I am not really very much interested in ‘keeping up’ with the ‘latest thing’ in music. Through the marvels of contemporary technology we now have ready access to centuries’ worth of music from large parts of the globe. The assumption that something written, recorded, performed, produced, last week will inevitably be better, more interesting, more relevant (what does that really mean?) to/for me than something which appeared earlier is facile, at best, a remnant of modernism’s unthinking attraction to progress at all costs, and which sees ever new versions of expensive pieces of ‘kit’1 which do the same thing as the previous version, although in a flashier, presumably more seductive way, persuading me to part with money for no reason other than that contemporary society is only kept afloat by the circulation of money. Consumption as moral imperative!