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I've got I am a Cat sitting on my nightstand right now. It will be my first Soseki so I'll be interested to see what you think of this one.

Are you on a bit of Japanese lit jag now?

I guess I am, but I don't know how it happened. Just filling in gaps maybe.

I'm finishing up his Kokoro right now, which has been a nice change of pace from the Dennis Cooper I've been reading. It's tragic, but also calm and serene, even dry. A real classic tale, slowly told.

Yeah, I've been filling in the gaps as well which are rather large in my case when it comes to Japanese writers though I'm really loving most of them.

I was blown away by Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes which is just shattering - slow and dreamy and terrifying.

If you haven't read him yet, I think you'd really like Edogawa Rampo. Creepy, odd short stories - a bit of horror genre here.

Speaking of Dennis Cooper, do you read his blog? I actually haven't read any of his books yet (on the ever-growing list...) but I do read his blog which is pretty interesting. It probably goes without saying that it is frequently work-inappropriate if that's a concern...

I haven't even read any Mishima! For some reason I was just opposed to him for years. And I should read the Abe also, since I liked the movie so much. Nothing but gaps!

Thank you for the Edogawa Rampo rec! What a name... never heard of him. Definitely looks like something I'd like.

And, yes, I do visit Cooper's blog. I've arranged my desk here at work that nothing is "work-inappropriate". I just read three of his novels in quick succession. What a wild ride...

No Mishima! Don't let Tosh know that!!! If you need recs of where to start with him definitely check in with Tosh, he's a hardcore fan. I liked the few Mishima titles that I read but he's definitely on the melodramatic side. Someone else on here compared him to Douglas Sirk and I thought that was perfect. There's this layer of perfect beauty and then it just gets to be a bit much if you know what I mean.

Edogawa Rampo is really interesting and sadly not too well known here. His name is supposed to be a Japanese pronunciation of Edgar Allen Poe.

A few years ago I saw a film Mishima made and it got me closer to actually reading his books. But in literature I never had a taste for melodrama. Or at least I thought I never had a taste, until I reread Crime & Punishment a couple years ago and realized that it is filled with melodrama. But what is melodrama anyway? I'm probably misusing the term. Anyways, I love melodrama in film, and I love Sirk, so maybe it's time to dive into Mishima. Thanks for the suggestions!

Hahahahaha a healthy helping of farts. What a way to open a book review. Hahahahahaha

I always like to know how to specifically tickle different people's funny bones. I shall make a note next to your name.

hahahaha! I don't generally appreciate scatological humor.

Was just about to review this when I saw you'd done it already, and done a good job of it. I love this book! But it's a while since I read it. And though in a sense it's his most perfect, I love everything he did after this breakthrough work, and there are heights to which he rises later which he doesn't reach here.

Anyway, just wanted to say, hey, I've never warmed to Mishima either. Partly because he's the 'go-to' Japanese author for so many westerners, but partly just cos I don't get it. I don't think his stuff hangs together, or at least I don't see what it is binding it. So I wondered, have you warmed to him? Any works in particular?

Oh, and have you read Tanizaki's 'Secret History of Lord Musashi'? Really a unique book in Tanizaki's ouvre - very influenced by Poe, I would guess, and dark and twisted-sexual as hell. But funny! One of my favourites.

I'll have to get a fuller grasp of Soseki's body of work, and how his life fits into his work and vice versa, etc. He and Kawabata are my two favorites, though I haven't read all the works of either, which is fine with me because it means I have stuff to look forward to.

Mishima, or at least the thought of Mishima, used to really turn me off. All that melodramatic posturing and self love! At least that's how I saw it... But as I've gotten older I've developed more of a taste for, what, histrionics? or at least keyed-up role playing, so when I finally got around to actually reading him just a few years ago I was ripe to enjoy it, and did. Loved The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, Confessions of a Mask, and especially The Temple of the Golden Pavilion which I'd gladly read again and again. I started his Sea of Fertility tetralogy but only read the first, which I liked, but it did seem a mite overblown and maybe even too dry and detailed, but still... very interesting material. I don't have a full grasp of him either, but I think his stuff only gives the impression of not hanging together because he was so legitimately complex and varied, and so ambitious with the subjects he wanted to tackle - I mean sexuality, politics, general culture, religion, you name it - he seemed intent on encompassing all of Japan past present and future and reconfiguring it into a whole new beast ready to carry Japan into the 21st century and beyond. If you haven't seen Schrader's film based on his life, I really recommend it.

Haven't read that Tanizaki, but did read a couple others. Of course I dug the darkly twisted sex of it, so I'll definitely check out the one you mention.

Soseki was (so they say) the first Japanese writer to 'go professional', giving up a prominent lecturing position to write serial novels for a major newspaper. 'Kusamakura' was the turning point, after which he basically had to churn out a 2-page fragment per day. As a result, his novels (with the possible exception of 'Kokoro') do become less focused, and maybe a bit 'samey' or interchangeable, but at the same time the forced discipline seems to free him up to make the kinds of leaps Kafka does: a fragment ends with a character walking down the street musing; next fragment, anything can happen. And that is a quality I can't get enough of. Really, they're all equally good - 'Light & Darkness', 'To the Spring Equinox...', 'The Gate' - and all ever so slightly frustrating. Mix the perfect shape of 'Kusamakura' with the improvisation of the later stuff and I think you get genius.

Yeah, I read Mishima's 'Sailor...' when I was a teenager and liked it, but I guess later I doubted that impression after being nonplussed by the other stuff. 'Mask' didn't grab me and I tried 'Sea of Fertility' last year, only to stall after one too many noblemen-strolling-in-lavish-gardens scenarios. Will earmark 'Golden Pavilion' for my next attempt. Histrionics, huh? Not sure if I'm old enough for that yet. Maybe. Will try the film too. Cheers.

Re Tanizaki - yeah the other stuff's good if a bit flat, but to me 'Lord Musashi' is on another level. (Haven't read 'The Makioka Sisters', though.) Kawabata I like, though I'm not sure I've fully grasped him, and I guess I find him a bit too careful at first reading. But a re-reading may put him in a whole new light.

Oh yeah, and that intentness on encompassing all of Japan that you speak of in Mishima - I actually think that's part of what puts me off about him. I've never been a Pynchon or De Lillo fan either (to pick two possibly random examples) - or really much of a fan of any broad-tapestry socio-political sort of fiction (unless I'm missing something). Whenever I have a crack at Thomas Mann I think of Walser's comment to Hoffsmansthal: 'Can't you just forget that you're famous for a while?' Probably unfair but it just pops in there - it all just seems a little overwrought. But maybe that view will mellow with age. Still, for now I wonder if I see the point in 'the novel of ideas'.

(Oops, misspelled Hofmannsthal, but Walser would approve.)

Now some of the scattered stuff I've read of Soseki is coming back... And I've read some of his later rambling improvisational stuff and liked it, esp The Gate.

I like what you say about mixing perfect shape with improvisation to get genius.

I never thought I'd ever be into anyone who engaged in melodramatic histrionics and radical self-absorption, but it happened and I don't know why. I also didn't get into Punk, in a modest way, until I hit my 40's. Not a mid-life crisis exactly, but perhaps a widening of my embrace of freedoms.

Being such a Walser devotee I'm surprised I give the time of day to any huge self-important novels of grand ideas, but I do. Though DeLillo's recent stuff, or rather his portentous tone, esp in an essay he wrote after 9/11, has started to wear on me. I don't put Pynchon in his camp though, as he can be so damn silly. I love Pynchon! But hear hear! on Walser's comment to Hofmannsthal (though I like some of his stuff also).

Yeah Hofmannsthal's OK - don't get me wrong. Re De Lillo, I think maybe he's on a mission to find the most unnatural prose style known to humankind, though whether he knows it I can't tell. Pynchon I just don't have the patience for. The number of times my parents have name-checked 'Gravity's Rainbow', but I've only ever made it 50 pages in. I don't have the necessary faith. (Maybe it's cos they also name-checked 'Midnight's Children' early on - now there is an author who really needs the Walser treatment!) Speaking of Walser and the 20 best short stories of all time, 'Kleist in Thun', I've long thought, would have to be number one. And if you ask me, a pinhead/laser-beam of a story like that is worth a whole 1000 pages of wide-angle panorama.

Punk? Yeah I came to hate it after being force-fed the Sex Pistols and Radio Birdman (Australian band) on late night TV as a teenager, but in my mid-20s I discovered The Stooges and never looked back. Always loved Joy Division though, if you can call them punk.

Yeah but sometimes I just want a long slow satisfying read, and reading Kleist in Thun 100 times in a row just doesn't add up to that, however much I agree with your appraisal of it.

Check out Pynchon's later stuff - Mason & Dixon, Against the Day - which explore similar ideas as GR but aren't as crazy dense and have higher quotients of silliness and humor.

So what kind of music do you make?

My life is a bit too chopped-up at the moment (and most of the time, in fact) to really appreciate the slow satisfying reads, so mostly they go on the list for later. 'Mason and Dixon' has (at first glance) one of the most irritating/alienating first pages ever but I'll pencil it in (tentatively) if you're sure. My parents always said start with 'V'.

As to the music, these days I find almost every musical term so undermined/devalued and sometimes outright changed from its original meaning that it's basically impossible to describe it unless you know the background of the person you're describing it to. It's a problem. But as you're an oldster like myself I'll say I mostly play old-fashioned indie rock, not the fey kind, but the kind that stems from Joy Division (who were, after all, one of the first UK indie bands in the true sense of the word) and leads through The Jesus & Mary Chain to My Bloody Valentine and kinda jumps the Atlantic with Slint in the 90s. You might put it under the umbrella of post-punk. If you were under 25 you might even call it 'shoegaze'. Also I dabble with home recordings of various genres and with varying levels of seriousness. If you want to have a listen here's some links. Please excuse the sound quality - it's getting there but on my budget (and with my Walserian/Bartlebyan lack of self-promotion) it's taking a while. No pressure at all for a critique of any kind.




Time for bed. Good chatting with you. Did I read that you're from Philadelphia? I have a taste for those gothic Eastern metropolises.

Will check out the music. Sounds like something I might like.

Not from Philly, but I've lived here since '94. It's a great old complicated place where I manage to live rather simply so to have time for long slow reads. I'm from a small town in Delaware.

I am not sure you'll like M&D, so pencil in ever so lightly.

Just thinking: another term for the music might be 'guitar-driven atmospheric pop', just so as not to make any great claims for it.

I loved Pittsburgh, was fascinated by Detroit but haven't seen much more of the east than that, outside of New York.

Don't worry, the pencil is light. Just wanted to make sure the recommendation was heartfelt. 3 heartfelt word-of-mouths from folk with good taste equals a must-read.

I like Pittsburgh also. Visually it's one of my favorite cities, though I'm not sure I'd want to live there. Never been to Detroit. Philly has some great buildings and is a great walking city but even though it's soaked in history and has lots of evocative pockets it still lacks a certain atmospheric mystique that a place like Pittsburgh has.

Pynchon is one of my desert island authors so the recommendation is certainly heartfelt.

I'm not sure I'd want to live in Pittsburgh either - I remember a surprising feeling of isolation there, which added to the mystique but might be hard to handle long-term. Detroit was spectacular in a post-apocalyptic type way. Philly maybe has a touch of faceless sprawl about it, I'm thinking? I saw it on TV recently and parts of it looked like Melbourne Australia, a cool place tending to facelessness but not as old as Philly.

On another note, I think I read in one of your reviews (or maybe I inferred) that you're a writer? Granted, I'm sure half of the people on ŷ������ are writers, but I'm wondering what you write, if it's been published (incl on the net) or if you plan to publish it, etc.

The core of Philadelphia, the Center City area, where I live, or at least I live on the fringes of it in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, is filled with charms - old fashioned and new fangled charms - and is one of the better blends of commercial and residential I've come across in this country. There are nice parks and urban density cheek by jowl making it a wonderful place to walk around in. Beyond that central area, especially to the north and northeast there are just horrible stretches of faceless unpleasant sprawl; but then there are large nearly self-contained neighborhoods even within this sprawl that are rapidly changing and offer all kinds of things to discover. And then there's West Philadelphia which is a well-established weird alternative world unto itself. There's a lot going on here, but still, the physically contained smallness of Pittsburgh, surrounded by rivers and mountains, give it an atmosphere that is hard to beat.

I write poetry. Have been at it for a good 25 years. The nature of it has changed quite a bit over the years, and I tend to follow it wherever it wants to go. At this point, and for the last quite a few years, it's been primarily concerned with playfulness and improvisation, but with me being me there's usually an undercurrent of seriousness, however unspoken. To me it's very different from most of the reviews I've written here, in that I don't explicitly pursue ideas and (coherent!) thoughts, but rather improvise above and beneath them (if you will). I hate submitting stuff, but I have, and I have had quite a few poems published online and in print, but never a book, though I have over the years "self-published" chapbooks, though more for the purposes of organizing my output than for worldwide dissemination and domination.

I listened to a couple of your tunes and liked what I heard, though I'll have to listen to more to get a grasp of what you're doing. I'm typically very slow when it comes to absorbing things - like a sun-baked sponge that's become almost pumice-like - but then once that first spot of wetness occurs I absorb so quickly I can hardly keep up with it.

Do you live in Manchester? I thought I saw that somewhere. If so, describe it a bit, if you care tot that is. I've always been curious about it.

Lived in Manchester for 2 years but got back to Australia last year - currently in Sydney. Lived in South Manchester, coincidentally not far from Palatine Rd Didsbury which is where the original home of Factory Records was located, probably in someone's loungeroom I'd imagine. Back then it was studenty/grungy/edgy and probably felt a lot more like an outer suburb; these days that neighbourhood is pretty gentrified but there's still a stretch of cheaper housing closer to the city which is where I was. Big old mansions turned to apartment blocks all around. Lotsa trees. Winding little streets by the Mersey River. Cycle paths. If not for the weather, really quite liveable. Cheap too, by Australian (or London) standards - probably by western European standards too. As to the city centre, well it's a hodgepodge, but some of it is really gothically atmospheric and beautiful as you'd imagine, only there's usually a 1970s/80s faceless office block in bad need of a paint-job not far off. It's dense - one of the denser cities in Europe. But only 2.5 million people in the metro area - somewhere between Pittsburgh and Philly, maybe a bit bigger than Baltimore? Low-lying bare hills in the east - great because you can get on a train and be in a tiny village in 45 minutes and go hiking. Aside from the weather, the only major downside is what the English call the 'clone town' phenomenon, which has turned the downtown areas of most English cities into chain store identikits. To an Australian it's pretty shocking - we don't have that here to that degree. But there are little pockets of individuality: the famed 'Northern Quarter' or the southern suburb of Chorlton. The people are great - sometimes they even nod, smile or say hello in the street. And despite the glitzy makeover it got after the IRA bombings in the 90s it still feels mostly slightly grimy and ad hoc and post-industrial. (They call it 'the birthplace of the industrial revolution'.) Band scene was disappointing, though, not that I expected it to still be flourishing (I'd already seen Seattle after the boom), but it seemed to have hit some kind of low. Brilliant older musicians jamming for free most nights of the week - great for the audience but not so great for the musicians - and then a lot of youngsters with stars in their eyes playing their regulation setlist to a bunch of fellow students at pay-to-play nights. A lot of local pride - to me, an incredible amount - perhaps in part due to defensiveness over (did I mention?) the WEATHER. (2 coldest winters for 100 years, the local papers said.) And at the end of the day, any country whose suburbs have more trees in 'em than the countryside has problems. But yeah, oop Manchester! The North will rise again! I miss it. Will that do ya?

It'll do me just fine. Thanks!

Sorry, 'twas late last night when I wrote the above and I forgot to ask: links to your poetry? Plans to put up a site/blog or similar? World domination imminent?

No problem. I'm not big on talking about it anyway. No plans for a site/blog, etc.

Some links - most recent first (some are years old, though):











And a sample of a long sprawling poem I'm working on this year:

Fractured, elephantine
boxes front the garage in
miniature. Huts frozen
by western omens. Peanuts
turn to favored grubs and
pounce on acres of mileage.
We prod the lost horseman
asking for beads. A cord
comes down from silvery trees
and tops our plentiful
jerky stations with sawn-off
increments of cats. Tattoos
turn from us and pass over
the bitter and reluctant
garbage-topped instruments.
Machinery then opens itself
to mold our heads into
decorative shrubs, or recently
it pours our yearnings
out and garbles delinquent toast.
Earth remains our donated stance
and we gaze footward, stations
collapsing and collecting
in tiny designs. Mops
come out to answer any holes.
Briefly I tend toward clouds
scooting by leopard skins and
quickly minted rags. I puzzle
Jenna as I puzzle Max but we
fit in the same pan
cooking as a single stew. Tainted
beds curve outward from our
unpremeditated goggles. Bent
food verging on cascading slivers
a corrosive plane of standard
feelers unclicks itself and
feathers into green gobbling.

etc. etc. etc.

You sold me on the book with the farts comment!

I really enjoyed your poem-I hope you share more with us.

There are plenty there and at least you don't have to smell 'em.

Hey Eddie, sorry, somehow I never saw the notification that you'd commented here. I kept thinking when's Eddie gonna reply - maybe he's a Bartleby who gets defensive when you ask about his stuff. Will have a look at the links. Thanks!

No problem, though I am most definitely a Bartleby...

And thanks Noran! didn't see your comment (#29) until just now.

Jesus, I can see why I missed it. You get the little symbol saying that something's happened but if the thread's been going for a while it can be way down the list. Bad design! Lucky I don't do much on here, but people with 50 likes/comments a review must put hours into keeping up with it. Meantime just wondering how come no plans for a blog/site? Bartlebyism? Or does it just not appeal? I was thinking of putting some of my prose fiction in a blog, till someone told me no publisher would touch it if it had already been 'published' on the net.

Just let ŷ������ consume your life, Ben, then you'll be able to keep up... and every once in a while you'll feel it's all worth it.

I've actually toyed with the idea of having a blog, and even started one - with poems, reviews, random thoughts, etc. - but I lost interest for reasons that aren't clear to me, though it could be some form of Bartlebyism in that I have little interest in forcefully and consciously projecting a self-image, which seems to be required with a personal blog. Of course there's the whole backdoor way of passively projecting an undefined self-image, but I didn't stick with it long enough for that to develop; though who knows, maybe I'll go back to it.

Well, if it's good and of interest to others you would think a publisher wouldn't care if it had previously appeared in a blog. I'm probably old-fashioned at this point, but if I'm into a writer I'd buy his/her book regardless of whether I'd read some of the content online. I still want to have that "thing". But if the nature of the business is that online content is untouchable by publishers then I'd probably play the damn game, if I were you.

So is this blog still up? I think I can see in the poems that you have no interest in consciously projecting a self-image - the self is well-hidden here! Just a pair of eyes/ears and a consciousness to sense through. Not sure I've grasped the thread yet - it's pretty dense! But I do get the feeling (as so often with poetry) that it takes on greater meaning when seen all-together, as if it's all part of the one whole(?) You ask me, the backdoor/passive-projection technique could be the way to go, though I get that a blog is no doubt time-consuming and boring and maybe unlikely to reach much of a readership. Still, isn't the creation of a public self part of the fun? I think of Beckett - a virtual Oblomov/Bartleby who passively projected an image so enduring it presides over and enriches everything he wrote. Not to get too grandiose.

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought a publisher would care about the blog scenario either, but this friend seemed adament. Me, I love having the 'thing'. And this is the only future for publishing - to make 'things' desirable enough that people long to have them despite whatever content is available digitally. Truth is, I thought maybe having a blog would encourage me to finish something! Do it in serial form, Soseki-style, with a deadline. But I sure would like to see my stuff thingified again.

ŷ������ to consume my life? Luckily my internet connection's too intermittent for that, but it helps to pass the time during the quiet moments at work. I'm really surprised at the level of commitment to this site, actually. And at some of the books that, though the publishers can't keep them in print, appear to be widely-read here.

Oh man I love the bit about "just a pair of eyes/ears and a consciousness to sense through". Love it! It might sound strange but that's kind of what I shoot for. And yeah, I usually feel that poetry, especially the kind of poetry I like, comes off better when it's surrounded with more of itself.

Of course any time we express anything we are projecting a self-image, and I do get off on the exhibitionist nature of expressing one's self in words online; but it's weird for me because I have expended quite a bit of energy in my life writing, and as part of writing is having the ability to create strong images and make strong statements I have cultivated that aspect of it, so that in writing I project a much stronger "public self" than I do in the flesh, where I am seriously self-effacing. With poetry I think (though I've never really thought of this before) I like to project something strong while being simultaneously self-effacing. Maybe. I think a similar quality attracts me in others also. It's a kind of humility, I guess, but then I like plenty of egomaniacal writers too.

I've always felt that if I had a blog (it is partially up by the way, but only because ever since I opened a gmail account I can't even figure out how to log on to it so I can take out all the content!) that in the absence of anyone actually reading it I'd lose interest. I don't have a problem writing stuff in private that no one reads, but to have it floating around unread online depresses me. But then you never know who's reading what once it's out there. I also think blogs require a certain blabbermouth quality (not to disparage blabbermouths who actually have something interesting to say) that I simply don't have. I don't know. I encourage you to do whatever it takes to finish something. The Soseki-style blog sounds like a good idea. Limit yourself to two paragraphs a day or something. Keep it small. Keep it going.

My first two years here on ŷ������ were a time of near total immersion. I could hardly let a day go by without writing a review, and I got involved in all kinds of drama, etc., but made friends, had great extended conversations, so quite often even as it consumed my life I was getting big payoffs, but then all of a sudden I cut the cord and stopped participating for a while, and while I have come back and have written reviews here and there I'm just not into it like I once was. It's still a great place for discovering books and discussing them, though. No place like it that I've come across.

Oh ,and I've listened to your music a couple times, though I'm still fumbling to formulate a response. In short - I like it. I kind of preferred the low-fi second album - Manchester 2011 (right?) - to the first, though the songs on both are really good. I'd actually like to hear more of the instrumental noodling (shoegaze?) pieces. I'm into guitar/electronics exploring sonic territory in a meandering way.

'Projecting something strong while being simultaneously self-effacing' sounds thoroughly Walserian to me, and I'm all in favour, but I'm curious as to what kind of a person can expend a lot of energy writing but not be bothered that no-one reads it. Not that this is a criticism, far from it, but even though I've quietly saved up a stack of unfinished and barely-read manuscripts over the years I can't help but angstify over them Pessoa-style wondering when and how they'll find an audience and what was the point in them if they don't. I get the blabbermouth bit - I find it thoroughly demeaning the way writers self-promote these days. There's a Pessoa poem where he says something to the effect that if someone should come knocking saying they were sent by him then don't answer, but if one day you open your door and they're standing there, maybe it's true - an emissary. (I hate 'they' for 's/he' but the sexist language is in a transitional state...) So I've taken that to heart, I think. If we love all these guys like Walser, Pessoa, Kafka, a bunch of Bartlebys, then we can't really go around blabbermouthing and selling ourselves without betraying their legacy, can we? But the thing is, without a deadline or a need to finish stuff don't you find it just piles up endlessly yet unresolvedly like 'The Book of Disquiet'?

As to the blog, I don't see why it absolutely has to be blabbermouthy - couldn't it just be a bunch of poems? My idea was an epistolary type thing - in my case it's a starship captain trapped on an alien planet where some Borgesian-idealistic paradox is playing out, told via log entries. That way each blog entry is a log entry and there's no need for anything else. But surely there'd be other ways around the form aside from just telling everyone what you had for breakfast and how heavy traffic was that morning.

And the music... I'm glad to hear you liked the lo-fi stuff (actually Adelaide 2011), cos it was the cheapest of recording set-ups and we were pleased with the result too (apart from the vocals, which are better on the Manchester stuff, but then the cost of the microphone really does make a difference). Also the lo-fi stuff was done with my best buddy from high school and we've been playing together for over 20 years, so it's probably got a little extra spice. Glad you like the songs - they also have been saved up over many years, stretching way back to the mid-90s. After my first band dissolved in my late teens I gave up on bands for a long while, just playing alone, jamming and occasionally jumping on stage with some outfit or other but basically not doing any serious gigging for over 15 years. Really it was going to Manchester that got me back into it - it seemed like make or break. All of which is to say that these 'Shadow History' songs are a certain type of beast - that is, pop songs, written as much as anything I've ever done with one eye on 'the charts' (but in a fantastical, bedsit-romantic kind of way), and dating mostly from a certain period. If you want to check out some more experimental noodly stuff there's my other bandcamp site - the COQ Bros might appeal (mostly plug-in-and-play random jamming), or the Ben W song 'Quiet Pleas' (quite meandering, though built around loops and mostly a one-man band thing), or even W.COQ's 'Breaking Rocks' (not shoegazey at all, but). Still, the reality is that most of the noodling I've ever done has floated out uncaptured into the ether, and when it comes to effects and electronics I keep it pretty basic. Have been jamming with a virtuosic/experimental/effects-loving lead guitarist in Sydney recently though and have plans to introduce his spacey sound into Shadow History when we finally play a gig up here.

Are you a musician yourself, by any chance?

What made you pull back from ŷ������?

Thanks for your messages!