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Filed under: feature, special | Tags: aimee mann, albums of the decade, alex ramon, amy winehouse, beth gibbons, bjork, camille, cat power, charlotte richardson andrews, chris catchpole, diane cluck, fiona apple, goldfrapp, joanna newsom, lisa germano, loria near, mavis staples, MIA, neko case, nina nastasia, patty griffin, peaches, pj harvey, regina spektor, rhian jones, robbie de santos, rod thomas, shannon wright, terry mulcahy, the knife, tomas slaninka, tori amos, wears the trousers magazine, yeah yeah yeahs
part one | part two | part three
Here's the fourth and final part of our albums of the decade countdown, 25 albums so fantastic they should have sold millions (and, lo, some of them did!)…
* * *
Shannon Wright
Maps Of Tacit
[Touch & Go / Quarterstick, 2000]
Distilling everything that was good about her former band Crowsdell and her first album flightsafety, and stripping them of their twee chirpiness and indie-pop sensibilities, Shannon Wright created her finest, and darkest, work in Maps Of Tacit. A multilayered tour de force, the guitar is aggressive without being brash and the creepy, stirring piano swirls with all the innocence and foreboding of a decaying calliope; the overall effect is both intricate and cinematic. Together with some creative use of sampled sounds, dense poetic lyrics and Wright's alternately silky and caustic vocals, it all adds up to a delightfully chilling labour of love.
Terry Mulcahy
Filed under: feature, special | Tags: alan pedder, albums of the decade, alela diane, alex ramon, anais mitchell, ane brun, ani difranco, bat for lashes, bjork, broadcast, charlotte richardson andrews, chris catchpole, feist, fever ray, florence and the machine, gillian welch, hildur guðnadóttir, hope sandoval, jenny lewis, joan as police woman, kate bush, katy knight, kristin hersh, laura marling, marissa nadler, martha wainwright, portishead, rhian jones, robyn, rod thomas, shelby lynne, st vincent, the innocence mission, the warm inventions, the watson twins, tomas slaninka, wears the trousers magazine
part one | part two | part four
Here's the third part of our albums of the decade countdown, running from #50–26.
* * *
Queen Adreena
Drink Me
[Rough Trade, 2002]
Casting aside the disparaging comparisons to "Kate Bush on crack" bestowed upon her in the wake of Queen Adreena's debut album Taxidermy, KatieJane Garside upped the ante with Drink Me, tearing whatever hinges that were still attached right off with a blisteringly manic grunge-metal fervour. Among her Wonderland's re-energised malice, the softer moments found Garside's raging voice shrunk mouse-high, whispering seductively as if through the keyhole, or chillingly into a void. Richly imaginative and manically enjoyable, Drink Me remains one of the decade's most vigorous and visceral thrills, disturbing to the very last note.
Alan Pedder
read our interview with KatieJane
Filed under: back issues, feature, interrupting yr broadcast | Tags: 2006, alan pedder, interview, music, rod thomas, the hot puppies
interrupting yr broadcast: the hot puppies
originally published on our old website in July 2006
With stamps of approval firmly in place from everyone from the Observer Music Monthly to the NME, Drowned In Sound and (crikey!) Vogue magazine, these glamorous indie pop chameleons have the potential to make it big in 2006. We caught up with their lead singer Becky Newman earlier this month for a wee chat. Rod Thomas and Alan Pedder rushed off an email full of silly questions and it went a little something like this…
Filed under: feature, interrupting yr broadcast | Tags: interview, music, rod thomas, sarabeth tucek
interrupting yr broadcast: sarabeth tucek
Sarabeth Tucek is one of the most refreshingly unpretentious artists you could hope to meet. Despite growing up in Manhattan (not exactly renowned for its easygoing nature), working with a host of incredible artists including Bill Callahan (aka Smog) and Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre), appearing in infamous rockumentary 'Dig!', and being handpicked to support her long-time idol Bob Dylan, around Sarabeth is an air of modesty and togetherness.
Her first single 'Something For You' emerged on tiny indie label Sonic Cathedral but had a monumental impact on her future career. "It got a lot of radio play," she explains – including the title of Record of the Week on Steve Lamacq's 6Music show – "which really forged the way for the record to be made. The climate here musically is very different from the States, people are so excited about music. There are a lot of music lovers, guys running little labels. Sonic Cathedral's essentially one guy who contacted me when he heard me through The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and it went from there."
Filed under: feature, words in edgeways | Tags: architecture in helsinki, interview, kellie sutherland, music, rod thomas
words in edgeways with architecture in helsinki's kellie sutherland
Having become word of mouth favourites with critics, music bloggers, fans and other musicians alike, relentlessly perky Australian ensemble Architecture In Helsinki have spent the last few years touring the world, picking up even more fans, even more praise, and putting together their third album, Places Like This. Along the way they lost two of their three female members (Isobel Knowles and Tara Shackles departed amid those infamous "creative differences"), leaving Kellie Sutherland as the band's sole oestrogenous force. Rod Thomas met Kellie for a quick chat before last week's low key but high demand gig at Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, sneaking past the queue that circled the square, and talked about life in the non-stop party that is Architecture In Helsinki.
Filed under: album, back issues, review | Tags: amerie, architecture in helsinki, callum sinclair, esther alexander, joan armatrading, keith anderson, rod thomas, trevor raggatt
The following reviews were published on our old MySpace blog in 2007.
Esther Alexander
Last Of The Hopeless Romantics EP ••••
Derby-based Esther Alexander has been a regular on the circuit around her hometown and London for a number of years now, paying her dues both there and with session work for the likes of Steve Winwood, Ruby Turner and the London Community Gospel Choir. Her first album, a pop and R&B-tinged affair, was released on an independent imprint in 2003 so new recorded material has been long time coming. It's heartening, then, that the hours spent writing and treading the boards have reaped dividends aplenty.
The five songs presented here – strictly four if you take into account radio and album mixes of the title track – demonstrate what an accomplished singer and songwriter Alexander has become. Although this EP (she sweetly calls it an 'albumette') sees her flirt increasingly with the mainstream pop of her debut, perhaps wisely casting aside any R&B tendencies, the songs are strong enough to connect and engage. Okay, so the title track's classy mid-tempo pop has 'Radio 2 playlist' written through it like a stick of Brighton rock, and the fact that it has been picked up by Caffé Nero for repeated in-store plays only lends credence to the coffee table tag, but it's not the be all and end all.
Production duties fall to Kipper – best known for his Grammy award-winning work with Sting – who succeeds in presenting a shimmering context in which to appreciate Alexander's delicate vocals. He also contributes to the co-penned 'Safe House', which, alongside 'Come & Find Me' is a tender ballad where the pop approach gives way to a cocooning sound in which cello, muted trumpet and flugelhorn (!) weave subtle countermelodies to the voice. 'Other Side of Winter' showcases the quality of the Alexander's voice unencumbered by slick production. Only the unproduced sound of the twin acoustic guitars and the applause that closes the song betray its live origins.
Initially some of the slower songs are not as immediate as they might be but they're well equipped to grow on you. The EP closes with an album version of the title track. Well, here's hoping that album comes soon even though, on the basis of this 'albumette', it should be worth waiting for too.
Trevor Raggatt
Because I Love It •••
Let's get one thing clear from the very beginning – the only track you are going to find here that's anywhere near as mammoth as her international calling card '1 Thing' is, er, '1 Thing', which has been tacked on to the end of this collection to remind people that, yes, this girl 'has' had a hit song, thank you very much. That's not to say that Because I Love It is a bad album. It's not. It's just that matching or exceeding the sheer excitement of her 2005 single is a tall order and one that Amerie's team has not quite managed to fulfil.
As far as pop albums go it's the same old story – the label wants to appeal to as many people as possible so they ensure that there are a few songs to dance around a handbag to, some mild-mannered sing-a-longs, and – brace yourselves – a few Mariah-robbing heartbroken ballads. Still, there's something genuinely likeable about Amerie, and, for the most part, she pulls it off. Beyoncé and Christina may have fallen victim to their own hype, churning out unlistenable pap, but Amerie has bounced around in the background and so retains some of the zeal displayed on the earlier work of her contemporaries. Even the most mundane of lyrics are given some degree of believability when injected with the enthusiasm and passion of her performance.
Amerie shines on the brass-fuelled, upbeat tracks 'Take Control' and 'Gotta Work', and even impresses with her slinky delivery on cheeky '80s pastiches 'Crush' and 'Crazy Wonderful', but things start feeling hollow and clunky on obligatory sob story 'When Loving U Was Easy', which even Amerie does not have the personality or voice to elevate from anything but dire and unnecessary. Of course, if you are au fait with albums by R&B divas, you'll be well acquainted by now with the dreaded phenomenon of filler tracks padding out the second half. None of Amerie's slushy ballads or slow 'jams' will bother you all that much, and besides, the aforementioned pasting-on of '1 Thing' and bonus track 'Losing You' rebounds Because I Love It into listenable territory.
Amerie is certainly somewhere near the top of the pile when it comes to the glut of female R&B singers we've enjoyed/endured (delete as applicable) over the last few years. The only problem is, whilst largely enjoyable, it's unlikely that the album will spawn another major hit to propel our plucky ingénue into the big league.
Keith Anderson
Architecture In Helsinki
Places Like This ••••
Tailem Road
The recent swathe of bands determined to bring a hefty dose of fun back into music cannot have escaped unnoticed by even the most casual of observers. CSS and Gogol Bordello are just two of the acts propelled into the higher echelons of indie greatness, not just because they are musically rather brilliant but also because they're so full of energy that they shine amidst a sea of more po-faced generic ensembles. Architecture In Helsinki is another one of these bands. The Australian collective's debut album Fingers Crossed emerged in 2004, with In Case We Die arriving the following year and thrusting the band into the public's consciousness with its pure and joyful blasts of riotous fun. The accessibility and appeal of their sound was highlighted by 2006's remix compilation where acts like Hot Chip fell sufficiently in love with their sound that they couldn't leave it alone.
Places Like This not only keeps the pace but also ups the ante as a collection of slightly unhinged, kinda disturbed, but quite magnificent tunes. A few songs trimmer than its predecessor (and the band with two fewer members), it seems that the madness has come more into focus with energy levels going through the roof. Lead single 'Heart It Races' is as edgy as it is simplistic, and catchy as you like thanks to the Cameron Bird and Kellie Sutherland's unified cries that soar above a backdrop of steel drums, bongos and synths. From start to finish, each song is orchestrated by a vast array of instruments – trumpets, drums of all ilk, glockenspiels, wind chimes, as many synth sounds as you can name, and of course the more traditional guitar, all make appearances through the course of ten songs. Adding a bewildering, kaleidoscopic feel to the album, Architecture In Helsinki veer between sounding like a calypso troupe, an '80s tribute band, a pack of scraggly alleycats and an experimental chamber choir.
'Hold Music', arguably the album's highlight, is Architecture In Helsinki at their bonkers best; here, the vocals sound almost like the cast of 'Fraggle Rock' have formed a school choir and are banging out renditions of all their favourite tunes at once. It's insanely poppy and outrageously over the top, but absolutely brilliant. This willingness to experiment with their vocal arrangements sets the band apart from many of their contemporaries as they skip between styles, harmonising in the most inventive of ways and using the voice as the ultimate instrument. The singing may frequently seem feral and untamed ('Debbie', 'Hold Music', 'Nothing's Wrong') but in fact it is immaculately ordered. Both leads intertwine in a flirtatious and complementary manner that, when combined with the musical arrangement, makes for something quite astonishing overall.
As crazy and unleashed as their music becomes, Places Like This makes room for moments of a more subdued beauty. 'Underwater', for example, is more of a bubbling pause for air, and displays the band's aptitude for production and arrangement. Of course, the mention of a cartoon-like energy and entertainment aspect of their music might suggest that the songs, beneath the surface, have little more to offer. This is far from the case. The album is littered with wonderful anecdotes such as "ignore me in the parking lot, I'm petrified by conversation" ('Nothing's Wrong'), or "your foot's on the clutch / your hand's on my crotch / slow down!" ('Feathers In A Baseball Cap').
Although it's definitely not everyone's cup of tea and, despite their protestations to the contrary, perhaps not a drastic move forward from their last release, Places Like This is nevertheless a wonderful collection of silly yet thought-provoking songs that will make you dance just as much as they will make you think, listen after listen.
Rod Thomas
Joan Armatrading
Into The Blues •••
An appealing aspect of Joan Armatrading's work is the way she tempers the earnest and personal nature of her lyrics – otherwise known as the curse of the confessional singer-songwriter – with a warm earthiness and sense of humour. Into The Blues is no different; she comes across as both intimate and playful in 'Play The Blues' as she observes that the teeth of her lover are "yellow like the sun… / but baby, when you sing the blues / I take off all my clothes for you". Darker tracks such as the desolate 'Empty Highway' and intense finale 'Something's Gotta Blow 'rub shoulders with the likes of 'There Ain't A Girl Alive (Who Likes To Look In The Mirror Like You Do)', a sort of cheeky lesbian reworking of 'You're So Vain'. It's a well-rounded album deliberately sequenced so that any given mood is not allowed to outstay its welcome.
'A Woman In Love', the album's opener, is the obvious choice to get a promotional airing with its smooth groove underlying one elegantly crafted hook after another. It serves as a four-minute showcase for Armatrading's rich voice, as well as her skilful command of piano, bass and the searing blues guitar that dominates the record. In stark contrast, 'Deep Down' is a messily indulgent exercise that should never have made the cut; it's a bloated, clattering blues jam with Armatrading repeating the two words of the title ad nauseam. A more conventional clunker is 'Liza', which simply isn't distinctive or appealing enough to stand up against the other material.
Much better are 'Secular Songs' and 'Mama Papa', which draw on funk and gospel influences and add flavour to an already unusual album. The sounds are consistent despite this cheery eclecticism. Armatrading's self-production is endearingly awkward as ever, with unfashionable whirring synth pads and cascading vocal layers seeming ill at ease in contrast with the grittier elements. However, it also serves as a reminder of her pop sensibility; while the blues-inspired compositions highlight her chops as a guitarist and an adaptable songwriter with a clear appreciation and understanding of the genre, it's tracks like 'Baby Blue Eyes' and 'DNA' – where Armatrading puts her trademark way with melodies front and centre – that really shine. The whole album turns on this compromise. It is by no means an authentic blues record, but Into The Blues stands as a strong addition to Armatrading's admirable body of work.
Callum Sinclair
Filed under: album, back issues, live, review | Tags: andy wasley, chris mccrudden, client, cocorosie, colleen, jill cunniff, judy collins, laura cortese, loria near, mary chapin carpenter, melora creager, neko case, peter hayward, rod thomas, shawn colvin, siobhan rooney, stephanie heney, the concretes, trevor raggatt, vanessa carlton
The following reviews were published on our old MySpace blog in 2007.
Vanessa Carlton
Heroes & Thieves ••
Poor piano-popster Vanessa Carlton might have felt the sting of inevitability about her second album, Harmonium. Coming off the back of her smash hit debut it was a relative commercial and critical failure, peaking at a lowly 33 in the US Billboard 200 charts. Part of the problem was that the whole album sounded too much like her debut single 'A Thousand Miles'; basic, boring piano-pop with no innovation or flair for variety. Carlton soon found herself receiving a cold "thanks, but no thanks" from her record label, A&M. All was not good, until R&B supremo Irv Gotti (Ashanti's backer) decided to take a chance on her by producing her third album, Heroes & Thieves.
Carlton's frustration with A&M bubbles to the surface in the album's first number, 'Nolita Fairytale'. Immediately recognizable as standard Carlton fare, its lyrics ("Take away my record deal / go on, I don't need it") might strike some as being somewhat petulant; sadly, that is by far the least of the song's problems. Although it is competent, it is certainly nothing special; despite Carlton's powerful voice (reminiscent of a young Sheryl Crow), her enunciation is so weak that it's something of a strain to distinguish between words and understand the song's heartfelt lyrics. This is a shame, because Carlton's skill as a lyricist is actually pretty good. Next track 'Hands On Me's tale of youthful, unrequited love works well with Carlton's yearning vocals, although it feels somewhat overwhelmed by a intrusive percussion – a common problem throughout the album, as it happens, and something Carlton would do well to avoid in the future.
Although most of the tracks sound rather samey, there are a few standouts. Carlton's multilayered vocals in 'The One' take on a rich close harmony that could tie the Puppini Sisters in knots, and ends the song with a remarkably wistful coda. 'My Best' shimmers with a lullaby feel, filled with the sweet chimes of an electric piano to create a very pleasing track, and proving that, when she tries, Carlton can be very impressive. However, what should have been the album's best number – 'Home' – fails to live up to its potential; at first Carlton eschews percussion, opting for a simple, near-perfect combination of piano, violin, harp and voice. Sadly, this quiet mastery is shattered by needless drums for the last two minutes, wrecking what could otherwise have been a welcome recognition that innovation is at least as important as convention.
Unfortunately, it seems that the pull of 'A Thousand Miles's success is just too strong, leading Carlton to return to the same, sterile sound again and again. Sometimes this sort of dependence on a tried-and-tested formula works well; it certainly hasn't done J-Lo any harm. However, she has international fame and a somewhat slavishly devoted fan-base to rely on, whereas Miss Carlton is – for now, at least – dancing at the fringes of being a one-hit wonder.
So, will Heroes & Thieves see her storming back from her long holiday from public recognition with a smash-hit single? Unlikely. Vanessa Carlton might not be over and done with, but if she wants to justify Gotti's faith – and prove A&M wrong – she will have to throw in a little more variety and forget the winning formula of 'A Thousand Miles'. It's had its day; one hopes that Carlton now chooses to look to the future rather than depend upon the past.
Andy Wasley
Neko Case
Live From Austin, TX ••••
New West
I admit it; I grew up with old school country music. My mother had a coveted collection of Patsy Cline 45s and my father spent Saturday nights attempting to get an old AM radio to tune into a Nashville radio station that would broadcast the Grand Ole Opry. So as I grew up in music, I learned to appreciate that which Austin City Limits has as its beginnings. Fast forward to 2007. Country music has become mainstream pop and the Grand Ole Opry has become somewhat of a caricature of itself. While in recent years, ACL has moved way from being a country and folk showcase into more current and relevant music, it still keeps to its roots of strong performances and is more successful today than ever.
So it was with pleasure that I picked up the live disc from Neko Case at Austin City Limits in Austin, TX. Neko has been something of an indomitable force in music through the last few years, both as sometime accompanist to Canada's New Pornographers as well a stellar solo artist. Most recently, Case shined with one of the most well deserving critically acclaimed albums of 2006, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. Selections from three earlier albums, Blacklisted, Canadian Amp and Furnace Room Lullaby are showcased in this set of 14 songs recorded in August of 2003.
Fans of Case will ask, didn't she already do this with 2004's The Tigers Have Spoken? Well, they would be partially correct. Tigers… was released with the help of full band, The Sadies whilst this album scales back the performance to a minimal backing band and one backup singer. Where The Tigers Have Spoken showcased a grand scale of musicianship and range, Live from Austin, TX puts Neko herself square into the spotlight.
Not surprisingly, this minimalist formula works extremely well. Neko has one of the strongest set of pipes in the music business, and they soar here. From the moment her voice takes flight on opener 'Favorite' to the closing rolling steel guitar in 'Alone & Forsaken', she takes control of each note flawlessly. The setlist appears to be chosen specifically to highlight her strengths, including an interesting selection of covers. What might be sacred ground to many artists becomes artistic license to Case, as she takes classics by Dylan ('Buckets of Rain') and country legend Hank Williams ('Alone & Forsaken') and gives them a tender twist. The band, Jon Rauhouse and Tom Ray with Kelly Hogan on backing vocals, accent Case with sparse yet substantial steel guitar and banjo.
Released as a DVD both in the UK and Stateside in 2006, the disc's audio companion is slimmed down from the original performance, cutting to 40 minutes from 90. Perhaps it's this production choice that at times makes the recording feel a bit rushed. With little to no banter between artist and audience, or even artist and bandmates, the recording lacks the depth normally standard of Case's live performances. The production is at times touch and go as well, with Neko's overwhelming vocals pushed so much to the forefront it occasionally drowns out everything around it.
Despite these minor problems, Live From Austin, TX shows the depths of an artist who was just coming into her own skin when she stepped on that stage in 2003. It is here you first hear 'Maybe Sparrow', which evolved just slightly for inclusion on Fox Confessor…, and gives the listener a hint of just what Neko was to become.
Loria Near
Mary Chapin Carpenter
The Calling ••••
Zoe / Rounder
From the opening piano chords of 'The Calling' it's clear that New Jersey's finest country export is back. When Mary Chapin Carpenter's distinctively smoky voice makes its entrance a few bars later it's clear that she's back with a vengeance. And vengeance may just be the appropriate word. While sonically the album contains all Carpenter's signature sounds there's a distinct change in lyrical content. The songs still inhabit the contemplative side of the psyche that is so typical of her songwriting but with a newfound edge, exploring the big questions which the events of the last few years make increasingly hard to ignore. Faith, racism, commitment, bigotry, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the jingoism which led to the Dixie Chicks's trial by radio, personal responsibility and free will…each steps into the spotlight across the baker's dozen of songs presented on the disc.
As a whole, The Calling is a magnificently mature statement, demonstrating music's unique ability to move and evoke a feeling of empathy, however difficult the subject matter. The album also represents a range of watershed moments of the artist. It's her first album for Rounder Records and her first Nashville-recorded album. In addition, along with her regular collaborators she's also thrown a couple of Music City studio legends into the mix in the form of veteran and drummer Russ Kunkel and guitarist Dean Parks (allegedly the most recorded guitar player in the history of modern music).
And the quality shows. The Calling is perhaps a little mellower overall than some of her best-known songs – there's no 'He Thinks He'll Keep Her' nestling among the set. However, the restraint perfectly complements the mood and it doesn't betray some form of mid-career ennui. Even where the songs do up the BPM count a dignified spirit remains; again, the word 'mature' springs to mind. That said, there are still plenty of moments to get the foot tapping – 'We're All Right', 'It Must Have Happened', 'Your Life Story' and 'One With The Song' all supply the janglesome country pop that has become a Chapin Carpenter trademark.
Careful not to leave proceedings on a down, the album closes with a pair of uplifting ballads – 'Why Shouldn't We' and 'Bright Morning Star' – which speak of empowerment and hope. A fitting conclusion to this artist's most mature and thoughtful collection yet.
Trevor Raggatt
Heartland ••••
Loser Friendly
Back in the mid-1990s, a Yorkshire lass by the name of Sarah Blackwood hit the pages of the NME fronting indie-pop trio Dubstar, whose debut album Disgraceful notched up two Top 20 singles (the rather brilliant 'Stars' and 'Not So Manic Now') and found them surrounded by weird and wonderful dolls, flowers, dogs and anything else vaguely psychedelic they could put on their artwork without finding themselves on the wrong side of kitsch. Sadly the hits dried up all too soon and the band's millennial demise went virtually unnoticed.
Not long after, the mysterious Client emerged from the shadows shrouded with intrigue, its two unnamed members referred to as simply 'Client A' and 'Client B' and their faces left out of the press shots. Still, it was hardly a secret that Blackwood was involved, especially given how distinctive her vocals are. Client are certainly a far cry from Dubstar and who would have imagined such a transition? Gone are the slightly twee stylistics; now it's PVC, slick photography and black as the new black. Oh, and 'electro' displaces 'indie' as the prefix to '-pop'.
Previous albums Client and City were surrounded by substantial media buzz (in certain circles at least), included collaborations with ex-Libertines members (spawning their only Top 40 hit, the rather uninspiring 'Pornography' featuring Carl Barat) but resolutely failed to ignite any real interest in the general public. The problem was that they were marketed as a slightly pretentious electroclash outfit when in fact, they themselves claim they were surprised to "find themselves relevant". Whether or not their intention was to front this so-called scene, the result was that they didn't quite deliver what seemingly was promised. Heartland, however, is quite another matter. While earlier songs such as 'Rock 'n' Roll Machine' or 'Radio' were fantastic in essence, but quite sketchily produced, just short of the spark they needed to be surefire hits, the sound on Heartland is much tighter, the vocals infinitely more honed and, on the whole, the songs much stronger. Finally, Client have produced an album that shows them off as a force to be reckoned with.
Successfully aping the '80s (and '90s come to think of it) and slightly camp, Client's sound on Heartland is essentially what more of their first release should have sounded like. It's slick, often catchy and achingly cool. 'Drive' and the fantastic 'It's Not Over' are relentlessly hummable, while 'Monkey On My Back' and '6 In The Morning' are suitably strange, risqué and provocative, with enough tongue in cheek lines to add a certain edge that keeps them serving the darker side of pop. There are obvious allusions to Goldfrapp on 'Lights Go Out', which sounds like a homage to 'Train' (although it is in itself rather good), and comparisons with acts that have already achieved success with a very similar sound is unavoidable. It's a shame that the initial batch of songs in 2003 hadn't sounded as full as this, as by now Client could have been pretty big.
The album isn't without its downfalls. As was more evident on previous releases, Client sometimes revert to clichéd lyrics that are lazy and predictable. 'Where's The Rock & Roll Gone' is dull and, bizarrely, lead single 'Zerox Machine' is one of the least interesting tracks on the record. Instrumental 'Koeln' is an odd inclusion on an album dominated by strong vocal hooks, although not a wholly unwelcome one. Despite its weaknesses, Heartland is a largely good album and even if their earlier efforts left you cold there's a lot to enjoy here. Blackwood's vocals are truly back on form, pop gems are in abundance and it makes you feel like dancing. At least just a little bit.
Rod Thomas
The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn ••
Touch & Go
Never an outfit to unify the listening public, CocoRosie may have produced their most divisive album to date with the their characteristically quirky and surreal third album. The Brooklyn sisters appear to have taken a similar turn to fellow eccentric Patrick Wolf in producing a record that simultaneously harbours their most radio-friendly moments ('Rainbowarriors' as a prime example) and also their weakest work. Though it's as varied and obscure as any previous outing and contains a similarly vast array of "instruments" (take this noun as freely as possible – coins, scissors, bicycle bells and pretty much anything else that was close to hand plays the part of percussion), the problem is that it's just not as interesting third time around. To give the sisters credit, brains have well and truly been wracked in order to orchestrate the songs with as diverse a selection of sounds as possible, but there are other forces at work here.
The main problem with the album – admittedly a standard feature of their work – is the vocals. Now, a certain amount of leniency is allowed for artistic expression, but Bianca's vocals on 'Japan' are, for want of a better word, repulsive. The song itself is an unforgivable assault of unfunny references to rape ("but you like it / so say thank you!") and pseudo-political views topped off by one of the most excruciating vocal deliveries of recent times with Bianca's scratchy brat-like vocal, hammed up even further with cod-patois tones, decimating everything in its wake. It's hard to believe that anyone can naturally sing in such a manner, and the need to adopt this tiresomely impish affectation escapes me. It might seem an unfair point of focus, but now more than ever it's a very, very thick layer of ice to dig through to appreciate what lies below.
On initial listens, tracks such as 'Werewolf' and 'Promise' are fine background music if not paid too much heed. Then, when more attention is finally given and lines such as "I suck dick" ruin any ambience created, are we supposed to be shocked? Or impressed at their intelligence? This is the album's core irritation – that beauty is promised but destroyed at birth by mercilessly contrived lyrics and indescribably grating vocals. I really wanted to fall in love with CocoRosie and so much of The Adventures Of Ghosthorse & Stillborn begins to offer the opportunity before they spin around and spoil it by doing something woefully insubstantial.
Superficially, CocoRosie are incredibly talented as the album's production values clearly display but their creative vision is riddled with flaws. Their lyrical images are often mundane, and even when more obscure they are predictably so, almost in the manner of a caricature. In a strange way, CocoRosie appear to have embellished the vices of their previous work and positioned themselves as very easy targets for criticism.
As harsh as the evaluation sounds, fans of previous work will likely find moments, even minutes, of beauty in this work. Many songs are decent enough efforts, but for an outfit as self-consciously styled as the Casady sisters, you might expect better. Even the presence of Devendra Banhart's writing on 'Houses' offers little benefit to the equation. Occasionally glorious composition is shot dead by thoughtless lyrics; Sierra's gorgeous operatics are strangled by Bianca's painfully overwrought vocals – ultimately, while trying too hard, it is far too lazy.
Rod Thomas
Live at the Sacred Trinity Chapel, Salford •••½
June 12, 2007
Some artists paint on canvases metres wide with broad brushes, spattering colour and ideas everywhere. Others content themselves with Jane Austen's "two inches square of ivory", finding freedom in restriction. French multi-instrumentalist Colleen is very much in the latter camp, teasing intricate songs out of sometimes as few as four or five tones played variously on the guitar, clarinet, the Baroque instrument, the viol, wind chimes and even music boxes.
Her concert at the Sacred Trinity Chapel, a tiny red sandstone church washed up by the ebb and flow of the Industrial Revolution at the edge of Manchester city centre, to promote her new record Les Ondes Silencieuses ('silent waves') was a mesmeric rather than exciting experience. Playing to a respectful, if slightly solemn crowd of people scattered over pews and lounging earnestly on jute mats on the floor, her seven-song set brought to mind the incidental music that accompanies a sinister European fairytale, the kind where the princess gets her hand cut off in the spinning wheel and bleeds to death slowly in the forest.
Employing a sound poised somewhere between French baroque composers such as Rameau, electro-pastoral shoegazers Slowdive and the avant-garde minimalism only to be found after 11pm on Radio 3 means Colleen is unlikely to trouble the charts anytime soon. Yet her sonorous, occasionally stiff, looped soundscapes have an undeniable charm, particularly in her guitar and viol-based work. Her painstaking approach to building songs out of tiny fragments using a pedal loop yields results that make a guitar sound like sleigh bells, and can transform her rather ponderous clarinet playing into something rich and strange.
All this, however, pales into insignificance compared to her work layering the sound of chimes or music boxes over one another. Not only do they exemplify her approach to making music, using just a few repeated notes so that the drama and variation in each song emerges at micro level, but the resulting sound is also weird enough to stick in the mind. A single song, in which a distorted music box melody plays backwards and forwards over an Elizabethan-sounding guitar line sums up everything Colleen does best: building wilfully odd art out of fragments.
Chris McCrudden
Judy Collins
Sings Lennon & McCartney ••
There's no denying the pedigree of Judy Collins, a singer as fine as they come with a career that has thus far spanned nearly 50 years and 44 albums. Throughout the 1960s, she earned herself quite the formidable reputation as a masterful interpreter of other people's songs – early recordings featured songs by Baez, Mitchell, Cohen, Dylan, Seeger and more, all cosseted by her pure soprano vocal. Given that her landmark 1966 album featured, and took its title from, a Beatles track ('In My Life'), it's remarkable that Collins has waited another 40 years before attempting more entries in the Lennon and McCartney canon. Set in this context, an album on which Collins explores the Beatles oeuvre in greater depth should be a cause of the hushed anticipation.
Sadly, the reality is a disappointingly lacklustre affair. There's no denying the pure beauty of Collins's still-crystalline voice, but the arrangements and interpretations are inexplicably disastrous. The players on Sings… rank among the greatest musicians the session world has to offer, yet, unaccountably, too many of the songs come over as tiresome jazz noodling that would be below par even in some mediocre Manhattan cocktail bar. Imagine the inspired spoof combo which closed each episode of 'Alas Smith & Jones' and you have in a nutshell the Collins takes on 'And I Love Her' and 'I'll Follow The Sun'.
Some, mostly McCartney-penned, numbers fare a little better. The sweetness (or at least bittersweet tone) of 'Blackbird', 'Hey Jude' and 'Yesterday' acts as a sympathetic context for Collins's trill. But there's no escaping the fact that Collins simply doesn't have sufficient grit, world-weariness or cynicism to convince on tracks like 'Golden Slumbers' and 'We Can Work It Out'. Elsewhere, 'Norwegian Wood' veers way too close to department store muzak fodder for comfort. And 'When I'm 64'…? Let's not even go there.
It's frustrating that what should have been a glorious canter through one of the all-time classic songbooks is such a disappointment. Perhaps another repertoire (Berlin, Porter, Gershwin…even Coward!) and a more engaging production would have reaped better dividends. As it stands, however, this particular collection will remain the preserve of Collins completists only.
Trevor Raggatt
Shawn Colvin
Live at Shepherd's Bush Empire ••••
June 18, 2007
The Shepherd's Bush Empire is no easy place to play solo. The gaping maw of the auditorium must be daunting for even the most seasoned pro and bands of any number. So kudos goes to both performers this evening for having the cahones to face up to this alone.
Husky, tousled and bescarfed support Jack Savoretti, only slightly showing his nerves, provides a soundtrack of lilting and earnest acoustic numbers that greet the punters. While he seems to be somewhat thrown by the hushed tones between tracks, this is probably a trick of the acoustics as the audience there to witness his set seem pretty grateful to be rewarded for turning up early by a more than half decent support.
There is no danger that Shawn Colvin is going to be concerned about a lack of appreciation. Decked in a shiny plastic patterned halter-neck, blue jeans and platforms, she looks every bit the part of a Midwestern trailer mom casually strolling onstage with just an acoustic guitar. But this unassuming demeanour disguises one of the finest singer-songwriters, which the audience, in appreciative applause before she even plays a chord, knows only too well.
Opening with one of the less popular numbers from her largely forgotten covers album might not be the most auspicious start, but she follows this up with two songs from last year's These Four Walls. Excellent on record, 'Fill Me Up' and the title track are even more poignant live, stripped of any production, the quality of Colvin's voice and poetry resonating loud.
Having spent a long time touring live and playing the New York folk scene before making a record, Colvin is completely at ease despite her assertion that this is her largest ever London gig. Apologising if the set recapitulates a Union Chapel show from the back end of last year she says that she can't remember what she played, to which an audience member calls back that "neither can we", without pausing for breath she retorts "We're the same age then".
Culling a set from throughout her career, Colvin has wide-ranging and nuanced perspectives on life, loves and relationships, from the fatalistic 'Trouble', which fizzes with venom, to the mournful, glacial and soaring 'Shotgun Down The Avalanche'. Colvin's lyrics are deceptively sharp, and coupled here with the raw immediacy of her live vocals, which effortlessly switch from piercing soprano shaking the cornices of the domed ceiling to a desert parched scratch on demand, she entrances the audience before drawing us back from adulatory rapture with between-track quips.
The glorious lovesong 'Polaroids', a list of images making a flickbook animation of a relationship and the triumphant tale of escape that is 'Sunny Came Home' elicit two of the greatest rounds of applause of the night. But even lesser known tracks are delivered with such poise that at the end of 16 songs the standing ovation is heartfelt and well deserved.
Returning for an encore of mostly covers, we are treated to an 'ad hoc' version of Neil Young's 'Birds' inspired by it being played before Colvin came onstage. A reworking of Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy' could be embarrassing for someone of Colvin's maturity, but she manages to breathe new life into a song played to death. And 'Killing The Blues', a standard in her live set for many years now, totally floored this reviewer.
For all her Grammys and critical acclaim, it is near criminal that Colvin is not better known and better respected by the public. Anyone who can, without pretence and so confidently, hold such a masterclass in performance deserves to be much much more highly regarded.
Peter Hayward
The Concretes
Hey Trouble •
Licking Fingers
As most people will probably remember, Swedish collective The Concretes caused quite a stir a few years back with their self-titled debut and its almost-instant pop classics such as 'You Can't Hurry Love'. Fewer will remember the follow up In Colour that failed somewhat to live up to expectations, and even fewer still will be aware that they're still going, despite losing Victoria Bergsman's majestic lead vocals to a brief affair with Peter, Bjorn & John and, ultimately, her solo career as Taken By Trees. For those faithful hangers on who've been wondering what the band might sound like without her, the wait is over. And the answer is, sadly, really not great. Though it starts off pleasantly enough, it soon becomes clear that Ms Bergsman made a well-timed departure from a once-great musical force now reduced to making dishwater music. What once sparkled now grates – the retro production values, the slightly twee edge and the faux-naïve lyrics; Hey Trouble appears to faithfully adhere to the formula of their debut, but recapturing the chemistry eludes the band completely.
At times the album, or rather the mixing and arrangements of the album, veer towards Belle & Sebastian at their more electronic ('Keep Yours'), and at other times The Supremes (a major, long-held influence). Certain moments are sufficiently well arranged and lavishly orchestrated, but it's all bogged down by its chugging monotony. One line in 'A Whale's Heart' (a song whose title is vastly more interesting than the song ever dares become) declares "it's straight-to-DVD hell". If this album were a film, this line would be the most apt in the script.
Alarm bells should really have rung upon hearing lead single 'Oh Boy', a limp attempt at reintroducing the Swedes into the limelight. Part of the problem is that many bands have jumped on the retro bandwagon since The Concretes first emerged – such as fellow Scandinavians Shout Out Louds, the aforementioned Peter, Bjorn & John, and even The Radio Dept – all of whom have become much more interesting and relevant than them. Hey Trouble is unrelentingly boring from start to finish; not a single track comes anywhere near to rivalling the pure joy of their earlier work, or even matching the energy of their successors. Lisa Milberg, who had the unenviable task of replacing Bergsman on vocals, flounders miserably, rendering any beauty in the songs impossible to hold on to. She lacks any real variety in delivery, and on the whole sounds entirely nonplussed, barely aware of the lyrics she is singing almost robotically.
In theory, the songs are fine, but they are just that: fine. They just about scrape by, but lack any real defining qualities or values that display why this album was made, or even why the band are still together aside from a contractual obligation. The ideas on this record have all been done before, often to death, by countless other bands. As harsh as it may seem, The Concretes have delivered an essentially pointless record. Hey Trouble sounds strangely empty despite the layers and layers of careful instrumentation, and, more's the pity, achingly insincere.
Rod Thomas
Laura Cortese
Blow Out The Candle •••
Laura Cortese: fiddler, singer, dancer, songwriter, polymath, sometime purveyor of dog-house bass for old-timey outfit Uncle Earl…there's no denying that the woman's got talent. Her latest release, a mini-album sequel to 2006's full-length Even The Lost Creek, finds her in pared-back, live and acoustic mode. Recorded straight from the mixing desk at a number of shows across the US and Canada, every one of the seven songs here demonstrates Cortese's energy and skill.
Drawing heavily on material from Even The Lost Creek, with just one pick ('I Must Away Love') from her solo debut Hush and a cover. But the bare-bones nature of the recording – a simple mix of fiddle, guitar and percussion – leaves Cortese plenty of room to breathe. The rock 'n' reel style of 'Mulqueens' amply shows why her fiddle playing has been so lauded on the Stateside Celtic circuit, while the other excerpts from her previous release are nicely stripped down retreads of the studio material.
This is particularly effective on the raunchy traditional number 'Jack Orion' where brooding sensuality rubs shoulders with snare and brushes and spookily cello-like riffing on an octave fiddle. Of course it doesn't end happily. Traditional ballads rarely do. The real surprise here is a tender cover of Kelly Clarkson's 'Breakaway' (co-written by fellow Canadian Avril Lavigne), as far away from American Idol sk8r punk as you can possibly imagine. But the transformation of the song to fit Cortese's country-folk style is seamless and the perfect foil to her lyrical fiddle playing.
Being picky, the technical quality of the recording isn't as smooth as some 'live' offerings, but what we lose in smoothness and overdubs is more than repaid in energy, honesty, authenticity and connection between player, listener and music. Which would you rather have?
Trevor Raggatt
Melora Creager
Perplexions ••½
Filthy Bonnet
The old maxim about never starting a band with a woman because she'll want to go solo has never been tested more than when applied to Melora Creager. Of course, the mythical band of this epithet wasn't Rasputina, nor was its lead singer the notoriously eclectic Creager who, as the founding member, is the nucleus around which the organised chaos of Rasputina's ever-shifting line-up revolves. The difficulty of the solo album already becomes apparent: can we extricate Creager from Rasputina when she is arguably the band's driving force?
There is no doubt that Creager has delivered an accomplished album, replete with the quavering vocals we have come to love. In many ways, Perplexions represents a 'back to basics' approach for the singer, showcasing her voice, the cello and piano in arrangements that seem less complex than her collaborations with Rasputina. There are exceptions in 'Sky Is Falling' and 'Krakatowa', but these rather noisy affairs are dwarfed by simple voice and cello pairings like the mournful 'American Girl'. Opening track 'Girl Lunar Explorer' has a gorgeous string-plucking jazz quality to it that Creager would do well exploring further in other solo projects. The all too short 'Itinerant Airship', meanwhile, features layered vocals over mellifluous cyclical cello.
Perplexions is only seven tracks long so seems like a rather embryonic solo effort. An inevitable problem of the album is that many elements, most notably the signature use of cello, hark back to Rasputina and do little to assert Creager's individual identity as a musician. However, the cello is such an intrinsic part of her repertoire that it may be impossible to fully separate the two entities. For the moment, however, Creager's work with Rasputina should be more than enough to satisfy her eager fans while she finds her musical bearings.
Siobhan Rooney
Jill Cunniff
City Beach •••
Militia Group
Although a lot of musicians can boast an authentic claim to the 'cool' moniker, they don't come much hipper than Jill Cunniff. Born and raised in NYC, at just 13 years old she had her birthday party at the legendary CBGBs; at 14 she taught herself to play the guitar; and at 15 found herself playing in garage underground punk bands alongside future members of the Beastie Boys. When Cunniff joined forces with fellow New Yorkers Kate Schellenbach, Gabby Glaiser and Vivian Trimble, Luscious Jackson were formed and promptly signed to Grand Royale. After five full-length albums and notable indie success, the band amicably called it quits in 2000. So, it's fair to say that Jill Cunniff has paid her dues, musically and credibly speaking.
Since 2000, Cunniff has worked on some pop projects and worked with Emmylou Harris, continued writing her own material and even found time to learn the art of production, sampling and mixing. The result is her debut solo album City Beach, dedicated to New York's Coney Island, a faded, atmospheric city beach famous for its lively past. In an attempt to bring the beach to the city dweller, this album is full of hot Brazilian beats, and deliberately laid back breezy tunes. Indeed, on the track 'Warm Sound', the listener is urged to start the century again, at a slower pace. The whole album is something of a contradiction, combining genuinely lazy sounds with an urgent and constant message of the need to slow down.
In the same way that a beach rarely belongs in a city, this insistence feels a little out of place here, perhaps consciously so. With a vocal style very similar to Nelly Furtado, the exotic hip hop beats and samba are perfectly accompanied, evoking a real world music feel that touches on several styles, including jazz, soul, Latin, electronica, pop, trip hop, funk and so on. Although essences of Luscious Jackson are evident – mostly in the sampling and beats – this has far less edge and, well, less NYC hipness, compensated for with ambiance. City Beach is a summertime album for sure and the mood is bright.
Of the 12 tracks, Cunniff wrote seven single handed and co-wrote the other five, and while the intended mood is definitely caught, the songs themselves aren't strong. Themes of lost love come second place to the regular insistence of taking it easy, and the lyrics are simplistic and a little clichéd. It doesn't help that the true standout number 'Lazy Girls', with its danceable upbeat rhythm, is situated right at the beginning.
Perhaps arriving a little too late to capture the chillout or ambient audience, the appeal of City Beach may suffer from not fitting into any particular nook. A little too soft for the indie audience and too mature for the spiritual types, the album may well contain too many disparate elements to pin it down sufficiently. Whether bringing the beach to the urbanite or the hustle and bustle to the coastal dweller, City Beach evokes a time and place unknown to either, where nothing is rushed and the atmosphere is relaxed and blissfully simple.
Stephanie Heney


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Books change lives, right? Well, they certainly changed mine. Books have been a part of my life since I was a kid, though I honestly didn't understand their true value until much later in life. They were entertainment in my younger years. I read Goosebumps and Hardy Boys because they provided quick, fun narratives (and some of the former were actually kinda scary at times — they seem ridiculous today, of course). I even read comic books as a kid, for the same reasons everyone read comics in their youth: fun! But I wasn't a literature nut in my younger years. I wanted to play video games or do stupid things on my bike — I honestly don't know how I survived childhood, because I used to do some monumentally stupid things on my bike.
Despite all of that, books eventually smacked me upside the head and changed the way I viewed them and the way I viewed life in general. I read or discovered these books during what I would consider to be pivotal moments of my life. Some of those moments were dark times; others were quite happy and exciting. But none of them were exactly same.
In chronological order, here are the eight science fiction and fantasy writers who changed my life:
The first adult fantasy book I ever read was Richard A. Knaak's Dragonlance novel, The Legend of Huma. I won't pretend it's a great work of art, or a great piece of fantasy (well, it's a fun piece of fantasy, but Dragonlance isn't exactly known for the best writing in the universe). I would later go on to read his DragonRealm series — a much more interesting and well-written set of relatively short fantasy novels. I think it's fair to say that I was always a reader or viewer of genre fiction, having watched Star Wars so many times as a child that I eventually had to justify owning three different VHS copies to prevent ruining my really good copy (the Leonard Maltin versions, which I still own). But I had never really grown fond of SF/F literature. That was until someone introduced me to Dragonlance. The Legend of Huma introduced me to a whole new sea of stories, and reading that particular book would one day give me fuel for an interest in writing genre fiction (I've never wanted to write anything else, really). Without that book, I don't know what I would be like today. A genre fan? Probably. A scholar in the field and a wannabe writer of SF/F? Probably not.
(This is a familiar narrative, no?)
I also discovered the wonders of science fiction in high school. However, rather than having George Orwell's incredible and canonical novel 1984 thrust at me by my friends, I had the novel thrust on me by a teacher (duh). And lucky me. I attended two high schools as a teenager: one in Oak Harbor, Washington, and another in Placerville, California. Of all the English classes I took while in Oak Harbor, only one managed to make reading interesting. That class had us reading things like Watership Down by Richard Adams, A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare, and, of course, 1984. And since that class, I've re-read Orwell's novel at least six times. The book made me realized that literature could have depth, that re-reading a work could actually change your experience of it. That book also helped turn me into a science fiction nut. And every time I re-read the book (less frequently now than when I was in my early 20s), I discover something new. That's the mark of a good book, if you ask me! I think it's safe to say that my interest in literature as an academic subject began here.
The short version of the story goes like this: during my senior year of high school, my English teacher assigned Beowulf, as often happens in high school. Instead of having us write straight literary analysis, however, she asked us to take the core themes of the story and come up with our own poetic versions. Thus began a month-long journey to rewrite Beowulf (with a friend). The weird part? We actually took it quite seriously, while others in our class sort of dilly daddled the way a lot people do when it comes to these kinds of assignments. We went to the library and looked up British history (the place where we intended to set our version of the story), dug up maps of the pre-Norman-invasion British Isles, and tried our best to fit our re-worked version into that new world (Grendel's lair ended up on the Isle of Man). We plotted the entire story, developed all of the characters, and then I started writing. And then came the all-nighters.
After a weekend of intense writing (in what I then thought was proper "Old English" style — heh), I strolled into class on Monday with a 31-page epic poem in tow. I still have a vivid memory of my teacher's eyes opening wider than should have been humanly possible at the sight of our work. She had expected something like 5-10 pages, not 31. And we got an A.
You might be wondering how this changed my life. Throughout my youth, I recall writing a lot of stories. For the most part, these were horror stories (I still think that movie with the evil severed hand somehow stole my ideas); they weren't very good. But it wasn't until that Beowulf assignment that I realized I really had the writing bug. From that point on, I started writing with more fervor. Clearly that bug never truly left, because I still write fiction as often as I can (not as much right now due to PhD work, though). Without Beowulf, I'm not sure I'd be where I am right now: an English major and a published writer.
I've written about my experiences with cancer here, here and here. There is a lot more to tell about my cancer, so I won't ruin all of it here. However, what I will say is that Alan Garner's fantasy novels were the only positive things I remember about being stuck in the hospital thinking I was going to die. That's about all I remember, actually. The narratives have since left my mind. If you shoved one of his books in front of me with the title and author removed from every page, I probably wouldn't recognize the writing. I blame it all on the drugs.
But that doesn't mean Garner's work didn't influence me in some significant way. His books were a welcome distraction from what is an understandably terrifying experience. Some folks like to say that escapism is bad for us, but I think escapism is just what we need from time to time. When the world descends into darkness, it's actually good for us to wander off into other places (in our minds). It just so happens that Garner was that distraction (others would follow him, of course). It's hard to argue with the awesome feeling of escapist relief, no?
One of the first science fiction courses I ever took at UC Santa Cruz was an American Studies course on African American fiction and the Other (I can't remember the exact title). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick is an obvious choice for such a course (especially when coupled with something like Sun Ra's Space is the Place). We read a lot of things in that class, including work by Tananarive Due, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, and many others. But it was Philip K. Dick's novel that acted as the catalyst for my academic career.
Up until that point, I had always intended to study science fiction in college. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of courses on the stuff when I first entered the college system, and so I had never been exposed to PKD (or other great writers, for that matter), nor had I been given the impression that I could actually study what I wanted. But that class completely changed things for me, and PKD more so than anyone else at the time. I would go on to take an independent study with the same professor (Prof. Ramirez!), in which I read several more works by PKD, including Ubik (my favorite of his novels, actually — I need to assign that for a class one of these days). Basically, by the time I finished my B.A., I had done so much work on the Other and science fiction that it would define my academic interests for a nearly half a decade (see Buckell and Hopkinson below for the shift in my these interests). PKD exposed me to an entirely different world of SF — where the human question is always in flux. There's a reason why he's so popular these days…his work is just too damned good.
As I've already mentioned, I had the privilege to read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler in college. I don't know what it is about Butler's work. Even a story as simple as "Speech Sounds" captivates me as a reader and as an academic. Whatever her allure, reading Butler showed me a different world of science fiction (and, by extension, fantasy): one in which people of color are central. I got to see science fiction from an entirely different perspective, which not only helped me round out my academic work, but also helped foster an insatiable appetite for fiction about experiences relevant to people of color (and women, too). From Butler, I grew the guts to take an intensive graduate course in feminist and queer theory (as an undergrad), and to extend that same desire to broaden my horizons by taking a similarly intensive course on the Harlem Renaissance (as a grad student — this is actually one of my favorite periods of literary history). The amount of work that I devoured because of Butler's amazing fiction is too long to list here. I am just forever thankful that Prof. Ramirez assigned Parable of the Sower, and I am likewise thankful to Butler for sharing so many wonderful stories with all of us — especially me.
I'll address these two in order of exposure. The first Hopkinson novel I ever read was Brown Girl in the Ring. While this is not my favorite of her work (Midnight Robber is her best science fiction novel thus far, and you're not allowed to ask me to pick a favorite from her list of fantasy novels), it certainly did for me many of the same things as Butler's Parable of the Sower. But while Butler exposed me to a world of PoC writers and who were writing about issues about which I would become increasingly more interested, Hopkinson proved to be a gateway "drug" to SF/F by people outside of the traditional Western sphere. True, Hopkinson has spent a great deal of her life living in Canada (and now the U.S.), but her work has always been about fusing and exploring the depths of Caribbean experiences. In another year, I would have read work by Ngugi wa Thiong'o (not a Caribbean writer, obviously), Amitav Ghosh (perhaps closer to a magical realist than a regular genre writer), Salman Rushdie, and many others. And her novel, Midnight Robber, would eventually become one of two primary texts for my M.A. at the University of Florida. In a way, Hopkinson completely changed the direction of my work as an academic and my habits as a reader.
But she wasn't alone. At some point during all the madness of school, I discovered Tobias S. Buckell. I started reading his work as a reviewer. While Crystal Rain is not my favorite of his books (though it is probably the most tightly plotted), the melding of peoples in his first Xenowealth book seemed novel to my younger self. From there, I went on to Ragamuffin (my favorite of his Xenowealth novels, though Sly Mongoose and The Apocalypse Ocean are quite good too), which showed me a completely different side to Caribbean-influenced SF. Whereas Hopkinson stayed firmly in the realm of what we might call "da serious genre fiction," Buckell took his mixed bag of characters to the wondrous world of Space Opera.* I love Space Opera, and even more so because Buckell's work did something with the genre I'd never seen before: he stuck Caribbean people and other racial groups right in the middle of it all. I'd never read anything like it, and since then, I've craved more like it (please recommend stuff to me). I'd read so many novels about white guys doing what white guys do in space that I'd sort of forgotten what the future might actually look like (Butler helped with all of this too, though her work has a tendency to remain fixated on the Earth — exceptions exist, of course).
Without Buckell and Hopkinson, my academic career wouldn't be where it is today. I'm studying Caribbean literature, and I intend to continue studying postcolonial science fiction from around the globe. But they also changed the way I viewed literature, so much so that by the time the whole World SF thing became a big deal (at least, on the Internets), I was already riding the world train. Now, when I see genre fiction by people from elsewhere in the globe, I pause and think to myself: I wonder how they write about SF tropes or explore their own experiences in relation to genre (sometimes their explorations aren't all that different from my own, which is interesting and important too). That's a good thought to have, I think.
There you go. That's my rough list. There are a lot of other writers I could stick in here, but I think eight is plenty enough for now.
What about you? Which SF/F authors changed your life?
*I am not suggesting that Buckell's works aren't "serious genre fiction." Rather, I am pointing out the difference in tone, which has a lot to do with what I think of as underlying cultural echoes of Space Opera's history as "that silly subgenre." The Xenowealth novels are actually quite serious, but they do use a lot of the tropes of Space Opera to get to its serious points. I think this is actually a great thing. Whereas Hopkinson's work tends to look at the experiences of Caribbean peoples within the sphere of our real world experiences, Buckell's work seems to suggest that the somewhat more cognitively estranged world of Space Opera and interstellar empires is just as fitting a space for those same individuals.
P.S.: I am well aware that this list is largely male-centric. In all honesty, I did not read a lot of work by women during most of the events described above. This wasn't a deliberate choice, but it was certainly an oversight I failed to recognize at the time. People like Joanna Russ and James Tiptree, Jr. have had a profound impact on me, but because I discovered their work so recently, I don't feel like I can properly gauge their influence in objective terms. Other great female writers have influenced me too: Karen Miller, Karen Lord, Lauren Beukes, and Stina Leicht, to name a few. There have also been quite a few women who have had impacts on my life for things other than writing — people like my mother and grandmother, my best friend Jen, Tansy Rayner Roberts and Alisa Krasnostein (for their feminist criticism), and Julia Rios (a fairly recent influence). I may have to make a completely different list one day for those non-writer folks!
P.S.S.: I really should include Ginn Hale, too, though I don't think it is fair to attribute my interest in SF/F featuring LGBT characters or concerns only to her. Christopher Barzak and JoSelle Vanderhooft were involved in that development too.

subset: commoncrawl


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Former CEO of NewsX, Indrani Mukerjea, who is accused of being an accomplice in the murder of her sister Sheena Bora, may have been her mother. The Telegraph, citing Indrani's relatives, reported that Indrani had two children from before she married Peter Mukerjea. Both were raised by Indrani's parents in Guwahati.
NDTV spoke to Peter, who said he always thought Bora was Indrani's sister until Wednesday morning. He added that he'd "heard" that Indrani was Sheena's mother in the past but had "dismissed it as a figment of somebody's imagination." Now, he told NDTV, he was hearing the same thing from "more credible sources."
Indrani, who is married to former Star India CEO, Peter Mukerjea, was arrested along with her driver on Tuesday. The driver, Shyam Rai, confessed to the Mumbai police that Indrani plotted her daughter's murder.
"We have arrested two accused (Indrani Mukerjea and her driver) under IPC sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 34 (criminal conspiracy)," a Mumbai police spokesperson told ANI.
Sheena Oberoi, was found dead in 2012, when Raigad police had found the remains of Indrani's sister, following which a murder case was registered against 'unidentified persons.'
"The two have been arrested and charged under sections 302 (murder), 201 (disposing evidence or giving false statements), 363 (kidnapping) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC. We are still talking to her," the police spokersperson added.
Sheena's last Facebook post was in December 2011 and she was not seen since. When friends were asked about Sheena's whereabouts, they said, they were told that she was abroad for some treatment. After her studies, Sheena used to work with a Reliance Group company.
Contact HuffPost India


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General surgery
General surgery is a surgical specialty devoted to the surgical procedures of the organs of the abdominal cavity (including oesophagus, stomach, small and large intestine, liver, pancreas, gall bladder and gall ducts), thyroid gland, skin, soft tissues, peripheral blood vessels and hernia. By character, surgery is an invasive or interventional specialty: for many operations, an incision must be made (so-called open surgery), and the healing process can therefore be painful and long-lasting. However, since 2000s, thanks to technological innovation, minimally invasive surgery has become popular. New surgical methods enable to operate through very small incisions. This speeds up the healing process, decreases post-operative pain and makes getting an infection less likely. One example are the laparoscopic surgeries whereby special instruments are inserted in the abdominal cavity. The surgical procedure is performed by means of these instruments. Here is a short overview of some of the most common diseases and procedures general surgery deals with:
Hernia is a protrusion of an abdominal organ or its part, or the lining of the abdominal cavity (called peritoneum) into subcutaneous tissues through a congenital or acquired defect in the abdominal wall. A hernia is better visible and palpable when one is standing or exerting oneself. The most common hernias are inguinal hernia and ventral hernia. Hernia is one of the most frequent surgical diseases. In some patients, a hernia causes no trouble at all, but in other patients it can cause strong pain and discomfort.
Gallstone disease is caused by solid formations (gallstones) in the gall bladder. These stones may cause episodic pains with nausea and vomiting, and sometimes even inflammation of the gall bladder, blockage and/or inflammation of the gall ducts, and pancreatitis. After operation, 90–95% of the patients will get rid of their problems.
Bariatric surgery (in common language called stomach-reducing surgery) is a method to treat obesity. During the last years it has been a topic of hot debates. By this operation, the stomach is made smaller and/or the small intestine is made shorter. After the operation, up to 85% of the patients lose weight significantly (at least 50% of the overweight) and the procedure also helps to decrease blood cholesterol levels and alleviate several obesity-related chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and podagra.
Skin moles can be a cosmetic and a medical problem at the same time. It is reasonable to show a skin mole to the doctor if it starts to disturb you – for example, when it rubs against clothes, has become bigger, red or itchy lately, or if you just don't like it. Skin mole removal is usually a very fast and unproblematic procedure. If necessary, the removed mole is sent for biopsy (tissue analysis) to exclude malignancy.
Many people have problems with varicose veins. Varicose veins on legs (varicosis) is a very frequent disease, caused by enlargement of the superficial veins in the leg. Such veins become protruding and can be aesthetically disturbing. In milder cases it can be a purely cosmetic problem, but varicose veins can sometimes cause acute inflammation and ulcers. When local treatment does not help any more, it is possible to remove varicose veins surgically. In case of moderate varicosis, sclerotherapy could be applied – during this procedure, a substance that damages the inner layer of the veins, is injected in varicose veins, leading to their closure.
Varicose vein surgery24 clinics
Varicose vein surgery with the removal of the great saphenous vein is a surgical procedure to treat varicose veins of legs. To remove the main trunk of the great saphenous vein, the major superficial vein of the leg, only two small skin incisions are made (in the groin and near the ankle bone). The branches of the vein are removed through small skin incisions or even through pinhole incisions that do not require suturing. The operation is performed under general or spinal anesthesia. Varicose veins are caused by chronic connective tissue weakness, therefore, to avoid the appearance of new varicose veins, it is necessary to continue using compression stockings after the operation.
Sclerotherapy for varicose veins37 clinics
Sclerotherapy for varicose veins is a procedure to treat varicose veins that lasts about 20–50 minutes. It can be done on an outpatient basis and the recovery is quick. During the procedure, sclerosing (i.e. constricting or narrowing) substance is injected in the enlarged veins and capillaries. Sclerotherapy is not suitable for treating large varices! Before sclerotherapy it is advisable to consult a doctor and perform an ultrasound examination. Varicose veins are caused by chronic connective tissue weakness, therefore, to avoid the appearance of new varicose veins, it is necessary to continue using compression stockings after the treatment procedure.
Skin mole removal156 clinics
Skin mole removal is a quick and simple surgical procedure, performed under local anesthesia. Anesthetic injections are the most painful part of the procedure. Once the area is completely numb, the mole is cut off with a scalpel and the wound sutured. Usually the removed mole is sent for biopsy (tissue analysis) to exclude malignancy.
Weight loss surgery (gastric bypass surgery)29 clinics
Gastric bypass surgery is one of the methods of bariatric or weight loss surgery. It is a laparoscopic procedure whereby small abdominal skin incisions are made to insert special instruments and a laparoscope with a camera in the abdominal cavity. During the procedure, the stomach is surgically cut and stapled into a small upper pouch and a large lower section. The middle part of the small intestine (jejunum) is also cut through. Once divided, the lower part of the jejunum is pulled up and connected directly to the new small upper pouch. The other end (coming from the lower part of the stomach) is sewn back at a certain point further down the small intestine. After the procedure, food enters the "small stomach", easily inducing the feeling of fullness, and then travels directly into the jejunum, "bypassing" the upper part of the small intestine. The only remaining task of the "large stomach" is to produce digestive enzymes for the small intestine.
Weight loss surgery (gastric sleeve surgery)26 clinics
Gastric sleeve surgery, also called longitudinal resection of the stomach, is one of the methods of bariatric or weight loss surgery. It is a laparoscopic procedure whereby small abdominal skin incisions are made to insert special instruments and a laparoscope with a camera in the abdominal cavity. Most of the stomach is removed with the laparoscope and the rest of the stomach is closed longitudinally with a surgical stapler. The remaining stomach reminds of a small tube or sleeve, hence the name of the procedure: gastric sleeve. By this method the volume of the stomach is reduced by approximately 80%, which leads to earlier satiety (feeling of fullness) and thus helps to eat less.
General surgeon's consultation30 clinics
A general surgeon usually specializes in abdominal surgery, but performs other operations as well. During the first appointment, surgical treatment is usually not performed. First, the general surgeon examines and consults the patient, and prescribes additional tests or analyses. A timely consultation with a general surgeon, accurate diagnosis and early treatment help to avoid developing severe complications.


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When hiring new employees, Google no longer looks at most candidates' grade point averages and test scores. more...
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The best tips for home theater cooling can depend on the particular setup in question. Equipment that is set on open-backed shelving does not typically require any extra cooling, though closed cabinetry and audio/video (AV) closets often call for special attention. Home theater equipment can be cooled off either actively or passively, depending on how hot it runs. Passive home theater cooling involves drilling ventilation holes in close-backed shelving and cabinetry, or propping open the door to an AV closet. Active home theater cooling can be achieved with fans and other equipment that promote air circulation in and around hot electronics.
There are many different ways to set up a home theater system, and each different installation can call for unique cooling solutions. Electronics tend to create waste heat whenever they are operated, and a fully equipped home theater system can cause substantial increases in the local temperature. The best way to keep home theater equipment cool is to set it on a shelf with an open back, leave space above and below the units, and avoid blocking any air intake or exhaust ports. This will tend to allow natural air flow, and keep the equipment from overheating.
Sometimes it is necessary to install home theater equipment in a closed cabinet or even a remote AV room, for either technical or aesthetic reasons. These types of installations can be perfectly safe for the equipment, though some attention typically must be paid to the concept of home theater cooling. If a cabinet or home theater enclosure lacks ventilation holes, it is often a good idea to create some. This can be accomplished with a variety of different tools, though a hole saw can complete the job quickly and cleanly. Simply drilling ventilation holes can go a long way towards cooling off a hot home theater system by passively creating more natural airflow.
If passive airflow is not sufficient to cool down a home theater system, then active measures can be taken. One way to improve airflow is to install fans, which can be attached to existing slots in some home theater enclosures. Computer case fans are one low power option, though there are a number of different units that can accomplish the same job. Active home theater cooling can be a little more complicated when an AV closet is involved, as it is sometimes necessary to run exhaust ductwork to the exterior of the house. This can be difficult and time consuming work, so it is typically a good idea to consider ventilation before choosing a location for AV closet.
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text: In the years since Lou Barlow's 2005 solo album EMOH, the indie-rock godfather has toured with his old bands Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr., recorded two superb LPs with the latter, and has seen his early Sebadoh albums re-released in deluxe editions. So it's understandable that Barlow's new solo release, Goodnight Unknown, finds him in a reflective mood, revisiting the various styles he's attempted over the years. The album opens with the pounding, strummy rocker "Sharing," which could pass for a later-period Sebadoh or early Dinosaur Jr. track, and throughout Goodnight Unknown, Barlow goes with what he knows, slipping clanging uptempo numbers between lo-fi acoustic ballads, some of which have been dressed up with stray bits of electronic noise, à la Barlow's The Folk Implosion. Barlow fans should be happy with the way Goodnight Unknown sounds, but they should also recognize that its songs aren't as memorable as Barlow's best. Frequently, the addition of synthesizers or homemade percussion seems designed to mask maudlin lyrics or derivative melodies, while the best songs—like the swaying "The Right," the spooky "I'm Thinking," and the aching "One Note Tone"—tend to be more stripped-down. Ultimately, this is a settled, homey record. It's heavy on the goodnight, but too light on the unknown.


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If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know I frequently bang on about the pointlessness of the Premier League. David Walsh, in today's Sunday Times, points out that Chelsea now have so much depth in their squad that their reserves are good enough to thrash almost any top flight side:
"What has become clear and should concern the Premier League is that the top four clubs, especially Chelsea and Manchester United, have the financial and organisational wherewithal to hold on to top-class players who would rather be an understudy there than a key member of the first team elsewhere.
"As the big four distance themselves from the pack, the consequence is predictability. It is a great weakness of the Premier League that in a race not yet a quarter of the way through, everyone knows who will fill the top four places. Only the order in which they finish remains to be determined.
"It would be encouraging to feel that those who run the Premier League were as concerned as they should be"
Of course, the Premier League bosses don't give a toss as long as the TV money keeps rolling in. Still, it's reassuring to see journalists pointing it out, even if their complaints will fall on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, I'm off to Wembley to watch a genuinely competitive top-flight sport: the NFL match between the San Diego Chargers and the New Orleans Saints. The London drizzle and Wembley's inadequate turf threaten to spoil the game again this year but I'll enjoy my American football fix nonetheless.


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Joyetech eGo AIO MANSION
Review by Ippolit
Review by Ippolit
Joyetech provided me with the device, but I always give a realistic review, usually after a week of daily use. I normally use an identical well known premium e-liquid for all my reviews, it's high VG and uses organic fruit flavourings with complex flavour notes, I know how it tastes in many devices and with varied settings, in that way I can judge how good a device is at releasing subtle flavours.
The MANSION is a very portable, elegant yet tough little AIO (All In One) being strongly constructed and well built from quality materials, it does not feel at all "plasticky".
Elegant in any of the colours, ideal for a special night out, dinner with a loved one or just to have handy in bag, pocket or in a drawer at the office - it's conveniently sized.
The MANSION wouldn't look out of place at that good restaurant would it?
Operation is simplicity itself, once turned on with the usual 5 clicks on the small side fitted fire button the MANSION will respond to a press of the button with a huge volume of flavoursome vapour that belies it size! In addition puff detection is fitted - so just suck and it automatically fires.
Filling is made very easy too, removing the press fit mouthpiece reveals the filling hole sealed with a captive plug. Simply remove the bung and top up, you can see the level on the side mounted tank windows.
You will also see the top of the coil base, more of which later, but note that there is a knurled ring on it that allows for airflow control - a novel addition for this size of device! Being a DTL ( Direct To Lung) vaper I was dubious, thinking the airflow would be too restricted for my taste - but in fact it works fine for me fully open, not airy but good enough. Closing the airflow down effectively reduces the airflow for those who prefer MTL ( Mouth To Lung) vaping. So the best of both worlds, a real all rounder, with good flavour and clouds from such a small device.
Being a top airflow and sealed tank design there are no leaks, vapour is produced rapidly and is intense when using DTL. The coil is very efficient, matched with the 1300mAh battery it operates at around 20-25W with a max rating of 30W. With a freshly charged battery a long puff results in fairly hot vapour even though the available battery current is regulated, there is so much flavour and vapour you won't want a long pull though!
The coil (or atomiser) is the readily available and proven Joyetech BF SS316 0.6 ohm. Note that there is no coil fitted out of the box, there are two provided in the kit. It's easy enough to pop off the top cap and the mouthpiece unit revealing the coil base ( see above graphic) that has a large screwdriver slot on the top, don't worry you don't need a screwdriver! Simply turn over the mouthpiece you just removed, theres a mini-driver built in!
Note that it's important to fully charge the MANSION before first use with the mini-usb cable and a suitable USB charger, also you must install a coil before filling the tank!
Remove the coil base using that driver, note the airflow control ring. Now prime your coil with a few drops of liquid (onto the cotton that is just visible), screw it firmly onto the base you just removed and screw that assembly firmly into the hole. Replace the mouthpiece, fill the tank as described, wait 5 minutes for the liquid to wick through and away you go!
You can change the tank LED colour too, to match the colour of your MANSION, I selected the white for my beautiful black version - 7 LED colours and Orange, Black, White, Silver, Gold, Rose Gold MANSION colours to chose from.
Whats in the box?
1 x eGo AIO MANSION
2 x BF SS316 0.6 ohm coils
1 x USB cable, short.
1 x manual, warranty card, warning card.
1 x set spare parts- you get 2 x spare filling hole plugs, and a few spare coil seals.
Size: 17.5*33.0*103.0mm
Weight: 83.0g
Colours: Orange, Black, White, Silver, Gold, Rose Gold
Battery capacity: 1300mAh
E-liquid capacity: 2.0ml
Atomiser head: BF SS316 0.6 ohm
Airflow: controllable top airflow
Vape way: direct inhale/hold button to inhale
Mode: direct output
Conclusion: I really like this little device, astonishing power from such an elegant AIO, with no leaks, puff detection it's an ideal device for pocket or bag.
(BTW- please excuse the fur on a couple of the images, our fluffy white cat is very nosy and had to be removed from the table several times, but she left some fur behind!!)
Available soon direct from the Joyetech store or your local authorised dealer. For more details on the eGo AIO MANSION & the Store - JOYETECH https://www.joyetech.com/product/ego-aio-mansion/


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We are not thrown out of heaven; we forget the WAYS for communicating with the eternal present. God, money, debt, are the virtual "values" of a tyranny at its sunset. It is linear time the main deception of a videeocracy that has become a debtcracy. We ignore the very high speed of our vital processes. We also ignore that linear time ultimately depends on a peculiar "APPLE": the Earth's magnetic field. Many events now show its imminent end, that is the beginning, the full emergence of the PROMISED LAND: the organic matter, which composes the entire human brain.
Tags amour armonia bene e male buchi neri cellule gialle cervello umano correnti longitudinali debitocrazia emozioni energia oscura fonon fotoni fusione fredda geometria gravità illusione ottica mangiare la mela neuroni neutrini piccole sole segnali precursori sensazione spin nucleari tempo lineare terra in UV terra promessa videocrazia
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2. The shadows of the ideas
Great sages like Plato (400 BC) and Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) have stated that we don't actually see the real reality, but just a shadowy one.
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Art of Science 2013 Online Gallery
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Photosynthetic Neighborhoods
Henry S. Horn
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Leaves carry out photosynthesis in clusters of cells locally serviced by end-units of pipes that deliver water and take away sugar. The cells must be within diffusion distance of pores to exchange carbon dioxide and oxygen. Diffusion may set an upper limit on the size of an efficient cluster, and quasi-fractal branching of pipelines may set a lower limit. Accordingly, many species of local woody plants show photosynthetic clusters of approximately uniform size, and these clusters themselves group hierarchically into neighborhoods of successively larger sizes. The photo fields are 4 millimeters wide, except for the aerial photo of human neighborhoods.


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Across Leeds, there are countless homes and buildings, which tell the stories of the Leeds of yesterday. They document the cities great and diverse history, from its affluent citizens to its industrial heritage.
One such building can be found on the outskirts of Weetwood Hall, in Far Headingley and it is currently on the market with Manning Stainton.
The story behind Bardon Hall Mews, points to a period of Leeds history now over a century old. The building is aptly marked by a blue plaque, with the words "Bardon Hill Stables" written on it.
The impressive building dates back to 1873 and was originally built as stables by one of Leeds most illustrious citizens, Joseph Pickersgill.
Pickersgill was an affluent man, who built his fortune as a bookmaker, and was well known for his Royal connections, acting as bookmaker for the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII.
The stables were a fittingly grand addition to the Bardon Hall grounds, which Pickersgill purchased in the mid-1800s.
Designed in a striking Edwardian style, Bardon Hall Mews' history was all but lost until the mid-1990s when a re-survey of Leeds listed buildings was carried out for English Heritage and the true significance of the building came to light. "It now stands as a reminder of the lavish and high-spirited lifestyles of the nouveau riche and royalty in Edwardian England."
In 2002, the impressive stable buildings were renovated and converted into luxury apartments, one of which is now on the market with Manning Stainton; it offers a modern living space, with the character which would be expected from such a historic and intricately designed building.
About the property
This two bedroom home is set down a long private driveway, with delightful private grounds surrounding. Offering a Mews House setting with a private entrance with great space for entertaining. There are numerous character features and it is set in a fantastic Weetwood location, with an array of amenities on its doorstep.


text: There is an online relay check at http://www.abuse.net/relay.html Charles Cresswell, IS Manager 020 72130728 The Association of Corporate Treasurers Ocean House 10/12 Little Trinity Lane London EC4V 2DJ tel: +44.(0)20 7213 9728 fax: +44.(0)20 7248 2591 www: http://www.treasurers.org Notice of Confidentiality This e-mail (and any attachments) is intended for the named addressee(s) only. It contains information that may be confidential. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not read, copy, use, or disclose it to anyone else. Unauthorised use, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by telephone immediately 020 7213 0705 and delete the message from your e-mail system. The Association of Corporate Treasurers may monitor outgoing and incoming e-mails and other telecommunications on its e-mail and telecommunications systems. By replying to this e-mail you give your consent to such monitoring. The Association of Corporate Treasurers is a company limited by guarantee. It is registered in England at the above address, registration number 1445322. #ACT#


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Hose Coupling, Nito Click, Gardena, Hozelock, 1/2"
1/2" hose coupling including hose clamp. Fits on 070752, 070952, 297152C and 297352C. Fits the Gardena/Hozelock systems as well.Go to product
Aluminium Handle, Ø0.87", 33.07", Blue
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Compact Wall/Deck Scrub, 8.86" Hard, Blue
Clean around equipment and against walls and comply with HACCP principles with this colour-coded Deck/Wall Scrub. Features angled bristles around the perimeter and a rounded, compact design for improved durability.Go to product
Customer satisfaction is a top priority at Vikan, and every couple of years we put ourselves to the test by asking our customers how they think we're doing.
Easy to clean Vikan Ultra Safe Technology products have delivered an outstanding cleaning standard for a large UK deli and meats manufacturer.
Food industry customers often ask us about the best way to clean up glass breakages and the resulting debris. Fortunately, Vikan has experienced Customer Service and Technical Sales Teams, and a de...


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It depends on the context.
Work Step by Step
A literal "quantum leap", e.g., an electron dropping between energy levels in an atom, is just about the smallest transition that can be imagined. On the other hand, the revolution in 20th century physics thinking, from classical to quantum physics, required "a quantum leap" in knowledge, i.e., a large change.


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The unemployment rate climbed back up to 9.1 percent in May, as the rate of private-sector job growth slowed to just 83,000, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report. The prior two months data were also revised downward, lowering the average job growth for the last three months to 160,000, approximately 70,000 more than what is needed to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.
The weakness in the private sector goes along with a government sector that lost 29,000 jobs in May and has lost an average of 24,300 jobs over the last three months. State and local governments will continue to make cutbacks, and there is a strong likelihood of further cuts in federal spending in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Without new stimulus, the unemployment rate may continue to creep upward.
For more information, check out our latest Jobs Byte.


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Feeling overwhelmed by starting a new business? Or stuck about what to do next to grow your existing business?
We know being a business owner is no easy feat, and it can be extremely helpful to get advice from other successful entrepreneurs who have been in your shoes.
So, we partnered with CNBC's Carol Roth and reached out to hundreds of influential small business owners and organizations that serve small businesses to offer advice and insights on what they found to help prosper their business.
In this eBook, you'll find 80 tips and strategies regarding:
• Managing your business
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Download the free eBook to find out how to take your business to the next level from these experts who know a thing or two about success.
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