Russell Davies

Music for reading in bed

My 'most listened to tracks' used to be heavily skewed by stuff I listened to while working. I don't really do that at the moment so now all my top tracks are from my 'bed' playlist.

They're the things I listen to while reading in bed. Atmospheric, not too intrusive, don't make Anne complain about 'weird noises'. These are all lovely, but I don't think I could hum any of them for you.

41256 - The Final

Right, that's it. Below is the last episode of 41256. I did one a week for a year. (Minus a couple of times where I evidently forgot, which I'm going to call 'holidays'.) I enjoyed it. I thought it was interesting, but now I'm done.

I'm surprised it wasn't more popular (though I'm not sure how popular it was) but, obviously, I'm also pleased that it wasn't. If it had started to be popular then I'd have had to have stopped it, since it's full of other people's audio material. I seem to have a knack for inventing self-defeating projects like this.

Anyway. This is it. Episode 50. A sort of supercut of the previous episodes.

I'm also surprised there aren't more short podcasts yet. One day.

This week - QY70

I managed two bits of music this week. Sitting and playing with a new little box, well, an old little box. A Yamaha QY70 from the mid-90s. It looks quite a lot like one of those Brother label printers but it's full of lovely sounds. I plugged it in, started noodling and made this track. Then, I plugged it in again, along with some Radio Music Music Things and made the thing below.

All these tracks have long periods where not much happens, that's because I don't know what I'm doing. I just plug stuff in and start playing. There's no editing here, so if it's just chugging along with not many changes you can imagine me panicking behind the keyboard, wondering why the thing I'm trying to do isn't happening. There's the odd interesting moment though.

This week - Bucky

I was full of good intentions this week. I would actually write things here. I would explain how useful I'd been finding the Kantor 4-player model. Or some of it anyway. But, when I sat down to write that I nudged the mouse on my desk, my music stuff lit up and I thought I'd try and make a track instead. So here it is, featuring some Buckminster Fuller. Most of this is boring, but I think the slower moments are quite nice.