Angel Song, again and again 💫

 

I talked about this record several times, in the past; here is a different PoV about it.

If you quickly switch between CD and LP, you’ll immediately realize that whoever recorded this session back in 1996 knew exactly what they were doing. Keep flipping impatiently between the two sources, and you’ll begin to appreciate just how good this CD really sounds. Only when you stop blaming yourself for wasting $55 on the double LP and actually listen will you start to appreciate the Luminessence reissue.

The best way to describe the phenomenon? It’s like buying a big-screen TV with the contrast and color cranked to the max—perfect for making a movie trailer pop in the showroom. But it’s only when you bring it home and dial the flesh tones back to the realistic levels you start to feel you can actually sit through a whole movie without squinting. Every instrument becomes more listenable. The music radiates an unmistakable joie de vivre, as if it’s reveling in its own being.

Yes, the vinyl sounds phenomenal. But that doesn’t take anything away from the CD. I’ve got a great disc player—but it makes me wonder how digital playback would compare if I’d sunk as much into it as I have into my analog rig.

Oh, and did I mention? Angel Song is an incredible album—effortlessly enjoyable on any format you throw at it. Well, here we go.

A one of a kind Goto system in Lausanne, Switzerland 🇨🇭

 

Thanking Darius Valiunas (for sharing the cool picture) whose DAVA Soul cartridge fuels the system.

Not by chance, the long horn reminds a Swiss Alphorn 

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Drone 💫

 

While it’s been active for nearly fifteen years, recently Ideologic Organ - the renowned imprint run and curated by Stephen O'Malley - has steadily picked up pace and its level of ambition, offering a platform and home for the work of a diverse range of historical artists like Ákos Rózmann and Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, as well as some of the most exciting and ambitious voices working in experimental music today, including The Necks, Lukas De Clerck, Oren Ambarchi, Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang, Kali Malone, Nina Garcia, Nate Wooley, and numerous others. So far in 2025, they’ve already had a great run, and now they’re back with one of their most exciting albums of the year so far: “Blue Veil”, the first release to document the solo cello work of musician and composer Lucy Railton. A stunningly beautiful and creatively rigorous immersion within a complex, deeply meditative realm of harmonics and glacial structure, it’s easily among the most striking ambitious releases we’ve yet to encounter in Railton’s stellar and highly celebrated career. Issued in two glorious editions - a black vinyl edition, limited to 700 copies, and a CD housed in a 6-panel digisleeve, complete with Obi strip - across the work’s duration Railton breaths a fierce sense of life into the fields of acoustic minimalism, just-intonation, and drone.  

Lucy Railton “Blue Veil” (LP / CD)
	First emerging onto the London experimental music scene during the 2000s - founding the noted new music series, Kammer Klang, at Cafe Oto, as well as co-founding the London Contemporary Music Festival - the British cellist and composers, Lucy Railton, was trained at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Royal Academy of Music. Since relocating to Berlin, and having collaborated with numerous artists across a range of musical idioms, Railton is arguably most well known as a solo artist, in addition to her work with Kali Malone, Catherine Lamb, Beatrice Dillon, and Russell Haswell. Over the course of the 40-minute duration of the piece, Railton’s highly focused and subtly virtuosic playing draws a deep sense of humanity and emotion from the shifting densities of texture and tone, emphasising the physical qualities of intervallic and chordal sounds. While most easily cast within the realm of drone because of its use of sustained tones and highly focused sonic palette, “Blue Veil” features too much structure - shifting between tones like a glacially paced organ dirge - for such a reductive definition. Like many of her immediate peers, as well as minimalists like La Monte Youngor composers like James Tenney before her, Railton deafly harnesses the use of just intonation harmony to draw hidden dimensions - beating patterns, otoacoustic emissions, combination tones, etc. - from the harmonic interactions. This active mode of “listening-with”, playfully and semi-metaphorically referred to by Railton as “sing-along music”, encourages reflexive participation in the music’s movement.

Weyrcliffe Bulk Eraser 💫

 

Big and heavy machinery is sometimes needed to get the job done. 

This monster eats your tape for breakfast. It can consume 10,5", 12" or. 14" reels in 1/4" up to 2" tapes and leaves no 'data' behind. It comes in at a whopping 43kG weight.

 At least this thing does the job as... it can (oooh, it does!!!) consume over 2500W (!)  

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Tim Buckley 💫🌈💫

 

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Skiffle

 

Arguably the most important record in modern music history. When Rock Island Line was released in the UK in 1955, it caused a sensation and influenced a whole generation of kids to pick up guitars and form bands.

Without this record there would have been no Beatles, Stones, Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Bowie and many others.

An interesting documentary about this is on YouTube

https://youtu.be/YVBbBwntUnI?si=3SuDFfQQOF6DrqSo

Derek Bailey 💫

 

Flip-flops 🌈

 

A Guild galore 💫

 

The Best Record, ever 💫

 

Is there a better compilation than Neil Young's 1977 'Decade' triple vinyl?  

A fantastic career retrospective, focussing on 1966-76, it has everything I need right now, songs like 'Expecting To Fly', 'Ohio' and 'Like A Hurricane' and liner notes from the man himself, plus great cover and pics -  what more could you want?

A true gem.

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Pierre Bensusan live in Chengdu, China (details) 💫💫💫

 

Nick Drake 💫

 

Jascha Heifetz & the 💫

 

Violinist Jascha Heifetz playing with a light attached to his bow to follow his movements.

Photographs by the great Gjon Mili for Life Magazine, New York (1952).