You Get Used to an Empty Room- playl­ist

Everything has been grim- the world, polit­ics, more person­al matters. Here is a short playl­ist of a certain mood of corrus­cat­ing bleak­ness.

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Cross­ing the Alps playl­ist

To travel in between Vienna and Graz, until the never-ending tunnel under the moun­tains is finished later this decade, you have to take the train over the top of the Semmer­ing Pass, going up and down over the Alps. You get some spec­tac­u­lar views, and the train­line itself is a UNESCO site. It’s hard to take good photos out of the train window, so here’s my playl­ist for over the moun­tain.

Japan playl­ist

Here’s a Spoti­fy playl­ist I made while I was in Japan, of Japan­ese artists and music that matched my mood at the time. (All the Japan­ese bands are marked with a J).

Forgot­ten late 90s Indie Pop

A little while ago, there was a thing on Twit­ter where people used the #indieam­nesty tag to tell funny or embar­rass­ing stor­ies about their involve­ment with the whole Land­fill Indie and Nu Rave thing in the mid 2000s (there’s also a surpris­ingly intel­li­gent and self-percept­ive inter­view with Johnny Borrell (!!) here). As the Guard­i­an article I’ve linked to said, “Indie amnesty brings togeth­er thou­sands of relat­ively banal anec­dotes about unglam­or­ous people doing slightly idiot­ic things into some­thing quite majest­ic” and most of the people were writ­ing about being fool­ish and easily impressed in their teen­age years.

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Should a word have two mean­ings?

My three top new albums this year have all been by female solo artists, two of whom are Welsh, Cate le Bon’s Crab Day, Gwenno’s Y Dydd Olaf (the Last Day) and Artan­gels by Grimes. Crab Day is well worth check­ing out, combin­ing influ­ences from spooky 70s folk, Fleet­wood Mac and Devo.

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Good­bye N17, Hello SE13

I’ve been really busy the last month. I moved from one end of London to the other, finished one job and did anoth­er short-term one, all in the space of a few weeks. When I’ve been at a computer in my spare time I’ve mostly been doing admin for DIY Space for London.

Sleat­er-Kinney

A few weeks ago I went to see Sleat­er-Kinney, one of my favour­ite bands, at the Round­house. They had been on hiatus since 2006, with the members work­ing on other projects like Portland­ia in the mean­time, so I was pleased and surprised when they announced a new album and tour. The last time they had played in the UK was when I was doing my finals, so I’d had to give it a miss. I’d seen them before at Read­ing Fest­iv­al, but I never really count short after­noon fest­iv­al sets at massive outdoor fest­ivals like Read­ing as really seeing a band prop­erly, because you’re basic­ally watch­ing them on a tv screen stand­ing at the other end of a field (one of the many reas­ons I don’t go to them any more). I don’t think I have ever been to such a big gig as the Round­house one where I just constantly ran into so many people I know and like, it was almost too much, there was someone new to say hello to every time I turned around . The band them­selves were superb, and played for an hour and half. I don’t think you could ask for more, really.

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Your suspi­cions I’m confirm­ing, as you find them all quite true

1) Contin­ent­al Shelf- Viet Cong
One off the radio at work. I’m not that fussed about the whole album, but I really like this single.

2) King­dom of Heav­en (Is With­in You) – The 13th Floor Elev­at­ors
From the True Detect­ive soundtrack. The seedy side of the late 60s. It really fitted the show well.

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Wake and walk and talk and take

More like wake and talk and work and talk and work lately. I’ve been work­ing teach­ing on a resid­en­tial course in an ex nunnery near St Albans this week. I’ve worked for the company for a few years on and off, teach­ing the odd course here and there. Most of their work is resid­en­tial, so I just do it occa­sion­ally. They hire out beau­ti­ful histor­ic­al build­ings and teen­agers from abroad come for 2 week holi­days. You take them out on field trips, give them lessons about cultur­al topics, and to improve their prac­tic­al use of English, and do a creat­ive project with them. This time we have been doing film-making. Last week they did a detect­ive story, this week horror stor­ies. No, you can’t see them, because of child protec­tion rules at the job.

Rocks are slow life

I’ve been enjoy­ing hermit­ting recently. I’ve gone out and done the odd thing and for work, but I’ve been happy to stay in the last few weeks and work on vari­ous projects, and apply for more work, and declut­ter junk. Some­times these phases are nice.

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The more you use it, the more it works.

Februr­ary has been a deeply weird and confus­ing month, for vari­ous reas­ons. I had to go to hospit­al with gast­rit­is and a kidney infec­tion. I didn’t have to stay in or anything, but I had to take loads of differ­ent medic­a­tions and was pretty ill for about a week and a half. I had to also follow the most boring diet possible until my stom­ach healed up (like, liter­ally noth­ing was allowed). I was basic­ally eating the diet of a fussy toddler. I never want to see anoth­er quorn nugget as long as I live. My stom­ach is fine now, and I’m rein­tro­du­cing vari­ous foods and drinks, but it’s weird to have to try to remind myself to eat prop­er meals again. I also lost weight. Soci­ety wants to tell you that you should always be happy about that for whatever reas­on, because women aren’t supposed to take up space in the world or some­thing, but actu­ally my weight was fine before (they defin­itely don’t want you think­ing that). Now my clothes are a bit sad and loose look­ing. Hope­fully now I’m back on prop­er food that will be sorted out quickly.  

Space is Ace II

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My friend Mel put on a space-themed night at Power Lunches with some other students from her MA course. I helped out by design­ing the flyer, help­ing with decor­at­ing, and djing in the bar. I had a really good time, but I really don’t have anything nice to say about the beha­viour of the three other St Martin’s students.

The night was really popu­lar though, the place was packed, and every­one seemed to have a good time, which was the import­ant thing.

Field Day 2013

I also went to Field Day this year. It was the first Saturday I had off work in about 3 months, so it was good to make the most of it (I also had to go to work the next day- some­how I looked and felt fine, I must be a wonder of biology). I managed to see most of the bands I wanted to, bar Toy and Mount Kimbie. I was there with my house­mate, but we managed to keep miss­ing each other. When I left I suddenly had a flood of texts onto my phone saying things like “I’m at the bar by X, we’re going to watch Y in a min, where are you?” which might explain it. Stupid tech­no­logy. He saw Mount Kimbie and found it disap­point­ing anyway. I managed to find my Medway friends anyway, and spent some time with people from Read­ing too, which was nice.

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