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Station Blues – Storehouse
(Free mp3 on www.storehousemusic.com)

Tom Rodwell has been mentioned on this blog before (in the days before I lost all my data). He’s based in the UK, but was raised in New Zealand and cut his musical teeth on the Auckland scene.

Tom’s mean line in old blues and spirituals is often rolled out as a solo show, but his duo project with bass player Joe Pineapple is called Storehouse.

Rarely have I heard a room more deeply rocked by a small group than at a Storehouse gig. The guys are funky and minimal – in sum, everything they need to be, and no more.

Storehouse also exist on myspace and YouTube.

I Know that My Redeemer Liveth – G.F Handel
Performed by Henry Jenkinson (solo); the Choir of New College, Oxford; Academy of Ancient Music ; Edward Higginbottom
From Messiah (1751 Version) : [Buy]

We finally make it to Easter Sunday and it SNOWS in Oxford for the first time this winter. We’ve been pretty lucky with the weather this year – colder, but dry, so sudden snow at the start of spring seems to be, well, particularly English.

Resurrection – Alabaster Relief, anonymous Nottingham artist, 15th Century

I Know that My Redeemer Liveth turned up while iTunes was on random play yesterday. (I love iTunes random play). Handel‘s tune is beautifully sung by Henry Jenkinson, and seemed a particularly good piece of randomness for Easter.

Anton Bruckner – Symphonie No. 6: III. Scherzo. Nicht schnell (Excerpt)
Performed by the Deutches Symphonie Orchester/Kent Nagano [Buy] [emusic]

I think I have a new favourite city. OK, I was only in Berlin for five days, three of them locked in a conference, but a free weekend offered the chance to have a little look around. What an amazing place.

The history of of the city, Prussia and Germany linger in layers everywhere – remnants of the communist Wall, graffiti left by Soviet soldiers in 1945, the grand imperial avenues of Frederick the Great.

The brand-new skyscrapers of Potsdamer Platz show how urban planning, art and architecture should work together, glistening as if freshly unwrapped. There’s a great leap forward going on in Berlin and you can sense the momentum in the air.

Still in some faded corners there are glimpses of how grim life could be in the GDR: the clattering S-Bahn station at Ostkreuz or the monotone apartments lining the Köpernickerstraße. Berlin is grungy, practical, passionate, surely the soul capital of Europe.

Earth, Wind and Fire were playing Berlin on Saturday night, but during a public transport strike the trip out to the Arena seemed a little too much hassle. A much more convenient (and cheaper) option was the Konzerthausorchester Berlin at the in the Gendarmenmarkt. An all-Germanic evening of Schubert 3, Bruckner 6 and a diaphonous cello concerto by Bernd Alois Zimmermann featuring Celeste and glass harp.

The concert wasn’t quite Mahler’s 8th at the Palais Omnisports de Bercy, (klari je suis jaloux moi), but the restored 19th century Konzerthaus, all chandeliers and marble busts of Schumann and Bach, was the perfect setting for getting back in the symphonic groove.

So, just enough time to scratch the surface… wandered around a lot, ate currywurst from an imbiss, climbed Richard Roger’s Reichstag dome. There was no time left for the Jüdisches Museum or most of West Berlin, and the Maerzmusik Festival concerts had to be missed: I guess I’ll just have to go back sometime.

GTA – Wanna Be Myself
Phoenix Down Music – Digital release available: iTunes UK /Amazon.com USA

A hiphop crew out of Oxford? You better believe it. GTA are a couple of lads making sharper waves than the Brasenose Mens’ Eight on the Isis during Torpids. They’ve already played support gigs for KRS-One, Amp Fiddler and Flavor Flav, and they sure sound like someone’s gonna pick them out of the City of Dreaming Spires and put them on a really big stage.

Perhaps being native of a smaller, slower town that isn’t Manchester, Birmingham or London has rubbed off on this crew… GTA’s soul-sampling intelligence is a bit of a change from the usual UK brand of gritty/grimy hiphop.

Their unusually sunny disposition and catchy beatmaking reminds me strangely of some of the Pacific-infused groups out of New Zealand, artists like Nesian Mystik and Tha Feelstyle.

MC Chima Anya has a dayjob as a junior doctor, so it makes sense that their home-made video for Wanna Be Myself is possibly the first hiphop clip filmed in an NHS hospital, with additional scenes taped at Cutteslowe Park in north Oxford. Chima Anya’s partner in rhyme is Ineffable, and he’s a trained accountant (all the better to count the loot when these guys finally make it big).

They’re working on an album, and their first EP Love is Here is available via Paypal, linked on their myspace page.

Beck – Leave Me on the Moon
From Kill the Moonlight Soundtrack [Buy] [emusic]

Seeing a Saturn V rocket is like visiting a cathedral.

Mostly we’re pretty dumb as a species – gifted with enormous intelligence that is used to find more efficient ways of pillaging our planet or blowing each other up.

Human beings can accomplish truly astonishing things when we put our minds to it and work together – the Saturn V is that dream made real.