I struggle with my reading, my cards are bigger than life

Hello you lovely lot, I hope you’re finding moments of magic in your days even as time grinds inexorably on. That’s certainly been the pattern for me: lots of relentlessly exhausting life stuff and delays with big projects - but also plenty of shining reminders of why I do all this. In particular had some amazing DJ sets this summer, including getting the good people of Christchurch up on their tables mid afternoon to classic house, another fantastic afternoon session in Bristol for Balearic Burger “B2B” with the great Charlie Stoic throwing Julian Cope and mutant Bhangra into the mix, three downright mystical hours of ambient takeover at We Out Here and so on… And just last week a truly vibey live conversation about soundsystem, space, bass, place, community and all the other things that matter with a brilliant collection of people at KEF’s swishy new showroom. When you live in your head (and your shed) as much as I do, those moments of getting in amongst it really, really stand out!

So there’s only one new Soft Music for Hard Times this time round. It’s quite a distinctive one, much more instrumentally-leaning than usual, very focused on a sophisticated modern jazz kind of zone with a few disco-balearic twists, it definitely captures a mood. But if you want something with a little more shadow, my first show for the ROVR app is now live, with the second coming in a week or so. These lean more towards the abstract / experimental / ambient style of my previous Worldwide FM shows, and I think you’ll like them.

gum.mp3 is a new discovery to me. He’s a North Carolina producer, multimedia artist and more who does something I’m always fascinated by: treats previous areas of electronic music exploration as unfinished business - so the jungle, garage, IDM etc that his rhythms touch on don’t come over as retro in the least. There are strong Underground Resistance echoes here, and not just because of the red planet obsession. And the track “Colors” in particular really caught me unawares, it reinvents airborne dancefloor euphoria in a very special way.

“AI” is noising up everything and it should just not. Most of it isn’t AI, it’s just the society of the spectacle writ large. Here’s a couple of great piece on it. First up, a fantastic reminder that language isn’t what the “large language models” think it is: something that should be obvious to anyone who, y’know, talks or writes or interacts with humans, but obviously isn’t to the engineers and investors who make decisions about our lives every day. And second, a gleeful takedown of Open AI’s business model by Ed Zitron, whose blog is pretty much required reading. Again, it should be obvious to anyone with eyes that Sam Altman is a grifter, but again those same people can’t or won’t see it until it’s too late.

Here’s some very non-AI music: it’s made with hands-on manipulation of reels of decaying tape, and it’s also very beautiful.

Don’t know where we’d got to with BassMidsTopsandtheRest when we last spoke, but I hope you’re keeping up… the last few, with Scouse art wizard Mark Leckey, synth-dub Zelig David Harrow, and Brixton soundsystem culture avatar IRAH, are all keeping the standards up, and have all been a hoot to do. Coming up next week is the gloriously cosmic Kavus Torabi, so make sure you’re signed up! (As ever if you’re on low income / in education / an educator, just shout, happy to add freebie subscriptions no questions asked)

I can’t remember why I went searching for versions of Terry Riley’s In C performed electronically, but my god this thread didn’t let me down. This stuff is proper medicinal.

I’m not usually a fan of the wordiness of middle-to-upmarket American journalism. It all too often gets a bit vainglorious, a bit over-egged sports commentator, a bit wanky. But I do make an exception for Talia Lavin, who somehow seems to manage to inject the literary into her factual writing and make it exciting and good. Here’s a great example from her blog, which 1) reminds us that nobody knows nuffink, and 2) has this fantastic breakdown of the intersecting forces in mainstream US politics:

“On the one side is a destructive force whose only motives are avarice and hate, in equal measure, whose actions are predictable because greed and hate are predictable, because stripping the country for parts in real time was always what Trump and his cronies were going to do. (This is a man whose associates automatically become cronies, even if they weren’t before they were in his orbit; he begets cronyism, it’s like a contagious disease). It’s been over nine years since Donald Trump descended down that gilded escalator and changed the way American politics works—or at least scraped any leftover sheen of decorum off it, and let the blood and guts hang low.

“And up against that was a force, not in direct opposition to the avarice and the hate, but rather a force for decorum, for manners, for sclerotic incrementalism, for dying in office rather than giving it up—stasis personified. I realize this kind of disgruntlement with the Democratic party won’t do me any favors with much of my audience, and there have been real policy gains over the last four years, but they have been buried in a slurry of faux-outrage and mealy-mouthed politesse that has acted as an affront to anyone looking around at the gaping wounds in this country and seeking, not even full redress, but acknowledgement thereof.”

As well as soft music, sometimes the brain needs a thorough scouring. And mine has more than ever this year, so I’ve been listening to a lot of very vicious sounds, whether it’s older (Slayer, Bad Brains have been favourites) or new. I’ve especially enjoyed this album of a Chinese guy pretending to be ancient Greeks and making monstrous prog-thrash with saxophones. And even more, this record of modern microtonal composition in the black mental style, which is aggressively psychotropic, but will really manipulate some of the knots out of your nervous system. Oh yes indeed I bought the clear screen printed vinyl.

Amapiano continues to be a glorious intervention in the dance music ecosystem, I’ve got an article coming up about it soon but in the meantime this DJ set by Nigerian multi-genre star Dope Ceasar should keep you going. Her technique is ridiculous - the quick cuts are almost counter-intuitive given the slow-burn nature of amapiano tracks, but it really works.

This performance by Pentangle has been doing the rounds the last couple of weeks and rightly so, it’s pretty much as good as it gets. If you only have a couple of minutes jump to “Wedding Dress” and just marvel at that drum intro.

This clip about internet shopping from 1997 has everything: a terrifyingly Kevin Spacey-ish Bezos, graphics and presentation style that Chris Morris would feed off for years, wildly wrong visions of the future, and cakes.

One of my great regrets is never seeing Prince in his imperial phase. I mean, every phase was an imperial phase by most people’s standards, and I did get to see him in the 2000s but holy shit, 1990 Prince was just beyond human understanding in his brilliance. Also, Batman was a stupidly underrated album, and the section of “Batdance” and “Partyman” in this Tokyo concert just makes me laugh with glee. Oh and if you never saw my very long and personal thread about “Starfish & Coffee”, it’s here.

Here’s a fantastic documentary about space psychology. I had it in an open tab meaning to watch for ages, and I’m glad I finally got round to it. It’s an hour long, and I highly recommend making time to watch without distraction because it’s a kind of meditation on the self and human connection as much as it’s about it’s purported topic of Mars missions…

Marla Kether is just the coolest of the cool. You might have seen her on the Glastonbury broadcasts playing bass for Little Simz, but her own music is just glorious - she’s a really good DJ as I saw at We Out Here last month, and an amazing producer and bandleader, and this live performance is just as boho and groovy as it it possible to be.

And finally - and talking of human connection and loneliness - you will know by now I can barely go a newsletter without sharing new James Baldwin stuff, but this documentary about his “lost” archives and the Yorkshirewoman who oddly found herself responsible for them is a heartbreaking bit of radio that touches on all kinds of things about how history is made up from individuals’ memories, friendships, losses and loves. And this addition to the copious bits about Baldwin in Maria Popova’s Marginalian site is another sterling reminder of the incisiveness of his writing. “Where all human connections are distrusted, the human being is very quickly lost.” All politics aside, the more I read, the more puzzled I am that all the way through my English Literature BA and a Creative and Life Writing MA, no tutor or syllabus pushed his work as essential. Just as a technician of and instructor in language, he was the best.

So that’s what I’ve been doing in my holidays. Thanks for listening / connecting / being part of it… as ever, your feedback is always appreciated, and even more so on the other Substack, so do remember to sign up if you haven’t! Much love.