Author: Andy Ferguson

Albums of the year 2024

2024 is a year I will not forget in a hurry, and has definitely seen a change to the way I buy and consume music. It’s been less about vinyl, more about CDs, and has also seen a shift to rediscovering old favourites rather than hunting down new music every week. Some of this is likely to do with the fact that a few very old favourites have released great music this year, but maybe it’s also just down to the fact that as I get older my musical taste has just settled. There is still a lot of new music here though, and quite a few artists I’d not heard of a year ago as I continue to discover some of the newer punk/hardcore releases that sit nicely beside artists I was listening to decades ago.

Last year was the year of loud and angry music, and this year started off the same way. But after the first few months of the year I found a lot of comfort in music without words, which has always been a thing for me, but never more so than now. I think this is reflected in some of my choices, but also by the fact that most of what I played that was not from this year was largely wordless as well. The Post Rock Classics playlist that started off as a minidisc 24 years ago is now a Spotify playlist that still soundtracks most of my working days, and I spent a portion of the summer tracking down Godspeed and Mogwai CDs on Ebay to try and complete collections that were started around the same time.

Here is my list for 2024, starting with my top 20 which are in no particular order apart from maybe the first 2:

Albums

In all cases the links below are to somewhere you can listen to and/or buy the record in question (Bandcamp or the artist’s own website). For things you can’t buy anymore I’ve linked to a description. All quotes are from the same page as the link.

Songs of a Lost World by The Cure

This record came out at a time when I was definitely grieving, but also about to give a talk at a conference about the last time I was grieving. It hits that emotional resonance perfectly, but I think I would still love it if I had been in a happier place at the time. Themes of growing older and being older permeate, and I think this is the perfect record for people who have followed the band over the last 40 years.

I keep trying to compare it to other Cure albums, and the best that I can do is that it’s a bit like the best parts of Disintegration and Bloodflowers. There isn’t a bad song on it, and I think it’s something I’ll come back to for many years in the way that I still do with Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography decades later.

Seeing the live stream of the launch concert reminded me how important this band were to me when I was growing up, and how much time I have spent listening to their music. I think this lineup is probably the best ever; although it’s not too different to who was on the stage in 1989 when I last saw them play live.

Everyone looks older, but they still sound great, and I think these new these songs definitely stand the test of time. I remain hopeful that the rumours of at least one more album before they retire are true.

“NO​ ​TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28​,​340 DEAD” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

THE PLAIN TRUTH==
we drifted through it, arguing.
every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.
we sat down together and wrote it in one room,
and then sat down in a different room, recording.
NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?
and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.
the sun setting above beds of ash
while we sat together, arguing.
the old world order barely pretended to care.
this new century will be crueler still.
war is coming.
don’t give up.
pick a side.
hang on.
love.
GY!BE

Another band that have been very important to me over the years, from buying their second album at the start of the century, to subscribing to the Constellation Records Bandcamp earlier this year because the amount of new music they were playing at concerts made it seem like an album was imminent. I love everything they have made, and this one doesn’t disappoint at all. I listen to a lot of this type of music when I’m working, and this is one that I have been coming back to over and over again. It’s also made me dip back into their back catalogue, and discover a load of other great records by related artists that I missed the first time around.

Cutouts by The Smile

I missed their first two records, but picked this up on a whim after hearing a couple of songs on Spotify. They don’t sound that much like Radiohead (the band 2/3 of them are also in), but it does tap into a lot of different types of music that I really like, and is basically just a collection of great songs played very well. Sometimes that’s exactly what I want, and this is one album that works as well shuffled with a load of other things as it does on its own.

The New Sound by Geordie Greep

I didn’t really discover Black Midi until just before they imploded, but after hearing the lead track from this I was definitely looking forward to hearing more of Geordie Greep’s first solo offering. It reminds me in places of the great crooners (Sinatra, Scott Walker, David Sylvian and David Bowie), and I very much look forward to what he does next.

A few words from the artist on this one:

“Music can be so much more than learning to play the same as everybody else. It can be anything you want. With recording The New Sound, it was the first time I have had no one to answer to. Being in a band (black midi), we often have this ‘we can do everything’ feeling, but you are also kind of limited in that approach, and sometimes it’s good to do something else, to let go of things.”

Absolute Elsewhere by Blood Incantation

Blood Incantation’s Absolute Elsewhere is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. At roughly 45 minutes, the two compositions that make up this album are as confounding as they are engaging in their scope, melding the 70’s prog leanings of Tangerine Dream (whose Thorsten Quaesching appears on „The Stargate [Tablet II]”) with the deathly intent of Morbid Angel. Absolute Elsewhere, which takes its title from the mid-70’s prog collective (best known as a celestial stopover for King Crimson drummer, Bill Bruford), Blood Incantation are leaving the notion of genre behind and writing a new language for extreme music itself.

I didn’t realise ambient death metal was a thing until I heard this. Now I want to hear more ambient death metal. I don’t feel qualified to write much about this music because it’s not something I feel like I have any background or expertise in, but I love it, and I’ve listened to it a lot during the second half of this year.

Delights of my Life by Eric Chenaux Trio

Chenaux’s tunes have the uncanny ability to sound like jazz standards; songs you feel you’ve heard before, though certainly never quite like this. Yet these are of course all originals, compositionally and interpretively, bent through an inimitable avant/out-music lens. Delights Of My Life conveys warm familiarity, shot through with the exuberantly experimental subversion and playful, even mischievous, iconoclasm that continues to mark Chenaux as defiantly, virtuosically, and genially one-of-kind.

My discovery of the year, not so much this particular record, but a rich back catalogue that I have been familiarising myself with over the last few months. I got this as part of my Constellation subscription, although it doesn’t have much in common with most other artists on the label, tapping instead into the world of the crooners, but also of jazz instrumentalists. I really like the combination of clean vocals and minimalistic, but complex, instrumentation, and don’t think I’ve heard anything else quite like this before.

This album as good a place to start as any, but I suspect this is an artist I’ll keep coming back to, and definitely a name I’ll be looking out for on lists of upcoming records and live performances.

“NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” by WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN

WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN (WAWBARC) is the new quartet of Mat Ball (Big Brave), Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion), and Jonathan Downs and Patch One (both Ada). On “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” they present six modal lullabies drenched in seared distortion, slathered across striding electronic pulses. Ball and Menuck began creating music in and for the bleakest moments of Montréal winters: “We’re honoring that idea of winter, when you come inside and your house is warm, a place that only exists because of how cold it is outside,” says Menuck. They later recruited Downs and Patch to flesh out their initial ideas.

Another Constellation release, and one that acts as an interesting counterpoint to the Godspeed record.

Red Will by Joy Dimmers

One of the few records I’ve bought on vinyl this year, and a definite highlight from the Wrong Speed Records catalogue. For me this hits the same kind of vibe as All Structures Align, who have probably been my favourite band of the last couple of years. I also agree with the label that this is likely to become a cult classic at some point.

Dead Centre by Reigns

Four years in the making, DEAD CENTRE is both a mindbending horror novel by musician TIM FARTHING (Hey Colossus, Henry Blacker, PJ Harvey) and the seventh album by enigmatic electronic duo REIGNS. The hardback book comes complete with a CD soundtrack and is illustrated by the author.

Dead Centre by Tim Farthing is one of my favourite books of this year. The fact that it comes packaged with the new Reigns album is a nice bonus. Does the album act as a soundtrack to the book? Or is the book an attempt to add some context to the music? I don’t know, but it may be a bit of both. I love this band, and whilst an almost wholly instrumental album might not be for everyone, it’s something I keep coming back to, even without the book to keep it company.

Optimistic Sizing by Objections

Another Wrong Speed release, and another instant classic. I loved the 7″ single from last year, and this picks up where that left off. Hopefully we will be hearing more from them next year.

Ensoulment by The The

This band have been important to me for as long as music has, but I was not expecting this album to ever be made, let alone for it to be so good. It stands up to the 80s classics, and like all good The The records soundtracks the times we are living in now, but also quite likely shows us some glimpses of what the future may be like if the world continues the current direction of travel.

As with The Cure, I am hopeful there is more music to come, but if there isn’t then this is a very strong swansong.

Friar Tuck by Julian Cope

And so the adventures of Robin H. Hood continue! The Prince of Fried has brung forth 12 brand new humdingers: all hummable and lyrically compelling and replete with wah-acoustic guitars and beautiful orchestrations of Mellotron 400 from Liverpool’s Blondest. So inhale the garage fuzz dub of ‘R in the Hood’; the mantric powerdrive of ‘Four Jehovahs in a Volvo Estate’; the sentimental Pete Burns lamentations of ‘In Spungent Mansions’… and who could resist the affectionate micro-trolling of ‘Will Sergeant’s Blues’?

Someone else I have listened to since before I was an adult. He’s releasing albums quite frequently again, and this is one of the better recent ones. I buy them on CD as soon as they come out to prevent more gaps in my collection, and is one that I bought without listening to any of it first (which is of course how we always used to buy albums before streaming was a thing).

Darning Woman by Anastasia Coope

The feeling that Anastasia Coope’s music transmits seems to emanate from a precipice beyond the material world, like a void or memory pressing up against the veil. It’s exacting and enveloping, but unmoored in space and time: ghostly, spectral, far-out folk. Darning Woman, her debut album, feels like a dispatch from another past. Akin to lullabies or nursery rhymes, its minimal folk instrumentation contorts into something staccato and strange led by Coope’s expressive, stratified vocals.

Short, weird, and otherworldly. I liked this as soon as I heard it on Spotify, and kept coming back to it.

Lives Outgrown by Beth Gibbons

One of the most beautiful records of the year, from someone who has never made a musical wrong move. This is one of those timeless albums that is just ten very good songs, five per side, lasting around 45 minutes. That’s how albums used to be when I was first getting into music, and I think this is the kind of thing I would have loved even then. This is the record that should have won this year’s Mercury Music Prize, and one that I think I will keep coming back to.

Forgiveness is Yours by Fat White Family

Fat White Family are back with the most sophisticated, vital and flamboyant creation of their career. The cult south-London band’s resplendent fourth album Forgiveness Is Yours, like everything they’ve done, has pushed them to the limits not only of their creative talent, but of their health, their sanity, their very existence.

Sounds like hyperbole, but I think the description matches the record quite well. These songs kept cropping up on Spotify, but were nothing like I expected the band to sound. Once I started actually playing it as an album it clicked for me, and I think there are parts of this that wouldn’t sound out of place on the radio, but also some great spoken word/experimental tracks that I love even more.

Wild God by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

I had a huge Nick Cave rediscovery last year, and this record came out at exactly the right time for me. He’s not made any bad records, but I think for me this is a highlight of his later years (not quite up there with Ghosteen, but as good as anything else from this century), and one that I think I will keep coming back to in the same way I do to Tender Prey and Let Love In.

Critterland by Willi Carlisle

For folk singer Willi Carlisle, singing is healing. And by singing together, he believes we can begin to reckon with the inevitability of human suffering and grow in love. On his latest album, Critterland, Carlisle invites audiences to join him: “If we allow ourselves to sing together, there’s a release of sadness, maybe even a communal one. And so for me personally, singing, like the literal act of thinking through suffering, is really freeing,” he says.

I had a tough start to 2024, and these songs helped a lot. It’s nothing like anything else on this list, but was always going to be on this list from the first time I heard it.

Katabasis into the Abaton / Abstieg in die Traumkammer by Grendel’s Sister

I love how this album is in two languages; the German that the band speak, and the English that allows me to better understand these fantastic and very unusual songs. It’s one of the few debuts on this year’s list, and I will definitely be listening out for what they do next.

Rack by The Jesus Lizard

Another totally unexpected comeback record, and one that sounds like it could have been made at any time during their history. The Jesus Lizard still rock, and this may be their best album ever. All of their albums have one-world titles, and there are still a lot of words they have not used yet, so hopefully this is the start of something rather than the end.

From the Heights of our Pastureland by Yoo Doo Right

Whilst writing this third opus, Yoo Doo Right drew inspiration from patience, the commodification of art, AI and algorithmic music/art, as well as musical influences ranging from Wes Montgomery and Sergei Rachmaninoff all the way to Neurosis and Russian Circles, wanting to create something to sit and grow with, celebrating the saving grace and driving force of unconditional love for all living things.

A very recent discovery, but one that nicely compliments a lot of the other Post Rock I’ve been listening to this year. I definitely want to check out their other records in 2025, and this is easily what I have listened to the most whilst writing this list.

I think they could easily become one of my favourite bands if they keep releasing records like this.

Other stuff

Live albums, reissues, and things that were definitely available in some format before this year.

The rest

Other things I’ve listened to this year that I enjoyed.

Something for next year

Patterns I have noticed when people struggle with switching to using Linux as their main operating system

A while ago I wrote the following in a blog post that was mainly about Reddit:

I’m in no way surprised that people are generally quite bad at describing the issues they are having, and also that they are very bad at choosing the right place to ask for help. I do have vague intentions to write up long answers to things that people seem to struggle with, probably starting with my insights on how people switching to Linux invariably start off with doing something really hard as part of their initial switch (dual-boot, Nvidia drivers, getting Windows software to work in the same way it does on Windows) and give up soon afterwards, not realising that everything else they will ever do isn’t going to be that hard to set up. That’s an essay for another day, but this is definitely a statement of intent.

This is a start at writing up some of those thoughts.

2025 marks my 20 year anniversary of starting to use Linux as a desktop operating system. Over those years I’ve used it consistently, and used it as my primary operating system for most of that time. I still use Windows at work, but when I have a choice of what to use then it’s generally Linux (either Debian or Ubuntu, depending on the use case). Because I’m an experienced user, and also someone who has worked in IT support, I often find myself trying to help people who want to make the same switch I did, but I find myself failing at the first hurdle because they are either trying to do something that is hard, or something I’ve never actually done myself.

Things people often ask for help with

I thought it was worth listing those things, because they are all things that I am definitely not the best person to help with, but some of them should be quite trivial with the right instructions:

  • Dual booting Linux and Windows
  • Installing Linux on a PC with an Nvidia graphics card, and choosing a distribution that doesn’t have a GUI for configuring graphics drivers
  • Playing games where no native Linux version exists, or where anti-cheat is a feature of the game
  • Having a workflow that relies on software that is not available for Linux, such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Cloud
  • Using Wine or something similar to run Windows/Mac software on Linux
  • Using a DisplayLink docking station
  • Installing or virtualising Linux on Apple Silicon

Some of these are clearly a result of situations where people want to run Linux as their primary OS, but need to keep Windows or MacOS around for specific use cases. How I always approach this is to have two computers, because my need for Windows is 100% work-related, and I am provided with a computer by my employer. But it would be a different story if I was a gamer or needed to use Photoshop.

I always try and recommend a dedicated Linux computer, because it’s possible to get a great experience on a fairly low-specification machine. Most mini-PCs work well, and there are always refurbished ThinkPads on the market that are either certified to work, or have been used by enough Linux users that documentation will exist for any workarounds required. A second computer reduces the risk of overwriting a bootloader or losing valuable data, and it means that the original computer is still available for those tasks better suited to Windows or MacOS.

But computers are expensive, and for some people they are unaffordable. Which is why a lot of these risky scenarios are attempted in the first place. Computers also consume electricity, produce extra carbon, and take up additional space at home. There are all sorts of reasons why most people only have one computer, and I accept that my default solution to most of these problems is written from a position of privilege.

Pre-switching checklist

Before even thinking about switching, there are a few things I would recommend:

  • Work out what applications you are going to use for everything you use a computer for, and if they are cross-platform then install and use them on your existing OS.
  • Ensure that all data you care about is stored somewhere that is not connected to the PC you plan on installing Linux on.
  • Get used to the Linux command line by installing something like Multipass or WSL.
  • Download the .iso of whichever Linux distro you have chosen, and run it in VirtualBox to check it meets your needs.
  • Burn the .iso file to a USB device, and boot the PC you are going to install Linux on. Check that all your hardware works, and that you are happy enough with how your computer is going to work afterwards.
  • Read and bookmark (or print out) installation instructions, and URLs of sites where you can ask for help or report bugs.

All of these steps are non-destructive. You may at some point realise that you can achieve what you want using a container or VM, or decide that Linux is not for you. These are things that are best found out before you have reformatted the hard drive of your only computer.

But what if it all goes wrong?

Each Linux distribution will have a place where you can ask for help, and where you can access documentation. These should be the first place you look. Reddit is used a lot for support, but there is no guarantee that there will be someone who can answer your question or help you out, and a lot of subreddits are specifically not for support, so if you ask support questions your post will likely be removed, or at best downvoted.

Writing a good description of what is going wrong is essential. I’ve linked to this article for a long time, but I still think it’s the best description of how to write a good bug report. There is also an Ubuntu specific guide that might be useful.

I still try and help people out when I can, but as a non-gamer with fairly modest hardware requirements, I increasingly find that the problems people are having are not things I have any experience with. But I
still think there are very few new problems out there, so hopefully there will always be someone who can point new users in the right direction.

Responding to a power cut

We had a short power cut earlier this week, which was a good test of the power resilience we have configured in the caravan. We are using some kit that requires constant electricity to function, but try and ensure that anyone who is working can continue to work for a few hours in the event of losing electricity.

And that’s exactly what happened. When our main router lost power, devices seamlessly connected to the secondary one (which has a battery), and the internet continued to work. There was no report of a loss of connection, just of one monitor powering off. We actually got as far as unplugging the monitor to swap it out before we realised that other devices in the van were also without power, and that the monitor was actually fine.

If we were using our USB-C monitors then we probably wouldn’t have noticed, which is a good indication that things are working largely as expected.

As I’m not working this week I’m using my more powerful mini-pc because I wanted to give it a decent road test. It didn’t survive the outage, but did restart as soon as power was back. I probably need a better solution if I am going to used this type of computer more, but if I was using my work setup I would have been fine until either the battery in my laptop or in the backup router gave out.

There is more we could do, but it was good to be able to validate our current setup here.

Punk, hardcore and metal albums of 2024

Over the last two years I have found myself listening to a lot of heavier music, and even some heavy metal, which is a new genre for me. I don’t know lots about this music, but I did think it was worth writing a list of things I’ve enjoyed, as a subset of a longer list that will follow later in the month.

I am definitely interested in more music in these genres, or anything that sounds a bit like them.

LM Studio Experiments

I have been experimenting with LM Studio over the last few days. This is a tool that allows me to run large language models locally on my computer, making it ideal for when I’m travelling or spending time somewhere with a slow or unreliable internet connection. It’s cross-platform (Windows, Silicon Macs and Linux), and has so far worked on every machine I’ve tried it on, although not always with the default settings.

There are a number of different runtimes and language models to choose from, with the smallest ones working on a laptop with 8Gb of RAM, and the large ones requiring a very powerful computer to get the best out of them. I’ver tried them on my work and home computers to do the sort of thing I use Copilot and ChatGPT for, and the experience is comparable, especially when using some of the larger models.

Ideally the software wants a decent graphics card and lots of RAM. The latter I can provide it with, but on my desktop computer it initially failed to work because it was trying to use my old and slow graphics card which is nowhere near good enough for this kind of tool. In this scenario it was just a case of telling it use a different runtime (CPU llama.cpp), and then everything started working as expected.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Linux version ships as an AppImage, which means it needs Fuse v2 to run. Newer distros will need to install libfuse2t64 to get it to run in the first place, but after that everything should just work.

In a world where AI is the future, but privacy is important as well, I think tools like this are definitely worth spending some time with.

Songs of a Lost World

Yesterday was the release day for the new album by The Cure. I used to try and pick up their albums on release day when I was younger, but don’t think I have managed to do so since Wish as very long time ago.

My first thought is that this record is really good. I keep trying to compare it to other Cure albums, and the best that I can do is that it’s a bit like the best parts of Disintegration and Bloodflowers. There isn’t a bad song on it, and I think it’s something I’ll come back to for many years.

If you like The Cure you will love this. And if you like music in general it’s definitely worth a listen.

In the evening there was the album launch concert, which took place at The Troxy, but was also broadcast live on YouTube which meant I could watch it without all the logistical challenges that a concert in London presents. It started with a performance of the whole new album, which is what I expected, but was then followed by a 2+ hour set of old favourites and a few things I wasn’t expecting (such as a whole segment dedicated to songs from Seventeen Seconds). It reminded me how important this band were to me when I was growing up, and how much time I have spent listening to their music. I think this lineup is probably the best ever; although it’s not too different to who was on the stage in 1989 when I last saw them play live.

Everyone looks older, but they still sound great, and these songs definitely stand the test of time. I think the new ones will as well, and am hopeful that the rumours of one more album before they retire are true.

New Music

It’s been another good week for new music. I try and listen to a few new things every Friday whilst working, and this is the selection I chose yesterday:

I’m already familiar with all three artists, but it’s always good to hear new music from old favourites.

Updated Ubuntu Installation script

I’ve made some major changes to my Ubuntu installation script over the last few weeks. Mostly because I finally replaced the hard drive in my laptop and needed to do a clean installation, but also because I wanted to try and get DisplayLink drivers installed by default, which has historically been a pain.

for the latter I’m now using a lot of someone else’s work, and a little bit of my own:

install_displaylink() {
    git clone https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/displaylink-debian.git
    cd displaylink-debian
    sudo ./displaylink-debian.sh
    wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/teknostatik/debian/master/20-displaylink.conf -O /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-displaylink.conf
    cd ..
}

One day there will be a more elegant solution, but for now this will do.

Since writing the original draft of this post I decided that having these drivers on all my computers really isn’t required, and I would generally just plug a HDMI cable in and use the dock for just the standard I/O. But it’s still there in a script as an optional setting, in case anyone else might find it useful. I’ve also added a few more optional settings, for QMK installation and enabling the firewall by default. I tested all this on a clean install of both 24.04 and 24.10 and it all seems to work fine.

Thoughts about living off the grid

I’ve been researching off-grid lifestyles for a while. Not because it’s something that I think would fit the way my family need to live, but because there are definitely things we can learn from people who have chosen that kind of life, and who are making it work.

As a technologist the idea of not having reliable electricity scares me. But then we live for 9 weeks a year in a caravan, and can already power phones and a mobile internet connection for several hours with power banks. Investing in another power bank that could recharge laptops would probably give us everything else we needed in an emergency, and adding some decent solar panels would make us mostly electrically self-sufficient as far as powering devices go.

We also have a lot of gas-reliance in the caravan, but most of the vans on this site use bottled gas anyway, so this would be straightforward to set up if required, as the van is already built for it, so it would just be a case of switching a few cables around. That would give us heat, hot water, and the ability to cook on a hob or in an oven.

Water is a trickier problem, but it’s generally the easiest grid to get connected to. A lot of places people live have water when they don’t have electricity, and there are definitely ways to make running water useful from an electricity-generating point of view.

We are not ready to take these steps yet, but there are things we have learned and changed already as a result of this initial research:

  • Not replacing our unreliable dishwasher and broken tumble drier has not really impacted our lives too much at all. Washing dishes just gets built into my evening chores, and clothes can be dried either on radiators or using the natural heat of the sun. We have a launderette lined up for emergencies. but it is rarely used.
  • When we’re in the caravan, a small portable washing machine will take care of most of our clothes washing needs.
  • We don’t need anywhere near as many clothes as we thought we did, and we definitely have enough of them to last a good while.
  • It’s possible to work off a laptop indefinitely, and there are now good enough portable monitors with a very low power draw to give the desired multi-monitor setup for working.
  • A combination of mobile internet and tethering to phones gives us three layers of internet contingency, at an additional cost of £20 a month plus £10 per trip if concurrent streaming or meetings are likely to happen regularly. We use Smarty for our main connection, and GifGaf for the backup, but that’s purely based on what works well in this physical location, and milage may vary elsewhere.

There will definitely be more experiments over the next year or so, and we do need to try and be more mindful about how we use electricity and gas throughout the year, not just when we are travelling.