Twelve months ago I started something I now have to maintain: an annual roundup of the music I’ve fallen in love with each year. So, following the aforementioned 2010 roundup, here’s my year in music, 2011.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the beautifully designed mixes over at Designers.MX, curated by Blake Allen and Josh Sullivan. So, it was a pleasure to contribute a mix, although I opted for something a little more, erm… risky.
I used to write often about music for this journal. Those days of turning sounds into words have slipped by, but I still consume new music as eagerly as I did at any other time in my life. Like many, I cannot help but compile lists, and I shall not apologise for it either. Here, for your pleasure, are my top albums, songs, and performances of 2010.
I’m back from my fourth trip to the Glastonbury Festival, where I celebrated its 40th anniversary in sweltering heat with 180,000 other lunatics.
I had decided not to write about the Watchmen movie, partly because I’m the kind of Watchmen fan that many of you will dislike, in that I only read the original comics a few months ago.
I have to blog about this competition, seeing as it involves a mix CD created by a musician I once booked and purchased tomato soup and mash for; it has artwork by my friend and office pal; its on a website built by someone who taught me all I know, and it is facilitated by a company run by a friend I’ve known for 30 years; some cash goes to a charity researching a disease which hit my family hard this year. No arguments.
I haven’t written one of my typical ill-researched and untidy off-the-cuff gig reviews for some time, perhaps because I haven’t really been to many gigs this year. I think my ill-judged attendance at a Verve comeback gig earlier this year put me off. Anyway, the balance has been amply restored thanks to a stunning evening with good friends and Fleet Foxes at Nottingham Trent University (bloody students) last night.
Yesterday I found myself sat once again in one of my favourite Reykjavik bars. I sipped a cup of cold Thule, served by an Icelandic lady, half-conversing in my rusty Íslenska. “Kemur þú oft hingað?” I asked. She laughed, politely. I suppose this would all make some kind of sense, were it not for the fact that I was about 30 minutes walk from King’s Cross.
Yes, its time for more pimping of our friend and office amigo Mr. Burgerman. Last week I wrote about the Heroes of Burgertown toys, and this week I am sitting thumbing through my own preview copy of his new 300 page monograph, published by IdN.
Ok, lets put personal crisis (read “cry-seas”) to one side and get back to some blogging, beginning with hot news of Heroes of Burgertown from the funny doodly chap who lives in the corner of our office - the man they call Jon Burgerman, because it is his name.
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