In rehearsal, 2009 There we were, round at a mate's house listening to his excellent hi-fi, when he selected a track from his extensive collection and announced the artist as Talvin Singh, OBE. (That's Order of the British Empire for those of you outside the UK.) Embarrassingly, I had to admit that I had never…Read more Talvin Singh
Marscape
Marscape is, effectively, a prequel to the early Brand X albums. It's the Robin Lumley and Jack Lancaster input to Unorthodox Behaviour and Moroccan Roll. If you pay attention, you can hear all four permanent members of the 1970s line-up of Brand X in this Marscape; some of the tunes were carried over to the…Read more Marscape
Avalanche
It doesn't take much to trigger an avalanche. Sometimes a fresh fall of snow or the warmth of the rising sun on a mountain slope is enough. In this case, though, it was just a brief entry on a social media feed - barely more than a link to this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASjn1Z83g9c Aimee Mann…Read more Avalanche
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
When the Crotchety Kid picked up a bass guitar at the beginning of the seventies, he was completely ignorant of harmonic structure. As a first step to composing bass lines, he bought and read a book in the Teach Yourself series. Those books had distinctive yellow and blue covers, which served as a stamp of…Read more Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Grandbrothers
The grand piano usually leads a solitary life. It rarely teams up with other instruments, especially electronic ones. So, the intimate connection between Erol Sarp's grand and Lukas Vogel's electric hammers and dampers may be unique. Together, Sarp and Vogel are Grandbrothers. Sarp is a classically-trained jazz pianist; Vogel is an electronics engineer who builds…Read more Grandbrothers
Altitude
The Airbus Perlan II glider in flight. On 2nd September 2018 the Airbus Perlan II glider claimed a record for "the highest sustained flight by a winged, manned, subsonic aircraft", recording an altitude of 76,000 ft (approximately 23 km) soaring over Argentina on the high stratospheric winds pushed upwards by the Andes mountain range. Another…Read more Altitude
Nothing Left to Say
I'm a firm believer in the adage, "If you have nothing to say, say nothing". And, when I started this blog post, I had nothing to say about Imagine Dragons. So it came as a bit of a shock to discover that they were phenomenally successful in the 2010s, especially in the U.S. They had…Read more Nothing Left to Say
Unremembered
It seems to me that 'unremembered' is not quite the same as 'forgotten'. A forgotten memory is lost forever; unremembered events remain in the locked mental storage cupboard, waiting to be rediscovered when mistress Serendipity stumbles upon the key again. In 2011, the vocal ensemble, Roomful of Teeth, commissioned the American composer, Sarah Kirkland Snider,…Read more Unremembered
Pymlico
A house in Pimlico, London Today, Crotchety Man has followed the sign at the Burning Shed, and headed in the direction of Pymlico. We have agreed to meet there on 20th May to celebrate the release of that band's seventh album, Supermassive. In the meantime, I have been mugging up on both the Pymlico band…Read more Pymlico
Sympatheia
For the next two weeks or so, Calum Graham, acoustic guitarist extraordinaire, is running a crowdfunding campaign for his next album. He has appeared in these pages twice before (Waiting, Billie Jean) and on both occasions I have marvelled at his work. CG's last album, Thread of Creation (2019), was self-released and doesn't appear on…Read more Sympatheia
Crotchety Man 