It’s been a day of troubleshooting at the chocolate teapot factory, so I’ve had the headphones clamped to my head all day, pumping out the following:

• Leadbelly – King of the Blues (compilation)
• The Sunday Reeds – Drowning In History
• Brahms – Piano Concerto no. 2 (Ashkenazy, Haitink)
• Brahms – Symphony no. 2 (Abbado, Berlin Phil)
• Betty Boo – Boomania (yes, really)
• Doctor & The Medics – Laughing at the Pieces
• Echo & The Bunnymen – What Are You Going To Do With Your Life?
• Echo & The Bunnymen – Siberia
• Sun Ra – We Travel The Spaceways/Bad and Beautiful
• The Sunday Reeds – Drowning in History (again)
• J.C. Bach – Symphonies, op. 9
• The Wedding Present – Bizarro

One of the saddest gigs I ever attended was Doctor & The Medics reinvented as a terrible tribute band. I really like their original material – it’s cod-psychedelic white soul, with nonsense lyrics about kettles, fried eggs, and naughty no-nos – to see The Doctor plus a band of completely new recruits trudging through (and murdering) things like the B52s’ Love Shack was so distressing that we walked out and went to hear a Thin Lizzy tribute band, Dizzy Lizzy, instead. The latter was far more fun.

A whole 5 days since my last post. Shameful. I will rush out into the garden and flagellate myself shortly. However, first of all, it remains for me to document what I’ve been listening to this week. In my defense, the internet has been broken at home and I’ve been too busy at the chocolate teapot factory to remember to make a note of my listening.

In the car, it’s been mostly these three albums:

• The Fall – The Infotainment Scan
• The Sunday Reeds – Drowning in History
• Kronos Quartet with Asha Bhosle – You’ve Stolen My Heart

I’m still enjoying The Sunday Reeds’ album immensely. The guitar feedback on it is absolutely ferocious, which is never a bad thing. And I’m surprised by how often I’m returning to Infotainment; it remains one of my favourite Fall LPs, and definitely one of the group’s stronger LPs (with Levitate) of the 1990s.

Tuesday’s listening was:

• Prokofiev – Romeo & Juliet (Previn)
• Morrissey – Southpaw Grammar
• Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque
• The Fall – Infotainment Scan
• Haydn – Symphony no. 15
• Haydn – Symphony no. 16
• Haydn – Symphony no. 17

On Tuesday night I went to see The Lemonheads at the Irish Centre in Birmingham. I could be misjudging him, but Evan Dando seemed rather (ahem) unfocused. Or, less charitably, off his face. He wasn’t happy with the sound, and stropped off stage in his acoustic solo spot having mumbled something about not being able to hear himself after a second attempt at playing “Favourite Tee”. Now, I don’t mind a decent rock ‘n’ roll strop – but if you’re going to come back on stage, don’t then be surly and ruin the mood. I left with a slightly sour taste in my mouth, which wasn’t helped the following day on listening to the covers album, Varshons, which I picked up at the gig. It is, frankly, completely underwhelming.

Friday’s listening was:

• Honegger – Chamber Concerto for Flute, Cor Anglais & Orchestra
• Schnittke – Praeludium in Memoriam Dmitri Shostakovich
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 14 (Rostropovich)
• Bruckner – Symphony no. 3 (Haitink)
• Carter – Elegy for String Orchestra
• Carter – Cello Sonata

Friday night heralded another trip to hear the CBSO, and a concert of two halves. Elgar’s In The South opened the evening’s festivities, and it started well. I’m no Elgar fan, but it had me paying fairly close attention to begin with. Unfortunately it soon descended into the all-too-familiar turgid Elgar-by-numbers that I loathe so well. I duly drifted off elsewhere and my attention was only recaptured by a couple of rather nice brass and wind chords towards the end of it. The fourth Mozart horn concerto, with our principal horn, Elspeth Dutch, as soloist, was little better. Dutch was obviously having an off-night, and I felt less and less comfortable as I anticipated split notes that arrived with alarming regularity. Conductor Michael Seal and orchestra seemed to be giving the piece a completely perfunctory treatment and the effect was a performance that gave the impression of wanting to get the piece out of the way as quickly as possible.

The second half was much better – Thomas Trotter never disappoints on organ, and a blazing rendition of “the” Widor toccata on the Symphony Hall organ is worth the price of a ticket alone. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve heard it played badly at a wedding: on that instrument, with Trotter at the helm, you may as well be hearing it for the first time. How can music so familiar be so exciting? Sheer volume has something to do with it, I’m sure… Saint-Saens’s third symphony suffered from some over-quick tempi that left the first movement’s stuttering theme a bit of a shambles in places, but once it got going all was well. Saint-Saens 3 is a miracle of sructural engineering, with the Dies Irae woven into every fibre of its being, and perhaps isn’t taken seriously enough due to its status as a bit of a pot-boiler. It has great emotional power, though, and Seal judged the pace of the slow second half of the first movement absolutely beautifully.

Today I’ve been experimenting with my new speakers, and have had the following on:

• Haydn – Symphony no. 60
• The Jesus and Mary Chain – I Hate Rock ‘n’ Roll 12″ promo
• Pink Floyd – The Wall
• Webern – Symphony, op. 21
• Cecilia Bartoli – Maria
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 15 (Järvi/Gothenburg SO)
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 4 (Rostropovich)
• Haydn – String Quartets, op. 33

Phew.

Back to the chocolate teapot factory today, whereupon I discovered that an awful lot of teapot lids had gone astray while I was on holiday. To soothe my poor frayed nerves, I listened to some thoroughly traumatic music:

• Stefan Wolpe – String Quartet
• Earle Brown – String Quartet (1965)
• Cage – String Quartet in Four Parts (1951)
• Leon Kirchner – Quartet no. 3 for String Quartet and Electronic Tape (1967)
• Christian Wolff – Summer (1961)
• George Crumb – Black Angels (1970)
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 13 (Järvi/Gothenburg SO)
• Shostakovich – Symphony no. 15 (Järvi/Gothenburg SO)

Järvi’s Shostakovich 7 is a recording I’ve long admired, and the two I listened to today don’t disappoint either. 13 contrasts fascinatingly with Ashkenazy’s reading – Järvi only takes a couple of minutes more, but manages to sound controlled and taut where Ashkenazy brings about a rushed mess. And although Järvi’s scherzo in the 15th is a little lumpy for my liking, the balance between the percussion instruments at the very end of the finale is one of the best I’ve heard, and utterly electrifying.

In the car, I’ve had on the Sarah Records Air Balloon Road compilation.

“Will Beckett’s March (Reprise)” from the album Mother’s Thinking Bath is receiving an airing on the very marvellous Bob Osborne’s Salford City Radio programme “Reformation” tomorrow night, between 9pm and 10pm.

This week’s playlist, apparently, is comprised mostly of artists associated with Invisible Girl Records – which is where the Mother’s Thinking Bath track comes in, as it was, of course, featured on the Invisible Girl Records compilation A Place In Space.

Salford City Radio is on 94.4FM or you can listen online.

Another day of heavy-duty reading. Today it’s been Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (conclusion), Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, and Jack Kerouac’s Wake Up. However, I got my ears around a fair amount of stuff this evening:

• Public Image Ltd. – Flowers of Romance (again)
• John Tavener - Ex Maria Virgine
• Sunn 0))) – Monoliths and Dimensions
• The Von Bondies – Lack of Communication
• Morton Feldman – Journey to the End of Night (1949)
• Morton Feldman – Between Categories (1969)
• Morton Feldman – Three Clarinets, Cello and Piano (1971)
• Morton Feldman – Four Songs to e.e. cummings (1951)
• Morton Feldman – Four Instruments (1965)
• The Insect Guide – 6ft in Love
• Alex Woolf – Piano Concerto, 1st Mvt.
• Echo & The Bunnymen – Think I Need It Too (new single on MySpace)
• Lily Allen – It’s Not Me, It’s You (yes, really)

And so to bed.

Another day of limited listening – I’ve only had a few things on today, as I’ve been immersed in reading Dashiell Hammett’s The Red Harvest and Walpole’s very silly gothic romance The Castle of Otranto. So, the only sounds to enter my lug-holes today have been:

• Cecilia Bartoli – The Salieri Album
• Tom Johnson – An Hour For Piano (from the Brilliant Classics “Minimal Piano Collection” box, Jeroen Van Veen)
• Public Image Ltd. – The Flowers of Romance – twice. It’s a mysterious and troubling record, this. Very Krautrock-y, but also with an unmistakable Eastern influence on the opening track, in which John Lydon impersonates an Islamic call to prayer accompanied by heavily gated drums and a ticking watch. All very odd, and perhaps not as consistent as it’s predecessor, Metal Box, but an LP I’m tremendously fond of, nevertheless.
• Shostakovich, 24 Preludes & Fugues op.87 (Tatiana Nikolayeva – better than Ashkenazy by a country mile)

Another day’s holiday from the chocolate teapot factory, another day of reading. Hence, not so much listening.

• Rachmaninov – Symphony no. 2 (Edward Downes) – I’m not entirely sure how this ended up on my iPod, especially as I don’t own it on CD. After looking for the Nikolai Lugansky recordings of the concerti and failing to find them I settled for the symphony. I abandoned it as unbearably schmaltzy in the third movement, although I enjoyed the first movement very much. If anyone would care to recommend a particularly stellar recording then I’ll give it another chance.

In the car while shuttling myself between my house and my folks’, and Winterbourne Botanical Gardens:

• The Fall – The Infotainment Scan
• CD86 compilation

This evening I’ve been brutalising the piano with my attempts at taming Carter’s Caténaires (about which more later) and making a mess of pieces I really ought to be able to play without thinking about them such as the Bartók Sonatina and Allegro Barbaro. So, no listening yet tonight either. I’m now off to bed with Cecilia Bartoli’s Salieri album – and am looking forward enormously to her forthcoming Sacrificium release.

A weekend of no updates. Well, some lapses were, I suppose, inevitable. And, of course, I haven’t quite the detailed recollection I’d hope for. But still. Much of the weekend’s listening was the BBC Music Magazine cover disc – Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture and the first piano concerto. I rather like both readings, but contacts on Twitter didn’t agree. In addition there were randomly selected Haydn baryton trios, some Jesus & Mary Chain vinyl, and various other bits and bobs that elude my memory.

Today has been a reading day – Bukowski’s Hollywood devoured in an afternoon – and hence I’ve not had music on for much of the time, but have listened to the Brahms again (I still like it) and the first Public Image Limited album. PiL were always so much more “punk” than the Sex Pistols ever managed to be. Hard to imagine that even “Annalisa” and “Public Image” the group were just gearing up to the majestic contents of Metal Box.

While ironing:

• Gubaidulina – Duo Sonata for two bassoons
• Sun Ra – Cymbals

Today I grabbed a 2CD compilation that I haven’t listened to for years for this morning’s listening on the way to the chocolate teapot factory – The Very Best of Sun Rockabilly, which features gems by the likes of Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, early Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, plus many long-forgotten one-not-quite-hit wonders like Billy Riley & His Little Green Men doing “Flying Saucers Rock ‘n’ Roll”. Marvellous stuff. Almost enough to make you want to grow a quiff.

While at the chocolate teapot factory I listened to:

• The Stooges’ Jukebox – a Mojo magazine giveaway. The opening track on this was The Trashmen’s Surfin’ Bird. I listened to it four times before I could get past it to the rest of the album…
• Echo and the Bunnymen – Siberia
• Inspiral Carpets featuring Mark E. Smith – I Want You (CD single) – “The ‘ole fuckin’, errr, kitchen sink-ah!”
• Morton Feldman – Voices and Instruments (Barton Workshop/Fulkerson) – includes Journey to the End of Night (1941), Between Categories (1969), Intervals (1961), Three Clarinets, Cello and Piano (1971), Four Songs to e.e. cummings (1951), Four Instruments (1965) and The O’Hara Songs (1962). A fantastic disc of some very varied Feldman works.
• Inch featuring Mark E. Smith – Inch (CD single) – priceless phone call recording of conversation between MES and Kier Stewart (producer) at the beginning of this. “What yer best gettin’ ‘im to do, Kier, is fuckin’ gerrim to sit at a fuckin’ table, an’ play the fuckin’ drumbeat.”
• D.O.S.E. featuring Mark E. Smith – Plug Myself In (CD single) – the best of the non-Fall MES 90s collaborations, for my money. I seem to remember D.O.S.E. being described fleetingly as “hardfloor” dance music. Whether that was a real genre or not, I have no idea. It pounds along nicely though. Droplets-ah! Space-bag!

I then had to go and unbung one of the chocolate teapot manufacturing machines, and as a consequence listened to nothing further until I was in the car driving home, for which my chosen sonic accompaniment was, once again, The Infotainment Scan by The Fall. It’s hard to believe that that album is now 16 years old – strangely, for something with such a large amount of programmed electronics, it still sounds remarkably fresh to these ears. And, of course, it hails from a time when Mark E. Smith was still writing lyrics that were laugh-out-loud funny – “Balti and vimto and spangles were always crap/regardless of the look-back bores…”

Just a quick summary, as I’m completing this a day overdue:

The La’s – The La’s
Morton Feldman – Something Wild: Music For Film (Ensemble Recherce on Kairos)
Sibelius 6 (Karajan)
Electrafixion – Electrafixion
Electrafixion – Sister Pain (single – CD2 and CD3 – live, inc Holy Grail)
The Fall – The Infotainment Scan
Morton Feldman – Something Wild: Music For Film (again)
Morton Feldman – Piece for Four Pianos
Edgar Varèse – Amériques (arranged for two pianos)
Morton Feldman – Five Pianos