I suppose even if it did nothing else for me, I could say that Hawtin's mix tests my perceptual apparatus. "Tests" meaning plays with in strange ways that makes me unsure whether I can trust what I'm hearing. Did that beat just get louder, or is it just that I started noticing it after feeling it for thirty seconds while I spaced out? &c

This Richie Hawtin album is a good deal harder than I bargained for. Where's my Kompakt Total 3 gone to?

And it always did sound like sitting on a train anyway. Moving but sitting still.

The notes to The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions say that the original title of "Shhh/Peaceful" was "Mornin' Fast Train From Memphis to Harlem". How great is that?

Everyday I Write the Book: A Bibliography of (Mostly) Academic Work on Rock and Pop Music

Grading, ugh.

If Mogwai's new single/EP "My Father, My King" is to be taken as programmatic (because of the prayer inside), to what extent should that suggest that we start to take their other music as more programmatic in the relevant senses?

Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio seems to slowly be shifting from sometimes annoyingly thin and angular to "differently melodic".

Other things I've listened to in the past few days: the new Spiritualized, the new Mogwai, and the Kompakt label comp Total 3. Both that I am endorsing the purchase and close attention to some of these things, and that I am endorsing the purchase and close attention to some of these things, may be of interest to you. (Reasons: semi-widespread panning of Spz record, semi-widespread personal avoidance of house music. Actually, no reason to be surprised by Mogwai endorsement.) More to come.

(I picked up the Kompakt comp on a whim inspired by Andy and Tim.)

Sometime in the past year I've more and more often been having the experience of whole large parts of songs popping into my head unbidden. Not only did this not often happen in the past, at least as far as I can remember, but I've always had trouble sort of mentally letting a song run along like that. So it's not even just the fact that it's happening at all, but the fact that it happened to me this morning in the shower with a number of songs from Change, which I've only had a few days, that pleases me so much.