Matt’s Bird Of The Week – House Sparrow
31 July 2009 // Matt's Bird of the Week
Something ace for the weekend… thanks to Matt Sewell for this beauty. There’s something quintessentially British about a House Sparrow. As British as chip butties and bramble picking, they even look like they’re wearing a flat cap for Christ’s sake. When you see them abroad they don’t look right, like they shouldn’t be there. Faded, [...]
Pleasures Of… Port Eliot part 2
Seeing a lot of folk I’d not seen in many (25!) years. Among them Stephen Parker, Chris Warren and Ross Reid. Nice to see my old friend Val and back on home turf too. And Kathryn Williams, someone else I am very fond of who I had not seen in a long while. Kath has [...]
Chris Watson presents Cross Pollination
This is ace – from the Southbank Centre, here’s Pestival… an essential night out… after Port Eliot’s Chris Watson gig, we’re buzzing about this already… sorry, that joke was bloody awful… Chris Watson – Cross Pollination: A Night of Experimental Insect Music. Sunday 6 September 2009, 7.30pm Pestival 2009 is a festival celebrating insects in [...]
Dusty 7s
30 July 2009 // On Water //Rivers Book
Really lovely email from the folks over at the lovely Dusty 7s blog. They’re the first people who’ve got in touch and tried to tackle their fear of nature with a copy of our book. They followed Bob Stanley’s Lea navigation, though probably got there a little after the ominous blue fence went up. If [...]
A Conversation With Bibio
Our friend Pat Long, the man behind the brilliant Heron label sent us notes from a field-recording of CBTR favourite Bibio, whose album ‘Ambivalence Avenue’ has pretty much fused with our office stereo since it arrived a couple of months back… Bibio is the alter ego of Wolverhampton-based Stephen Wilkinson, keen amateur gardener and prolific [...]
Pleasures Of… Port Eliot
29 July 2009 // Caught By... //Pleasures
A few of our highlights from the Port Eliot Festival… The talk from ‘Falling And Laughing – The Restoration Of Edwyn Collins’ by Grace Maxwell and Edwyn’s acoustic gig afterwards; King Creosote – special mention to Kenny’s genius Dexys cover; Chris Watson – check out anything that he’s recorded; Robin and I being given our [...]
Our Rivers
We got an email the other day from Nik Shelton at the RSPB which we wanted to run in full because A) it’s river related and B) it made us smile. Love the idea that the RSPB sounds like the offices of the X-Files. Click the links and adopt a river – we here at [...]
Frank on a Narrowboat Part 3
by Frank Cottrell Boyce So today is the day we finish the Wigan Flight. I go ahead with Steve’s daughter to pre-set the locks and to check that the pounds have enough water for us. We stumble on an unreported youth subculture. Every fourth lock or so is surrounded by a group of big Wigan [...]
Another Storey
Over here at CBTR towers we’re massive fans of The Wooden Branch, the ace website dedicated to all things arborescent… Tomo who runs the site send us a cryptic email the other day pointing us to a new going concern of his… it’s also fantastic. “…introducing the wooden branch’s sister. i’d tell you more, but [...]
Port By The River, Monday Morning
So yesterday sealed the deal. It featured readings by Kurt Jackson, the mighty Andrews of Arcadia, Hannah Hamilton, Kathryn Williams and Gavin Pretor-Pinney – all ace – alongside Chris Watson‘s Nature Disco (90 minutes of field recordings from Africa, Iceland and the Port Eliot estate – utterly mindblowing) and a tent raising acoustic gig by [...]
Caught by the River