A fine pair of carved pumpkins courtesy of Ezara and Joe

Ive been a fan of Phillip Glass since i saw the film Koyaanisquatsi on Channel 4 way back in 1982 (for those of you that dont know click here…) but ive never seen him perform live, so I jumped at the chance when my good pal Darren invited me to the Barbican on Sunday to see the old git strutt his stuff.

Im still recovering from a severely burnt brain.

Firstly I expected lots of twonks, dweebs, wild jumpers and humans that look like Greys, but really had no idea of the scale of mutantcy on display. Every corner was like being on the set of Total Recall. The last time i felt like this was when i stumbled across a crop circle in Upavon.
The Barbican is a perfect setting for this as it is a real concrete lump of post apocalyptic 1970’s madness, set in the middle of a baren ‘24 days later‘ deserted East London. The whole place looks like its been kind of forgotten about and you feel the need to start looking for lay lines or something.

Anyway to be fair the mutants were really buzzing and the whole place was a really exciting to be in… Then they appeared…once on stage the Philip Glass Ensemble sat and glared at each other and their instruments (3 synths, 2 flutes and woman with voice) no twitching – no coughing…nothing.. for about 2 minutes of strange silence… then BOOM – the onslaught of a massive tsunami of sound seemed to take all the oxygen out of the room – I was a little alarmed at first as i was genuinely expecting a slow sort of build up of layers of intricate sound.

THIS WAS THE SAME SOUND 25 MINUTES LATER WHEN I WOKE UP.

yep – im ashamed to admit it but it was like a drug – i fell asleep

The gig was ‘music in 12 parts’ and we were on… well… err part 1, I managed to keep the eyes open to get through part 2 and then a break of 15 minutes.

Even now I cant get over the repetition i mean dont get me wrong i was expecting it but – all by hand? – no sequencers or playback loops, no digital relays – just ‘arthritic’ constant repetition – but for me the most amazing thing was the womanand voice… her patience and her ability to keep up with the synths wow mind blowing. Anyway we couldn’t take it and we left half way in and im real sorry we did, but when you think the original takes 3 days to play out…..

Go PG!!!!

Our beautiful Victorian home is up for sale, we are off to pastures new in sunny Berkshire!

What a fantastic day to show off our village green – here are a couple of snaps taken at midday. Scenes like this we will sadly miss when we uproot and move to Berkshire.

just another laid back sunday drinking moment…