A one-line review of every #TimsTwitterListeningParty I joined in May 2021
Nobody has asked for this. Tough luck. It’s a monthly series now. I’ve marked LPs that I’d never heard the whole way through before with a 🆕 icon. The links (mostly) go to the album on Spotify. Japan Gentlemen Take Polaroids…
Letters never sent
Friday Reading has gone on a break. That’s often how it goes and how a season abruptly ends. I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t had a chance to write it for a fortnight now, so I hereby…
Living the Eurovision dream
No Friday Reading this week afraid because I have been too busy living the Eurovision dream. Not only have I put together the Guardian’s fiendish Eurovision quiz, but I am absolutely thrilled that for the first time on Saturday I…
m-orchestra – The Grim Circus – track-by-track guide from my #GrimTwitterListeningParty
Today, 100% unlicensed and unofficial, I did a #GrimTwitterListeningParty for new m-orchestra album The Grim Circus. I don’t have a fancy replay facility, but here it is presented as a track-by-track guide to the stories behind the songs and what…
Stuart O’Connor
I was very sorry to hear that Stuart O’Connor, who was known as ScreenjabberStu on Twitter, has passed away in Australia. He was a colleague of mine who worked on the Guardian’s tech, media & games coverage in the early…
Friday Reading S11E20
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from the Guardian’s Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things. It is now in its eleventh season. Sign up here. “Panenka himself, meanwhile, saw it differently….
The Grim Circus to be released on Friday
I remember when I first started making music again after a hiatus of nearly a decade I tweeted something along the lines of “Note to self: it is fine to start making dad laptop techno for fun, but nobody needs…
Katie Coxall
I was very upset this morning to learn that Katie Coxall passed away yesterday. If you’ve been on the same corners of the internet as me you’ll undoubtedly know her work as mushybees, and she was the person behind the…
Friday Reading S11E19
Friday Reading is a weekly series of recommended reads from the Guardian’s Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things. It is now in its eleventh season. Sign up here. It has been the Guardian’s 200th…
14 months later…
I went into town on Sunday. Before we start, this isn’t one of those “I was out doing something perfectly allowable under the Covid regulations and I saw other people doing something perfectly allowable under the Covid regulations and WHAT…