While wandering around Scotland this past week, I read a chunk of Ken MacLeod’s novel Beyond the Reach of Earth, which contains this reminder about the limits of sound as a representation of place.
MacLeod’s Correction
See you in Cloud City
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
Last Full Day
Push a button, any button
Last full day in the UK, where they do doorbells well.
Current Status
Just chilling
Scratch Pad: Macleod, Suzuki
From the past week
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
And another especially light week on social media. Been busy.
▰ I planned to read Ken Macleod’s Beyond the Reach of Earth, but hadn’t read the prior novel, Beyond the Hallowed Sky, in quite a while, so to prepare I read reviews of Hallowed Sky, and then I opened Reach of Earth only to find that Macleod begins it with a concise, five-page summary of Hallowed Sky.
▰ I read the third volume of Yuto Suzuki’s ongoing manga Sakamoto Days.
Lanois’ Canada
From his new album
Daniel Lanois concluded the slow, steady cadence of dropping tracks from his new album, Belladonna Nocturne, today, the day of the album’s release. They’ve all been instrumental so far, and this one maintains that mode. It’s the most straightforward of the batch, featuring relatively (though not entirely) unprocessed piano and guitar. The accompanying video takes a cue from the track’s title (“Canadian National,” presumably after the railway), combining snippets of views of roadside Canadian vistas, also lightly processed. Lanois previously released, back in 2005, an album of instrumentals titled simply Belladonna. This one appears to be, in essence, all instrumental as well. Emmylou Harris was listed in the initial announcement, along with drummer Brian Blade and bassist Daryl Johnson, raising the possibility of a more traditional song, but her presence appears to consist of a few moments of highly modified wordless vocalizing, meaning that she doesn’t break the atmospheric spell.