Great interview with Rudy Van Gelder - note comments on digital vs analog.

This (from 2011) is all worth a read however these comments on digital vs analog are worth paying attention to:

What are your feelings on digital versus analog?

The linear storage of digital information is idealized. It can be perfect. It can never be perfect in analog because you cannot repro­duce the varying voltages through the dif­ferent translations from one medium to an­other. You go from sound to a microphone to a stylus cutting a groove. Then you have to play that back from another stylus wig­gling in a groove, and then translate it back to voltage.

The biggest distorter is the LP it­self. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes go­ing simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good rid­dance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engi­neer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium.

Via:
https://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2011/05/rudy-van-gelder-signature-sound.html

Hell You Talmbout

David Byrne's band played this as their final encore at last night's Leeds gig.
Really powerful, didn't really understand it as they were playing it.

Here's the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_You_Talmbout

Climate Change: We've been told, plenty of times.

The most important news which should affect every political & economic decision we make.
I don't think we (as a species) have any intention of changing from 'business as usual'. We'll just watch the calamity play out.
#HopeImWrong

Global warming must not exceed 1.5C, warns landmark UN report
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report

For tradecraft fans... The Spy and the Traitor - BBC Book of the Week

Enjoyed listening to this on a long drive yesterday.

The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintrye

Ben Mcintyre's thrilling history tells the breathtaking story of a KGB double-agent operating at the height of the Cold War.
Passing countless secrets to his British spymasters at M16 over the course of a decade he undermined the Soviet Union's intelligence gathering machine from deep within. Eventually, he was betrayed and what followed was a sequence of events involving ingenuity, duplicity, and fearlessness.
Read by Tim McInnerny.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0blvnxb

Interesting in the light of recent claims/revelations.
You can understand how people who join and risk their lives, put their trust in colleagues, don't take well to traitors.

See also
The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintrye review – the astonishing story of a cold war superspy
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/19/the-spy-and-the-traitor-by-ben-macintyre-review

#TrueStory #Tradecraft

The Shape of Water

Finally got around to watching The Shape of Water last night.
"Set in Baltimore, Maryland in 1962, the story follows a mute custodian at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature."

Rather lovely.

Offbeat and quirky (n all that).
Great setting in the early 60s in the middle of the cold war.
Lovely score and the way it's all shot in various shades of green (or is that teal).

Kermode get it right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXzdPzGi1_8

See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shape_of_Water