Apologies for yesterday’s grouchy digression. Back to business today, and one of a bunch of new records that have been exciting me over the past week or two. Mountains are a new name to me, though it seems as if the Brooklyn-based duo have released a couple of albums before this one, “Choral”. Obviously, though, reading a press release from Thrill Jockey which cites Fennesz, Brian Eno and Susumu Yokota is going to drag me in pretty fast. But when the opening title track of “Choral” wafts in, what it reminds me of most is those luxurious, percolating Cluster records like “Zuckerzeit” or “Sowiesoso”, perhaps even the Harmonia records. Of recent records, you could safely file this one alongside the Arp and White Rainbow discs that came out last year. But Mountains aren’t quite so puritanical as to construct their music entirely from synths and computers. In fact, as these harmonious pieces gradually unravel, there’s a faintly vintage, hand-tooled air to a lot of the music, not least because of the tangible instrumentation that threads through the drones. By the end of the 12-odd minute opening track, there’s a humming Terry Riley organ, and then a passage of solemn and unadorned acoustic guitar, which leads into the gorgeous “Map Table”. When I wrote about Fennesz’s “Black Sea” the other week, I mentioned how Christian Fennesz’s guitar-playing was becoming more prominent and less treated in places on this set. I mentioned, as is my pathological habit, James Blackshaw. But it strikes me this morning that the comparison is even more relevant to Mountains on “Map Table”, in the way the thoughtful acoustic progressions begin as kind of conservatory kin to the Takoma School, and then gravitate towards something more silvery and unanchored. “Map Table” for all its distant crackle and phase, would fit rather neatly onto one of Tompkin Square’s “Imaginational Anthems” comps; perhaps a better comparison than Blackshaw might be someone like Greg Davis, who augments his picking with various kosmische electronica. The guitar continues to pick its way through “Telescope”, and the immersive hum is such here that I keep thinking of, perhaps, Popol Vuh at their most contemplative – “In Den Garten Pharaos”, maybe? By the end, the guitar is starting to strafe, and the inevitable reference point of Michael Rother comes into play, too. But this is a thoroughly engrossing record. I’ve just had a look at their myspace, and there aren’t any new tracks, but the stuff there should give you a clue as to why I’m making a fuss, hopefully. (Ha! Actually belatedly read to the end of the press release and it mentions Harmonia, Cluster and Popol Vuh. Symbiosis!)

A sad start to the day, then, to be woken by news on the Today programme of Oliver Postgate’s passing. For anyone in their late thirties and early forties, Postgate’s wonderful and vivid animations were an indelible part of our childhoods. As a spokesman for BBC’s children’s channel CBeebies noted, Postgate’s great strength lay in his ability to create “worlds within worlds”, the kind of places populated by talking dragons, sentient trains, pink woollen aliens and crotchety, intellectual woodpeckers. Postgate’s creations were arguably located in a more innocent era of children’s TV – programmes involving impressive amounts of multi-coloured knitwear, sticky back plastic and old washing up liquid bottles. A time, clearly, before the zip and sophistication of American cartoons dominated the teatime schedules. There’s a certain held-together-with-gaffer-tape quality to the jerky, stop-start animation of his shows; something ineffably British, and very post-war, about making puppets out of wool and cardboard. But there’s also something strange and magical at work here, a storytelling quality firmly located in the tradition of children’s literature, stretching back to Carroll and Barrie. It’s easy, of course, to spot the lace and Victoriana in Bagpuss, with its sepia tinted credits, and there’s something of the Alice about his owner, Emily. While the diminutive inhabitants of Pogle’s Wood, for instance, could perhaps be identified as more benign relatives to Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Goodfellow and other greenwood tricksters rustled up from folklore. The first episode of Pogle’s Wood, incidentally, was considered too scary for children. It is, you might think, something of an achievement for a puppet show. But this is from a time when it was OK to scare children. Doctor Who aside, I can think of number of TV shows – admittedly mostly clustered around the mid-Seventies, a few years after Pogle’s Wood – that regularly gave me the spooks. Children Of The Stones, King Of The Castle, The Changes, The Tomorrow People (well, the opening credits, at least). But, of course, you can argue these were all aimed at a slightly older age group and probably went out after Newsround, which if memory serves seemed to act as a watershed between tots and school children. One email read out on the Today programme this morning, though, cited Postgate’s Noggin The Nog as a major “behind the scenes” moment. Certainly, the show’s opening voiceover – “In the lands of the North, where the Black Rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long the Men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale...” – came loaded with all manner of unsettling signifiers: black rocks… cold sea… dark nights… In what I can only assume to be a slight nod to Hamlet, Noggin, king of the Viking-like Nogs, was perpetually under threat from his wicked uncle, Nogbad the Bad. Elsewhere, there was Graculus, a large and sinister green bird of unknown origin. Fortunately, there was also a friendly Ice Dragon among the ranks to balance out any sensations of pre-adolescent creeping dread. All of these, by the way, were built in a barn in Kent. For those wishing to avoid having their youth forever bespoiled, look away now. The Clangers were hand-knitted, and had skeletons made of meccano, wood and brass ball joints, while their view of the galaxy stretching out into infinity was, in fact, 8 x 5 sheets of battened hardboard painted midnight blue. It’s to the credit of Postgate – and his long-term collaborator Peter Firmin – that in an act of alchemy, they could make magic from such humble materials. For such brilliant memories, thank you, Mr Postgate,

Just looking idly through the Top 40 this morning, I can’t see any sign of Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah”, which apparently turned up in the midweeks as a result of some X-Factor shenanigans. I’m proud (and perhaps not a little pompous) to say that I’ve never watched anything more than about five minutes of The X-Factor, since as a rule I try and avoid things which will almost certainly annoy me. But through some kind of grim pop-cultural osmosis, I guess, I do know that some girl who reputedly sounds like Dolores O’Riordan (like Laura Marling, then?) has sung the old Cohen song on the show and that the winner’s Christmas Number One single will be “Hallelujah”. In some corners of the media and the internet, all this has been greeted with a lot of hot-under-the-collar pontificating, which I don’t want to add to, but which has prodded the Buckley take back into the public consciousness (much the same thing happened when, by some uncanny coincidence, someone did the tune on American Idol). Now far be it from me to pre-judge what the X-Factor version might turn out to be like. But in truth, I don’t care, other than being mildly relieved that this imminent flood of cash for Leonard Cohen is coming at the end of 2008, rather than at the end of 2007: if he’d been so fortunate 12 months ago, I wonder if he would have embarked on the financially exigent, artistically extraordinary shows that we’ve seen since the summer? What I find much more irritating is the idea of great songs being sanctified, that these gleaming cultural documents shouldn’t be touched by unclean mainstream hands. I mean, really, who gives a toss if some Redcoat belter sings a song you like in a way that you don’t like? Play the Buckley version, or the John Cale version, or the Rufus Wainwright version, or the original. Switch the radio off when the X-Factor one comes on. Just don’t whinge, as if there should be some law against the ITV masses getting to hear a version of a good song. As a music hack, and a man of a certain age, I suppose I have to constantly guard against becoming a grumpy old man. But it’s a condition I find hugely unbecoming, and perhaps more importantly a huge waste of energy. The truth is, the excess of choice which we’re presented with nowadays, the long tail or whatever, means that it’s easier than ever before to block out all the static of popular culture that disagrees with our fragile metabolisms. Why get worked up about shit, or about Top 40 minutiae, when you can easily pretend it doesn’t exist? Which I suppose is another reason why I generally only blog about music I like, and try and avoid gripes like this. And why I should really be blogging about Death, or Mountains, or Six Organs Of Admittance, or Alela Diane, or Eddy Current Suppression Ring, or Arbouretum this morning. The point is, though, that “Hallelujah” is a very good song. Not perhaps as great as it’s sometimes made out to be – Cohen, Buckley and maybe even Rufus Wainwright have all written better themselves. And when the X-Factor thing has been and gone, it still will be a good song. No-one will die. It’s going to be OK, I promise. Everyone move on, there’s nothing to see here.

Four hundred and twenty-odd posts in, it seems I'm belatedly getting the hang of this, since I've just learned how to embed Youtube links into Wild Mercury Sound. Here, then, is the excellent new take on "Old Enough" by The Raconteurs, augmented by Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe. [youtube]YBEkNefuGCU[/youtube] Beautifully shot as well as played, I think. It strikes me that perhaps "Consolers Of The Lonely" might not have received as much love as previous Jack White endeavours, but I like it more and more, and I can't think of many bands I've seen in the past couple of years who play with such verve and virtuosity as they do(here's my review of their Hammersmith show back in May). Anyway, this is fantastic. On the album, I recall "Old Enough" sounding like an odd relation of English folk-rock, recalling - especially the Swarbrickish fiddle - Fairport Convention. Here, though, driven by the meticulous picking of Skaggs, it's recast as flighty, plaintive bluegrass, an endearingly studied hoedown that eventually wanders into "Wake Up Little Susie". I suppose when people mythologise bluegrass, it's often presented as a raw, untethered music. But actually, as this clip proves, there's something very precise and fragile about it, joyous but also, thanks to the skill involved, mighty self-conscious, too. But that self-consciousness is, I guess, enhanced by The Raconteurs, White and Brendan Benson in their new hats, White singing in that restrained and uncharacteristically nervous tone that'll be familiar to anyone who saw his deferential performance of "Your Loving Cup" with The Rolling Stones in "Shine A Light". I sometimes think, and am sometimes fairly sure that, hyperbolically, Jack White is a rare artist destined for posterity, one whose body of work will eventually measure up, in some way, against those of his heroes. It's interesting, though, to watch him in their company now, and to see how the impetuous swagger he usually brings to his music is replaced by an oddly fannish meekness. It makes him more human, for the time being, I suppose, and it certainly doesn't detract from the strength of this version.