My Own Private Record Club* 10 Mar 2015 This is a post listing the records I'm listening to for my YEAR OF ROCKISM**, as outlined here (cut and pasted from Tumblr): I’m going to listen to one album…
Provenance And Use AKA A Vague Critical Resolution 2 Jan 2018 Culture circulates online within algorithm-driven networks: Google, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify, etc. These are also automatic measurement systems. Two particularly valuable things they measure are attribution - the path you took…
The Dan 11 Sep 2017 Walter Becker of Steely Dan died the week before last, and so I spent last week listening to each of their seven LPs, one a day. "The rim of salt…
WAMDUE PROJECT - "King Of My Castle" 23 Dec 2014 A question that haunts a project like Popular is how you review things that have a very specific context – no, more than a context, a specific use – when…
Album-A-Day 2019 #2: Hello Pork Pie Hat 21 Jan 2019 This is a document of my album-a-day listening project. Each entry originally comes out as a tinyletter and subscribers to that get intros and miscellanea as well as the LP…
A Great Philosopher (DR ALBAN - "It's My Life") 8 Jan 2020 (Reached #2, September 1992) In Britain, Alban Uzoma Nwapa was known for two things. This song was one of them. The other was his dental practice - teeth had brought…
KITAN on the KEYS: a bad pianist’s practice diary #4 21 Sep 2014 so yesterday i had my first piano lesson in 37 years (ie my teacher wasn’t born when i had my last one): i went in VERY butterfly-stomachy -- and came…
The Canon Crawl 16 Sep 2015 This is another one of my 'listening exercises' - in a world of enormous musical choice, I find games like these are a good way of structuring what I hear,…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
8 Aug 2008
#426, 23rd September 1978 On one level the ‘plot’ of “Dreadlock Holiday” is hugely important to any judgement of it. On another, not at all, but let’s recap anyway. The narrator is a tourist in Jamaica – he gets mugged for his silver chain and returns to the comfort of his hotel where a woman […]
28 Jul 2009
Here’s something I did for fun yesterday: a graph showing the % of UK #1 hits with female lead vocals, year by year. (Shared male/female leads counted half)*. (Click on it if you want it a bit clearer). The red bars are the percentage of female leads for each year. The line is a trendline […]
1 Jan 2003
101. THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS – ‘My Elastic Eye’: ‘It sounds exactly like an elastic eye!’ said Fred S. I scoffed, but you know what? – it does! Though maybe more a clockwork one – but the wobbly fuzz-bass still sounds like it’s looking, even probing the track for something. Every music-box noise here is luxurious […]
1 Jan 2003
This article was the author’s working notes for his since published book “Adorno: A guide for the perplexed”, available from Waterstones, reputable booksellers, and Amazon Introduction, by Alex Thomson In many ways Adorno exemplifies the image problem faced by critical theory today. Adorno is not a sexy figure. He comes over in his writing as […]
28 Dec 2019
REASON: Welcome one and welcome all, to the FreakyTrigger wing of a KWIZZ (quiz) sat for a hundred and blimey years by Isle of Man schoolkids. (“Please return your answers to the Principal’s Office by Monday 13th January.”) RHYME: Themed sets of 10 questions each — a new one every day (or so). COLLABORATIN’ COMMENT […]
8 Feb 2001
Charlemagne Palestine – Four Manifestations on Six Elements 1. Charlemagne Palestine approaches a piano like a climber approaches a mountain. He does not play the instrument so much as he lets it test him: he starts each performance like an ascent, knowing that somewhere ahead there are the limits of the piano, and also the […]
21 May 2008
I give marks out of 10 to every song – based on whatever criteria you like, here’s your opportunity to say what you’d have given more than 6 to from 1976. Tick as many as you like. And use the comments to discuss the year as a whole, if you like.
15 Aug 2017
Spooky happenings over on Silent London this week, where the Sound Barrier Podcast dabbles in the supernatural, otherworldly and ectoplasmic. Or rather, a pair of meditative films which use death, and the afterlife, to dwell on the nature of existence. But if that feels a little dry, don’t worry there are madmen axing down doors, […]