coalescent

I think I've decided that Sunday evening gigs are a good thing. They're social, but they don't go on too late and if you necessary you can just stand there in zombie mode and let the music wash over you. And when you get back, you can have toast. Tonight I was back at the Zodiac with Mike to see Delays (no 'the,' despite what that URL would have you believe).They were great, a bit like what you might get if you raised the unnatural offspring of Ash and The Byrds in an environment littered with early-nineties synth samples. Even money says they'd sound incredible playing in the open air at some sunny summer festival. This despite having a keyboard player whose only special skills seemed to be looking like this but dancing like Kevin the teenager. Support was from The Veils, who turn out to offer significantly less sub-Placebo pointlessness than you might expect from some of their promotional photos, and in fact were the best support band I've seen for ages.

All this at the end of a weekend spent, in the main, convalescing from an irritatingly persistent bout of the flu. After three nights of going to bed at 9:30 I think I've bested it, though, and I have at least made good progress on the reading front. I've now read three-and-a-half of the Clarke Award nominess, and should easily finish the fourth by Wednesday, so I won't feel like a complete fraud. Maul was good, and clever, but not great; although given that I have to discount Pattern Recogntion (on the grounds - and believe me, it causes me physical pain to say this - that even John Clute can't convince me it's SF) I'd have to say it's the strongest of the nominess that I've read so far. Any which way is going to be an interesting result this year, it seems.

(The icon change comes because, beautiful as it is, I got a little bored with the Alethiometer, and because I've also been kickin' it old-school style down home on the umta range. Expect it to last until that final episode airs on Sky. Sniff.)