The Listening Club - 19th April 2015

Hello hello,

Hope you're all doing fine - Still brightening up apace in Amsterdam, with King's Day just around the corner too, amazing to think it was only a year ago that you fine folks decended upon the city - helluva lot has happened in that year for sure...

Also King's Night will fall next Sunday, which means #vortex time again - still looking for a theme, so suggestions on the tweets please, will update here when a decision has been reached!

Last week our "wee drink" on the stoop ended up in a spontaneous long evening session around the bars of West Amsterdam (dangerous thing to do on a Sunday night, hemhem), so both myself and @nessiest missed @mutster101's pick of the soundtrack to Wim Wender's film "Until The End Of The World" but it looks like Wim's collection of famous friends kept everyone amused (agree with the consensus also, don't bother watching the film, it's rather tedious!). Thanks to Gareth for the pick and for spinning the frisbee across to @mrhig for this week's pick, and here he is with the blurb...

"There are two sides to everything. No one thing is just that one thing.

Take life. Take death. One can't exist without the other. Neither mean a thing on their own. Both are required to make sense of things. You need to have lived for death to have meaning. You need to die for life to have a point.

Why fear one but not the other?

There are places where death is… not embraced, but celebrated, yes. Many areas of the world believe that at times the lines between the geography of life and death are paper thin, but some places don't see that as a bad or scary thing. If we aren't so scared of death; if we keep death in sight and in mind more often; then those that have gone to the other side aren't so far away - and, when it comes to our allotted time, we won't be so scared of joining them because they'll have always been with us.

Some are more than happy to stay on the side we're accustomed to, not to reach out and fully explore our reflection. I can understand that. For instance, tonight's selection is a record of two sides. It's a long one based on my personal barometer for what a record length should be. I'm often only really comfortable with an album being up to about 45 minutes long; this one goes well over an hour.

If you choose to turn back when this, the first side, is done, not to part the veil and look on what is ahead of us, I won't blame you. None of us will blame you. Seeing things from the other side can be scary, raw, perhaps dangerous. I'll give you a warning when we're meeting the point of no return.

But if you choose to hold on, to stay for the whole thing, I think you'll appreciate it. We can see the whole picture together. Both sides of the argument. Embrace what is beyond, see that there's little difference between there and here. You've nothing, really, to be afraid of. They've been among us all along. You'll join them one day.

But not today. Today, we celebrate."

Indeed. Direct download is here, and the mixcloud is...

The Listening Club - 19th April 2015 by Madame_Holette on Mixcloud

See you at 8PM BST!