Sunday 22 May 2011

Just back from a very useful visit to the eye hospital. For once it wasn’t sunny when I left (torrential rain), but as they hadn’t dilated my pupils it didn’t really matter anyway: normally I stagger out squinting in pain into the sunshine.

I’ve been half-listening to and enjoying the ‘new’ Kate Bush album over the week, and it’s curious that she’s done the whole thing on analog(ue) tape rather than digitally. I like tape and I like vinyl, but I’m in less of a hurry these days to say that they sound ‘better’ than digital formats: they’re just what I happened to grow up with. When Nye Parry was visiting a few weeks ago he told me about this study showing that people increasingly prefer the sound of sizzly mp3s to ‘good-sounding’ uncompressed audio. It’s what we’ve got used to.

There are some nice offers of concerts coming in, so I’m prioritising the ones that will be the easiest and the least stressful to do. The tortured (or stressed) artist effect is totally over-rated.