A selection of things which’ve recently caught our eyes and ears…
Tove Jansson, ca. 1967. © Moomin Characters TM
Sheila Heti writes an ode to Moomin creator Tove Jansson, celebrating her life and work in A Right-Size Dream: An Appreciation of Tove Jansson
On the Zoomorphic website, Julian Hoffman recalls an accidental encounter with a European brown bear: “My mind suddenly emptied, leaving a clear and continuous space in which all I could hear was my heart, like the quivering thrum of an arrow after hitting its target. From its low saddle of stone the bear eyed me in the meadow, and the wild rushed in like a river.”
Tim Dee muses on the pleasures of birdsong: “Poets, I discovered, could get birds right even as the men who wrote the textbooks got them wrong.”
Sol Re Sol Records have reissued Alceu Valença’s Molhado de Sour, the 1974 album widely regarded as a Brazilian classic. Also worth checking, on the same label and from the same year, is Sidney Miller’s Linguas De Fogo LP. Listen here.
https://soundcloud.com/s-srecords/sets/alceu-valenca-molhado-de-sour
And staying on the subject, here’s another great record: Tubby Hayes Quartet Live At The Hopbine 1968 Volume 1: The Syndicate. A sensational performance by heavyweight British jazzers mastered, pressed and packaged with care and attention by the (to use the parlance) cats at London’s Gearbox label.
Which segues nicely into: Vanessa of Messy Nessy Chic documents the disappearing record shops of Paris.