Hello You. A very hasty round-up written in the dying moments of 2024. Truth be told a LOT has ben going on and I should probably be having a stab at something a bit more substantial, but I’m having to type this squeezed onto a desk that barely has room to contain my laptop, one of Mum’s potplants, a boombox playing Indonesian Noise Music and the oversize keyboard I’ve had to use ever since the letter ‘N’ on my macbook stopped working. Tidy up? I think you know me better than that!
First things first, I am absolutely chuffed to bits to have the latest Howlround LP included in Electronic Sound Magazine’s Albums of the Year list yet again! And this just happens to coincide with the fact that you can currently pick up a copy of A Loop Where Time Becomes on attractive purple vinyl for HALF PRICE while stocks last due to the current Castles In Space end of year FLASH SALE! Turns out they have so much coming out in 2025 that they urgently need the warehouse space, so click here to snag yourself a bargain!
Thanks once again to the team at Electonic Sound for their support – always a stimulating read and this month featuring Jean Michel Jarre, the man I always think of as my very VERY first exposure to the wonderful world of strange and beautiful sounds. Comes with a tasty 7” too!
Speaking of a Year In Review, the good folk at Touch Music recently asked me to resurrect their long-running Touch Radio series with a round-up of my favourite Touch-releated tracks from 2024. The resulting hour long mix is the first stirings on these pages since 2021, and takes its place alongside an archive of 150+ episodes hosted by the great and the good of the experimental community and stretching back well over a decade – so get stuck in!
As mentioned earlier, I really should spend a bit more time writing a review of a year that has seen more than its fair share of audio adventures, from a spectacular Berlin light-show to a cave far beneath Margate, to an appearance on East Midlands Tonight (I think that’s what it’s called?!), a smoky room in a ruined mansion, a festival tent in Wiltshire, friendly welcomes in Barrow in Furness, Hastings, Coventry plus a triumphant Howling Homecoming at Cafe Oto. Even ended up in Normandy having an absolute stone-cold legend of acousmatic music buy me dinner! And that’s just off the top of my head. A better blog post would have provided photographic evidence, but this desk is driving me mad and I think wine might be opening downstairs, plus I’ve got to take the dog out. Cute dog pictures I CAN do!
Thank you so much to the many friends, co-conspirators and fellow nerds who have come along for the ride once again this year. Wishing you all a Happy New Year and here’s to more Sonic Adventuring in 2025!
Robin The Fog 