Niklas's thoughts

Luke Howard – 'Galileo'

March 15, 2026

Galileo

I do not like easy jazz. I don't know what is happening. Maybe I'm getting softer in my older fucking age or it's just that I'm appreciating a recording where you can hear playing not in the modern-classical jazz sense—i.e. fucking boring twiddling à la dreadfully-virtuosic-performer style—but instead how the piano hammers move inside a piano.

The EP Galileo by Luke Howard is a lovely EP where old-schooly piano playing meets a neo-classical sensibility.

I feel weirded out by myself: I actually like the 1940s-ish type of playing, how it twines with steady and quieter background chord thrums, while the Howard's right hand louder plays melodies and curlicues.

Fuck me, this is nice. I can't remember a single song name nor a single melody but I just like this shit. To me, this is a pleasant take on romantic piano playing in jazz. This is everything that the Downton Abbey scriptwriter should have wanted to do and failed to do. This is made with feeling and does not at all feel like it's written by AI, thank Bog. Get in.

#piano #music #jazz

Starting to read Christopher Clark's 'A Scandal in Königsberg'

March 13, 2026

Königsberg

The book has an intriguing intro:

Between 1835 and 1842, scandal tightened around two clergymen in the Baltic port city of Königsberg. It destroyed their reputations, drove them out of their jobs and into prison, and banished them from public life. Their legal exoneration of the most serious charges against them came too late to reverse the damage. I have been thinking about this small vortex of turbulence ever since I happened on the relevant files in the early 1990s. The campaign of denunciations and rumour that took down the Lutheran preachers Johann Ebel and Heinrich Diestel belongs to an age before the advent of paparazzi, radio, television and digital social media, but that is precisely what endows their story with fabular power. Resemblances to present-day persons and situations, though not intended, cannot be ruled out.

Ooh! Witchy start!

The book is #1 in LitHub's best-reviewed nonfiction list for this week.

#book #reading #quote

Soulwax: Abbey Road After Hours

March 13, 2026

The Dwaele brothers, a.k.a. Soukwax, a.k.a. 2 Many DJs, have now released a 50-minute video from their February 2026 gig in Studio One in Abbey Road—yes, the room where Shirley Bassey recorded 'Goldfinger' in the world-famous recording studio—that shows why they're great DJs.

I really like the mix between feeling you're caught in a liminal space between being in the same room as the DJs and being in the surrounding areas, watching buspeople, empty room, and corridors, for example, here:

#music #soulwax #dj #dance

A brief comment on 'Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere'

March 13, 2026

Theroux

I've recently seen 'Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere', the first documentary that Theroux has made for Netflix.

I wish the documentary were in-depth; even though it focused on Theroux's usual way of interviewing people—calmly asking questions, simply pointing out inconsistencies in people's stories—there's a lot of show-and-tell of manosphere influencers but little to show how and why they're wrong.

Don't get me wrong: these influencers are often wrong, always in how their xenophobia (real or manufactured for money) shows, for example, through sexism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

I mean, I think the documentary would have been better made if more time were spent on not just following the influencers or asking them slight questions but rather speaking with people who research and know how the manosphere influences not only their target audiences (young boys who become older boys with money and are allowed to vote) but the results of their behaviour on others.

This documentary scantily passed victims. I'd like to have heard interviews with women, especially those who did make it into the documentary.

Unfortunately, even though Theroux hits some good points, I think it's a mistake for this documentary to mostly just pass influencer content through the Netflix funnel rather than to analyse, question, research the field, and ultimately present a better documentary.

#video #sexism #islamophobia #homophobia #xenophobia #documentary

An excerpt from a new book about Bowie and his search for life, death, and God

February 18, 2026

From Peter Ormerod's David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God:

While working on his new music, Bowie was also working on the realization of a lifetime's dream: a piece of musical theatre. His collaboration with Michael Cunningham had fizzled out, but Bowie persevered. He got in touch with Enda Walsh, an Irishman whose plays and musicals, including Disco Pigs, Penelope and Once, had by then received countless awards. The result of their efforts was arguably as significant as any of Bowie's other last works: put it together with the touring exhibition and you have a kind of multimedia autobiography.

Agape was still very much on Bowie's mind during his discussions with Walsh. “There was a lot of talk about the beauty of unconditional love,' Walsh recalled. Elsewhere, Walsh said, 'We looked a lot at stained-glass windows, how a story is told with a central image. How it's all broken and shattered.'

After the false start with Cunningham, Bowie's work with Walsh was showing potential. So in 2014 Bowie asked Ivo van Hove, one of the most decorated theatre directors in Europe, to help take it to the stage. From Bowie's earlier concept, two elements survived: Thomas Jerome Newton, his character from The Man Who Fell to Earth, and the poet Emma Lazarus, who was beginning to elide with the resurrected biblical figure. But details remained scarce. 'There should be a killer in it, there should be a girl in it,' was all he told van Hove.

Bowie, Walsh and van Hove met in New York in 2014, along with Corinne 'Coco' Schwab, Bowie's personal assistant and confidante since the mid-1970s. Bowie and Walsh read the script to van Hove, interspersed with songs played on CD. Van Hove thought something was missing, and told Bowie that he needed to write 'the one song in the beginning. We need to know who that guy is. And we need a song that establishes the character within three or four minutes.' So Bowie wrote the song and recorded a demo. The song was called 'Lazarus'.

'It sounded like an immediate Bowie classic, even in a demo version,' said van Hove. 'And I knew: now we have a show. Now we know who the guy is, what he's longing for, what his issue is. It's mysterious at the same time. It's everything.'

On My Bloody Valentine's 'only tomorrow'

February 1, 2026

Stream the album via this page.

My Bloody Valentine's song 'only tomorrow' is great example of what the band could and can create.

Kevin Shields has a billion guitar pedals and ways to make effects; still, this song is basically something that a young person with a few computer-based effects could make. Shield's great knack at creating music is what separates him from the chaff.

It takes a fucking aeon of trial-and-error to come up with this fucking sound, let me tell you, in case it's not already obvious to you. To mix a simple guitar that's not particularly fuzzed with another guitar that sounds like a Big Muff pedal has been blasted through overdrive... And pairing those two elements with what seems to me to be pink and white noise, and then adding Bilinda Butcher's processed vocals...

The arrangement and full-on playing could easily have become ham-fisted but here we are: this is fucking grace.

From the first verses to the bridge at 01:20, to then twelve bars of overlays: softly toned-down guitar feedback and then back to the verse?

mbv live in 2025.

Fuck me. This is some really thought-through music that still sounds like it's made by renegades and young punks. This is some proof that the next MBV album will fucking rock the world, if it ever comes. Only Kevin Shields would know, I guess.

03:29: the start of a solo-guitar tremolo melody starts. I can't believe how more guitars are added just a bit after the four-minute mark, and the song grows even more. Is that a Leslie speaker? I don't know. I've heard this song and it's taken me to other galaxies so many times that I can now afford to chill out and just go somewhere else in my mind with this. Repetition, minimalism, and a simple wall of guitar-based music – the drums can't be ignored, because unlike most of the guitars, they and the simple one guitar that follows the verse are the only instruments that seem to contain a bit of treble.

It's all mixed very extraordinarily. If you know anything about Kevin Shields's ways around music, you know he cares about everything in how music is presented.

At the end of the day, the song is a fucking tune. Regardless of how well-produced, engineered, mixed, and presented a track is, if it ain't a tune, people won't like it. This is a track that one could play on one acoustic guitar and people would get off on it.

#MyBloodyValentine #music #MusicTips #shoegaze #feedback #composition #sound #tone #guitar

The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky

January 13, 2026

I'm reading The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. I's a special book for mainly one reason: it shows Vaslav Nijinsky, a very famous person—perhaps the most famous dancer of all time—in his own words as he descends into madness.

It was first published in a highly bowdlerized edition; in 1995, the first unexpurgated edition was released.

Reading Nijinsky's diary is extremely freeing—because he writes perhaps without boundaries—and at the same time very trying. It's trying because he was obviously very ill at the time of writing; seems to get worse as the diary goes by; I've read a little more than a third of the diary so far.

A lot of texts are written as large swathes of text, not paragraphed. Here's just a few examples.

I showed her the blood on my foot. She does not like blood. I gave her to understand that blood was war and that I did not like war. I asked her a question about life by showing her a prostitute's dance. She felt it, but did not leave, because she knew I was playacting. The others thought I would lie down on the floor and make love. I did not want to complicate the evening and therefore got up whenever it was necessary. I felt God throughout the evening. He loved me. I loved Him. Our marriage was solemnized. In the carriage I told my wife that today was the day of my marriage to God. She felt this in the carriage, but lost the feeling in the course of the evening. I loved her and therefore gave her my hand, saying that I felt good. She felt the opposite.

I do not want to dance in St. Moritz, because people do not like me. I know they think I am a sick man. I am sorry for them because they think I am sick. I am in good health, and I do not spare my strength. I will dance more than ever. I want to teach dancing and will therefore work a little every day. I will also write. I will not go to evening parties anymore. I have had enough of this kind of jollity to last me a lifetime. I don't like jollity. I understand what jollity is. I am not cheerful and jolly, because I know that jollity is death. Jollity is the death of the mind. I am afraid of death, and therefore I love life.

I stand on my head in the ballet “Scheherazade,” where I had to represent a wounded beast. I represented the beast well, and therefore the audience understood me. Now I will represent feeling, and the audience will understand me. I know audiences because I have studied them well. Audiences like to be astonished. They know little and are therefore astonished. I know what is needed to astonish an audience, and therefore I am sure to succeed. Do you want to bet that I will have millions? I want to have millions in order to make the Stock Exchange crash. I want to ruin the Stock Exchange. I hate the Stock Exchange. The Stock Exchange is a brothel. I am not a brothel. I am life, and life is love for people. The Stock Exchange is death. The Stock Exchange robs poor people, who bring all the money they have in order to increase it, in the hope of achieving their goals in life. I love the poor and will therefore gamble on the Stock Exchange in order to beat the stockbrokers. Stockbrokers are all men who gamble on the Stock Exchange with vast sums. Vast sums are death, and therefore sums are not God. I want to win money on the Stock Exchange and will therefore go to Zurich one of these days. My wife is urging me to go to Zurich to see a nerve specialist in order to have my nervous system examined.

I do not like past centuries, because I am alive. I cannot write with this ink, because I do not feel it. I like a pencil because I am used to a pencil. I do not know why I picked up the fountain pen, because I can write well with a pencil. I do not have attractive handwriting, because I do not understand fountain pens. I like this fountain pen because it is very convenient. It can be worn in the pocket together with its ink. It is a very ingenious invention, because many people want to have a fountain pen. I do not like fountain pens, because they are not convenient. I will go on writing with mine because I received it as a present from my wife for Christmas. Christmas is a name for a habit that exists all over the world where there are Christians. I do not like Christianity, and therefore I am not a Christian. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are Christianity. I am God and not a Christian. I do not like Christians. I am God and not a Christian.

I do not study people in order to write about them afterward. I want to write in order to explain to people the habits that make feeling die. I want to call this book “Feeling,” I will call this book “Feeling.” I like feeling and will therefore write a lot. I want a big book about feeling because it will contain your whole life. I do not want to publish the book after your death. I want to publish it now. I am afraid for you because you are afraid for yourself. I want to tell the truth. I do not want to offend people. Perhaps you will be put in prison for this book. I will be with you because you love me. I cannot keep silent. I must speak. I know that you will not be put in prison, because you have not committed a legal error. If people want to judge you, you will say that everything you say is said by God. Then you will be sent to a lunatic asylum. You will be confined in a lunatic asylum, and you will understand the lunatics. I want you to be put in prison or in a lunatic asylum. Dostoevsky did a spell of hard labor, and therefore you too can be committed somewhere. I know men whose love never falters within them, and therefore they will not allow you to be committed anywhere. You will be free as a bird, for this book will be published in many thousands of copies. I want to sign “Nijinsky” for the sake of publicity, but my name is God. I love Nijinsky not like Narcissus but like God. I love him, for he gave me life. I do not want to pay compliments. I love him. I know his habits. He loves me, for he knows my habits. I am without habits. Nijinsky has habits. Nijinsky is a man with faults. Nijinsky must be obeyed because he speaks with the tongue of god. I am Nijinsky. Nijinsky is I. I do not want Nijinsky to be hurt, and therefore I will protect him. I am afraid for him because he is afraid for himself. I know his power. He is a good man. I am a good god. I do not like a bad Nijinsky. I do not like a bad God. I am God. Nijinsky is God. Nijinsky is a good and not an evil man. People have not understood him, and will not understand him if they think. I know that if I were obeyed for several weeks at a stretch, great results would ensue. I know that everyone will want to learn from me, and therefore I hope that my preaching will be understood. Everything I write is a teaching essential to mankind. Romola is afraid of me because she feels that I am a preacher. Romola does not want to have a preacher for a husband. Romola wants a young, good-looking, and rich husband. I am rich, good-looking, and young. She does not feel me, because she does not understand my beauty. I do not have regular features. Regular features are not god. God is not regular features. God is feeling in face. A hunchback is God. I like hunchbacks. I like ugly people. I am an ugly man with feeling. I dance hunchbacks and straight-backs. I am the artist who loves all shapes and all kinds of beauty. Beauty is not a relative thing. Beauty is god. God is beauty with feeling. Beauty is in feeling. I love beauty because I feel it and therefore understand it. Thinking people write nonsense about beauty. Beauty cannot be discussed. Beauty cannot be criticized. Beauty is not criticism. I am not criticism. Criticism is an attempt to be clever. I do not try to be clever. I flaunt my beauty. I feel love for beauty. I am not looking for straight noses. I like straight noses. I like my wife's nose because it has feeling.

#books

MTV – saved and rewound

January 12, 2026

A short while back, MTV—a.k.a. MTV Music—stopped broadcasting. Their website went fairly dead as well. The music video phenomenon didn't start with MTV but without MTV, it would have gone nowhere.

Now, a developer has taken it upon themselves to try and save the feeling that MTV was. Enter MTV Rewind.

What's saved:

120 Minutes (6,063 videos): The holy grail of alternative rock and shoegaze.

Headbangers Ball (1,604 videos): A shrine to thrash and heavy metal.

Yo! MTV Raps (348 videos): The golden age of hip-hop, preserved.

MTV Unplugged (343 videos): Stripped-back intimacy from before auto-tune ruled the charts.

Club MTV (232 videos): For the techno and house heads.

There are also decade-specific buckets—ranging from the experimental MTV 70s (268 videos) to the massive MTV 2020s (8,050 videos)—proving that the music video format isn’t dead, it just lost its home.

Here's an embedded example of MTV Rewind:

For more information about the project, see this Midnight Rebels post.

#music #video

January 8, 2026

Robyn's 'Sexistential' vs Factory Floor's 'Fall Back'

'Sexistential' feels a bit dated as Robyn's done this stuff before; it's not bad, it's just that I feel spoiled with how more of an pop innovator Robyn used to be. This isn't bad stuff! It's just that other artists, for example Fever Ray, make sexual music that's more exciting and uproariously fun than this. 'Sexistential' feels like Chicago house, the stuff that Robyn tapped with Honey.

I can't help but think of music like Factory Floor's song 'Fall Back' as I hear this new single. Even though their sound owes a lot to that of New Order, they managed to release something with a distorted and contorted vocal, a very simple bass-line, and drums that sounded as though they've been programmed by myself (not an accolade in any way), and yet everything coalesced and sounded good; better than that, it was really fucking good.

I hope Robyn's coming album contains a lot more interesting and mainly experimental stuff. She's a pop master, I get that, but we need more. MORE!

#music