Boring Like A Drill

Please Mister Please

2009-07-03T21:58:00.001Z

Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, "Pour Piano" (1973). Carol Morgan, piano.
(5'17", 7.25 MB, mp3)

AudioMulch 2.0 Released

2009-07-01T17:35:00.002Z

AudioMulch, a program I've used in a number of my compositions, live gigs, and installations, has now been upgraded to version 2. I'm pretty excited about this, particularly because the revisions to the interface and work flow are expected to make future upgrades and additional features quicker and easier. The program is intended for novices as well as specialists. Info and 60-day demo here.

Housekeeping in The Listening Room

2009-07-01T17:19:00.002Z

As mentioned before, all 12 pieces from Real Characters and False Analogues can now be heard in The Listening Room. However, I've been having trouble with some of the mp3s: Redundens 4 and all of the Stained Melodies come out distorted when I try to play them.

I'm figuring out how to fix this, but in the meantime if you have the same trouble then try the player on my NetNewMusic page.

This Is The New Music! Real Characters and False Analogues

2009-06-29T21:09:00.003Z

12 mp3s for download or streaming.

John Wilkins' An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, published in 1668, proposed the existence of a universal language, written and spoken, which could communicate experience without mediation. It was believed this language could reconstruct the order of nature that God had revealed to Adam, before confounding man's language at Babel.

Many people have claimed that music is the true universal language. (The first modern artificial language was Solresol, which can be transmitted musically as well as verbally.) Unforunately, this particular species of musical fundamentalist is most likely to insist that some types of music are more natural than others*, when in reality all music is, essentially, as arbitrary as any language.

Real Characters and False Analogues is a set of twelve pieces for microtonal piano I wrote in 2004, then revised extensively in 2009. It is a sequel to Stained Melodies, adapting the compositional premise of the earlier work, that of simultaneously performing isolated pitches from different, unrelated pieces of music. Real Characters develops this idea by imposing a series of transformations to the sources' rhythm, tempo, dynamics and pitch, producing a greater variety of harmonies and textures.

In keeping with the ultimately arbitrary nature of supposedly universal languages, all compositional choices were governed by a set of chance operations; and although the piano is tuned to a special 22-note scale, only 15 notes are decided by chance to appear in any given piece. Each of the twelve pieces is named after one of the myriad artificial languages invented over the past century.

The entire set, along with detailed composition notes, can be downloaded from its page on the music website, or heard in streaming audio at The Listening Room.

* According to Nicolas Slonimsky, "The American pedagogue Percy Goetschius used to play the C major scale for his students and ask them a rhetorical question. 'Who invented this scale?' and answer it himself. 'God!' Then he would play the whole-tone scale and ask again, 'Who invented this scale?' And he would announce disdainfully, 'Monsieur Debussy!'"

Everybody's I Ching

2009-06-27T01:28:00.000Z

Forget random.org; if you want true chance operations à la John Cage, for years the go-to source has been ic, the little DOS program written by Cage's assistant Andrew Culver. It imitates the I Ching's method of producing random numbers without all the original's tedious poetry and oracular pontification.

Now that command-line programs are a dying breed for the general computer user, it's great to see that Culver is keeping the program alive by putting a beta of a new, user-friendly, web-based ic on his site. If it was good enough for Cage...

Please Mister Please

2009-06-25T22:51:00.001Z

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, "Sue Egypt" (1980).
(2'58", 3.38 MB, mp3)

Street Art, Hackney

2009-06-25T22:28:00.001Z

Bird And Person Dyning

2009-06-24T15:45:00.007Z

An old man is walking slowly through the room. At one end of the room a bird is twittering. Not a real bird; it's an electronic bird call. The man walks slowly towards where the sound seems to be coming from. We can hear the bird, but we can also hear what the man hears: he's wearing microphones over his ears. The sounds he can hear are played through loudspeakers in the room, so that we can hear the bird from our position, and the bird from his position, as projected from a third position. The man can also hear what he hears relayed from those loudspeakers. Inevitably, feedback occurs.

The feedback produced is a high, whistling sound which complements the bird nicely. The man tilts his head a little to one side, or hunches down a fraction. The feedback shifts to a new note, the tone becomes reedier. The slightest adjustment to how the man listens can completely change the sound we hear. Even the bird's repeated call changes: its chirping amongst the feedback causes heterodyning, creating the illusion of other, differently voiced birds chirping in chorus.

On the weekend I got to see and hear Alvin Lucier perform his 1975 piece Bird and Person Dyning, as part of the Cut and Splice festival at Wilton's Hall. The above description gives some idea of how a simple setup can create a complex sonic environment. In a single, unified action it reveals how the subtleties of sound depend on how we listen, our position in space, the size and shape of the room. There were some good pieces on the weekend, and more poor pieces, but Lucier's music still stood out for having both a depth and a transparency that the others lacked.

(Video and audio of Bird and Person Dyning is on UbuWeb.)

The traditional summer solstice ritual of hiding in my bedroom all day with the curtains drawn

2009-06-21T02:04:00.002Z

This blog doesn't get much mail, except for some crazy oboe-playing guy who writes in every six months or so to complain about a passing comment I made about a music critic several years ago. So I was quietly excited to discover that a lonely missive had dropped into my inbox today.

That thrill turned to disappointment when it turned out to be be from Web Sheriff, an apparently legitimate company that perversely tries to make their emails look like spam by putting "EXTREMELY URGENT" in the subject line and using an embarrassing, fakey old-west style sheriff's badge as their logo. Best of all, despite the company name and logo, they're British; and there's nothing funnier than the British pretending to be cowboys (except for Germans pretending to be American Indians.) I guess the old company logo of Robin Hood being persecuted by Lily Allen's dad didn't inspire as much confidence.

Anyway, this EXTREMELY URGENT email from Deborah Sykes was a "DMCA REQUEST" to "remove Infringed Title(s) from Infringing File Location(s)" I thought the DMCA was an American law, so I'm not sure why a British company is so keen on enforcing it. I haven't bothered to look this up because the file in question had already been taken down, so I guess their urgency wasn't extreme enough.

You're probably wondering what file on my website the sheriff (head office in Wiltshire, not Nottingham) was so exercised about. It was because I had briefly included a copy of that massive Van Morrison hit, "Thirty Two" - all sixty-one seconds of it - in Please Mister Please. Van's time here has come and gone, but you can recreate the magic of the song in your own homes by strumming any old chord on an acoustic guitar and reciting over the top these deathless lyrics:

I see, you see, we'll get a guitar,
yeah, we'll get a guitar
and, oh, we'll get, we'll get three guitars,
No!, No!!, we'll get four guitars
and we'll get Herbie Lovelle to play drums,
and we'll do, the
"Sha-la", sha...
We'll do the sha-, sha-la bit.
"Sha-la, sha-, sha-la, sha-la", we'll do it,
we'll get together, uunghh, we'll get
uunghh, ttcchh, uugnhh-uunghh-uunghh, like that,
and we'll do the sha-la bit and then,
then, then, and we'll get, we'll get sixteen guitars,
and then, then we'll play it,
and then we'll do that one, yeah.
Let me hear ya' do that again.
Over and over, Bert Berns song, over...
[clack, clack-clack, clack]

Update In C

2009-06-18T18:23:00.001Z

As promised, video of the busked performance of Terry Riley's In C on the weekend.

Please Mister Please

2009-06-17T16:04:00.002Z

Edgar Varèse, "Hyperprism" (1923). Ensemble Intercontemporain /Pierre Boulez.
(4'15", 3.52 MB, mp3)

Better Than Joshua Bell

2009-06-16T21:22:00.001Z

Sorry for the last few days' silence. I spent a long weeked catching up on some drinking with an old friend who was in town. This means I missed the chance to see some quality busking on Southbank, where The Ramshackle Orchestra for Musequality gave a kerbside performance of Terry Riley's In C. To quote Petemaskreplica:

It's immensely satisfying to play. It's something to do with the autonomy. What you play, and how, and when, is up to you, and it's thrilling to find all sorts of unexpected combinations emerging as a result of your decisions. You get into the groove, and play around, reacting to what the other musicians are doing, they reacting to you in turn.... The whole 45 minutes or so was filmed, so I hope to add YouTube links soon!

Other Minds has the complete score of In C available online, in PDF format.

Why I'm glad I don't play piano

2009-06-12T23:08:00.003Z

I was warned before moving into my new house that I would be sharing my room; and so I am:

It's a Kemble spinet piano: a compact piano design developed during the Great Depression, and which pretty much died out by the end of last century as digital pianos became omnipresent. The landlady warned me that it's never been tuned, as if you couldn't tell from striking a few keys at random. I doubt that having one end up against the radiator (see left) has been helping it.

It's times like this I'm glad I don't play the piano. Never mind how out of tune it is; if I were any good at the piano this thing would also frustrate me with its short, clunky hammer action and other foibles peculiar to this design. They're also supposed to be real buggers to maintain and repair, because of the cramped and convoluted hammer mechanism packed inside. I'd resent it for taking up valuable space which could be used by a better piano.

Instead, I'm just happy to have a an acoustic instrument to mess around with. I've wedged down the damper pedal and am trying it out as a resonant sound chamber (note microphone lead). I'll have to have another dig around inside to find the serial number and see how old this thing is.

Incidentally, Kemble is the last piano manufacturer remaining in Britain, but not for much longer. They've just announced that their factory will close in October.

Joan La Barbara (In the Presence of Greatness? part 4)

2009-06-10T16:45:00.004Z

Like most things in life, it seems, I first came across Joan La Barbara's music unwittingly when watching Sesame Street as a kid. Apart from that, although I knew she was a composer I'd never (consciously) heard any of her own music. I suspect I wasn't the only one in that situation who went to hear her free recital at the ICA the other weekend.

In the introduction to one of her pieces, La Barbara herself made a passing reference to her fame lying elsewhere, as a singer and interpreter of other people's music (cue the rollcall: John Cage Morton Feldman Morton Subotnick Philip Glass...). Presumably it was a mixture of admiration for her vocal talent and curiosity about her compositional talent that resulted in the little room being filled to capacity on a rare sunny Sunday afternoon, with a bunch of us having to stand. (Including myself: the last available seat was nabbed by my ex-girlfriend.)

Afterwards, I asked the ex what she thought of her comfy concert experience. At first she said it was "a bit hippyish" but then revised her opinion: it's not La Barbara's fault that her pioneering work in experimental vocal music has helped spawn a couple of generations of inferior imitators.

There's also the methodical approach to much of La Barbara's music that saves it from self-indulgence. She performed two of her earliest works, from the early 1970s, beginning with Circular Song. This piece requires her to sing sliding scales using circular breathing - a technique never really intended for singing - embodies two distinct approaches in her music, exploring new techniques while following a clearly defined process.

Performance Piece played most dramatically with these two tendencies. Essentially it's a improvisation, with one caveat: whenever La Barbara realised she was thinking consciously of the sounds she was making, she had to verbalise those thoughts. The performance then became a balancing act between sound and speech, one half of the brain holding the other at bay.

Only one piece required anything more than La Barbara's voice and a microphone. The more recent 73 Poems was a multitracked vocalisation of Kenneth Goldsmith's poetry, mimicking the overlaying of Goldsmith's texts. You can see and supposedly hear the collaboration here, but the sound doesn't seem to be working. Some functional sound examples are here.

Please Mister Please

2009-06-09T22:49:00.002Z

The Al Wood Orchestra, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" (1979?).
(3'56", 3.60 MB, mp3)

Filler By Proxy LXX: Apology Accepted

2009-06-07T23:19:00.002Z

Kyle Gann has been reading the latest collection of Morton Feldman interviews, and discovers that Feldman is a gift to the musical world that keeps on giving. Now, I can listen to Feldman's music and opinions for hours on end (in the case of the music, it's kind of mandatory), but then Gann quotes the following passage where Feldman compares the composers Stefan Wolpe and Ernst Krenek:

Wolpe was in the midst of a musical revolution in New York. He was in the midst of the rising young, fabulously talented people coming up in Europe, and he knew it. Krenek never knew it. There's not an ounce in Krenek's music, in things that I've heard of his late style... But nothing existed, nothing happened. It's music where nothing happened. It's the kind of music somebody might write some place in Adelaide, Australia.

Speaking as a native I'd object to that comparison, except I left Adelaide many years ago and so my criticism might look a teensy bit hollow. I wonder why Feldman's mind alighted on my home town in particular?

Gann comments,

Fascinating and endearing stuff (apologies, though, to any composers in Adelaide).

Mr Gann, you have nothing to apologise for. Mr Feldman, on the other hand...

Filler By Proxy LXIX: This post has made me hungry

2009-06-06T14:06:00.001Z

It's been a bastard of a week, so no time for ~~love~~fun online. I'm firmly relocated back in East London, the world capital for dodgy chicken shops. It's good to see I'm not the only one with a fascination for these establishments. Now here's a musical tribute we can all sing along with! (Found via Floccinaucinihilipilification.)

The Labour Party vs the BFG9000

2009-06-02T23:42:00.002Z

The election for members of the European parliament is on this weekend, so I've been getting a motley assortment of pamphlets shoved into my letterbox. I've had one from the racist loonies in the BNP, the not-so-racist-but-still-pretty-loony Ukip (apparently that's how you spell their name), Christian loonies, and the authoritarian control-freak loonies in the Labour Party, who tried to disguise their pamphlet as a community newsletter.

Headlined "Action on Crime", the blurb boasts about Labour MEPs voting to "ban the import of replica weapons which can all too easily be converted into working firearms". The accompanying photo shows police posed next to one of the frighteningly realistic weapons which hoodlums have been concealing on their persons while terrorising London's streets.

Phill Niblock again (In the Presence of Greatness? part 3)

2009-06-01T16:55:00.001Z

Last weekend I went for the second time to see a Phill Niblock performance. The main reason this time was to have a clear hearing of his work performed live, without the chattering of the punters.

People who know anything about Niblock know that he does two things. First, he writes music which requires a solo musician to hold one note for as long as possible, over and over again, and then overdub that with more of the same, over and over again. A loud, dense drone, rich with shifting overtones, is produced.

Secondly, and this comes as a surprise to some more musically-oriented people when going to see a performance, he makes films of people around the world doing rigorous manual labour, and these are typically screened during his musical performances. A large projection screen was centre stage at Cafe Oto for the launch of Niblock's new CD, Touch Strings, showing work in East Asia related to the fishing industry, before switching to agricultural and building labour.

The films are open to political, social and economic interpretations, but these considerations are subsumed within the prosaic documentation of people performing practiced, necessary actions, devoid of aesthetic artifice. If the juxtaposition of sound and image comment on each other, it is through the musician's playing, stripped of expressive subjectivity, performing a disciplined series of tasks. The necessity of the work shown on film, however, is missing from the music. Largely, it appears that both appear together because they're the two things Niblock does. The incompatibly impersonal approaches to the two media make film and music oddly neutral accompaniments to each other.

The musicians sat to one side, in semi-darkness: Susan Stenger and Guy De Bievre on electric guitars for the first piece, Stosspeng, and Arne Deforce on cello for Poure. The final piece, One Large Rose, was for multitracked string ensemble and performed without live musicians. Stosspeng was an hour long and a bit different to other Niblock pieces I've heard. The two live guitars seemed to float above a mass of lower-piched drones, and showed a greater variety of timbres and textures instead of receding into the background. The scale of the piece allowed the audience's attention to drift from the video to the music and back again, and although it's a common experience to lose the sense of time in this type of music and just become caught in the moment, I found myself losing focus on the video as well, even though there was nothing abstract about it. In the latter half of the piece I realised I'd been watching the screen but couldn't remember what I had just seen.

Please Mister Please

2009-05-29T00:14:00.002Z

Charles Dodge, "He Destroyed Her Image" (1973).
(1'57", 4.47 MB, mp3)

In the Presence of Greatness? (Part 2 - Robert Ashley)

2009-05-28T15:29:00.003Z

I found out at the last minute that Robert Ashley was appearing at the ICA (a friend saw an article about him in the trashy free newspaper they hand out at train stations) and so I rushed out to see for myself a live performance of one of his operas. This time, my reason for going was clear to me: I needed to understand.

For years I'd been interested in Robert Ashley's work, heard recordings of some of his operas, and generally tried to avoid listening to his music until I had the ideal conditions for doing so, because I always felt that it was beyond me. What I'd heard was an unremitting treadmill of ideas - musical, linguistic, philosophical - presented in such an undifferentiated fashion that there was no way for the mind to latch on to any particular reference point to gain an overall perspective. It was an immersive experience, but in a way that made me feel like I didn't pay enough attention.

So a live performance of his 1994 opera Foreign Experiences (part of a tetralogy called Now Eleanor's Idea, itself part of a larger trilogy) seemed a perfect opportunity. This was a "chamber" adaptation, for two voices instead of seven against a backdrop of electronics, staging non-existent instead of minimal. Sam Ashley and Jacqueline Humbert performed outstandingly, creating a seamless patter of speak-singing, virtuosically incanting their texts in lock-step unison or call-and-response, casually slipping from one accent or speech pattern to another as they shifted between characters.

The texts of Ashely's operas have always felt like novels. In this case, the setting is a modern American suburbia like that of Don DeLillo's White Noise, or more particularly the Vineland of Thomas Pynchon's southern California. The opera's story revolves around similar themes of rootlessness, ignorance, paranoia, remoteness, mediated experiences, thwarted radicalism and spiritual quests - all trapped in the paradox of living a life of modern materialism within a legacy of religious fervour. The narrative approach often feels similar as well, switching from closely reasoned metaphysical arguments to the banal and the vulgar, revelling in the lucid inarticulateness of American vernacular ("Naw shit no.")

Why present all this as opera? There's the music, the voices, the thrill of the performances, of course; but so many details fly past without allowing the mind to linger over their portent. (Earlier pieces like 1968's Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon forced listeners to dwell upon the disturbing implications of what they were hearing - that same piece gets a fast-forward reprise in the middle of Foreign Experiences.) Then I remembered Perfect Lives, the instigating work in this opera cycle: it was conceived as an opera for television. This must not be confused with televised opera.

It seems that all of Ashley's operas are best approached as television: a constant barrage of information, presented indiscriminately and dispassionately. There are people, voices, background music, all telling different stories and exposing different anxieties to which one may tune in or tune out, but can never fully grasp. Not in one sitting, anyway.

Filler By Proxy LXVIII: The Stockhausen Football League

2009-05-24T17:42:00.002Z

It's the last day of the English football season, so The Guardian is giving minute-by-minute updates on its website, tracking the fates of teams facing relegation. Naturally, reporter Scott Murray is decribing the action through an extended conceit of likening the tail-end of the Premiership season to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (with some John Cage coming in for stoppage time), right down to the concluding section of his epic opera cycle Licht: "Sunday Farewell".

In the Presence of Greatness? (Part 1 - Christian Wolff, AMM)

2009-05-23T14:16:00.005Z

A friend has just been visiting and travelling around Europe, seeking out ageing and obscure musicians and filmmakers from the previous century, meeting them and, if possible, interviewing them. I wonder if there's a similar impulse in what I've been doing since I arrived in London - catching up on history. I've been more interested in seeing old, established artists than in seeking out something new.

I'm starting to feel like a type of collector. I tell myself I'm going there as a witness, but I'm not sure what it is I think I'm witnessing. Personality? Magic? An insight into how they work?

A couple of weeks ago I went to Conway Hall to see Christian Wolff, last survivor of the co-called New York School. He was performing selections from his series of Exercises, a set of pieces begun in the early 1970s, which allow musicians to find their own ways to follow each other through a common set of shared melodic material. It is, in effect, music born out of consensus.

Accompanied by the Post Quartet (reduced to a trio due to illness) and occasional percussionists, Wolff sat at the piano, balancing a melodica on his lap, and... did nothing, except make sounds. His onstage personality was as self-effacing as his music. The material is so "poor" and undistinguished it directs attention away from itself, toward the gently ragged, meandering sounds produced by the ensemble. At worst, the Exercises are bland and lulling, at their best (as in the spare, ephemeral piece for microtonal sounds) they unfolded like a benign force of nature - affirming John Cage's belief that art should aspire to nature. Wolff, however, achieves this through social interaction, rather than through Cage's reliance on the impersonal*.

Later that evening AMM played, in their current lineup of John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost, accompanied by Wolff, John Butcher on saxophone, and Ute Kanngiesser on cello. They improvised for an hour without a break. At first, Wolff sat beside Tilbury at the piano, making small noises in the highest realms of the keyboard, before moving to an electric guitar resting on a table. And, of course, there was the melodica.

A feeling of stasis and troubled quietness was maintained for the hour, yet with each musician producing occasional passages of restless activity. It was a far cry from the witless freneticism that has become a cliché of free improvisation, but it never found a period of the sustained immobility which has become prevalent amongst many improvisers in recent years.

These later static-and-silence musicians are the descendants of the style AMM developed over forty years ago. At Conway Hall the musicians were very skillful, but the music never lifts me the way the greatest moments of improvisation can do. Should I be disappointed? Of course not, no-one expects every gig like this to be transcendent; but on the other hand should I feel privileged to witness this particular grouping of musicians playing together? Why was I sitting there listening to it? For a sense of history, or for the music?

* Wolff did impose at one point to suggest they all start over on his latest piece, which came adrift early on. The impersonal interposed during the last piece, when the cellist's microphone toppled over the edge of the stage and crashed to the floor, where it remained for the duration. Watch out for this if you find a recording.

Please Mister Please

2009-05-20T23:10:00.002Z

Françoiz Breut, "Si tu disais" (2000)
(2'26", 4.51 MB, mp3)

Streaming audio

The Retreat from Moscow: Eurovision Wrapup 2009

2009-05-18T20:11:00.023Z

I'm cheating, I'm watching this on iPlayer, which means I'm (a) fast-forwarding through the boring bits and (b) drinking alone. As must all large-scale events these days, it begins with a warning:

Ah, for the innocent days of being fifteen again, when I couldn't look at strobe lights without succumbing to impure thoughts and popping a boner.

And right from the start we have a Fine Cotton with the now-dreaded Cirque du Soleil setting the tone for a night of po-faced, state-sponsored whimsy. Score One for iPlayer. Then last year's winner comes on and sings what I assume is The Toilet Song again, as the last two winning songs have been hopelessly unmemorable. The male singer looks dead earnest while pulling the same writhe-around-on-the-floor moves Madonna used to do twenty years ago. Hang on, is that a Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus flag?

Keep that guy away from the Greeks!

This is the dawn of the bold, new, post-Wogan era, so sadly he's missed his chance to bring out his old Masha and Pasha jokes one more time when the hosts take the stage. He also misses out the chance to point out that one of the hosts is your granny's toilet roll cover lady grown to full size and come to life.

Lithuania: A stage school boy with a tragic hat sings out of the corner of his mouth to disguise his accent. So far, so blah, but it wouldn't be Eurovision without a stupid gimmick and meaningless attempts at profundity thrown in at the last moment. (ITE?, DKC)

Israel: This much-touted Jew-vs-Arab throwdown counts as a Don't Mention The Wall, so that's another drink along with their tried and tested English-chorus/Foreign-verse formula. Two charming divas in requisite softcore dominatrix gear warily eye each other off before bonding over their shared love of kerosene tins. (DMW, ITE?)

France: Kicks it old-school with a standard chanteuse act, whose only concessions to Eurovision are to wobble about a bit at the end in a small bit of awkward choreography, and to have her makeup done by Tim Burton. Professional, tasteful, the crowd seem to love it - this won't win. Bonus points for not having an accordion on stage. Points off for having an accordion in the mix. (LKW)

Sweden: Yet another Swedish disco anthem sung by a burly blonde diva. This one's an opera singer, so they have to bog the song down with lots of high warbly bits, only to have her struggle on the normal, breathy parts. By the end, she's swapping ranges so often it sounds like a tribute to the late Yma Sumac. Didn't every second future-dystopia sci-fi movie in the 90s tell us we'd be listening to this stuff right about now?

Croatia: Darko and the Pantene Ladies serenade you with their smoky charms, until one of them starts wailing uncontrollably. I think it's one of the women. The singer stage right is getting visibly annoyed with the wind machine.

Portugal: There's a fine line between being cheerful, colourful, and sweet, and being The Wiggles. With an accordion.

Iceland: This is as standard as Eurovision gets: a mid-tempo power ballad, sung in nonsensical American English, with a Dramatic Key Change for the last chorus, and utterly incongruous visuals. First a ghost ship for all the Pirates of the Caribbean fans, and then, more perplexingly, Ghost Flipper. (DKC)

Greece: Years of hanging around Lonsdale Street and watching Eurovision have convinced me that modern-day Greece is just one giant discotheque. The singer dude shows how his country has moved with the times by leaving his shirt unbuttoned, revealing neither medallion nor chest hair. Acrobatic hijinks ensue around a bedazzled travelator that metamorphoses into the Giant Stapler of Greece. "Feel it in your heart when you are winning this race!" (DKC)

Armenia: "Chop it up! Bring the noise!" That's just what their Armenian sounds like; their English makes much less sense. You know those old movies where the Sultan calls out the exotic dancers to entertain his guests? This is sort of the reverse, like watching an Armenian movie set in an American R'n'B club. (ITE?, DKC)

Russia: A sourpuss in a shower curtain bums everyone out with a dirge and a reenactment of The Jumbotron of Dorian Gray.

Azerbaijan: We're just happy to be here, so let's raid the TV studio's wardrobe, grab as many flash pots as we can find, and crank the wind machine to 11! See, you don't need a theme to make the crowd happy. (WM)

Bosnia&Herzegovina [sic]: Firstly, congratlulations to this country for entering under almost the same name for two years running. The first white suits of the night, albeit retro-uniform type things, looking a bit like Coldplay's stupid outfits would if they weren't colourfast. One young man furiously strums an electric guitar while a piano plaintively tinkles over the speakers. Then they turn on the wind machine. It's a grim trudge, this one. (WM)

Moldova: A girl in purple boots does the singing-and-yelling thing to show how passionate these Slavic types are. She is accompanied by four Moldovan morris dancers who inexplicably break into the Dance of the Little Swans near the end, and a distant, shouty man brandishing a traditional Moldovan ceremonial mop.

Malta: It's nice to see Chiara coming back every five years or so. It's so reassuring. She stands there and sings, throws out her arms occasionally, and almost wins. With no video screens to back her up she gets lost on the vast stage, but she knows most of the voters are watching on telly and gets the nuances right.

Estonia: A Eurovision fake-violinist sitting down: is this a first? There are also two (2) cellists, also sitting, two backup singers standing still, and a lead singer standing still but ominously clutching a violin as well. In the instrumental break she stands still and pretends to play the violin a bit. This must be the most inert use of onstage prop instruments ever.

Denmark: A Danish Ronan Keating impersonator arises from his barstool to sing a Ronan Keating song. Why? Why? He keeps going into a half-squat like he's been riding a horse too long. Does the real Ronan Keating do that? (2xFC)

Germany: Reverting to goofy kitsch again with an unappetising mélange of 20s, 30s, and 40s jazz clichés, squelched into a stiff pop ditty. In lieu of a decent song, they bring onstage legendary German pop icon Dita Von Teese (of the Friedrichshafen Von Teeses) and loudly announce her presence for the benefit of all the non-Germans who didn't grow up watching Gummi porn. (FC)

Turkey: Haven't they done this one before? Not that I'm complaining. The most substantial item of clothing worn by the ladies is around their ankles, for some reason. Don't get any ideas, because halfway through a shirtless guy bounds onstage and starts showing off how he can totally kick you in the head like it ain't a thing. (2xCR)

Albania: I'm guessing Albania got into the finals on the sympathy vote, because they're trapped in 1983. A girl with crimped hair and a bubble skirt struggles with the English language while one of the mimes does a headspin. Oh yeah, there's a pair of scary mimes. And Gumby, who's become a creepy, middle-aged stalker who just won't go away. (DKC)

Norway: A gurning fiddler is backed up by a pair of singers teleported in from the 1976 contest, and some stray tumblers from a travelling production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers who commit gratuitous violence against hats and generally looking this close to walking over and planting one on the singer. (WM)

Ukraine: A committee job, surely. Techno set? Yep. Ruslana-type chick? Of course. Lving statues? Why not. Gay Mardi Gras centurions? Uh, OK. Karen Carpenter impression? You mean she does a gratuitous drum solo or starves herself? Too soon! (2xCR)

Romania: A hen's night overruns the Troll King's throne. When is someone going to fling their skirts off?

United Kingdom: The Toilet Song for this year. X-Factor warbling of a dreary Diane Warren ballad. Oh god, and Andrew Lloyd Webber simpering over a white piano. Score Two for iPlayer. (FC, LKW, DKC)

Finland: If I asked you to name the two most obnoxious things in the world, you'd probably say white guys rapping and fire twirling. Guess what this trainwreck's got for us?

Spain: Another case of "will this do?" from one of the big nations. At one stage the dancers hold up a sheet in front of the singer, usually a Eurovision cue for a costume change. Instead, she disappears completely. And then, um, pops up again a few metres to the left. This isn't a lame magic show, it's a lame song contest! (ITE?)

The voting: Norway wins. Why do the Israeli fans have large, inflatable hammers with the Star of David on them?