1944–2024.
My Mam was the strongest woman I ever knew. She put me first for fifty years and worked tirelessly to support our family through thick and thin. She encouraged my creativity and always trusted me to follow my path.
Funny and sharp until the very end, she died peacefully yesterday morning (we were with her) after ongoing health issues worsened over the last couple of months.
I still haven’t really taken it in, and think sharing might help with that.
Mam, I love you xx
This year’s been full of unexpected challenges, meaning I’ve lost focus in some areas and chosen not to spend energy documenting things. But making music continues to offer a kind of therapy through play, and I’m grateful.
Of course, releasing music feels like throwing your loved ones into a void, making it all the more rewarding when people connect with it. And attracting a review anywhere, let alone in a respected publication, seems impossible for unsupported artists. So, I’ve made an exception to my hiatus because I’m in the latest Electronic Sound, a print magazine I’ve read for years, and that’s worth a post.
I thought I’d lost my old iPod, but found it in the cellar and got it working again. It’s a delight to find a lovely old playlist on it, currently playing through the Scarlett into Ableton and my ears via my desk speakers. I thought ~2005 might’ve been the last time I’d used it, but the playlist is called AAA NACONF, so I must’ve dug it out and loaded it up for the conference tech team in January 2011.
It was exciting to see it charge (I cobbled together a wall charger from three old cables), but it was stuck on the Apple logo for ages; thankfully, a trusty forced restart button combo brought it to life. It’s a shame I can’t manage its contents because there’s an empty 6GB; I understand that Macs still recognise these models, but it takes a silly daisy chain of dongles or an old machine with a FireWire port. Maybe one day.