hall tonight #bbcproms

Therapy comes in many shapes and sizes but fundamentally it is a relationship between two humans where one has a professional and ethical obligation to promote the wellbeing of the other. Chatbots cannot do this. They can trick vulnerable people into thinking they can, but they simply cannot.

If you are a published writer & object to Anthropic slurping up your writing for AI, you have until 8/15 to sign up to help defend your copyright. Check this database to see if they hv taken yr writing (you might want to check regardless): www.theatlantic.com/technology/a... Then . . . 1/2

RIP Biddy Baxter. It took all of six months, but I remember receiving a reply from her when I wrote to ask what the music was accompanying a history item on Blue Peter: Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky.

Read the room, @theguardian.com - who on Earth worded its celebratory crossword-completion message: ‘Congrats’?

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... I’m only halfway through this and it’s already the best discussion of the use of music in film I’m likely to hear. What a delightful and thoughtful man Walter remains

Epiphany: Never mistake inexperience for inadequacy.

I used wasps to rid myself of the moths infesting my studio. I won’t have a word against wasps.

Intellectual property is the only property you don’t usually have to be born into wealth to acquire and benefit from. Except when there is a deliberate attempt to stop the less wealthy from accessing it or benefiting from it. They fucking hate that, the propertied classes. Stay in your lane.

@kevinsargent.bsky.social It’s arrived. All the way from Spain. Well Balearic 😄

This is the AI future we are promised.

🎶 Undercooked aubergines rumbling me … 🎶

The worst decision the BBC ever made was cancelling The Hour after series two.

I was one in a band called Doves (London), but can I just say this, by the other Doves (Manchester) is one of the most perfect creations? Such incredible, vital choices. A life-saver. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RxG...

Network (1976) is currently free on Am*z*n Pr*me, just sayin’

Possibly the first grown-up telly/art I ever saw, well before I could assimilate a fraction of it. Spencer Banks had been in Timeslip, so it called out to me aged only 10 and Mum let me stay up (!). Haunted me like a dream ever since. Great piece here.

Cruel but not entirely inaccurate. Sic transit gloria Blue Mundi.

Anything less is stealing

This is going to be quite the night, I am sure ...

Anyone else utterly entranced by Just Act Normal?

Irritatingly, the studio alarm has been beeping as faulty/low battery this afternoon. Roughly in the same key as this Moog ambient Moog doodle I've been doing. So, grabbed a mic and naturally it's now in the piece ...

Alert! The entire 2014 series of Mapp and Lucia is £4.99 to buy in HD on Prime video. God I loved this. Every single cast member is perfect, it's like a little summer holiday to warm up your February

This is organist Olena Kohut, killed today in Sumy by the Russian missile. Joseph Rheinberger, Visione, op. 156 no. 5 💔

Society of Authors anti-LLM AI protest tomorrow in London. If you write, don’t bother looking up whether Meta stole your stuff. They did. It’s barely “content” to them. It’s soup. Arseholes. Protest corporate colonialism / parasitic tech capitalism, or just come and shout. I’m going to.

At the risk of outing myself as a total fanboy, I have been addicted to this uncanny documentary podcast by Joel and author Will McLean. Hit so many psycho-geographic, Cold War and folkloric buttons, and bang up to date. Essex is on fire ... Stick with it!

Yesterday, my other half asked if I was angry, owing to the way I had been playing the piano. I told her, I was 'just composing' ...

This. Forever this …

I wrote in the Guardian today about the UK government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, which proposes handing AI companies the life’s work of Britain’s creators for free. The government must reconsider. We can be a leader in AI without throwing the creative industries under the bus.

A few years ago, I went to Parliament to explain how “buy outs” and reduced residuals / royalties and digital deals were knackering the viability of creative careers. Nobody seemed to understand what on earth I was saying. The idea of property being “stuff you’d invented” seemed baffling to them.

This puts it better than I can, so resharing. Copyright is a human right.

It's just hit me the rising four-note guitar lick on Bowie's 'Fame' might be quoting that brass lick from Blood Sweat & Tears' 'Spinning Wheel' .. "What goes up, must come down ...'

Not many books I even finish let alone want to go back and devour immediately, but this book is so ‘me’, as my other half rightly perceived. A beautiful, florid, magpie-brained, psychogeographical meditation on life, death, loss, psychosis, nature, the cosmos. @galleybeggars.bsky.social

Bald-faced self promo here but I am proper chuffed with this score, which we only mixed a fortnight ago! Celtic-inflected Americana for a lively, emotional contemporeary retelling of a cherished story.

I hate the term 'temp music'; I prefer 'proxy music' ...

Off to Glasgow for a final dub - so exciting to finally hear the score in the mix on full-range speakers, see the final grade and titles. After recording, for me the other highlight of the process.

UNION IN THE HOUSE.

Composer for screen/dance/theatre/songs just arrived in this joint. Looking forward to connecting. Interested mainly in creators’ rights, arcane trivia and stupid jokes.