Month: December 2014

First of my “What I Listened to in 2014” posts…

Electronica is a genre I’ve never listened to much, but I found myself beginning to enjoy it more in 2014. This was partly due to picking up on the 20th anniversary of Underworld’s classic Dubnobasswithmyheadman album.

Here is “Rez/Cowgirl”:

Of the bands I heard perform the one year I went to Campalowhum, near Wainuiomata, the best was Sleep ∞ Over (Stefanie Franciotti), who performed in a forest glade – just right for music like “Romantic Streams”:

Shyfx is best known as a drum and bass and jungle producer, which isn’t really my territory, but an excursion into reggae produced this wonderful and ineffably summery song, “Soon Come”:

I should have known I was tempting fate (in a good way) when I posted my roundup of what I’d had published in 2014 and said I didn’t expect anything else to be published this year … because then I got the very welcome news that my short-short “Officials” had been selected by guest editor Owen Marshall for inclusion in the December 2014 issue of Flash Frontier.

This is an excellent issue with stories from these New Zealand and overseas authors:

Elizabeth Farris, The Ossuary
Maggie Rainey-Smith, Turning the Worms
Steven Gowin, Earthquake Weather
Brenda Anderson, Can We Get You Anything?
Tim Jones, Officials
Maris O’Rourke, Cast-offs
Keith Nunes, With Her Eyes Open
Annette Edwards-Hill, A Life Well Lived
Frank Beyer, Under the Turnstyle
Paul Beckman, Color Coordination Rules
Heather McQuillen, The Stick, the Boy and the Shell
Rita Shelley, Vested Interest
Patrick Pink, The Hurt That’s Blood
Mike Crowl, The Memorial
Steve Charters, Letting Go
Celine Gibson, Constancy
Michael Webb, Game Over
Gail Ingram, Aoraki
D R Jones, Yeah, Nah
Adam J Wolstenholme, Down Goes His Lordship
Helen Moat, Danger Zone
Fortunato Salazar, October
Louise Miller, Three Women
Andrew Stancek, Corn Chowder
Nancy Stohlman, The Fortune Teller
Rupprecht Mayer, At Home

There is also a feature by Rachel Fenton:

This month Flash Frontier‘s Rachel Fenton bows out of her role as Features Editor and inter[e]views Frances Gapper, author of The Tiny Key. Also this month, poet and short fiction writer Valerie Sirr leads us through a blind criticism and flash enthusiast David James recommends his favourite shorts by other writers. We end with a piece about craft from flash editor Jamez Chang.

You can read the fiction here and the feature here. It’s a great way to round out the year!

We are standing by.
Our knives are very sharp.

It would please us very much.
You will feel a slight distress.

Tungsten, beryllium.
Knives as sharp as love.

Masked and gowned and sterilised.
Knives as sharp as love.

Credit note: Created by the strange mind of Tim in 2007 or thereabouts, retrieved on Monday from the depths of his unpublished poetry files.

Tim says: This is probably the least Christmassy poem ever, but I wanted to post one more poem before going into holiday mode. From next week onwards, I will follow my usual summer blogging practice of posting (a) YouTube clips of music I’ve particularly enjoyed during the year, in the improbable expectation that you might enjoy it too, and (b) my traditional “What I read in 20xy” posts.

Following representations from concerned blog users, I will make the music posts shorter this time round, so they don’t take so long to load. One post per genre is my new motto! Will power metal, technical metal and Swedish melodeath all get individual posts? Inquiring minds don’t want to know.

The Tuesday Poem: Goes from strength to strength.