BlueDotBlog: Welling up at the Workshop

Seeing the Radiophonic Workshop perform the Doctor Who theme tune had me welling up a bit on my third day at the BlueDot festival.

I guess it's just a mixture of childhood memories, their own history, and the fact I once had a painful breakup with a Dalek. They say they'll call, but they never do.

I saw The Long Now, an Eno-inspired soundscape project by Finnur Bjarnason and Richard Norris, aka the bloke from The Grid, and a bit of Hookworms too. Has to be said, I wasn't overly fussed about catching Gary Numan, and instead found myself quivering to the whiplash wit of comedian Josh Jones. Love that guy.

I watched my writer chum David Hartley perform a rare feat of making two fifteen-minute stories thoroughly engaging. I'm actually camping with Dave, and if I'm not nice about his writing, he'll poke me in the eye with a tent peg. (Seriously though, thanks for the camping company, Hannah, Dave and Debs.)

My dirty techno fix came courtesy of Ralph Lawson and Helena Hauff's excellent inner city electronic takeover. I was equally baffled and impressed at the modular mock-Erasure music of Look Mum No Computer.

I have two bestest highlights yesterday. Lamb's showstopping Gorecki, a perfect example of how to overcome technical problems - they had to stop the show at one point - and go on to bring the house down. And Future Islands, whose feather-light synth pop seems to feed singer Sam with all kinds of demons. My favourite move of his is the sideways bowling ball. Try it sometime.

That's all for yesterday's BlueDot fun. No pictures this time because I'm trying to save battery. More tomorrow - I really need to tell you about the man whose hat was on fire.

BlueDotBlog: Dub hits and fun Lips and puppets

I saw too much yesterday at the BlueDot festival for one blog post. However, it's one blog post you're getting today, so you'll have to make do. Do you think I'm MADE of blog posts?!

I went to a talk about Jodrell Bank's Lovell telescope. You'll know the white lattice dish from the mock-up fictional version that killed off Tom Baker in Doctor Who. Apparently if it snows heavily, they tilt the dish to make an avalanche. I realise it's July, but I'm willing to sit here and wait for that to happen.

I caught Pop-Up Cinema's Flash Gordon. They do frenetic puppet show remakes of classic films. Imagine Alfred Hitchcock doing Punch & Judy on a runaway train. Flash (pictured above) was a delight.

I have two absolute highlights of the day. Mad Professor plumbed the depths of dub with cheery playfulness, ripping up Stevie Wonder and, er, Robin S with delay turned up to 11. And a solo Roni Size beamed his way through a bass-shredding drum 'n' bass set that reprazented (geddit?!) the earliest and latest elements of his career.

I enjoyed the Rajasthan Heritage Brass Band with all their Bollywood sass, and I was wowed by a fire-breathing puppet parade.

Brian Eno collaborator Tom Rogerson kicked up an ambient storm, while Afrodeutsche and Not Waving cranked up enough techno to bring the rain clouds in.

I saw Alexis from Hot Chip, which I quite enjoyed. I liked his cheese hat. I didn't really connect with Public Service Broadcasting. And the Flaming Lips were every bit as rambling, wild and immersive as I'd come to expect. Wayne had a special message for us in balloons (below). You can figure out the full text. Amazing.

I met old friends and made new friends, and had a pretty neat katzu curry. I told you this was way too much for one post. Phew.

More tomorrow.

BlueDotBlog: Take THAT, sealions

Hey, I'm at BlueDot festival, a weekend mash-up of music and science in the shadow of Cheshire's Lovell radio telescope.

I've not been very bloggy recently, so let's pep things up with a daily live blog parped out from my tent. It's barely breakfast time and I can already hear someone in a nearby tent taking about hydrogen fusion.

Or something. I'm not very sciencey.

BlueDot started in spectacular fashion. The Halle Orchestra blasted out some grand classical music to the sights - and sounds - of the Blue Planet telly programme

I can now say I've seen killer whales battering sealions to death to the glorious swells of an orchestra. They even did a Christmas melody set to the crazy antics of polar bears and penguins.

For personal reasons, it was especially pleasing to see the Halle pull this off. I sang with them as a founder member of the Manchester Boys Choir. I am that sealion, squealing in whale-walloped harmony with that astonishing collective.

A highlight of BlueDot is the eerie art that haunts the woods at night. I love the massive suspended globe, surrounded by the sounds of everyone on the planet chattering away in an Underworld-style stream of consciousness. It glows in the dark - you'll have to make do with a daytime picture for now.

More BlueDot today. Hope I get to fuse some hydrogen.

YouTube tops the singles chart

This week, the UK chart changed forever. Watching a YouTube video will now count towards a chart position. No seriously, it's true - here's Dua Lipa explaining all about it.

With this in mind, I can now announce the brand new top ten UK singles:

1. James Corden
2. A cat falling off the edge of the world
3. Damp memes (like dank memes but wetter)
4. More James Corden
5. A dog playing Fifa 18

6. A 76 minute video of someone unboxing a Pot Noodle

7. Jimmy Carr laughing like an unoiled trampoline
8. Donald Tru--- oh actually it's James Corden

9. Logan Paul videoing his knee for a full weekend

10. Boards of Canada lyrics videos

Hey hey hey, it's a short story remix by The Hillside Curation

I once made a blue-tac sculpture of Fatboy Slim. At least, I think it was blue-tac. I found it on the floor.

I don't think Fatboy Slim would have been impressed with my sculpture. The embedded fag ends and dead spiders made it pretty horrible to look at. And also it was fifty foot tall, and I think it would have made the real Fatboy jealous of the fake Fatboy.

Sometimes it's best to leave the original thing alone. The world would be a lot better with one American Pie, one version of the Sugababes, just one of the Jedwards. As it is, people insist on trying to "improve" things until everything that is "good" falls into a "burning pit of sadness".

In an entirely unconnected note, here's a remix of one of my short stories. AHEM. A while back, I wrote a tale called Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey about a person pressing a button in a factory. This is a mocking blog post, but I couldn't be more pleased with this stellar work by Rickerly and David Hartley for The Hillside Curation. Seriously, it's damn good - more literature should be like this (assuming you can call my stream-of-consciousness "literature"). It kind of made me whoop with delight. Check out the Jack Nicholls and Ada Hoffmann pieces too.

The episodes are all named after a cluster of streets from the curators' home town. One day, I will build a blue-tac sculpture for every street. One day.

The doctor (Adamski) will see you now

Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy was the 1990 debut album from Adam 'Adamski' Tinley. (Not an actual pharmacist.) I seem to remember Smash Hits calling him a keyboard wizard. (Not an actual wizard.)

I first got into Adamski when he released the fizzy NRG,  a Lucozade burst of squelchy rave. So when he got to the top of the charts with Killer, a tune I was obsessed with, it seemed the keyboard wizard was working his wand overtime. Wait. Not an actual wizard. I keep forgetting.

Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy was the first big rave album I owned, but it was before folks like Orbital and the Prodigy showed us how excel at making dance music albums. I wanted a sweaty club experience but the clubbier elements were squeezed out by what felt like extended jokes. Tinley doing an Elvis impression. Reciting the alphabet ("E is for electro, and that's quite serious"). Adam's strained punk singing.

Then again... Listen to the choppy bassline of Eighth House. The Detroity surf of Squiggy Groove. There's a whole heap of rave sensibility still in there, and the naive sound of his bedroom keyboard set-up is utterly charming. Despite its flaws, I was fond of the album and the 17-year-old me played it loads.

The Pharmacy shut up shop pretty quickly. The album only spent five weeks in the charts, compared to, say, 25 weeks that year by fellow chart-toppers Snap. It doesn't even have any reviews on Discogs. Adamski has been active this century as Adam Sky, plonking out sparky house music and dirty punk electro. Forever the keyboard wizard - just not necessarily remembered as a pharmacist.

A-ha-actually...

Someone playing Take On Me.
Kid to dad: "This is such an obscure tune."
Dad to kid: "Obscure? It got to number one!"
Me: holds tongue.
Me: holds tongue.
Me: holds ton-- "Actually, it only got to number TWO."

Yes, this happened. I really shouldn't be allowed out in public.

To be fair, the dad was then joyfully forced to hear me launch into my favourite bit of pop trivia, which is this: The act beginning with A that had a UK number one hit with Take On Me was, in fact, the boy band A1 in 2000, and not, as you'd think, A-ha in 1985.

How's that for a bit of slightly depressing pub quiz trivia? It's such a poor cover version as well.

To be honest, I think he stopped listening at "actually".

A whole Seven Inches of reflections

I did a theatre show. I did a big thing on a stage and, amazingly, people came.

After two Edinburgh Fringe shows and a stack of spoken word / comedy performances, it was great to expand my own brand of cartoon stupidity to a larger stage. My third show Seven Inch was a surreal and silly story about a failed record shop, which happened to be a 3D cartoon. The four performances, commissioned by The Lowry, were part of their Week 53 festival for the creatively curious.

What an absolute joy it was. 160 people on the opening night, a five star review, and a riotous closing performance on Friday in which I lost my temper at the audience. All acting of course - in real life, I have the temper of a ketamined sloth on holiday.

It was also a fantastically rewarding experience to collaborate with proper clever theatre people, especially stage manager Mark Croasdale who, I suspect, is an actual angel. Next time I meet him, I'll check for wings.

I'm not quite sure I can process how big of an experience this was just yet. I'm writing this in bed by yapping into my phone. Maybe I just need some sleep, and to get my blogging and social life back. A touch of normality, and some space to reflect.

Then what? It would be great to go on tour with my little record shop show. For now, though... to bed.