Terrapin listens 2

Catch up (January)

2012-01-21T07:33:00.003+14:00

Some of the things I've been listening to recently. No time to say anything detailed.

Brahms - Symphony No 2 I like it more than I used to but something eludes me about Brahms' orchestral music.

Brahms - String Quartet in F, op 88 - I was stunned by this, amazing. Must listen again.

Bonnie Tyler - Faster Than The Speed Of Night - OK, but the title track is brilliant, and of course "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"

Talco - Combat Circus - Listened to this again just before Christmas, it's brilliant.

DJ Emil - World Lounge vol 1, Sun - Mixtape or whatever of various world music. All interesting, a lot of it is superb.

Gang Of Four - Entertainment!

2011-10-04T05:20:00.003-10:00

I really rated Gang Of Four when I was college, around the time this was released. They were brilliant live. I thought this was very good at the time, but not perfect* - I thought some of the tracks, such as "Natural Is Not In It" and "Return The Gift", were a bit monotonous. Then, when Go4 did a reunion tour about 6 years ago, this seemed to be elevated into the pantheon of all time great albums. I was prompted to listen to it again by hearing the aforesaid anti-consumerism anthem "Natural Is Not In It" on, irony of ironies, a television advert. (I'm surprised it didn't become a hit single and make Messrs King, Gill, Allen and Burnham very rich, which would have been even more ironic).

I'm still not sure if it deserves to be up there with the likes of Sergeant Pepper (or whatever the greatest Beatles album is these days), Pet Sounds (which I'm ashamed to say I still haven't heard all the way through) and Forever Changes, but it's certainly stood the test of time, and I think it's even better than I thought it was 30 years ago. Music taut and electrifying - Gill's scratchy guitar is unique, and intelligent and incisive lyrics. The high point is "At Home He's A Tourist".

However, the inclusion of the subsequent single "Outside The Trains Don't Run On Time", with its B-side "He'd Send In The Army", shows rather mercilessly that Go4 were great, but not for very long. (Spot, in "He'd Send In The Army", the reference to the now mercifully forgotten National Service sitcom "Get Some In".) Still, a great record.

*I rated Entertainment! number 3 best album of 1979, behind The Fall's first two LPs, Live At The Witch Trials and Dragnet. (I'd heard a couple of tracks off The Clash's London Calling but I wasn't keen. I changed my mind some time into 1980.)

The end of REM

2011-09-29T02:45:00.002-10:00

No, I'm not going to say "REM RIP", which had become a hoary old cliche within 24 hours of the announcement. I feel sad about it, because although I didn't hear their last album I did hear "Accelerate", and to me it sounded that they still had fuel in the tank.

I still haven't heard the first four albums, and I'll try to seek them out. Like a lot of fans, "Document" was the first one I heard and liked. But "New Adventures In Hi-Fi" is my favourite.

I only saw them live once, at Wembley Arena on the "Green" tour in 1989. At the time their music didn't seem to me to fit big venues like that - I remember people singing along to "You Are The Everything" at the tops of their voices and thinking it was a bit stupid. But obviously they grew into it.

Good luck!

Beethoven - String Quartet No 9 (Rasumovsky No 3)

2011-09-29T02:43:00.001-10:00

Finally finished listening to the Rasumovskys. Wonderful wonderful wonderful. So good there isn't anything intelligent I can write. The music says it all.

The Fall - Levitate

2011-09-23T05:49:00.002-11:00

When I bought this in 1997, I was incredibly disappointed. I had heard bad stuff from The Fall before, but I realised (as I thought) they would never do anything worthwhile again. (I was wrong.) Listening to it again, the really disappointing thing is the way in which a lot of the songs seem to be created by laying down the musical base, and then Mark E Smith sticking the vocals on as an afterthought. A bit like making pizzas - and I'm talking Domino here, not (eg) the excellent Boca Cabana in Grasse. The only song where Smith seems truly with-it is "4 1/2 Inch". Some of the music could have made awesome Fall songs - "The Quartet Of Doc Shanley", "Hurricane Edward", "Ol' Gang", even the cover of Hank Mizell's "Jungle Rock". What a waste.

And whose idea was the cover of Bob McFadden's 1959 novelty hit, "I'm A Mummy"? Now "Monster Mash" would have been interesting. Perhaps it's not too late...

Catch up!

2011-09-01T01:12:00.002-11:00

I hadn't realised it was over 5 months since I last posted here. I haven't been listening to much music - some, but not much, and very little new. Also very little classical music. Here's a list:

Love - Forever Changes (great as ever)
Radiohead - In Rainbows (respected rather than loved, and the last track "Videotape" is awful)
Lee Perry - Arkology (the best bits rather than the whole 3-disk set, but fantastic)
The Fall - "Theme From Sparta FC" (getting to become my favourite Fall song)
Talco - Combat Circus (punk/ska with Italian folk influences, a bit like the Pogues but Italian. Really great, free download from Jamendo).

Dexys Midnight Runners - Searching For The Young Soul Rebels

2011-03-29T00:45:00.002-10:00

This sounds better than ever (see link), and I'm getting to like the slow songs. I still haven't got into proper soul yet, though.

Bartok - String Quartet No 3

2011-03-29T00:43:00.002-10:00

I really enjoyed this, much better than No 2. It's very taut and compact. The first time I ever heard any Bartok (it was the Violin Sonata), I pigeonholed him as (horrid) modern music. But actually modern is completely wrong - much of this is primitive.

Beethoven - String Quartet No 7, op 59 no 1 (Rasumovsky No 1)

2011-03-29T00:41:00.002-10:00

This is fantastic. But the final movement seems a bit underpowered to me, not enough to overcome the tragedy of the slow third movement. Perhaps it was meant to be like that?

Radiohead - In Rainbows

2011-03-29T00:32:00.003-10:00

I'm listening to music again, perhaps not as much or as enthusiastically as before, but I am getting back into the habit. Listening to this, I started feeling the same as before (see link), a bit "ho-hum, this is all right but it doesn't really engage me". And then "Reckoner" really got to me. This really is a fine record, I underestimated it last time.

Gone off music

2011-01-16T00:03:00.001-10:00

It's ages since I last posted here. The truth is that I've gone off music completely. I've been ill for the last few weeks, and I can't face listening to anything. I hope normal service will resume soon.

Soft Cell - Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret

2010-11-04T01:55:00.002-10:00

Even though I was a hardcore Fall fan and serious beer drinker in my student years, I loved Soft Cell in a way I couldn't explain. Coming back to this, their 1981 debut album, I enjoyed it a lot although some of the lyrics leave something to be desired - how did Marc Almond think, at the age of 24, he knew enough about middle-aged middle-class ennui to write a song about it ("Frustration")? But any sins are pardonable on a record which includes "Say Hello Wave Goodbye". Again, the lyrics are laughable because the song is about the end of a passionate but doomed heterosexual affair, but the person from whose point of view the song is sung from is obviously gay. Or is that why the affair was doomed? Either way, it doesn't matter: it's a wonderful song.

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

2010-10-19T03:55:00.002-10:00

I've never really warmed to the Manic Street Preachers, although I'm sympathetic to their no-bullshit ethos. This was the first time I'd heard what is widely regarded as their greatest work, and I haven't changed my view. It's just so loud - any trace of subtlety has power chords ladelled on, and James Dean Bradfield sounds like the Shouty Choir out of "Sorry I've Got No Head".

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

2010-09-29T22:44:00.003-10:00

I was astonished by how good this was. The conventional wisdom about the Bad Seeds seems to be that they became purveyors of ballads while Nick Cave expressed his darker side through his other band Grinderman. Not true, at least on the evidence of this. The title track is especially good, but the whole album is excellent. I suspect that Cave's lyrics veer towards self parody, but not without surprises. For example, it is obvious, in "Albert Goes West", that bad things are going to happen to Albert and the other characters who head for different points of the compass. But the twist is in the last verse - the narrator isn't going anywhere because "I like it here", and sees the sun coming up.

Love - Forever Changes

2010-09-23T21:34:00.001-11:00

This has just nudged past Trout Mask Replica as my favourite record of all time. I wish I could write a lot about it here, but there isn't time. The crowning glory is "You Set The Scene".

Schumann - Symphony No 1 (Spring)

2010-09-23T21:29:00.002-11:00

About 15 years ago I bought a CD of songs by Schumann thinking they were by Schubert (I think they had got into the wrong rack in the shop - this was when people bought records in shops). When I got home I realised the mistake, and just put the disk away. I didn't play it until a couple of years ago, and loved it. I decided to listen to as much Schumann as I could - but, as with most things, I didn't get round to doing it.

I really loved this symphony. Obviously very Beethovenish, but with occasional foretastes of Wagner and Bruckner.

Mozart - Piano Concerto No 23

2010-09-23T21:27:00.002-11:00

Listened to this again, and I'm worried because I'm just not getting it. It must be me, because I'm sure it isn't WAM.

Mozart - Piano Concerto No 23 in A

2010-09-08T20:54:00.001-11:00

I'm a bit puzzled. I used to love this, but it left me a bit cold.

Various - New Weird Australia, Volume 6

2010-09-08T20:47:00.002-11:00

I really enjoyed Volume 3 of this collection of experimental Australian music (compiled by Stuart Buchanan, of Fat Planet fame), so I was pleased to see that the series was still going and had in fact got up to volume 6 (I'll have to catch up on volumes 4 and 5). This wasn't as exciting as volume 3 - nothing as thrilling as K Mason's "Of Two Evils" - and some of the tracks didn't sound particularly new or weird (for example, the intro to Chrome Dome's "She Said" sounds like Killing Joke circa 1980). But still good things on here, particularly Eastern Grey's "24-5".

The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent

2010-08-25T00:29:00.002-11:00

When I first started listening to this I thought I wasn't going to enjoy it as much as the first time I heard it, a couple of years ago. But it is brilliant, especially "Tommy Shooter", "Wolf Kidult Man" and the extraordinary "50 Year Old Man".

Only slight disappointment is the cover of the Groundhogs' "Strangetown". It's not as bad as the version of "Junk Man" on "Middle Class Revolt", but I can see a sort of maverick affinity between MES and Tony McPhee, and somehow I would have expected something better.

Beethoven - String Quartet in E minor op 59 no 2 (Rasumovsky No 2)

2010-08-25T00:26:00.002-11:00

I've listened to this over and over again during the last couple of months. I'm far from tired of it, but I will move onto something else. The slow movement is wonderful, not far away from the feeling you get with the late quartets. By comparison, the first movement is almost lightweight.

Terence Trent D'Arby - Introducing The Hardline According To...

2010-08-17T23:48:00.000-11:00

I didn't like this at all.

The Who - Tommy

2010-07-20T22:05:00.003-11:00

When I first started listening to The Who, circa 1974, Tommy and Quadrophenia were their most revered albums. When I finally got to hear Quadrophenia, about 15 years ago, I thought it was rubbish, and, having got round to listening to the original Tommy for the first time, this was pretty disappointing as well. A lot of the time this is all the things The Who at their best weren't - pretentious, flabby and rambling. I've seen the Ken Russell film several times, and the versions of some of the songs on the soundtrack are better than the original - notably Tina Turner's demented "Acid Queen".

Heifervescent - Pondlife Fiasco

2010-07-13T20:53:00.002-11:00

Well-crafted collection of melodic but jangly songs by Andy Doran. The darker songs are the best, especially the Hitchcock-esqe (Robyn not Alfred) opening and closing tracks, "When The Stars Fall From Grace" and "And The Pondlife Flourished". The happier songs - "Kaliedoscope" and "It's Coming Together" - are a bit less convincing, at least to me. But that's probably because I'm a miserable sod.

Bartok - String Quartet No 2

2010-07-06T21:08:00.002-11:00

I listened to this again the other day and I still didn't warm to it. Is it really me? The only thing which seemed to have any spark was the fast second movement, and that seemed too disjointed.

Radiohead - In Rainbows

2010-07-06T21:04:00.003-11:00

I finally got round to listening to this, some three years after it was released. It's excellent, especially on the second listen, and I expect I will get to like it more and more. "Nude", especially, is a wonderful song. One but/cavil - there isn't anything to surprise or shock, nothing that made me think "F***ing hell!" And, with Radiohead, I don't think there ever will be. But still worth listening to.

The Fall - Middle Class Revolt

2010-06-29T22:59:00.002-11:00

...aka The Vaporisation of Reality

My abiding memory of this record is "lacklustre". But that doesn't sum it up adequately. Much of it is very tedious (the title track and "Surmount All Obstacles" to name two). Some of it is insultingly bad (step forward the inept cover of the Groundhogs' "Junkman" and, worst of all, "Symbol Of Mordgan", which consists of someone - I read somewhere it was Craig Scanlon - talking to John Peel on the phone about Manchester City over the top of some half-hearted jamming).

But some of it is more interesting than I remembered - "15 Ways" is beautifully subtle, a skewed take on Paul Simon's "Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover" (evidently too skewed to bother the copyright lawyers). Originally I had "Hey Student" down as a pale retread of fierce 80s songs like "Lucifer Over Lancashire" and "Lay Of The Land", but I can see now it is pretty good in its own right. And "City Dweller" and "M5#1", which presumably are intended as a "town and country" pair. Though at the risk of being pedantic, I would point out that junction 1 on the M5 doesn't lead to anywhere "agrarian" - rather West Bromwich and Birmingham North-West.

The cover version of Henry Cow/Slapp Happy's "War" is OK-ish but it led me to check out the original on YouTube. Now that is fantastic.

Bartok - String Quartets Nos 1 and 2

2010-06-22T20:49:00.003-11:00

It's good listening to Bartok's quartets again. I remember going to hear all six played by the Emerson Quartet at the QEH one Sunday afternoon in 1995: it was fantastic. I enjoyed No 1 a lot, a few weeks ago, but wasn't really in the mood for No 2.

Procol Harum - Nightriding

2010-06-22T20:43:00.002-11:00

I first started listening to rock music around 1974, which was really the tail end of Procol Harum's career, and I couldn't work out where they fitted into the grand scheme of things. They were responsible for "Whiter Shade Of Pale", a seemingly undisputed progressive classic (which I hated, and - it's the opening track on this compilation - still hate), but they weren't really part of the prog mainstream. Listening to this, I still can't work them out. I hated most of this, although the bluesier songs like "Whiskey Train" and "Seem To Have The Blues" are a bit better. The saving grace is Robin Trower's guitar work, which even, almost, redeems dross like "Ramblin' On".

Mike & the Mechanics - "The Living Years"

2010-06-11T00:11:00.003-11:00

My father died last week, and as I was driving to see Mum the next day I instantly recognised this song starting on the radio. I am supposed to say at this point that I was in tears by the time it finished, but actually I was laughing out loud at the screaming mawkish sentimentality. Ian Dury did the job far better in his song "My Old Man"

Though I would liked to have talked more in the last few years, luckily Dad didn't die "before we'd done much talking".

All the best, mate, from your son.

Led Zeppelin - Mothership

2010-05-21T03:17:00.002-11:00

For two and a half years (from about April 1975 to the end of 1977) I worshipped Led Zeppelin. It started when I heard "Physical Graffiti" through our next door neighbour's wall. I borrowed it and loved it. The thing that made the most impression was John Bonham's drum sound. But when I bought "Led Zeppelin II" later that year (after the school carol service, if memory serves) I knew that it was the real thing. It's a bit sad, I suppose, that great as Led Zeppelin were, they never surpassed the music on their first two albums. It may, then, have been a long slow decline, but what a decline.

I don't think I've listened to any Led Zep for 30 years, and I was expecting to be underwhelmed, especially since heavy metal has long been a derided cliche, and Rolf Harris and Dread Zeppelin have done their worst, but I was bowled over by the immediacy and power of the early stuff on this compilation, especially "Good Times Bad Times" and "Whole Lotta Love".

Tchaikovsky - Symphony No 5

2010-05-11T22:01:00.002-11:00

When I first started listening to classical music I rather stupidly gave Tchaikovsky a wide berth because he was "popular" (think 1812 Overture and Swan Lake). Later on I got to like the Sixth Symphony (Pathetique) and the Violin Concerto, so I was expecting to like this. But I really didn't, I found it turgid and boring. A bit like early Sibelius without the sparkle. I'm trying to work out why. I think that maybe it was because Tchaikovsky was trying to express really extreme emotional states within too rigid a tonal framework. Mahler is, of course, emotional, but his freedom with tonality gives him the language.

Mahler - Symphony No 5

2010-05-07T02:52:00.003-11:00

Well, I finally felt up to listening to Mahler 5 this week, and it was fantastic. I used to love Mahler, but about 3 years ago I listened to the Fourth and didn't enjoy it. It was a weird experience, a bit like meeting an old friend again after a long separation and not getting on with them. I want to listen to it again soon, more carefully, analytically, movement by movement, because it is easy to be borne along by the emotion. The thing I noticed most this time was the third movement scherzo, which has somehow washed over me before. I think I found it a bit over-long and incoherent.

Brad Smith - Moon8

2010-05-05T20:54:00.003-11:00

This is a re-creation of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" using primitive (moop!) Nintendo (neek!) sound effects (8-bit, hence the title). It's an interesting idea, but it didn't work for me. It seemed a bit like those reproductions of the Mona Lisa with Lego.

Free download at http://rainwarrior.thenoos.net/music/moon8.html.

J S Bach - Cello Suite No 3 (not Mahler 5)

2010-05-04T01:06:00.002-11:00

I was planning to listen to Mahler's Fifth Symphony last week but because of the way things are at the moment I wasn't feeling up to it, so I listened to this again (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2010/02/j-s-bach-cello-suite-no-3.html), and really enjoyed it this time. It's austere but still sensual. I don't think this is the best possible performance: the rhythm gets "lost" sometimes, but it is still very good.

Steely Dan - Reelin' In The Years (Best Of...)

2010-04-29T00:54:00.002-11:00

In the Seventies, I didn't really get on with Steely Dan. They were so painfully cool, and I didn't like cool. Listening to this again, I was spot on. I can appreciate the brilliance of the musicianship now, and the amazing way in which the songs are crafted, but still the coolness - which sometimes, to me, borders on dissociated - turns me off. Except "Reelin' In The Years" which now, as then I love.

Beethoven - String Quartet op 18 no 1

2010-04-21T20:49:00.002-11:00

I don't remember listening to any of Beethoven's first six quartets before, although I immediately recognised the last movement of this piece. It was much better than I expected, but I was thrown somehow by the tragic intensity of the slow second movement.

SoLaRiS - The 12 Gates

2010-04-21T20:36:00.003-11:00

I had a look at Jamendo to find something psychedelic and I confess I downloaded this apparently preposterous concept album of instrumentals about Ancient Egypt in order to poke fun at it. But I really enjoyed it, especially the opening track "Amun-Ra", which is awe-inspiring (albeit in a cheesy sort of way, a bit like the theme from "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"), "Hamunaptra" and the funky "Jackal Of Isis". It isn't enormously original, and the some of the tracks go on too long (especially the 13 minute title track, which reminded me a bit of Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful Of Secrets"). But it is well worth listening to.

Free download at www.jamendo.com/en/album/17695.

Phoenix - Live In Sydney

2010-04-12T23:32:00.003-11:00

This was a freebie with the Observer a few weeks back. Didn't love it; didn't hate it. Mildly enjoyable in a few parts, rather boring as a whole (except the extremely boring "Love Is A Sunset", clocking in at 10 minutes, a minute longer than (eg) Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive"). I don't know what was getting the crowd worked up so much, but it wasn't the music.

Prog Britannia on BBC Four

2010-03-30T02:24:00.003-11:00

I've just been watching the BBC's documentary on progressive rock on iPlayer. Wonderful.

I wasn't into what you might call hardcore progressive rock - Yes, ELP, Genesis, King Crimson - myself, though I respected it. (We didn't call it "prog": it didn't sound serious enough.). Partly this was because I found the lyrics too whimsical and the music somehow not muscular enough. Partly it was a money thing: I could only afford to buy an album every other month. If you don't like one of the tracks on an album with eight tracks, it's liveable-with; if the album has only three tracks (like, for example, Relayer) it's a disaster. So I didn't take the gamble. I finally bought The Yes Album in the early 90s, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The key to enjoying prog is not to take it too seriously.

Two criticisms of the programme - there was hardly a mention of Pink Floyd (though bits of their music could be heard in the background) even though they could surely be categorised as progressive up to including 1971's Meddle ("Echoes" is surely one of the archetypal progressive pieces, with its length and episodic nature, its nebulous lyrics and musical virtuosity). The other was the way in which it made prog out to be an exclusively English thing but (although I don't know about Scotland) there were important bands in Ireland (Fruupp and Horslips, the latter marrying rock to Irish folk music) and especially Man (from Wales), who showed that you could do progressive and heavy blues at the same time.

Mark E Smith on art etc

2010-03-25T00:42:00.002-11:00

Just found this short video of Mark E Smith on the Tate website. Don't know about 50 Year Old Man: he looks more like 70!

http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/71190048001

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

2010-03-24T22:32:00.003-11:00

Bloc Party are another band I had missed out on so far. Influenced by a whole bunch of circa 1980 bands which I loved (early Cure and, especially, Gang Of Four) or, at least, respected (Joy Division) I was expecting to love this but I was a bit disappointed. I can't pin it down, but it seems to be somehow detached, slightly lacking in real fire. Maybe it comes out live, and didn't on this (debut) album. It's there on "Helicopter" and "Luno" - nearly. Don't get me wrong. I thought it was very good. Just not as brilliant as I had expected.

PS - I am really mystified by the comparisons which have been made between Bloc Party and The Fall (as I was by comparisons between Franz Ferdinand and The Fall). Beyond a certain abrasiveness, they are a totally different kettle of fish.

Schubert - String Quintet in C

2010-03-24T22:27:00.002-11:00

Another old favourite. Listening to the first movement again, I wondered if it sounded a bit too sweet, somehow. But it is like drinking a Beerenauslese - you get the sweetness and then you get the acidity, and it is perfectly balanced. The unbearable tenderness of the slow movement: I don't think Schubert surpassed this. I don't think I had noticed before how rustic - rough, almost, by contrast - the 3rd and 4th movements are.

Haircut 100 - Pelican West

2010-03-10T23:54:00.003-11:00

I confess to a liking for Haircut 100 the first time around, and I really loved this. Music of almost insane cheerfulness - in "Milk Farm" they launch into the children's hymn "Glad That I Live Am I" - Prozac in MP3 form. Best tracks are "Fantastic Day" and "Love Plus One".

Beethoven - String Quartet in F major, Rasumovsky No 1

2010-03-10T23:52:00.002-11:00

Heard this again last night. Wonderful, I keep getting more and more from it. I think I was right about the Violin Concerto.

Regrets, I've had a few...

2010-03-05T00:07:00.007-11:00

I only listened to the Chemical Brothers' "Dig Your Own Hole" once (up until last week), but I still didn't regret buying it. There are only three LPs which I actually wish I had never bought. There was Mark Stewart's "As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade", which was bought on the strength of a brilliant set at ULU, but the sound was more electronic and experimental on record than live. I also bought the Redskins' "Neither Washington Nor Moscow" again largely because of a live performance (supporting the Dead Kennedys in late 1982), but by the time they released the album their musical style had shifted a lot from punk towards soul. And finally, there was Kingmaker's "Eat Yourself Whole", purchased at the late lamented Tower Records after a few pints, which I hated as soon as I heard it.

Beatles - Revolver

2010-03-04T22:48:00.006-11:00

This is the very first time I have heard "Revolver" (with the exception of a couple of a couple of obvious tracks). There is only one LP I am more ashamed not to have heard, and that is the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds".

I was too young to be into the Beatles the first time round, although a few of their songs - "All My Loving" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand", for example - give me a sort of warm glow. I first started to listen seriously to the Beatles (and the Rolling Stones) around 1977, when all the bands I liked at the time (Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin etc) were running out of steam, and punk (which I was still to loathe for another few months) was in the ascendant.

Back then "Sergeant Pepper" was the undisputed masterpiece, but opinion has shifted and there seems to be a widespread view that "Revolver" was the perfect pinnacle of the Beatles' work. That is strange, because to me it is anything but perfect, but rather imperfect and transitional. When you subtract "Eleanor Rigby", which has a sort of perfection, as if it could never be otherwise, and the awful "Here, There And Everywhere" (the token slushy love song), the thing which makes it so thrilling is the way in which it is striving for a new language (musical and verbal) but not quite succeeding - a struggle which is obvious in "Love You To" and made explicit in "I Want To Tell You" (both Harrison songs). And breaking through in "Tomorrow Never Knows".

Beethoven - Violin Concerto in D

2010-03-04T22:43:00.003-11:00

This was the very first CD I bought, in May 1989 just before going to the Bavarian Alps for the first time. So I associate it with memories of stepping out from Garmisch on a beautiful golden morning, across the meadows, heading for the Ostfelderkopf.

This really was a favourite piece of mine, but I found it less interesting this time. Unlike so much of Beethoven - eg the F major Rasumovsky quartet I am listening to a lot at the moment - there is a lot of (wonderful) material but he doesn't seem to do so much with it. Listening to the first movement, I wondered "where's the development?". Maybe I don't get on with concertos as well as I did before - too much decoration.

Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole

2010-03-04T22:36:00.004-11:00

"DYOH" was the last record I bought because it was trendy. I think I only played it once, and found it rather boring. I thought the same when I played it the first time last week, but it grew on me the second time. I had totally missed the gentler "Lost In The K-Hole" the first time before (I think young people call this sort of thing a chill-out track). And "The Private Psychedelic Reel" is glorious, it goes on and on and on in a good way (a reel both in the sense of a dance and in the sense of something cyclical). The only time it isn't so good is when the Chemicals try to involve human beings, and they tend to come off second best - Noel Gallagher in "Setting Sun" and Beth Orton in "Where Do I Begin".

Gosh, I bet the drummer needed a rest after recording this lot.

BBC6 Music - is it worth saving?

2010-03-01T03:55:00.003-11:00

As a middle-aged, alternative, indie kinda guy (and the witty sort of person who uses the expression "kinda guy" in an ironic sort of way - a kinda guy kinda guy, if you will) BBC6 Music should be right up my street, and sure enough I felt sad when I heard about its probable deletion from the schedules. But I hadn't listened to it for some time, and before rushing to the barricades I thought I ought to find out exactly what I was defending. When I did, and I actually managed to find some music (because the first two attempts yielded an interview with Sir Geoff Hurst and another rather patronising interview with an elderly woman who runs a postal museum in Bath), it was very ordinary. It may seem like heresy, but is BBC6 Music really the national treasure its supporters make it out to be?

Beethoven - String Quartet in F, op 59 (Rasumovsky) no 1

2010-02-23T23:02:00.003-11:00

When I first bought classical records I didn't listen to a piece, such as a symphony, all the way through - I would listen to each movement over and over again until I felt I knew it like the back of my hand, and only then - which could be up to a month later - would I listen to it complete. Later on, when I was listening to more music - buying CDs, going to concerts every other week or so, listening to it on the radio - I got more blase. But I can see now that that approach was wrong. I was listening to too much, too carelessly.

I heard the Rasumovsky quartets, once each, about 20 years ago (I borrowed the CDs from the library). I remember thinking they were good, but they really went over my head, because listening to the F major quartet I want to listen to it again and again. I heard it all on Monday, and yesterday I was playing the second movement (the allegretto) over and over. The amazing thing is that normally a scherzo is supposed to provide light relief, but this is incredibly rich in ideas that grow out of each other like the shoots and branches of a tree. So listening to this quartet is work in progress. I am going to keep listening this time until I have understood it.

Overall impressions - on the one hand (little as I remembered from listening to this the first time) I can see more similarity with the late quartets than I expected (I tend to think of the late quartets as completely out on a limb, and that is incorrect); on the other hand I can see a lot of influence from Haydn's quartets.

Sorry this is rather incoherent. But in the end, it is the music that does the talking.

Libertines - The Libertines

2010-02-23T01:49:00.003-11:00

There was a period from 2000 to late 2005 (which I call "the Great Silence") when I didn't listen to any music at all, so the Libertines passed me by completely. This record is terribly disappointing, and I can't quite put my finger on why, except the fact that Pete Doherty, while he may (at least for some) have been the epitome of cool, can't sing. And since my favourite band is The Fall, I hardly expect Pavarotti standards. All I can say is that "Narcissist" is nearly OK, but that doesn't nearly compensate for the grisly awfulness of "Music When The Lights Go Out". It helps a bit to realise they weren't really a punk band, more punky pop, which is why they are so unconvincing when they really punk out on "Arbeit Macht Frei" (not funny). They must have been amazing live, but not here. Very, very overrated.

PS - I see I am not alone... http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/events/overrated/shortlist.shtml

Various - Best Of Bootie 2009 (version 2)

2010-02-09T21:49:00.003-11:00

The Guardian recommended this free collection of mashups, so I listened to it, and I enjoyed it more than I was expecting, given that this sort of young people's music is not really my cup of tea. It's well worth downloading for the ear-destroying Beastie Boys/Prodigy/Pendulum track "Voodoo Sabotage" and the wonderful version of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" with a whistling tune which I gather is the theme from an old American TV programme called the Andy Griffith Show. It has its limits - for example, it is clever to weld Lady Ga Ga's "Bad Romance" together with the Human League's "Don't You Want Me" without showing a join, but what you get is less than the sum of the parts.

You could write length essays about (a) mashup as an essentially postmodern art form and (b) the legal implications but I don't have time....

http://www.bootiemashup.com/bestofbootie2009/

J S Bach - Cello Suite No 3

2010-02-04T22:56:00.003-11:00

I didn't really get on with this. I think it was because I was feeling ill and tired, and I thought that a bit of Bach would be easy to listen to. But it isn't, because you have to engage your whole mind, more so than with Romantic music where, if you don't want to do too much thinking, you can let the emotions wash over you. I may have reservations about the recording as well, but I will listen to it again soon, fully switched on.

Thelonious Monk - Genius Of Modern Music Vol 1

2010-02-04T22:49:00.002-11:00

I actually wasn't looking forward to listening to this. I don't know why but I am a bit uncomfortable about jazz, probably because I don't listen to enough. I should certainly listen to this more often (the last time was about 3 years ago) because it is wonderful. The track that really stood out for me this time was "April In Paris": the harmony inhabits a sound-world which if not the same, seems next door to the one inhabited by Berg's Piano Sonata. The other thing which I noticed, which I supposed I had noticed before but not identified, is the use of bare fifths.

"This Flight Tonight"

2010-02-02T04:03:00.002-11:00

When I was getting the car out this morning, a line of a song went through my head: "I'm drinking sweet champagne, got the headphones up high" and thought "CHAMPAGNE ISN'T SWEET, STUPID, YOU MUST BE THINKING OF LAMBRUSCO". Then I remembered that the line was from "This Flight Tonight", and that although I've heard the 1973 heavy blues version by Nazareth, I had never heard the original by Joni Mitchell. So I've just found it and played it, and it's amazing, even though I'm not really a Joni Mitchell fan (whenever I think of her I think of the LOL hilarious bit from the Isle of Wight Festival where she is telling off the rioters). So perhaps I should listen to more Joni Mitchell.

I also played the Nazareth version, and that is amazing as well, in a different sort of way.

The Fall - Cerebral Caustic

2010-02-02T00:52:00.004-11:00

It is funny how memory plays tricks. I remember when I first bought this album in 1995, I thought it was brilliant, mainly because (a) Brix had come back and (b) it was better than its predecessor, the rather lacklustre Middle Class Revolt. After a few months of intensive listening, I came to the conclusion that apart from three good tracks ("The Joke", "The Aphid" and the cover of Frank Zappa's "I'm Not Satisfied") and two bad ones ("North West Fashion Show" and "Pine Leaves") it was pretty boring. The interesting thing from this listen, over a decade later, is that the boring tracks are much more interesting, even "Pearl City", a track which I had totally forgotten. Even the much-maligned "One Day" is quite good. Though I've decided conclusively that "Bonkers In Phoenix" (a title which could equally aptly be applied to the TV series Medium) is a turkey.

Sibelius - Symphony No 7

2010-02-02T00:48:00.002-11:00

I've finally finished listening to Sibelius's symphonies. I started the cycle (if you want to be pretentious) back in the summer of 2008, just after I started this blog, and I planned to listen to one a month, but I've only just reached No 7. I enjoyed it: it isn't as if Sibelius is talking a different musical language to the other symphonies, but he manages to create a piece in one movement which is genuinely symphonic.

Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left

2010-02-01T02:18:00.004-11:00

Oh dear, I am going to sound like a total phillistine (maybe spending a week listening to No Se has destroyed my hearing, or brain, or both) but I really didn't like this. Except for "Time Has Told Me", which is a wonderful song, I found it simultaneously twee (especially the arrangements) and depressing. I'll come back to it in a few months time, perhaps, and see if I change my mind.

No Se - Rece Na Kratach

2010-02-01T02:11:00.003-11:00

I heard harcore Polish punk band No Se for the first time early last year, when I found their debut mini-LP on Jamendo . I ended up playing it over and over again during the year, and each time I played it I liked it more. So I was really pleased to find their latest collection, released just before the new year. With 11 tracks lasting 20 minutes, the best description is fast and furious. (So furious, in fact, they make Crass sound like the Wiggles.). Best tracks are "Frustrator", "Masochizm", the manic "Hymn Pracoholika" (Workaholic Hymn) and, best of all, "Wulgarny Kawa L Ek Polityczny" (Vulgar Political Piece).

Euros Childs - Son Of Euro Child

2010-02-01T02:04:00.001-11:00

Locking yourself out of your blog is as embarrassing as locking yourself out of your house. I forgot my password and got into an endless circular process with Blogger and Google which left me feeling I couldn’t be bothered. Till now.

I heard this back in November. I had been an admirer of Gorki’s Zygotic Mynci (though not uncritically), and I had been wondering what Euros Childs was up to these days, when he released his latest LP as a free download. It is brilliant (mainly – I found the instrumentals “Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke” and the various parts of “Harp” a bit boring). Childs’ surreal imagination is undiminished, often very dark beneath the apparent jollity (as in “Sitting Gently All Around” and “How Do You Do”). Even better are “My Baby Joy” (but don’t expect something joyful) and the wonderful, bittersweet one-minute love song “Mother Kitchen”.

Download at http://www.euroschilds.com/

Berg Piano Sonata op 1

2009-10-22T01:04:00.000-11:00

Two posts in one day!

Do you remember that picture where, if you look at it one way it looks like a young woman with a feather in her hat, and if you look at it another way it looks like an old woman in a headscarf. That is how I feel about Berg’s Piano Sonata. If you listen to it one way, it is ripe Romanticism; if you listen to it the other way, it’s atonal. It is interesting to compare it with Scriabin’s “Black Mass” sonata, which is undeniably Romantic, but pushing the boundaries. It doesn’t get me nearer to an answer with the Berg, but at least it shows I am not way off beam.

Old blues - a shameful confession

2009-10-22T01:02:00.000-11:00

This is a shameful confession but I can’t listen to old blues songs (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2009/04/some-pre-war-blues.html) without subconsciously imagining what they would have sounded like played by Led Zeppelin. For example, Willie Brown’s “M&O Blues” is superb, but my mind’s ear can hear John Bonham’s drums crashing in at the end of the first verse. I will persevere.

Various

2009-10-20T03:02:00.002-11:00

Yesterday I was feeling down, but a blast of "Inside Flaming Hotz" by Carioca Funk Clube cheered me up (as it always does).

I wasn't going to listen to anything walking back from the station, but I did. This is what I enjoyed:

Blurt - "Get" and "My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People"
The Clash - "Clash City Rockers"
The Fall - "Christmastide" (probably the weirdest Xmas song ever recorded)
The Congos - "Feast Of The Passover".

The Clash - The Essential Clash

2009-10-15T00:58:00.001-11:00

Round about the time when the Shea Stadium live album and the book came out last year, there seemed to be a bit of an anti-Clash backlash, and I started wondering whether The Clash were really as wonderful as they are cracked up to be, and as I remember them. Yes, they were. I'll say that louder. YES, THEY WERE.

It’s hard to analyse what was so great about them. Part of it was the feeling of unbounded confidence and (paradoxically for a band which was so anti-authoritarian) authority. That feeling started to trickle away after “London Calling”: for me, the watershed was “Bankrobber”. What were they doing? They weren’t gods any more. After that, they did some good songs, and a few remarkable ones (“Ghetto Defendant”, for example) but they just weren’t the same old Clash. That is why “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” (which was fairly unremarked at the time, as far as I remember) was so special: just one last flash of the old spirit.

Purists probably don’t like compilations like this, but it is a pretty good potted history (ending with Mick Jones’ departure, which is just as well). There isn’t any point whinging about the track selection, though, for example, “Armageddon Time” was surely important enough to merit inclusion. When I started to list (mentally) tracks which deserved to be here, and I realised that there weren’t any on “London Calling” that didn’t, it became clear to me that it was the band’s masterpiece.

I’m not going to attempt a track-by-track. Just a couple of comments. I had only heard “Clash City Rockers” a couple of times, and discarded it as lightweight. Big mistake, great song (the surreal take on “Oranges And Lemons” – “the bells of Prince Far-I???”). And, excited as I was by the original, I was wrong about their “Police And Thieves” (http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2009/02/lee-scratch-perry-and-various-arkology.html). And the best of their best – “Complete Control” and “White Man In Hammersmith Palais” – weren’t just great. Those songs had something – the nearest I can get is to call it a nobility - I can’t explain.

Back again

2009-10-15T00:45:00.002-11:00

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted here. We had an eventful summer when we moved house, a lot of stressful stuff, but as the song says, “All Right Now”. I didn’t listen to any music at all while all this was going on - I didn’t have time - and when I started again I didn’t really have the motivation to write about it. Until now.

No time to write this so instead of individual posts for each item, here’s a brief note.

Adam & the Ants - Prince Charming
I wanted to break my aural fast with something trashy. I started getting disappointed with this even though my expectations were low, but it somehow seemed to improve around what would have been side 2 of the album. “S.E.X”, though slow and relatively quiet, has the seedy allure of some of their early material.

Captain Beefeart & the Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica
My favourite LP of all time. Listening to it for the first time in 3 years, I loved it a bit less but understood it more. It’s not as musically shambolic as it seems.

Telemann - Various
I’ve never taken Telemann seriously but I loved this.

Black Sabbath - Greatest Hits
I’ve never taken Black Sabbath seriously either. I was disappointed the first time I listened to this - even though everyone laughs at Sabbath and heavy metal in general, their music is regarded as seminal rock music. So I listened to it again, and was more impressed, especially with the stuff from the first two albums. But the best track is “Sweet Leaf”.

No Se - Bez Wdzięczności (Without Thanks)
I had to listen to this again (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2009/02/no-se-bez-wdziecznosci-without-thanks.html), and thought it was even better. Really ferocious.

Mozart - Symphony No 34
This is great, but I am still trying to work out what marks out Mozart’s last 6 symphonies (No 35 onwards) from the rest.

Schubert – Piano Sonata in B flat, D960

2009-06-05T00:38:00.000-11:00

This is Schubert’s last piano sonata, and given the reputation of his late piano work I don’t know why it took so long for me to listen to it. But it hasn’t been a good time for me to listen to something like this (too much distraction and angst), so I haven’t come away with much more than the obviously banal conclusion that it is great music, and I need to listen to it again soon.
Great it is, though, because in a very stressful week it has at least made me feel human again.

I found myself wondering how I could tell that this was Schubert and not Beethoven, since they inhabit roughly similar sound worlds. My answer (banal again) is something like this. Schubert says “it is like this, but I very much wish it were different” (yearning, Sehnsucht if you want to be pretentious). Beethoven just says “it is like this”. (I wrote this, and then I remembered the “es muss sein” rubric from Beethoven’s last quartet, so I might be less wrong than I thought).

Downloads from All About Jazz

2009-06-05T00:35:00.000-11:00

The last downloads I got from AAJ were a bit disappointing, with the exception of Sam Sadigursky’s brilliant “Such Fruit” (with Becca Stevens) – see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/downloads-from-all-about-jazz-itmos.html. These are far better.

The best tracks is Bethany & Rufus’s blues/gospel “Linin’ Track” (is it my imagination, or is the bassline like the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beat”?) and Eric Astor’s effervescent guitar piece “Brooklyn” (a bit Santana-esque, I thought. Fusion usually NMCOT but this is an exception). Also good were “My Gun’s Empty” by Machinegun (free jazz, building up as the sax gets more and more agitated. Hardly unique, but still pretty interesting) and “Metamorphing” by Plunge (a bit of austere “classic” modern jazz). Bill Hartzell’s “Tainted Rose” (more fusion electric guitar) was OK, but a bit repetitive. The only track I didn’t like out of this bunch was “Redux” by Tamandua – atmospheric, brooding but rather dull. But overall, very good.

Download (free) at http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/jazzdownloads.php.

Culture Club – Colour By Numbers

2009-05-13T01:46:00.000-11:00

Since it is going to be the Eighties all over again soon, I thought I would get in the mood, courtesy of last year’s Daily Mail 80s record collection. Of course, back then, I couldn’t stand the New Romantic thing (what hardline Fall fan could?). But to my amazement/horror I found myself actually enjoying Culture Club’s music. When I started listening to this again, over a quarter of a century later, I must say it sounded rather bland, but it started growing on me again. Best tracks here, as before, are “Mister Man” and the singles “Karma Chameleon” and, especially, “Church Of The Poison Mind”. This time round I can even see what a good song “Victims” is, though let down by its cheesy arrangement.

Then as now I find Boy George’s half-teenage-boy-half-teenage-girl persona a bit perplexing, but if you listen rather than psychoanalyse, it’s worth the effort.

Sibelius – Symphony No 6

2009-05-13T01:44:00.000-11:00

Before starting to listen to this I couldn’t remember anything at all about it from the previous times I had heard it (about twice). That is unique because with all the other Sibelius symphonies I could remember something, if only (as with the Seventh) a vague recollection of pleasure. As I started to listen to the Sixth, it all started to come back. For the first few minutes, the slow intro to the first movement, I thought that this was something really good which I had totally forgotten about, which was a bit worrying. But as the work went on, this feeling subsided, and I started to remember why I had forgotten Sib 6. Except for those first few minutes, yes, this is unmistakeably Sibelius. It’s not bad Sibelius (if such a thing exists: his quality control is pretty rigorous). But there doesn’t seem to be anything extraordinary: nothing which made me sit up and think “gosh”, let alone “F***ING HELL!!!”. I’ll come back to it again, when I have time. But it didn’t fire my enthusiasm.

Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death And His Friends

2009-05-05T00:43:00.000-11:00

I haven’t always hated Clodplay. I actually quite liked some of their older stuff, especially “Yellow”. The hatred took hold when they went stellar with “X&Y” and Live8. I remember with derisive amusement the look of rage on Chris Martin’s face when someone (I think it was Jonathan Ross) reminded him that they had been denied the number one single spot by Crazy Frog. So I would have passed this by on the other side, if I hadn’t promised Ed on the 17 Seconds blog that I would listen to it if I got the chance. Ed had rated VLV way higher, in his best LPs of 2008, than The Fall’s offering, and I had expressed some doubt about this judgement, so in the interests of fairness I promised to listen to this.

Which I have now, and what a load of rubbish it is. The thing that grates most is the inflated pomposity of the lyrics. If it were not for the lyrics, the music would not seem as bad. But lyrics and music together are unspeakable, delivered with an unfounded confidence that says “We are singing songs about grown-up stuff like death AND we’ve got Eno on board with his soundscapes (whatever that means) so we are dead clever”. I suppose “Yes” is listenable, even perhaps “Strawberry Swing”. But any quality these possess deserve is outweighed by the sheer, jaw-dropping awfulness of “Cemetries Of London” (whose lyrics sound like the sort of idea Iron Maiden might have had and discarded as being too daft), the title track, and “42”, which surpasses even “Fix You”, the previous ne plus ultra of Clayplod badness (you know I am getting excited when I lapse into Latin).

Dvorak – Symphony No 8

2009-04-30T01:27:00.000-11:00

When I listened to Dvorak’s Ninth Symphony (New World) a few months ago, I didn’t get on with it at all (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/dvorak-symphony-no-9-from-new-world-or.html). Part of the problem was that it sounded very shouty. The Eighth is not without its shouty bits, but I loved it, more light and shade, especially in the second and third movements.

Worth mentioning also is the performance, a free download by the Peabody Concert Orchestra, from the conservatoire at John Hopkins University (go to http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/pcorecordings, 2001/02 season). A lot of free classical downloads I’ve listened to have frankly been rather mediocre, but this performance is really good. (Why the tuning up at the start of the third movement?)

Miles Davis – Birth Of The Cool

2009-04-28T00:41:00.000-11:00

I enjoyed this a lot, especially the opening track “Move”. But I prefer my jazz a bit less relaxed, a bit less cool. I wondered if this was a bit unfair, but after listening to a few minutes of Charlie Parker I was right.

Some pre-war blues

2009-04-28T00:39:00.000-11:00

I read about the Pre-War Blues blog, aka “Honey Where You Been So Long”, http://prewarblues.org/ a long time ago, but only just got around to downloading a few tracks at random. I am never going to be a hardcore blues fanatic, and this is the first time I have heard any really old, acoustic blues, but the tracks by Kid Bailey (“Mississippi Bottom” and “Rowdy Blues”) are great, and Willie Brown’s “M&O Blues” thrilling in its austerity. By accident (it was posted instead of another track by Brown) there is an amazing song “Make Me Know It” by Evelyn Preer, better known as a film actress. Less sure of Blind Will Dukes’ “Dead Shrimp Blues”, apparently recorded in the 1970s, sounds a bit contrived.

Haydn – Piano Sonatas

2009-04-28T00:34:00.000-11:00

Haydn - Piano Sonatas Nos 48-52, Hob XVI: 35-39
Due to pressures elsewhere these are getting more like tweets than proper blog entries but ploughing on regardless. I expected these pieces to be vaguely pleasant, but they were amazing. There is a depth of expressiveness here, almost Romantic, which I have never noticed in Haydn before. There seem to be three Haydns – the sensitive Haydn who wrote these sonatas, the urbane Haydn who wrote the string quartets, and the clodhopping moron who wrote the symphonies (as to which see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/12/haydn-symphonies-nos-100-military-and.html).

Killing Joke - Killing Joke

2009-04-06T00:18:00.000-11:00

Despite the ostensible nastiness of punk and post-punk acts, there were only three bands I found genuinely unsettling. Those were the Stranglers, the Birthday Party - and Jaz Coleman (who, I recently discovered, was later described as "the new Mahler" by conductor Klaus Tennstedt) and his unmerry men. Listening to this nearly 30 years after it was first released, I found it rather disappointing. Worse, bits of it made me laugh, for example the distorted vocals on "Wardance", which sound like a baddie out of "Doctor Who". It's not all bad - "Requiem" is a genuine classic, and "The Wait" is quite good - but it's nowhere near as good as it is cracked up to be. Most revealing, perhaps, is "Primitive" - wonderful, crunching, syncopated bass, then a majestic guitar riff, then - rubbish vocals and lyrics. Maybe I just don't scare as easily these days. It's a shame that the reissue didn't include "Psyche": that really was terrifying.

REM – Accelerate

2009-04-06T00:07:00.002-11:00

REM have been my second favourite band for 20 years now (favourite being The Fall). I had lost touch with them after 2000, so that until now the most recent record of theirs I had heard was “Up” from 1998. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed – I sort of assumed that having been at the top for so long they would have lost their edge – but this is a damn fine album. Not quite in the same league as “New Adventures In Hi-Fi”, which is probably unsurpassable anyway, but still excellent. If it takes eight years of George W Bush to produce songs of the quality of “Living Well Is The Best Revenge”, then (sorry Barack) roll on President Palin.

Sibelius – Symphony No 5

2009-04-06T00:06:00.000-11:00

This (or another recording of this, to be accurate) was one of the first classical records I had. It’s hard to listen objectively to something as well-loved as this, and in fact I found the first and third movements a bit disappointing. The slow second movement was the one I appreciated most – not just pretty, there are some moments of absolute peace that feel almost Mahlerian.

Joy Division – Closer

2009-03-20T01:41:00.000-11:00

This record must have been in my top 10 of Albums I Am Ashamed I Have Never Heard (top 3 being “Pet Sounds”, “Revolver” and “Blonde On Blonde”). Monumental in every sense of the word, it really was Joy Division’s masterpiece (was ever a band less aptly named?). Musically most of it leaves me open-mouthed in admiration –“24 Hours” and “Decades” are, for me, their finest songs, far better than - “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, but emotionally it leaves me strangely cold.

J S Bach – Flute Sonata in E minor, BWV1034

2009-03-20T01:40:00.000-11:00

I enjoyed this. I was going to just play it once, but I ended up playing it over and over again. Not as jolly as a lot of flute music tends to be, rather on the solemn and austere side, but none the worse for that.

Ruth Theodore – Worm Food

2009-03-20T01:37:00.000-11:00

I wrote a very short but enthusiastic post on this LP (free download on Jamendo) when I first heard it last summer – see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/ruth-theodore-worm-food.html (I think Theodore used to be based in Hampshire but now lives in London). Due to multiple misfortune in the Terrapin household – I won’t go into details – I haven’t had time or opportunity to download anything new, so I listened to this again. I had psyched myself up to be disappointed – some things aren’t as good the second time you listen to them - but I still think it is very, very good. If I described it as English folk (with bluesy influences and the odd burst of jazz) it would be too much like pigeon-holing it, so I won’t. Great songs, with bitter, witty lyrics, great singing, great guitar. The only tracks I don’t get on with are “Overexpanding” (a bit smug, IMHO) and “Home” (maudlin). I was intrigued by the strange, raucous live singalong at the end of “Threat” (seemed to be called “Controlled Demolition”). Best though are the incandescent “Rash”, also “Grounded”, “Murray’s Wives” and “3 Floors”.

Brahms – Piano Quartet in C minor, op 60

2009-03-04T01:31:00.000-11:00

The trouble with Brahms or, more accurately, the trouble with me when it comes to Brahms, is that I have never yet been able to listen to him as Brahms, as opposed to as a composer who sounds a bit like Beethoven.

The first time I listened to this, I just wanted to get it over with and listen to something else. I just registered it as an agreeable German Romantic piece, and that was that. But when I got to the final movement I found myself enjoying it more and more, and I had to listen to it again. So I did, and I really liked it. But here’s the thing (as Adrian Monk says). I still don’t think I like it purely as Brahms, I like it because bits of it sound (to me) like Beethoven and Schubert, albeit good Beethoven and Schubert. So I need to make more progress before I really manage to hear Brahms as Brahms.

But perhaps if Brahms really, really wanted to be heard on his own terms he shouldn’t have done things like the (apparently) obvious reference in the final movement to the rhythm in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

The Specials and the Battle of Midsummer Common (too much fighting on the dance floor!)

2009-02-27T02:14:00.001-11:00

This interview with the reforming Specials was very interesting for a number of reasons, apart from the fact of the band’s (at least partial) reunion. I really liked the Specials, although they weren’t one of my very favourite bands. I think that was because of the rather whiny, preachy nature of some of their songs, such as “Racist Friend”, “Rat Race” and probably everything they released after the Fun Boy Three departed. But I suppose a bit of preachiness was hardly surprising given that Jerry Dammers’ father was a senior canon at Coventry Cathedral.

It was interesting (and a bit alarming) to see how much Terry Hall had aged. It was also interesting to see John Bradbury get a bit of publicity, given his virtual invisibility during the Specials’ existence. But most interesting of all was the mention of the chaotic concert in Cambridge in 1981 which resulted in Hall and Dammers being convicted of public order offences (though not incitement to riot as the article claims ), and possibly inspired the “too much fighting on the dance floor” line in their (much overrated) song “Ghost Town”. And I was there.

Unusually, the concert took place in a marquee on Midsummer Common. Most major gigs in Cambridge happened at the Corn Exchange, squalid, uncomfortable, perfect venue for punk. (I’ve just looked at their website – it’s still there and it’s got SEATS!!!). Fights happened but it was nowhere near as dangerous as student folklore suggested. I think for a while in late 1980 and early 1981 there weren’t any gigs going on there, something weird to do with the noise disturbing experiments going on in the university labs next door.

Anyway, too much digression. The odd thing is, I can’t remember much about the event itself. I think we had a few pints beforehand in the Salisbury Arms (now back in the Good Beer Guide, but I’m not going to digress again), whereas I didn’t usually drink before gigs. Perhaps that is why I wasn’t more afraid. I don’t think we even had tickets: we were going to buy them on the door but by the time we got there (I think the Specials were already on stage) things were already so tasty that there wasn’t anyone there to take money. I don’t remember if the music was good or not, it just got interrupted a lot. The incident that got Hall and Dammers into trouble was (as the song says) a little bit frightening but the thing that stood out in my mind was the ridiculous cap Jerry Dammers was wearing. The only songs from their set I actually remember were particularly angry renditions of “Pearl’s Café” and “Do The Dog”, and the whole thing ending up with a manic “Skinhead Moonstomp” with uninvited skinheads dancing on the stage.

Interesting experience? Yes. History in the making? Not really.

An old Craig Finn podcast (and a digression on positive hardcore and posi-punk)

2009-02-19T01:45:00.000-11:00

A few months ago, when their last album was coming out, there was an interesting article about The Hold Steady in the paper and I thought I had to hear what they sounded like. So I headed for their website and downloaded this twenty-minute podcast by singer Craig Finn, recorded in 2006. It was a disappointment in that it contained absolutely nothing by THS, but what was there more than made up for it – five classic American punk tracks from the late Eighties / early Nineties. I was going to delete it but then I read Finn’s article about American hardcore in the Guardian the other day (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/feb/13/us-punk-rock-hold-steady) and I had to listen to it again.

Replacements – “I Will Dare”
Bad Brains – “Right Brigade”
Soul Asylum – “Sometime To Return”
Gorilla Biscuits – “Start Today”
Descendants – “Sour Grapes”.

The song by the Replacements is especially worth a mention. All of this podcast is great but there is something about it that makes me feel a bit sad. This is young people’s music. And I am getting old.

Unfortunately, the podcast disappeared from The Hold Steady’s site a few weeks later so I can’t do a link, and I don’t normally post music here because it is more hassle than it’s worth. But if anyone really, really really wants to hear it let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

To digress briefly, I was intrigued by Craig Finn referring to the Gorilla Biscuits as “positive hardcore”. About 20 years ago I was puzzled by a reference in Marc Riley's song “Snipe”, to something called “posi-punk”. I had assumed I had misheard it but I wondered if it meant the same as Finn’s positive hardcore. It turns out that they are entirely separate sub-genres of punk, posi-punk being an early name (coined by the NME, which explains why I never heard it, being a Sounds person back then) for what became known as Goth (Goth music? positive?!?). What interests me about this is the fact that punk, for all its apparent emphasis on freedom and spontaneity, attracts such trainspotterish distinctions.

Silos Abbey – Canto Gregoriano (Gregorian Chant)

2009-02-17T01:41:00.000-11:00

I’ve got to be brief. I’m sorry, but this (a big hit during the last plainsong craze in the 1990s – they happen about once every decade) didn’t do much for me. It is very serene – more serenity than you can shake a stick at – but there just doesn’t seem to be very much happening. It’s not the monks’ fault - I suppose we are so used to polyphony that anything else comes as a shock.

No Se - Bez Wdzięczności (Without Thanks)

2009-02-10T01:49:00.000-11:00

I chose this album on Jamendo, released in 2002 by Polish punk band No Se (from Bytow, west of Gdansk - I think this was their first) more or less at random and I was not expecting much from it, but it is very good. Hardcore sound, sometimes (at – relatively - slower speeds) with heavy metal influences.

The standout tracks are “Noc Sylwestrowa 98” (New Year’s Eve 98) and, best of all, the furious rap-style “Przemoc” (Violence). The only track which is not quite as convincing is the slower, longer “Koniec” (End). But overall, powerful stuff.

Download at http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/no.se.punk.

Lee “Scratch” Perry and various – Arkology

2009-02-05T01:44:00.000-11:00

I feel I ought to know this music inside out, but I am only vaguely familiar with it. I tended to tune out a bit mentally when John Peel played dub, not because I didn’t like it, but because listening to it didn’t seem to take much effort, and by extension I got the impression that creating it didn’t take much effort either. I now see that that is totally wrong, and I can see, at least sometimes, the great subtlety of a lot of these pieces. This is wonderful music – the peak probably being Junior Murvin’s “Police And Thieves”, whose almost sublime beauty makes The Clash’s cover (much as I revere them and much as they obviously revered the original) sound clunky and loutish.

I must confess my attention started to wander during disks 2 and 3 (apart from “Police And Thieves” and “Roots Train” (Junior Murvin again, with Dillinger)), but it came back in a big way for the last two tracks, the Congos’ blissful “Feast Of The Passover” and Perry’s “Roast Fish And Cornbread” (weird weird weird but wonderful wonderful wonderful).

Listening to dub for three weeks on end, if only at a rate of 15 minutes or so a day (this is a 3-disk set), with a Friday afternoon off, is a bit much, though, a bit like (I imagine) smoking a Camberwell Carrot, or (I recall) eating a whole Sainsburys family size Black Forest gateau alone on a Sunday afternoon. I am going to give it a rest now.

Sibelius - Symphony No 4

2009-01-13T03:39:00.001-11:00

I am working through Sibelius's symphonies at a rate of about one a month (though I'm a bit behind) and this is the halfway point of the cycle. I had forgotten how good the Fourth was, with the exception of the bleak beauty of opening of the first movement. I really enjoyed it all (or did I? It's too gloomy a work to talk about enjoying, exactly). Things I had forgotten or hadn't noticed before: the similarity between the start of the scherzo (the 2nd movement) and the final movement of the Third Symphony. The abrupt and anticlimatic way the whole thing ends (the 2nd movement too). A lot of it is amazingly dissonant, for Sibelius.

Slang Tang, Episode 7 (Dec 2008)

2009-01-09T01:42:00.001-11:00

I must say that when I started to listen to this, I was thinking that with a head full of New Year angst, a load of repetitive electronic robot music was the last thing I wanted to hear. Fortunately that feeling evaporated quickly. Most of this is really good and (with the odd exception) not in the least robotic. Best tracks were “Nqayi” by Maga Bo and Teba. Also “5x8 Cell” by Mutamassik – I had heard and enjoyed the two tracks from the “That Which Death Cannot Destroy” album which were posted on Slang Tang’s sister site Fat Planet last year, but this is even better (more irregular beat, more interesting ambience). The track by Digitaldubs & Tippa Irie was also good.

The last three tracks, by Kid606, Kampion and Lackluster, were a bit less interesting. I’d say the Lackluster sounded a bit like Jean-Michel Jarre, but that is probably a mortal insult in electronic circles, so I won’t. At least there wasn't any of that damned skweee this time.

Download and info at http://www.slangtang.com/.

It wasn’t featured in this podcast, but I can’t help mentioning that just before Xmas I had another listen to “El Ventana Esta Abierte” by El Hijo de la Cumbia, from Argentina (see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/el-hijo-de-la-cumbia-el-ventana-esta.html). Awesome.

The best singles of 1978

2008-12-24T00:41:00.003-11:00

Everyone is posting their lists of the best LPs/albums/whatever and singles of 2008. I'm going to do something different. The other day http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/12/magazine-give-me-everything.html I said I had rated Magazine's "Give Me Everything" the best single of 1978 at the time. To my enormous surprise (I consistently rate a brain age in the mid-seventies on Nintendo Brain Training) I managed to dredge up the whole Top 10 from the corners of my addled mind and here it is.

1. Magazine - "Give Me Everything"
2. The Clash - "White Man In Hammersmith Palais"
3. Sham 69 - "If The Kids Are United"
4. The Clash - "Tommy Gun"
5. Ian Dury & the Blockheads - "What A Waste"
6. Gang Of Four - Damaged Goods EP
7. The Cure - "Killing An Arab"
8. Magazine - "Shot By Both Sides"
9. Rezillos - "Destination Venus"
10. Flying Lizards - "Summertime Blues".

I'm not saying that I would choose them now as the best singles of 1978 (the Flying Lizards single is an especially embarrassing choice) but it's interesting. Conspicuous by their absence are The Fall, whom I discovered the following year. Also Siouxsie & the Banshees - I thought "Hong Kong Garden" was rubbish, but their album "The Scream" was the best of the year.

Happy Xmas and New Year everyone!

Love – Forever Changes

2008-12-22T06:25:00.000-11:00

In the summer of 1967 we planned to go to Llandudno on holiday, but my brother got rubella (which everyone called German measles back then), and instead we spent a week at Westward Ho!, which, though not as exciting as north Wales, I really enjoyed. In the same summer, Arthur Lee’s band Love recorded this wonderful, wonderful album.

I heard this for the first time last year, and loved it. I thought that on coming back to it I might be disappointed, but I’m not. It’s as wonderful as ever. So I played it a second and third time. I said I loved “Forever Changes” the first time. Actually, when I heard the opening track, “Alone Again Or”, I hated it – I remember thinking “This sounds like CAT BLOODY STEVENS” and I nearly didn’t listen to any more. I’m glad I did.

The songs which stand out for me are still “The Red Telephone” (harrowing and beautiful: I still haven’t got completely to the bottom of the lyrics, beyond that it is sort of about madness in a mad world) and “You Set The Scene”. But also “Andmoreagain”, which deserves a place on the pantheon of Great Neurotic Love Songs, (alongside the likes of Talking Heads’ “The Book I Read” and, of course, Syd Barrett’s “Terrapin”). As does the aforesaid “Alone Again Or”. And the audaciously cheesy arrangements, which somehow add another dimension to the music.

None of the tracks could be called weak: the least strong are the unconvincingly callous-sounding “Bummer In The Summer” (though it is growing on me), and “Maybe The People (etc)” (I do NOT pander on this blog to unnecessarily long song titles – come and haunt me if you don’t like it, Mr Lee), which is sorely in need of a middle eight.

But the songs that fascinate me the most were the ones that defy gravity. “The Good Humor Man (etc)” should have collapsed under the weight of its own tweeness even before it acquired the pizzicato strings, but somehow it doesn’t. And “The Old Man”, which should simply be too weird to work, but isn’t.

Magazine – “Give Me Everything”

2008-12-22T06:23:00.000-11:00

I was interested to read the reports of Magazine’s reunion: it’s just a shame that John McGeoch didn’t live to be there. I really liked Magazine, although I never actually get around to buying any of their albums. The song I remember most is not “Shot By Both Sides”, but “Give Me Everything”, which I remember voting the best single of 1978. I thought I must have been mistaken thinking it was even better than (for example) The Clash’s “White Man In Hammersmith Palais”, so I listened to it on Last FM. No mistake – this is an absolutely awesome song.

Schönberg – Five Pieces for Orchestra, op 16

2008-12-17T02:19:00.000-11:00

The first time I have heard this, it’s brilliant. Schoenberg isn’t atonal yet, but as with the Berg piano sonata you can discern the (to use the modish expression) direction of travel. Here the tonal uncertainty is used to express extreme and often violent emotions. Reminds me of bits of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

You lose the quiet bits travelling on the bus, though. Still well worthwhile. Highly recommended (unless you want something restful).

Oliver Postgate: nice man but his work is overrated, shock horror (children’s television)

2008-12-11T06:05:00.000-11:00

Straying off the usual topics. I’m sorry to hear about the death of Oliver Postgate, especially because he always seemed such a nice person. I ought to be able to join the chorus of people saying how wonderful his and Peter Firmin’s programmes were, but to tell the truth I was never particularly keen on Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Pogle’s Wood or the Clangers (I was a bit too old by the time Bagpuss came out).

I think the feeling I got from all of these was that somehow there was a grown-up talking down to me in an ironic, quizzical way, and I didn’t like it. I much preferred Camberwick Green / Trumpton / Chigley. (I switched on the radio a few months ago and heard someone talking about the “genius of Cant”, and thought he was talking about the great Brian, until I realised that he was talking about Kant.).

Most of the discussion of Postgate’s merits assumes the conventional wisdom that all children television nowadays is “dumbed down”. That’s rubbish (IMHO). For example, the surreal, slightly unsettling beauty of “In the Night Garden” is miles better than anything Smallfilms ever produced. Agreeable and intelligent though their programmes may have been, they never invented, for example, any character as complexly weird as Makka-Pakka.

Tom Robinson Introducing (08.12.08 edition)

2008-12-11T01:37:00.001-11:00

BBC 6 Radio podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/trintro/.

This is actually the first time I’ve listened to TRI since starting this blog and, looking back, the last time I heard it was back in May, when it featured the brilliant neo-progressive Future Kings of England (see http://www.myspace.com/thefuturekingsofengland).

This time there isn’t anything quite as special, although 7 Dollar Taxi and their muscular guitar-based Britpoppish rock are worth a mention. I thought their singer’s mockney accent sounded a bit dodgy, before we were informed that the band were (at least originally) from Switzerland. But if they are working on their second album do they actually belong on TRI? Also good were the guitar atmospherics of Two Skies (yet another band from Sheffield).

Worth mentioning for sheer awfulness was the grand guignol of Fireworks Night.

Charlie Parker – The Ultimate Charlie Parker

2008-12-08T01:39:00.001-11:00

Charlie Parker’s “One Night At Birdland” was the first jazz record I ever bought (I’ve still only got 4*). I think I only played it once or twice because I thought the sound quality was so bad (yes, stupid, I know). I thought recently that I should listen again to Parker because I’ve neglected him badly. I thought I was going to have a big epiphany experience and love this but it has been a bit more complicated. I found I wasn’t really warming to the music as much as I could, or should, do. Part of the problem is the apparent effortlessness of the playing. It is easy to let it go completely over my head. It’s almost like someone talking naturally. Once I listen more carefully, mindfully, I find myself thinking what amazing playing this is. But I still haven’t felt connected to it, in the way I felt connected to Thelonious Monk the first time I heard him. But I am starting to “get” it – especially “After You’ve Gone”, “Oh Lady Be Good” and “I Got Rhythm”.

Maybe the reason why I’m not more wild about this is that I just don’t listen to enough jazz – plus having flu doesn’t help (the second time this winter and it isn’t even bloody Christmas yet). I’m also not sure if this is the perfect collection. It seems rather biased towards Parker’s work with bigger bands and strings, which I hadn’t heard before, and is interesting but somehow to me isn’t the “real” Bird.

* the other 3 being Monk’s “Genius of Modern Music Volume 1”, Miles Davis’s “Birth Of The Cool” and John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme”.

Haydn – Symphonies Nos 100 (Military) and 94 (Surprise)

2008-12-03T02:23:00.000-11:00

After enjoying Haydn’s quartets a few weeks ago (http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/08/haydn-string-quartets.html) I wanted to go back to his symphonies. When I had listened to them before they had made very little positive impression. Maybe it was because of Haydn’s accustomed place on orchestral concert programmes as a hors d’oeuvre rather than a main course. (Then again, the same applies to chamber music.) This time (I promised myself) it would be different.

Only it wasn’t. I am still underwhelmed. The one positive thing I got was realising how beautiful Haydn’s woodwind scoring is. But the brass and percussion, when used full-on, is so heavy handed, as in the slow movement of No 100, or the (in)famous “surprise” in No 94. I thought about listening to this again, in case I changed my mind, but I just couldn’t be bothered.

I hope I come back to these Haydn symphonies (or perhaps others) in a few months’ time and eat my words.

The Fall – Imperial Wax Solvent

2008-11-25T01:31:00.000-11:00

When I said a couple of weeks ago that The Fall were still going strong – http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/11/fall-50000-fall-fans-cant-be-wrong-part.html – I have to admit I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I listened to this with some trepidation, but not only is it true, I was astonished, gobsmacked, whatever at how good this is. With the possible exception of 1993’s “The Infotainment Scan”, it’s the most consistently good Fall album I’ve heard (though I have to admit that I’ve lost touch with them over the last decade or so) since “This Nation’s Saving Grace”, some 23 years ago.

It kicks off relatively quietly, with the subtly surreal “Alton Towers”, so the howl and guitar riff that introduce “Wolf Kidult Man” come as a shock. The benchmark for Fall classics in recent years is “Theme From Sparta FC”. This definitely passes the test. My heart sank at the thought of the next track, which is over 11 minutes long (must be the longest they have ever recorded). I assumed that it was going to be boring, unfocused and rambling, and would have been happy to bank my winnings. Totally wrong. “50 Year Old Man”, which is a celebration of Mark E Smith’s half century, is wonderful, taking off at tangents several times, including a slow bit with banjos. (Have there ever been banjos on a Fall record before? There have now...) MES shouts “Fade out! Fade out!” over the fade-out, but fading out seems to be the last thing on his mind.

The rest is brilliant. You wait for the duff stuff, but it doesn’t arrive. Even tracks like “I’ve Been Duped” (with Eleni Poulou/Smith singing – can you imagine the scene in the Smith household – “Darling, I’ve written a song especially for you to sing”?), and synth near-instrumental “Taurig” (sic), which shouldn’t work, do. Especially good is the ominous “Tommy Shooter”, whose lyrics – “See, the clouds are darkening with wings of chickens, they’re coming home to roost” manage to be simultaneously sinister and hilarious.

Skewed and life-enhancing. A great and totally unexpected piece of work.

Johnny Cash – Ring Of Fire: The Legend

2008-11-19T22:26:00.000-11:00

I’ve never been into country music. I haven’t heard enough of it to form an active dislike: I’ve just never really gone near it, mainly because to an outsider – ie an English city dweller - a lot of it seems sentimental and conservative. But a couple of weeks ago I was in a record shop and I heard Johnny Cash’s “San Quentin”, recorded live at the prison, and I had to hear more.

This collection, released a few years ago around the time of the biopic “I Walk the Line”, crams the whole of Cash’s recording career, from the mid-Fifties to his death in 2003, into a single CD. It’s a heroic endeavour (at least four times as heroic as trying to fit 25 years of The Fall onto two disks) and as a basic introduction to Johnny Cash it succeeds enormously.

The hardest thing about listening to Cash’s music, at least the earlier material, is that it is deceptively easy. That is, it doesn’t seem difficult (which is why country music is – fairly or unfairly – bracketed with “easy listening” in the UK. So it’s easy to underestimate the depth of songs like “I Walk The Line”, which isn’t (as it first seems) just a about a bloke saying he is going to behave himself, but about the redemptive power of love.

The zenith of this collection is the amazing “San Quentin”. It has to be listened to rather than described, so I’m not going to try.

Some of the stuff that follows is a bit disappointing: the mawkish “Man In Black” verges on self-parody, and “The Highwayman” (with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson – Cash draws the short straw and gets the daft verse about the spaceman) is a mistake. After that I wasn’t expecting the dark late songs to be very good, but they were, especially the covers of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”.

If any country fans out there have got any suggestions for further listening I’ll be glad to consider them. Meanwhile, I’ll be buying or borrowing copies of the San Quentin and Folsom concert albums. Or stealing them...

Sibelius – Symphony No 3

2008-11-13T01:39:00.000-11:00

First, apologies for the longwindedness of the posts on the Fall compilation. Now, Sibelius.

I’ve never really got on with the Third. It’s not that I actively disliked it – if I had, I might have made an effort to understand it – but more that I didn’t take it seriously. So I don’t think I’ve listened to it more than two or three times before. In fact I don’t think I had heard this version – part of the set I bought about 15 years ago – ever before.

Something odd happened this time because halfway through I caught myself not taking it seriously again, so I decided to listen to it a second time. Now I understand this piece much better and rate it a bit (though not much) more highly.

The busyness of the first movement makes a strong impression, especially if you are experiencing it as a dose of bright C major sunlight on a dark grey November morning in gloomy London. But whereas my impression of the opening movement of the Second is of economy and efficiency - see http://terrapinlistens2.blogspot.com/2008/09/sibelius-symphony-no-2.html – here, it is the opposite. There is a wealth of material in the exposition, but I’m a bit disappointed that Sibelius doesn’t do much more with it. Again, I thought on first listening that I had been wrong to bracket the second movement with other Sibelius slow movements which just seem to be there to be pretty. But the second time round I wasn’t so sure.

I love the third (and final) movement now, however, especially the way the chorale theme comes out of nowhere like a ship out of a mist, and sweeps on and on, delaying its resolution until the very end.

I like this work more than I did. But equally important, I respect it now