In situ

My music begins with me alone in my bedroom. It’s a square room in a high-ceilinged Victorian house. I work on a computer at a pine desk, programming and arranging until my fingers freeze (there’s no heating). When I’m not at the desk I lie on the floor, or I perch in an old cradle full of stuffed animals. I’ve spent a long time trying to find a way to neatly compact all the books and records I keep for inspiration and, occasionally, distraction. I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I will never attain perfect alphabetical order.

Hydrogen Jukebox: This is a Low

Ashy Pet. An Irish phrase originally applied to anyone who back in the peasant days hogged the fireside, refusing to brave the omnipresent rain outside to undertake the necessary spud-hunting, wake-attending, poitin-brewing or whatever it was they did in those days. Gradually, the saying became applied to a particular type of child, the type who didn’t go out with the other children on healthy outdoor pursuits like climbing trees, setting things on fire and tormenting the neighbourhood mentalist, the sort who instead stayed indoors, developed an unhealthy pallor and hung around with their mothers instead of having friends. Being a weakling child of sickly constitution and cowardly disposition, I was one such creature.

Hydrogen Jukebox: Songs from the Films of David Lynch

Nothing sinks the heart as sure as the latest list of best albums ever. The dead weight of expectation and predictability, the same wretched roll-call of names and titles drained of any surprise and vitality they once possessed. “Best Of” lists are where albums go to die, the graveyards of once great songs, your solemn remembrance soiled by the sound of leering music journalists masturbating at the cemetery gates. So instead, we turn to the curios and the cults, the ones that were saved by slipping through the cracks.

Alternative Tuning: Being cool

I live much of my life in denial. Let me explain. I am what you might call ‘old’ and ‘shabby’. Figuratively speaking, I’m not old (I’m in my late thirties), but I frequently feel ‘old’ (and ‘shabby’, like a scrappy tramp) because I gig. When I’m not gigging, I’m in denial (‘I’m as bright and young a thing as any other bright, young thing! Yay!’); when I gig, increasingly, I find myself looking at all of the other (bright, young) people there and thinking: this is no place for me, I should slink out of here like the Gollum I am.

Murder, she wrote: An interview with Rennie Sparks

“That kind of thinking drives me crazy. It shows a complete lack of understanding regarding the purpose and possibilities of art in general. Murder ballads are nothing like real murder. They are rituals to celebrate the fleeting beauty of all things.”

Alternative Tuning: Infinite playlists

Just the other night, me and my good lady sat ourselves down on adjoining couches and watched a check disc – which is a sort of low quality coverless DVD PR types send out in order to curry favour and get things reviewed and all of that – of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

The Art of Seduction (or the Music Anyway)

Private Midnight, published by Overlook Press, is a psychoerotic thriller with lashings of the supernatural. The story has a lot to do with seduction, its pleasures and dangers – and music.

There are many kinds of music that may give you traction for the action with the greatest satisfaction – but when it comes to creating a stylish, mature mood that will appeal to and inspire a woman of genuine taste, it’s worth considering making your own soundtrack for seduction.