Congratulations to Resonance FM on being awarded a five-year licence to continue its broadcasts. Resonance is a ‘radio art’ station catering for minority interests (I like Peter Cusack’s environmental recordings series and my friend Eric Namour’s [no.signal] shows of ambient, improv and electronica music, for example), and it started broadcasting three and half years ago. […]
Cultural Calendar
Musical Battleground — article in The Spectator
My article under the title Musical Battleground is in the arts section of the Christmas issue of The Spectator, out today. It covers the remixing potential of digital media, using the BBC Creative Archive and The Grey Album as examples. Here’s an excerpt: But are the products of this ‘remix culture’ any good? Though technology […]
Why birds, and neanderthals, sing
The ‘music instinct’ is far more ancient than previously suspected, and neanderthals and birds may have been jamming before they were talking. But why do humans and birds converge on the same acoustic and aesthetic choices and why do babies respond to musical sound? … quoted from the blurb for the Play on: a journey […]
Theatre of Voices UK tour performing Stockhausen
I was just clearing out my email in-box and found an unsolicited request to plug a tour on this site. Normally such messages would be deleted straight away, but I must have noticed the polite tone and decided to stay its execution until the next clear-out. Then, on re-reading it, and in the spirit of […]
No Music Day
I found out rather late in the day (via the Soundscape UK email list) that today is No Music Day. This idea began with Bill Drummond, who apparently chose 21 November as it is the eve of St Cecilia’s Day — St Cecilia being the patron saint of music. The idea of No Music Day […]
Discovering new music: rationality and randomness
Do you behave completely rationally when you buy music? These days it’s a lot easier to base your purchases on sound evidence (pun unintentional). You can Google an artist you’ve heard of, check out their reviews in the press; read about their development and discography on All Music Guide or Wikipedia; see if there are […]
The spectrum of song: Jeays, Jenkins, Roberts
I have a theory that there are three men in the UK each of whom represents one of the primary colours — red, green and blue — in the spectrum of song. From blending their work in different proportions, you could make any other colour you wanted. But, even though all of them wear the […]
Recording the Lea Valley: sound and vision
The new film by Saint Etienne and Paul Kelly, What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day?, is billed as an homage to the Lea Valley. Seeing it led me first to dig out Peter Cusack’s 02000 album The Horse was Alive, The Cow was Dead — which is an audio document of the same area […]
Age and tradition in music buying
One other thing about the ‘infomercials’ that I mentioned in my last entry: the LA Times article reports that the informercials “will be largely targeted at the baby boomers who 30 years ago fueled the music industry but who today buy fewer albums”. A Universal Music president is quoted as saying, “Nobody has found a […]
In-depth music documentary sources
While I was working through all the pages on this site I listened to the last six or seven episodes of The Story of Atlantic on the BBC Radio Player. They were broadcast on 6 Music Plays It Again, and you can still catch some episodes if you’re quick. This was a 14-hour series made […]