Catch-Up

I’ve missed a lot of posts this month. It’s a darn good thing I don’t do this for a living.

One reason is that I’ve been working on a particular project, and that has taken a lot of the little spare time I have. (Said every blogger ever at least once.) No, I’m not telling you what it is.

Another is that my mother has been in and out of hospital, and that’s more time- and attention-consuming than one might think. It’s family stuff and therefore complicated and not for discussion as it happens.

I’ve been fighting off a cold as well for about a week, probably as a result of standing around too many cold, damp South West Trains stations so I can visit my mother in hospital. And go to work.It got the better of me this weekend.

I haven’t felt the need to comment on anything in the news. Too many You Tubers do that and listening to them after a while starts to feel echo-chamber-y. Reading the Guardian, which I did for a while to see what ‘They’ were thinking, is now painful. Even browsing the Financial Times makes me wince. Seems the Fifth Columnists are still alive, virtue-signalling and trying to spread despair. Understand that the majority of news articles are about raising money for some charity, cause or government agency or department, and you will see that the print media is not about news. News is something somebody it’s about doesn’t want you to read: everyone wants you to read about how they need more money or the sky will fall in.

I haven’t felt the need to comment on anything that’s going on in my life, or that I’ve been reading. I am leading the classic ‘figure-eight life’ as somebody described it, and once you’ve been round the figure-eight once, that’s all you’re going to see.

Yep, I went in and back-filled the missing posts on Blogger.

John Adams: The Chairman Dances

Radio 3’s favourite minimalist for a long while. I saw Nixon In China a long time ago, and I don’t recall any special dancing when this was playing.

Nils Frahm: Says

Nils Frahm was born many years after Riley, Glass and Reich popularised Minimalism. It was probably just another influence on him. Says is a wonderful piece of music. Headphones, sit back and let it do its thing.

Steve Reich: Music for Eighteen Musicians

One of Steve Reich’s top five best sellers. For a long time it could only be performed by his own ensemble, because the notation was incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t played in the ensemble. I saw the first performance by another band at the Queen Elizabeth Hall many, many years now. The appetiser was a piece by Terry Fernyhough, which is somewhere else you can miss without missing anything.

Philip Glass: Glassworks

While we’re talking about Minimalism, let’s mention Philip Glass and this album, which everyone who saw Koyaanisatski rushed out and bought the following Saturday.

Terry Riley: In C

Ah, but maybe you have never heard Terry Riley’s In C. My generation did, because John Peel would play it on his Saturday afternoon show, between Principal Edwards Magic Theatre (don’t go there) and Captain Beefheart. In C was the first Minimalist piece to become famous. Every other minimalist owes their bank accounts to In C and Terry Riley.

Simon Ten Holt: Canto Ostinato

Hans Beekhuysen mentioned this in one of his videos and I threw caution to the wind and ordered it from Amazon. It rested a while before I played it, and when I did, I was very pleased. It’s melodic, rhythmic and repeating in the best manner of Minimalism. Give it a listen above and you’ll either run away because you don’t like Minimalism, or you’ll think it’s kinda like Terry Riley, but it lasts longer.