On Sunday, motorsport fans around the world will be tuning in to watch one of the sport’s most prestigious events, the Indianapolis 500. The following day will be the 100th anniversary of the 1911 Indianapolis 500, the first running of this famous race. Marking the centenery, Ralph Kramer’s book Indianapolis 500: A Century of Excitement […]
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My top ten albums of 2010 (part two)
This is part two of a two-part series. Check out part one. Autechre — Move of Ten Autechre’s second release of the year is officially an EP, but is just as long as its companion album Oversteps. In the case of the second half of this EP, you can certainly hear that these tracks are […]
My top ten albums of 2010 (part one)
Because that’s what you really want to know, isn’t it? It is mid-April, and ever since Christmas you have been on the edge of your seats thinking, what music really got Duncan’s toes tapping in the arbritary selection of 365 days we elect to call “2010”? Well your luck is in, because I am going […]
Autechre — Oversteps and Move of Ten
Autechre really annoy me. They are too good. What I don’t understand is why no-one else is apparently able to make music like this. Autechre may be perceived as being wilfully difficult. Maybe they are. Almost without fail, the first time you listen to new Autechre material it is impossible to get your head around. […]
Gristleism: a different take on the Buddha Machine concept
I have written before about the Buddha Machine. It is like a mystical modern-day music box. I’m a big fan. The original was described by some as the anti-iPod. It looks like the sort of iPod knock-off that you might get free in a cereal packet. Instead of loading it with several gigabytes of your […]
My top ten albums of 2009
10. The Fiery Furnaces — I’m Going Away It wouldn’t be an end-of-year music roundup from me without something related to The Fiery Furnaces appearing on the list. And here it is: I’m Going Away. This is probably the lowest they have appeared in my end-of-year list since I discovered them. Not that I’m Going […]
My top twenty albums of 2009 — part one
It is the end of the year. I like music. That can only mean one thing: a run-down of the music I have bought this year, arranged into vague order of how much I enjoyed them. In this twentieth anniversary year of Warp Records, it has been a stonking year for the label in my […]
Warp20 (Box Set)
Warp Records celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year with an extravagant box set, Warp20 (Box Set). Measuring in at 10 inches × 10 inches × 3 inches, it truly is a thing of beauty. Packed in there are five CDs and five 10 inch records, full of Warp goodness old and new. It was not […]
20 Warp albums — part 5
This is the final selection of my overview of twenty interesting Warp albums from the record label’s twenty years. To read the other parts of this series, please check the table of contents on the right. Jamie Lidell — Multiply Jamie Lidell is clearly a very talented person. His voice is incredible, but perhaps more […]
Patrick Hannan — A Useful Fiction
Have you noticed that there is a lot of introspection about devolution just now? I suppose it underlines the fact that devolution is a process rather than a settlement that everyone is still looking at how to tweak it. Maybe it is just the newness of it. The Scottish Parliament is very young as these […]