The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham News and Links for Monday, November 6

Kia ora from New Zealand! Matty Flatt here, your deputy to the managing editor covering today for Fitzie as he jets around the world.

This is my first time writing the Hoddle, and it’s an interesting experience. Your brain jumps around to a million different things you could write about (and do a generally bad job on) but I feel like the best strategy is to focus on things that are familiar. For me, one of those things is music (a topic not too far from the heart of Fitzie).

Though it’s not my day job, one of my hobbies and passions is music, and the making and performing of it; and over the last few days I’ve been tinkering around a few old projects that had been collecting dust. As I did so, I laid down a couple of guitar tracks and did some work around my guitar tone (a HUGE deal if you know any guitarists) and realized how odd the brain can be when it comes to sound.

I could be playing my guitar, listening through my headphones or monitoring systems and think it sounds great - and then hear back the recording product and think it sounds totally different! It’s not too dissimilar from when we hear our own voice back after leaving a voice message (maybe I’m showing my age here...) - our initial reaction is sometimes confusion, even disgust at the sound of our own voice.

It’s something you constantly have to combat as a musician; but psychoacoustics, how our brain reacts to sound, is a funny thing. It’s almost never logical.

One time a few years back I was running sound at a regular gig, and we did some experimentation around putting the drums on a riser. The complaints around volume levels went up exponentially; however, we were monitoring levels and they were actually lower by around 5 dB. It just goes to show: sometimes we hear with our eyes.

This concept also applies in some ways to how we feel about music we love. Often, there’s stuff we listen to in our younger days that we revisit after many years, only to question our own taste; on the flipside, there’s songs we previously struggle to connect with but that suddenly click.

The brain is a fickle beast.

What are some songs or albums that you never got, that all of a sudden hit for you? What once-loved music do you now struggle with?

Matty Flatt’s track of the day: Praying for Time, by George Michael

And now for your links:

Old dad talks about how he’ll always love us (sorry to give the Chelsea Youtube channel the clicks)

The Athletic: Gotham FC and OL Reign are headed to the NWSL Final

The Guardian: Arsenal try to one-up Liverpool with a statement of their own about “unprecedented” refereeing as Mikel Arteta wishes that he was a real boy come closer to fruition by embracing the hypocrisy that engulfs all humanity

This video of goals out of the blue is a fun watch, courtesy of the Premier League Youtube channel