This month continued the fatigue and exhaustion which I also dealt with in October. I had been trialing a new medication for 3 months which was very bad for me, it turns out. I ended that at the end of November and am already feeling much better in most ways (though still in need of something to address the issues that the bad medication had been intended for to begin with).

What I watched

  • The 3-hour long livestream performance by The Cure on November 1, for their new album. This band is just as good and compelling now as ever. Really inspirational, to be frank.

What I listened to

  • Traditional Singing from Dublin, by Macdara Yeates. One I missed from September. Lovely.
  • Chat Pile’s Cool World, from October. Brutal and so, so, so good.
  • Silly Sisters, the duo of Maddy Prior and June Tabor. The close harmonies are just magical.
  • Steeleye Span’s Below the Salt.
  • The Albion Band’s Rise Up Like the Sun. I love all their records, but this one is my favourite for some reason. It could be all due to the strength of opener “Ragged Heroes”, which is probably my favourite of all the “calling-on” songs to be found on British Folk Rock records of this period.
  • Much more on the record player which I failed to note down, but certainly some Cocanha, Loren Conors, Tashi Dorji, some John Dowland collections, etc…

New releases this past month

  • Teknogake, from various artists on the label 時の崖_tokinogake. I was supposed to contribute something to this record but fatigue and other issues kept me from finishing my piece in time. No worries–this collection is brilliant!
  • Labyrinthe !, by Pierre Henry on Recollection GRM. Extraordinary.
  • Divine Comédie, a collaboration from Bernard Parmegiani & François Bayle also on Recollection GRM. It’s amazing.
  • Songs of a Lost World, the new album from The Cure. It is as good as everyone says. It’s brilliant. Robert Smith sounds even better and the pieces here are thoughtful and beautiful and patient and moody as hell in all the best ways.

What I did

  • I saw Carl Stone perform at Bello Bar in Portobello. It was a good performance though I was surprised at how frenetic and maximalist the set was.
  • I saw The Tallis Scholars perform at the National Concert Hall. It was a beautiful concert–what I saw at least. I think I mistakenly left during intermission because I believed that the concert was finished (they bowed several times before getting off the stage and I must have unconsciously took that to mean the show was over).
  • I got a hair cut.
  • I saw They Might Be Giants in concert at Vicar St here in Dublin. Excellent.
  • I saw Maria Somerville perform at The Workman’s Club here. I was very underwhelmed. I love her NTS show, and I really liked her album of a few years back, but I had trouble finding a foothold with this performance. The band didn’t cohere and the whole thing felt quite by-the-numbers and uninteresting to me.

What I made

  • I spent a long day recording a live performance with Whozyerman? in our practice space. We recorded three songs, and plan on releasing the videos at some point in the new year.