Happy New Year everyone!
Many thanks to all of you who have read, followed, commented, shared, promoted and otherwise supported the blog during the previous year, most especially to my beloved band of Patrons. i’m starting 2019 in the usual way, with a new mixtape featuring something from each of the brilliant albums in my Best of 2018 list. Being such an eclectic list, the ‘narrative’ of this mixtape is one that unavoidably veers between quite wildly dissimilar styles and aesthetics, but to my ear that only makes it all the more interesting and fun.
40 tracks (well, technically 41: Jóhann Jóhannsson’s were short so i included two) that testify to and celebrate the range and scale of musical wonders created during 2018 – the full tracklisting is shown below, and links to buy each album can be found in the previous two days’ articles. As always, the mixtape can be downloaded or streamed. Read more
As of yesterday, autumn is officially here, so it’s time to take stock of some of the more interesting concerts looming on the horizon. Most imminently, Japan’s most dazzling audiovisual electronic pioneer Ryoji Ikeda is making a rare visit to the UK. His 
New music ensemble An Assembly are going out on the road for a small-scale autumn tour, performing three works, two of them ensemble commissions: Louis D’Heudieres‘ Laughter Studies 6b – the title of which seems apt, since the mere description of it, involving four vocalists “describing and imitating their own private soundtracks of synthesised tunes and field recordings, transmitted to them via earphones” had me chuckling just thinking about it, Charlie Usher‘s An assembly – a 45-minute epic made up of 14-second miniatures – and a new work by Rowland Hill responding to a 1959 review of Stravinsky’s Agon. They’ll be performing these pieces at Manchester’s Anthony Burgess Centre on 1 October, at City University in London the next day (this concert is free) and finally in Birmingham’s Centrala Café on 4 October. Full details can be found on 
