Frosty

...another Katie creation! A bit of a weird day today: we've been pottering about as normal - work, sledging, eating pizza, watching 'Sleepy Hollow' - whilst Beck has been making her way to Atlanta, Georgia...USA! I was up early to see her off, sliding down our snowy street in the back of a cab, and I shall be up late to hear that she's arrived alright at the other end. (though, funnily enough, Katie and I are just this minute watching the news telling us how many people are still stuck at Heathrow...) She's there for a few days with work - meetings and stuff, but also time for a few sights (Martin Luther King's birthplace and Coca-Cola's...) She's back on Wednesday, so we're all missing her, but hopefully she'll have a good time, so we're all pretty 'jelly' too...!

It's been a bit of an electronic week, music-wise, as I've worked my way through Oneohtrix Point Never's mammoth 'Rifts' set. All my various bus journey's and foot-struggles up and down the snowy hill to work over the last few days have been soundtracked by the sound of all the bubbling-synths, pan-pipe synths, laser beams and R2D2 noises that Daniel Lapotin (for it is he) has apparently been utilizing for the last few years in his crusade against "timbral fascism", which I take to mean that he believes that particular sounds in and of themselves are not, by definition, naff. I broke myself in gently with a few listens of 2011's remarkable 'Replica' album, which is as concise and focused as 'Rifts' is sprawling; approachable rather than immersive. The latter, which is based around a load of lo-fi samples from eighties TV ad's, was very well received when it came out, particularly on the Net, but I must admit it passed me by first time round. The track 'Replica' itself, with it's haunty, decaying piano motif, is particularly good - it almost plays out like a missing link between Brian Eno and Tim Hecker. Plus Lapotin is a Library geek as well; by which I don't mean some kind of pretentious 'curator of sounds', though he's undoubtedly that too, but according to Wikipedia, he's got a Masters degree in Library and Information Sciences, so he's doubly worthy of our attention. Anyway, this morning I fended off the snow with sunny indiepop from East Village (whose posthumous sole album 'Drop Out', mines a similar vein to early-nineties Teenage Fanclub and is well worth checking out if you like that kind of thing) - and next week I'm planning on a full week of vintage soul, just for the sake of variety...!