Those records of the year in full

As the amount of new music I have time and inclination to listen to continues to dwindle I haven't got a lot to recommend for this year, but I did like:

Huntsville For Flowers, Cars and Merry Wars (Norwegian Krautrock, if you know what I mean)with guest vocals from the lovely Hanne Hukkelberg whose 2008 release Blood From a Stone I can heartily recommend.

Wire Red Barked Tree - as good as their first two 'comeback' records in the 1980s.

The Robert Mitchell 3io (yes I know it's a crap name) The Embrace - jazz interpretations of an eclectic selection of modern songs by the likes of Aphex Twin and Little Dragon - much better than similar efforts by The Bad Plus.

A perfect one to write to, although it didn't come out this year, but I was given it in 2011, is Inlandish by Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Tim Story: very reminiscent of Harold Budd's Eno collaborations with bits of Boards of Canada floating in and out and fragments of other Eno ambient classics such as On Land. Only with the recent re-release of a lot of the Cluster material can it be now be proved how much Eno 'borrowed' from these progenitors of ambient.

Alan Moore

A great interview with comics genius Alan Moore - in three parts - whenever he talks I find myself agreeing with almost everything he says, an example below:

'Taking responsibility for something is generally a good way of gaining some measure of control over it. That’s certainly true when it comes to one’s own life. You take responsibility for it and all of a sudden you have control over it. And I think it extends to other things as well. If we take responsibility for the way we’re governed and the way that we’re ruled economically and the way that the Anonymous and Occupy protesters seem to be doing, then that potentially can have a huge world-changing effect. That’s the same whether you’re talking about politics or whether you’re talking about the arts. If I hadn’t believed that it would be possible for me to have some sort of effect then I’d never have tried. As it turns out, my ideas have been communicated to a fair number of people. But back at the beginning, that was far from obvious. All that you had was your own belief in yourself. So yes, it’s vital that individuals believe that they can have an impact upon society. For one thing, it’s historically true. For another thing, it is the best thing to believe because if you believe otherwise that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is the philosophy of a natural-born slave in many respects.'