Halfway House 2017

We’re almost halfway through 2017 and the world hasn’t blown up yet! Well done us. Let’s make the most of our remaining time and have a nice chat about music: this year my personal favourites seem to be mostly house/techno rather than pop – the exact opposite to last year. This is despite (because of?) the fact that I’ve listened to quite a lot of pop this year, thanks to being seated much nearer the office radio for the last 6 months – Ed Sheeran-ocalypse and all. Grime has thankfully taken up the slack a bit and provided us with several out-and-out bangers.

Anyway, here are some selected tunes of 2017 that I have enjoyed:

The Sound Barrier Podcast: 6: Der Müde Tod & The Seventh Seal

Ah Death. May your cold embrace be delayed, but when you grasp me at least do it with the humility and grace you do in this week’s Sound Barrier podcast. For this week Peter Baran and Pamela Hutchinson discuss the recently re-released Der Müde Tod and The Seventh Seal both of whom feature Death as a lead character. How do these personifications stack up, how do Fritz Lang and Ingmar Bergman deal with this heavy material and which one is a comic masterpiece (Bill And Ted’s Bogus Journey obviously). Recorded in a makeshift studio, but with all the non-makeshift opinions you expect we pit these two movies together, and the conclusion may surprise you. Listen to it over on Silent London here.

The Silent London Podcast is also available on iTunes and Stitcher. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave a rating or review too. The podcast is presented in association with SOAS radio by Peter Baran and Pamela Hutchinson.

“the note that she hoped would say more”: sergeant pepper five decades on

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released the week of my seventh birthday — to date my favourite (an affective fact unlikely to be challenged this year). Seven is the best number.

But it didn’t come into our family lives until a month later, my mum’s 32nd birthday, 4 July 1967. We were on holiday in mid-Wales, on a hillside farm owned by family friends (my godfather) a little up from Aberdyfi. Dad hadn’t joined us immediately — in those years he often had to travel to London from Shrewsbury for days on end, to attend work-related meetings. So he drove up a few days later — we were a two-mini family, very Italian Job in that one way at least — laden with presents for everyone, especially mum.

The Sound Barrier Podcast: 5: Wall-E / The Red Turtle

On the fifth Sound Barrier we have no guests, but an extremely animated discussion about – oh, did you see what I did there. We are comparing a Pixar classic with a brand new, but dialogue free, movie. So the dialogue free movie The Red Turtle is our “silent movie”, while Wall-E, which has largish silent section, is our sound film for comparison. Beautiful hand drawn Studio Ghibli animation vs incredibly detailed computer generated work. We delve into the animation, but we also spend a fair bit of time of the thematic similarities between the two, loneliness, love, loss and of course skittering critter sidekicks. So build a raft, or hold on to a passing rocket and listen as we break the Sound Barrier again.

You can listen over on Silent London here or on iTunes and Stitcher. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave a rating or review too. The podcast is presented in association with SOAS Radio by Peter Baran and Pamela Hutchinson.

The Sound Barrier Podcast: 4: Mindhorn / The Mystery Of The Leaping Fish

This fortnights Sound Barrier podcast tackles comedy for the first time. And in particular the comedic potential of detectives and drugs. On the modern corner with have British meta farce Mindhorn, where Julian Barrett plays Richard Thorncroft who played Isle Of Man bionic detective Mindhorn. He is drawn back to the Isle Of Man to help with a case, or to try and regain some fame, and also take some drugs. Which made us think of our favourite drugged up detective, Coke Ennyday, played by Douglas Fairbanks Snr in The Mystery Of The Leaping Fish. Coke is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche who really doubles down on one particular aspect of Holmes’s method…

So join myself, Pamela Hutchinson and special guest Julian Coleman (you can follow him on Twitter here). Listen over on Silent London here or on iTunes and Stitcher. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave a rating or review too. The podcast is presented in association with SOAS Radio by Peter Baran and Pamela Hutchinson.

Alan Moore Knows The Score (It’s One Star)

Watchmen by Alan Moore
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Modern comics events seem to demand endless lead-ins and spin-offs, and sadly Doomsday Clock, from the blockbuster team of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, is no exception to this trend. Watchmen, the extended prequel to Doomsday Clock, feels wholly unneccessary to 2017’s much-anticipated DC Rebirth (TM) event. For a start, it’s not even by Geoff Johns – how big a clue do you need that DC see ‘Watchmen’ as simply a cash-in? The storyline has been farmed out to a British writer-artist team who are given the task of introducing us to the universe which will “collide” with the DCU in this winter’s mega-event.

It’s an important job and one which might have been suited to a special issue or even an annual-length story, but no – DC had to drag things out to 12 long issues – for comparison purposes, the Death Of Hawkman (in which Hawkman dies) was only alotted 6 issues. Watchmen includes several issues focusing on characters who don’t even survive to take part in Doomsday Clock! And don’t get me started on the sequences set on yet ANOTHER part of the DC multiverse, where pirates still rule the waves – yes, it’s a cool concept for an alternate Earth, but an editor should definitely have stepped in and asked for a bit of clarity.

Making Your Mind Up: How Eurovision Caused Brexit

FAKE NEWS! But REAL POP! In April I went to Seattle and talked about Eurovision and Brexit, and now thanks to the miracle of YouTube and Bruce from my work’s Graphics Department you too can experience my presentation. It isn’t quite the same as being there (lots of people laughed! honest!) but it’ll have to do.

I hope you enjoy this piece of multimedia content, I certainly enjoyed making and presenting it – we will be back to the written word (and to Popular) before long, I promise.

Unheard Album Project: April 2017

The fourth instalment of my project to listen to a new (to me) album every day for a year: one track from each of the LPs I listened to in April. I’m pleased with this one – though this is a playlist of two halves, and those wishing to avoid a prog/electronic/odyssey should skip to Joe Goddard and start there. Full tracklist below the cut.

The Sound Barrier Podcast: 3: The Wind / Lady Macbeth

The Sound Barrier podcast is back with an episode about women up against the patriarchy, the odds and some mighty gusting wind. And we look at two actresses, one at the height of her powers and popularity, in Lillian Gish, and one virtual unknown who both captivate their audience. So stern looks, staring through the screen, death and sex all feature highly in this episode. Joining Pamela Hutchinson and Pete Baran in the studio special guest (and occasional FT contributor) Ewan Munro. Which is better, a Virginian flower trapped in the desert or a Northern lass, traded for a bit of worthless land who starts to rebel (answer – they are both really good).

Thanks as ever to SOAS Radio, you can listen to the podcast here on Silent London
Or on iTunes here.

They Ask Me What The Use Is: Pop Conference 2017

Last year’s Seattle Pop Conference, on Voice, was an epiphanic experience for me, reviving a part of me that had become burnt out since I stopped writing regularly about current music. Like most epiphanies it was almost traumatic – I staggered around for a while afterwards trying to reconcile the critical self PopCon spoke to and the reality of the rest of my life and career. The critic’s life, these days, is often grim and precarious – Pop Conference overturns that, offering an opportunity to celebrate and indulge everything you might want it to be. As someone who’d stepped away from that life in a professional sense, I feel a little like a guilty interloper going there, at the same time as the event energises me and makes me feel so welcome and at home.

Of course I was going back, though. And you can’t have the same epiphany twice – this year I realised what Pop Conference reminded me of was Glastonbury. OK, a Glastonbury where all you have to brave is jetlag, not rivers of mud and piss, and stumbling on the best DJ in the world in the healing fields at 4AM is replaced by catching a presentation about a drag king One Direction tribute act in the quiet of Sunday morning. But something just as surprising and nourishing, if a bit kinder to my mid-40s constitution.