God bless WFMU. Seriously. Not only did the guy just play one of the most completely insane-sounding Tom Ze tracks I’ve heard (’Pagode-enredo dos Temp do Medo’?),apparently a new one, he’s right now playing the first track off Scott Walker’s new album, which I have just spent the last few days wrestling with, trying to write something that does it some kind of justice.

Finally sent Daniel the review today - too long, but look, if you can’t break a word limit for Scott, well - and got the fear that I’d written about it so hard that it wasn’t as good as I’d made it out to be, or that I’d written more passionately than I’d listened, which happens. But then the WFMU guy played the first track, ‘Cossacks Are’, and right from the first notes I could feel myself sitting up straighter, stopping what I was typing, zoning into listener mode. I knew it was something petrified and amazing, like yesterday when I was writing the review and pausing to look into the garden and the most enormous crow was perched on the fence-post against the grey empty sky and I felt good and scared and like everything was filtered through a dark lens.