Here's a digest of recent music added to my collection.Black Pus - This came across my radar via the music site The Quietus which featured a track (1000 Years) from an upcoming album.[soundcloud id='70726224' color='#ff7700']There area  few Black Pus albums available on Bandcamp - I bought Pus Mortem. I kind of like the stripped down clatter of Black Pus and find it unaccountably invigorating.[bandcamp album=408643617 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=fa1520 size=grande]Cyclopean is a collaboration that includes a couple of founder members of Can. They have a four track EP out on Mute. You can get flac downloads, but not I think from the Mute shop. It's pretty straightforward electronica, but nonetheless enjoyable for that. Here's an edit from one of the four tracks on the EP.[soundcloud id='77259492' color='#ff7700']Fire! Orchestra - Exit! Slightly unusually for me, I added a free jazz album this month - Fire! Orchestra's album of late 2012, Fire! I've kind of been inveigled into Gustafsson sax jazz via Neneh Cherry and The Thing - see their cover of Suicide's Dream Baby Dream. Despite being live, this is quite laid back a lot of the time. Two tracks - here's an edit of one of them[soundcloud id='76288623' color='#ff7700']Merzbow Pandi Gustafsson Cuts A rather noiser outing for Gustafsson, this time in the company of Hungarian drummer Pandi and Japanese noise artist Merzbow. Bought as flac download. Here's a snippet:[soundcloud id='72072638' color='#ff7700']This I rather like. There's a general thread in my listening these days, to include sound textures as much as music, hence my liking for both the introspective analogue bleeps and gurgles of Pan Sonic and wilder noise.My Bloody Valentine mbv.  This caused something of an interweb sensation when released - the website crashed due to all the hits. I'm not a major MBV fan, but I bought it in part to see what the fuss was all about. To be honest, I wouldn't rave about it ... yet, but it's definitely growing on me. It's really a bit of an old-fashioned shoegaze type album, and I'd have to leave it to the MBV fans to identify whether it represents a significant advance over previous MBV offerings.Finally, today's the release date of the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album, Push The Sky Away. Keenly awaited, the download link is still not active - I ordered the super deluxe edition to be released in April, so all I'll get at the moment is an mp3 download. I am sure it will repay the patience. More on that later.

This has quite frankly been the worst start to a cycling year since I took up cycling seriously about 20 years ago. In the last instalment of My month in cycling, for December, I noted that I'd been quite ill over Christmas. I don't know what that was that afflicted me so badly for a few weeks with heavy coughing and fevers, but it left me with persistent fatigue. My resting pulse rate has risen and fallen from day to day, and on some days the slightest exertion causes my heart rate to rocket.So, it's not been good. Having lost weight over Xmas, I'm now piling the pounds on as I was unable to take serious exercise for 5 weeks.From about 26th January, this began to change, and I have not only begun training again, but I have started cycling to work again. Turbo training has never seemed to attractive! I use a Polar power meter on the turbo - it may be at the less sophisticated end of the power meter market, but at least it can give me a useful estimate of where my fitness is at. And it's rather clear that this extended illness has cost me dear. It will be interesting to see if I bounce back, or grovel back.

Pere Ubu - Lady from Shanghai. (Bought as flac download) David Thomas and Co are still at it, with another good album. From the website, it would seem that an accompanying paperback book is available outlining the way the album was constructed. This may seem a bit over the top, but note the extra special limited edition of Nick Cave's new album - perhaps this is a trend!The Haxan Cloak - I bought the eponymous first Haxan Cloak album, again as a flac download), after hearing one of the tracks (The Mirror Reflecting (Part 2)) from the forthcoming second album on Soundcloud, which I found via Cosey Fanni Tutti's Twitter. I suspect the new album, due in April, is likely to present a more atmospheric sound.Todd Snow - Emergence - This is something I also noted from Cosey's tweets. Quite atmospheric and almost ambient, it's available on Bandcamp in any format (of course, I chose flac).Magazine - Live and Intermittent - Bought on CD via the wire-sound website. Bit of a nostalgia trip for me. Magazine always were one of my favourite bands of the late 70s/early 80s. Their post-reform album No Thyself (it's on sale at the moment, good value at £5) is better than I expected and a worthy addition to their discography. Anyway, back to the live Magazine CD - it's a bit lo-fi in places, but if you were there back in the day a nice reminder. I also picked up Dave Formula's CD Satellite Sweetheart, but haven't  had a chance to listen to it much so far.

My last post, on the first records I bought, reminded me of the days in which I used to spend time rootling through racks of LPs. I was something of a late starter in music buying, not acquiring any kind of record player until I left home for university. In my case, this was a 'music centre' - it was several years before I obtained components that might reasonably be termed 'HiFi'.  In any case, I enthusiastically explored many genres of rock and pop before moving off down a direction informed by punk and its sequelae of post-punk and industrial genres.Anyway, in those days record buying was a far more satisfying business. One hung on the words of the inky music papers, alerted to upcoming releases, deciding whether to believe Paul Morley's review which seemed to feature his grey socks, picking out what one should be seen to like, etc. Of course, the inky rag of choice both reflected and directed one's taste - in my case I favoured the NME. Down in the record shops, we leafed with great dedication through the racks of greasy plastic covered sleeves trying to divine from the graphic design what might be within.But back to record shops. It's always seemed to me, looking back, that we've moved from smaller local shops (staffed by people with a real interest) to a more supermarket approach (Virgin Megastore, HMV), and now to a general disappearance of record shops from the high street (presumably as we move to online shopping and buying music via downloads). I did a quick google search for one or two of the shops I frequented and came across this serious nostalgia-fest: Record Shops (at the Edinburgh Gig Guide website).Thing is, I can recall both the circumstances of the purchase, and the shop in which I bought almost all of the vinyl LPs in my collection. These LPs are really a series of hooks into the memories I have of being a student.  Also I have a better memory for individual tracks on these LPs than those bought on CD or as download. I think this is at least partly due to the punctuation of turning the record over halfway, but also to the element of scrutinising the record sleeve and I suppose the sheer dedication of my listening in those days. There are very few CD sleeves I've ever spent much time with, and of course the lack of decent artwork and sleeve notes is a major let-down of download purchases.I find myself in an era where - probably as a result of my age and lifestyle - music listening and discovery has become a very solitary activity, though much, much easier. I'm not a luddite: the majority of my music these days is obtained online, and I enjoy Last.fm, Soundcloud and Bandcamp as avenues to find music, but I have to confess to moments of nostalgia for the days of leafing endlessly and greasily through racks. 

There's a news story over at the BBC website, First records, and where you bought them, which made me think. So, confession time.My first single was Roadrunner, by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers.The first LP I bought was Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd.Both were, I think bought on the same shopping trip in late 1977 at a rather ace record shop in Edinburgh called Phoenix Records. Located on the High Street, it is sadly no more. These were the days when browsing for LPs was a process of leafing through racks of sleeves covered with clear plastic jackets, all greasy from other people's  fingers. It may be that my ageing memory is at fault, but I am sure I recall the LPs being arranged by Record Label rather than artist.Shortly after, I got caught up in the Year Zero of punk/post-punk (you can see my current tastes in this graphic representation of my last.fm scrobbles). The Pink Floyd disappeared, but more mysteriously (given the cultural circumstances), so did Roadrunner. Both are now present in my digital and digitised collection. Here's a YouTube video:

Here's a nice video of John Cale performing Venus in Furs - it's a TV broadcast from 10th January this year. h/t Here Comes The Flood

It seems that December has proceeded pretty much as the whole of the 2013 season has done: appallingly.My training has gone pretty well in fits and starts through the month, and monitoring the Critical Power estimates (obtained by the budget Polar power meter fitted to the turbo bike and analysed by Golden Cheetah) has indicated my training has not been completely ineffective!As I write, I've woken early yet again at the behest of my persistent chesty cough, which is showing no signs of shifting after about 5 days. So my last training was on 22nd December, a day before I left for a brief Christmas break. That turbo session went pretty well, and I was somewhat encouraged. Unfortunately, I've been so ill that it's looking unlikely that I will be able to ride the New Years Day '10'. I have decided to adhere to Team Grumpy's Rule #5:

Team Grumpy Rules

Over the years, Grumpy Bob and 'Grumpy' Art have developed a set of rules.  These are of course intended to be implemented at all times, however exactly.  Originally posted at the Team Grumpy blog.Rule #1. Remember to make your excuses before the race, not after. Otherwise it will just sound pathetic.Rule #2. Don't tinker with your bike the evening before the event. It will break, either then or, worse still, during the event.Rule #3. If all else fails, buy some new bike kit.Rule #4. And if rule #3 fails, new skinsuits are probably a good option.Rule #5. Never train or race with a bad cough - it will destroy your entire season.Rule #6. Tantrums are appropriate if provoked (e.g. by mechanical problems), but try to avoid damage to equipment.Rule #7. Team Grumpy riders are allowed to use whatever equipment they wish (and their wallets permit). However, the official team energy drink is always pop belge.

Well, this album was really a little out of the ordinary for me. The only other record I have featuring Scott Walker is a Walker Brothers collection of some of their 60s output.I bought this as a flac download  several weeks ago, on its release date, and I've been listening since. I don't actually buy into this godlike genius thing - I think a genius might release more records - but after a few plays of samples via the web, I decided to buy it. And I'm not disappointed, though on the other hand I'm not overwhelmed. The record has an interesting juxtaposition of Walker's voice with a odd array of sounds and aural textures, which on the whole I really like. My reservations are more that I haven't really got to the bottom of the lyrics, and with an album like this, it's difficult to really form an opinion too quickly. Many of the songs seem to be making quirky connections between widely disparate people and events. It's safe to say this one's going to take a bit of concentration.

This is a Rouleur publication (under the Bloomsbury imprint), and in common with that magazine, it's chock full of photographs, printed on high quality paper. In his introduction, Sykes admits he'd always promised that he wouldn't write a biography of Fausto Coppi (there are quite afe of those around). What this book represents is a collection of photographs from Coppi's career, punctuated with interviews with some of Coppi's contemporaries. Sykes' intention is to preserve the memories of these veterans.In this, the books succeeds admirably. It's not a book that provides a detailed biography of Coppi - you have to look elsewhere for that - but for all that it's delightful to read and to savour the often superb photography, with some of the often painful eyewitness testimony.The design of the book is lovely, with excellent reproductions of the photos on heavy paper. Unfortunately the photos are not captioned, so relating them to thw interviews is not always easy. As a nice touch, the text pages are tinted in what appears to a pale Bianchi celeste.Coppi: Inside the legend of the Campionissimo, by Herbie SykesPublished by Rouleur via Bloomsbury Sport £27-ishISBN 1408181665

From Stars to Stalagmites - How everything connectsWorld Scientific 2012 ISBN 13 978 981 4324 97 7Paul S. Braterman*I am a pretty avid reader of popular science books, but generally speaking I've mostly read books with a general emphasis on biology, particularly evolutionary biology. From Stars to Stalagmites is therefore a bit different from my usual reading fare, taking a chemist's view on the world. In essence, the book spends 16 chapters explaining how we know stuff. Stuff ranging from the age of the Earth to how CFCs were incriminated as the cause of the ozone holes. Many of these accounts are told with specific reference to the people who shaped the theories and the science. I don't mean just the scientists - policy-makers and politicians also feature highly - a good example being the chapters on figuring out the cause of the ozone hole and on global warming.I could summarise this book as "a collection of stories about stuff", but that would ignore the central theme that comes across as one read through the book: how we know how natural processes work, and how we can use this understanding to probe the deep history of our planet, figure out how to rescue our planet from anthropogenic destruction and so forth.On reflection some, if not all, of the chapters come across as excellent material for presentations. Whether such has been the origins of the work or not, I do believe that the book itself would have benefited from a bit more in the way of illustration...For me, stand out chapters include the opening chapter on the age of the Earth (Chapter 1), that on Fritz Haber, the First World War and explosives (Chapter 6), and the 14th Chapter on why water is weird. But I guess those preferences reflect my interests; the book is consistently interesting and clearly written.In dealing with the evolution of ideas about the Earth's antiquity, Braterman effectively sets the stage for all the controversies manufactured by the biblical literalists who insist in (mis)interpreting the bible to deduce that the Earth is a mere 6000 years (give or take a little). The chapter takes the reader on a journey in the changing scientific understanding of earth science, which neatly encapsulates the nature of scientific discovery. I think this example illustrates the value of this book. It's not necessarily in its factual content, but in the way rational and thoughtful investigation of the world and its material phenomena can lead to clearer understanding of the world around us. And more than this, several chapters describe how current understanding can and does change as science advances, both in terms of techniques and in the application of knowledge from disparate areas of investigation.To conclude, From Stars to Stalagmites is a valued addition to my bookshelf and a fine example of popular science writing.*Disclosure: Paul Braterman is a BCSE committee member, as am I.[cross-posted from Wonderful Life]