Except now, there's a new app called 'Jacket', named after the thing the record sleeve goes into, that fulfils all but two of my niche criteria. It offers much more, and it's the closest any app has come. Here’s an overview of its features:

• 


Interleaves my own digital library on Navidrome, with streaming from Apple Music, and shows large album artwork, without an extra action to trigger an 'immersive mode':

  

• Supports album collections:

  

• Shows enriching data from Musicbrainz, last.fm and Wikipedia. I can read about the albums and their artists, with credits that link to the artist. Liner notes basically!

  

  

• Artist pages with logos (where available). Also lists missing albums from your collection using Apple Music.

  

• Menu bar app to see what's playing, which track number out of a total number of tracks, and the whole menubar item is a toggle to play/pause.

  

• Match your Discogs library with Apple Music to play your physical collection anywhere.
• Discover new music with recommendations from Apple Music, last.fm and Bandcamp Daily.

  

• Send URLs and text searches of albums and artists to yourself via a shortcut, creating your own inbox of music to try in ‘Listen Later’.
• Create songlink urls to share albums to most streaming services.
• One search field, for results from my Navidrome and Apple Music Libraries, and the wider Apple Music catalog.
• Scrobble everything to last.fm.
• Works on MacOS, iOS and Carplay.

The two missing criteria are 'Social Club' (no social features beyond sharing URLs yet) and ‘ethical’: Jacket kind of fails the latter sadly, because while I designed it, Claude Code built it.

I'll come back to that but to be clear up front, I'm not calling myself a developer or selling an app. I’m operating on the (maybe misguided) hope that ‘It’s just for me, and I wouldn’t be able to afford it otherwise, so that makes it sort of OK’. It’s what made the process so enjoyable - no one else’s needs had to be considered. If I don't think there should be a shuffle button when playing albums, there isn't one.

Navidrome

The first decision was how to manage my personal was library - carry on using Plex, try another system, or just keep the files locally on my Mac. The latter meant fast loading and no syncing, but also made it harder to create an iOS app that I could use remotely. I’ve tried and failed to use Doppler’s built-in transfer function, which syncs the music files to your phone.


I ended up moving all my files to Navidrome. I was initially put off by the default web interface, but soon realised there were other ways to use it. It’s supported by a large variety of apps (more so than Plex), and trialling Navibeat made me realise this was a great way to create an API for my personal collection. 

I chose this over Plex, because it’s fast and focussed on music. Most importantly, it uses the metadata in the audio file, rather than creating a separate database like Plex. So if navidrome ever goes away, or I need to move it to a new server, I still have all my hard-won data in one place. And hard-won it was, Plex was covering up for my lack of proper tagging, and it took me a while to get to grips with what data I needed, and what were the best data sources. In short, I found the best workflow was to use mp3tag as the tagging app, with MusicBrainz as the data source. Now I know that Bandcamp purchases only need the full release date adding to the YEAR field, so that I can get my ‘order by release date, not just year’ wish fulfilled. Beforehand I was using Meta app, but found I couldn't enter a full date information. Now, when I rip a CD, I'll use XLD and get it done right from the start.

Initial setup took a while too - I’m running it from a docker container on my Synology NAS with a reverse proxy so that I could access it from anywhere. Claude was instrumental here in helping me set this up. I couldn't have got there by searching alone, whereas Claude wrote clear and accurate step by step instructions for my particular NAS and OS version that I could follow. It also wrote a script to auto-sync my desktop music library with the server. If I hadn't figured all that out, I would've used a PikaPod instead.

Building the app

The next thing to work out was what form it should take. A web app would have the advantage of using CSS for style and layout, but in the end I went with Swift. If Qobuz had a public API that I could use, it might have been harder decision, but there were too many advantages to going native:

• iOS and CarPlay: I wanted a system that worked across everything, not just my Mac.
• Gapless playback: works out of the box with AVQueuePlayer or AVAudioEngine.
• System integration: media keys, Control Center "Now Playing" widget, lock screen, AirPlay, headphone controls.
• And of course, MusicKit for the streaming service side. The goal here was to focus on my personal library, but use Apple Music to fill the in gaps, and play recommendations.

The very first pass was a single swift file (with dependencies) in an Xcode project, which read a small local test folder of music, and created a simple list of songs, with basic player controls:

The second pass grouped the songs into albums, and with that, I was off. Within a few days I had a MacOS app working, and I’ve been iterating on it now for a couple of months. Now I have a fully working app with all the features mentioned at the start. During the process I experimented with three different layouts:

Split, Spines & Grid

Spilt view is more like a ‘normal’ Mac app - a sidebar, a vertically scrolling content panel and a detail view. The cover in the detail view fades into the title and play controls, and then scrolls down to reveal album meta information and description (where available), artist bio and other albums by them. It shows results from both my Navidrome library and Apple Music, so I can see and play any holes in my collection.

Content is shown in groups - if I choose 'artists', I get alphabetical groups with each letter. 'Albums' shows it in descending release date order, and 'Recent' shows recently added albums, grouped by fuzzy times like 'Last week' and "Last month'.

Spines view uses the same engine, but visually is a complete rethink - what could the app look like if it wasn’t following Mac conventions? Represent each album, playlist or music recommendation as if it were a physical collection (Vinyl or CD).

Interestingly, someone else had the same idea, and there's a kickstarter for a physical device as interactive wall art. With this layout, I liked how the selected music was front and centre (in Split View it’s always right hand heavy). You then tap the cover to flip it around for track listing and other album information - as if you were turning over the physical thing.

The spines themselves have a few different text styles, decided by their genre. So electronic music gets a monospaced font (Space Mono), classical gets a serif, and so on. As I expected though, it's tricky to read vertical spines, and it hides the one thing I wanted to elevate in the app - the album cover. You do get a hover 'peek' at the cover, but it's not the same as viewing them in a grid, which is where Grid view comes in. It presents the same horizontal shelf, with centred 'Now Playing' cover, but with a grid for ease of browsing:

(That small thumbnail of the cover top centre is a button to re-centre on the currently playing, so you can browse around and get back easily)

These alternative layouts are a tricky custom UI, as well as horizontal scrolling it has to keep track of a horizontal scroll position and remember if an album is 'open' and recalculate accordingly. As such there is a small performance hit, so Split View is the one I use the most, closely followed by Grid, and Spines remains a fun experiment. Split View was designed to take advantage of standard Mac UI setup as much as possible - navigation sidebar, vertically scrolling content and detail panel.

I mentioned earlier that it pulls in artist logos for their biography pages. There are some online sources for these (such as fanart.tv) but they only feature the more classic/mainstream bands, and only as PNGs. I decided I had to have vector logos, so the app pulls in from my own PDF archive of vectorised logos. I expected to regret starting this, but I've actually really enjoyed the process of maintaining the artist pages. Finding images I'd taken from gigs for the headers and vectorising the band logos in Figma. Tagging music files felt tedious, but this process is very rewarding.

Discover

I wanted Jacket to cater for music discovery, as well as library playback. As well as surfacing random selections from library, Discover brings together recommendations from four different sources:

Bandcamp Daily

I really enjoyed the magazine feature in Qobuz, so to replicate this, jacket loads the Bandcamp Daily RSS feed. It fetches a title, thumbnail and description for the card, and opens the page in a webview. It even scrobbles what's playing, and displays it in the menubar.

Apple Music

Apple Music for playing Apple Music algorithm playlists and recommendations: 'Top Picks for You', 'Recently Played', 'Recently Added' and 'New This week'. I can also search the Apple Music catalog and play any search results.

last.fm recommendations

Last.fm's website uses Spotify to play recommendations, but only if you have a Spotify Premium account. I don't anymore, so Jacket lets me use Apple Music to play them instead. The sentence explaining why last.fm has recommended it ("Similar to…[names of other bands you've listened to]") is included in the card.

Listen Later

Inspired by the 'Mail to Self' shortcut I've been using for years, the last part of Jacket's Discover section is 'Listen Later'. I used to write myself notes to myself when people recommended tunes, or use the 'Mail to Self' shortcut to remind me to listen to albums or playlists on bandcamp. Now I've got an inbox for it all, where it's all playable.

A shortcut is used here too - taking either a URL, text selection, or plain text input, it appends the data to a plain text file in iCloud. Jacket then parses this to create a Listen Later entry in the app. If it's a Bandcamp or Youtube URL, it grabs the title and a thumbnail from the page. If it's text, Jacket does an Apple Music search and shows the top result. When I'm done, I can mark it as played and it's shunted to the back of the list and that status is synced using iCloud. I love how all my music recommendations can be listened to in one app. It also works as a way of bookmarking music on Apple Music, without the commitment of 'adding to library'. If I like it, I can add it.

It’s not for everyone

There’s a lot that Jacket doesn’t do. There’s no queue management for example, as mixing my files with Apple Music is technically complex. Each one requires a different framework to play (AVFoundation and MusicKit respectively) and neither one can be used to play both. As my style of playing is album by album, this doesn’t bother me at all, but would be a dealbreaker for some.

There are no lyrics, and as mentioned earlier, there’s no shuffle button on albums. That’s just opinionated, as listening to an album out of order is just wrong. It almost my default way of playing playlists though.

The elephant in the room

To frame my AI usage up until this point: I don’t use it to write anything for me, plan my trips or any of the supposed use cases. This site does not use anything created by AI. Because I felt that my AI nay-saying had to be based on actual experience, I’ve experimented with using at every step of my day to day design processes, and the result has always been hilariously bad. Not even in the realms of useable. Like the time I gave Figma the style rules for an iconset I was working on, along with similar examples as a basis, and asked it to create an icon of a cruiser-style motorbike for me:

Where I have found AI useful is with technical queries. I have to use Wordpress for my main client, and Claude has helped me with it's frustrating quirks in ways I would never have found from my usual search of forums or Stack Overflow. The server and reverse proxy setup for Navidrome is another example.

Then, an old friend of mine showed me how he used Claude Code to create the app he always wanted, and that niggling "what if?" thought wouldn't leave my head. I could've spent all that 'Qobuz theming' time on building the app I wanted. I can’t overstate just how addictive (and liberating) it is to use a combination of plain English and design mockups to describe what I want, and have it made real. Being able to experiment with a real working interface with real data (and not just a picture of one) is potent. Or is that toxic?

Obviously I would never have the funds to pay a developer to make an app for me - it just wouldn't have been an option. A real developer would no doubt look at the codebase Claude has created and wince. Or maybe they wouldn't? I have no idea either way, and that’s another reason why I'm not distributing it.

The dilemma is: I now have the app that I wanted, but at what cost? There are three costs here:

• Supporting the plagiarism companies hell bent on destroying our environment and culture. That's obviously a biggie. Like knowing that air travel and eating meat is bad for the environment, but still flying abroad and eating a burger. The target of my ire became the enabler of my obsession.
• Financial cost. I took out the £15 a month 'Claude Pro' subscription, which means my app has cost me just over £30. Cheap so far, but will it end up costing me more, as I'll need Claude to bug fix and maintain it? That’s also not taking the £80 Apple Developer annual membership into account, which is needed to use MuiscKit. How much more time and money do I want to spend fucking around with it? I can maybe see a future where I just settle for a combination of Apple Music app and a navidrome client. Not as satisfying, but maybe more relaxing?
• Personal cost. I don't use the term addictive term flippantly. I don't think I've ever felt so consumed by something in all my life. For those two months I was screen-bound. I read less, and barely went out walking or birding (listened to lots of music though). There was an element of UK heatwave induced lethargy here, but it was also due to my Claude usage. I would be constantly multitasking - give Claude a prompt, get on with work but keep checking back in on it - constantly switching focus. It melted my brain.

Now that Jacket is at a good stage, it's easier to slow down my usage, but I'm honestly not sure what happens next. I think my hope would be to be able make a version without AI, either by learning Swift (unlikely), or by trading skills time with a developer.

Changes in 1.4

• The main focus is on improving the appearance of modal dialogs, such as Album Info and Add to Playlist:
  • Modal overlay background blurs the background, rather than darkens, for better differentiation.
  • Paragraph breaks in description text.
  • Better line-height in description text.
  • Removed the weird text-shadow from the close button that made the icon look shit
• This one is a very opinionated change that some may not like, but I removed the pageheader background colour and gradients that you see on Album and Artist pages. Supporting it was tricky, and I realised I preferred the more minimal look. If you want these back, you can simply delete lines 336-342 of the custom.css file!
• Improvements to the styling of the bottom 'player' bar
• Search history dropdown redesigned to flow underneath the input field
• Now just using one font throughout. No more pissing about.
• Found some more instances of blue accent colour (including the player scrubber tooltip and improved contrast of new orange elements.

Instructions

Once you've downloaded the theme files, start by making a backup of the app. Modifying the CSS file will not affect any data, the worst that can happen is that the display looks a bit wonky, but it's worth having a backup in case you decide to switch back. Everytime the Qobuz app is updated, these changes will be overridden, so you will need to go through the steps again.

Then you can add the stylesheet file to the Qobuz app:

CSS

1. Quit Qobuz if open
2. Find the Qobuz CSS folder:
   On MacOS
   In Finder → Go → Go to Folder → and navigate to:
   /Applications/Qobuz.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/@qobuz/qobuz-dwp-ui/dist/assets/css/
   On Windows
   C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Qobuz\app-8.1.0-b019\resources\app\node_modules\@qobuz\qobuz-dwp-ui\dist\assets\css (Note the myuser and app-8.1.0-b019 parts of the path will vary)
3. Open main.css file in a plain text editor, and add @import "custom.css"; at the very top. It must come before anything else - this will load the custom styles.
4. Place the custom.css file from the download in the same folder
5. Restart Qobuz

Variables

If you're familiar with CSS, you can edit the custom.css to suit your needs:

• Accent colour (line #6)
• Font stack (line #16)

Icons

To update the app icon, using the files in the icon folder.

• In MacOS, select the Qobuz app in Finder, choose File → Get Info. Drop the icon.icns file on top of the app icon in the top left of the Info dialog.
• In Windows, right-click on the Qobuz app shortcut → Properties. Click Change Icon, and browse to the .ico file in the download folder. Click OK → Apply. Note that Windows caches icons aggressively, so after changing an icon you may need to restart Explorer (via Task Manager) or log out and back in to see the change take effect.

• Fix for the 'Catalogue/Library' toggle being hidden behind the top toolbar on artist pages:

  

• Fix for the Library toolbar (Toggle sidebar, Library Settings and Add button) being hidden behind the now playing bar:

  

• Various small tweaks and improvements

Download Qobuz theme v1.3. Note this is for the Beta release only.

I'd been really looking forward to this gig! The setup is minimal (two guitarists, various pedals and a drum machine) but they can create such a epic sound regardless, one that's inspired by the likes of Ride, Slowdive and Mojave 3. Incidentally, do have a listen to the mixtape they put together for Ransom Note, it's superb. They played everything they could (the entire Holy Island album + the single "War Machine") and didn't disappoint. This is the kind of music that really hits my spot. I hope they tour again soon and get the chance to play larger venues. As Adam quipped, the basement venue of The Library felt like "a rehearsal session with your friends and a crate of beers". The intimacy is nice, but they deserve more.

Here are some videos and photos from the night!

There’s a fair few changes compared the current release. I can now order albums by release date, so that's another tick on my Music App Criteria list!

The most prominent change is that Favourites, Playlists, Downloads and Purchases are now combined into one ‘Library’ tab. This features a sidebar that’s not present in the Discover and Magazine views, which means my theme can no longer support a global sidebar. Ideally, the sidebar would be persistent, and have all the navigation in there, rather than splitting it up between the two locations. I was hoping the new sidebar was just hidden, and that I could've used CSS to always show it, but sadly it's actually removed completely from the DOM.

There are lots of improvements to consistency of buttons and dropdowns. No more big blue buttons! The library also adds a load of new UI elements, particularly toggle switches for filters, that are a bit too visually noisy for my liking. They're also not the most legible. Fortunately, some of these can be hidden in the preferences.

So I've rebuilt my theme to work with the Beta release. I've brought back the styled top bar from the first version of the theme. Under the hood, the app uses even less semantic classes, and more tailwind utility classes, which makes it harder/impossible to target specific elements. In general though, less tweaks are needed, and this makes the theme a lot simpler and smaller (27k → 19k).

Changes in 1.2:

• Rebuilt for Qobuz Beta - no more global sidebar, but top navigation that blends into the content.
• Coloured page headers (for Albums, Record Labels etc) blend underneath the top navigation.
• Instead of the full Qobuz logo, I've reduced it to just my take on the Q logomark.
• Styled toggle switches to take up less space.
• Improvements to the replacement app icon, and now includes a .ico version:

  

• Note this is for the beta only - won't work properly with the current public version. For that, use version 1.1.

About this theme

To summarise my experience with the alternative music streaming service Qobuz: great ethical company, the best sound quality, but I couldn't quite get on with how it looks. As Qobuz desktop is an electron app, with a webplayer at play.qobuz.com, I can customise the interface with CSS. This is not an unsolicited proposal to Qobuz, telling them how they should design their app and logo, it's just customising the look to suit my own taste better. OK, maybe it is just a little bit.

• A different font. 'Qobuz Sans' is OK, but has a little too low an x-height for small text, and those curves on the lowercase L and T bug me. The kerning also looks off (look at the distance between the e and t in the example below. I really like Klim Foundry's Söhne and I'm using a trial version of the fonts for this. Obviously you can specify your own fonts, and I've set it to use Inter and then Apple default of San Francisco if you don't have these fonts. Space Grotesk would be a fun and open source choice! These are both in the replacement font stack.

  

• A different accent colour. I hate blue, but I love orange.
• A different logo. I'm not keen on the existing logo, which to my eyes looks rather dated. They have a good thing going on with the whole 'capital Q looks like a turntable', but this is a separate logomark (I don't know why they don't use their Q logo for the app icon, instead of the tiny 'qobuz' logotype). So I made a version that integrates the two marks. I really like the Z of the Safiro font, as it reminds of a stack of albums:

  

• Improved full screen player. Shows the album artwork as large as possible, and removes some UI clutter.
• The download also contains a replacement app icon .ics file, featuring the new logo I made, along with lots of other small bits and pieces.
• Album grids to be full-width. Lets make the most of the space on large screens.
• Paragraphs not to be full-width. Artist bios are too long to read comfortably.
• Less clutter in the full screen view, and the album artwork as large as possible (obviously the image might not be high enough resolution but hey).
• Removes those distracting yellow 'Hi-Res' logos from album grid views, and tones them down when they're shown on album pages (to match the existing 'CD Quality' icon).
• Lots of little improvements to help UI consistency.

Screenshots

If you're using this theme, let me know how you get on!

Instructions

Once you've downloaded the theme files, start by making a backup of the app. Modifying the CSS file will not affect any data, the worst that can happen is that the display looks a bit wonky, but it's worth having a backup in case you decide to switch back. Everytime the Qobuz app is updated, these changes will be wiped over, so you will need to go through the steps again.

Then you can add the stylesheet file to the Qobuz app:

CSS

1. Quit Qobuz if open
2. Find the Qobuz CSS folder:
   On MacOS
   In Finder → Go → Go to Folder → and navigate to:
   /Applications/Qobuz.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/@qobuz/qobuz-dwp-ui/dist/assets/css/
   On Windows
   C:\Users\myuser\AppData\Local\Qobuz\app-8.1.0-b019\resources\app\node_modules\@qobuz\qobuz-dwp-ui\dist\assets\css (Note the myuser and app-8.1.0-b019 parts of the path will vary)
3. Open main.css file in a plain text editor, and add @import "custom.css"; at the very top. It must come before anything else - this will load the custom styles.
4. Place the custom.css file from the download in the same folder
5. Restart Qobuz

Variables

If you're familiar with CSS, you can edit the custom.css to suit your needs:

• Accent colour (line #3)
• Font stack (line #16)

Icons

To update the app icon, using the files in the icon folder.

• In MacOS, select the Qobuz app in Finder, choose File → Get Info. Drop the icon.icns file on top of the app icon in the top left of the Info dialog.
• In Windows, right-click on the Qobuz app shortcut → Properties. Click Change Icon, and browse to the .ico file in the download folder. Click OK → Apply. Note that Windows caches icons aggressively, so after changing an icon you may need to restart Explorer (via Task Manager) or log out and back in to see the change take effect.

Albums is a companion app to an Apple Music Subscription where, like Longplay, long players are the focus. You can skip previous/next albums as well as tracks, and playlist tracks are shown in the context of their parent albums.

Comparing Albums app with my feature wishlist I found that Albums scores the highest of any app so far:

• Last.fm scrobbling. Solid and reliable. Done!
• Ethical. While it uses Apple Music as a streaming service, buying Albums supports an indie developer. Done!
• Immersive view. Albums has an ‘Art View’ that shows the album cover artwork large and colours the UI elements to match. Done!
• Album Collections. Done!
• Ordering albums by release date (not just by year). Done!

That's not all, I've also been enjoying :

• The Release feed. This feature is superb, not only giving me a playable list of new releases, but also showing you future releases, and when they'll be released.
• Listening Reports. While I use last.fm for my true stats (as it includes analog listening), I really like how they're presented in Albums, and you can even generate an image of your weekly/monthly/yearly listening reports and top albums to share on the socials.

  

  

• Listening history. What was that new album I played last Monday afternoon? Easy to find out.
• iCloud syncing. Remembers your current listening position and syncs it between MacOS and iOS apps. Start one platform, and then pick up where you left off on another.
• Airplay integration. The iOS app assumes (correctly) that I don't want to listen to music on my iPhone speakers, and always prompts me for which airplay speaker I want to use (and often seems to connect to the right one automatically?).
• Always visible search field, unlike Apple Music’s “maybe after a few clicks I’ll show you it” approach.
• Random Album widget. I’m not normally a fan of widgets, but I find this one really useful for surfacing music I’ve not listened to in a while.

It really feels like developer Adam Linder has aimed to make the most feature-filled music app, as I keep discovering new features all the time. From my list, the only features missing:

• Albums already shows more album info than Apple Music, as it downloads production credits from Discogs and MusicBrainz. Would love this to be expanded to sources like Wikipedia.
• Combine streaming and own library. Albums is Apple Music only at the moment, but Adam has hinted that local file support might be coming in the future).
• I mentioned 'Social Club' features in my list, but let's be clear, I wouldn't expect an indie developer to implement such a big feature. The listening report share images are already more than any other app is doing.
• A MacOS menu bar app to show the currently playing track (and pause/play toggle, à la Neptunes app) would be the icing on the cake!

If there is a downside to Albums, it’s that (to my nit-picky designer's eyes) the interface could use a bit more polish. It's not big things - some elements are tight up against others and need more room to breathe. Toolbar icons could be grouped to prevent each single icon having a different outer shape. Artist Bios need a line length restriction, rather than running full-width. That sort of thing.

Here's a quick before and after mockup:

If you have an Apple Music subscription, and wanting more than the official app has to offer, get Albums. There are many MusicKit apps out there, but this joins Longplay as the ones I would recommend you try.

Design changes

I really like the new Tahoe design. There, I’ve said it. While I hate Liquid Glass’ fussy twinkly edges and lack of legibility, they both feel less prominent in Apple Music somehow. I do like aspects of the new design language - proper button affordances for one. It now feels less spartan - just the right balance.

Immersive view

This is the big one for me. The 'Now Playing' view from iPadOS, which was previously only available on Mac in 'proper' fullscreen mode, is now possible at the window level (click the cover in the player bar at the bottom, or Cmd+Shift+F, to show it). This looks really nice, I just wish they’d been less timid with the size of the album cover. There’s a lot of space going to waste here, make it bigger you cowards! A landscape version of that iOS view with blended artwork would be the ideal. However, it has controls for airplay and volume level, and can also show lyrics with syllable by syllable highlighting. Nice!

Search bar improvements

I wrote about how Apple Music has previously an awkward switch between “Your Library” and “Apple Music”, and that the switch and the search bar were at different ends of the app, as far away from each other as possible. They fixed that by placing the search field right next to the switch, although the search field is now hidden and has to be triggered by clicking 'Search' in the sidebar.

Info about upcoming concerts

This isn't available in MacOS yet, but a nice touch, although encroaching onto Music Harbour app's territory somewhat.

I've made more improvements since my first version, and here's version 1.1 ready to download. Installation instructions are below.

Here's a list of what the theme changes:

• A different font. 'Qobuz Sans' is OK, but has a little too low an x-height for small text, and those curves on the lowercase L and T bug me. The kerning also looks off (look at the distance between the e and t in the example below. I really like Klim Foundry's Söhne and I'm using a trial version of the fonts for this. For the logo and largest headings I'm currently using Safiro by the Atipo Foundry. Obviously you can specify your own fonts, and I've set it to use think Inter and then Apple default of San Francisco if you don't have these fonts. These are both in the replacement font stack.

  

• A different accent colour. I hate blue, but I love orange.
• A different logo. I'm not keen on the existing logo, which to my eyes looks rather dated. They have a good thing going on with the whole 'capital Q looks like a turntable', but this is a separate logomark (I don't know why they don't use their Q logo for the app icon, instead of the tiny 'qobuz' logotype). So I made a version that integrates the two marks. I really like the Z of the Safiro font, as it reminds of a stack of albums:

  

• The download also contains a replacement app icon .ics file, featuring the new logo I made, along with lots of other small bits and pieces.
• Sidebar. For some reason my brain needs to see a sidebar in order for it to feel like an app, so a sidebar it has got. At one point it all got a bit Tahoe, but I've settled on this design, which is more Arc Browser. If you prefer the non-sidebar approach, another version is available.

  

• Album grids to be full-width. Lets make the most of the space on large screens.
• Paragraphs not to be full-width. Artist bios are too long to read comfortably.
• Less clutter in the full screen view, and the album artwork as large as possible (obviously the image might not be high enough resolution but hey).
• Removes those distracting yellow 'Hi-Res' logos from album grid views, and tones them down when they're shown on album pages (to match the existing 'CD Quality' icon).
• Lots of little improvements to help UI consistency.

Changes in v1.1:

• Added sidebar view.
• Simplified the fonts down to just Inter and Safiro. Inter doesn't have as much inherent boldness as Söhne, and meant I could specify tabular numbers for the time counts (stopping the numbers moving around as the track plays).
• This time I worked out how to remotely inspect an electron app, by opening it with Terminal: open -a "Qobuz" --args --remote-debugging-port=9222 which allows it to be inspected in Chrome. This meant I could work on the features that are desktop only, such as the back/forward page navigation buttons.

Screenshots

If you're using the Qobuz theme, let me know how you get on!

Instructions

Once you've downloaded the theme files, start by making a backup of the app. Modifying the CSS file will not affect any data, the worst that can happen is that the display looks a bit wonky, but it's worth having a backup in case you decide to switch back. Everytime the Qobuz app is updated, these changes will be wiped over, so you will need to go through the steps again.

Then you can add the stylesheet file to the Qobuz app:

CSS

1. Quit Qobuz if open
2. In Finder menu > Go > Go to Folder > and navigate to /Applications/Qobuz.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/@qobuz/qobuz-dwp-ui/dist/assets/css/.
3. At the top of the 'main.css' file add @import "custom.css";. It must come before anything else, and this will load the custom styles.
4. Place the custom.css file from the download in the same folder
5. Restart Qobuz

Variables

If you're familiar with CSS, you can edit the custom.css to suit your needs:

• Accent colour (line #3)
• Font stack (line #16)

Icons

To update the app icon, using the files in the icon folder.

• In Finder, select the Qobuz app, choose File > Get Info
• Drop the .icns file onto the app icon in the top left of the dialog.

You can also use the other icons in that folder to replace the contents of these folders:

/Applications/Qobuz.app/Contents/Resources (.icns)
/Applications/Qobuz.app/Contents/Resources/app/static/icons/prod (.icns, .svg and .png)

In contrast to many gigs I've been to in the last year, there was plenty of chat in between songs - an engaging connection with the audience. There was no talking during the set (a common problem with gigs these days), everyone was rapt. As a taster, here's a brief snippet of Tyler performing "Your Whole Life" the opener from For the Morning:

Leigh and I met him briefly afterwards at the merch table, and it turns out he's an absolute giant of man. Not just in stature, but one of the most warm and friendliest humans you could ever meet. I took the opportunity to pick up a couple of vinyls for my collection, 2011's The Valley Wind and 2024's New Lost Ages.

I asked some friends if they’d like to help me build this. They wished me luck. “To hell with them,” I told C. “I’ll build it anyway and destroy Spotify and Apple.” C smiled and said spite was an interesting reason to make something.

The interface is as pared down as much as possible, the UI's focus is on album artwork, with player controls in a super minimal status bar, and library browsing in an accordion style sidebar with tabs. It's built for people who don't want music apps to "feel like managing a spreadsheet".

I love how this approach cuts out unnecessary repetition of things like current album/track. I love it, and even though it would never happen, I would love it to support Apple Music too.

With any app that plays your own files, the question is how you support mobile devices. With my Plex library, it's stored on a NAS drive and accessed remotely. With Doppler, a separate app is used to transfer music to your device, just like the days of iPod. Spite also has a new approach here. Your playlists are automatically synced, using either iCloud or Dropbox to source the files, along with the most recent albums (up to 30) called 'Superfresh'. This is all done with an XML file that tells the mobile app which files to fetch from the chosen cloud storage. This has worked really well for me.

Revisiting my music app criteria shtick, Spite scores highly:

• Last.fm scrobbling - done!
• Immersive view - done! This isn't a view you have to trigger, album covers are always shown large as possible 😍.
• Collections - done! They're called 'Labels' here, and playlists are known as 'mixtapes', which I love.
• Supports MacOS, iOS, iPadOS and CarPlay

It also includes:

• Add custom artwork to your playlists (mixtapes). This is something common in most streaming services, but I'm not aware of any apps that do this in the play-your-own space.
• Menubar app to control Spite when it's in the background.
• While there's no social sharing (as you'd expect when it's not a streaming app), anyone on the same cloud service can collaborate.

Spite is free to try for 30 days, and after that costs $15 for Mac + iOS, or $10 for just Mac. An absolute bargain in my opinion!

I've been a fan for a couple of years, but this was my first time seeing him (Gordon Chapman-Fox) play live. The live sound was bassier and heavier than I expected, and the hypnotic visuals from 70s/80s films felt like time travel. There's something very enticing about the retro-futuristic Radiophonic Workshop sound - memories of growing up in that era, and watching Paddy Kingsland soundtracked Dr Who.

Here's a brief flavour from the gig:

I very much approve of the posters dangling from his kit ✊.

There were also two great support acts too - Cities + Memory and U, performing his audio/visual story Archenfield. I picked up the fantastic Brutalist t-shirt at the end.

So over the last couple of months I've been slowly tinkering in Zen browser with the Stylus extension (available for Chrome and Firefox). I'd tested wider ranging changes at one point (such as a Tahoe style sidebar) but there's a point where it becomes futile to keep fighting against the existing theme. Especially when future updates will likely break it all anyway. I'm not totally sold on Qobuz yet, but these tweaks mean I'm spending more time with it. Plus I find fettling like this a fun and welcome distraction from the apocalypse that's happening at the moment.

What this is not: this is not an unsolicited proposal to Qobuz, telling them how they should design their app. What this is: customising the look of Qobuz suit my own taste better. It's like the old days of Helvetireader!

Here's what I've changed:

• A different font. 'Qobuz Sans' is OK, but has a little too low an x-height for small text, and those curves on the lowercase L and T bug me. The kerning also looks off (look at the distance between the e and t in the example below. I really like Klim Foundry's Söhne and I'm using a trial version of the fonts for this. For the logo and largest headings I'm currently using Safiro by the Atipo Foundry. Obviously you'll need to specify your own fonts, and I think Inter Display works nicely as an open source option, as does the Apple default of San Francisco. These are both in the replacement font stack.

  

• A different accent colour. I hate blue, but I love orange.
• A different logo. I'm not keen on the existing logo, which to my eyes looks rather dated. They have a good thing going with the whole 'capital Q looks like a turntable', but this is a separate logomark (I don't know why they don't use their Q logo for the app icon, instead of the tiny 'qobuz' logotype). So I made a version that integrates the two marks. I really like the Z of the Safiro font, as it reminds of a stack of albums:

  

• Album grids to be full-width. Lets make the most of the space on large screens.
• Paragraphs not to be full-width. Artist bios are too long to read comfortably.
• Less clutter in the full screen view, and the album artwork as large as possible (obviously the image might not be high enough resolution but hey).
• Removes those distracting yellow 'Hi-Res' logos from album grid views, and tones them down when they're shown on album pages (to match the existing 'CD Quality' icon).

There are many other style tweaks, such as the top navigation bar background blurring and fading out:

It supports both dark and light themes, although as a solely dark mode user, the light theme changes will probably have even more bugs than its dark counterpart. The desktop app differs in a few areas, such as the back/forwards navigation, so I haven't been able to use the web inspector to find out what these elements are called and make them consistent.

If you fancy a go, download it and have a play. Change the font and accent colour to whatever you fancy. While this is intended to be a userstyle with a browser extension like Stylus, it can actually be applied to the desktop app, with a little bit of work. I'm unsure what the process would be on Windows, but on MacOS:

• In Finder > Go > Go to Folder and navigate to /Applications/Qobuz.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/@qobuz/qobuz-dwp-ui/dist/assets/css/
• At the top of the 'main.css' file add @import "custom.css"; (must be the first)
• Place the custom.css file from the download in the same folder
• Restart Qobuz

You will of course need to repeat this every time the app gets an update. I'm not sure if I will progress any further with this, but I'll make updates to this post when I do. If it becomes a bit more of a project, I'll pop on Github, and add a replacement application icon as well.

Each of us chose and introduced three 'desert island' songs, and had a lovely little chat about all our tracks. Seeing as I'd only just played "Everyone But Me" for the second time on the last Troika, I chose something non-Starflyer 59. Something old, something new, and something in-between.

1. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" - Steely Dan (Marcus)
2. "Bat Out of Hell" - Meat Loaf (Andy)
3. "Tomorrow Never Knows (2022 Mix)" - The Beatles (Jon)
4. "Leave Them All Behind (Remastered)" - Ride (Rich)
5. "Green and the Blue" - Fink (Marcus)
6. "Can't Get It out of My Head" - Electric Light Orchestra (Andy)
7. "Chemin de la Baie" - The Besnard Lakes (Jon)
8. "Miss the Bliss" - Hot Chip (Rich)
9. "Firth of Fifth (2007 Stereo Mix)" - Genesis (Marcus)
10. "Whiskey Lullaby (feat. Alison Krauss)" - Brad Paisley (Andy)
11. "Even If You're Never Awake" - Stars of the Lid (Jon)
12. "Jonny Guitar Calling Gosta Berlin" - Snapped Ankles (Rich)

If you prefer, you can also listen to it without all the the talky bits via the medium of Apple Music playlist:

Formed in Riverside, California by Jason Martin, and while the lineup around him is ever changing, Jason is Starflyer. Notably, the late great Richard Swift was part of the band for a while, and his son Charlie joins him as drummer on the most recent albums. Celebrity fans include Father John Misty, who used to work for their label, Tooth and Nail records.

The first three releases (Silver, Gold and Americana (or Red)) are very much heavy shoegaze, influenced by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, but the sound has evolved over the years, and you can also hear The Cure, The Smiths and New Order. It's always unmistakably Starflyer though, the influences are there, but the end result is something else.

When I first heard their debut album Silver in 1994, it connected deeply with me. It was the autumn after I'd left college, and I've always associated Silver with that season ever since. They even have consistently well gorgeous album covers, making them the full package for me. I've followed each album religiously and put a (very) subtle reference to them on the cover of The Icon Handbook. Their compilation album Easy Come Easy Go features a tank on the cover, hence, there's a tank icon in the 'I' of 'Icon', which is themed around music.

Sadly, I’ve never been able to see them live, and probably never will. They've never toured the UK, and since 2010, Jason took over his late father’s trucking business. That was the end of touring full stop. The last fifteen years worth of albums have had a running melancholic theme of “I’m old and obsolete”. Which is a shame, because he’s really not. That’s what made his last two albums, Vanity and Lust for Gold so refreshing, while he's still looking back, it doesn’t descend into self flagellation. It's nostalgic, but new.

I'm like a minor-league ball player, man. I'm better than some, but not good enough to get it done. That's not me being humble. That's just me looking at it pretty honestly.

In typical self-deprecating fashion, Jason once explained "I'm like a minor-league ball player, man. I'm better than some, but not good enough to get it done. That's not me being humble. That's just me looking at it pretty honestly." The title of this episode, "Win Some, Lose Most" is a phrase that Jason Martin recently joked in an interview should be the next album title.

So here's a journey through the many incarnations of Starflyer, in almost chronological order:

1. "A Housewife Love song" - from Gold (1995)
   What a way to open the second album Gold - one of the heaviest, filthiest tunes Starflyer has ever done. Rare for Starflyer, this song has an accompanying music video. Fun fact, the 'housewife' in the video was his future wife, Julie.

2. "Harmony" - from Americana (1997)
   In contrast, this song is lighter and smoother - a summery vibe from the third album.

3. "Do You Ever Feel That Way" - from Americana (1997)
   Lyrically simple, I love the contrast of the briefly minimal first line of the verse before guitars crash in for the second line.

4. "Fell in Love at 22" - from The Fashion Focus (1998)
   The fourth album brought the first of many direction changes, with keyboards prominent for the first time, especially on this gorgeous dreamy ballad.

5. "Shedding the Mortal Coil" - from the compilation Easy Come, Easy Go (2000)
   This is a cover of a Daniel Amos song, another band that influenced Jason's songwriting. I love it's pop quirkiness in a Starflyer setting, and it's quite upbeat, despite the title.

6. "Your Company" - from Leave Here a Stranger (2001)
   By 2001's Leave Here a Stranger there were signs that Starflyer were heading towards more classic rock, possibly from listening to lots of Oasis. It was specifically recorded and mixed in mono as an homage to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.

7. "Loved Ones" - from Old (2003)

8. "Good Sons" - from Talking Voice vs Singing Voice (2005)
   Now we get to the 'New Order' period, with a very Peter Hook twangy bassline in this one.

9. "Like a Baby" - single (2015)
   An infectiously catchy non-album single, at a very 'Guided By Voices' length of 2 mins.

10. "2nd Space Song" - cover by Ester Drang, from The Appearances (2018)
    There have been a few covers of Starflyer songs, but this is the best by far. Ester Drang's The Appearances EP has been described as 'Velvet Space Rock' and their cover of a song from Starflyer 59's debut Silver, fits right in. It also sounds more expansive and bombastic than the more basic and fuzzy original.

11. "This Recliner" - from Miami EP (2020)
    This single marked the start of a new era, dealing with things like older age and illness, but punchier. Also, the opening notes of this remind of Interpol.

12. "Everyone but Me" - from Americana (1997)
    In typical Troika fashion, Starflyer have been featured before, in episode #33 Endings (about my love for the last tracks on albums) and #54 (a Best of from 2024), but the first instance, the song ‘Everyone But Me’, bears repeating. It's my favourite song of all time - if I ever buy new speakers or headphones, it has to be the first thing I play. The coda at the end is what makes it so special for me, and I couldn't finish this episode any other way.

This episode also features "Samson" from the Fell in Love at 22 EP (1998) and a passage from "The Party" from Everybody Makes Mistakes (2000), which the episode cover is a homage to.

Kings Heath's The Hare and Hounds isn't my favourite venue. It feels cramped and claustrophobic, and there are always at least a couple of high volume obnoxious twats. While Jace (Lasek, lead singer/guitar) was talking to the audience, one guy announced on his way out “You’re a fucking amazing band but I need a piss”. Another of his kin was bellowing every time Jace hit a high note “FUCK ME, DID YOU HEAR THAT FALSETTO??! WOOOO!! AMAZING!! WOOOOOOO!!”.

Another problem with the venue is that the stage is really low down, so the band were mostly hidden. plus Oggy (bassist and lead singer) had broken her ankle earlier in the tour, so her and Kevin (drummer) were sitting down, completely out of view the whole time. Jace and Gabriel were the only ones of the band I could see. What paltry photos I could get, had to be done with arms as high as possible, so was keen not to push my luck and piss off people behind me.

Despite all this, full-bladder guy was absolutely on the nose - they sounded amazing. The Thorn were supporting, who bought a rocky Wickerman vibe with them. They contrasted with the shoegazey, Beach Boys-y psychedelia of the Bezzies, but I liked them.

I will say this again about The Besnard Lakes - I wish more people knew about this wonderful band.

They went out on such a high though—there was so much love for them in Camden's iconic Roundhouse. For the first time at this venue, I'd managed to get seats for Leigh and I to watch the gig, which makes life so much easier when you're in your fifties.

Their last song performed live, at their last ever gig, which of course had to be the epic closing tune from Frengers: 'Comforting Sounds'.

The end of the ending was a little marred by the fact that we couldn't drive home. I was so smug that I'd found a reasonably priced JustPark space, just 3 mins walk from the Roundhouse, and we would be on our way home to a cosy bed in Oxfordshire. We would've been, if I hadn't parked in the business park next door to the JustPark space. We got back to find the gates locked with an 'unauthorised' vehicles will be towed away' warning on them.

So we had no option but to find an impromptu hotel for the night, and case the joint early in the morning. Fortunately both worked, and the car was still there!

Aside from a break 1999—2004, Kula Shaker’s output has been steady, and there’s something about the new material that captures the vibe and punch of their first album K. First time I’d ever seen them live though!

Bucking this trend, I was given Sonic Cathedral 20th Anniversary box set by my daughter last Christmas, which came with a disc of Christmas music that actually resonated with me. This is a label that was previously featured on episode #52 about Shoegaze, and while that does tend to be their general output, it's not exclusively, and I discovered a new favourite band. Here are my favourites!

1. 2000 Miles by Deary
2. Get Thee Behind me Santa by Pye Corner Audio
3. O Holy Night by Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea

This last track in particular is an epic festive tune, and was my introduction to the wonderful band that is Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea.

Album of the year

This has felt like a particularly good year for music, and as such, it's been hard to keep the list down to 20. There was however, one album in particular that nudged ahead of all the others:

Album of the year

The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation

The Besnard Lakes
Bandcamp

A new album by The Besnard Lakes was always going to score highly with me, or would it? Before Ghost Nation was released, two tracks were made available: 'In Hollywood', which I wasn't all that crazy about, and the addictive 'Give us our Dominion' that I played on repeat in the summer. With these two contrasting omens it felt like the album could go either way. What a relief it was to finally be able to listen to Ghost Nation in October, and find that the rest of the album was even better than I could've hoped. While death and loss seemed to inform 2021's The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, Ghost Nation is upbeat and life affirming, with the anthemic 'Chemin de la Baie' instantly becoming my favourite song of the year on first listen. Even 'In Holywood' works in context - it's the album I needed this year.

I loved this album so much that I bought it four times - two limited edition vinyls, the CD and the Bandcamp digital download. When an album resonates this much, you want to support it in every way possible. I'm counting the days until February when I next see them live - I've got tickets for the London and Birmingham dates!

Narrowly missing out on the top spot were Swallow, the brilliant solo debut by Steve Queralt of RIDE, and Landscape from Memory by electronic maestro Rival Consoles, who also wins music video of the year for the delightfully analog 'Soft Gradient Beckons':

Albums of 2025

No streaming links this year (Spotify in particular can get in the sea), so all albums link to Bandcamp where available. There are also no "reviews", I spend too long each year working out different ways of expressing why I loved a particular album! 1-3 are in order, the rest is arbitrary.

1. 

   The Besnard Lakes are the Ghost Nation

   The Besnard Lakes

2. 

   Swallow

   Steve Queralt

3. 

   Landscape from Memory

   Rival Consoles

4. 

   Luster

   Maria Somerville

5. 

   Dans Boogie

   Destroyer

6. 

   More

   Pulp

7. 

   The Glass Curtain

   Billow Observatory

8. 

   Stochastic Drift

   Barker

9. 

   Get Sunk

   Matt Berninger

10. 

    Die in Love

    Greet Death

11. 

    In a Fugue State

    Joe Harvey-White & Paul Cousins

12. 

    Iconoclasts

    Anna Von Hauswolff

13. 

    I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away

    Hayden Pedigo

14. 

    Rarely Do I Dream

    Youth Lagoon

15. 

    Essex Honey

    Blood Orange

16. 

    Tremor

    Daniel Avery

17. 

    Willoughby Tucker I'll Always Love You

    Ethel Cain

18. 

    Holy Island

    Sister Ray Davies

19. 

    Constellations for the Lonely

    Doves

20. 

    Last Leg of the Human Table

    Cloakroom

21. 

    II

    Kiasmos

22. 

    Pinball Wanderer

    Andy Bell

23. 

    Double Infinity

    Big Thief

Honourable Mentions

I also enjoyed; Fragments by Tremours, Bleeds by Wednesday, In holiday clothing, out of the great darkness by Clarice Jensen, Tall Tales by Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke, God's Going to Give You a Million Dollars by Shallowater, THE BPM by Sudan Archives, Another One Making Clouds by Everything Else, Formed in Fractures by Monna, NEVER ENOUGH by Turnstile, Microtonic by BDRMM and Sunset Funeral by Glare. My main discovery of the year (new artist with no new material in 2025) was Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea.

2025 Playlist

Away from the context of albums, here's my Apple Music playlist of favourite songs of the year:

Gigs

As my age increases, and less bands play local venues, the schlep into London for gigs is feeling more tiring. I'm aware of myself booking less gigs and only going for the ones that I'm really keen to see, or that I know are seated.

Gig of the year, without any doubt was Radiohead at the O2 Arena. Leigh and I lost out on the ticket lottery, but managed to get in as +1's with Geri and Colly. And what seats! It felt like we got the best view in the house. An emotional evening, with all the songs I wanted to hear, bar 'Fake Plastic Trees'.

Carrying on the Radiohead theme, does #2 count as a gig? I think so. Leigh and I were utterly blown away by the whole performance.

1. 

   Radiohead

   O2 Arena, London, 22 Nov 2025

2. 

   Hamlet - Hail to the Thief

   RSC Stratford Upon Avon

3. 

   Hayden Pedigo

   King's Place, London, 26 Aug 2025

4. 

   Wilco

   Albert Hall, London, 22 Jun 2025

5. 

   Hamish Hawk

   Thekla, Bristol, 15 Feb 2025

6. 

   Maria Somerville

   ICA, London, 10 May 2025

Books

I normally read a lot of music biographies, but started reading a lot of folk horror this year, a genre I'm really enjoying. Here are my top five of the year - covers link to bookshop.org. Withered Hill particularly drew me in - I thought I could predict the conclusion, but the twist at the end made me gasp out loud!

1. 

   Withered Hill

   David Barnett

2. 

   Living the Beatles Legend

   Kenneth Womack

3. 

   There and Black Again

   Don Letts

4. 

   Barrowbeck

   Andrew Michael Hurley

5. 

   The Apparition Phase

   Will McLean

I also enjoyed: Underland by Robert Macfarlane, Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch, You’re With Stupid by Bruce Adams, Dark Matter & Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver, Starve Acre & The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley and Scuttlers Cove by David Barnett.

• Saint-Jean-Baptiste au Béguinage, Brussels - Oct 2016
• Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham - 04 Oct 2016
• St John-at-Hackney, London - 10 December 2012 (audio now added!)
• Le Poisson Rouge, New York - 21 Nov 2008
• Les Voûtes, Paris, France - 05 Aug 2008
• St Giles in the Fields, London - 20 May 2008
• St Mary's Church, Philadelphia - 03 May 2008

I particularly want to highlight that first recording at Saint-Jean-Baptiste au Béguinage, in Brussels. I reckon it's the best quality recording I've had submitted yet, and the setlist is 👌. You can really hear the Moog 55!

It all started with a blog post where I'd gathered a list of Stars of the Lid (shortened as SOTL) live recordings I'd found online. Just a few weeks later, one of SOTL's team got in touch, and mooted the idea of making it into a website, Stars of the Lid Forever, to archive all these bootlegged shows, and more that have come to light. It's an unofficial project, but surviving SOTL member Adam Wiltzie has given it his blessing, and provided the domain name and hosting, along with extra video footage.

When Stars of the Lid performed live, they were augmented with a string quartet and Luke Savisky's mesmerising projected visuals. I would give anything to be able to experience again. If you want to get a little taster of that live experience, just watch the Tour Diary film on the site. While much of the photo and video material I sourced for the site is frustratingly low res, the quality of this short film by director Andrew Telling on the 2016 European tour is cinematic. Watching back those scenes from the show at The Barbican (the last time I saw them perform) genuinely moved me to tears, it was that special.

The process of creating the site involved listening in-depth to all the recordings, and making sure the tracks were split and labelled correctly. I've chosen my three favourite performances from the eighteen shows featured on the site. These are:

1. "Requiem for Dying Mothers" (which is made up from three separate songs: Requiem for Dying Mothers Part 1, Requiem String Melody and Requiem for Dying Mothers Part 2). Recorded by Boiler Room at St Agnes Church, NYC in 2015.
2. "Even if You're Never Awake" - Recorded at The Echoplex in Los Angeles in 2008
3. "December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface" - Recorded at the Barbican, London in 2016. As well as a string quartet, this tour also featured Franceso Donadello playing the behemoth Moog 55, and Robert Donne of Labradford on keyboards. It sounded amazing!

It all started with a blog post where I'd gathered a list of Stars of the Lid (shortened as SOTL) live recordings I'd found online. Just a few weeks later, one of SOTL's team got in touch, and mooted the idea of making it into a website, Stars of the Lid Forever, to archive all these bootlegged shows, and more that have come to light. It's an unofficial project, but surviving SOTL member Adam Wiltzie gave it his blessing, and provided the domain name and hosting, along with extra video footage. I starting building the site directly in Kirby, working out features as I went, not worrying about the site design until much later in the process. All I knew was that it needed to use Futura, the iconic typeface used on SOTL's album covers.

Collaborating with SOTL's team, we assembled all the recordings we could find - eighteen in all. The process for each show involved:

• Listening to the recordings and identifying the separate tracks. The majority of the provided set lists would either be missing or mislabeled, or supplied as a single audio file. As we wanted the ability to play individual tracks (and also relate this data to the albums they came from), this is where I found Fission app to be really useful. Seeing the waveforms made it easier to see the subtle changes in song, and split the audio into separate tracks.
• Researching any photos of the event and writing to ask permission to use them (I'm still waiting for any of them to reply!)
• Creating the cover art and adding meta tags in Meta app. As SOTL sometimes played unreleased music, or changed arrangements in the live version, I've labelled some as 'unknown', and hopefully the community will help identify these!
• Making an optimised MP3 version for streaming on the website (the original WAV files can be downloaded too)
• Finally, posting to the Kirby backend, relating each audio file with the correct song in database of all SOTL's discography that I'd set up. This allowed me to generate a list of all the shows where a particular song was played, and show what album/track number to find the original.

The hope is that more recordings will come to light. If you're hanging on to any material from a live show - audio, photos, video or posters, please let me know!

One of the show recordings I was researching images for was the Staerkal Planetarium in 2008. I couldn't find anything online, with the exception of a very small and low-res poster for the show. There was no credit, so no way of tracking down a higher-res version. In some spooky cosmic alignment, I had an email from Matt Flowers the following week, who (without knowing anything of my research) happened to mention that he designed the poster!

As we got near launch, video footage of the 2016 European tour emerged from director Andrew Telling. After months of cobbling together every scrap of low quality imagery I could find on the web, to suddenly be presented with such high quality video was, highly emotional. Particularly the scenes of the show at The Barbican, the last time I saw SOTL live, bought me to tears. You can watch this on the Tour Diary section of the site. There are more shows to be posted, in the short few hours since the site launched, eight more show recordings have come to light!

To celebrate the launch of the Stars of the Lid Forever project, I've chosen my three favourite performances from different shows for the latest episode of Troika.

Kicking off at 7:30pm will be Nine Is The Level, a name that should be familiar to anyone who reads this blog. Next will be Nick Rees, and headlining is The Balloonist, otherwise known as Ben Holton (of Epic45, My Autumn Empire, Birds in the Brickwork, and Ben Holton). Very excited about these acts coming to our little market town! (OK, Nine is the Level lives next door to me)

I was chuffed to be asked to design the poster again, which retains the same circular motif used in the previous posters, but this time, the artwork is completely vector.

My favourite iPad apps are Adobe Capture and Adobe Fresco (a free Adobe app!), and these two make up my vector drawing workflow. Capture lets you import photos and convert them into vectors with variable amounts of contrast. This is great for creating textures, and I'm always on the look out for textures and patterns that would be useful.

In this case, I'd taken photos of a broken LCD TV. Something had collided with the screen, rendering it useless for watching telly, but causing it to visually glitch in a really interesting way.

These were imported to Adobe Capture, in some cases several times, as you can use the slider to adjust the amount of tracing for different results:

One photo, three variations of textures. These vector images can then be used in Fresco, by applying them as a colour fill or as a mask. Obviously, they don't have to be used straight, they can be edited, combined and transformed as much as you like. I just love working like this, being able to make compositions without worrying about resolution, or starting with too small a document size. It's a shame that there's no equivalent to Fresco on MacOS.

It started in 2005, when I put out a post looking for somewhere to rent, and found it, renting a desk with MCC Design. I was there until 2007, when John Oxton King and Simon Clayson at Rissington in Gloucestershire and then Webble Mill in Burford in 2009. It was then all change, moving back to Witney at No73 with Matt, Ed and then in 2017 to Wenrisc House where Wes joined us. The last 3 years were spent in Elmfield House with Wes and Darren.

That’s twenty years of finding office spaces (most in our area are dreadful unless you can afford one of the many swanky barn conversions) and finding suitable people to share with. For the latter we had a test, where we made them watch a Peter Serafinowicz sketch called Markets of Britain - if they laughed, we knew we'd get along fine!

I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to do this, but as Wes and Darren have decided to work from home now, I begrudgingly accept it's time do the same. Sure, I'll be saving some money, but sharing an office with fun folks has always been the ideal scenario for me. We talk about this on the One Footer podcast, where I get tips from my co-hosts about how to not go mad.

Know what song comes next before it plays? Can you name albums by their covers alone?

Yes!

In my search for the "perfect" music app, Adrian Schönig's Longplay is the closest match I've found yet. The MacOS app has been out of beta for a couple of weeks now, and I've been enjoying it, a lot!

Longplay is a companion app to an Apple Music subscription, where the album cover art is the UI. No lists of tracks, in fact very few words at all, just a wall of album covers. It takes a unique direction on sorting, where your library can be ordered and sized by concepts such as 'Brightness' (of the album artwork), 'Addiction' (time spent listening) and 'Negligence' (time since your last listen). Albums are the focus, but all your Apple Music Playlists are here too.

This approach of elevating the cover art, combined with another vital-to-me feature, is what seals the deal for me: I can play music on my Mac, iPhone or iPad, and be confident that it will scrobble consistently. That’s genuinely huge for me, and mentally such a weight off my mind. Again, I wish I wasn't that person, but here we are. There are a few other MusicKit based-apps out there that have last.fm integration, but they either don't have a MacOS version, or a UI I want to use. Longplay has both.

There are lots of other reasons too:

• It supports album collections (another of my wishlist wants), which are synced between Mac/iPhone/iPad.
• iOS and iPadOS get widgets a plenty! I have a page on my iPhone home screen dedicated to Longplay, with a large Album Wall widget at the top, and a smaller Now Playing one below. (Longplay is also on my dock, see below).
• The Mac version features a 'mini player' window that’s themed on the cover art, as well as the ability to play local files. The latter is an in-development feature at the moment, so the preference has to enabled via terminal. As long as the files aren't WAV or FLAC, I find this works well.
• It can be controlled with Shortcut actions, and on a Mac via applescript and an MCP server, allowing you to use LLM's like Claude to interact with it. My feelings on AI are mostly (vehemently) negative, but here's an example of how it provides a plain language input method to achieve complex tasks. I've played with this feature a bit, but haven't found a good use case for my own listening yet.
• And unlike Apple Music, Longplay is not laggy. Using the search field filters albums instantly.

It's not a place to get recommendations and explore new music (that's what Apple Music's for), but it can be a place to rediscover music. Viewing by 'Negligence' allows you to surface those long forgotten and barely played areas of your library. Rediscover gems you once felt worthy. I can also play a random album, or shuffle albums, to the same effect, and I've rediscovered many albums this way.

I’d love to be able to do everything in Longplay, in particular, add new albums from the Apple Music library without having to open the Apple Music app. However as far as I'm aware, this is a MusicKit limitation, and it doesn't feel like Apple will be in any hurry to change it. Another limitation from Apple, this time in the form of a bug, is with Airplay. You can't currently send DRM music to speakers from within the app, so you either have to use the system-level airplay (thereby playing every other sound on your Mac through your speakers) or use something like Airfoil.

For future versions, I have a few things on my wishlist:

• A MacOS menu bar controller, showing the current track with a toggle to play/pause would be fantastic.
• Ordering albums by release date. Currently, ordering by 'release' organises alphabetically by year.
• Part of my experience of listening to a physical album is in reading the liner notes, and I'd love a future version of Longplay to be able to display these, much like how NowPlaying app does.

This isn't Adrian's full time job, but development is very much active. Kudos to him for subverting the usual music player approach, and creating such a unique app!

Needing to try and relive those times, I stumbled across a recording of a performance at The Boiler room in New York in 2015. The video of that concert is below, which is also available as audio on Soundcloud.

The setlist mentions 'Generous Abandon', an unfamiliar track that as far as I know, has never been released. Their last album, And their Refinement of the Decline came out in 2007, and while they've teased that new music was in progress, as well as a feature film, none of that came to be. When Brian McBride died in 2023, the chance of hearing any of that unreleased material seemed to become even more remote.

When trying to find out more about 'Generous Abandon' I stumbled on the rich seam of SOTL live recordings on the Internet Archive, in particular a recording from 2013 at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in New York with the Wordless Music Orchestra. Not only did they play 'Generous Abandon', but three other tracks as well: 'E7', 'Deg Fag' and 'Dutch Girls'. Incidentally, I've since discovered another unreleased SOTL track that emerged years later, recorded by just Adam Wiltzie, called How to Disappear Inside a Thirty Piece Orchestra).

Here are all concerts I found:

• 1997 at the Garage in London, and Manchester - supporting Labradford
• 1999 Millvale Industrial Theater, Pittsburgh - Featuring an early version of 'Broken Harbors' from The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid.
• 2007 at Urbis in Manchester
• 2008 at the Echoplex, Los Angeles - This recording features two cover versions: 'Fratres' by Arvo Pärt and 'Syriana Suite' by Alexandre Desplat (from the film Syriana)
• 2008 at Holy Trinity Church in Leeds
• 2008 at the Staerkel Planetarium, Champaign, Illinois - What an amazing venue choice, I would've loved to been at that one!
• 2013 at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in New York
• 2015 at the Boiler Room in New York

When the actual V&A East Museum opens next year there'll be even more on show, but such a thrill to see these in real life.

1. 

   Die in Love by Greet Death
   New Hell was my favourite album of 2019, and with only EPs in between to keep my going, it's been a long wait. I won't try and describe their sound, but please give it a listen!

2. 

   A Sober Conversation by BC Camplight
   Always up for new BC Camplight album. His lyrics are often brimming with dark humour, bringing a light touch to heavy subjects.

3. 

   Swallow by Steve Queralt
   RIDE's bassist releases a surprise hot contender for my favourite album of the year. It has it's roots in shoegaze, but expands beyond that, sounding like a film soundtrack.

4. 

   Get Sunk by Matt Berninger
   Tired of his 'Sad Professor' persona, The National frontman goes a bit more upbeat. Tracks like 'Bonnet of Pins' really get's it's claws in me.

On the first day in the village we came across a sign outside the village hall, telling us "Well Dressing - in progress. Please come in". We'd vaguely heard the term before, but went it to find out what it means, and were so glad we did.

It's a Derbyshire folk tradition of dressing up wells with clay panels, decorated using only natural materials. It dates back to a pagan custom of "making sacrifice to the gods of wells and springs to ensure a continued supply of fresh water". It was later adopted by the Church as a way of giving thanks to God for the gift of water.

Wooden boards are put into the river a fortnight before Trinity Sunday, to soak up as much water as possible, and are taken out a week later to be filled with clay (known as "puddling"). A design is transferred onto it by pricking through a paper design with cocktail sticks onto the clay. This outline is marked with wool or other natural materials such as peppercorns, melon seeds, maize etc. The "dressing" involves firstly inserting dried materials into the clay, followed by long-lasting leaves and stems, and then 'petalling' can begin.

Flowers go in petal by petal, overlapping in a method resembling slating a roof, helping to shed any rain. The "Heavy Gang" of strong men with tractors then take the dressed boards to each well very early on the Saturday morning where they can be briefly enjoyed by visitors for a week. That's a lot of work for just seven days!

There were several themes being worked on this year - from the 40th anniversary of Toy Story to Jane Austen, via Peanuts and The Jungle Book. Sadly we had to leave Ashford-in-the-Water before we could see the panels completed, but I've found photos on Facebook of the finished panels in situ. The parish church website has photos of last years panels.

I'd just had my third ever experience of Sleep Paralysis, and probably the worst one so far. It's a state where the brain is active, but the body is still in REM sleep, so you can’t move or speak. I've heard it described as the body's safety mechanism, preventing you from injuring yourself. A bizarre but very common side effect is a hallucination of an intruder in your room, and that's been my experience every time.

People have reported seeing figures in the room with them — it's often been the scientific explanation for paranormal experiences. If I wasn’t wearing a sleep mask, would I have had visual hallucinations too? Considering that often people have described what they've seen as demonic, I had a lucky escape.