No more hum...

Playlist

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Elements

Steven Wilson - The Future Bites

Kronos Quartet - 25 Years

Wishbone Ash - Pilgrimage

Gidon Kremer - De Profundis

Kats-Chernin - Unsent Love Letters, Meditations On Erik Satie

Mozart - Symphonies #38-41

Philippe Jaroussky - Opium

Strauss, R - Der Rosenkavalier

Various Composers - The Art of French Chamber Music

Daniel Hope - Spheres

Luciano Pavarotti - Tutto Pavarotti

Schubert - The Late Quartets

Morning, Sunday morning. A little listening back work before the early morning shop for my mum. It’s what Sundays are for...

1st month of 2020 pt 2 away...

Up and readying myself, with a listen to my new stuff - out on Friday coming...

The beast was listening to itself...

...the younger version of the beast probably did this too much too...

Stuff...

At this point my new LP was still called "Untitled"...

Out, under the moon...

...me still in the cans...

Shopping achieved and home again within 40 minutes just as my record ended...

Post breakfast, decided to move all my hard drives...

I'd had this idea for a while but only today finally executed it...

Finally, finally, the infernal hum of the hard drives is no more...

Brainwave I ought to have had ages ago...

A tidy desk is a happy desk...

A record played - Nina Hagen's "Unbehagen" her 2nd and final outing with her band - an eclectic mix of punk, pomp and reggae...

...before she moved on to her more, shall we say, leftfield, and still going strong, solo career...

Meanwhile, downstairs, Anne's painting continues to progress...

Out to see my mum...

Upset that she can't seem to get her TV to work, is deaf as a post and shakes almost all the time...

TV fixed and instructions given for the umpteenth time, instructed that the time is now to have her ears syringed - and she is on the waiting list to see if her medication can be changed re the shakes...

This evening, some Schubert, in honour of his birthday,...

...before the latest episode of the reasonably preposterous "Finding Alice"...

Highlight of the Day : No more hum...

Shuffling stuff and remixing other stuff...

Playlist

Various Composers - Die Mannheimer Schule

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Untitled

Haubenstock-Ramati - Konstellationen Etc

Golden Hymns Sing 'Hurrah' - The Great Dystopian Songbook I: Songs For The Setting & Rising Sun

Jadin - String Trios

Huelgas Ensemble - The Magic of Polyphony

Gary Boyle - The Dancer

Rhye - Home

Rabbitt - A Grunt and a Croak in the Night

The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro

Alban Berg Quartett - Rihm & Schnittke: String Quartets No. 4 (Live at Vienna Konzerthaus, 1990)

Various Composers - Mannheimer Schule, Vol. 1-5

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Disquietmusik

Beethoven - Complete String Quartets

Edward Spark - The Curse

Saturday - but writing this next Tuesday morning...

As ever my playlist and pictures remind me of things I've forgotten...

Nearly the end of January...

Yesterday felt like a Saturday...

A really good day due to it having been Anne's birthday and it having turned out far better than anticipated...

A bit of a lie in today as the podcast was fully prepped by close of play yesterday and so was ready to go...

Reasonable outside - although, as is mostly the case these days, I did not venture forth...

Podcast up...

...and breakfast at home...

...with the radio - Radio 4, Saturday Live...

Anne went off to visit her mum and I went into the attic to do some "tidying"...

I found the family tree of my early bands, which used to be on the wall in the flat where I lived in 1979/80...

...and a couple of big pictures of my band Rough Cut from, probably, 1978...

Desmond Gurr, me, Dood Hamilton, Dennis Gurr...

We were originally called Berlin - a far better name..

Just before Dood left, we changed our name to Sven Diamond - can you see what we did there?

Future Capital Models guitarist Gus Bolton replaced Dood and we changed our name again to Kicks...

The band split when I left for Germany in the summer of 1979...

But before I did, the very first line up of the, at that time unnamed, Capital Models had one session - me, Ann Park, with whom me and the Exec Producer were at college, on electric violin and Ann's brother Jim on drums...

No recording exists...

I also found our old bus passes...

The views...

I basically just moved some stuff around...

...and added a CD player, amp and speakers to the set up...

...before I descended again...

...and got sucked into doing a couple of remixes for Edward Spark for his new project - working on a track called "The Curse"...

...which took up the afternoon (during which Hearts beat Dunfermline 1-0 and Queens' game in Inverness was called off)...

A beautiful curry for tea from Annie...

..and then a listen back to my Spark work...

In the evening, a "Call My Agent" or two and the final ever two episodes of "Spiral" entertained...

So glad that the ending (spoilers) was upbeat - everything could have been much darker...

Lights out...

Highlight of the day : Remixing...

Overcast, strange day, turns our to be one of the best...

Playlist

Various Artists - Milano Jukebox : Anne's No 1s 1961-2021

A great big Happy 60th Birthday to Annie Milannie!

At 5:52, I had nothing...

Out into the dark and small tokens of goodness secured...

Then, while Anne slept on, retagging and putting together all the tracks for a 3CD set of her No 1 singles - which soundtracked the big day...

Here's the track list - I must confess to never having heard couple of the songs on disc two and almost anything on disc three...

But I had decided, no compromises - it had to be the actual number one singles...

I was hoping that Olivia Rodrigo (whoever that is!) stayed at number one today (update : she did)...

On Anne's emergence, she was pleasantly surprised and set about sorting out the flowers...

It turned out the card I bought demonstrated admirably my ineptness, as I didn't realise, until opening it to write it, that it was actually a Valentine's card...

Oh well...

It was still appreciated...

Mid morning a welcome visit from Jane and Kitty...

Jane had baked a cake and Kitty carried it in...

Yumtastic!

Enjoyed...

Part of Anne's present from Jane, Bob, Olly and Kitty (and Rafa) is a hoped for trip to that London later this year with a hoped for viewing of "Les Miserables"...

Slightly better than some flowers and chocolates and home made CDs perhaps...

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Jane's previously gifted plant had started to bloom...

In the afternoon, the postie brought this 5CD box - my third CD of the year, with a month almost gone...

Delightful...

Meanwhile, other presents included Stephen Fry socks from chum Teresa....

...and a subscription to curry boxes from chums Debbie and Sid...

...and, later still this afternoon, Anne's diamond bracelet was delivered...

Then, Anne's bestest chum of over 40 years, Lynn, arrived...

We enticed her in for some cake...

More tasty items accrued...

The two ladies looked back at a photo album, retrieved from the attic, featuring pictures of when they first got together - on a trip to Paris in 1977...

Even Fang came in to say Happy Birthday - although he was a bit wary of Lynn's leaving...

After some predictable post Dreamies slashing, he exited while we enjoyed a "Call My Agent"- even though it looked like he didn't want to go...

Around 5, Keith and Maureen arrived, having walked from their home 2 hours away, on the other side of the city...

Abby and Blair arrived a few minutes later to take them home again...

A box of gourmet cheeses and meats is now very much being looked forward to...

..while Abby and Blair's bouquet was top notch...

To top off the day, an Indian takeaway was secured and collected by your correspondent...

...and more telly was watched - another "Call My Agent" and " The Investigation"...

I'd recorded bits and pieces of my podcast throughout the day and put it all together last thing, before retiring with the latest version of the new LP on the cans...

So there we are, Anne's 60th - with the lockdown, we could not really celebrate properly but Anne reckoned she had an even better day than it might have been under normal circumstances..

Especially as, when we checked the webcam in Seville, where we might well have been, it looked overcast...

So, you know, it's all good...

Highlight of the Day : Celebrating Annie's birthday...