Record Reconstructor

  Dashboard! Right now I'm struggling with momentum.  In truth, it's been a pretty tough month in terms of my personal mental health between chaos at work, global anxiety, not sleeping, and a lot of demands on my attention leaving me struggling to find the energy to sit and write.  I'm staring at a growing backlog of albums I've listened to and not covered, I'm looking forward towards the finish line and somehow the 150 albums I need to listen to before December now feels more daunting than the idea that I did 850 already in ten months.  I've filled every slot in my spreadsheet now, I know exactly what I am going to be listening to in the next sixty days but sometimes I catch myself back in old habits, watching comfort youtube videos for the 18th time because I know the serotonin hit of familiarity is what my brain is craving to try and keep it on a level. Also, I need to take myself to task a little.  I balk at the idea of writing up the albums I am listening t...

  If you are reading this and you are one of my regular readers, it delights me to tell you that by the time you read this, the episode of This One Goes To 11  which Michael and Tyler very kindly invited me to appear on should be live on the internet.  If you want to go and listen to me try and keep my instinct to talk relentlessly in check and let those guys get a word in edgeways, please go listen to or watch the episode (and all the others while you are there). If you are here because you listened to the episode and decided to come read some of my writing then first of all, thank you.  I don't get paid for this, there are no ads, and I don't really promote myself very well apart from to my very limited followers on BlueSky so I appreciate you taking the time.  There's a lot of writing about a lot of albums on this blog, some more detailed and better than others if I am honest, so let me show you what I'm proudest of. If you want to know why and what I am do...

  Dashboard! In this modern age it's never been easier to find supportive media related to whatever niche interest might be tickling your fancy.  Right now, with literally no effort, I could find countless video and audio and text sources with the click of a few buttons on my keyboard which could give me exhaustive guidance on the best wok to buy for my kitchen and why, which of the over one thousand NFL players I should be looking to pick up for my fantasy team, the best make and model of drumstick for the electronic kit I play.  I can watch guides, displays of incredible skill, I can listen to storytelling both intentional and improvised and somewhere in between.  We have democratised media access;  everyone's 15 seconds of fame is right now, all the time, just around the corner.   Why then is it so hard to find a good podcast about music? Now, good is a relative term and if you substitute 'good' for 'popular' you can find many popular music podcasts...

  ...but I do I was driving with Matt through the streets of suburban Birmingham to go collect an Indian takeaway for the group of friends we were hanging out with for the week at the UK Games Expo, and we were talking about music.  Matt had asked me what my favourite song of all time was, prompted by the fact that the extremely lengthy and highly eclectic playlist which I put on in the car when I can't think of anything else to play had delivered a motown standard which had been played at his wedding.  I told him it was an impossible question;  I've got a hundred favourite songs and it changes from minute to minute and mood to mood, and is highly dependant on what is top of mind when I'm asked.  I could give you a list of 20 albums which are my favourites, maybe 100 songs I'd consider the pinnacle of my musical tastes, but they're all tied for joint first; or at least, they shift places so often based on my whims that they may as well be. He asked me what it wa...

  Dashboard! I'm not using the album cover as the header image because its a woman in a bikini top and Bluesky will probably label that as "explicit content" Being an avid Taylor Swift fan is one of the things which has brought me the most positive and rewarding experiences in my music listening history.  This isn't a gimmick, or an affectation, a quirky oh-so-unexpected contrarian opinion I have to make myself sound interesting.  My love of Pop music, infectious pop music, inspiring and lyrical pop music is deep seated and almost certainly dates back to seeing Kylie Minogue perform in a tent in 1997 and redefining the boundaries I'd erected for myself around what was and wasn't 'acceptable' music for me to listen to.  I've listened to Lady Gaga and Kylie and Girls Aloud and Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, and Carly Rae Jepsen and a host of Eurovision artists this year because pop music, like all music done well. has the power to touch and express par...