the square mic was in my head because of the beastie boys book, which i got for xmas and devoured. it's marvellous. if you're the type to get excited about physical things (and especially books) it's a real joy. something about it reminded me of the dictionaries i work on - perhaps the different papers used for some signatures, maybe the fold out bit that goes through their gear, but it feels like a reference tome. it's an artifact, recording/telling the story of the music industry across those years, of a group of friends, of people who did something incredible with integrity, of loss, of new york (and la). the film of the related spike jonze live show is also great.

rich and i would sit and listen to check your head and ill communication while playing megadrive games, fiddling with guitars, dreaming up music. i loved that i could hear the pzm in their recordings. back then - before cheap high quality home recording gear - there was something hugely democratic about a cheap, weird square mic from radioshack (tandy?) that took an AA battery, had a bog-standard quarter-inch jack plug that would plug into anything and sounded great, somehow sucking up a whole band in a way other mics couldn't, and also showed up on awesome records like ill communication. i think we recorded an entire demo mini album with ours in the back of a martial arts centre in gloucester. i remember banging a nail into a wardrobe and hanging one on it to record demos for data in a hurry in a flat above an abandoned shop in leicester. it was command stripped to a wall in the cheltenham rehearsal room hells angels randomly evicted us from in 2016 (it was a saturday. they had their kids with them. the bouncy castle was to keep the kids entertained while they made sure we fucked off properly). i've heard they're great on double bass. it's currently sounding awesome somewhere near my guitar amp, as i make new scratchy demos.