Music Review – “Vamp” (Jake Perrine, 2001)

I was introduced to this Gothic rock-opera by a friend several years ago, rediscovered it recently, and was amazed how much influence from it had seeped into my own work: in particular, its villain-protagonist Alexandra has more than a little in common with the antagonist of "Wolves of Dacia." That being so, and since I...

Album Review: “Party on, Papillon!”

Having hugely enjoyed Anna Secret Poet's earlier album "Tits of Steel" (as hilarious as it sounds, and a great antidote to a depressing workplace where listening to offbeat deadpan punk-poetry ought to be mandatory for mental health), I was eager to hear her latest offering, and was thoroughly entertained, amused, and really very impressed (especially...

Music Review – “Arboles Lloran Por Lluvia” (Helena Tulve, 2014)

I first encountered Helena Tulve’s work by accident, while searching through my local library’s depressingly small collection of female classical composers. A copy of her 2008 album “Lijnen” was all that this search yielded, although it justified the effort with its starkly beautiful, free-form works: part audio poetry or storytelling, part sound-scapes, each piece feeling...

Music Review – “Lijnen” (Helena Tulve, 2008)

Haunting, sonoristic contemporary classical suite. This subject may have come up before, and I have no wish to reignite political debates on this blog, but suffice it to say it was only after transitioning that I realised what an indifferent feminist I had been before transitioning, and set about looking for ways to amend that,...

Album Review: “Tits of Steel”

A brilliantly eclectic combination of performance poetry and punk ... I was lured to this album by C. T. Herron’s glowing review that gave me very high expectations for it, and they were not disappointed … much to my relief, as Anna has been a supporter of this blog since its early days, so it...

Album Review: “Pesticide”

Having recently received some lovely reviews on my own work, I feel the time has come to share some of the love around, so the next few posts will be reviews of works I have recently discovered and felt were deserving of a wider audience. To commence, a punk-Goth album by an independent local (as...

Musical Interlude

The next proper post I plan to make will be a review of albums by some friends of mine who have helped support my morale over these last three years ... so these reviews will be predictably favourable, but I shall make every effort to justify that artistically. 😉 That will require some thought and...