This year's shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize was announced on 22nd July. The prize celebrates albums by artists from the UK and Ireland released in the qualifying year. According to its website it is "the music equivalent to the Booker Prize for literature and the Turner Prize for art". Allowing for some understandable self-promotion…Read more Mercury Music Prize 2021
art rock
The Old Man and the Table Saw
Have you any idea how difficult it is to find a good picture of an old man and a table saw? This is a little smaller than I'd like but it's the best I could find on the whole of the Internet. I suppose there aren't that many master craftsmen around these days. Carpentry has…Read more The Old Man and the Table Saw
Song of the Stars
The dead can be many things. They can be buried or incinerated; they can be forgotten or revered. They can star in zombie films. They can even be grateful. But there's very little that the dead can do. And yet, according to one Australian duo, the dead can dance. Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard formed…Read more Song of the Stars
Rain Tree Crow
Occasionally we come across a band, an album and a track that all share the same name. If my memory serves me correctly, the Vinyl Connection blog site gave a technical term for this nominal trinity a few months back, but I have been unable to track it down. So please forgive me if this…Read more Rain Tree Crow
Winter Is Never
This video appeared on the Proglodytes blog last week. It pleased Crotchety Man greatly and impelled him to pursue Gazpacho across previously uncharted regions of online musicland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okjo3tRZnNY For English speakers 'Gazpacho' is a strange word. It's a Spanish word for a cold vegetable soup. Not the most promising name for a band, you would…Read more Winter Is Never
Whole Thing
Back in 1991 Peter Gabriel had a problem. His studios had issued a string of block bookings to successful bands like New Order, leaving no time for lesser-known artists on his Real World Records label who only wanted a day or two of studio time. His solution was to set aside one week for those…Read more Whole Thing
Heterotopia
Utopia is a place where everything is good; dystopia is a place where everything is bad; heterotopia is where things are different ... - Walter Russell Mead Heterotopia is a difficult concept to define succinctly. The word comes from the Greek roots, heteros (other) and topos (place). So a heterotopia is an other place, somewhere that…Read more Heterotopia
Paper Earth
Crotchety Man has nothing to say this week. No words of his could possibly do justice to this spine-tingling performance by Bent Knee and the Boston Conservatory Percussion Ensemble. Just watch this video and be transported to a happier place for the next 30 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1834&v=LGNZePMJ8XM BENT KNEE - Paper Earth (Live 2018 / Full…Read more Paper Earth
The Black Rock
March came in with an icy blast here in the UK. We had 10 - 20 cm of snow, much of the country's transport system ground to a halt and some unfortunate motorists got stuck on a Scottish motorway for eight hours. It was all due to "the beast from the east" - a weather…Read more The Black Rock
The House on the Hill
The English master was about to hand back our homework. "Before I return your books", he said, "I'd like to read you one of the essays". We sat there nervously for a moment, not knowing what to expect. Was he about to praise the text he held in his hands or lambast it mercilessly? And…Read more The House on the Hill
Crotchety Man 