Funnily enough, although the late teens were about guitar music, my university years saw me start to get back into electronica and hip hop. The Orb’s amazing ambient work Adventure’s Beyond the Ultraworld was one of the pieces of music that helped me on that journey. When I started at Loughborough, I was super keen … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 1991
Amidst all of the horror and the madness, the recurring theme of "The will change the world of work forever" keeps popping up on my various timelines. There's no doubt that a number of assumptions about who can and can't work remotely have been crushed in the past few weeks. Although that will be little … Continue reading What comes next? The New Abnormal
This week I have learned: #CoffeeRorschach is probably the silliest thing I've done in a while, but it gives me great amusement.That multiple video thing in Zoom. Can't work out if it's useful or just a pleasing gimmick.This "event" is giving an opportunity to examine sacred cows.It's very easy to slip into not doing any … Continue reading Weeknote 480: Coffee
If there’s one album that perfectly encapsulates the guitar music of Britain’s indie scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic is it. Jangly, cute, poppy but maybe slightly sad. It was music like this that led me into my University days up in Loughborough. https://open.spotify.com/album/6CmJJCI3lOn5XVZ68hP9kY You can see the #51for50 … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 1990
A Simon Heath-inspired trio of Easter bunnies The week in photos:
The final of the late 1980s trilogy is The The’s Mindbomb, Matt Johnson’s fourth album and to my mind his best. Working with Johnny Marr, late of The Smiths, created a wonderful piece of work, sensual and political. Quiet and loud. Structured and abstract. At the end of my first attempt at A Levels, I … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 1989
Imagine that tomorrow your government announced that a new App was to be released. That every citizen over the age of 16 would be obliged to install this app on their phone, and would be duty-bound to carry the phone around with them at all times. Travelling without a phone with the active app install … Continue reading Hard choices
This week I have learned: the power of saying thank you.that we need to start to think about the things we want to keep about "in the office" working, rather than just obsessing about the things we want to change.in the absence of informal communication, diaries are becoming increasingly crammed, making informal communication even harder.that … Continue reading Weeknote 478: business as unusual
The first organisation in which I worked that really did a lot of conference calling was Reuters. I found it really hard some times when a whole group of people, very expensively co-located in plush offices in the centre of London's Canary Wharf, would be forced to sit at desks and individually dial into meetings … Continue reading One-to-one-to-one-to
A work of staggering beauty is how I ended my thoughts about the first album on my late-80s trilogy, and it’s how I view the second. Spirit of Eden is an incredible piece of music, the product of vast amounts of time and effort (and money, if the reports are to be believed). I don’t … Continue reading 51 for 50 – 1988