Category Archives: Composed Music

Eight Tracks VI

I’m going to try to do monthly blog posts this year. Here’s the first – my annual round-up of the best popular music tracks of the year just ended.

DJ John Peel at his mixing desk. I can assure you I'm not joking about the saxophone thing.
“Now here’s 20 mins of the sound of Hell through the medium of bass saxophone and circular breathing”

You can also check this new list out on Apple Music or Spotify. And, check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for a bonus track.

Continue reading Eight Tracks VI
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Life’s What You Make It

Earlier this week, a friend who makes a brief cameo appearance in my survival memoir, Stroke: A 5% chance of survival, sent me a link to this recent article celebrating the original release of Pavement’s album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Here’s the tl;dr take:

C'mon, man. The kids are really... nice.
I was there, kid. That’s not how it went down.

I mean, I was there. Not James Murphy. Though he probably was, too. I saw Pavement touring their first album, the epochal Slanted and Enchanted, at Edinburgh’s late and legendary venue, The, er, Venue.

That’s quite enough sub-muso-journo dross from me. Get to the human reflection below.
And in the Apoplectic Tiny Letter.

Continue reading Life’s What You Make It
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Moonage Daydream

Long-suffering readers of the blog may recall that a couple of years ago I went through a bit of an obsession with the moon. (1, 2)

Over the Moons
D: None of the above

Yeah. Not Mark Kozelek’s Sun Kil Moon, messiah claimant Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church, or even Ban Ki-moon, eighth Secretary General of the United Nations.

[More, occasionally stroke-related, whimsy here.] Continue reading Moonage Daydream

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Our Christmas Gift to You

Well, nobody found the Birds Fate Ruins Xmas EP during the past week. Which is hardly surprising, given the story of its creation and deletion. Besides, Prof Paul, Mouthsounds Steph and I have made a point of scouring car boot and stoop sales, second-hand record stores, and record fairs for Birds Fate material for more years than I think any of us care to remember.

It's Broken Mirror or nothing, man.
“Get outta my store, losers!”

But you know how it is with your favourite bands – you don’t listen to them for ages, and then you put ’em on and remember why you loved them in the first place. So it was that the Prof went back to his Birds Fate archive after reading last weeks post.

[More whimsy, more material, more secrets at the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.]

Continue reading Our Christmas Gift to You

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Birds Fate Ruins Xmas

I’ve just opened the doors on my advent calendars for the sixth of December. “Tobacco” beard oil, a jasmine green tea light ale, and a piece of chocolate bearing the countenance of an appropriately sceptical elf, since you ask.

I swear, I’m not making this up!

He sees when you don't upcycle
You better shop local/Hipster Santa’s coming to town

[For more festive good cheer, sign up for the Apoplectic newsletter.]

Continue reading Birds Fate Ruins Xmas

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Cairnpapple Hill

Tiny Letter readers will know that Mrs Stroke Bloke and I visited Cairnpapple Hill in central Scotland last weekend. It was an enlightening trip, in light of last week’s post on ’80s movies. Like Withnail and Marwood, we came across a bull in a field. And turning to an obvious omission pointed out by Atletico Marcelo in the comments, Cairnpapple was the site of a little henge.

Beneath the haunted moon/For fear that daybreak might come too soon
Where the little children danced, no doubt.

Continue reading Cairnpapple Hill

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May Day

It’s the Early May Bank Holiday in Scotland today. Ian Wiki confirms that May Day is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival.

The earliest May Day celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times, with the Floralia, festival of Flora.

Flora: the Roman goddess of partially hydrogenated sunflower oil-based spread

In explaining the origins of May Day, Ian comes up with all sort of specifics, but kind of slides over the idea that – as Longsufferingreaderoftheblogpaul wrote in a comment to a particularly off-the-wall post – time is social. Harvests. Day and night. Diurnal clocks. Biorhythms and cycles. All that mushy wetware bio stuff I never learned but is real.

Cornwall in England definitely gets into that side of things:

[On May Day,] Padstow holds its annual Hobby Horse day of festivities, believed to be one of the oldest fertility rites in the UK.

Continue reading May Day

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The Gospel of the Unicerosaur

As (kind of) trailed by yesterday’s post, apoplectic.me is simulcasting with nerdbaitband.com this week, where Longsufferingreaderoftheblogpaul writes…

Hi, Friends of NerdBait!

Our new piece, The Gospel of the Unicerosaur, is our most exciting and ambitious work to date. We are really excited to share it with you.

So, let’s just cut to the chase… Continue reading The Gospel of the Unicerosaur

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Highlander

Mrs Stroke Bloke and I spent this past weekend in the Highlands. More precisely, we were visiting family in Strontian, on the banks of Loch Sunart. One of my cousins asked if I would be writing about our trip in the blog this week. And since she took me to see David Bowie’s Sound and Vision tour stop in Ingliston in 1990, I could hardly say “No.”

“Scotland, stay with us. I mean, do you know how much this coat cost?!”

But first, please note that on Monday, 4 April, I’ll be presenting Nerd Bait’s latest (and maddest) concept EP, The Gospel of Unicerosaurus, as part of Illicit Ink’s show at the Edinburgh International Science Festival!!!

Continue reading Highlander

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