Crone Age

June 19, 2026

It’s my birthday in a few days which means that I have been writing this newsletter for three whole years. This will be the 159th published Slowpoke. Congratulations if you made it this far. There is no prize. We are just all here, in it together. If you’re feeling generous though, I do have a couple of requests to make of you…

Firstly, this week I have been running a survey - it’s for (another) research assignment for my Masters. However, I am already fascinated by the responses I’ve had and I think it will almost certainly be beneficial to my writing here in Slowpoke (and elsewhere) too. It’s about music discovery and engagement. It’s easier to do on a desktop - on a phone you have to scroll across to see all the options for a few questions - but if you’ve got five minutes spare, I’d love it if you’d share your thoughts. And if you’re feeling EXTRA kind and generous, perhaps you’d consider sharing the link so I can gather yet more thoughts and opinions. The more the merrier.

Every time I make a point of mentioning the ways you can exchange your money for my work, I labour the point that it’s not expected nor is it necessary to do so for me to appreciate your presence and engagement. That is all still true, but I also realise that if you don’t ask, and if you don’t tell people something is available then they most certainly won’t do anything about it. So, with that in mind… I made a zine, you can buy it here. And if you enjoy my newsletters, you can subscribe for free, or as a paid subscriber. Because it’s almost my birthday, if you subscribe before the end of the month, you can have a cheeky discount.

Now all that admin stuff is out of the way, what is there to report this week? I got some fascinating replies to last week’s newsletter and it seems I was correct in assuming that some people would feel a twinge of panic and purchase a spare hard drive. One person wrote a very thoughtful email about cutting down on the amount of physical media products they own and suggested that some things are perhaps more special if they’re not forever. Well, I sat with that for a while and gave it some thought. It did make me think about some of the very special, one-off shows we have at Roadburn and how often people are aghast that we’re not recording them for posterity. In those instances I fully embrace the notion of some things existing just for a short while, for the people who were present. Also, sometimes a special, one-off show presents itself without warning, regardless of the billing on the poster, and it would be a madness to go around recording every show for posterity just on the off-chance it turned out to be magical.

Anyway, my curiosity about other people’s habits has led to me interviewing a couple of folk this week for what may become a regular feature (TBC). I am fascinated by how other people listen to music, and how they come to make those decisions about technical set up, ethical concerns, financial outlay etc. So I figured I would just start asking people about it more. If you have what may be perceived as an unusual set up, if you have particularly strong feelings about specific formats of music, or you know of someone who listens to music in a way that nobody else does - let me know.

Last weekend I went to Download festival entirely to see Blood Incantation. I did also stop by to check that Bush were rubbish, which I confirmed immediately. Blood Incantation were great and I remain in awe of their vision and execution of it. Also, their gongs. I had my photo taken with one of the gongs. I will simply never a miss an opportunity to do this. There is no photographic evidence that I enjoyed a nice day out, an amiable catch up with the band, and watched a great show… but proof that I saw a gong? You got it.

Tonight I am going to see One Leg One Eye. I actually wrote about them in the very first proper Slowpoke which I set free into the world on my 40th birthday! They have a new album out now called CRONE. The concept of crones is very alluring to me - I am keen to know more about crones, to know more crones, to be more crone - so they sold it to me before I’d ever even heard a note. However, the album itself is great too. There is much less obvious folk influence in the sound of this album, compared to their debut… or rather any hint of it is saturated by distorted, industrial drone. However, the album does draw on Irish mythology and therefore the songs are imbued with the weight of something intangible; history, wisdom, unrealised prophecies… who can tell?

The new Warning album is out today. I have worked with this band, or rather I have worked with Patrick Walker, for many years now. I don’t know that I can realistically pretend to be objective about it for that very reason, but I do think that it is worth 45 minutes of your time. I am very proud of Patrick for what he has done with this record, and I am thrilled to have been alongside him during its creation. Maybe I’ll write more about that another time, but for now give Rituals of Shame a listen. It’s beautiful.

I think that’s all for this week. Thank you for being here, thank you for reading - especially if you’ve doing it for the last three years with me.

~Becky

Here I am with a Blood Incantation gong, and Leah who gave me access to the gong. Thank you for indulging me, Leah.