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 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 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.

Changes in v1.1:

• 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.
• I've 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.
• Lots of little improvements to help UI consistency.
• 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.

  

• If you prefer the non-sidebar approach, version 1 is still available.

Changes in v1.0:

• 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 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:

  

• 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).

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

If you want to , you can also update the app icon, using the files in the icon folder. Use these 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.

1. 

   I'll be waving as you drive away by Hayden Pedigo
   As mentioned in the latest episode of Troika. If you purchase the album (rather than stream) you get a great bonus 'credits' track.

2. 

   More by Pulp
   A triumphant return after 24 years away. The song-writing is as fresh and invigorating as ever.

3. 

   NEVER ENOUGH by Turnstile
   Post-hardcore outfit Turnstile embrace electronics and even, dare I say, pop?

Customising the Spotify web player is one option - if you know a bit of CSS you can bend things to your will to an extent. The drawback for me is the web player can't detect Spotify Connect speakers like my Sonos, only the desktop app can do that. Fortunately, I came across Spicetify, a command line app that customises Spotify Desktop. This can inject user.css, as well as make other tweaks via javascript. If you want a keyboard shortcut to immediately jump to 'the drop', you can do that.

To replace the new Spotify brand font, I've used one of my favourite typefaces, Söhne by Klim Type Foundry. You can even download demo fonts which you can use locally. I'm surprised at how much of a difference it makes to me, it's just so much more refined, calmer. While large UI scale changes aren't worth the effort, I can hide ‘Podcasts' and 'Audiobooks’ from the top of the sidebar so that I can see ‘Albums' and 'Artists' without having to do that weird horizontal scrolly thing.

My Spicetify user.css, such as it is, is as follows:

/* Change the UI font */
:root {
    --encore-title-font-stack: "Söhne", "Test Söhne", "Aktiv Grotesk", system-ui, sans-serif !important;
    --encore-body-font-stack: "Söhne", "Test Söhne", "Aktiv Grotesk", system-ui, sans-serif !important;
}       

/* Make main headings not _quite_ so heavy */
.encore-text-headline-large {
        font-weight: 700 !important;
}

/* Hide Elements */

/* Podcasts in sidebar menu */
.J4qD2RoZgGLbOdpfs63w button:nth-of-type(2),

/* Audiobooks in sidebar menu */
.J4qD2RoZgGLbOdpfs63w button:nth-of-type(3) {
    display: none !important;
}

Obviously, with each release there's a chance that the markup will change, so there'll always be a bit of cat and mouse. If you want to use your front end skills to do a bit of UI hackery, I highly recommend enabling devtools to enable you to inspect the markup.

Update 23rd June: Scrub that, Fuck Spotify. Every time I start to think about using it again, Ek gives more reasons not to.

1. "Paris, Texas" — Ry Cooder
2. "Green Arrow" — Yo La Tengo
3. "With News About Heaven" — William Tyler
4. "Set My Watch To You" — Jim Wallis
5. "Carthage" — Hayden Pedigo
6. "After the Storm" — Yasmin Williams

Starting the episode off is Ry Cooder’s iconic theme for Wim Wenders' equally iconic 1984 film Paris, Texas. For me, it's the first record that started this whole genre, a sparse metallic sound that sets the mournful and lonely tone for the film, against a backdrop of Big Bend National Park. This is followed by "Green Arrow" by cult indie band Yo La Tengo, and yes the crickets are all part of the music! Not necessarily thought of as a 'Country' band, neverthless this track from 1997's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One fits really well into the theme.

William Tyler was another of the musicians that I mentioned on Troika #48 and he's been a member of Lambchop and Silver Jews, but solo since 2010. He's collaborated with Marisa Anderson and Four Tet, and has a new album with Four Tet coming out later this year. His output is more experimental of late, but "With News About Heaven" from 2020's New Vanitas EP has his earlier ambient country leanings.

In Huge Gesturing Loops is an ambient solo album by UK musician Jim Wallis. Built around recordings made by pedal steel player Henry Senior (Danny & The Champions Of The World) that were originally intended for a different kind of album, it became a more atmospheric affair In the vein of Chuck Johnson (see Troika #48).

I’m a huge evangelist for guitarist Hayden Pedigo at the moment. A fingerpicker guitarist from Amarillo, Texas, where he also ran for City Council. What started as some surreal YouTube tom-foolery, then became a real campaign, with an accompanying documentary, Kid Candidate. It showed not only his sense of humour, but also his genuine love for the ignored parts of the Amarillo community. He has a new album out next month, called I'll Be Waving As You Drive Away, and in this extract taken from last year's Live in Amarillo, Texas he explains why he leaves pauses in his music. This is followed by "Carthage" from Letting Go. I chose Carthage particularly for it's use of birdsong, and is fantastic one to listen to in headphones.

For the final track, I'm turning to northern Virginia's Yasmin Williams, who I discovered when I heard "Sunshowers" from Urban Driftwood, an album that was inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. I've read that she was inspired to learn guitar by playing Guitar Hero 2, but that's unconfirmed. I play "After the Storm", which closes that album.

Cover photo by Yann Allegre.

The first episode came out on 3rd March 2015, with the idea that it would be ‘low-key’ and ‘low-friction’. I hoped I’d still be recording episodes in ten years, and while 55 episodes isn’t much for that length of time, I’m very content to still be chugging along doing my little podcast.

It’s important to me that Troika remains a hobby project that I do on my own terms. No outside influence , marketing, analytics, sponsorship or advertising. Not thats ever had anywhere near enough profile to attract such offers, but they would bring pressures as part of their deal that I’d rather not have.

When I set up the RSS feed for the show, I did submit it to Spotify for inclusion, but it was instantly rejected as they detected that there was copyrighted music. No other platform seemed to mind, and I’ve always stated in the post for each episode that I don’t claim any copyright, and encourage people to buy music. My hope is that this can stay under the radar for a while longer!

The lack of analytics means I’ve no idea if many people listen, but occasionally some kind of people drop me an email if they’ve particularly resonated with an episode, or replied on Mastodon or Bluesky when I’ve called for feedback and ideas. Thanks to those people, and thank you for everyone who listens.

Naturally the theme of this episode is ‘ten’, but I did put out a poll on Mastodon with some other ideas. Namely, a ‘best of’ compilation (no idea what that would actually entail!), three ambient tracks like episode one, or my three most hated songs. Songs themed around ten was the clear winner, but I will return to those three hated songs on a future episode. Aphex Twin’s track 10 (from Selected Ambient Works II) didn’t make the cut as it’s quite the mood killer, and yes, some of the links will be a bit TENuous.

1. "Ten Billion People" — Explosions in the Sky
2. "Ten Little Girls" — Curve
3. "Tennessee Tips" — Sleigh Bells
4. "10:37" — Beach House
5. "I Close My Eyes and Count to Ten" — Dusty Springfield
6. "Beyond the Pale" — Big Audio Dynamite (From No. 10 Upping St)
7. "10,000 hours" — Spielmann
   Spielmann on Bandcamp
8. "Number 10" — Interpol
9. "10,000 Claps" — Phantogram
10. "Continuum 10" — Nala Sinephro

You're probably familiar with Brendan Dawes' drawing The Process, a succinct, sketched representation of the creative process. It resonates with a lot of people, and I'm definitely of the 'keep refining until I'm happy with it' frame of mind.

I'm in danger of taking it too literally, but I keep feeling there is one important step that's missing. It's the fact that when you start, you start with nothing. A blank piece of paper, a blank screen, even a blank mind. That's scary, but also exciting too.

I always come back to the scene in the Beatles documentary Get Back. Under pressure to have more songs for the new album, Paul McCartney creates the title track itself. When he starts he has nothing. Over the course of just a few minutes experimentation on his bass you can hear the main riff and lyrics of "Get Back" emerge.

I'm no Paul McCartney, "casually shitting out a golden song at 10 in the morning" (Great comment on the video!), it takes me so much longer than a few minutes. Still, the satisfaction and thrill of creating something from absolutely nothing is the spark for me.

Often that blankness feels like a huge obstacle, but just doing something, putting down some sort of mark gets me past that. It's absolute rubbish 99% of the time, but with iteration, a solution emerges.

1. "Mutations" — Nilüfer Yanya
2. "Into the Ooze" — Brimheim
3. "Lust for Gold" — Starflyer 59
4. "You're going to be fine, and I'm going to Hell" — Grandaddy
5. "I know it's like this (Baby)" — Bill Ryder Jones
6. "Kentucky McDonalds" — Foxing
7. "Last Stand" — The Amazing
8. "Purpose is Glorious" — Natalie Holt (Slowed down + reverb version)
9. "Full Mammoth" — Cowboy Sadness