music | Wait until next year

February 22, 2012

Christopher Reimer RIP

Really sad news coming through this morning that Christopher Reimer, the guitarist in the band Women, has died. Thoughts obviously with family/friends at this time. Women are/were one of the few truly exciting bands to emerge in the past few years, a band not afraid to be abrasive, uncompromising and to have a little mystique around them. They could be challenging, but were nearly always rewarding if you put in the effort. Their last album was sequenced in a way that took more than a little work – some pretty difficult songs upfront, then the most accessible song kept right until the end. Reimer’s guitarwork was integral to the sound, weaving nagging melodies, adding strange textures. A very sad loss.

February 20, 2012

You aren’t what you eat

Amongst all the goodness in the first issue of the New Inquiry magazine, one article in particular stood out – The Resentment Machine, by Freddy De Boer. It is available in full in that link back there, so you should probably read that rather than this, but anyway, it challenged me in all number of ways (I should probably offer some sort of summary here, but even after multiple readings I won’t do it justice and you’d be better off just reading the real thing, or failing that reading what follows in the next paragraph…), but one quote near the end particularly got to me. Read the rest of this entry »

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February 14, 2012

Gone Tomorrow

I love Lambchop and I love pro wrestling. Put the two together and I’m a very happy bunny. The new Lambchop album is wonderful. I’m thinking it might be one of their best, if not their best, but will perhaps calm myself down a little before writing on it. Plus, I have tickets to see them in a few weeks, so it seems to make sense to write something after that. I’m sure I have an awesome pro wrestling post lurking somewhere in my sub-conscious too. But more than likely I’ll just make these promises of awesome post-age only to fail miserably at delivering them. You know the routine. Anyway, enjoy the video. I am Mr Curator rather than Mr Writer today.

February 10, 2012

The Jazz Scene

After a bit of a surge in visitors to the site in the past couple of days I figured I’d scare them off with my real speciality, the filler post. Ah, but what filler today. I thought I’d highlight this collection of photos from William P. Gottlieb, taken in the 1930s and 40s, documenting the great and the good of the jazz world. There appears to be approximately one billion photos in the set, and they are all now in the public domain, so lazy bloggers such as me can use them to embellish their sites and write puff pieces like this. Read the rest of this entry »

February 1, 2012

First impressions of ‘Hospitality’

What does it take to create a great indie album in 2012? Can it even be done? Indie rock, pretty much however you define it, has always been a derivative art form, influenced equally by sixties pop/rock and punk with a sprinkling of other more esoteric sounds. And it has always influenced itself, but more and more so in recent years, bands influenced by bands influenced by bands. There is always the risk and the reality of the law of diminishing returns. A xerox of a xerox etc. Read the rest of this entry »

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