Union Jack waving intensifies

None of them are in D minor:

1. A minor

2. E major

3. C minor/C harmonic minor

4. F minor

5. C minor/C harmonic minor

6. F# minor

I was of the belief that the idea of limited willpower (i.e. ego depletion) was false. It seems that the truth is that it's more in contention than anything else.

Glad to hear you're still putting in the hours. I was impressed with playing on You Drank Some Darkness, so I can only imagine how much you're building upon that now. Sweet guitar too!

I haven't seen that book. I have played and enjoy playing live, but not much recently. I do dedicate a reasonably amount of time playing instruments though, so it can certainly still be relevant in that way. I read some of the preview about practising slowly and it seems really interesting. I'll add it to the list.

I can relate to the endless pursuit to get the perfect take when recording. It can make you go kind of crazy. But you're on the right track in letting go of that perfectionism when playing live. Partly because, as you say, some people won't even be paying close enough attention to notice. But more the fact that any minor mistakes and fluffs- that in a recording would be immortalised and forever noticeable- exist for a second or less when you're playing live. If you nail the show overall, people won't remember that you didn't fret a note correctly or messed up a fingerpicking pattern.

I look forward to hearing your future output!

I think the majority of these people didn't talk to the author because they don't give a shit. A quick wiki search reveals that all but one of the acts who were mentioned are still active and making music. That one is Sonic Youth and they kept on going for a decade after the 'killer' review, releasing 4 more albums.

These acts are still out their doing their thing. Why would they care to talk about the fact that Pitchfork gave them a bad review a decade or two ago? Especially when the general critical consensus for most of these releases was nowhere near as 'brutal' as Pitchfork's.

Thurston Moore essentially said (paraphrased): "I understood the nature of the score and it didn't get to me. In fact, the reviewer later revealed he now loved album, which was nice." The author spun that into Moore being "granted catharsis via a reviewer’s apology". It's clutching at straws.

I'm sorry that I rarely have an intriguing story or pertinent observation to share with all you great people in the pub. I love visiting this thread every week and reading about your experiences. And I feel like I'm taking and giving nothing back. But interesting, personal life reflections are somewhat hard to come by when you spend 90% of your time sitting in a room working on music.

I know more about your weekly lives that anyone outside my direct family, even though I've never met any of you. And, in a way, I think that's rad. Maybe some people think that's sad. At times, so do I. But it takes a concerted effort for me to remain on the straight and narrow, grinding away at my music. Any activity I do outside of that grind is like a hole that I have to climb out of to get back on the path. Sometimes it's worth it, but most times I just don't bother. It's an existence of few highs, but also one of few lows. I guess that's the path I've chosen for now, but I don't know how long it's sustainable without losing some sort of essence of what life is. Even for someone who is mostly content with that lifestyle.

There's a Kayak club around the corner from where I live. I'm thinking of attending a session on Sunday.

Troyka - Rarebit

A jazz trio that grooves in the weirdest way. I'm not usually drawn to jazz that has an excessive amount of dissonance and ambiguous tonality. But the rhythms these guys glue it all together with makes it work for me.

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Syd Arthur - Morning's Calling

Psych/prog-rock band that treads a really cool line between a number of styles. They have a great knack for taking standard ideas and infusing them with interesting twists and turns.

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Opeth - Heir Apparent

The Opeth track I always come back to.

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Dominique Fils-Aimé - Birds

Super understated neo-soul/r&b. Enchanting vocalist.

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Lydian Collective - Thirty One

Infectious, melodic jazz. This would usually be a bit 'happy' sounding for me. But similar to Troyka above, the rhythms and arrangements swing it for me.

So if you're a serious artiste you're left grappling with the cognitive dissonance that if you get paid you're a sell-out but if you don't get paid you starve (unless you're one of the lucky dilettantes we don't talk about but we all know and us serious artistes all know they aren't serious anyway, just lucky). And if you're a serious artiste you know that validation is nothing but validation is everything but validation is illogical but if it matters it MUST be logical and somehow.

Since you mentioned David Foster Wallace, this reminded me of something related that he said:

It’s like, if you’re used to doing heavy-duty literary stuff that doesn’t sell well, being human animals with egos, we find a way to accommodate that fact by the following equation: If it sells really well and gets a lot of attention, it must be shit. Then, of course, the ultimate irony is: if your thing gets a lot of attention and sells really well, then the very mechanism you’ve used to shore yourself up when your stuff didn’t sell well is now part of the Darkness Nexus when it does, so you’re screwed. You can’t win.

A photographic representation of how it feels in contemporary Britain.

Ah, fair play. I've only read his fiction so I can't make any argument for his essays; I agree that my points fall flat in that context.

Otherwise you can end up like David Foster Wallace and you're just ejaculating vocabulary words onto the reader for no reason other than to show off how clever you are and no one knows what the fuck you're talking about in the middle of a sentence

The whole point of Wallace's style is that it's supposed to represent his perception of reality.

Sometimes in life you carry on even when you don't quite understand what's going on. Sometimes you have conversations where people presume prior knowledge. Sometimes it is simple and mundane. Sometimes it is complex and confusing. Sometimes you're in a new situation and it's like you're in a completely different world. Sometimes you are lost. Sometimes ad nauseam.

All these sort of things are reflected and directly inform the way he writes. And as much as telling a story, his style is an attempt distil into narrative form a lot of the things about the human condition that we tend to ignore. So you're not only being told a story, you're also reading a comment on all these factors in life and being made to feel them (or that's the intent, at least).

Now you could argue that he fails or that there are more effective ways of achieving his goal. And those points could probably be argued quite convincingly. I mean, I'm reading the The Pale King at the moment and I almost stopped at around ~50 pages in due to a particularly tedious chapter.

But to say that he simply ejaculated vocabulary words onto the reader for no reason other than to show off how clever he is seems like an unnecessary and dismissive slight.

Thanks, tng.

I have about 50 minutes of unreleased music right now and I'm always working. I can't share any of it publicly at the moment, but I look forward to doing so when the time is right.