Don’t recall now how I discovered Ruby Colley’s work, but these are marvellous records. Broadly contemporary classical violin, but interpolating field recordings, folk and electronics. Music that wanders and explores.
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
I don’t know why I didn’t pick this up when it was released in June, but I finally gave it a listen the other day. Laura Cannell is a violinist who composes with and in specific sites and places, chiefly in East Anglia. Here, she collaborates with six other women, living in six other places and working in six other genre spaces, to reimagine some of her compositions. To my ear, only one track out of twelve didn’t really work so well for me personally. The others range from fascinating to immense. I’ve always found Cannell’s work somewhat autumnal, so this might have been the right time to discover this collection of voices and strings and electronics. Misty music.
I’ve wanted to see this for some while now, and decided to treat myself. Yet another Second Run issue – I have seven others.
Physical media in your home cannot be randomly deaccessioned from streaming services.
Today I learned the Coen/Washington TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which is a very beautiful film with very interesting composition, is not actually available on physical media.
Bells, drones, chants, unsettling sonics, big occult energy. I’d forgotten I ordered this. Glad I did.
I started reading a sample of this two nights ago and was so hooked that I pressed the button last night and bought it. The translation by Shaun Whiteside reads as smooth as silk. Being an idiot, I like books that explain philosophical schools and tools with easy clarity, and this really does it, on a par with AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE, which I now discover I never put my notes about up here.
TIME OF THE MAGICIANS at Amazon.
A gripping narrative of the intertwined lives of the four philosophers whose ideas reshaped the twentieth century
The year is 1919. Walter Benjamin flees his overbearing father to scrape a living as a critic. Ludwig Wittgenstein, scion of one of Europe’s wealthiest families, signs away his inheritance, seeking spiritual clarity. Martin Heidegger renounces his faith and aligns his fortunes with Husserl’s phenomenological school. Ernst Cassirer sketches a new schema of human culture on a cramped Berlin tram. The stage is set for a great intellectual drama. Over the next decade the lives and thought of this quartet will converge and intertwine, as each gains world-historical significance, between them remaking philosophy.
Time of the Magicians brings to life this miraculous burst of intellectual creativity, unparalleled in philosophy’s history, and with it an entire era, from post-war exuberance to economic crisis and the emergence of National Socialism.
I love Tokarczuk’s work, but this is a doorstep of a thing – even on Kindle, I think it took out 5% of the battery life just downloading the bastard – and I’d been putting it off because this year I’ve been in the mood to read nimbly across shorter works. But autumn is approaching, and I feel now like it’s time to settle in with a few very long books. Also, obviously, Fitzcarraldo can sell me pretty much anything.
It was the second piece that sold me. Here it is, in all its glory.
It’s on Bandcamp, but if you’re in the UK, it’s cheaper to grab it from Amazon. The shipping charge from the US is brutal.
- SPIES, Calder Walton. Found via a review in, I think, TLS.
- BECKETT: ANATOMY OF A LITERARY REVOLUTION, Pascale Casanova. Turned up on a search. I need some crunchy literary theory about problem-solving writers.
- I AM THE BROTHER OF XX, Fleur Jaeggy. Found via a review in, I think, LRB. There was talk of interesting prose choices.
The wonderful people at Zoharum Records occasionally send me a small package of things I’ve never heard of before.
I am especially liking the next one:
I don’t know a lot about jazz, and even less about John Coltrane — I am, however, completely devoted to the music of Alice Coltrane. But Coltrane came up in conversation with a publisher friend a year or so back, and I’ve been meaning to learn more.
COLTRANE: THE STORY OF A SOUND, Ben Ratliff. Seemed like a good place to start. There is a good biography by Cuthbert Simpkins, but I wanted the creative stuff, the thinking and the processes.