I’m sitting down to type up this list, and there’s a prompt appearing in the WordPress text box, which I delete in order to write this sentence. It says: “Have you ever performed on stage, or given a speech?” The answer to that question, is yes, on both counts, but that’s not why we’re here… Read More My Favourite Albums of 2022
Hey, long time no see, Internet. Here I am, re-emerging from my year-long hibernation to participate in the annual record recap/love-in. It’s been quite the year, but you already know that. It’s been a year for music too, which is something you probably also already know. Here are my choice cuts from the last twelve… Read More My Favourite Albums of 2021
As has become a yearly tradition (and the only thing ever to be posted on this blog anymore), here are my favourite records of the past twelve months.… Read More My Favourite Albums of 2020
There’s a lot that I’ve been grateful for this year, and I am happy to report that 2019 has been a pretty solid year for yours-truly (if not the world at large). I took up running, which meant I took up heavy music again, and I got slightly better at speaking Chinese, even if I… Read More My Favourite Albums of 2019
I told myself I wasn’t going to write an AOTY list for 2018. Then I read everyone else’s AOTY list, and I decided I would. Here’s an AOTY list for 2018. By no means am I saying, definitively, that these are the best records of 2018 – I’m just saying they’re my favourites. I’ve included… Read More My Favourite Albums of 2018 (Another AOTY List)
I don’t know how other to start this post than with the line: I went for a drink with a woman once. It wasn’t by definition a date, and I’m not entirely sure that we knew each other well enough at the time to even qualify as friends, but we went for a drink and,… Read More Answering the Question, Fourteen Months Late (On toe and My Favourite Song)
This afternoon I sat down to write a poem inspired by Kayo Chingonyi’s recent collection Kumukanda. It’s a wonderful debut collection, rooted heavily in a childhood spent immersed in music. It finds him laboring over mixtapes and old cassette players, spacing the seconds between songs to ensure smooth transitions and optimal exposure. I read it… Read More The CRM Monday Mix #1 (Something New)
I’m not a big advocate of greatest hits compilations. I see their merit, but I tend to treat them cynically – not as cash grabs, but mostly just as unnecessary. I can appreciate the appeal of having a record of nothing but hits, in that the experience is normally a much stronger one than a… Read More Record of the Day #21 – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Greatest Hits
Yesterday I had a lot of writing to do – emails, stories, reviews, lesson plans, the list goes on. It was a day spent in front of the computer (aside from a trip to uni for a swim), hammering the keyboard for hours on end until the to-do list I’d started the day with was… Read More Record of the Day #20 – Sigur Ros, Valtari
I don’t normally pick up soundtracks, mostly because I don’t assign them the same value as my other records. I find it a lot harder to invest the time or develop an emotional connection with a soundtrack, especially when the tracklist exists as fragments or snippets of a movie. I find that with most soundtracks… Read More Record of the Day #18 – Whiplash OST
Started in early-2015, the Oneiric Escapism branch of all-things A Lonely Ghost Burning offered something different, the intentions of the compilations varying from those of the counterparts. Here, the emphasis was on finding something sonically absorbing, and the artists considered seemed intent on spellbinding a listener instead of simply soundtracking a mood or moment. It was an… Read More A Lonely Ghost Burning – Oneiric Escapisms
A Lonely Ghost Burning‘s Alternative Melodies series of compilations seeks to promote the work of artists primarily from the genres of rock and indie, with the many sub-genres covered also. Each release boasts a selection of songs rife with heart and energy, dynamic and anthemic, from the finding-its-feet feel of the initial Alt / Punk moniker to the streamlined… Read More A Lonely Ghost Burning – Alternative Melodies Aplenty
“America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war?” –Â Allen Ginsberg, 1956 This time last year, I had been living in Columbus, Georgia for four weeks. I was travelling as a student… Read More 1,000 words for America, from a quiet English city on a Wednesday night.
Bit of a weird one, about the notion of fear and how I managed to relate it to trampolining. … Read More Fear and Floating in (Chichester) Las Vegas
I turned twenty-two yesterday. I heard Taylor Swift’s hit song 22 probably more than twenty-two times yesterday. Probably twenty-three Turning twenty-two means that it’s been twelve years since I owned my first iPod. At ten, to celebrate moving into double-digits, my parents bought me an iPod Mini, in bright blue. I think they bought it… Read More On the Importance of the iPod, Over the Years
Another thought piece, this time pondering positivity and what it means going forwards.
To potential endings and new beginnings.… Read More On Positivity, Poetry, and the Future
Craig Reviews Music 