Roses bloom, algae may bloom, and musicians bloom sometimes, too. Yazz Ahmed, trumpeter and flügelhorn player, has been blooming since 2011, when she released her debut album, Finding My Way Home. This Track of the Week is from her second album release, La Saboteuse (2017). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHDayLZdPIY The general style of Yazz Ahmed's work is ambient…Read more Bloom
2010s
Bite the Bullet
To adjust to unpleasant circumstances. e.g. "The severe drought is forcing everybody to bite the bullet and use less water." dictionary.com A few days ago, a drought was declared in half of England. Crotchety County falls within the drought area and this part of the English midlands has sizzled to 30+ degrees C. Our once…Read more Bite the Bullet
Anna Maria Jopek
From the pictures of Anna Maria Jopek on the Web, you'd have thought she is a glamour model. Her hair is the colour of sun-ripened wheat, her eyes shine cornflower blue, and her feminine curves would grace the cover of any glossy magazine. But AMJ is not known primarily for her looks. She is a…Read more Anna Maria Jopek
Nothing But a Fool
The members of Joy Division had agreed that the band would not perform under that name should any one of them leave. So, when their singer Ian Curtis took his own life in 1980, the dark post-punk group morphed into New Order. The band soon evolved more of a dance-rock sound, closer to new wave…Read more Nothing But a Fool
Eleuthera
The fingers of fate are long and bony. They reach into the mind to turn up thoughts that you never imagined could be there. And so it was the other day when I revisited a post that appeared in my Hubzilla feed a few months ago. The post was headed "Eleuthera", Stockholm - Monty Alexander,…Read more Eleuthera
Talvin Singh
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
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
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
Crotchety Man 