Rudolf Steiner’s wisdom 💫

 

Sleeping as art, as per anthroposophy.

Consciousness in spirituality.

💫

RIP for Mike Westbrook 💫

 

Talking about synchronicity…

Here is the official statement – today, 12 April 2026 – announcing the very sad news of the death of Mike Westbrook OBE, from his manager Peter Conway: 

(statement begins) ‘It is with very great sadness that I announce the death of jazz composer, pianist and band leader Mike Westbrook who died peacefully at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital yesterday 11 April.

He is survived by his wife, musical collaborator and muse Kate Westbrook and by his son Guy, daughter Joanna and his step children Josie, Clio and Jason Barnard.

Mike’s huge importance for European jazz is summed up by German journalist and festival director Bert Noglik (*)

“Mike Westbrook has not only incorporated some of the best minds in jazz in the UK into his bands, he has also given European jazz its own sound. The way he has managed to absorb the very essence from the American pioneers, and then moved forward innovatively to reflect European culture from the perspective of a jazz-
inspired musician is without parallel anywhere. His work, combining the best from the two worlds, has created one of its own. Here, music and art, sound and poetry, complement and sustain each other. In his inspirational collaboration with Kate Westbrook, works have been created that, for all their diversity and richness, represent what amounts to a genre. Just as Mike often took Duke’s Birthday as the opportunity to give concerts, it is in sincerest gratitude that we salute Mike Westbrook.”

Mike will be missed by us all. May he Rest in Peace.’ (statement ends)

MIKE WESTBROOK OBE Born High Wycombe 21 March 1936 Died Exeter 11 April 2026. In sadness

Horns by John Kalinowski

 

Big horns are still a niche market everywhere. Once you get to a certain size speakers become near unsellable. But with horns size matters greatly and compromising size is why many commercial horn systems to me sound weak and and overly small. 

Might as well run dynamic types if wanting such. So I build for one guy, myself and if anyone wants what I built after that’s cool. 

Suggest just building whatever you want and not worrying about reselling. 

If its good they will come.

💫

Nick Drake’s set-list 💫

 

A Nick Drake’s set-list featuring the newly discovered “Mickey’s tune” note the (x) at the side,  possibly not a favourite for nick to perform live…

💫

Alf’s such a penny-pinching, choosy toffee-nose 🥳

 

Sept?

 

Flea-market gems 💫💫💫

 

A well-kept secret among British jazz scholars 💫

The Who’s Who of British Jazz 💫

A sealed-copy with insert of 2017 Björn Meyer’s first disc on ECM, masterfully engineered by Stefano Amerio.

🌠

A first pressing in mint conditions of this early ECM’s masterpiece.

Had Vol. 1… finding this Vol. 2 in the wild was a 20 years long hiatus 😳

A nice score, indeed.

💫🍀💫

Neumann R5 mono cartridge 😳

 

A rare beast, indeed!

A weird arm for a weird cartridge 😳

A Neumann MS-52 H disc cutting head looks identical to the R5: they apparently used the same case which makes sense, both being pro-only stuffs.

The imposing weight 🫣

Thanks to Ciro Marzio for his detailed pixies. 

💫

Angine de Poitrine 💫

 

Everybody’s talking about this masked duo in pois!

Their aim is “ Emulating the rockstars of planet Earth, time-traveling explorers Klek and Khn de Poitrine marvel at hot dogs, pyramids, and rock in all its grandiosity.”

Enough to tickle my interest.

😳

They’re weird as a Gary Lucas with Capt. Beefheart or Devo or microtonal Tinariwen, but definitely unique and a new voice in music and the noble tradition of masked groups composed by anonymous musicians, having the Residents as the kings.

Look at these fretboards 😳😱😳… a microtonal world stargate!

They also reminded me the “Cantina’s group” and their music in Star Wars 🤟

I suggest to explore their musical vision on YouTube as their vinyl records are hideously priced 😱

Khn’s pedal board 💫

Jack White is taking a risk with “this” opening act 

🤟

They’ve been moving global media interest quite a bit, from Quebec niche follow-up to stardom in a blink of an eye.

💫

Harry Partch 💫

 

1970's re-press with red labels of the 1967 CRI LP of the maverick composer's mid-1960's studies for his unique microtonal instruments performed by his own Gate 5 Ensemble, producing some of the strangest otherworldly avant-garde music ever.

condition (record/cover): NM / EX

One of the most significant and most elusive figures in the history of American music receives here his first proper commercial LP release. Harry Partch - who had spent his adult life as an itinerant, building his own instruments tuned to a 43-tone just-intonation scale, composing music that could only be performed on those instruments, surviving on the margins of American musical life - did not enter the commercial record market until 1966, when Composers Recordings Inc.issued this LP. The work, And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma (1963-64, rev. 1966), was recorded in an abandoned chick hatchery in Petaluma, California, where Partch had assembled his instruments. 

It consists of 34 duets - played on instruments Partch designed and built, including the Chromelodeon, the Spoils of War, the Cloud Chamber Bowls made from Pyrex carboys from the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory - that function as the verses of a complete work, "assembled with a minimum of players" as Partch described it. 

Performed by the Gate 5 Ensemble under Partch's direction, with the legendary percussionist Michael Ranta among the performers, it is a work of rippling rhythmic complexity and tonal beauty - strange, ancient-sounding, categorically unlike anything else. The CRI pressing is the original, the document closest to Partch's own hand. Among the most important records in this collection.

Garrard 301 Classic

 

This turntable, produced in 2026, costs (reportedly) a steep 

€ 40,000.00.

Plinth and SME arm included.

💫

P.S. - how much’s worth my Garrardzilla? 

Just sayin’

🙃

Do remember they can’t cancel the spring 💫

 

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Evan Parker, Paul Rogers and Louis Moholo - Tebugo 💫

 

Live at The Vortex in London on September 5th, 1992.

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His Bobness’ Records Shop Day special edition 💫

 

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Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024)

 

A superb, enthralling little movie which quite moved me.

Shot in evocative black and white, the award-winning short film by artist Alexander Singh and art historian and researcher Natalie Museata is an illicit queer love story set in a dystopian world where objects are paid for with slaps and kissing is illegal, punishable by death. Angine, an unhappily married woman, compulsively shops in a department store. 

There, she becomes fascinated by an innocent sales clerk, Malaise. Their secret relationship evolves into a dangerous love story that tests the limits of their repression-fueled world. 

A surreal yet chilling film, it is a sharp critique of control, but despite its dark premise, it remains a romantic tribute to those who dare to challenge the status quo.

~

Alexandre Singh & Natalie Musteata are a couple and filmmaking duo. Alexandre is a Franco-Indian visual artist whose work has been collected by the MoMA and Guggenheim Museum, New York, and CNAP, Paris. Natalie is a Romanian-American writer, curator and filmmaker, with a PhD in art history and film. They live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

Available on YouTube.

The soundtrack is of amazing beauty, too.

Tyrant in the house?

 

Progressive Living 💫

 

Pat 💫

 

Pat Metheny began playing guitar at just 12 years old in Missouri, influenced by his trumpeter brother Mike. By 15, he was a prodigy: he was regularly playing with Kansas City's top jazz musicians, so much so that he won a scholarship to Down Beat at just 14.

His rise was meteoric:

At 18: He became the youngest teacher in the history of the University of Miami.

At 19: Gary Burton recruited him to his famous quartet.

At 21: He revolutionized jazz with his first album as a leader, Bright Size Life (recorded ECM 1976), accompanied by a very young Jaco Pastorius.

His unique sound, born from his innovative use of delay and a passion for academic jazz combined with folk influences, made him an instant legend. 

Soft Moustachism 💫

 

Ha, haaaaa!