Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Mysterious Voice of the One String Phono Fiddle The phonofiddle is not to be confused with the Stroh Violin. It is a relative in the same family, but has not got a violin fingerboard, rather a long flat fingerboard, … Continue reading →

The Shipping Forecast Every night the entire nation of Britain fall into the envelope of sleep serenaded by the softly spoken cadences of The Shipping Forecast….a tiny transistor radio on their bedside table transmits the comforting voice of the BBC, … Continue reading →

An extraordinary life and an extraordinary woman. Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico City in 1907. Her instantly recognisable paintings, many of them self portraits of almost hallucinogenic intensity, have defied definition or categorisation. Sometimes called ‘naive style’ and Andre … Continue reading →

Imagine if there was music that had been created in the 7th Century which still sounds harmonically avant garde today. As early as the 6th Century, Chinese court music came to Japan. The Japanese introduced the koto and the biwa … Continue reading →

Elven Kaban, the contrabass player with Forgotten Fish Memory Orchestra, asked me one day during a rehearsal if we could include some jazz in our repertoire. It was a reasonable request. We had been busy deconstructing all kinds of musical … Continue reading →

  Marc Riboud has sadly passed away on the 30th august 2016, at the age of 93. One of the truly great photographers of the 20th Century, he travelled the world, particularly in those giant lands of the eastern communist … Continue reading →

          George Gurdjieff He was a remarkable, complicated, brilliant, infuriating and inspiring man. His life’s work was to synthesise a philosophy for the perfection of human consciousness, bringing together Sufism, esoteric gnosticism, fakirism, shamanism, and incorporating … Continue reading →