Smartphone zombies - the modern urban nightmare

Because, probably, it interferes with its nation's world-renown public transport punctuality, the German city of Augsburg has come up with a clever way to stop people getting inconveniently hit by trams when crossing roads while glued to their smartphones. The city, which lies some 50 miles north-west of Munich, is trialling the use of red LEDs embedded into the ground on pedestrian crossings which flash when a tram is approaching. "It creates a whole new level of attention," an Augsburg city spokesman told the German news organisation N-TV.

According to the DEKRA Accident Research institute, 17 per cent of people on European streets use their smartphones in road traffic. One of DEKRA's researchers, Clemens Klinke, said one incident in Stockholm made a particular impression. "A young girl stood in the middle of the road, got her phone out and started texting," he told the Daily Telegraph. "It wasn’t until a bus driver sounded his horn that she realised where she was standing." Sadly, a 15-year-old in Munich wasn't so lucky last month, killed by a tram while crossing a road wearing headphones and looking at her phone.

Tragic as that was, it is sadly a symptom of the mindless attachment we have to our smartphones, and the equally mindless distraction it causes. Germans even now have a word for it - "smombies". How often do you have to step out of the way because someone is walking towards you more interested in their call or texting than looking where they're going? That might merely be an annoyance, but when people get killed by ignoring basic road safety, then being glued to a smartphone on the street is not so smart.

The smartphone has become the indispensible tool of our age. We can't go anywhere without it, we can't sit down to dinner without having one at hand, and have even started to lose our basic navigation skills because of our reliance on phone-based navigation apps. I've posted before on how anti-social phones have become, but the fact that a German city needs to install flashing lights in addition to the skill we're all taught as children of looking both ways before we cross a road, over-reliance on phones is becoming a public safety nuisance too.

The part that worries me the most, however, is how smartphones cut people off from the world, oblivious to it, others and things (trams included). For as long as I've been commuting to work, the "personal stereo" has been a blessing and a curse - a comfort to shut out the frequent horrors of overcrowded public transport, a nightmare when it involves hissy music leaking from headphones. Last week I briefly returned to commuting in London after a 17-year break, and noted how, with standing room-only on the 0711 to Waterloo, everyone to a man and woman was hunched over a smartphone, idly thumbing through e-mails or tweets or Candy Crush or whatever it was that they were doing. At least, though, they weren't getting in anyone's way.

But walk down a busy street, however, and it's impossible not to get stuck behind a zombie texter, or have your progress climbing stairs after getting off an underground train impeded by some idiot desperate to refresh their inbox as soon as a whisp of reception can be attained. Here is where the Chinese had a capital idea two years ago: the city of Chongqing became the first place in the world to create a dedicated walking lane for pedestrians hooked to their phones, with 100ft of pavement was marked with special paint and the sign "cellphone" for those wishing to dawdle along with their devices, and another "no cellphones" pathway for those wishing to go about their business freely.

In tech-mad Tokyo the problem is even more acute. The notorious melee of people traversing the pedestrian crossing at Shibuya Station has become even more hazardous due to the hundreds of people paying more attention to their phones than those around them. According to a report by the AFP news agency, incidents in Tokyo involving pedestrians or cyclists account for 41% of all phone-related accidents. Some 122 people were taken to hospital between 2009 and 2013 as a result of accidents caused by pedestrians using mobile phones.

That a teenager in Munich should have been killed by not seeing a tram coming is, sadly, no surprise. The Japanese mobile operator NTT Docomo conducted research into safe use of smartphones and found that the average field of vision while staring down at one is just 5% of the normal view. Using computer simulation, NTT found that, based on an average of 1500 people on the Shibuya crosswalk at any given time, if they were all looking at their phones there would be 446 collisions, 103 falling to the floor and 21 phones being dropped.

As someone who spends most of his travelling life plugged into his iPhone listening to music and podcasts, I'm as guilty as anyone in any of these cities for shutting out the world. But I do at least reserve a little - some might say smugly so - awareness of when I'm inconveniencing others. Because nothing you read, hear or watch on your smartphone should be worth putting your life at risk. Should it?

Now 96 families know they're not walking alone

In the 27 years and 11 days since the Hillsborough tragedy, we have frequently heard or read the refrain "no one should die because they went to a football match". But on the day that a jury has delivered justice to the families of the 96 who died in Sheffield, by declaring their deaths unlawful, we should also put football into some context.

In England on April 15, 1989, football was somewhat in the social doghouse. To be a fan was to have pariah status in some circles. English clubs and their supporters were in the midst of a five-year ban from European competition after hooliganism had reached its nadir at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels on May 29, 1985, when 39 Italian fans died and 600 were injured as a result of fighting between Liverpool and Juventus supporters. Two weeks prior to that ugly encounter, 56 people died and at least 265 were injured when fire swept through Bradford City's antiquated Valley Parade stadium.

But, with the Premier League and its Sky money not heralding a gentrification of English football's elite for another three years to come, Hillsborough ensured that the sport continued to be supported without the fanfare and wall-to-wall attention it gets today. Amongst metropolitan circles to declare interest or even an opinion on the game would result in looks at social occasions akin to announcing a penchant for bestiality with zoo animals.

Hillsborough darkened the sport's already dimmest days and, that the tragedy should have involved Liverpool fans again brought a further cruel twist to the reputation of the city and the club. On the day of the disaster more than 24,000 supporters travelled from Merseyside for the FA Cup semi-final between the Reds and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough, Sheffield Wednesday's ground. They had been assigned to the North and West stands, but in the build-up, a large number of Liverpool fans were already crowding before the turnstiles of the Leppings Lane end of the ground. To relieve the pressure, an exit gate - C - was opened a few minutes before the scheduled kick-off time, but all this did was filter 2,000 spectators into fenced-in pens that were already bulging, resulting in a severe crush...and the deaths of 96 people. The youngest was just 10, the oldest, 67. Many had died horribly from compression asphyxia, an agonizing death (essentially how a boa constrictor kills its prey).

In the aftermath, blame was placed squarely on the behaviour of the fans themselves. As with Heysel, and indeed all the other shameful moments of English football support, it was assumed that this was a terrible event with the sport's neanderthal element at its root. This was seized upon by the police and the establishment, who appeared in collusion to besmirch the Liverpool supporters with lies to protect their own standing. Sir Bernard Ingham, then Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, accused the fans of being "tanked up yobs". Today, he refused to apologise for the slur. The Sun newspaper compounded things by publishing lurid claims about the fans, rendering the paper persona non grata to this day on Merseyside.

Despite this, the families of the 96 men, women and children have fought a tireless battle in the intervening years to win back the reputations of their loved ones and, moreover, for the police who were supposedly in control of Hillsborough to be brought to account for their apparent negligence. Not all police officers at Hillsborough that day were culpable: most joined the effort to get victims to safety, with advertising hoardings famously used as makeshift stretchers. But the evidence and statements that have appeared throughout the inquest, one of the longest in British legal history, have made for grim testament of the conduct of the senior commanders on duty at Hillsborough and even of the culture within the South Yorkshire police authority in a decade that also saw it accused of heavy-handed tactics during the 1984 miners' strike.

Today, after hearing from more than 500 witnesses, reading 4,000 pages of documents. watching countless hours of video evidence and almost three months of deliberation, a jury has found the police commander at Hillsborough on the day, Chief Superintendant David Duckenfield "responsible for manslaughter by gross negligence". During the inquest, Duckenfield’s barrister, John Beggs QC, had pushed the prevailing police view of Liverpool fans being drunk and uncompliant with police instructions as the crush worsened at the Leppings Lane End. Survivors countered this, giving evidence that there hadn't any misbehaviour and that a lack of coherent police planning had led to the chaos that ensued. Overall, the jury concluded a catalogue of errors - a lack of police planning, control and communication, the inadequacies of the stadium itself, delays in the emergency response, poor signage and information on match tickets, and even a lack of response by Sheffield Wednesday officials in delaying kick-off of the cup tie. Of 14 questions the jury was asked to consider, all but one received a 'yes' - the one  'no' being in response to a question about whether the supporters' behaviour "caused or contributed to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles".

There will, no doubt, be renewed vigour to bring those responsible to account for their negligence. Perhaps the police on duty on April 15, 1989 - all no doubt now enjoying comfortable retirement, generous pensions and preferred parking at the local golf club - will be pursued with the same zeal that miscreant celebrities have been by Operation Yewtree. For the record, the current chief constable of South Yorkshire Police, David Crompton, said the force "unequivocally" accepted the findings, and admitted that it had "failed the victims and failed their families".

Personally, I see no benefit in a witchhunt. The families, hopefully can now seek closure and vindication, rather than the prolonged pain of further legal proceedings. The one frustration is that they've had to endure 27 years of agony that could have been avoided a long time ago by a simple admission of failure. If there is a legacy of Hillsborough - and wisdom after the event - our sports stadia and the organisation around football matches improved beyond all recognition. Lord Justice Taylor's report saw to that, heralding in more expensive but safer all-seat venues, with changes to matchday policing at grounds. In the process, it also brought about a change in the clientele profile.

But for me the most important outcome of today's verdict is the full exoneration of Liverpool fans. Football has had a lot to answer for, and even today, it would be naive in the extreme to think that hooliganism has gone away. I, like the fans of most teams remain party to the tribalism that, to some extent, drives the game. As I am with Manchester United, Spurs and Arsenal, I'm programmed to dislike Liverpool out of a decades-long on-the-pitch rivalry. But no amount of dislike could wish for the events of 27 years ago. None.

No amount of retroactive investigation and, potentially, arrests will bring back the 96, either. All we can hope is that the reputations of those fans and, indeed, the city of Liverpool have been restored by the verdict, and the victims' families can, 27 years on, finally enjoy peace and dignity.

Party over. Oops, out of time.

When David Bowie died in January two things happened. Firstly, there was an understandable outpouring of grief. Bowie wasn't just a pop star - he'd transcended that status at the outset of his career. His music, his art, his way of life were on a totally different plane, and the impact he'd had on those who'd grown up with his music (as well as those who'd come late to the party and found out in the best way what the fuss was all about) was immeasurable. Certainly more so than any other rock star I can think of.

The second thing that happened was the abrubt realisation that musical icons who'd emerged in the '60s and '70s were beginning to pop their clogs. Well, to be fair, clogs were popping long before 2016 came knocking with its apparently unstoppable roll call of celebrity death. Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Michael Jackson, et al, should still be rock and rolling, had rock and roll not got in the way. And, then, if you really want a depressing legacy, Wiki the hip-hop acts who have died in an age range of early-20s to mid-40s, with causes grimly including: "shot and killed" (numerous), "car accident", "complications from AIDS", "cancer", "complications from diabetes" and a long list of strokes and heart attacks.

If you were to transplant these deaths into the general population it's likely that you wouldn't see anything greatly different (though "shot and killed" may not be as prevelent an exit in every part of the world...). The bleedingly obvious point I'm making here is that people die all the time: 55.3 million each year, 151,600 people every day, 6,316 people each hour, 105 people each minute. Two people will have died, somewhere in the world, in the time it has taken you to read this sentence.

Unfortunately we expect our icons to be immortal. At some point - whether we like it or not, accept it or don't - we will have to bear with the news of Paul McCartney and Ringo Star reforming the Fab Four upstairs. Even the Rolling Stones can't go on forever. Not even Keith. No doubt the insurers of a special gig this October in California that will feature the Stones, Bob Dylan, McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who are sweating bullets, given the rate we're losing celebrities this year.

However, like Bowie's death, last night's news of the 57-year-old Prince moving on came from nowhere. Even if the tabloids have since been intrusively digging around reports of prevailing ill-health, here was another icon departing as unpredictably and, in a way, as eccentrically as he had conducted himself throughout life and as an integral figure of that trio of Madonna (whom Prince was older by just a couple of months) and Michael Jackson (who was just a couple of weeks younger than La Ciccone).

They were children of the first pop era, who'd learned their way in the world in the '70s to become the premiere megastars of the MTV age, mixing dance and pop with gawdiness and sexuality, to take over the very arenas rock's behemoths had occupied the decade before.

Prince, Madonna and Jackson were the undisputed pillars of the 80s in pop. Just as Bowie, glam and art rock had done for the 70s, they established put image, reputation and music to work. And while Jackson may have been the self-styled King of Pop and Madonna its Queen, Prince was by no means the errant offspring. Like Bowie, he was an innovator who took recognised forms and adapted them to his own idiosyncratic sense of artistry, crucially both in the studio and on stage.

Prince was an analogue musician in the pre-digital age who sounded like no other. His 'Paisley sound' was his own, uniquely, and unlike any other contemporary in black or white music. And, of course, with his adrogyny, he challenged what black or white musicians should sound and look like. Somehow he appeared to be overtly sexual and asexual at the same time. In his music there was a lot of funk, soul and R&B, but also a lot of rock, blues and psychedelia, and more than a lot of knowing humour. The thing is, we just knew so little of him which, actually, in this era of knowing what everyone has for breakfast thanks to social media, is fine by me.

My abiding memory of Prince was being crammed into the Stravinski Auditorium in Montreux three years ago on a hot, sweaty Saturday night. Somehow I'd managed to get down to the front of the stage, which is not my normal MO at concerts at all. The Stravinski is perfectly shaped to see artists from almost everywhere in the room, such is its pleasant intimacy, but by virtue of the fact I'd been forced to use a side entrance, I was right up against a human barrier of security people shining torches on anyone who dared to get their phones out to photograph the Purple One. By the time he was on stage, I was resembling one of the bodies in Picasso's After Guernica, deformed and bent totally out of shape by the crush.

Not exactly being the right shape or physique for such exertions, I ended the concert with cramp in both feet and both calves, gasping for the drink I'd been denied by being hemmed in down at the front. And I wouldn't have had it any other way - as Prince, backed by his muse-du-jour 3rdeyegirl, funked out for close to three hours barely 20ft in front of me. It was one of the gigs of a lifetime, coming in the midst of a long summer of concert-going. You can read my review of it here: http://whatdavidbowiewoulddo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/party-over-oops-out-of-time-prince-at.html

Instagram/Montreux Jazz Festival

I've been less effected by Prince's death than Bowie's, simply because Bowie meant much more to me, and in a way, that gave me greater licence to wallow. But, like every obituary and music fan who has thusfar commented on the Purple One's sudden demise, his genius was truly, really unparalleled, even if that does, after so many celebrity deaths, sound like hyperbole. Much of that is down to the fact you can't, really, nail down what it was that made him so innovative.

The starting point would be his starting point, the 1978 debut album For You - written almost entirely by him and performed exclusively by him. It's personnel listing reads: "Prince - all vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, Orr bass, bass synth, singing bass, fuzz bass, Fender Rhodes electric piano, acoustic piano, Minimoog, Polymoog, ARP String Ensemble, ARP Pro Soloist, Oberheim 4-voice, clavinet, drums, syndrums, water drums, slapsticks, bongos, congas, finger cymbals, wind chimes, orchestral bells, wood blocks, brush trap, tree bell, hand claps, finger snaps."

Over the next three albums - which included 1980's Dirty Mind (the one with Prince posing on the cover in, well, his underpants) - his polymathic virtuosity expanded further, along with more of his American moral sensitivity-challenging mild eroticism (Smash Hits named him The Purple Perv). In 1982, 1999 put him squarely on the map with the a whopping, 70-minute double album that featured the brilliance of its title track, along with Little Red Corvette and Delirious. Purple Rain, which followed, is arguably one of the greatest albums of the decade, removing Springsteen's Born in the USA from the top of the US charts and featuring the hits When Doves Cry, Let's Go Crazy, Purple Rain, I Would Die 4 U and Take Me With U and ending with the anthemic, nine-minute gospel-meets-blues opus of a title track, one which showcased Prince's excellence as a lead guitarist, an attribute he was rarely credited for.

These were the albums that introduced me to Prince. These were the albums that established him as an artist, really, like no other. There would be 33 more to come from Paisley Park Studios, each as confounding and as their predecessor, some without fanfare, some without even a name attached to them (), but all unmistakeably without parallel or without imitation. That may not be your definition of genius, but it certainly comes close to mine. And that is what we mourn for. Death is inevitable, that we know. But loss is something you can't allow for, especially the loss of someone as brilliant as Prince Rogers Nelson.

Attack of the drones - eye in the sky or public menace?

One way or another, yesterday was all about drones. In the evening I went to see Eye In The Sky, the terrific and tense thriller about an operation by the British, American and Kenyan military to take out a terror cell in a Nairobi suburb. Without giving anything away, drone technology in various shapes and sizes features centrally in the film, which stars Helen Mirren as the British colonel running the operation, Alan Rickman - in his final role - as her boss, and Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul as the US Reaper drone pilot operating out of a metal box in the Nevada desert while politicians from London to Singapore debate the morality of firing a missile to prevent a suicide bombing but which could also cause collateral damage.

It's a brilliant, thought-provoking essay on modern warfare, on the decision making, on the chain of command and the political blowback of the decisions made. Under taught direction by Gavin Hood, Eye In The Sky' articulates how drones aren't just pilotless bombers.

Even when the aircraft and its pilot are continents apart, someone is still responsible for pulling the trigger, even if that turns warfare into a detached video game, policed by politicians and lawyers, rather than generals. As Alan Rickman icily reminds a politician near the end, they might make the decisions, nursing cups of coffee and plates of biscuits in front of a big screen, but they should "Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war."

There's no dispute that drones have improved the effciency of prosecuting war. And while it might still be the ambition of would-be top guns to fly jets into battle rather than sit in front of a screen with a PlayStation joystick, such stand-off weapons do, at least, reduce some of the risk to military lives.

In peaceful applications, drones have plenty of uses: my company, Nokia, was recently involved in the trial of drones to improve traffic management in Dubai, something that will become particularly viable when 5G wireless technology comes into use later this decade; in film and television production, drones have become particularly useful for aerial shots - especially good when filming nature documentaries and you don't want to spook animals with a loud and expensive helicopter; and even Amazon and Dominos Pizza are considering drones for making deliveries. All examples of how drones can work in the right hands.

But in the wrong hands...? Yesterday, as I emerged from Eye In The Sky, news appeared of a British Airways plane being struck by a drone on its approach into Heathrow Airport, after increasing warnings in recent months of the possibility. This wasn't just a close encounter - the Airbus A320, which was carrying 132 passengers, was apparently struck by a drone on its nose.

Thankfully, it landed safely, but God only knows what would have happened if the drone has been ingested by one of the Airbus's engines. Landing a plane is tricky enough, especially on the Heathrow flight path that takes jets from the east to the west side of London, let alone with the instability of a single engine working.

Not long after yesterday's incident reportedly too place, I was in Kingston's Bentall Centre and walked past one of those gadgets-for-blokes shops. Piled high in the entrance was a selection of what the shop categorises as "remote control toys" - drones as cheap as £70. Now, drones at that price are unlikely to reach the sort of altitudes to bother an airline pilot on final approach, but for a few hundred quid more you could buy one that could reach up to 2000ft - about the height commercial aircraft are at over the boroughs of Richmond and Chiswick, five to ten minutes away from landing at Heathrow. Remote control aircraft used to be an expensive hobby conducted by enthusiasts who knew what they were doing. Now, a small aircraft can be put in the hands of people who chose one over buying a puppy or a hoverboard or whatever else was the in-vogue must-have last Christmas.

Speaking about yesterday's incident, Steve Landells, of BALPA, the British Airline Pilots Association, and a former RAF and British Airways pilot, said: "Frankly, it was only a matter of time before we had a drone strike given the huge numbers being flown around by amateurs who don't understand the risks and the rules." Between April and October last year there were 23 near-misses between commercial aircraft and these hobbyist drones in the UK. One incident involved a drone missing a Boeing 777 that had just taken off from Heathrow by just 80 feet.

Despite the threat of up to five years in prison, incidents like this (as well as people shining laser pens into the eyes of pilots) are on the rise. Heathrow, too, seems to be particularly targeted, with large parks like Richmond Park and Osterley underneath the flight path providing plenty of open space for someone to launch a drone. If an irresponsible idiot can do all this just for laughs, what could a terrorist do, given the obsession they seem to have with aviation. As someone who flies in and out of London frequently, I'd rather not die in a ball of flames in Hounslow as a result of some moron in a tracksuit thinking it might be fun to fly their Christmas present into the path of my flight.

Britain's Civil Aviation Authority maintains what it calls the "drone code", which dictates that drones of any kind - professional or amateur - should not be flown above 400ft and should certainly not be flown near planes and airports, usually within a two-mile radius. For pilots, however, the big worry is that drones in amateur or even some professional uses, like film making, are just too small to show up on their anti-collision radar systems, and certainly not on air-traffic control. As, no doubt happened yesterday, by the time a drone is in a position to potentially cause a problem, it is probably too late.

"Much more education of drone users and enforcement of the rules is needed to ensure our skies remain safe from this threat," Landells has said. The British Government says that work is going on with international bodies to develop a stronger regulatory framework. But if rules are going to be ignored by either the ignorant, the anti-social, or those with seriously nefarious intent, then laws need to be toughened, police enforcement needs to be improved, and the penalties made even more punitive than a five-year-stretch. Otherwise the next time a drone and an airline meet, the outcome could be a lot worse than just the chills yesterday's incident sent down my spine alone.

Record Store Day - Christmas for musos

There are, as we slip gracefully into Record Store Day 2016, curmudgeons abroad who knock this friendly, enthusiastic celebration of recorded music as a cynical marketing excercise, but then what marketing excercise isn't cynical? 

If, as is argued in some quarters, Record Store Day is just a Hallmark festival, then so be it. Good on those who participate, from the thousands of independent record shops in every continent who take part, to the hundreds of thousands of punters, giddy like children on Christmas Eve, queuing at the crack of dawn to get their hands on that Bowie picture disc of The Man Who Sold The World, or The Doors' Live At The Aquarius Theatre Vol. 1 on blue vinyl, two of the many rarities and special editions on offer at this year's Record Store Day. 

RSD isn't just about selling records on the pretext of a promotional event, it's a celebration of what makes buying, collecting, browsing, touching, debating, obsessing and, yes, listening to music part of a collective cultural experience the world over. And if the world's beleaguered independent record shops - the churches I worshipped in as a teenager, who introduced me to the enjoyment of music curation - can get a helping hand by staging special RSD events, with live music and face painting for the kids, then more power to them. Picking up a Top 10 album while you're out doing the weekly shop in Sainsbury's may be convenient, but it's no substitute for the Saturday afternoon I know I still love to spend in a proper record shop flicking through the racks, drooling over lavish box sets, holding up the album artwork and declaring excitedly, "oh yes!".

Anything that gets people into actual record shops, buying music in its physical form and adding to that row of spines, be they CDs or vinyl, is fine. And in the end, it doesn't matter whether today you buy something or nothing, one, ten or fifty, it's all about getting involved.

Now, I know what you're thinking: isn't this all a bit flogging a dead horse? Last week the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry reported that revenues from digital music exceeded physical formats for the first time, accounting for 45% of the total in 2015. There is no escaping the fact that physical music sales are falling: just like kids preferring the PlayStation and Xbox to Airfix models and Hornby trains, buying records and CDs music is a declining business, impacted by other trends. 

I'm as guilty as anyone: I will buy albums on iTunes for the convenience of immediately listening to them on the morning they come out. It's the same impatience that would have me scampering to New Malden's MJM Records as a teen on the day that a vital album came out. I'm sure there's a psychological explanation for it. 

At least now, with new releases coming out on Fridays, I can curb my loins for a day and descend upon my current emporium of choic, the palace of the recorded disc that is Gibert Joseph here in Paris's Boulevard Saint-Michel. And at least I'm paying for my music. I'm one of those contrarians who actually think artists should get paid the right amount for what they do. It's their talent, their artistic endeavor, so why should they get paid the bare minimum for letting us access it?

Buying music has sustained me in the way others collect books or embrace cinema. It got me through teenage, it got me my first job, and it has taken me thusfar to my fifth decade as the one constant in my life. It is true, then, as one particularly curmudgeonly music journalist tweeted today, that we won't need a special day once a year to go out and buy records. But if it creates some fun and drives a bit of passion about music, then what's the harm? If it creates curiosity amongst the current generation of teenagers - as, thankfully, I know it does, then more power to it.

So we sold De Bruyne and Lukaku. Get over it.

Reuters

At the end of last night's Champions League quarter-final tie between Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain there were two sets of opposing schools of opinion at work on Twitter. And both involved, exclusively, Chelsea supporters.

The first concerned praise for City beating PSG and progressing to a semi-final, the only English club that will do so this season. For every Chelsea fan sportingly slapping City on the back, there was another, soaked in bile, branding any such individual as a traitor to the cause. This branch of football's tribalism has also manifested itself in the conflict of conscience Chelsea followers have at seeing Tottenham doing so well this season. Chelsea's dismal, trophyless term has rendered many in a state of catatonia, numbed by the failure to achieve any of the club's objectives, including retaining the Premier League title, but also accepting the mediocrity that will leave the club in or around mid-table on May 15.

The second movement concerned Kevin De Bruyne, Belgium's best known Prince Harry tribute act, who scored the scorching goal last night that made the ultimate difference between City and PSG. Chelsea, as you might recall, bought the-then 20-year-old from Genk for £7 million on the final day of the 2011-12 winter transfer window. But, being Chelsea, he remained at Genk for the rest of that season, before being loaned out to Werder Bremen the following August. A successful, goals-a-plenty season later, he returned to Chelsea, by then under the management of José Mourinho. Mourinho gave assurances that De Bruyne would play for him and, being a capable attacking midfielder, especially down the flanks, he certainly seemed to fit the Mourinho preference, previously seen with Arjen Robben, Damien Duff and Joe Cole during his first spell in charge, to title-winning effect.

However, the ginger winger somehow failed to convince the club that he was worth keeping. Mourinho himself explained that De Bruyne had "failed to compete" for a place, suggesting either an attitude issue or a reaction to Mourinho's training approach. And so, De Bruyne was offloaded in the January to Wolfsburg, where he spent the rest of the 2013-14 season, and the 2014-15 season, building up the solid reputation (including being voted by journalists the German league player of the season) that made City fork out a club record £55 million.

Which brings us to last night. Frankly, what little we saw of De Bruyne from the stand at Stamford Bridge didn't exactly convince us that he was the Chosen One. Like all the other attacking midfielders Chelsea have bought and sold - and that list runs the length of the Bayeux Tapestry - he showed plenty of running and endeavour, but certainly didn't display the sort of talent that justified City spending so heavily to acquire. So maybe Mourinho was right.

Former Chelsea striker Tony Cascarino doesn't think so. In his column in The Times today, he wrote: "I can't understand how [Chelsea] and José Mourinho decided to let him go. He may not have played that many games for them but surely he showed his potential in training every day?" adding "I don't know how Chelsea couldn't see his potential." Mourinho, like his mentor Sir Alex Ferguson, has never held back in showing short shrift to players that don't meet his requirements. Just look at Juan Mata, who went from Chelsea's player of the season to lucrative sale to Manchester United. Clearly, though, De Bruyne's results in Germany spoke for themselves, and even with their reputation for unwarranted largesse (a trait obviously shared with Chelsea), City saw in the Belgian something they needed. Last night, that investment may have singularly paid off.

But for Chelsea fans, however, to bemoan offloading De Bruyne to begin with is wasted energy. Likewise, Romelu Lukaku, whose own brief appearances for Chelsea were not particularly convincing, even if he disappeared on loan to West Brom and Everton for three seasons, where he scored like a demon.

It is galling to see, and can be likened to owning the winning lottery ticket that slips through your fingers on a windy day (or, as Danny Baker put it on Twitter, "Like seeing the girl you dumped at 17 go on to be Jennifer Aniston."). But what can you about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Chelsea's transfer policy leaves an enormous amount to be desired. As this blog has frequently commented on (actually, make that 'constantly'...), the club's husbandry of young talent, loaning them out, having them win tropies in the youth squads, but never letting them see the light of day in the first team, is an absolute disgrace, no matter what the footballing or even business rationale the club may put behind it. And, if Chelsea let De Bruyne and Lukaku go because their player development processes aren't sharp enough to recognise talent, or because they didn't fit the ethic of the manager, then the blame for that needs to fall squarely on the shoulders of Michael Emenalo, the club's technical director, or on Mourinho.

But then it is also possible that, like us in the stands, Mourinho just didn't see anything in either player to convince him. It was perplexing that Lukaku would go off on loan, score a decent number of goals, and then return to the Bridge to bumble about unconvincingly. The question is, was he a diamond in need of polishing? Was Mourinho the right manager to apply the polish? Or did the player simply not fit the manager?

The point of all this is that, there's not a lot of point in moaning about it. Chelsea moved on. They sold David Luiz and bought Diego Costa and Cesc Fàbregas with the proceeds, winning the Premier League on the back of their endeavour. Lukaku might, we read, still come back to Chelsea, as if to prove a point (and in the process, earn Everton a princely sum). De Bruyne may well turn out to be an expensive impulse buy for Manchester City. Chelsea may need to do something about improving their player development processes. Either that, or buy a better crystal ball. But to moan about decisions to sell average-looking players who go on to be above average, well that's just tough. Time to move on. As they did. Or at least as far as this coming Saturday, when City - including De Bruyne - come to Stamford Bridge.

No Stairway? Denied!

Like finding the source of the Nile, identifying the true origins of pop music is not straightforward. We all know - or should know - that much of what we listen to today shares genetic code with the blues and its derivatives including jazz, rock and roll, country, gospel, R'n'B, soul, hip-hop and, of course, rock.

Identifying how these genres evolved would require a forensic examination of notes, scales, chord structures and all the things absolutely nobody is bothered with as teenagers posing in front of the bedroom mirror with a tennis racquet. What we do know, however, is that with every new iteration of the form as it developed out of spirituals sung in southern cotton fields to become the most important culture of the 20th century, and every teen transplanting his racquet for making an actual racket, that what came before has been infused in what came after.

All this said, it still baffles me how, given that there are only so many notes, octaves, chords and time signatures, we still get lawsuits by one songwriter claiming another has nicked their work. As early as 1954, Johnny Cash was forced to pay Gordon Jenkins $75,000 for the use of lyrics and even melody from Jenkins' Crescent City Blues which it was claimed found its way into Cash's Folsom Prison Blues.

Some cases are less obvious than others, some more so. For example, Jeff Lynne once tried to sue Paul Weller for allegedly stealing the descending guitar riff from ELO's 10538 Overture for Changin' Man. There's little doubt that the riffs in question are almost identical, but does that mean Weller went out of his way to steal from a band you would hardly charge him with as being an overt fan?

I'm no lawyer, but at what point do you prove a deliberate act of wanton plagiarism? Plus, while we're at it, you could argue that Lynne leaned heavily on The Beatles' Dear Prudence, given that the descending guitar motif is the same, just in a different tempo.

There are many, many more I could cite, and it's perhaps not surprising how often The Beatles would figure in such a list. Actually, I would argue that bands as varied as Oasis, The Chemical Brothers and Tears For Fears all dabbing their brushes at the Fab palette could be held guilty of musical pilferage, but then where does homage stop and petty larceny begin? After all, The Beatles themselves were once taken to task by rock'n'roll's pioneer, Chuck Berry, after his publishing company sued that Come Together contained elements of Berry's 1956 song You Can't Catch Me.

It's this assumption that playing the same set of notes, in the same or similar order, no matter how briefly, constitutes plagiarism. I've heard Sam Smith's Stay (not willingly, you'll understand) and not once did I think: "The scoundrel's gone and ripped off Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down" (co-written by Lynne, it should be mentioned). And, yet, Petty and Lynne have now been credited as co-writers of Smith's song because Petty's publishing company noticed "a likeness" between the songs. Even Petty himself didn't believed that Smith had ripped off his song willingly. The matter ended quite amicably, with Petty brushing the issue of as "these things happen". For their trouble, Petty and Lynne are now entitled to 12.5% of Stay's royalties. Not a bad result for one of the best-selling and most-played singles of the last couple of years.

There are, inevitably, examples of too much similarity going on for mere coincidence. Rod Stewart even held his hand up freely when Brazilian musician Jorge Ben took to the courts over a very distinct similarity between the chorus of If Ya Think I'm Sexy and his rootsy 1976 song Taj Mahal. While Stewart stressed that it hadn't been a cynical lift, he said: "Clearly the melody had lodged itself in my memory and then resurfaced. Unconscious plagiarism, plain and simple." Oasis may have fallen into the same trap when The New Seekers' noticed how similar Shakermaker was to their hippy-dippy Coke advertising I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing, a song from Noel Gallagher (and my) childhood. For that, they trousered $500,000.

But then we get to a case of blurred lines - literally. In March last year a California jury concluded that Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines was too close - and therefore unlawfully close - to Marvin Gaye's Got To Give It Up, which resulted in the duo handing over $7.4 million to Gaye's family. At stake was the argument over whether Willams and Thicke copied Got To Give It Up notationally, or whether the production, vocals and overall vibe of the track were suitably similar to warrant the charge. Even now, it is still one that can be contested.

So step up Led Zeppelin and Stairway To Heaven, or specifically the distinctive notes picked out of an A Minor chord that, 45 years ago, Jimmy Page turned into the one of the most played riffs in guitar shops on Saturday afternoons the world over (alongside Smoke On The Water, of course). A US judge has ruled that Page and Zeppelin's Robert Plant will have to face a US jury trial over a claim that Stairway's opening chords were stolen from Taurus, a 1967 instrumental by the band Spirit, who toured with the British group at the end of the 1960s, when - it is alleged - they were exposed to the song.

The claim first surfaced in 1997 when Spirit's guitarist Randy California complained about the similarities in an interview, shortly before he drowned while attempting to rescue his son from difficulties in the sea off a Hawaii beach. His trustee Michael Skidmore decided to take up the case against Led Zeppelin, arguing California deserved a credit. Lengthily, this has now led to US District Judge Gary Klausner ruling that a jury could find "substantial" similarity between the sequences of Stairway and Taurus in question, which he called "arguably the most recognizable and important segments" of the songs.

Led Zeppelin have argued that the chords used were so "clichéd" that they did not deserve copyright protection, no doubt drawing on the oft-heard argument that it would be like copyrighting air. However, the judge, showing a certain degree of musical knowledge, ruled that: "While it is true that a descending chromatic four-chord progression is a common convention that abounds in the music industry, the similarities here transcend this core structure. What remains is a subjective assessment of the 'concept and feel' of two works ... a task no more suitable for a judge than for a jury."

And so Case No. 15-03462, "Skidmore v Led Zeppelin et al, U.S. District Court, Central District of California" will open on May 10 with a jury of 12 asked to make thedecision. You can judge for yourself, below: certainly there's a tonal similarity between the songs, and the contested guitar sequences do share the same notes, but that to me would be like arguing that any song in the key of D Minor ("the saddest key of all"), is the same as another. In fact, if anything the Spirit sequence sounds more like Is There Anybody Out There? from Pink Floyd's The Wall (interestingly, many of Roger Waters' songs have been written on an acoustic guitar in this same key).

The issue, then, is always going to be one of subjectivity. The Pharell/Thicke case did at least examine the mechanics of the songs in question, while others have held up their hands to admit to the subconscious at work. But in the case of Stairway? I think the mighty Zeppelin have a very strong case for dismissal on their hands.

How Manchester United became the club I used to hate

Earlier in this football season it became something of a repeat chore, most Mondays, to have a whinge at yet another calamitous performance during the weekend by Chelsea in their supposed defence of the Premier League title. It was a run which took them to just a point above the dropzone in December, leading to José Mourinho getting sacked and Guus Hiddink coming in to steady the ship with his grandfatherly light touch.

But on this particular Monday I'm not in the least bit bothered by Chelsea's form, or the fact they will end the season in mid-table mediocrity, or even that on Saturday they lost - for the first time in Hiddink's second spell at the club - to the team they played on the opening day of the season, resulting in a lot of harumphing, a doctor getting demoted, and the team diving into the steep decline that then followed.

No, this week's reappearance of the Monday Moan is about Manchester United, a club I have traditionally had little time for simply because we football fans are by nature tribal, that it's either your team or their team - it's that black and white - and Manchester United have always been the wrong tribe. Actually, the moan is specifically about the current Manchester United manager.

Yesterday, when asked by a reporter clearly more interested in sensation than news reporting whether Louis van Gaal regretted turning down an offer to manage Tottenham in 2014, the archly pompous Dutchman said: "I'm sorry for Tottenham but Manchester United is a bigger club," adding with customary arrogance and more than a drop of acid (though with some justification), "It is a little bit pathetic you asked that. It's easy to ask that but, ok, you enjoy yourself."

There is a reason why I have a dislike for Manchester United. And it is a dislike forged in nothing more than profound, unabated and prolonged envy. They have won 20 league titles, more than any other club in English history, 11 FA Cups, four League Cups, three European Cups, one European Cup Winners' Cup, a UEFA Super Cup, an Intercontinental Cup and a FIFA Club World Cup. Two years ago they were the world's second highest-earning club, with an annual revenue of Eur 518 million, and last year were rated the world's third most valuable club, worth slightly shy of $2 billion. They are still the world's most lucrative football brand, and "Bobby Moore" is still (along with "Benny Hill and "Mr. Bean") a universal cypher to striking up conversation around the world.

So van Gaal was absolutely right in saying that: "The challenge was bigger for me at Manchester United and shall always be bigger" because all that reputation is currently straining on his shoulders. The thing is, though, to come out with that on a day when United were so roundly beaten 3-0 by Spurs, and managed to upset everyone's equilibrium at White Hart Lane by the club bus arriving late because it had taken two hours to drive just eight miles from their central London hotel, is a demonstration of a brand of arrogance that van Gaal alone appears to have adopted without any justification for doing so.

The Man United of yore wasn't immune to embarassments, but somehow, even their journey to Tottenham yesterday seemed indicative of their season and, perhaps cruelly, of van Gaal's tenure, too. This is a club still shivvering in the cold shadow of Sir Alex Ferguson's seemingly unassailable 26-year reign. The hapless David Moyes was always going to be in receipt of a poisoned chalice when he took over. But when van Gaal replaced him in 2014, it would be reasonable to assume, given his history, that some semblance of normality would return to Old Trafford. But it hasn't, and after two years in charge - these days, a generous amount of time, even for a club in transition - van Gaal still hasn't restored Manchester United to the team that, as an opposing fan, you dreaded playing.

Yes, I admit, that I would wake up on the morning of league or cup fixtures between Chelsea and Manchester United with very real fear in my stomach. 22 years on I'm still scarred by the 4-0 mauling they gave us at Wembley in the FA Cup Final of 1994. For most of the 1990s we watched Manchester United behind our fingers. They had The Squad - strikers, the midfield, defenders, the goalkeeper, even the stadium, by which everyone else had to aspire. And they had the manager. Today?

I don't buy that van Gaal is still rebuilding. True, Ferguson left them in a lesser state than people will readily admit, but he hardly retired with the club he'd built in any serious disrepair, and certainly not that it could capitulate so poorly as they did in the space of a six minutes against Spurs yesterday. True, they were dogged opposition in the first half, but then what gave way in the second? And why?

Sure, van Gaal is playing a very young team, but so was his counterpart, Pochettino. And yet while Spurs' youngsters have been playing with a verve and vigour matched only by their title rivals Leicester, United's kids still look wet behind the ears. As was once famously said, you probably can't win anything with kids. Ferguson won his titles with the right mix of youth and experience - the youngsters providing the spice, the veterans providing the guile.

Van Gaal is, then, far closer in character to Arsène Wenger. Both can display staggering daddy-knows-best arrogance. And both can suffer from acute myopia. The difference is that van Gaal, who parades about with that leather folio case looking more like a chartered quantity surveyor than the manager of one of the greatest football clubs in the sport's history, is sometimes so puffed up with pomposity that he forgets the legacy of which he is the current custodian.

It hasn't all been that bad this season for United. But when you look at the overall picture of their wins, draws and losses in all competitions, it is still nowhere near the United we used to fear and loathe in equal measure, with all the jibes about buying titles and the politics of envy that football fans used to throw at the club.

Van Gaal may well be on the right road to restoring that legacy, but on current form it will be a long time before the fear returns to opponents' eyes. And with Mourinho's PR machine maintaining his visibility (turning up like a fiendish sprite at football matches and even boxing fights just to say "I'm still here...!"), and the rumours, hints and suggestions about him fulfilling his clear desire to take over at United not abating, time is running out for van Gaal to serve credence to his assertion that he was the right man for the right job at the right club at the right time.

1971: the year it all began

Ask anyone who knows their Elvis C from their Elvis P and you will never reach any consensus on when pop music was at its most vibrant.

For every proponent of 1954 (the year Presley invented rock and roll by recording That's Alright Mama at Sun Studios), there will be another to champion 1964 (the year Beatlemania exploded in America). The Beatles also have a claim on 1966, the year they released Revolver, which included Tomorrow Never Knows, the track that for so many reasons probably changed the course of music more than any other.

Move on to 1977 and the arrival of punk, 1982 and Thriller, The Smiths' This Charming Man and New Order's Blue Monday a year later, Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in '92, Britpop in '95 - I could go on, but we'll never, ever, reach any conclusion. But if there is one year which, simply because of the volume of milestone releases, is inescapably more significant than most others it's 1971.

Music journalist, Smash Hits co-founder and former Whistle Test presenter David Hepworth came to this conclusion four years ago when, having previously noted how much of an annus mirabilis (in his words) it had been, he compiled a 121-track Spotify playlist from the albums released that year (also published in this blog post).

It is likely that you and I will beg to differ on just how much these were landmark songs, or even whether those making were any bigger than anyone since, but when you look at the compilation - below - of albums released in 1971, it's inescapable that this year in particular witnessed momentum unlike any other in pop history.

• Led Zeppelin - IV
• David Bowie - Hunky Dory
• The Who - Who's Next
• Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
• T-Rex - Electric Warrior
• The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
• Carole King - Tapestry
• Paul McCartney - Ram
• John Lennon - Imagine
• Elton John - Madman Across The Water
• Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
• Faces - A Nod Is As Good As A Wink...To A Blind Horse
• The Doors - LA Woman
• Joni Mitchell - Blue
• Stevie Wonder - Where I'm Coming From
• Genesis - Nursery Cryme
• Pink Floyd - Meddle
• Jethro Tull - Aqualung
• Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus
• King Crimson - Islands
• Nick Drake - Bryter Later
• John Martyn - Bless The Weather
• James Taylor - Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
• Rory Gallagher - Rory Gallagher
• Humble Pie - Rockin' The Filmore
• ZZ Top - ZZ Top's First Album
• Yes - The Yes Album
• Earth, Wind & Fire - Earth, Wind & Fire
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - 4 Way Street
• Don McLean - American Pie

I may have been four years old at the time (though I believe I was already in possession of my first album, Songs From Chigley And Trumpton), but almost half a century on, it would be hard not to regard Led Zeppelin IV as one of the most important rock albums of all time, or Hunky Dory as the album that created David Bowie, the songwriting from S to F of Who's Next, What's Going On's social commentary, McCartney and Lennon's solo albums breaking out of The Beatles' shadow, Carole King's landmark Tapestry (which she'll be performing in full this summer in London), and even Stevie Marriott and Pete Frampton defining the live album for years to come with Humble Pie's ear wax bothering Rockin' The Filmore.

In his excellent new book, 1971: Never A Dull Moment, Hepworth has returned to chronologically explore 12-months that bore “more influential albums than any year before or since”. From the outset, he states the case that 1971 wasn't just an extraordinary year for releases, but effectively the start of the rock era. Of course, it wasn't exactly Year Zero: rock had emerged when Chuck Berry cranked up his Gibson for the first time, and was then followed by The Beatles, the Stones, The Kinks, The Who, the Beach Boys and myriad others blurring and stretching the boundaries of pop and rock in the 60s. But Hepworth's argument - which is bang on the money - was that '71 established the longevity with which these artists would endure, in many cases long after their peak, and in some cases as we push on into the new millennium, long after they've left us.

Starting from New Year's Eve 1970, when Paul McCartney effectively wound up the Fabs, Hepworth writes that the next day would herald "the busiest, most creative, most innovative, most interesting and longest-resounding year of that era". To support his argument, he doesn't just trawl the albums and the stories behind them, but provides context, too - the political and economic environments of the early 1970s, the cultural emancipation that teenagers enjoyed in the 60s that endured into the 70s as owning records became as affordable a hobby as creating bubblegum cards had been in childhood.

There was, also, the attraction of the form itself - the gatefold sleeves, the Hipgnosis and Roger Dean artwork - but more importantly, the lack of other distractions which inhibits attention to the long-form recording today. In 1971, youths didn't have iPhones and iTunes, PlayStations or even their own TV sets. Immersing oneself in two sides of a 43-minute album (or four if it was a prog act's latest overblown double) was an escape from the grey skies and prevailing austerity outside if you were in Britain, or the horrors of being at war in Vietnam if you were American.

Even if, now, you might consider the 23 minutes of Echoes that consumed the entire second half of Floyd's Echoes, or the eight-minute duration of Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven, grossly over-indulgent or patronisingly "of their time" on the part of the bands, it would be churlish in the extreme to dismiss their virtuosity, and that, Hepworth suggests, underpins the richness of what appeared in 1971. This was was the year, he asserts, that the rock era truly began. But it was also the year when pure creativity and raw talent, before many of these artists ascended into superstardom, and then descended into drug-addled mediocrity later in the decade.

Hepworth notes how this was a time when bands were able to do more or less what they wanted to, artistically, but they did so on the back of paying their dues. More or less every one of these landmark albums was a product of artists who performed relentlessly, using gigs in provincial ballrooms and university refectories to hone material before committing it to the studio, before going out on tour again with the new album and developing even more material for the next recording - which might even appear in the same year.

Old heads like me will have an inbuilt interest in Hepworth's tome, even though, at 48, I've clearly come to the releases of 1971 retrospectively. But as the owner of a good 90% of the albums listed above, I've come to them as modern classics, as vital to my cultural development as reading 1984, The Catcher In The Rye, On The Road or Hamlet.

I may have come to Bowie via Ashes To Ashes, but it proved to be essential to go back to the very beginning to see how he progressed from Hunky Dory through Ziggy and all the other guises to reach the 1980s. As a Beatle fan, I was compelled to find out what happened next, and with Lennon being tragically taken from us in 1980, listening to Imagine, released nine years before, became part of the mourning process. I was introduced to Genesis via Follow You, Follow Me, a love song, but was intrigued by Nursery Cryme and the frankly dark goings on in The Musical Box. You could even argue that with so many hip-hop artists sampling Bonzo's drums on When The Levee Breaks (recorded in a toilet at Headley Grange for its unique acoustics), 1971's tail has stretched long into the subsequent decades.

In 2011, on the 40th anniversary release of 1971's Aqualung by Jethro Tull, my friend and contemporary Steven Wilson - who had just remixed the album - told Classic Rock magazine that he thought that by '71 the record industry had finally recognised that rock music was an art form. "There seems to be something leading up to 1971," Wilson said, "which is when record labels started to get interested. That's usually when scenes start to die, but I think you can see 1971 as the zenith of creative expression for experimental music. The records were still very ambitious after that, but there's something about the spirit of '71 that was special."

In chronicling, month-by-month, the major albums released in 1971, Hepworth doesn't just present a giant coincidence, but perhaps by coincidence, the year's progress tells a story (as Hepworth relays) that began with The Beatles breaking up and ended with Don McClean's American Pie telling a tale of loss of innocence.

1971 was, then, a year of profound confluence, a year in which the album, itself, found its place as one of the most important artistic mediums, alongside books and cinema; in which the groundwork done by Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper created the album artist as a thing in its own right. It was the year in which the music business began tapping into rock music for the next decade or two, at least, as its great money spinner.

So, if you have any interest in what happened along the way, then you'll want to know what fired the starting gun. Hepworth expertly dusts the trigger for prints with 1971: Never A Dull Moment, compiling a fascinating, entertaining and revealing examination of rock music's genetic structure from the events of the year which, arguably, brought it all together.

Watts app - Ben Watt's Fever Dream

Pressing play for the first time on Ben Watt's last album, Hendra, when it was released almost two years ago to the day, summer seemed to begin almost immediately.

Even though it covered heavy personal subjects, such as his mother's dementia and the death of his father, the record offered an antidote to the-then receding winter months. It's laid-back warmth - augmented by Bernard Butler's guitar and even on one song, a guest appearance by David Gilmour and his trippy pedal steel - became my go-to listen for the subsequent months. Pure sunshine in a CD, or whatever format it came on.

24 months on, Watt has, to a certain extent, repeated the experience with Fever Dream. And that, believe me, is a very good thing indeed. From start to finish, musically at least, another revitalising, Vitamin D-infused first blast of sun on the face after months of cold, wet, grey misery. Long may Watt, his writing and recording schedule, and his record company, keep these albums appearing in April.

Now, in positioning Fever Dream in this manner, don't think that it's all about, you know, just vibe. This certainly isn't one of those Buddha Bar compilations piped through the lobby of a hip boutique hotel. It is, though, as with its predecessor - and, actually, all the best material Watt and wife Tracey Thorn produced in Everything But The Girl - a highly accessible, automatically familiar, and totally agreeable collection of wonderfully dreamy songs, albeit with an edge. "We kept Hendra’s sonic template of open-tuned folk-jazz and distorted string-bent rock, and went for a new grainy intensity," Watt himself explains on his website. "We just did most of it live. Small room, small band. A harder edge. Instruments spilling into each other."

With Hendra separated from its predecessor North Marine Drive by almost 31 years (in mitigation he had been busy in the interim with EBTG and, like Thorn, becoming a very distinguished author) it, he says, opened up his creativity. Fever Dream is the result of that fertility: "I was simply deeply inspired by the Hendra experience, the reception, the months of touring, the rediscovery of my voice," Watt says. "I felt compelled to write more. They came in a burst at the beginning of last year. I feel I have somehow tapped into a nucleus of myself again lately. It feels urgent. From the source."

That source is, clearly, an urge to examine relationships, those to cherish, those to question and those to forget, encased in varying pitch of jazz and folk influences and even a West Coast, Laurel Canyon timbre. As Watt says, there are obvious tonal similarities to the previous album, with Butler once more deftly applying grungy, Neil Young-like guitar flourishes.

The mood is set by the woozily luscious opener Gradually and its line "Something about your love just got to me gradually/Like an autumn fire/A growing intensity" which comes pretty close for an intimate declaration to John Martyn's seminal "You curl around me like a fern in the spring". The next two songs, the title track and Between Two Fires (not to be confused with Zach Galifianakis and Between Two Ferns, hem hem...) clip along at a sprightly pace, the former comparable with the gentle pop of, say, Christopher Cross (not to be dismissed as merely AOR, either), with the latter musing on how "Sometimes love can last a lifetime/Other times it tires/I can not blame you now it's gone/We were caught between two fires", Butler's guitar squawking in the background to add a sense of unsettlement to the track. Both could enrich the soundtrack to driving a convertible up to Big Sur. But there is a ponderous undercurrent from which a darker hue emerges, calling into question the integrity of relationships and, perhaps, simply asking, in the words of this very blog, "Where are we now?".

This is not, however, a break-up record, or the precursor to one. The examination of relationships is observational and questioning, rather than cathartic or confessional, but it's to Watt's strength that he can lay such examinational lyrics over relatively simple, relaxing arrangements, themselves the result of uncomplicated interplay between Watt, Butler, bassist Rex Horan (to be heard on Laura Marling's work) and prolific session drummer Martin Ditcham, whose working relationship with Watt goes back to EBTG. Ditcham, in particular, provides the sort of cold, faded rhythms he contributed to Talk Talk's The Colour Of Spring - on Winter's Eve, mallets beat out a muted pattern on tom toms, but not to express a sad, year's end reflection, rather one of uplifting positivity at odds with the music behind it.

Mentioning John Martyn earlier (those who know me well will attest that I'll mention him at any opportunity...), part of my supreme enjoyment of this album stems from tracks like Faces Of My Friends, a combination of grace and danger and on which Watt could so easily be supplanted by the big man's whisky-soured drawl. On that front, it's worth noting how good Watt's vocals are on this album. He has never been blessed with a traditional lead singer's depth and spectrum - and that did show on Hendra. Maybe with confidence drawn from the previous album, throughout Fever Dream Watt conveys more heft, complimenting the music rather than trying to fit into it, blending into the bluesier aspects of Butler's guitar work as well.

That said, on the closing track, New Year Of Grace, he brings in Bostonian vocalist Marissa Nadler to add a vocal layer to a beautiful, sparse song that Watt's natural range might not have otherwise carried so well alone. Again, another example of tone and lyric providing reversible contrast, on this occasion the barely-there instrumentation delicately mixed into the background of a wistful lyric that cleverly and subtly acknowledges enduring love. And in being so unspectacular, it actually provides a spectacular ending to the album.

It's hard not to compare Fever Dream to its predecessor, if only because Watt invites such comparison. There is, though a clear progress between them, though. Whereas Hendra seemed to be an exploration of styles, its follow-up brims with even greater conviction, purpose and direction. It is the album that I can assure you, you'll want to be playing all summer long.

The Night Manager - a class act

While it could be expected that us British ex-pats are currently consumed by the Brexit discussion, the reality, over the last month, has been somewhat different. 

Those of us living away from our island home have been experiencing considerable frustration at not being able to see why the UK whipped itself into a frenzy - and played out via the press and social media channels - over The Night Manager, the BBC's lavish adapation of John Le Carré's novel about ex-British Army soldier Jonathan Pine and his mission to bring down nefarious international arms dealer, Richard Onslow Roper. But with thanks to Amazon for their swift dispatch of the Blu-ray package of the six-part series, I have allowed myself to catch up in a single evening's binge viewing. And, man alive, it didn't take long to see what the fuss was about.

Now, before I go further, the United States won't get to see The Night Manager for another couple of weeks, so I'll avoid giving any spoilers away. But I will say that this was contemporary spy drama at its very, very best. James Bond and Jason Bourne have, to some degree, shaped our expectations of post-9/11 espionage on screen, and this updated version of Le Carré's book places Pine and Roper in the very recent context of a Middle East consumed by uprising and the horrors of Syria and Iraq we now know so much about. 

Thanks, however, to brilliantly weighted acting and the razor-sharp steerage of Danish director Susanne Bier, the BBC's adapation gets the balance absolutely right, offering a sort of Bond-for-TV while still capturing what Le Carré does so well in his novels - the minute details of espionage and his characters and their intense, complex and subtly evolving relationships. In many respects Le Carré's stories resemble theatre productions, drawing on a core cast of principle characters and the interplay between them, with just enough settings to give the narrative some breathing room. The other way of looking at them is their relative lack of sensationalism - the antipathy of Bond, of course, and from a dramatisation point of view, closer in spirit to Len Deighton's Harry Palmer, who eschewed the Brioni suits and Aston-Martins of 007, for a drab trenchcoat and London Transport buses.

The BBC production does, though, tread gently in the realm of latterday cinematic Bond: the cinematography is stunning, the locations - Roper's Majorcan estate in particular - exquisite, and the build-up of suspense is such that you'd have to have ice flowing through your veins not to want to watch all six parts in one go, given the opportunity.

There is so much to enjoy about The Night Manager, but its biggest virtue is the casting: Tom Hiddlestone as Pine, Hugh Laurie as Roper, the ubiquitous Tom Hollander as Roper's waspish sidekick Lance 'Corky' Corkoran, Olivia Coleman as the George Smiley of the piece, civil servant Angela Burr and her obsession with snaring Roper, along with the catwalk elegance of Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, David Harewood (last seen being blown up in Homeland), Douglas Hodge and Neil Morrissey (yes, the onetime man behaving badly).

Again, without giving anything away, but Hiddlestone, Laurie, Coleman and Hollander in particular are outstanding. And, perhaps without this being the intention, the reason for their magentism is their portrayal of social standing. Yes, sorry to bring up the c-word. Everyone knows how obsessed we Brits are with class, but it has become unavoidable, especially in the last couple of days, with a Tory government led by an Eton and Oxford-educated stockbroker's son and a clique of school, university and country chums around him, all coupled to the strongly-held belief that Britain's wealthy elite (which represent not much more than 6% of the total population) are in the vast majority of positions of power and influence.

In The Night Manager 'Dicky' Roper is the son of an auctioneer who has built a comfortable and clearly oppulent life for himself selling assault rifles, anti-aircraft missiles and sarin gas to anyone prepared to buy them, and without any moral regard for whom or where the buyers use them on. 

Laurie's Roper is unashamedly posh, something which, with the exception of a certain American doctor, he has built his acting career around, particularly with comic toffs like Blackadder's Prince George/Captain George and Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves. Here, though, Laurie plays the villain, and one with borderline mysognistic tendencies and a close-knit clique of associates, the origin of which is not explained but could be from either military service or an establishment like Eton (which Laurie also attended, as did Hiddlestone and fellow thesps like Damian Lewis, Eddie Redmayne and Dominic West). 

This inner circle behave as one would expect those who were members of the Bullingdon Club to behave: a group of upper-crust rugger-buggers in expensive suede loafers who see the nature of their business as simply that, business. To add to it, there are the nasties of MI6, including the cynical, sneering Geoffrey Dromgoole, played by Tobias Menzes, who plays Whitehall mandarins and powerbroker with consumate ease (see Skyfall and The Thick Of It).

Little is known, or is meant to be known, however, about Hiddlestone's Pine. But given the context of his service in Iraq and his officer's deportment (contrasted by Roper's Scottish ex-SAS grunt bodyguard Frisky), he adds to The Night Manager's unspoken class narrative. Pine may have chosen to leave the army for the relative anonymity of manning a hotel's night desk, but Hiddlestone plays him as well-bred but enigmatically damaged, in sharp contrast to Roper's cockiness and illicitly acquired wealth. To puncture all this toffery, Coleman as Angela Burr (a change from the book, whose equivalent character was male) is a pregnant, loveless but professionally focused housewife with a strong Northern accent, working in the prosaic confines of a drab London office, a classic Le Carré motif to demonstrate that spycraft isn't all about vodka martinis. The class divide couldn't be more pronounced.

Authentic, real-world espionage in the era of jihadism may have nothing to do with chaps quaffing vintage cognac in gentlemen's clubs and addressing each other as "old boy", but I've got to admit that all of the rich, received-English accents in The Night Manager (alongwith the integral theatre of the British establishment) make it all the more better.

And for American audiences who will see the series later this month, Laurie and Hollander will add themselves to that volumous tradition of English actors who do villainy so well. Because let's face it, if you want a baddie, pick a Brit. Peter Cushing in Star Wars, Ian McKellen in The X-Men, Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons in their respective Die Hards, Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector, even George Sanders voicing the ruthless tiger Shere Khan in Disney's original Jungle Book, the list is endless. Better still, pick a caddish, posh Brit.

Of course, screen villainy isn't just for those with a cut glass accent: in theory, Roper could have been recharacterised as a Marbella-dwelling East End bad'n. Tony Soprano was clearly in this social bracket as the son of a Newark mafiosi who continued the family business with all the traditions of working class southern Italian crime that went with it (including a crew dressed mainly in tracksuits and gold jewellery). But whereas Soprano was actually the protagonist of The Sopranos, in The Night Manager, Roper's poshness amplifies his villainy, with Laurie adding a plummy, sinister sheen to the part aided by the rich timbre of his voice. 

Yes, it is about breeding and, yes, it is about class. And, yes, it comes over as being all the more authentic, especially in these times when priviledge is both visible and, it would appear, it really is not about what you know, than whom.