I'm catching up; and so hopefully is Royal Mail...

It's taken me a long time to catch up after my unplanned absence and now there is so much new stuff that I want to get hold of to listen to, of which more below. To do that however I rely heavily on the services of Royal Mail, the UK Postal Service, to bring packages to my door and just recently this long standing organisation has been involved in protracted industrial action over the subject of changes demanded by the modern competitive environment. It is possible that, for all parties involved and not merely out of my self-interest, over the recent weekend a deal has been reached that will put all interested parties back on course.

Quite possibly the future of Royal Mail is at stake here and this kind of consideration somehow reminded me of the past, an increasing music collection, and then a 2003 album Give Up - The Postal Service.
I no longer even attempt to keep my CD and vinyl collections in any logical order and although this probably started as a matter of lassitude it has now become a quite deliberate policy.
By profession I'm a chemist, which seen in simple terms (that are almost always good) involves toxic cookery and, when things don't go quite so well, nu-alchemy! As an undergraduate therefore I had to go to lectures on quantum physics that left me cold and also seemed incredibly pointless and theoretical. The 'Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle' has few such simple and useful applications larger and thus more useful than the subatomic. Put very simplistically it states that it is fundamentally impossible to know "what some thing is and where it is simultaneously just so long as it is far too small to be useful in any sensible way" - but my life-enhancing discovery is that it also describes my music collection perfectly. By ensuring that remembered and sought for items regularly, but of course totally unpredictably, become mislaid a natural quid pro quo means that those which have genuinely become either forgotten or lost will inevitably come to light again!
Thus, while I was hunting for the CD Give Up, I preternaturally came across my CD of the (eponymous) 2000 album Saint Low. I had forgotten about it for several years and so I listened to that again too! In fact I found both and they are too good to be forgotten and so I'm planning to review both albums on here in the next week.

I've also got a whole list of things I want to find an excuse to order - enough to keep me out of mischief at least until Christmas - and the first few arrived on Saturday and this morning. Coming soon are my thoughts on:
iLiKETRAiNS - Elegies to Lessons Learnt
Maxïmo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures

Already on order are (yet) another two albums from the hot-bed that continues to be Montreal and they are...
Patrick Watson - Close To Paradise
Letters Letters - Letters Letters

... and that is not to mention the latest album from Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War, which I have already mentioned!
Last for now, but not least is Awyren - Cerys Matthews' first EP entirely in Welsh, which was released today on CD by Cardiff-based KungFu Records. Sorry about the poor representation of the cover art - I'll add better as soon as I can. (24 October - at least one job got done!)

Amazon.co.uk does not seem to know about this one, and I can't tell you quite what it sounds like yet either, but I have just ordered it regardless! It is available, worldwide, from sebon.co.uk; always a good place to search for all music Welsh! The price is GBP 5.50 (for guidance only - US$ 11.00, € 8.25) and this includes post and packing in the UK. For delivery abroad add GBP 1.00 (about US$ 2.00 or € 1.50).