As the year draws to a close it’s common to take stock. Best albums, films, gigs, personal experiences. For me it’s been an important year. Strictly speaking I moved to London and started my current job in Autumn 2009 but this has been my first full year in the capital. It seems I’ve spent about £1000 on gigs, you can see a partial list on Songkick. Highlights have included Ben Frost setting fire to the equipment at The Luminaire, Carla Bozulich lying on top of me during a set at Cafe Oto, the reactivation of Swans, Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, Richard Youngs, Oneohtrix Point Never, The Sun Ra Arkestra, Throbbing Gristle, Cafe Oto’s Japanese New Music Festival and a huge number of improv sets involving the likes of John Edwards, Evan Parker, Tony Marsh and Chris Corsano to name a few. On top of that I’ve eaten at a bunch of awesome restaurants visited numerous galleries, exhibitions, pubs and a bunch of other stuff I went on about in a previous post.
At the start of the year I bought a record player and have been doing my best to keep up with what’s available from Volcanic Tongue. Some of my favourites have been Call Back The Giants, Autre Ne Vuet, Ducktails – Landscapes, Forest Swords – Dagger Paths, Vulcan - Meet Your Ghost, Tashi Wada - Alignment, Flower-Corsano Duo - You’ll Never Work In This Town Again, Part Wild Horses – Blew in the Face, MV & EE – Liberty Rose, Bill Orcutt – Way Down South, a few Heather Leigh Murray releases and a couple of awesome Richard Youngs LPs.
Not everything great was new though. I got acquainted with Kate Bush by listening to Hounds of Love on loop for a few weeks. London punk poet Patrik Fitzgerald was brought to my attention and Grey Echoes became one of my favourite tracks. On top of that I’ve been listening to pretty much every album mentioned as I read through Rob Young’s excellent history of British folk: Electric Eden. Some awesome reissues I’ve picked up include: Doug Snyder & Bob Thompson - Daily Dance, Vertical Slit - Slit And Pre-Slit, The Dead C - Clyma Est Mort/Tentative Power, Lula Côrtes - Rosa De Sangue, Nihonjin – Far Out, Catherine Christer Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord and Crass – The Feeding of the 5000. Simply put I’ve listened to so much awesome new music this year I can’t even remember it all! That’s not even counting films. I signed up to LoveFilm and watched a bunch of them too, old and new. To top it all off The Wire will publish their end of year list next month and as usual I won’t have heard half of it and will spend the next month or two catching up.
On the down side I spent a little too much money on gadgets and didn’t get the holiday to Tokyo I dream about. However I now have a shiny 13-inch Macbook Air which I love, a Kindle and my prized Nikon D90. Unfortunately I failed to become a great photographer in my first year but I did get contacted by an agent asking to hire me and a venue wanting to use some photos in their press-pack so I must be doing OK. My personal life hasn’t exactly gone to plan either but hopefully I’ll survive.
Now I need to find a new place to live in London before I head back to Glasgow for Christmas. Wish me luck!
