on returning

No relation.
Well hello. I've finally finished the first draft of my book Infinite Music - I'm pretty pleased with it and its first readers have made noises of approval. No release date as yet, but it won't be before Christmas. In the meantime I'll be swatting away the cobwebs and cranking this old blog back into life, hopefully returning to its former levels of activity and longwindedness. I'm aiming to have a Rouge-classic size post up in the next few weeks.

Until then there's a few things to be pointed out. Firstly I've updated the links on the right-hand side of this page after untold months of neglect. There's a load of great sites in there now, many of them should by rights have been up there at least a year ago. Have a gander.

While up to my neck in infinite music I took an afternoon off to visit London's Handel House museum with John Maus and chat to him on a bench for Upset the Rhythm TV. The resulting video touches on harmony and melody in song-writing, film music and the role of music in society, and contains excerpts from that evening's jaw-dropping show. Try to ignore my habit of incessantly pinching the end of my nose, of which I was shamefully ignorant until seeing the video. Having admitted I have a problem I'm now taking steps.

Paul Morley did several pieces on Dubstep (and the genre formerly known as) a month ago. His video interview with Ikonika is particularly worth your while.

Over at her blog Popular Demand, Anwyn Crawford has asked some very pertinent questions about today's pop.

This amazing little documentary follows Terror Danjah around his ends and includes footage of 'the godfather of grime' working on beats.