It began with the book, or perhaps I mean to say it awoke. A few weeks  ago, listening to Word Podcast 188, I heard about Peter Doggett’s latest book. Commissioned as a sequel, or at least inspired by Ian MacDonald’s influential song by song Beatles chronology: Revolution In The Head. I thought the idea was sound, if any classic rock canon could bear the load of similar scrutiny, it was probably Bowie. I noted the book on my ‘to read’ list, and the next time I found myself without an ongoing book, whilst waiting to depart St. Pancras International, having recently ended one book, I  bought the Kindle edition, via “Whispernet”. I do most of my book reading on trains. I thought it would probably make an interesting read, despite knowing that I didn’t really enjoy listening to Bowie’s music.

It wasn’t always that way. At some level I would still identify myself as a Bowie fan; albeit a heavily lapsed one.  We go way back together. His commercial peak as a pop star ( Let’s Dance ) neatly coincides with the start of my interest in the pop charts. He still seemed a current, voguish music figure. The promo video was a new central focus of pop culture, and Bowie was of course one of the craftiest, most-prepared of the video pioneers.

Access to archive media was rare then, and fashion was forward-looking; any consciously retro styles were focused on the ’50s.  I remember a classmate at boarding school, with the archetypal ‘older brother with record collection’ filling me in on the standard mythology. The multiple identities, snatches of song titles and character names and iconography all seemed unimaginable and distant. Fascinated by the scraps, I used my sense of wonder to fill in the gaps.

I remember the first time I saw a photo of Ziggy Stardust, years later.  It was in a newspaper colour supplement. There was a stock photo collage piece on ‘The Many Faces of David Bowie’; probably already a cliche even then. Like anyone, I was knocked out just by the look of it. It was preposterous; somehow ridiculous and cool. A vision from the future, even 15 years out of date.

Bowie still pops up throughout the rest of the decade. He’s still a face. Movie and soundtrack work. Labyrinth. Absolute Beginners. When the Wind Blows. I watch all of these at home on a VCR.

I pretend to study for ‘A’ levels, at the local sixth form college. A grim time for chart music, the fag end of the Stock Aitken Waterman years, just running up against the first twinklings of rave culture. There’s a jukebox, with actual seven inch singles in. Most of them are by Rick Astley, or Sonia, or Michael Bolton. There’s a ‘Golden Oldies’ section with maybe a dozen  records  over on the far right side. ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is one of them. I play it once or twice a day for weeks. After this, a little piece of me is always slightly disappointed each time I play an electric guitar and it doesn’t sound very much like Ronson.

Tin Machine are next along, the sheer contrariness of this scheme just delights me; although I never get to hear much of the music, there’s a near media embargo on it. As I move through the 90s, with a gradually solidfying income, I fill out my CD collection with all the back catalogue. It gets solidly played until I’ve commited the bulk of it to heart.

I’m amused by the negative attitude to ‘Drum and Bass Bowie’ from the inkies, most of these still in thrall to the last few coughs of Britpop. I like the singles more than most others from that year.

Then it’s spoiled. Glastonbury 2000 kills it. Against my better judgement, I trek down to the pyramid stage to watch Bowie’s headline set. Stadium Rock is not my thing. I stand in the mud for a while, and I try to watch on the giant TV screens on the other side of the crowded field. It’s too slick, too caberet, I’m completely disengaged and intensely disappointed. I leave them to it after half a dozen songs. Something feels quite broken. After that, I find it hard to listen to the old records in a more than academic way.

Nonetheless, now I’m reading the book, I put a playlist together that covers all the albums it discusses. I’m mostly reading on the train, and this means I’m mostly listening as I read. It’s a peculiarly immersive way to listen to records. I tried it once before, with Scott Tennent’s book about Slint’s Spiderland. I read that on the Northern Line, with the album on rotation. Eventually it almost felt like I’d been present at those recording sessions.

It leaks into your ears, ambiently informing your reading. Occasionally mid-passage about the invention or arrangement of a song co-incides with the track playing everything pulls into focus across multiple senses. Berlin-period Bowie plays particularly well with rail transport, with it’s stations and trains and mechanical sounds. Listening to Heroes, waiting platformside in the raw concrete trenches of Stratford International.

The book itself is a solid read. Bowie remains an unsurprisingly opaque presence, and some of the speculative interpretation on lyrics and motivation feels like a stretch. The musical analysis likewise falls falls a little short of the template established by ‘Revolution In The Head’, occasionally quite gratingly clunky (a ‘sustained fourth’ chord?). Luckily the framing works just as well. Imposing a narrative upon the chronological order of recordings creates an appreciation of it as one body of work. Considered so forensically, it’s an astonishing thing. Much as with the previous book, what stands out just as markedly as the quality of the songs and recordings, is the rate of progress, and the rate of change. Here’s a rough calendar of the recording dates of the albums covered within ‘The Man Who Sold The World’.

• - The Man Who Sold The World – Spring 1971
• - Hunky Dory – Winter 1971
• - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars – Summer 1972
• - Aladdin Sane - Spring 1973
• - Pin Ups – Autumn 1973
• - Diamond Dogs – Spring 1974
• - Young Americans – Spring 1975
• - Station To Station – Winter 1975
• - Low – Winter 1976
• - Heroes – Autumn 1977
• - Lodger – Spring 1979
• - Scary Monsters – Spring 1980

I still find this list astonishing. Just five years separate the psych-folk/music-hall of Hunky Dory and the ambient alienation and hyper-stylised funk of Low. A further four years between that and the proto-industrial-cum-New Romantic Pop of Scary Monsters. It’s a lot of terrain to cover in a decade, banging out over an album a year interspersed with global touring. For the sake of convenience, I have left out the live album releases.

A couple of other interesting points leapt out at me after reading. I realised my instinctive dating of ‘Scary Monsters’ is mistakenly late. ‘Ashes to Ashes‘ has been so convincingly retconned as a New Romantic cornerstone, I have been unconsciously sticking it in the middle somewhere around ’82-’83 amidst Culture Club and Duran and the Spandaus, and ‘Come on Eileen’. The actual recording date puts it barely out of the 1970s, which means that dense, sound bricolage of such modern sounds was hand-stitched in the most analogue ways. Tony Visconti deserves even more of my respect.

The second thing I never before realised, was that the ‘Art Bowie’ period – the less overtly commercial works spanning from ‘Station to Station’ to ‘Scary Monsters’ does rather neatly line up with a management dispute. As I understand it, these records were produced under a settlement that meant a significant portion of royalties were due to a now estranged management organisation. Once this lapsed, he abruptly switched to the ultra-commercial, lucrative career arc prefaced by ‘Let’s Dance’. Which is of course, where we came in.

A final, unexpected triumph. As a side effect of the book and this entombment in the music. The joy came back. In sounding all the material out new depths, informed by fresh context, and with rested ears refreshed, I’ve rediscovered my original appreciation for this sequence of records. Pity my poor family.

The only fault I can find with this technique of marrying immersive listening with a scholarly reading is that it is intrinsically retrospective, and perhaps simply nostalgic, and reductive. It obviously requires you find an artist or a work that’s had enough time to embed itself in it’s surrounding culture, and can never be forward looking.

Best album from the set? I change my mind constantly, but think I most often settle upon ‘Low’. There isn’t a bad one, although I’ll never consider ‘Pin Ups’ to be essential, and I think I might always find ‘Lodger’ a little underwhelming. Who’s next for the treatment? I’m not sure. I notice there’s a book about the rise and fall of Spacemen 3.

1. Green On Red : Here Come The Snakes
2. Jane’s Addiction : Ritual de lo Habitual
3. Pixies : Bossanova
4. Metallica : Master Of Puppets
5. Depeche Mode : Music For The Masses

Five LPs I used to frequently listen to when I was a lad that I occasionally listen to now

1. The Sisters Of Mercy : First And Last And Always
2. Genesis : Nursery Cryme
3. New Order : Substance
4. Steve Vai : Passion And Warfare
5. Frank Zappa : Joe’s Garage

Five LPs I used to frequently listen to when I was a lad that I haven’t played in a decade

1. Marillion : Script for a Jester’s Tear
2. Simple Minds : Live – In The City Of Light
3. Pink Floyd : The Wall
4. Madonna : True Blue
5. Red Hot Chili Peppers : Blood Sugar Sex Magik

The ‘holiday season’ was surprisingly survivable. The nut roast didn’t poison anybody. I doubled up the recipe quantities, and had exactly 50% left after dinner was done. The main problem I had was getting all the vegetables evenly done. There was much shuttling trays in and out of the oven, and from shelf to shelf, but everyone went away fed and uncomplaining, so I’m going to chalk that up as a success.

It turns out that having a 1 year old daughter is an excellent diversion around this time of year. Most of my time seems to have been spent chaperoning her around various relatives’ houses, where she excelled in capturing the centre of attention. She’s unsurprisingly done terribly well for presents. Typically, her favourite seems to be something inessential; a tiny gift teddy bear that was part of a seasonal book bundle.

I have a nice new coffee mug with a picture of Moominpapa on, of which I am already fond. Also notable, a comic strip book that frames the life and work of Bertrand Russell as an analogy to a classical greek tragedy. Better than it sounds, it’s quite a fascinating piece.

2010 has been a pretty good year I’d say. Mostly full of Ada, who has grown from being a rather sickly baby whose inability to keep food onboard, or sleep to rule frazzled nerves, to a largely reflux-free, sleep-friendly and entirely enchanting toddler. I think my Ada high-point of the last year would be when I taught her to high-five people, whenever she was being carried at shoulder height. She’s currently showing signs of becoming a precocious chatterbox. Other than that, there’s been the career gear-change, moving to work for last.fm, which has been almost entirely awesome. The new job brought a house move to London, which took me through the stages of ambivalence, active dislike of the place, right through to my current state of mind, which is settled back into an easy enjoyment of the appeals of city living. The fly in the ointment there is the lingering unsold Bristol house, dealing with which is going to feature heavily in the new year, I suspect.

Usually, at this time of year, I’d do some sort of summary of the year in music. 2010 has been a year where I’ve been kept pretty out of touch, because I’ve simply been too busy with other things. So most of the new discoveries I’ve made have been anything but current. Like everyone else, I became briefly overexcited about Janelle in the middle of the year. Standouts would be finally getting around to listening to Spirit Of Eden, and falling for it predictably, discovering The Books and Field Music, and my most unusual acquisition Sia’s ‘Some people have real problems’ album, which I wouldn’t have expected to have been my thing, but really captivated me. Luckily last.fm did a chart thing of my annual listening(a subscriber-only feature).

Having an infant at home has really curtailed the gig-going, so I had to focus on quality, not quantity. I did Primavera again, and I don’t seem to be tiring of that yet, I’ve already bought tickets for 2011. I saw an astonishing Dirty Projectors show at the Barbican, performing ‘The Getty Address’ completely, accompanied by Alarm Will Sound. I finally got to see the New Pornographers with Neko, which was good enough to keep a stupid grin on my face all the way through the first hour, even though I was coming down with a stupid cold. I think I’ll probably get more opportunity to see things in 201, but surprisingly I’m not really complaining.

Here’s to 2011. Still sounds wrong.

Suggested listening

• Janelle Monáe: Tightrope performance on Letterman
• Field Music: Each time is a new time from Measure
• The New Pornographers: A bite out of my bed – Horns!
• Sia: Academia – featuring Beck
• Talk Talk: Spirit of Eden – just listen to the whole thing.

Here’s a lovely interview with Carl about it. I have a ticket for Thursday night in my INBOX.

Rather excitingly, the recording sessions featured St Vincent, Will Sheff, and slightly less excitingly, the Dap-Kings horns, and Zach Condon. The album title is ‘Together’.

The New Pornographers are due to play this year’s Primavera Sound, although I suspect I will be giving it a miss this time around.

Barcelona is still a marvellous city, and Primavera is still my favourite rock festival. While we were out there, Barcelona FC won the champions league. I can’t pretend that I have any sympathy, interest, or even understanding of football, but I really enjoyed the electric city-wide atmosphere on the day; silent, tense and concentrating, as countless viewers watched the televised match, suddenly punctuated by sighs and unison cheers as chances were missed, and goals won; culminating in the riot of celebration erupting from every door and window onto the streets when the final victory was realised.

The festival was another success. The personal highlight, for me was the chance to finally see Lightning Bolt, unusually for them, an on-stage performance, that was one of the most exhilarating live shows I have ever seen. Shellac, playing again on the same ATP stage as last year, as good value as always, another chance to see Oneida, and sample some of the “heritage” acts, giving it some legend, like Sonic Youth, Throwing Muses, and Neil Young. A suprisingly energetic Michael Nyman band set in the indoor auditori was an unexpected highlight, as were a couple of new-to-me performances from Andrew Bird, and Gang Gang Dance. I was amused by Sunn O))), but sadly unable to persuade either of my companions to stay and watch more than ten minutes of their set.

More disappointing were Marnie Stern, who I’d been looking forward to seeing again, seemed to be suffering from terrible sound and equipment problems, Deerhunter transforming a great album into a weak coldplay-lite live experience, an uninspired and frankly routine Art Brut performance, and a generically dull Jarvis set.

It turns out that I edited and uploaded my photos to flickr shortly after returning to the UK, but what with all the busying and rushing around re-organising and home renovating, I seem to have forgotten to switch the set to public, at least until now.

Last night I went to see Fever Ray. Fever Ray is the assumed band name of Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of the strange and compelling Swedish brother-sister art-electronica duo, The Knife.

The ticket price for this one was fairly steep. Seventeen pounds is a lot to ask for an debut act, on a Bristol weekday evening. Knowing the Knife to have something of a penchant for staginess and performance statements, I figured that the cost of admission might indicate a more elaborate performance spectacle than the routine Academy show. It wasn’t a terribly full crowd, which may have also had something to do with the ticket price. Luckily my expectations of an interesting presentation were met, more than satisfactorily.

A stage swathed in as much machine-made fog as I’ve seen since I last watched the Sisters Of Mercy, decades ago. For readers unfamiliar with the Sisters’ stage ouevre, let me clarify; this means a lot of fog. The five-piece band only identifiable as bizarre silhouettes suggestive of a dark circus. Improbably tall hats, shadowy pierrot faces, frock coats, hunched shoulders. Karin, stage center shrouded in an enormous cowled cloak, the headress simultaneously suggesting fur and antlers and briar-hedge basketwork, her peculiar outline only really humanised by oversized white gloved hands. During the second song, she cleverly unfurled her cloak a little, a sudden backlight creating a surprising stained-glass panel effect that seemed to shine from inside her.

The whole performance was a meticulously staged progression, slowly opening up the initial murk. At the start the overhead fog was scissored dramatically by a pair of slow moving laser beams. By the second song, they’d each expanded to a pair of fan shapes. Later on these picked up oscillating movement, and eventually traced out colour shifts in the waves of fog. Within the on-stage gloom, the odd sight of a dozen or so standard-lamps, pulsing away in time to the beats through thick lampshades. I didn’t have my camera with me, although I expect it would have struggled to capture any of this well. Quite a few people have submitted photos of previous shows to flickr.

As the show progressed, the stage was slowly up-lit from the back with soft blue and yellow glows. The cloak was shed, placed on a stand just behind front of stage, it still loomed, like some kind of shadowy spirit-familiar. Gradually we could see a little more of the performers, jigging around, wildly shaking shamanistic totem-sticks, pounding away on congas and toms, yet still the lighting and smoke effects kept them essentially obscured and anonymous.

The short set stuck solidly to the album, without encores, which was fine by me. My attention didn’t wander, nor did I tire of standing in place. My only complaints would be with the slightly murky sound, which isn’t that unusual for the Academy, and that the music didn’t really connect as terribly live, aside from the vocals; pitch-shifted, yet weirdly still human and very real. I think this was probably down to a combination of the very programmed sounds, and the distancing effect of the theatrics. It was something more like watching a stage-show display set to a musical playback, than a rock music show. I took it as an opportunity to watch something a little out of the ordinary, and enjoyed myself.

The album is ace, and I recommend it to anyone. You can find it on spotify.

The video for “Triangle Walks” gives an impression quite close to the live show. There are some other videos available on the band site which give a good sense of the Fever Ray aesthetic.

Triangle Walks from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

Even better, their first release is a Christmas single : ‘Countdown to Christmas / Baby Jesus was the first Glam Rocker’. Better still, they’ve made it available as a free download ‘as an antidote to the credit crunch’. It sounds pretty much like you’d expect, and the first listen brought a seasonal smile to my face.