i’ve been listening to what i guess we’d politely term ‘disperate’ stuff recently - modernist classical um/argh (Ligeti, Boulez, Varese) for the most part ’cause it fills my room like traffic noise - which synchs invisibly with the ongoing cognitive dissonance of writing my play. plus, it was my club last week, so i spent the lead-up scouting for kind-of-dance-musics (DAT Politics, Omnikrom, Ill Ease). it is little wonder, then, that my escapism has come in the form of… something more…

TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

(did you see the single exclamation mark there? = restraint).

anyway, receipt of ARS’ (oh dear) The Bird Of Music wasn’t the first time i’d heard them, but was the first time i’d heard them (stay with me). ok, maybe i’m spending too, too much time alone, obsessing over a vast implacable personal project, commuting a couple hours most weekdays, not socializing in any meaningful way, missing stuff - but as result, my cynicism (only ever persona) was breached with the first synthetic twinkle this record deigned to sprinkle in my general direction.

for me, at least (there are madd haterz in the Plan B Editorial Suite) they manage to go beyond ‘traditional’ (a byword for awful pointlessness) to ‘classic’ - much in the manner of The Organ or Bobby Conn, perhaps.

anyway. that’s what i’ve been listening to on train platforms, empty offices and early hours bedrooms - when i’m requiring a comfort blanket of dainty arrangements, pretty voices tapering to achey high notes, modest climaxes and thin, brittle melodies; careful, serious words: “If you feel compelled towards me / Then it’s just gravity / How can it not be fate? / When we were made this way..?”

aww, sweetness… have a happy valentines, everyone.