http://www.sumitsays.com/public/downloads/singstar/singstar_files/B000EOW0JQ.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Well, I was wondering where the Singstar series was going to go next (having done singalong pop, rock and retro) but I certainly wasn't expecting this. Quite a line-up: Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Cylob, Drexciya, Funkstörung, Gescom, Global Communication, Hecker, John Cage, Kid606, LFO, Mouse On Mars, Merzbow, µ-Ziq, Nightmares On Wax, Orbital, Plaid, Shitmat, Squarepusher, The Black Dog, Venetian Snares …

For reasons that don't really bear close examination right now I'm listening to Battle Hymns, the 1982 debut of heavyweight cheesemetal champions Manowar. Which is every bit as hilariously awful as you might expect. What you might not expect, however, is to find that their seminal track Dark Avenger includes narration by no less than … Orson Welles:

Orson: He was met at the gate of hades
By the guardian of the lost souls,
The keeper of the unavenged
And he did say to him:
Let you not pass abandon return to the world from once you…

one-two, one-two, can you hear me?

Okay, I've been a bad musicblogger again. See, I went on holiday, then when I got back I was busy with other things, then I went on holiday again, then I was busy with other things again.

You're not buying this, are you?

Well, I've been waiting for a chance to polish up the stack of unfinished posts I've accumulated over the past couple of months, but it's never going to happen. So apart from the sleevenotes for my past four mixtapes, I'm going to abandon them and start over.

Stay tuned …

Alan Thomas
Hindsight for SPNM, 18 April 2006
Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, London

Setlist:

Elliott Carter: Changes
Bryn Harrison: Return
Donald Bousted: Solo for Elisabeth
Giacinto Scelsi: Ko-Tha (movement II)
Jerry Wigens: still
Ed Bennett: My Broken Guitar
Alan Thomas: Etude 5 - Indigo Wave Box
Alan Thomas: Etude 2 - Kleptomaniac

Déjà vu: another fabulous venue, another event at the outskirts of my musical taste, another chance meeting with an acquaintance. Snapshot: experimental guitar works, part of a showcase curated by Rolf Hind for the Society for the Promotion of New Music. Ambience: a…

From this month's Intersection:

A few years ago, celebrity architect Frank Gehry announced he was going to apply his architectural fireworks to the common car. This much-feted collaboration between General Motors … Gehry, and the architect's old friend William Mitchell - head of the MIT Media Lab's Smart Cities group - sounded intriguing, if a bit odd. For one, there are no automotive engineers involved. Instead, the motley group behind the concept car includes urban designers, engineers, computer scientists, a lawyer and a doctor. There's even a rock star - U2's The Edge has made cameo appearances at the MIT…

the richard alston dance company
1 April 2006
sadlers wells, london

Volumina: This was basically what I'd come to see. I remember discovering Ligeti sometime in - what? the mid-80s? and the idea that anyone I'd ever see anyone dancing to his music (at Sadler's Wells, no less) would have seemed ridiculous. In the event the music was impressive but the dance … rather inaccessible to someone of my level of (in)experience. The outfits were Star Trek-meets-Pierre-Cardin; the movements dynamic and dramatic but hard for me to correlate with the music. They looked convincingly overwhelmed by the scale of…

Andrew Shoben for Greyworld
Dan Flavin: A Retrospective
1 April 2006
Hayward Gallery, London

I'm never sure about music at art exhibitions. On the one hand, I enjoy soundtracking my life, particularly when it there's a significant probability of mood enhancement - as there is at many art exhibits. But the flipside is that you might enhance your mood in the "wrong" way, or at least fail to give the art proper attention. (Maybe all this is just too precious. Or maybe the culture of hushed art appreciation is.)

So it's nice when the work's done for you - as…

It would seem that Mah Na Mah Nah was originally part of the soundtrack to a Swedish "documentary" of the sort that used to be watched in private cinemas by men wearing raincoats. Who knew? * (Are there pointless remixes available, I hear you ask? Why, of course!)

*I suspect the answer may be "everyone but me".

I just chipped in $20 towards the International Chiptunes Resistance Tour, featuring Bitshifter and Nullsleep. (They're going round the world, reaching London in May). I don't know if that makes me an early adopter or a complete tool, but it seems like a worthwhile cause (assuming you like chiptunes): 8bitpeoples have been giving away music for years and it's good to give something back. But it looks like they're stalled at just over two grand (the target is three). I'm not sure my faith in human nature will survive if they don't make their target.

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This month's title is a description of icebergs from a documentary about penguins, but I thought it sounded like something a rapper might say to describe his flow. All of the artwork is based on photographs I've taken. The front cover is Death Valley, taken in July 2002; the back cover was taken near the Uffington White Horse in 2004. The booklet interior was taken at Jaen Castle in Andalucia in December 2005. The tray liner was taken from a hot-air balloon over Wiltshire in 2002; the disc is the interior of a crop circle near Avebury in summer…