Record Reconstructor

Dashboard! Yes, I'm putting two up on the same day, look, time has got away from me this week a little and we have guests arriving today who I'll need to socialise with this evening so this is going to be a more truncated than normal weekly wrapup, but fortunately its only seventeen albums so that shouldn't take too long.   On with the show. I listened to my 200th unique album in its entirety since January 1st on Monday this week, driving back from Manchester after watching the Superbowl, and as a special treat (and to keep my .swifties.com tag on Bluesky validated) I decided to listen to the most recent Taylor Swift album.  First, a couple of notes - I understand the machinations of releasing multiple versions of albums to keep them in streaming charts longer and produce limited run vinyl and the like.  When I am listening to albums, if there are multiple versions, I'll almost universally choose the studio version over any extended cut that is available (though with...

  Dashboard! It's been seventeen and a half years since my first date with my partner Catherine;  we met, as was the style at the time - before internet dating became an entirely different environment (as I understand, I myself have been out of the game for a while you see, but I hear horror stories) - on Match.com, exchanged a few messages, enough to arrange a meeting for coffee the week before Christmas at the Showroom Cinema Bar in Sheffield.  I told her much later on that during that first date, when I went to the bathroom, the fly zip on my jeans broke completely and I spent the second half of that date very subtly draping my jacket over my crotch area to prevent her from thinking I was either unable to dress myself or giving very inappropriate signals.  Our second date was a week after New Year, and the rest is history.   For two people who spend a lot of time listening to and discussing and sharing music, we somehow don't have 'a song'.  No firs...

Dashboard! Eventually serendipity is going to stop delivering to me these ideas for topics and I might have to think about what I am going to write in advance like some kind of animal, but as long as the universe is going to keep suggesting topics, I'm going to keep following it's direction, if only because I love the path of least resistance. On Monday this week, I listened to my 200th album since I started doing this, and I deliberately stopped at 199 just before the Superbowl because I wanted to give some thought to what I would listen to as the digits ticked over to 200.  I even drove nearly two hours to Manchester listening to podcasts instead of music because I wasn't ready to commit to a 200th album choice.  By Monday morning, I had decided.  I've been putting off listening to Taylor Swift albums because I don't want to exhaust them all so early into the year;  as a special occasion, I would allow myself to listen to her most recent album, because she name ch...

Dashboard! If there was ever any evidence that there's no established plan, no constructed content distribution schedule to this blog, let it be this - because I did a last minute pivot and devoted an entire article to this week to just a single album, this week's wrap up has thirty different albums I need to scoop up into a single post.  So I apologise is this post is interminably long, or if I cover an album with just a passing glance before moving on.  I'm also up against a deadline to get this written and published before getting in the car and driving over to Manchester for my annual Superbowl party with my friend Tom and some of my other regular NFL fantasy friends/bitter rivals. Let's just crack on, shall we? God, I'm such a nerd.  Sometimes I just need a little inspiration for where to go inside my mental band rolodex and start picking stuff to listen to, and this occurred to me last week when I listened to Silversun Pickup's Carnavas .  Well, this week ...

Dashboard! CW: Mental Health, like, for real It's 2004, and I'm laying in the bath.  It's where I've spent most of the evenings that week;  not for cleanliness reasons - it's winter, and my small, cramped flat is freezing cold.  My electricity in this place is fed by coins, coins which last a vanishingly small amount of time to fire the electric radiators enough to keep the temperature up.  And I'm broke, flat broke, negative cash balance broke.  There are no more coins to be had, not for days.  But my water, my hot water, that's fed from the building central heating, and that's a bill which is part of my monthly rent, so that is already paid.  The bathroom is small, and with the door closed and a towel shoved against the bottom of the door jamb, it doesn't bleed too much heat.  So I come back from the job I hate, eat as basic a meal as I can (tinned, bulk, best not to thing about it) and I run a hot bath.  I lay in the bath for hours, with a...