Record Reconstructor

As we embark on a new column of albums from The Pile, we reach one I've been looking forward to writing about for a while - in fact, it was nearly the very first album I wrote about for the site.  You see there's very little ordering to the layout of the Pile, but when I was looking at which albums were at the top, and saw this one sat in the first position of my actual CD racks (rather than the loose pile of CDs next to it), I nearly re-arranged where the columns of loose CDs were just so I could write about it first.  In the end I thought that went against the spirit of the original tweet which prompted this whole endeavour, but now I've slogged through 67 albums already, my reward is I get to talk about this most unlikely of CDs. I'm delighted to tell you you can listen to me here Generally, albums in the Pile tend to fall into one of two categories;  either they have some weird and personal connection to me, or they are interesting from a musical point o...

That's the first 20% done. It was more or less 120 days ago that the idea to write this blog was suggested to me on twitter, and here I am, 4 months later, still plugging away at it.  While I'm conscious there have been significant gaps in which stuff hasn't been posted, I have also in that time accomplished a huge amount personally while still keeping the home fires burning here on my little slice of the internet enough for it to still feel like it's something that matters to me. I've had a lot of very nice feedback about the whole endeavour - as I said way back on Day 0, this started life as a kind of Midlife Crisis Prevention Exercise, a way to write about and share stuff about my experience in the last 40 years with some kind of focus.  If you've enjoyed it, taken anything positive away from it, or just feel like you know me a little better now, that's a fantastic bonus. Because people are occasionally interested in these things, here are the...

I'm not really a great believer in concepts like serendipity or kharma.  As someone who tries to fashion themselves as much as a realist as I can without descending into that Peter Hitchins/Richard Dawkins bubble of self-superior madness which seems unavoidably linked with that mindset, I'm a fan of coincidence over 'fate', and that what some people see as patterns in the chaos of the universe, I'm generally alive to the idea that people can find patterns in just about anything if they look hard enough and they really want to. All that being said, either subconsciously or because there really is an order to the universe and it's currently messing with me, today's album continues to follow a theme of depression, and people's reactions to it, which has been poking its head up in various aspects of my life over the last week. Listen to me here I wish I was a better singer.  I'm not completely atonal, and can carry a tune OK as long as its wi...

I don't blame any of you for thinking I had forgotten about this.  The truth is both more profound and prosaic than me losing interest - sometimes, life gets in the way, and over the last 3 weeks I've been to America and back, participated in two World Championships, been horrifically ill, and orchestrated a 40th Birthday Party for my significant other which was as successful as it was mentally and fiscally draining.  And in all the time these other tasks have been taking over my life, I've looked back at The Pile knowing that there are only 2 albums left in the first stack for me to write about. So now, the dust has settled, a degree of normality has returned to my weekly schedule, and I find myself with time again to sit back at my PC, listen to a whole album, and write about it some more. Today's album is a combination of misguided, puzzling, and inevitable, a kind of melange of bad decision making which to this day comes back to haunt me, but rarely in musical ...

If ever I needed an incentive to get through writing about Muse yesterday, it was the knowledge that next in the pile was this album, which is so loaded with personal associations, gig stories and general musical interest that this blog entry might end up being three thousand words long before I decide to rein myself in.  It's the seminal album by a band who's reputation is either a mould-breaking, hyper-talented band who defy classical genre classification, or a group of pretentious metal wannabes who's very name (along with Radiohead) was internet shorthand for identifying obnoxious music snobs in the mid 2000s.  It's Tool time. Listen to a dubiously legal version of me here People like to think they are clever, especially adolescent men, and I was no exception.  Certainly a large proportion of people, me included, love the way that revelatory moment feels when it lands on you out of the blue, when you realise that the thing you were already enjoying has a h...

[[Editors Note]]:  Ever had writers block?  I've had half this blog post written for a couple of days now, but I'm finding it hard to coalesce my thoughts into some kind of coherent narrative about this album.  I've got fragments, parts, but no glue, nothing binding to hold it together.  In the interests of not letting this project wither on the vine because I can't seem to collect my thoughts about this album, I'm going to power through it for the next 45 minutes and see what I come up with, but apologies is this isn't my best writing (which is of dubious quality at the best of times). [[Editors Note 2]]:  I am going to finish this entry today if it kills me.  It's now been nearly 9 days, the longest I have had an unfinished blog entry so far, and I need to put this behind me now. * * * I've spend a day or so trying to figure out how to frame my feelings for this blog post;  don't worry, this isn't one of those scary over-share stories I ...

Yes, yes, I know.  Things are crazy right now, as I mentioned a few posts ago.  As well as closing out the fiscal year at work, a process which is always an excruciating amount of work at the best of times, I've also been planning and organising a Charity Netrunner tournament which takes place in 9 days time (and looks to have raised about £1,200 so far), organising myself and preparing for a trip to the US to play in the Netrunner World Championships in 18 days time, and trying book and organise my partners 40th Birthday Party in 39 days time.  Every time I've looked at The Pile in the last few days, I've felt guilty that I'm neglecting something that I started, I'm enjoying, and I want to see through.  Which is a convenient segue into what I am going to talk about with this album... Listen to me here I should get the "talking about the album" bit out of the way up front, because I don't have any complex or deep thoughts about it really.  ...