Category: music
- Current listening ()
BBC stuff: On 6Music: every single Don Letts show, it’s unmissable; quite a few Gideon Coe shows; occasional listens to Nemone, Radcliffe & Maconie, Introducing, Gilles Peterson and Tom Robinson Other BBC radio: Late Junction, Martin Freeman when he’s on, Sounds of the 70s. M’colleagues on West Wilts Radio: Andrew’s Alternative Afternoons Chris Samuel’s Polyphonic […]
- I subscribed to Loud and Quiet and now I’m writing about it ()
Not long after lockdown started, I saw a tweet from Gemma Samways about Loud and Quiet, a music magazine I’d never read before. Pre-pandemic, it relied on advertisers to pay the bills, and gave away the magazine for free. The pandemic took away gigs and festivals and most of the mag’s income, so the editors […]
- Giles on the radio ()
I’ve started doing some very amateurish broadcasting on West Wilts Radio, between 2-4pm on Friday afternoons. The show is mostly music, hopefully an interesting and entertaining mix. There might be occasional bits of chat; I’m mostly making it up as I go along. ☞ Listen live on the web at westwiltsradio.com. WWR is a community radio station […]
- 4AD and floppy hair ()
A label, with love I’m very grateful to Phil Gyford for creating this playlist on Spotify: Facing the other way: the story of 4AD. It’s given me a chance to remember some music I’d forgotten, and one or two haircuts I’d rather not think about at all. I wouldn’t say 4AD defined my music taste during the late […]
- 31 albums ()
For reasons too dull to go into, I spent most of last weekend by myself. Not unhappily. I had chores to do, stuff to deal with, as you do. But I decided to make the most of a mostly empty house by setting myself a challenge: to find out how many albums I could listen […]
- The Wedding Present stop for a tea break ()
(The scene: a recording studio. Members of seminal 80s/90s indie rock band The Wedding Present gather around the drum kit for a cup of tea.) DAVID GEDGE (sipping tea): Ahh. Lovely. CHARLES: Yeah, lovely. DAVID: I should write a song about cups of tea. PATRICK: Yeah. Good idea Dave. DAVID: A song about tea. KATHARINE: […]
- Backstage with Kraftwerk ()
SCENE: A backstage dressing room inside an internationally famous arts venue in a European capital city. The walls are bare brick or raw concrete. A plain white desk sits in the centre, with a single plain white plastic chair. On the desk there is a single small tablet computer, which bleeps occasionally. The four members […]
- How ELO wrote “The diary of Horace Wimp” ()
(The scene: members of 70s prog-rock-pop band Electric Light Orchestra are in the recording studio, putting the final finishing touches to what will, in years to come, be one of their best-known and most-loved songs: The Diary of Horace Wimp. The band are standing still, holding their instruments, as the final bars of the song […]
- The xx go for a pizza ()
The scene: a pizza restaurant. Waiting by the sign that says “Please wait here to be seated” are The xx. They look a bit miserable. WAITRESS: Table for three? THE XX: (Shrug in unison) OLIVER: Maybe. WAITRESS: This way please! (They all sit down and look at menus.) JAMIE (sighing heavily): Nothing could have stopped […]
- John Peel’s record collection – the Spotify playlist ()
Listen to the John Peel record collection playlist. No matter how hooked you are into modern digital music consumption, you must surely feel the magnetic pull of a decent record collection. A proper collection, of actual vinyl records. Yes, such a collection consumes vast cubic volume and requires specially constructed shelving to support its weight, but […]