London agenda for Monday 23 April 2012
1. Listen to an artist talk with David Shrigley [Le Cool]
2. Change the world, with a little help from UCL researchers [Run Riot]
3. Enjoy Don Giovanni as a gay, debauched playboy and nightclub owner at Heaven [Flavorpill]
4. Hear comic singer/songwriter extraordinaire Helen Goldwyn [Don’t Panic]
5. Walking the dead of the Middle Ages [Ian Visits]
6. Eat at Pimlico Fresh [Tired of London]
23 Apr 2012
Trouble Books - Concatenating Fields
2012 sees another album of beautiful, intimate, ambient folk-pop from this sublime and criminally underexposed American duo. “Concatenating Fields” is their third long player, out soon on MIE Music, and it sound every bit as absorbing as their work to date.
23 Apr 2012
Octagon Court - Bring Her In
Octagon Court have released a video for the brilliant “Bring Her In”, an arch piece of distinctly British art-pop. See vocalist Charlie Audsley rotating as a giant mouth sings from the clouds and guitarist Stephen Draycott cavorts in the surf. Octagon Court could be equally at home on Pitchfork or at the Tate. One to watch: closely.
22 Apr 2012
Brainlove DIY Radio Show
If you’d like something to listen to this Saturday morning, here’s the monthly radio show hosted by Snipe’s music editor John “BRNLV” Rogers, with tracks by Internet Forever, Magnetic Fields and Enjoyed and the latest underground sounds from Iceland, Denmark and Estonia.
21 Apr 2012
21 Apr 2012
Connan Mockasin - Forever Dolphin Love
This came out over a year ago but we just found it so we’re posting it anyway. Creepy art-pop so demented it makes of Montreal sound like Dire Straits.
21 Apr 2012
UCL's blind mice, see how they swim
Professor Robin Ali explains how his UCL team have been transplanting cells into the retina of night blind mice, enabling them to see in semi-darkness and swim towards a visual cue.
Here’s the abstract.
20 Apr 2012
Sin Kitty - Vanity Daze
A beautiful cover for a beautiful, honest song. Unashamedly tapping elements of 90s indie-rock, slowcore and shoegaze, this is one for fans of Throwing Muses as much as fans of Big Deal.
20 Apr 2012
Londoners are followers not leaders in music taste, says reputable study
Two academics in Dublin compared Last FM listening habits in various cities. You know how Londoners are really cool and happening and listen to all the cool new music first? Well you don’t.
Conrad Lee and Pádraig Cunningham’s paper (PDF) looked at different cities and analysed where Last FM subscribers were listening to new music first. They say:
“London’s unremarkable position is…noteworthy”.
So as a city our musical taste is not cool and current, it’s “unremarkable”. Hurts, doesn’t it?
The image above, for Indie music, shows this admirably. In simple terms, the higher up the city and and the bigger the orange circle next to it, the earlier Last FM listerners there are listening to new tracks.
Conrad Lee, not being a journalist, has helpfully set out some headline-unfriendly caveats:
1: It’s all based on Last.fm data
2: We haven’t yet shown our model of flow to be predictive
3: We just indicate which cities are ahead, we don’t know why (leaders may not be ‘influencers’)
But he agreed over email that “the results show London is not the musical trendsetter we might have expected.”
So there you have it. You people need to raise your game.
Conrad Lee and Pádraig Cunningham (PDF) – The Geographic Flow of Music
Conrad Lee – blog post explaining the results and offering some caveats
Technology Review – Network Science Reveals The Cities That Lead The World’s Music Listening Habits
Image – Courtesy of the authors
20 Apr 2012
This chart shows Ken Livingstone's big problem
The longer the campaign goes on, the fewer people want to vote for him.
Once the also rans are eliminated and second preferences reassigned, the three most recent polls by any organisation show Livingstone trailing Johnson 53-47.
If Livingstone keeps turning voters off over time, it’s hard to see those numbers shifting in his direction.
Summaries of all the relevant polls, and links to the data itself, can be found at UK Polling Report.
20 Apr 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- The best church names in London, and where they come from
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
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