Tuesday 14 June 2011

Lots of interesting deliveries today, even before the new album arrives.

From Matt Seattle, his new edition of the William Dixon pipe MS, now available here, and via eBay this LP whose existence I only half-believed in until I came across it on eBay. Jon Catler in 1984 playing sort-of-Steve-Morse-ish rock on 31-tone equal tempered guitar, with Johnny Reinhard on electric bassoon.  Yup, that’s 31 notes (and frets) to each octave.

When I was a student in York, Johnny R visited the Music Dept to tell us about his Festival of Microtonal Music and played us some of this album, and it’s been stuck somewhere in the back of my mind ever since. The nice thing about the record is that it hardly ever shows off all the 31 possible keys with micro-chromaticism (just occasionally); most of the time it just sounds really well in tune. And no, the bassoon doesn't sound ridiculous.

later
At last! These will be on sale here exclusively very soon ...

later still
Cycled round to Alison's with a box of CDs. Rather than listening back to our own hard-won product, we ended up listening to Cow People instead. It's more complicated harmonically than it lets on at first listen, of course.

Spurred by my success at putting a new handle on my harmonium case yesterday (even if I did take some skin off my fingers as well as mud off the case), I was back in the garden tonight finally fitting the Kryptonite U-lock bracket to the seatpost of my Dahon bike: it's only taken me four years to get round to that one. Work avoidance.