Tuesday 26 July 2011

The Trespassers


Dear listener,

Here is a cautionary tale that I have derived from a story that one of my school teachers used to tell. He used to tell it to people who wanted to drop one or another of their GCSE subjects. When you have listened to it you may wonder what relevance it could possibly have to education ... but I think the message is clear enough. Not to give too much away, but there is a certain way of dealing with problems that may not be the best in the long run.

Bringing an appropriately transylvanian atmosphere to the soundtrack, we have the Kyiv Chamber Choir's "Hymns of the All Night Vigil" and a bit of dark ambient wonderworking from Robert Rich's "Cowell Theater" album, both of which are available from the scrumptious Magnatune website.

Here is a link to the audio file; but - if you have not already - how about subscribing with iTunes or adding the feed into your podcatcher so you never miss another episode. Hopefully we will be kicking things up from fortnightly to weekly episodes in the not-too-distant future, so stay tuned.

Tim (sound engineer extraordinaire) worked really hard with me to bring this episode for your listening pleasure so we hope that you enjoy it. Thank you for listening, and if you did enjoy it, please let us know with a comment or something.

Sweet dreams,

Seymour.

Thursday 7 July 2011

The Cat and The Mouse


Dear Listener,

Traditionally we know that cats and mice do not get on with one another - it's a cat-eat-mouse world! But here is a story that just asks "what if" a particular cat and a particular mouse should break the mould because of their love for one another?

This is a story adapted closely from one of Grimm's Fairy Tales. The brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were collectors of European folk tales, publishing some of our best loved and most often recited stories in the early 1800s. Unlike the "disneyfied" fairy tales that have become popular in our own time, the stories that the Grimm brothers collected tended to be dark and obscure ...

The rather evocative, at times dark and obscure, solo violin of Anthony Salvo accompanies this tale which I hope you enjoy. If you like the music you can download it yourself from magnatune.com

To listen to this week's podcast you can click on this link but I really recommend subscribing to the rss feed (there's a selection of feeds at the top right) with a podcatcher like Juice or iTunes - then you won't miss any future episodes.

Enjoy!