Things I’ve resolved to do this year (said resolve only 22 days late…)

Run a marathon not competitively, just for myself
I’m going to be getting off to a slow start on this one as I tore a ligament in my knee a fortnight ago. Let’s hope I’m not out of action too long.

See my photography in physical form that’s another way of saying print my stuff out
Already got this underway with the kind help of Steve and Dan. Working title ‘Last Days of the Labyrinth’.

Do more freelance work
I can tick this box too as I’m working on two projects outside work hours already.

Buy my own place
A big one for me, bit of a mental block I confess. Must overcome mental block…

One other
But I’m not going to talk about that here!

My mother died on the 9th of January this year. I scattered her ashes at Easby by the river outside Richmond. I carry her photo with me. I talk to my dad every Sunday on Skype. My 14 year relationship with Isobel came to an end. I feel a little more in control of my own life. I feel more settled in this house and Highams Park, this nowhere place. I don’t know anyone here and that’s okay. I began a new life, not so very different in some respects from my old one and in others very different indeed. I’m still running – I ran 22 km the other week, all the way out to the other side of the M25 and back. After a recent health day at work I’ve begun to eat more healthily – protein supplement to compensate for running, nuts, fruit. My life alternates between a week with Amy and Gabriel and a week of predominant solitariness. At the grand old age of 45 I realise I’m mostly happy being solitary. On my weekends on my own I visit exhibitions (Saturdays) and the next day I get a train to explore somewhere: The City, Thamesmead, Beckton, Purfleet, Tilbury, Sheppey, Folkestone, Margate. Many more places still to visit. Most recently I took the train to Burnham-on-Crouch and marched along the estuary on the Dengie Peninsula for two hours until I faced the North Sea. Then I marched back again. I passed nobody in that time. I take lots of pictures on my trips, I’m passionate about taking photographs. I’ve also begun to pick up and take home little mementos like a strand of seaweed or some leaves. I visited Isobel and the kids in the Lake District for a few days this summer. I stayed in my cousin’s chalet in Chamonix for a week with Amy and Gabriel, we had a lovely time making day trips to Italy (Turin) and Switzerland in our rented car, going for walks, visiting a glacier and watching movies in the evening. In the autumn half term the three of us visited Robin and Vered in Matta, Israel. We visited and swam in the Dead Sea, caught the bus to Jerusalem, drove in Vered’s old car to the Sea of Galilee and Nimrod’s Castle in the Golan Heights. It was fabulous. I’d like to travel more. The flight to Israel used up all my freelance earnings from designing theweaveshed.org. After a lifetime spent not wanting to travel alone, I can imagine doing so now. I want to take more photos. I’d like to begin to make prints or books of some of my pictures, I can’t imagine being able to do so, but maybe in 2012 I’ll make a start. I’m as passionate as ever about music, perhaps more so. I’m not reading as vigorously as I used to, but I did read Thomas Pynchon’s wonderful Against The Day, no mean feat, at least for me. I also read some Slavoj Žižek and Robert Adams’ On Beauty In Photography. I lost interest in Twitter, but still read the web via RSS most days. I’m horrified by the erosion of so many worthwhile things: public housing, the NHS, free speech. The Con-Dem alliance without mandate. I marched with Amy and Gabriel at least once this year in protest. I met up with Lis at her Buddhist temple for the first time in more than 20 years. I corresponded with Inkeri after a gap of more than 25 years. I almost gave up publishing Hard Format after doing a weekly post for four and a half years, but then changed my mind. I just about make ends meet, but I live in a rented house and am crap at stuff like pensions. What happens in 20 years? I became increasingly anxious about my memory which seems to have deteriorated recently, but beginning to eat nuts, seeds, etc is at least helping me to feel less anxious by doing something. I became a web manager. My employer, Central Saint Martins, moved from its premises in Holborn and Charing Cross Road to the Granary at King’s Cross. Before the final departure, over the summer, I took more than 3,000 pictures of Southampton Row (100+ photos of the sinks, 200+ of windows, etc.) and I became deeply immersed in the emptiness of the place, the sense of its history, the dust and the light. I would like to publish a book with Steve of a small selection of the images, but that seems an uphill struggle at the moment. At King’s Cross I discovered Camley Street Natural Park and fell in love with its slender two acres, surrounded by a seemingly endless building site bent upon throwing up more dull architecture in the name of late capitalism. I try to take my camera there at least once a week in my lunch hour. I wonder whether I’ll ever meet someone again or was that it for me? I think of Robin Williamson’s Lament of the Old Man. I wonder whether I’m a little too bent out of shape. I wish I could control the muscle spasms that assail the right side of my face and cause my eye to partially close. I crease my face up to try to make it less obvious. This was the year I saw Gaspar Noe’s Into The Void with Dan and was enthralled. I watched Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev for the first time in a number of years and felt like I’d been knocked down, such was the power of the film. I visited some great exhibitions including Postmodernism at the V&A and Paul Graham and Thomas Struth at The Whitechapel. I went to very few concerts. Amy is busy most weekends with her friends. It’s heaven and hell at the moment, perhaps in large part the impact of the separation. I see almost none of the adults I used to see when I still lived with Isobel. Amy is only half a head shorter than me now. Gabes struggled to make friends in his secondary school and a place has come up in the other school. I hope and pray he’s able to settle in this time. I can increasingly share my pleasure in films with them both: Bladerunner, Brothers Quay, the Bourne Trilogy… They’re really growing up, exploring and establishing themselves more and more. I’ve found some peace now, at least some of the time.

Dear x,

After our conversation the other night, I feel I need to confess that I have once again reworked a photographic series.

This time it was ‘Church’. It may be found here: http://www.eleventhvolume.com/photos/intro/church.html

I have:

• Applied a tint to every image
• Deleted an image
• Adjusted the tonal contrast and range of some of the images
• Changed the dimensions of the crop applied to a number of the images
• Changed the web presentation from a Flash-based to an HTML/Javascript format which is accessible on iOS devices and scales to full-screen better
• Adjusted the order of the images in the slideshow
• Changed the colour of the slideshow background.

I await your decision as to the form of the penance you feel necessary to administer.

Yours, y.

As I wrote in my previous post covering 2008′s releases, music increasingly has to strive – heroically or otherwise – against its own past to be heard. In light of this and my ramblings down music’s assorted thoroughfares and byways, the following is a list of the music that’s meant most to me in 2008. For quite a bit of the time it’s, perhaps inevitably, been of greater significance than the current year’s crop.

The Drift by Scott Walker was my soundtrack to 2008. It finally made sense to me after 20 or so partial listenings in 2007. In all seriousness I now view it as the greatest work of the new millenium, riven as it is with the personal and political. Tilt, Climate of Hunter, the Pola X soundtrack and the rare Scott rarities (the Nite Flights quartet, the Ute Lemper songs and Darkness) kept it frequent company.

Charley Patton‘s delta blues haunted me, initially in the budget set then with renewed strength when I caved in and paid the bargain price of £40 for the unutterably great Revenant box, Screamin’ and Hollerin’ The Blues, soon to be featured on Hard Format.

Harry Smith‘s Anthology of American Folk Music was an autumnal favourite, its sense of voices heard through time, their wealth of testimonial resonance a source of wonder to me. I’m saving up the pennies for Victrola Favourites and Goodbye Babylon too…

2008 was the year that I finally began to listen to Miles Davis again after a hiatus of something like four or five years. Before that I’d listened mostly to his ’70s recordings (bootlegs and official releases) intensively to the point of exhaustion. Now I find myself listening mainly to the best bits of the Jack Johnson and On The Corner Complete Sessions, i.e. the first three CDs of each. Also, the ’60s Second Great Quintet, the studio recordings and the Live At The Plugged Nickel and the Miles and Gil Evans Complete Columbia Studio Recordings.

I rediscovered snd to my great pleasure. I’d bought makesnd cassette on its release, but not followed its successors, Stdio, the brilliantly entitled Tender Love and this year’s vinyl only 4, 5, 6.

I finally got round to listening to Disco Inferno whose Lost In Fog I’d meant to follow up on for years. I’m glad I did, their blizzard/chaos/melody/(un)familiar approach is strikingly resonant.

Mark Hollis‘ one and only solo album I’d heard occasionally before, but this year it struck an almost silent, but deeply felt chord.

I stopped listening to Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark/OMD at Architecture and Morality. This year I discovered Dazzle Ships. Precursor to so much, including Dubstep’s hidden echoes, it’s a hugely ambitious and sadly overlooked work.

Other discoveries this year: Schubert’s Winterreise, .O.Rang, The Conet Project, Sly and Robbie’s Stripped to the Bone, Morton Feldman, Terje Isungset’s ice music, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Morgan Packard.

Perennials: Kraftwerk of course, Rhythm & Sound, múm, King Tubby, Jon Hassell

Musically 2008 didn’t feel like one of the best. With so much amazing music from the past to compete with, the present has a lot to do just to keep up.

End of year perspectives seem to popping out of the woodwork, who am I to blow against the wind? Few of them, however, share much in common with my own preferences. Almost no-one seems to have valued Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald’s Recomposed which is strikingly ambitious in scope and impressively realised. Von Oswald’s involvement in Francesco Tristano’s Auricle / Bio /On and his live trio seem to point to fascinating new paths ahead for him (and us). Let’s hope he makes a full recovery from the stroke he suffered a couple of months ago. Likewise, I’ve seen little mention of Arve Henriksen’s Cartography, perhaps because it was released so recently – shame his move to ECM hasn’t resulted in much sign of improved promotion. Portishead’s been written about enough elsewhere.

I’ve departed from the format of the past couple of years by breaking releases up into albums I believe are in some way significant and that I’ll still value in years to come and records I’ve listened to a lot, but either aren’t groundbreaking or that aren’t entirely my taste (valuable). The other categories are surely self-explanatory…

If I’ve missed anything, let me know!

Enduring

• Arve Henriksen – Cartography
• Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald – Recomposed
• Portishead – Third

Well worth hearing

• Alva Noto – Unitxt {techno electronica with attitude, clear linkage to Kraftwerk pleasurably discernible)
• Autechre – Quaristice {less an advance than a fictional retrospective, but enjoyable nonetheless}
• Benge – 20 Systems {soundtracking machines approaches the sublime}
• Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago {lots of coverage for this one elsewhere}
• Box – Studio 1 {Bjorkenheim and co thrash, crash and pulverise}
• Bruno Pronsato – Why Can’t We Be Like Us {sensuous minimalism awash with sighs and honed beats)
• Byetone – Death of a Typographer {superior electronica}
• Fennesz – Black Sea {stormy, beautiful pulchritude}
• Gas – Nah und Fern {feeling the edges of it, I’m yet to inhabit its centre, joke is of course there isn’t one}
• Headhunter – Nomad {excellent dubstep/Berlin techno hybrid}
• Johann Johannsonn – Fordlandia {Icelandic string-drenched loveliness}
• Morgan Geist – Double Night Time {delightful disco pop}
• Murcof – The Versailles Sessions {Murcof turns to Last Year In Marienbad}
• Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Raising Sand {gorgeous Lanois-esque roots dream bought for Is and enjoyed by me a lot}
• Scorch Trio – Brolt {scorched earth}
• Shed – Shedding The Past {brilliant minimal with more than a nod to Chain Reaction heritage}
• Skyphone – Avellanada {welcome second episode of Danish loveliness, I suspect overlooked by too many people}
• snd – 4, 5, 6 {snd jettison ukg, retain basslessness}
• Steinski – What Does It All Mean?
• Terje Isungset – Ice Concerts {sublime warmth from ice}
• Thomas Brinkmann – When Horses Die… {fascinating vocal electronica project}

Fun

• Beck – Modern Guilt
• Flight of the Conchords
• Jazzanova – Of All The Things
• LindstrØm – Where You Go I Go Too

Disappointing

• 2562 – Aerial
• Dusk + Blackdown – Margins Music
• The Bug – London Zoo
• Ø – Oleva
• Ryoji Ikeda – Test Pattern

Nothing new

• Kraftwerk, David Sylvian, Jon Hassell, not enough from T++ (where’s the Chain Reaction-style aggregate CD?)

Wish I could hear it, but not for £67.99…

• Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto w/ Ensemble Modern – UTP (apparently they’re getting new distribution so this’ll be available at a more affordable price next year)

Need to hear, but haven’t yet

• The Caretaker, Philip Jeck/Sand, Soundboy’s Gravestone Gets Desecrated By Vandals, Janek Schaefer/Extended Play, Eivind Opsvik, Dubstep Allstars vol.6

Coming next

• Looking back at 2008, Part The Second, being music released before the year in question, but favoured these past 12 months

Other noteworthy lists

• Mapsadaisical, Milkfactory, Boomkat

Previous years

• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003

My daughter is 10 years old already. Last night I attended her last evening as a Brownie (Is stayed in bed unwell). Next week she’ll be starting Guides. The troop is small, no more than 8 or so little girls. They performed to earn their entertainers badges. Sweet, corny jokes were recited from children’s annuals and parents dutifully groaned, the Sky Boat Song was tapped out on a little keyboard and we clapped and my daughter… my daughter sang Neon Lights a capella and her dad was so utterly, utterly touched.

Forgot to tell you also: my boy: he asked me what could he write in his News so I do long description of what we did yesterday at seaside so when I finish long description he say: ‘mum, it has to be INTERESTING’. bless. I suppose.

Yes I thought of you as I drove past that main building. Amy ridiculously sweet with that awful electronic journal thing that doesn’t work. She has a cold poor love so please go easy on her. Jim bob also sweet – standing in line for school, aphid lands on his tee shirt – he’s very pleased with it – Cosmo is trying to blow it off him – Jim bob very cross and moving away to avoid Cosmo’s blowings as Jim bob likes aphid on t shirt. Bless. Jim bob told off by mum (in line for school) for strange gyration he does when parts of his body are doing god knows what. hmm. really not sure how to approach this one. I wonder whether it’s involuntary to some degree – some kind of nervous/excited reaction to things? (am wondering this because he didn’t seem to have done anything with his hands at the time…and the gyration coincided with cosmo and michael arriving at school…?

Lord, lord. Do not doze off to the latest Scott Walker. I did and then kept being woken up by sudden stabs of sound that disintegrated back into seemingly endless nightmare landscapes. It was all too like those bad dreams when you try to wake yourself up, but keep falling back asleep. It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon and I was pretty tired – on impulse I put on The Drift. Why did I have that impulse, why did I act upon it? The only other comparable experience that springs to mind was many years ago when, in the middle of a rather strong trip, I decided to put on my favourite Ligeti CD. It was the Wergo one with all the biggies, Lux Aeterna, Atmospheres, etc. Never has an hour passed so slowly. I cowered under a duvet, but wasn’t able to reach the CD player to turn it off, or escape from the room. I just lay under that security blanket (blue on the underside, a washed-out ’70s red and purple flower pattern on top) until it was over, at which point the world brightened up no end. To be honest, yesterday’s Scott Walker experience wasn’t as powerful as that, but it wasn’t exactly a picnic either…

The above image is from Ligeti’s website where there are some other fine pictures of the man.

Until I can find the time to fix the **()&)!@!@ commenting, please email any responses to this or future posts to me: enquiries + the a with a circle round it + eleventhvolume + full stop + com. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks.