I'm scared and I'm, fuck, I'm way tired. I've been pushing hard to get better at my job, and I hope that's going to be recognised. I have no real evidence to make me believe that it won't be, but I have plenty of paranoia. The moment of truth will be in a couple of months, during which there's ample...

Age/Sex/Location? 37/M/UKDo you have any brothers or sisters? Y.When was the last time that you've cried? I think it was about ten days ago, shortly after waking up.Do you post on any other forum(s) and if so, which ones? No. What was the last good CD/LP that you've purchased? Jim O'Rourke, Simple S...

Don't buy a brand new pedal steel.Buy an optical volume pedal. Buy a compressor.Buy a height-adjustable bench.Do not buy any pedal steel without access to all three of these things.

The Burns Double Six is a mighty thing. The made-in-Korea ones ('Club Series') are great. The neck is like a cricket bat, it's stiff enough that tuning is very solid and wide enough that you can do just about anything you'd possibly want to on it, although consequently playing thumb-over would be ha...

I bought a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ a few weeks ago: this model can self-power USB storage. I don't have an HDMI display, but it was very simple to follow a few tutorials to get it up and running on my network as a (headless) file and media server. It runs the Raspbian port of Plex Media Server very ...

Visions of the Emerald Beyond - Mahavishnu OrchestraMicroshift - HookwormsAdventure - TelevisionBlues for Tony - Holdsworth / Pasqua / Haslip / WackermanNot Two - Rivers of Sound and Amir ElSaffar

Bill Withers Live at Carnegie HallPatto Hold Your FireAcreil flutter straight on the nine miles (here)Bill Evans and Jim Hall UndercurrentsRobert Glasper Experiment 2014 NPR tiny desk concert (here)

In no particular order: Warm up. The muscles that drive your fingers are in your forearms and your palms. These muscles need to be relaxed and stretched and have plenty of blood circulating through them. The most important part of your warm up can be done while the instrument is still in the case. (...

Primer is awesome hard science-fiction, like putting your brain in a Klein bottle. Contact is decent. The Truman Show, if you haven't seen it. There's a superb French film called Peut-etre, featuring time travel, a slow-motion cumshot and Screamin' Jay Hawkins. See 'Alphaville'. Phase IV is strange ...