Florence and the Machine - Lungs

When I first started the CD spinning (or, more accurately, hit play on Spotify) I was hugely disappointed that here was another young female singer, having been brought up on her parents' Kate Bush records, trying to create that 'alternative sound', and instead sounding like all those other singers that think London-sound is cool. The voice is reminiscent of Kate Nash, Laura Marling and, dare I say, Lily Allen, and the first track, Dog Days Are Over doesn't do anything to dispel this.

However, as the album continues. her accent very quickly melts into the background as you get carried away into a jolting, almost tribal wall of music. Every song is like a great book; you really can't put them down until you've found out how they finish. An underlying pattern of verse-chorus is hidden under the evolving drums, guitars, harps that build up and up until you can't help yourself joining in. Drumming Song opens with a pattern of drums that's reminiscent of 'People Party' by the relatively unknown band, "For Stars" and builds into an epic that makes you feel like you're flying through the Amazon rainforest at the speed of sound in the arms of a superhero that you're passionately in love with. Your face is being scratched by the creepers as you fly, and you're missing getting to see the monkeys, but damn you just don't care!

In short, this Florence has a massively powerful voice and can't half write a tune, and is clearly supported by some incredible musicians. I have been surprised, but pleasantly so! Yes it's easy to like, and yes it's going to be hugely popular, but that shouldn't be a reason to ignore something that is both pleasing to the ear and intrigues the mind. I for one am delighted that popular music is going in this direction - people are starting to think about their music again.

c u r r e n t l y

Thanks to last.fm radio, and the ever plunderable Spotify, I've discovered Jason Webley - an American music-man who is a little like a more interesting version of Willy Mason who collided with an accordion and a few violins in a tragic (and yet beautiful) pile up, which was then attended by Isaac Brock (of Modest Mouse fame) in a particularly shouty mood. Listen to the song 'Broken Cup' to see what I mean.

I've decided that in future I should avoid looking at photos of musicians on the internet however. They never look like you expect.

C u r r e n t l y m u s i c 26/02/08

Currently listening to:

Roxy Music, Roxy Music
I am Kloot - Moolah Rouge
A Hawk and a Hacksaw - The Way the Wind Blows
Radiohead - The Bends
Jeff Buckley - Grace

C u r r e n t l y m u s i c

It's so cold in this house. It's so cold in this house. Smart little Bloc Party.

Music I'm currently listening to:

Purcell: Dido and Anaeus (particularly the Prelude for Witches act. Amazing stuff)
Elgar: Dream of Gerontius (my favourite piece of classical music)
A Hawk and a Hacksaw: The Way the Wind Blows (crazy Romanian market-place music)
Thom Yorke: The Eraser (How to do electronic music)
Led Zeppelin

In rainbows.

There's a new radiohead album. Oh yeah - it finally arrived. I've been like a hare (not narcoleptic like the one in the fable) waiting patiently for the tortoise to finish the race - for over 3 years. Finally they've produced something, and it's beautiful. Plus you can pay as much for it as you want! Amazing!

Books...

This holiday, I have done much reading, which has been something I have been looking forward to doing ever since exams got to within 4 months away. I list...

• Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre. A pretty good read. Set in southern texas you follow the expoits of an incredibly unlucky and persecuted individual, Vernon Little. He has been witness to a mass murder at a local school, and as the only friend of the dead killer, he becomes a scape goat for the local police intent on "cause and effect". 3/5
  
• The Player of Games by Ian Banks. One of his culture novels, the first I've read. It took some getting into; his writing style is horrible - very punchy sentences, with poorly worded, forced dialogues. However, the story was quite a good idea, and if you can get past the writing and the fact that the characters names are clearly produced by Mr Banks luring his cat across his keyboard (Chiark-Gevantsa Jernau Morat Gurgeh dam Hassease indeed!), it's quite good. Basically, Jernau is a game player, he plays all, and he usually wins all in impressive style. He is taken away to the empire of Azad, where their game, Azad, is so complex that your positioning in a tournament determines your status in Azad society. 3.5/5
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling. You all know what these are, and I love them. They're so well written - very few other books have presented the same interweaving and gripping story lines that the entire HP series have. Perhaps it's because there's around 3000 pages of character history, but the character developments are fantastic. An easy read, but well worth it. Not wanting to give anything away, the ending is great. I may have shed a tear or two... 5/5
• The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. The story slowly ducks and weaves, but it's the writing that really pulls you along in this book. It's written from 4 perspectives - three 1st person and one 3rd person. Leo Gursky writes with stacattoed, regularly punctuated sentences, and writes about his days trying to make himself noticed at the end of his life. He'll go into starbucks and order coffee loudly, and then proceed to deliberately spill it. He's written a book, but it was never published - it was given to a friend to look after when world war II began, and he hasn't seen it since. His only love, Alma emigrated from Poland during the war, while pregnant with Leo's only son. Another Alma writes exceptionally for a 15 year old - always questioning, always reasoning, and her brother "Bird" writes his own confused thoughts in his diary, which I suppose is his own was of expressing love. Their mother is translating The History of Love, a book by the main character in the 3rd person piece, Zvi... as the story unravels the stories begin to link together in breathtaking style. I really enjoyed this book, and will no doubt read it again and again. 5/5

The Dawkins Delusion

The Dawkins Delusion - by Alistair McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath.

I must admit that this was a very good read. McGrath gives a fair and well argued critique of a book he describes as "often little more than an aggregation of convenient factoids, suitably overstated to acheive maximum impact, and loosely arranged to suggest they constitute an argument". He essentially portrays Dawkins as an "Athiest Fundamentalist" who's main aim is not to pass on the message of evolution to the uninitiated, but to wipe out all world religion. One of my favourite quotes sums up how McGrath views Dawkin's world view:

"Here is Ruse's comment on what happened next:

'When John Paul II wrote a letter endorsing Darwinism, Richard Dawkins' response was simply that the Pope was a hypocrite, that he could not be genuine... Dawkins himself simply preferred an honest fundamentalist.'

Ruse's comment immediately helps us understand what is going on. If Dawkins' agenda was to encourage Christians to accept biological evolution, the Pope's statement would have been welcomed... Dawkins is unable to accept that the Pope - or presumably any Christian - could accept evolution."

It appears that Dawkins is a character who shares many attributes with fundamentalist Christians and is in fact doing more damage to the atheist/Darwinian cause than any creationist. In my opinion, and I have held this view for some time, he does genuinely believe that evolution is the be all and end all of life on earth: "no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” (A River Out of Eden, Dawkins 1995). However, until reading this book, I pretty much agreed with him - though I was willing to compromise for religion. Having read this book my eyes have been opened even further to the possibility of a God. One of the most important revelations (as well as the aforementioned "Real Magic" was that many scientists are religious. And, in the words of Gould "Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with atheism"). Religious belief is not infantile, or stupid.

Thus, I must agree with McGrath. While Dawkins' books on the natural sciences are well argued, clear and enlightening, it appears that The God Delusion is a departure from his usual well argued, scientific, evidence based writing. Now, I have not read The God Delusion, but having read this critique I'm not sure I want to. Dawkins arguments seem to lack depth and carefully researched arguments - many of his points rely on long-defunct Christian theology, in short, if you do read the God Delusion, read The Dawkins Delusion as well - at least give religion a fair shot. McGrath has the advantageous position of an ex-atheist Christian trained in molecular biophysics and also theology. Read the book, and make your own mind up. In my mind, Dawkins has lost alot of respect.

How much is religion "blind faith" and how much of it is reasoned?

c u r r e n t l y

Currently reading: The Dawkins Delusion: a critique of The God Delusion - should be pretty interesting.
Currently working on: Limb Bud Development
Currently listeninging to: Interior Lulu by Marillion - an epic track from their 2000ish album Marillion.com. Not an easy one to get into if you've never heard Marillion before, but beautiful none-the-less

c u r r e n t l y l i s t e n i n g t o

The Cooper Temple Clause - Make This Your Own.
The band released this album in its entirety for streaming on the NME website a few days ago, and upon first listening it was awful. The thrashy-synthed, slightly angry TCTC that I had grown to love seemed to be dead. The songs seemed poppy, badly produced and dull. However, having taken the plunge and, against my better judgement, bought the album anyway out of loyalty, it's actually not too bad! The album is much better produced than either the previous releases of the songs, or the NME stream, and, while it contains a few duff songs, the majority are still recogniseably TCTC.
The song "All I See is You", is amazing. It starts with the quiet rolling eerie noises I loved from their first album (e.g. the track 555-4823), and ends with Panzer Attack guitars and shouty singing - so unmistakeably TCTC. I could not describe how happy this made me. #AAAAIII will fiiind a waaaaaaay to youuuu#. It even ends resonantly like Talking to a Brick Wall, My favourite song they have done.
Even the songs that start poorly (like Connect) do eventually build into something, which has calmed my worries of a "Four Day Hombre" style album. They've made use of the other singers in the band, which in my opinion is a bad thing (Ben Gautrey just sounds like TCTC), and songs like Isn't it Strange and Take Comfort suffer for this, though they tease with All I See is You by starting with another singer but ending with some classic Ben.
Overall, this album is much more of a success than I ever expected. £9 well spent!

c u r r e n t l y l i s t e n i n g t o

I've been listening to Andrew's Itunes (ponytime) this evening, and have discovered some suprisingly good music. I'd never listened to Pearl Jam before, and the few songs that I've heard have been really good (like a cross between Nirvana (the guy's voice sounds a bit like Mr Cobain), and Porcupine Tree). Also, Kula Shaker, a phrase I use quite often, but a band I'd never dared to cross - really good! Nice indianny influences. In other music news, Battle (who supported TCTC at the Junction are amazing, a cross between Bloc Party and The Cure.

Darwin, Dawkins, God and Me. All in 417 Words

This is not a radical post – it is my opinion.

If, all those million years ago, the tiny life-like particles had come together and “discovered” a DNA-like way of copying themselves, but, one that was perfect, I mean 100% perfect, letter for letter, chemical for chemical, then we’d still be sitting in a primordial soup. The sheer fact that we cannot copy ourselves perfectly has enabled us to become what we are today, and isn’t that incredible? – Me, 2006

Evolution by natural selection is an amazing thing, and in my opinion, explains everything there is to know about the origins of us, and every other living thing on the planet. Richard Dawkins also believes this, and I am currently reading his book “The Blind Watchmaker”, and it is fantastic. Full of beautiful metaphors and well explained theories (though his analogy of DNA to the ROM of a computer was extremely confusing), it is well worth reading. However, I think if he is going to more widely spread the amazing news that is neo-Darwinism he is going to have to divorce it from his arrogant atheism.

Now, I’m not religious, and I don’t really believe that there is a God – perhaps I’m hedging my bets – an agnostic. As I’ve said, my beliefs about the origin of life are the same as Dawkins’s, but that’s not the point. That does not immediately disprove the existence of a God. God and evolution (even evolution by natural selection) are not mutually exclusive, it just simply gives a different role for a deity. All the species we have on this earth today are descended from an original (or a few original) ancestors, and that’s great, but so what? Maybe once all religious experts realise that evolution did happen, and that natural selection is the perfect, most logically perfect way to explain this, and people like Dawkins realise that while it may disprove the book of Genesis as a literal fact, it does not prove organised-religion to be a breeding ground for unintelligent, uninformed, brainwashed fools perhaps we can all get on. Religion in general makes a lot of people happy, and I believe has helped us set up a large majority of the moral codes we hold today. I have no problem with peaceful religiousness; it’s just not for me.

Aside from these religious misgivings, the book is well worth reading and shines a glorious light on all that is natural. Completely natural, and beautiful.

Anyone else’s opinion would be welcomed!

Tom

Magic and vocab.

Have just finished Dr Bainbridge's Pregnancy tour-de-force. It was only a simple skimming over the science of pregnancy, but was actually extremely interesting, and should make re-revising my repro notes from last year much easier. As I was reading it it reminded me just why I am studying Development and Reproduction next year - just because it's as close to magic as you can get in science.

I've now started to second book in the Gormenghast trilogy - the first few pages required me to have a dictionary at my side. I realised how I read books and simply ignore any words that I've not heard of before. "With her arms akimbo" for example... would have glossed over it, but now I know that it means to have your hands on your hips and your elbows sticking out sideways. I've been writing the really complicated ones down in my old french "Lexique" book from GCSE year, so maybe they'll stick!

b o o k s

Currently Reading: A Visitor Within (The Science of Pregnancy) by David Bainbridge. Written by one of my lecturers no-less, the infamous Dr Bainbridge. While this is going to be a relatively basic coverage of the science of pregnancy, seeing as I'm doing development and reproduction next year it can do no harm. It'll also be fascinating to read one of his books!

Just Finished Titus Groan. It was fantastic. A surprisingly simple story of the first few years of Titus's life, interspursed with the foreground of Steerpike's rise to fame within the Castle ranks. Well written, and thoroughly enjoyable. 10/10. I'm going to read the other two books in the series after Dr Bainbridge's. I'll feel better about reading some fiction when I've read a book relavent to my course!'

m a n i c s

Currently Listening to: Am going through one of my annual Manic Street Preachers fortnights. Can't get enough of them at the moment, as can be seen from my last.fm profile! Also listening to alot of Led Zeppelin.

g o r m e n g h a s t

Currently Reading: Titus Groan by Mervin Peake (1st Book in the Gormenghast Trilogy). I randomly picked up the entire trilogy in Victoria Coach station on the way to Alex's, and it cost me £15 so I hope it's good. I read the first 90 pages on the coach, and must admit that although nothing happened, it was great fun to read. Mervin Peake's writing style is vividly descriptive, and simply in describing the daily lives of a number of characters within Gormenghast he kept me hooked. Hopefully this bodes well!

b l a c k h o l e s a n d r e v e l a t i o n s

Currently Listening t0 - Muse - Black Holes and Revelations. It's actually pretty good - after hearing their single Supermassive Black Hole, which is a bit like jamiroquai I was worried, but it fits in pretty well with the album, even though the other tracks are much more muse like. Seems pretty angry though #you'll burn, yeah you'll burn for you sins, yeah you'll burn# ahem.

t h e e r a s e r#

Currently Listening to - Thom Yorke -The Eraser. Apparently it's not out yet, but when it does, I'll definitely be buying it - it sounds amazing. I was told it came out a week ago, and got annoyed that no shops were selling it, so downloaded it. Oops! Anyway, it's Classic Thom Yorke, electro, with those really stirring repetitive refrains he does so well... #it_gets_you_down#, #this_is_f***_up#. Reminiscent of #the Raindrops {x47#} of "Sit Down.Stand Up". Also listening to Keane - Under the Iron Sea. I thought it was going to be horribly dull and sameysamey; somehow it's not. It's still Keane, but it's different. I'm so glad they havent gone the same dull dull desperately dull way of Embrace.

I don't want Thom to go skint, so I would like to reiterate that I am going to buy the album when it comes out. Preorder it from HMV.

Sweatshop Yoghurt?

Sorry for not posting for a while.



For one reason or another, I always get an attack of conscience when buying economy sainsbury's foods from their budget range. For example, the other day I bought a pack of 4 yoghurts for 29p. Surprisingly they tasted very nice, and I am still here to tell the tale, but, I did feel guilty as I saw it roll through the checkout, probably for a number of reasons

• I was disgusted at what I was doing to myself
• What state would the cows that produce the milk be in? Though, assuming the milk is British (shipping in cheap milk is surely economically stupid), then the cows would be of an "acceptable" (on British scale) standard, and milk from different farms is mixed up anyway.
• Was the fruit abused? Were the peaches that went into my peach melba made to work inhuman hours? Perhaps... it is not a human afterall.

I also bought economy muesli yesterday (59p for 1kg) - the same question can be said of the oats and the nuts.

In conclusion, I do not know, but, my bank-balance will force me to selectively buy economy foods - but only those that I can see few ethical qualms with.

Tom xxx

My Music

Lookie! My Music... It updates and everything!!!!



Latest Musical Loves:

• The Cooper Temple Clause
• I Am Kloot
• The Zutons