Links: Industrial Love Song (+2)
- Industrial Love Song (AM / S), by These New Puritans, featuring Caroline Polachek. I had somehow missed These New Puritans until a friend introduced them to me a couple of weeks ago, and in a classic case of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon I am now seeing them everywhere. They have an album coming out this year and this is the lead single, featuring the ethereal voice of Caroline Polachek.
- Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. I don’t really read historical fiction, but it’s also not a particularly apt description for this very unique book, actually the first of a trilogy called The Baroque Cycle, which weaves a narrative around a huge cast of historical characters and several fictional ones, in seventeenth century Europe and colonial America.
- Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk (album released in 1988; AM / S). I recently heard a very interesting episode of the Artworks programme on BBC Radio 4 about this highly influential album, which has been a favourite of mine for years now, which apparently was critically panned at the time, but later served as an inspiration for Radiohead’s Kid A. Both the album and the Artworks episode are well worth a listen.
Photograph: An oak tree in Beckenham Place Park.