I was lucky enough to catch one of the first two performances in Durham Cathedral, which brought an extra layer of poignancy to the end of the piece where archive footage shows the miners all trooping into the nave on Gala day.

I also had the chance to see the relics of St Cuthbert - not the man himself, who despite the claims made for his miraculously preserved corpse, had finally gone the way of all things – but the hefty oak coffin in which the devoted monks carried him away from the Vikings and which still looks pretty sturdy now.

[On a semi-related note, I've just spent the last four weeks giving myself a crash course in Max/MSP, the open-ended multimedia software used by many electronic folk such as Matmos, Fennesz and Aphex Twin. But there was no way I was going to make a fool of myself by asking the famously technophile Autechre anything specific about it...]

Here’s the online version, with slightly fewer photos of me spoiling the wonderful views.

Bill Thompson Shifting Currents interview for hcmf

Expo Leeds review for Frieze

Review of Broadcast & The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age for Drowned in Sound

HCMF piece profiling Janek Schaefer’s latest project as well as his award-winning Extended Play installation.

My not-altogether complimentary review of the new Múm album.

Tortoise album review from the last-ever issue of Plan B (sob!).

And a little bit more Supersonic, from new folk website Folking Cool.

It’s true, Goblin were utterly preposterous, but fantastic with it.

Even if the finer points of their research into acoustic perception and spectral analysis are currently making a wonderful swishing sound over my head, it’s a fascinating place, and one which I hope to explore in more depth elsewhere in the future.

In the meantime, here’s The Synthetic Performer, 1984-style…

Although the credit crunch claimed Leeds’ version last year, the Bradford one still seems to be going strong. If there’s little to be done in the wake of last week’s Euro elections beyond hoping that the BNP will depart their posts in a hail of eggs, scornful laughter and Holocaust-denial charges sometime before the end of their alllotted terms, then at least we can take extra satisfaction from the fact that more than 100,000 people will be having a shamelessly multicultural good time in Peel Park this weekend. And the former National Front chairman won’t.

Over the next few months, I’ll be contributing features and news items to the site, focusing upon some of the festival’s artists, composers and projects.

For a start, here’s an interview with HCMF’s next composer-in-residence, the venerable Jonathan Harvey. And a piece about Belgian AV artists Visual Kitchen, whose installation based upon Harvey’s Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco will be giving festivalgoers a dose of transcendent vertigo in November.

Watch out for a future piece about IRCAM, the Parisan bunker of sonic experimentation…