One of the most annoying things about my music website, going back to the previous major incarnation and which carried over into this one, is that if you want to see the lyrics to a song (or the liner notes, or the links to share and download), well, you first have to start listening to a song. Only then are the lyrics displayed. This isn’t some dark pattern to boost song plays (I don’t have any stats or analytics on this page). It’s just a design shortcoming.

Now for most users, and dare I say fans, this may not be a problem, but then again, maybe they might also want to be able to refer back to something without waking up their cat or whatever.

Functionally, this isn’t difficult (although there are tricky edge cases). The difficulty lies in the design and ergonomics and UX.

• It shouldn’t break the existing main way to use the site and play songs
• There should be a visible way to do it, but not too visible
• It should be tailored to both desktop and mobile devices (i.e. NOT rely on showing an option on hover)

At this stage, I must have designed and coded at least 3 or 4 completely different solutions based on text links and buttons and icons in various positions, etc., but I think I finally have one that strikes the balance that I want. It’s minimalist, you can safely ignore it, but if you’re looking for it, it’s fairly easy to discover (especially on desktop/tablet). Which is what I’ll let you do without describing it here :)

Now once you do use it, it has some repercussions.

• By default and as before, when you click on a song to play it, the lyrics are displayed, but if you previously displayed then hid the lyrics of a song without playing it, it will remember what you did, and so the lyrics won’t be displayed by default if you later play that song.
• I also decided to let the user open and close as many songs/lyrics as they wish, to avoid wild page jumps. If you go nuts and you’re lost, note that you can click the pink note button on the left of the UI to scroll to the song that’s currently playing.

The general idea, for better of for worse, is that the UI won’t do anything sneaky that you didn’t directly do yourself, so it won’t force you to figure out extra arbitrary choices I might have made for you, on top of the ones that can’t be avoided...

I nearly forgot. I was motivated and inspired to finally do this by what Alexander Rutz (@animaux@oslo.town) did to his site (which was in part inspired by mine—love it!). So thanks Alex!

But wait, there’s more!

As I mentioned when I introduced this major new version of the site, I went with a very minimal design after years of baroque excess.

In this release, I decided to take a small step in the other direction by changing the default font from Helvetica to Atkinson Hyperlegible, which is, well, hyperlegible, and which I’m quite fond of esthetically.

I know and I’m ashamed to say that my music page is probably woefully lacking in terms of accessibility, but the sad fact is that I’m a Sunday coder and I don’t yet have the knowledge and knowhow to make the necessary changes, although it is definitely on my todo list, and may even lead to yet another total overhaul of the site if necessary.

As usual, let me know if you run into any strangeness and/or what you think about these changes.

And if you’re actually reading this, thank you for keeping the indieweb alive by visiting personal sites and blogs!

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I am so proud and delighted to be able to say I collaborated on a song with the one and only @Traiken@mastodon.social! As I wrote in the liner notes on my #Faircamp site:

I stumbled on a poem by Traiken on Mastodon which really spoke to me, and before I knew it, I was writing a melody to it. I sent a rough arrangement to Traiken hoping he wouldn’t be offended. Thankfully, he was thrilled, went on to gloriously flesh out the arrangement in his inimitable style, and this is the result.

Traiken’s music is instantly recognizable, both due to his signature sound and his unique compositional style. In fact, I’m such a big fan that I was moved to review his album Heartless Angels on NHAM!

That’s why I felt some trepidation when I sent him my demo, and why I’m so glad that our respective styles and universes melded so well and So Much!

If you haven’t heard it yet, I hope you’ll give it a proper listen up until it’s massive, rousing finale, and then tell the whole wide world about it!

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How did this whole sknot business come about you ask? Spoiler alert: don’t read if you want things to stay shrouded in mystery! Back in June, I wrote a rather angry song, and I guess I felt hesitant to release it after the more positive albeit bittersweet songs on my recently released offbeat album...

I joked on Mastodon that I could release it under a pseudonym, and immediately thought of “sknot”, i.e. “not sknob“ maybe (I don’t pronounce the k in sknob or sknot, but you do you, I don’t mind either way.)

Plus it reminded me of a silly lyric that has been living rent-free in my head after hearing it played live only once on TV over 40 years ago:

She said your nose is running honey/I said sorry, but it’s not

(I searched for that song/live video yesterday and found it! And yes, I remembered the lyrics and melody correctly, because my brain is weird...)

ANYWAY, before talking myself out of it, I bought the sknot.fr domain name, whipped up a #Faircamp site, asked Ordos Mk.0 (@ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club) to master my mix, and then published the song there.

I also created a new artist under my Mirlo account, a great feature by the way, and published the song there also. I set it up so that all proceeds go to @mirlo@musician.social if you buy it, a small but heartfelt gesture of support.

But wait, there’s more!

To my utter delight, musician and remixer extraordinaire (and all around delightful person) C.Circo (@CCirco@ravenation.club) gloriously remixed “What Will It Take“, and took it where no sknob or sknot had gone before!

And there you have it.

Will sknot release more songs? Who knows!

(Although I’m told he has some half-written lyrics lying around, so I guess it’s at least a possibility.)

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So I usually chronicle my musical adventures on this blog, but between the three-month-long heatwave and the adventures themselves, it just dawned on me that I had totally neglected to keep up. So I’ll hopefully be catching up over the next few days, starting with this post. #NHAMFest26 took place on August 27, with an animated and retrostrange pre-fest evening on the 26th, CELEBRATING CREATIVE HUMANS AND FRIENDLY HANGOUTS as the (n)hamster who made it all happen described the event, which saw a non-stop series of artists perform from 5am to 1am the next morning (UTC time).

I’m not supposed to play favorites, but I’m only human and I have to say that Sound Of The Void (@Firesledge@piaille.fr), Johann Bourquenez (@johann@masto.bike), control.org (@controlfreak@social.control.org) and (big surprise) @bgm@musicians.today and his son George were particular highlights for me (no offense to the others whom I also greatly enjoyed).

I participated too, by helping with organization and backstage logistics, and by playing my own set, because it generally takes about a year for me to forget how stressful it was the last time. And as usual, I was paralyzed with stage fright from start to finish because I think playing live is totally incompatible with my brand of offbeatness. Mentally, I was relatively serene, even though I hadn’t been able to learn my songs properly due to the uninterrupted crushing heat, but my body begged to differ and tried to sabotage the whole thing. Nevertheless, I muddled through acoustic versions of the songs from my latest album, offbeat, and even brought out the ukulele to play my smash hit, Ukulele Bonk to close out the set, and the kind audience was very supportive.

The whole festival, despite tricky logistics, went off with nary a hitch, I managed to catch all but 2 or 3 acts (out of 20 or so), a lot of people showed up, and the vibe in the interactive chat was fantastic all the way through.

Until the next time I forget how traumatic it is.

Thank you to those who attended and/or watched the replay of my set and sent kind and supportive words my way. I really appreciate it! Several more recordings are available on the NHAM Live Performances page.

And a huge thank you to the (n)hamster for the huge amount of work he put in to make this happen!

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Since I’m often asked this question, I’m going to be lazy and publish answers I posted on the bonkwave forum a while back:

1

In clumps:

The Beatles, Harry Nilsson

Prokofiev, Schubert, Erik Satie

Emerson, Lake and Palmer (I was young, but it did open my ears to some stuff)

Weird Belgian bands I used to be friends with (Aksak Maboul, COS...)

Tuxedomoon, The Residents, Snakefinger, Renaldo and the Loaf...

Kurt Weill (my all-time musical songwriting hero), Carla Bley, Nino Rota

Bernard Herrmann, John Barry

Robert Wyatt, early Gong, Magma

Talking Heads, B 52s, XTC, and other post-punk bands (Siouxie, Ian Dury, Madness, others...)

Kraftwerk, Gary Numan

Philip Glass, John Adams, Laurie Anderson

All of Zappa up to the mid to late 70s, Albert Marcœur

French singer-songwriters (Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg, Nino Ferrer, Georges Brassens, Richard Gotainer, a few more...)

Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds

Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli

That's it for the early years 😅

2

I came to jazz much later (via fusion bands at first, and probably thanks to Zappa also). My dad listened to a lot of scratchy old blues records, which I should have included in my list, because one thing that puts me off a lot of mainstream music, is the total absence of blue notes (or even slightly weird non-diatonic or extended chords) 😅

3

I mentioned Prokofiev in my list because my earliest musical memory is hearing the famous dance of the knights from Romeo and Juliet on the radio and my brain exploding. Just thinking about that piece gives me goosebumps. And looking at my list again, every artist I mentioned has tracks that give me goosebumps just by thinking of them! 🪿

Also in elementary school (in France), I had a music teacher who taught us a series of original songs, each one about an animal. And once we all knew our songs really well, he had us sing them at the same time, and they all fit together forming counterpoints and harmonies and canons, and my head exploded again, and I think that this influenced me more than anything else. In fact, I still remember the melody and lyrics of my song (the hippopotamus 😄) 50 years later! 🦛

These are my main influences. I obviously listened to a lot more stuff over the years. People often ask me if I was influenced by The Divine Comedy for instance, which is very flattering, but no, because I discovered them rather late in life. Similarly, I would bring the entire Cardiacs discography to my desert island, but I only discovered them a few short years ago (not that my music bears any resemblance to them, unfortunately).

And today, through my involvement with NHAM and The Indie Beat Television, I mostly listen to artists from the fediverse!

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the bonk way is my collaborative contribution to The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves 3 Sample Challenge

I didn’t know what to do with this edition’s sample pack. I lack the required chops (I am sample-challenged), and I said as much on Mastodon... That’s when C.Circo (@CCirco@ravenation.club) came to the rescue by suggesting we collaborate on a track, and this is the result. The lyrics are an ode to the ethos of #bonkwave, and an expression of my gratitude towards C.Circo, who embodies that ethos.

It was mastered by Ordos Mk.0 (@ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club)

You can hear it alongside a ton of other great #bonkwave sample-challenge tracks on The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves 3

You can also find it on my Faircamp site, which has an exhaustive collection of bonkwave-related materiel.

Finally, the bonk way is available on my shiny new hand-crafted music site.

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I was interviewed by Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) about my new album offbeat over on #NHAM.

Read the interview →

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As I wrote on Mastodon in what turned out to be an interminable chronicle of the making of offbeat :

I’ve never released an album. I write and publish individual songs that progressively outline and become part of albums, sometimes jumping around from one album to the next.

But collaborating on projects on the fedi has taught me something I usually lack : patience. Weeks or months often go by between the moment I finish a song and its release.

Which has probably put me in the necessary headspace to think of a whole album before I’ve actually finished any of the songs.

The idea for the album came from the song I wrote for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves album back in October 2025. I usually write silly songs, or topical songs about ideas or issues, political or otherwise, and have released rather few personal, inward-looking songs in all my decades of making music. But Downfall was my first, serious, earnest #bonkwave track, which is what got the ball rolling, and so after some hesitation and prodding from early listeners, I included (a remastered version of) Downfall on offbeat.

I’m definitely stepping out of my comfort zone with this album, as all the songs are about me, or say a lot about me in a less roundabout way than usual, and not always in a very flattering light. But hopefully, they will still appeal and speak to people who don’t have my particular brand of oddballness (I just realized I could have called the album oddball instead of offbeat, but I’ll stick to the more musical option...).

And hopefully, it will be an interesting ride for regular folks too.

Musically, the album is quite varied (no two songs are in the same key, and meters vary from three to four to five to six or maybe even 12), even though the songs always somehow end up sounding like my slightly oddball, offbeat pop songs. Probably because I never worry about making them sound like proper pop songs that follow proper pop song conventions. I let the words dictate the melodies, which dictate the harmonic and song structures, and the arrangements are then dictated by a mixture of personal taste, available tools and instruments, degree of (im)patience, number of spoons, musical chops and lack thereof and of course, serendipity. The result is what it is, for better or for worse, although hopefully the former.

In other words, I hope you enjoy the album, which you can listen to and/or download in the usual places:

• My shiny new hand-crafted music site.
• My Faircamp site
• Mirlo
• Bandwagon.fm
• Oh, and as an experiment, I also created a dedicated javascript-free page for the album.

I would like to thank Emma and Sam (@ethicalrevolution@climatejustice.social) and a lot of lovely people on the fediverse for their encouragement and support.

Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank Ordos Mk.0 (@ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club) for expertly and enthusiastically mastering the album.

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Downfall was written back in October for the Four Seasons of Bonk Wave fall album, which was appropriately released in spring (if you’re in the northern hemisphere like me :)

Downfall also sparked and opens my upcoming album, offbeat. For now, you can hear it alongside a ton of other great #bonkwave tracks on The Four Seasons of Bonk Wave: Autumn Waves 2 (Autumn Waves is actually a triple album!)

You can also find it on my Faircamp site, which has an exhaustive collection of bonkwave-related materiel.

Finally, Downfall is available on my shiny new hand-crafted music site.

And thank you to @ordosmarkzero@ravenation.club for mastering the track!

If you’ll pardon a little music geekery, all these months after having written and recorded the song, I’m still kind of amazed by how moving from D minor to D minor 7 (pretending is phony...) changes the feel of the song. And it’s not just the arrangement or the harmonies. I get the same effect when I’m just strumming an acoustic guitar.

Also, don’t ask me why, but I remember that when I sat down to write the music, my initial idea was to make a song with a lot of silence in it. I mostly failed, but still.

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In the first post in this series, I explained why I used PHP to generate the playlist of my new hand-crafted music site from a large-ish XML file, instead of doing it locally like I used to (damn you Chrome and Firefox for dropping XSLT support!)

Thing is, depending on the speed of your device and your internet connection, it takes a few short seconds for PHP to do it’s thing on the server, before sending the result in one go to your browser.

And this slight delay has been nagging at me since day one. So I’ve been thinking of ways to load the very lightweight page skeleton, and then retrieve the rendered playlist from the server.

And I finally took the time to figure out how to do it, using the javascript Fetch API to fetch the PHP code in a separate file once the skeleton loads. Which meant rethinking a bit of code for everything to keep working like before (basically making sure the data is loaded before calling anything critical).

After ironing out the kinks, I’m pretty sure I have a version that works!

The question now is, do I actually like it better? It does have the following advantages:

• The site loads instantly, even on a slow device.
• There’s a fun little loading animation. I went with an austere design after years of visual excess, so the animation reintroduces a touch of whimsy.
• When you click on a link to an album or a song from somewhere else like here (or your Mastodon feed), you get a bit of visual context before the page scrolls down to the target album or song.

I did a quick poll on Mastodon, which came out in favor of NOT going this route. Still, if you’re reading this, it probably means I decided to roll it out anyway.

It’ll be easy enough to roll back if I change my mind or if it proves to be troublesome or unpopular.

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