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David McGuinness

@davidmcguinness.bsky.social
159 followers 189 following 319 posts

amateur executant: usually too busy organising music to make any. linktr.ee/davidmcg

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Reposted by David McGuinness
Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
In short: Fuck that, and fuck them. iandunt.substack.com/p/some-dispa...
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
not sure about Lismore being a 'tiny' island as it's 9 miles long (Guardian subs, do better please) but this is a great story www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
theguardian.com
‘Hugely exciting’ finds on tiny Scottish island shed light on spread of Christianity
Community-funded archaeological excavations of ‘really important’ sixth-century monastery also rewrite story of Lismore
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
even if you’ve barely got a passing interest in Scottish lighthouses and/or Robert Louis Stevenson, this is a great listen www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
bbc.co.uk
Sunday Feature - Keepers of the Light - BBC Sounds
Robert Louis Stevenson, the lighthouse dynasty he left behind and the sea that shaped him.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
hearing the seated TV studio audience clap and cheer at the drops in this genuinely made me think of Mozart engineering his piano concertos to get audible reactions from his audience - they didn't just sit in silence then either youtu.be/38rvtcwhuw4?...
youtu.be
Angine de Poitrine: Zugzegk | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
YouTube video by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
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Reposted by David McGuinness
Fiona McLees @mclees-fiona.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Here we are - an excellent surprise when turning the pages - on one of versos is a trompe l’oeil fly, rather nicely painted with shadow as if it has just settled on the page
Sketchbook page, mostly blank apart from a black mark which is a painting of a flyA close up of the fly painting, made in black and white watercolour
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
this is a good piece (the main photo features my workplace) but the Guardian has to describe the Black Isle as ‘remote’, 5 minutes’ drive from the city of Inverness. STOP IT! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/se…
theguardian.com
‘Scots are the kindest people on earth!’ Meet the Americans moving to Scotland
Since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, there has been a 63% rise in Americans renting properties in Scotland. Politics is one reason – but there are many other surprising motivations …
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I wanted to find out what's on this tape that I recorded in about 1978, but I could only find a 7.5/15ips Revox, so I've been listening simultaneously to four tracks of random stuff at double speed, two of which are playing backwards. It's like being haunted by your own hyperactive ghosts.
a battered tape box from the 1960s in front of a Revox B77 1/4" tape machine
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
this is why in Glasgow we can't have nice things. fs.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Introduce yourself with 10 acts you've seen live: Hespèrion XX Mike Oldfield John Zorn’s Masada Diamanda Galás Cardiacs Shirley Collins Steve Reich & Musicians Fred Frith JPP The Rutles
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
I was furious when Sony stopped selling these with mic inputs: rather than having a brilliant pocket device you could use to make things, you could only be a passive consumer. So I took mine back to the shop and bought a cheap Sharp one instead. It still works!
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Reposted by David McGuinness
The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Not to be some wild-eyed innocent, but I think it should be slightly bigger news that The Lancet have crunched the numbers and found that Musk's USAID cuts will kill 14 million people. And that's just by 2030. That's 9,600 people a day, every day, until the next world cup rolls around.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Logic has started sending me subliminal messages. (unlike Apple Music which repeatedly suggests 'Quit Music')
a screenshot of a Logic edit with piano and bassoon tracks above a blank green track where adjacent regions read 'this is' and 'good'. Ironically the 'good' portion is below an unusably bad edit.
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Reposted by David McGuinness
Greg Jericho @grogsgamut.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
"“Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world,” an internal planning document said. “We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”" novaramedia.com/2026/07/29/a...
novaramedia.com
AI Firms Are Buying up Old Books, Then Scanning and Destroying Them
The world’s biggest AI companies are buying antiquarian books en masse so they can be scanned to train their large language models (LLMs) before being destroyed.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
The New Goodies LP (1975) remains one of my favourite records - genuinely funny and musically astute parodies across several 1970s genres with the best session players, all written (and mostly performed) by Bill Oddie. Comedy records don’t usually stand up this well 50 years on.
a photo by Tony Russell (Getty Images) of The Goodies at Piccadilly Circus in 1975. Bill Oddie is wearing a ‘THE NEW GOODIES L.P.’ t-shirt
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
where my dad taught to me to swim (in my 20s, ahem) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002zg1s?…
bbc.co.uk
Archive on 4 - The People's Pool - BBC Sounds
One Glasgow swimming pool reveals the story of public baths and wash houses in Britain.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
on our trip to the beach this evening (one hour each way) we encountered one instance of deliberate sustained dangerous driving and two road traffic accidents, one very serious. take it easy out there.
evening sun on the beach at Portencross, with Arran in the background
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Reposted by David McGuinness
Per Ahlberg @perahlberg.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
The strangest thing happened today. We went to the uninhabited island of Lunga, west of Mull, to look at the puffins nesting there. I was just taking photos when I felt a thump as something landed quite heavily in my head. It was a puffin! It stayed for about a minute before flying off.
A man with his back to the camera, wearing a blue jacket and a grey woolen hat. A puffin is sitting on top of his head. On the left, an arm holding a mobile phone can be seen. In the background, a green slope and the sea beyond.In this photo the puffin is taking off.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
BALL-et (UK) or ball-ET (US)? Differing stress of French loanwords is the sort of thing that occupies my brain when I should be doing something else, so fortunately these people have thought about it with more rigour doi.org/10.1017/S002...
doi.org
Stress in French loanwords in British and American English | Journal of Linguistics | Cambridge Core
Stress in French loanwords in British and American English - Volume 61 Issue 1
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
the irony of Burnham banging on about the North is that if you really think Manchester is the North of the UK, that’s about as London-centric as you can get. seen any maps recently?
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Reposted by David McGuinness
Tits McGee @scientits.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
‘Say yes and never do it’ Mel Brooks knew how to deal with the studios
You have some wonderful stories of basically getting away with stuff at the studios.

I’d learned one very simple trick: say yes. Simply say yes. Like Joseph E. Levine, on “The Producers,” said, “The curly-haired guy—he’s funny looking. Fire him.” He wanted me to fire Gene Wilder. And I said, “Yes, he’s gone. I’m firing him.” I never did. But he forgot. After the screening of “Blazing Saddles,” the head of Warner Bros. threw me into the manager’s office, gave me a legal pad and a pencil, and gave me maybe twenty notes. He would have changed “Blazing Saddles” from a daring, funny, crazy picture to a stultified, dull, dusty old Western. He said, “No farting.” I said, “It’s out.”That’s probably the most famous scene in the movie, the campfire scene.

I know. He said, “You can’t punch a horse.” I said, “You’ll never see it again.” I kept saying, “You’re absolutely right. It’s out!” Then, when he left, I crumpled up all his notes, and I tossed it in the wastepaper basket. And John Calley, who was running [production at] Warner Bros. at the time, said, “Good filing.” That was the end of it. You say yes, and you never do it.

That’s great advice for life.

It is. Don’t fight them. Don’t waste your time struggling with them and trying to make sense to them. They’ll never understand.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
as I was leaving Glasgow university chapel tonight I realised that I had been taking microphones into churches to record organ overdubs since 1988. Not always in as beautiful a place on a summer evening as this though
University of Glasgow memorial chapel from the quadrangle outsidewideangle view from the organ console looking past a laptop down into the chapel me and the navetwo AKG 414 B-ULS mics in sort-of ORTF configuration for recording some quiet bits on the organ without pedals (I used spaced omnis for everything else to get maximum bass)
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
delighted to hear Ivor Kallin doing his Singalonga Stockhausen thing 45'58 into this. It brought back happy memories of appearing on his Ambrosia Rasputin show on Resonance FM with Alasdair Roberts in 2013 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
bbc.co.uk
Archive on 4 - Resonance FM: The Art of Listening - BBC Sounds
Comedian Stewart Lee tells the story of Resonance FM, the UK’s greatest radio art station.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
delighted at Janet and her work getting more attention. we used to have the odd chat over the photocopier or washing-up at the university, and she’s fascinating, determined & hilarious thequietus.com/culture/art/dancing-…
thequietus.com
Dancing on Moonbeams: Artist Luke Fowler on Electronic Music Pioneer Janet Beat | The Quietus
Artist Luke Fowler speaks to Claire M. Holdsworth about his latest film, A Sensation Never Yet Known, a portrait of the electroacoustic composer and musician Janet Beat
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
if you have some tedious admin to accomplish, listening to this as you do it is a great way to brighten it up, and better than the usual 80s nostalgia www.youtube.com/watch?v=p38v...
youtube.com
Nurse With Wound - The Sylvie And Babs Hi-Fi Companion [Full Album]
YouTube video by Zaphyra
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Finnish folk heroes Tallari have been going for 40 years now! I met them at the Swaledale Festival in 1986, and it's great to see that Arto Järvelä is still a teenager whenever he picks up his fiddle. youtu.be/xcLk4rJe544?...
youtu.be
Tallari - Polskatrallitus Tyrväältä @tallari6936
YouTube video by Martti Viitalähde
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Reposted by David McGuinness
Gareth Dennis @garethdennis.uk · 07/06/2026
Yes, @doctorow.pluralistic.net is a legend. This whole interview is perfect, on "AI".
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
I think you'll find it's 'countrymen' #mansplaining
a photo of the back of a red MINI COUNTRYMAN S parked on a street
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
a wee reminder of what is possible in a kinder society
a toilet door sign in the Anglican cathedral, Vancouver in 2022: it reads - MEN’S WASHROOM with symbols for a toilet, a urinal, baby changing and disabled facilities, TRANS PEOPLE WELCOME, some Braille, and the branding: Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, BC - Open Doors, Open Hearts, Open Minds
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
I like getting the RSE's newsletter, but the envelope always insists that I just chuck it in the bin
an A4 envelope whose main feature is '100% COMPOSTABLE' in huge letters across the bottomsmaller text at the bottom of the envelope reads - You can dispose of it in: your home compost heap; your food waste bin/caddy; or your garden waste bin.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
get in
an ad for a Druid Lecturer-in-Residence (0.5 FTE) at the University of Galway, Salary £56,452.37 to £90,056.94 pro rata
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
a wee close up of the hand-painted Alexander 'Greek' Thomson wall decoration at Holmwood House this afternoon. I walk past Thomson buildings all the time but getting to see his interior designs is a real treat #glasgow www.nts.org.uk/visit/places...
two small geometric patterns in cream and deep red with small details in light and mid blue, on a neutral red background
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
today’s life tip: always have the number of a good local locksmith in your phone
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
@theguardian.com has its regular ‘how I healed myself by moving to an exotic remote Scottish island & getting in the sea’ piece again. Most of the usual clichés intact. Please stop. www.theguardian.com/environment/202…
theguardian.com
‘I needed to be in that strange, flat place’: how an Orkney garden healed a writer
After her sister died, Victoria Bennett left Cumbria for the remote Scottish archipelago, where she learned to go with the ebb and flow of life
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Back in the university chapel after a 4 month break last night with Ross Ainslie, and the 1st phase of our pipes & organ project is shaping up nicely. Also, I've found one place where I can play a bottom C on the new 32' stop: at 16Hz it's below the range of human hearing, but you can feel it!
the view looking down from the organ loft of a large empty church space lit by stained glass windows, with organ pipes rising above a lone piper (Ross Ainslie) sitting on a table A photo showing  the 11 pedal stops of a large 1920s church organ, with five arrows pointing to a new stop labelled '32 SUB BORDUN'
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 29/03/2026
i’m sure there’s room for a microtonal alien mathrock instrumental band who really love their chips and brown cheesy gravy. yup, Angine de Poutine
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Reposted by David McGuinness
Ross W. Duffin @rosswmd.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
When Falstaff threatens to have ballads made up about Prince Hal and sung to filthy tunes (IHen4.2.2), he did not have a Latin-texted motet in mind, but the effect might be the same. Brilliant Josquin parody and amazing solo performance! youtu.be/91CuilQk61U?...
youtu.be
16th century polyphony meets MAGA Christians
YouTube video by Jonasquin
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
back home from a fun day in St Andrews improvising on piano, melodica and the gorgeous 1860 organ in the Laidlaw Centre at St Andrews, with the HARK collective. The folks from @fifecollege.bsky.social recorded us in Dolby Surround with more DPA mics than you could blow a melodica at
a ridiculously complex mic array in the recital room at the University of St Andrews' Laidlaw Music Centre, surrounded by people grinning, taking photos and looking pleased after a day's recordinga stage box with lots of very carefully labelled XLR cables plugged into it
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
#Cardiacs were superb last night of course, wonderful to finally hear some of the big set pieces as they should be, with an audience. Also, they very kindly let me sit in on their soundcheck which was quite the (seaside) treat. Stellar work from some very lovely people spreading happiness and joy.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
I can’t quite get my head around the fact that I’m going to see Cardiacs play tonight, two doors along from my university office, and this seems normal. There are two many impossible things at play simultaneously.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
easily the finest piece of art produced this year is Harry Hill's reading of a Shopify ad, 20'48 into this. Perfection. youtu.be/mMKSnQTY5Vs?...
youtu.be
The Harry Hill Show - Amanda Lamb
YouTube video by HARRY HILL
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
We've got until the end of Monday to respond to the Green Paper on BBC Charter Review. You can bet your arse that the people who want rid of the BBC will be filling it in, so if you value the BBC, please do it too. www.gov.uk/government/c...
gov.uk
Britain’s Story: The Next Chapter - BBC Royal Charter Review, Green Paper and public consultation
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Adam from Glasgow @1707unsubscribe.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
Great work by @glasgowbell.bsky.social A recommended read, particularly for Glasgow’s residents. It’s about your money: www.glasgowbell.co.uk/humanitarian...
glasgowbell.co.uk
Empty offices and child ‘directors’: How to augment reality and avoid tax in the process
We’ve got to the bottom of that giant banner on the M8 office block
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Uniformbooks @uniformbooks.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Can't think of a better film about being a musician, all of the time... there's even a bit where Fred's coughing is music. Black and [off-]white version: youtu.be/XEVJUJz2AuY
youtu.be
Step Across the Border (Fred Frith) - 1.5 hour documentary
YouTube video by Tim Entwisle
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Step Across the Border (1990) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Step_Ac...
en.wikipedia.org
Step Across the Border - Wikipedia
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CodaQueen @codaqueen.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Had a flashback to this one, just now, watching The Skids on #TOTP youtu.be/Gib916jJW1o?...
youtu.be
The Skids,`Into The Valley`Maxell advert
YouTube video by rob jukes
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FLAVOR FLAV ⏰ @flavorflav.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Yes,,, your boy has taken a ride in the 4 man bobsled,,, but im an adrenaline junkie and needed to try skeleton. And now I’ve officially joined the team and am gonna try to start competing. 66 years old going 66 mph.
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
do yourself a favour and set aside half an hour to marvel at this from the astonishing Angine de Poitrine. microtonal looping in silly costumes at its absolute best youtu.be/0Ssi-9wS1so?...
youtu.be
Angine de Poitrine - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)
YouTube video by KEXP
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Peter Ross @peteralanross.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Interesting piece on Andy Goldsworthy's Gravetstones art work on the BBC website. It's an "exclusive first look" apparently. I offered it to a national newspaper last year but they turned it down. I ended up writing it for my Substack. smallfinds.substack.com/p/small-find...
smallfinds.substack.com
Small Finds #7
Andy Goldsworthy
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David McGuinness @davidmcguinness.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
anyone advocated a cultural boycott of the US yet?
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