July 29, 2011

The Devil's Wind Chime

This is, perhaps, getting a little tedious. Or at least would be if there were anyone left here to be bored by it. Other than me -- and I'm immune. Anyway, it's another instrumental -- so much less effort, those, since I don't have to waste time striving in vain to disguise the hideousness of my voice.

The track name is a cheap gag based largely on a complete memory failure. Having probably not heard TB properly for decades, it had melded in my mind with other over-earnest tinkly 70s synth nonsense to become, basically, just a horror movie soundtrack. Churning out my own little satanic possession parody last night -- a couple of hours plus iTunes tag fiddling, honestly GarageBand remains fucking amazing -- drove me to listen again in full today. And all I can say is: God bless the generosity of forgetfulness. I had managed to repress completely just how much of Oldfield's magnum opus is gobsmackingly awful prog drivel. Can there be anyone who still seriously listens to this guff today? Christ, where are Emerson, Lake and Palmer when you need them?

Fuck it, I'm off to iTunes to buy a bunch of Yes and Hawkwind and Peter Gabriel dressed as a flower. And where's my copy of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds?

Tomorrow: social occasion of the year and another sad farewell. I'm rapidly running out of friends around here.

Tonight: those Wales photos won't edit themselves.

Yes, I know, I should be writing R code to calculate dwell time distributions. No, I'm not doing that. What can I say? I'm a bad person.

Posted by matt at 10:49 PM | Comments (2)

July 17, 2011

Duelling Supermarkets

Yet more tracks. Tough Guy is sort of a comic monologue, although probably not actually funny to anyone other than me. Where There is Pressure, on the other hand, is a little fingerpicky faux-folk instrumental. Rank self-indulgence, as usual, but it's keeping me entertained at least.

The latter title is a nod to Hofesh Shecter's Political Mother, which I finally caught up with on Thursday night, a year late -- had tickets last year, but was called away. I liked it a lot, it was big, loud and exciting, if perhaps a bit one-note. Those few occasions when it did shift into a slower more reflective mode were quite a relief. Was tempted to see it again yesterday with the all-too-briefly-visiting Davide, but in the end we just had a few drinks and dinner at The Eagle.

Work proceeding OK. I'm hoping to be pretty much done with chapter 6 by the end of the coming week. Very slightly worried that my incredibly tenuous data may be seized upon by over-optimistic supervisors as demonstrating something other than unmitigated uselessness. That would be tiresome.

Posted by matt at 4:12 PM | Comments (0)