2011

...an interesting year, and the last half has brought a lot of change for me personally. I'm about to take redundancy (what a beautiful word) and will probably spend the next year trying to make stuff happen and scratching around for a living from music. this is potentially madness, but it's also incredibly liberating. it's about time, even if it's the wrong time.

as far as playing goes, this year's been one of the best. my instrument continues to challenge me and some days i feel like dousing it with petrol and setting a match to it may be the best use for it. but at the same time, i'm learning shitloads and finally playing things i can be kind of happy with. fourth page continue to be a quiet revelation, sonnamble (with the addition of wei-ya and paul) have evolved into a really powerful wee unit, and there a number of other associations which look likely to yield fruit in the coming months. playing in vienna was wonderful, and with any luck there'll be a few jaunts around europe over the next year. forwind continues to evolve, and that will take up a fair amount of my time. there's a lot to do, and a lot to think about.

much of the music i've been listening to this year was made before 1950. i'm increasingly drawn to the raw, the unmediated, the unselfconscious, the unironic. i fucking hate irony. there isn't much that i like that was made this year (chris watson's el tren fantasma was an exception, as were a couple of others i can't be arsed to remember), increasingly i feel out of touch with what is being made and what's being written about in the wire or played at cafe oto or wherever. much of it seems shallow, faddish or revisionist to me these days. it's hard to tell whether this is due to my own weariness or truly indicative of the times we're in. it doesn't matter, i suppose, and i'm wary of my own dis-ease with what i hear or read; i don't particularly want to be statler or waldorf.