I don’t know how you hear music. I imagine that if you like music at all then it has, in your head, some kind of third dimension to it, a dimension suggesting space as well as surface, depth of field as well as texture. Speaking for myself, I used to hear “buildings”… three-dimensional forms of architectural substance and tension. I did not “see” these buildings in the classic synaesthetic way so much as sense them. These forms had “floors”, “walls”, “roofs”, “windows”, “cellars”.

This is what happened to him after his hearing loss;

What I hear now when I listen to music is a flat, two-dimensional representation. Where I used to get buildings, I now only get architectural drawings. I can interpret what the drawings show, but I don’t get the actual structure: I can’t enter music and I can’t perceive its inner spaces. I’ve never got much of an emotional hit from technical drawings. Here is what really hurts: I no longer respond to music emotionally.

He then met Oliver Sacks the famous neuroscientist who had personally lost his ability of stereoscopy something he has treasured all his life. Both these losses made these people experience forms of space in mono….. monospace.

It proves to me the link that I’ve always felt between the experience of space and music, and that as an Architect and fan of music I find their pleasures somehow equivalent. While not hearing building I definetly sense space, and in Architecture while not experiencing tunes I definetly think of space as being somehow musical. The article is also touching to me as perhaps I am on the brink of loosing this feeling to, that my right ear hears at about 50% of normal I’ve felt that my brain somehow makes up for that when I listen to my ipod forinstance, but for how long?

Dusker by Kiln is on ghostly records and also check them out on their my space page.

I pretty much am immune to shopping with two exceptions, books and music. Now I think I might need to clarify a bit more, it’s not the love of purchasing a new book or record per say, its the actual physical pleasure of being in a good record or bookshop I’m thinking of. Now I live in Helsinki my pleasure in bookshopping is satiated in the Academic bookshop whose interior is by Aalto and which has a great selection of books and a cafe to boot.

Record shopping here is harder, the main shop I know is Stupido. But it’s an activity seems to be dwindling because of more and more online competition. In Edinburgh I used to go to Fopp which recently went bust, although some shops have been sold back to HMV. When I lived in London there was always Berwick Street, but they are having problems too, and the FreeRecord Shop Chain in Finland is leaving (good riddance), the trend appears more and more to be to downloading music. In Amsterdam I loved Concerto with their wide selection and second hand area and Midtown Records with their recommendation boards, they seem both still to be open at least.

So I find myself, as in Architecture, sitting on the cusp of the analogue and digital age with one foot in both camps so to speak. Record listening and shopping has never been easier in the digital age and with websites like scissorkick and hypemachine its truly a fantastic world of music out there. But what happened to my love of shopping for music in a music loving environment? Will this go the way of the Dodo, with real life music shops slowly dying out? I hope that like Stupido real life record shops and online shops can compliment each other and not kill each other off.

Rosslyn chapel near Edinburgh is a very magical building, not least because I was married there, oh and some famous book and film was set there apparently! However a 600 year old piece of music has (maybe) been discovered encoded into the arches of the building, by a father and son team. There will be a recital of the music in Rosslyn chapel itself in a few days time. See Stuart and Tommy Mitchell’s website for details and to listen to the music they discovered.

Architecture of course a kind of encoding of information into a physical form, but its usually one way, the building itself is a product of explicit codes like the local building code for example and implicit codes, like a cultural value encoded into the decoration of that building. The only modern equivalent of an explicit musical code encased into a building I can think of would be La Tourette by Corbusier who worked with Iannis Xenakis and who may have encoded music into the window fenestration there.

Yes Lordi won Eurovision, but what will happen next year in Helsinki, are we going to see a floodgate of kiss impersonators entering the competition or even more diverse and downright weird offerings, I hope it gets weirder as it can’t really get worse can it? The Finnish English language blogs I read covered it well, Georg blogged it live, Darren links to Silvia surely the highlight, and phils got the winning picture!
Oh and we all complain about those voting patterns I mean Russia’s Rubbish got 10’s and 12’s from virtually every country worried about its gas supply friendly neighbour! Some boffin has called this the Gravity Model, yes it’s a real scientific theory and has been written up with reference to Eurovision. Itresembles international trading patterns apparently.