Journal
Recent gigs and talks
John Newling at Beam, 19th February. I’ve known renowned artist John for many years and find his ecological sensitivity very interesting. I loved his note about embedding material—additional layers, text, and so on—into the work that most (or all) won’t see, but which is of great importance to the artist, and how it increases the possibility that the results will resonate with people.
E.R. Thorpe and Richard Warren at The Grove, 7th March. Emma’s a fantastic singer songwriter, recently championed by 6 Music. She’s also one third of The Low Drift. Richard’s best known for The Hybrids in the ’90s, his solo work as Echoboy, and for playing bass with Spiritualized in the 2000s. It was a treat to see both play acoustic sets in an intimate space a short walk from home.
Torn Sail at Squire PAC, 26th March. A rare full-band line-up with Huw Costin on lead vocal and acoustic guitar, Henry Claude on guitar and backing vocals, John Thompson on bass, Jim Baron on keys, synth and backing vocals, and Jeff Davenport on drums. It was such a treat to see Huw, Jim, and Brown Fang play together in one exceptionally tight band, and I think everyone in attendance was a long-time supporter. Highlights included a mesmeric Mud People and every moment of Nutshell. E.R. Thorpe was a late addition as support, the night before her new album, Human Love, was released. Brilliant stuff.
As I’ve noted previously, I enjoy attending these local events as they’re an opportunity to hang out with friends—all of us united by the wonderful work several small labels and individuals do for local art and community.
Return to Tokyo, Part 3
Days 11 to 15. We celebrated a retirement, caught beans for good fortune, and spent three Perfect Days ticking off favourite places and stores.
Return to Tokyo, Part 2
Days 6 to 10 brought several trip highlights, including an outstanding café, trippy outdoor bathing in Karuizawa, and a perfect few hours at Sakamoto Library.
Return to Tokyo, Part 1
I’ve split my summary across three posts, and this roundup details the first five days. Highlights included lots of sumo, a studio session, and getting to know Ryōgoku.
Weird switches
Another time-consuming but deeply rewarding home repair. I love my 43-year-old Technics SU-Z15 amplifier far too much to replace it, and I’ve no excuse when there’s a detailed YouTube video of a Turkish chap repairing the very same amp. I came close to despair with the weird as hell input switches, but I bloody did it.
For anyone interested, oxidised contacts were causing crackling when adjusting the volume and input selection, often resulting in intermittent stereo, with one channel frequently dropping out. I had to do a partial breakdown, completely disassemble the switches and faders, remove dirt and oxides with DeoxIT D5 and a razor blade, then lubricate with FaderLube F5. Frustrating at times, but often strangely calming.
Tokyo music haul
I’ve just returned from my third trip to Japan — my first in almost eight years. I have some general notes and photos to post when time allows. In the meantime, here’s the music haul.
I focused on my fave 70s/80s city pop artists and YMO/Sakamoto, but couldn’t resist the 1978 Japan pressing of The Kick Inside, a 1985 Hounds of Love tape, and that Kid A obi variant.
Group 1: Non-Japanese artists, clockwise: Japan, Tin Drum; David Sylvian, Brilliant Trees; Rockin’ On, Radiohead cover; Fleet Foxes, Crack-Up; Kate Bush, Hounds of Love; Kate Bush, The Kick Inside, 1978 Japan pressing; Radiohead, Kid A with obi.
Group 2: City Pop: Toshiki Kadomatsu, Touch & Go; Tatsuro Yamashita, Ride on Time; Mariya Takeuchi, Request; Akiko Yano, Oh Hisse Oh Hisse; Akiko Yano, Ai Ga Nakuchane; Shigeru Suzuki, Band Wagon; Tatsuro Yamashita, Circus Town.
Group 3: Ryuichi Sakamoto, L-R: Thousand Knives of, Async, Opus 4 x LP box set, 2024 Japanese edition; two magazine specials.
Group 4: Yellow Magic Orchestra, L-R: debut album, Japanese edition; Solid State Survivor; Public Pressure.
I visited Coconuts Disk, Ella Records, Flash Disk Ranch, Siam Time, Waltz and Tower Vinyl. I skipped Disk Union and Kankyo this time because I’d already exceeded my packing (and spending) limit.
2025 in music
Here’s my 22nd annual roundup: sixty short reviews across five categories, plus shows, stats and playlists. It gets more ridiculous every year, but I do it to myself, I do.
Small plates and beautiful bowls
For this year’s office party (the two of us going for a posh meal), we returned to London’s Session Arts Club, having loved our lunch there in spring. We consumed lots of sharing plates and fine wine, and Geri looked stunning.
The next morning, we enjoyed the Hyakkō 100+ Makers at Japan House. I’ve long been drawn to Japanese craft aesthetics, and the display showcased many things I particularly love: modest ceramics, simple homeware and urushi lacquerware. I’m as moved by the precise duplication of stacked wooden plates or nested lacquer bowls as I am by an asymmetrical, irregular Bizen ware pot.
Sometimes a humble object is so steeped in skill, patience, place, nature, respect, history, function and unassuming beauty that I get a bit emotional. Often the maker invites the owner to continue the process by adding character through repeated use, and it kills me that I can’t hold these pieces or follow them through time.
Clockwise from top-left: Geri at Session Arts Club, earthenware by Kumagai Yukiharu, lacquerware by Tokeshi Ai and woodwork by Tokeshi Hiroyuki, crockery by Matsumoto Yuki, wooden plates by Tomii Takashi, lacquer nested bowls by Ninjō Ikkei, ceramic pots by Samejima Minami, leather forms by Jōji Yoshimichi.
Akiko Yano & Kosuke Mine
I never expected to see Akiko Yano play live, let alone meet her and get an album signed. In case you don’t know, she’s “the Japanese Kate Bush” who predates Kate Bush. She released her debut in 1976, toured the world with Yellow Magic Orchestra, and married Ryuichi Sakamoto. She’s a legend.
It was our good fortune to discover that the closing night of the London Jazz Festival was happening at The Barbican the day after the Radiohead gig, so we extended our stay in London.
My two fave Akiko Yano studio albums are Ai Ga Nakuchane (recorded in London with the band Japan) and Iroha Ni Kompeito. I also adore her joyous 1979 live album 7 O’Clock in Tokyo, recorded with an all-star band including all three members of YMO and City Pop king Tatsuro Yamashita. It perfectly encapsulates the togetherness of the late 1970s Japanese music scene.
Akiko shuffled her Barbican setlist around, starting with YMO’s Tong Poo and also playing Harusaki Kobeni, Rose Garden, Gohan Ga Dekitayo, Hitotsudake and How Can I Be Sure. I occasionally closed my eyes and listened to her sing and play, and with the auditorium reverb it felt almost like being transported back in time to the 7 O’Clock shows.
Her set was followed by a fierce headline quintet made up of tenor sax legend Kosuke Mine, pianist Fumio Itabashi, drummer Takeo Moriyama, bassist Takashi Sugawa and the alto sax of Miyuki Moriya. We bought the reissue of Kosuke Mine’s First a few years ago, and it was exciting to hear a couple of tracks from that alongside other raucous jazz freakouts. Top night.
Radiohead at the O2
From one of the best seats in the entire arena, I watched my favourite band for the fourth time. Within minutes, I knew this would be my all-time favourite gig.
The line and the stream
...so many things I was taught to rely upon — jobs, industries, institutions, milestones, even seasons — feel like they’re being upended in front of me. When you’re told to expect a certain broad arc to your life, it’s more than a little terrifying when that map’s redrawn as you’re looking at it.
I appreciate pretty much everything Ethan writes and could highlight many posts, but The line and the stream really needs to be embraced, archived and revisited — not least for its determined positivity and quiet hope.
Stars of the Lid Forever
I love Jon Hicks’ new side project, Stars of the Lid Forever. It’s unofficial, but surviving member Adam Wiltzie gave Jon his blessing, and even provided some unseen footage. It’s such a wonderful example of what it means to really love music and how rewarding it is to be a fan.
Mani
It was a shock to learn that Mani had died suddenly. I’ll be forever grateful that my teens aligned with the rise of The Stone Roses in 1988–90, when the future was ours.
Much like Hooky in New Order (the band that had transformed my listening habits a year or two earlier), Mani was no supporting act. Those basslines really cut through, his love of Northern Soul and funk giving the band a groove that brought dance kids to indie nights. Listen to his driving intro to She Bangs The Drums, the sinister underbelly of I Wanna Be Adored, or his famous bassline from I Am The Resurrection. And, of course, there’s him and Reni — the best rhythm section of that generation — propelling all 9 minutes and 53 seconds of Fools Gold.
Here’s a love letter to the band and those times that I wrote back in 2012.
I also saw him play with Primal Scream many times, and much of what matters on their best album from that period, XTRMNTR, is down to him.
The texture of the work
I’ve been drawing comfort from the way established artists will typically vanish for a while and suddenly re-appear with a fully-formed new body of work.
Composing with field recordings
Musician Henry Claude asked me some questions for his field recording research project, and was kind enough to let me archive my detailed responses here.
Number 11
My parents bought their modest semi in 1970, five years into their marriage, for just under £4,000. I moved in three years later as a baby. Through many happy times and several difficult chapters, it was our family home.
Those walls hold a lifetime of memories. My favourite is the three of us enjoying every minute of Live Aid with the windows wide open on that hot July day in 1985. There was always music in the house.
I left home in the ’90s, but home never left me. It was there throughout my adult life — summers back from university, Christmases when single. The year my Dad was dying. Passing groceries over the gate during the pandemic. I loved that whatever the reason, it was always the same house. Not once did staying over mean searching for light switches or opening every cupboard to find a mug.
My Mam passed last spring, and I put the house on sale a few months later, initiating a year-long process that has been expensive and fraught. A weird market, a neighbouring saboteur, frustrating structural surveys, buyer withdrawals, a shrinking sale price, rolling bills and unsympathetic authorities. Oh, and weeds — lots of brutal weeds.
Today, after a tough week clearing the place to meet a short-notice exchange deadline, I handed over the keys. After more than five decades, No. 11 is no longer ours. My heart breaks, but my memories are forever.
How much would you risk?
Guillermo del Toro discussing AI’s “semi-compelling screensavers” and how prompt-based output may never truly move us:
The value of art is not how much it costs and how little effort it requires, it’s how much would you risk to be in its presence? You know, what would you do to be in the presence of Starry Night at Musee d’Orsay? Would you go to Paris? Yes? Would you stand in line for three hours? Yes? And then you’d have five minutes in which you’ll be monumentally moved by that. You know? So how much would people pay for those screensavers? Are they going to make them cry because they lost a son, a mother, because they misspent their youth? Fuck no. It’s not going to happen.
Grand Sumo at the Royal Albert Hall
After a decade as a sumo fan and a year of anticipation for the London event I was almost tearful watching the opening moments of day one on iPlayer. Seeing familiar sumo rituals performed at possibly the most beautiful venue in the world is something else.
Geri’s fully weedled her way into sumo over the last few years and befriended several top-division rikishi. She designed a stunning fabric for veteran Tamawashi, which made quite an impact this summer when numerous wrestlers wore it as yukata (she wore one herself at the recent Tokyo tournament and again yesterday). As soon as she returned from her latest trip, she was off to London, helping some of them see the sights, including a photoshoot at Abbey Road that’s had tens of thousands of views and been shared by the Mayor of London. She also sat ringside on day four.
Unexpected commitments forced me to reduce a planned few days in London to just a few hours — long enough to join Geri for the final day’s action. Our seats were up in the Gods, but what a treat to see sumo at the Royal Albert Hall. The fighting across the five days was exhibition-level at times, but then it was technically a touring event where nobody wants to risk injury (and possible demotion) between the main bashos. None of this mattered because it was still fun and it’s all about the show as a whole. It’s been wonderful having them all here. For all of us who care about this sport and all its brilliant details, it’s been quite a week.
Eno on AI
All my misgivings about AI really are to do with the fact that it’s owned by a group of people that I don’t trust at all. I don’t trust their taste, I don’t trust their morals, and I don’t trust their politics, and that’s a problem for me—that the whole technology is in the hands of the wrong people.
Reflecting on a summer of sound
A funding award enabled me to dedicate three months solely to developing my artistic practice — something I’ve been reflecting on these past few weeks.
