Brian Lavelle » www.brianlavelle.org

I’ve always enjoyed what I consider—no doubt pretentiously—to be rather unusual musics. There, I’ve said it.

At school, I came across a group of strange individuals performing under the name Ring. There’s very little about them on the great interweb, perhaps reflecting how individual and obscure their music was at the time. They had an early demo tape (untitled) which was released in 1984 on the anarcho-punk label BBP Records and Tapes (a sticker on the cassette proudly proclaims their motto “DIY not EMI is our game”). Ring’s first “real” (ahem) album, again on tape, was O De Dun Dun, self-released in 1989. Both were wonderful. There is, apparently, a Levitation connection in their guitarist Bic (Christian Hayes) who went on to form that group with others. I’ve never heard them.

And then there was this tape—Nervous Recreation—their third and last outing, which was just extraordinary in so many ways I find hard to express now.

I dug it out tonight, from amidst a huge unlit pyre of magnetic media, just to see if it was as magical as I’d remembered, despite nearly two decades of unreliable nostalgic mist. Its cover is still as odd to me now as it was then. The music is complex, playful and accomplished, and as the site above notes, in thrall to the genius of Tim Smith and Cardiacs. That, in my book, is A Good Thing. It’s incredible to think, in fact, that this material was recorded on a four track cassette recorder.

And, remarkably, listening to it for the first time in probably 15 years or more took me back again to happy (if frustrating) times in 1989, sitting in the refectory at school, trying to explain the last track on the album, “Some Fish Have Teeth”, to anyone within earshot, even those who thought Iron Maiden were the pinnacle of invention in music and hairdressing.

But especially I tried to explain this music to Judith, to whom I was in thrall. I failed to explain it, probably, but at least I tried. Not that she ever knew I was in thrall. I think. It just seemed to me, at that point in time, that there was never more of a beautiful truism than “some fish have teeth” to the point where it became something of a mantra. That all seems a bit silly now.

And Judith, if by some quirk of fate you’re out there and reading this, do get in touch. I think I know what the song means now.

I’ve just received a beautiful new (well, really quite old) FED-2 rangefinder camera made in the former Soviet Union some time in the 1950s. The FED-2 was the first and very successful attempt by Soviet camera makers to improve upon the original and vastly more expensive Leica II and IIIg designs.

The camera above is unusual because it’s finished in black enamel, so this is an opportunity to see how the FED-2 would have looked if that finish had ever been available on a camera out of the FED factory. It never was, and this finish is in fact the detailed modern enamelling work of a skilled restorer from Odessa in Ukraine.

The story of the FED factory is an interesting if unpalatable one. The factory (???) in Kharkov was an orphanage-turned-work-commune named for Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the original Soviet Secret Police, the Cheka (later the NKVD).

And the origin of the title of this post? It’s from an old Soviet song about war journalism:

With Leica and with notepad
And sometimes with machine gun
We passed through fire and frost.

Stephen Rothery has a controversial conspiracy theory that the early Leica I and II models were clones of the first FED rangefinder (the FED-1 or Fedka). He posits that the Leica in the song was simply a genericised trademark and that, for some time in the 1920s to the early 1940s, Leica in Russian was a synonym for a 35mm camera. I’m not sure about this, but it’s a good story…

Anyway, these are rugged, inexpensive machines that take great photographs, on good old fashioned film. I plan to use this pretty much exclusively for black and white photography; perhaps I’ll post some shots here after I’ve used it for a bit.

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[Edit: 23 June 2008: I worked out the camera is from 1955 and is the type 'a' version of the FED-2. I've added a wonderful little wrist strap from Gordy's Camera Straps. Elegant, simple and rugged. And very reasonably priced too! The camera, which is heavy enough, feels safe hanging on it. Highly recommended.]

It’s a fact that no matter how small the boxes are which arrive in the post for me, both of our cats will attempt to park themselves inside them when they’re empty (and often as they’re being emptied). Here’s Hamish happily ensconced inside the box in which I received an order from Puerhshop yesterday. As you can see, he doesn’t quite fit but he looks happy enough: definitely Priority Male…

But enough of the cats, who really have no interest in tea I’m glad to say. Today, I tried another of the Shincha I’d ordered from O-Cha.com: this time it’s the Fukamushi Sencha Supreme. Originally, I hadn’t opted for this one as I don’t have a lot of experience with Fukamushi, but comments of the Green Tea Forum suggested that this year’s harvest of this Shincha was rather wonderful, so I buckled. Again.

The leaves are a beautiful grassy emerald green, with shards of lighter colour throughout, and are quite fine as a deep steamed tea like Fukamushi will always be. The vendor says of this tea:

Very green and very thick. More astringent than most or our green teas, the taste of this fukamushi sencha remains on the palate for an extended time. As this is a very bold green tea, be sure to not brew too hot, for too long, or with too much leaf.

Mindful of this advice, I was careful in making this tea for the first time, particularly given my lack of experience with Fukamushi. The parameters I used for the first session were:
A measured amount of 2.0 grams of the fine leaf in a small pre-heated kyusu with 150ml of water at a temperature of almost 80°C for 1.5 minutes. The vendor recommends those parameters of time and temperature with an amount of 4 grams for 300ml of water so I just halved that direction for the small pot I was using. The simple arithmetic seemed to work fine.

The aroma of the unbrewed leaf is much more grassy and intense than the Kirameki I reviewed previously. There’s also that same distinctive sencha sweetness in the smell that I find very hard to describe: a vegetal, rather than sugary, sweetness. I could breathe in that aroma for hours without tiring of it; it’s uplifting and empowering. Or am I just overly excited by the prospect of this tea?

The colour of the liquor is a powerful green: rich and luxuriant. And the taste of this first infusion is surprising. It is bold, as Kevin Moore of O-Cha.com indicates, but it’s much less sweet in the taste than I’d anticipated from the aroma of the dried leaf alone. I’m beginning to learn that the infusion of any tea can dramatically change what you might expect from its taste, having formed a view when giving it a good sniff beforehand, so to speak, and that this applies not just to Japanese tea.

I suppose the same can be said for decent wine and good single malt whisky. Can whisky and tea be compared? Well, it’s been said before that single malt whiskies are chemically complex and are known to contain several hundreds of individual components (congeners) including a variety of alcohols, aldehydes, acids, esters and phenols, as well as carbonyl – sulphur- and nitrogen-containing compounds. Many of these contribute to the flavour of a whisky and the relative concentrations of each are dependent upon variations in raw materials and production methods. Consequently, each single malt whisky is discernable from any other, including those produced at a neighbouring distillery. I’d be curious if the same can be said of green tea. What makes a particular tea grown in a certain area and processed in a defined way taste differently from others, even in following years? I’ve read comment that this year’s Hatsumi Shincha is quite a bit different from last year’s: same farm, same processing, same vendor. So why the difference? Answers on a postcard, please!

Back to the Fukamushi: as the tea cools in the yunomi, more of the vegetal taste comes out. I can’t place it, but its flavour is really quite different from the other sencha I’ve tasted. I like it; it’s different and surprising. A second infusion of this tea, brewed for around half the time of the first one, perhaps a little less, comes out an even more intense colour. Jill described it as chartreuse and that’s a good description. The taste is less strikingly vegetal than before; possibly somewhat sweeter.

I can see this tea will be a nice contrast to the others in the cupboard and I’ll definitely enjoy finishing it.

Next up for review: possibly the Hatsumi mentioned above. We’ll see. I still have a large stack of puerh to get into, and some oolong; fear, perhaps, is keeping me from going there…and I’m obviously enjoying my Shincha so much!

And for good measure here’s the other one, Bob—our Little Slice of Darkness—in that same box. Obviously, he can’t miss out on some packaging action; his brother, however, is the trailblazer when it comes to that kind of thing…

Well, in a twist on the title and content of a slightly earlier post, I’m delighted to say that Spring definitely seems to have sprung around these parts. The temperature and sunshine over the last few days has been consistently good. Maybe I’m speaking too soon, but it is May, after all…

Perhaps I’m wrong, but what may be heightening my mood even more so than the upturn in the weather is that two of my packages of Shincha have just arrived from O-Cha.com.

I tried the first of these today, the Uji Shincha Kirameki. The aroma of the leaf in the just-opened package is wonderful: fresh, grassy with an astonishing sweetness that’s hard to compare to anything else.

My parameters for brewing the first infusion were as follows:

A measured amount of 4.0g of the beautiful deep-green grassy leaf in a pre-heated kyusu with 200ml of water at a temperature of approximately 65°C for 1.5 minutes.

The first infusion is light and grassy, with a soft mouthfeel and no bitterness whatsoever. As you might anticipate with a good first flush tea, there is no hint of the kind of ‘tiredness’ you find in older senchas. There’s a slightly sweet flavour to this but the overall impression is of lightness. The liquor is faintly transparent green, with yellowish tints. The shorter steep time may account for this, but it’s recommended that the brewing time be reduced for a shincha and also that the temperature be reduced slightly. I’ve no complaints with that advice at all; it certainly worked for me.

The liquor of the second infusion was cloudier and greener (pictured here). It has more of an initial impact on the tastebuds in the mouth; slightly more bite than the first infusion. It’s very good indeed and confirms my view that the second infusion is the more representative of the power of a particular sencha.

I managed to get good fourth and fifth infusions of this tea before I had to call it a day. And that was down to me, and the lateness of the hour, rather than the tea. I don’t doubt that if I’d persisted the tea would happily have given more. I’ve not experienced that in a Japanese tea before. Whilst this tea may be relatively expensive—$37.95 for a 100g bag—I can’t complain, particularly if each 4g kyusu of the tea gives at least five delicious infusions. That’s about $0.30 or £0.15 per 200ml yunomi. As they say, you do get what you pay for.

I’ll be interested to compare this Shincha to the other (less expensive) O-Cha.com Shincha I received: the Shizuoka Sencha Hatsumi. More on that one at a later date.

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[Edit: 9 May 2008: I've had a couple of further sessions with the Kirameki and, thanks to Ryan's advice, have had even more enjoyment from this Shincha. I increased the leaf to water ratio—in fact, I used a smaller kyusu, using approximately 4 grams to about 150ml of water—and increased the temperature to approximately 75°C.]

Well, I’m not, as a matter of fact, a cat but I have recently been reading a book with that title by the Japanese author, Natsume S?seki, written at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

Originally published in ten instalments in the literary magazine Hototogisu between 1905 and 1906, I Am a Cat is a satire on upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era, portrayed through the eyes of an “unloved, unwanted, wandering kitten”. And it’s very amusing in a wry, philosophical sort of way; easy to dip into and with a storyline that’s more a string of anecdotes and observations than a rigid narrative structure.

I’m enjoying it; the observations on the superiority of cats over humans are really quite droll, especially if you know even a little of how cats behave; and with it tonight I’m also enjoying some 2000 Long Yuan Hao Yi Wu Mountain raw puerh that I got as a sample from Yunnan Sourcing. Very nice indeed, and my first ever puerh: the smokiness, dried fruit aromas and lasting flavour are quite intense, and not what I was expecting at all.

Okay, so that’s Chinese tea, with a Japanese novel, itself translated into English: but it’s Thursday night and it’s been one of those weeks…

This past weekend in Edinburgh we had probably the most beautiful Spring day so far this year. The sun was so warm and the breeze so slight that it might even have been Summer. Jill and I sat in the Dean Gardens overlooking the Water of Leith—incidentally, where the photograph for my blog header was taken—and speculated on the start of Spring proper.

We thought that the extremes of weather we’ve had for months now were gone; that our extended Winter was over. Needless to say, this morning there were hailstones and rain and it had turned decidedly colder again.

To take my mind off this reversal of meteorological fortunes, I turned to thoughts of the arrival of Shincha. Shincha is the first tea harvest of the year in Japan, starting in the middle of April in Kagoshima, Shizuoka and a few of the other growing regions, and at the beginning of May in Uji in Kyoto.

I’ve ordered a number of packages from a couple of my favourite Japanese tea purveyors, namely:

? Uji Shincha Kirameki, from O-Cha.com;

? Shizuoka Sencha Hatsumi, from O-Cha.com;

? Shincha Traditional, from Hibiki-an;

? Farmers’ Shincha, from Hibiki-an

I’m very much looking forward to the arrival of these packages and am confident this should be enough sencha to keep me going for quite a while. The only temptation will be to try each one separately when it arrives, whereas I should really store some of the four packages to keep them as fresh as possible for as long as possible… We’ll see! In any event, I’ll post my thoughts here as I try each type.

Over the last few months, I’ve become very interested—some might even say obsessed—about obtaining a particular style of Chawan by one of my favourite Japanese potters, Shibuya Deishi (?? ??). His potter’s mark is ?? (Deishi) or ?? (Mingetsu).

The tea bowl in question is one of, or similar to, his Oni-Hagi Winter Tea Bowls with a straw-ash glaze. The Oni–Hagi style is apparently a representation of cherry trees in blossom and Oni is Demon or Devil in Japanese—whilst demons are thought of as wicked or evil in Western culture, they are considered a useful ally in Japan. Here’s an example of one of these extraordinary bowls:

I think this chawan is just beautiful. The glaze is wonderful and the notched feet are perfect. As I said above, it seems I’m obsessed!

I have a few of Deishi’s more inexpensive pieces in the Oni-Hagi style already and they are truly beautiful: rugged and quite sensual but also somehow fragile in aspect, perhaps because the nature of the glaze makes them seem impermanent and on the verge of disintegration; and I love the notion that they change in appearance over time more than most ceramic items. The glaze becomes cracked and crazed and takes on the colour of the tea. The glaze often reminds me of the bark of a tree, particularly something like a silver birch. For me, they make tea-drinking even more enjoyable. Some have even expressed the view that the composition of the clay and glaze changes the taste of the tea, for the better.

Toru, from Artistic Nippon, is trying to see if he can find me one of these, but I fear that the range of bowls similar to the one above might be long gone. Even if I can find me one, I have a feeling it will be expensive… So, watch this space! And any help or further info on Mr. Deishi would be most welcome.

This is my first post in relation to the tea part of this blog: an attempt to set out my (very amateur) thoughts on real tea, the tea ceremony and the many ideas and emotions that spring from these things. What’s behind this is that I’ve been so inspired by the large number of excellent and diverse blogs on the internet that I felt if you can’t beat them, then why not join them in a cup of life-affirming tea? The Tea Links section on the right will list as many of these sites as I can find; all have something positive and unique to offer to this subjective area. Some are very learned whilst others are just honest, essential diaries into tea life and the life of tea.

I’ve been drinking and enjoying Japanese green tea for several months now – principally sencha, gyokuro and matcha, but also some others. I confess I’ve amazed myself by how much I’ve got to know over this period, and equally by the many fundamental mistakes I’ve made in the same time frame. I’m a novice and will remain one, which is fine, but learning just a little, day by day, is enough for me. That, too, seems to be an important part of the discovery and the enjoyment of tea.

I’m hoping soon to make a start on Chinese teas too, particularly oolong and pu-erh, which intrigue me and make me want to know so much more. The sheer number of these teas and the wealth of information available on them is bewildering yet intoxicating.

So, with great excitement and some little trepidation, here I go plunging from the Great Tea Learning Curve into the Great Tea Unknown, mixing metaphors as if there’s no tomorrow. Expect more mistakes; I’m quite sure of that. But I hope I’ll find new experiences, new knowledge and new friends united under the banner of Great Tea.

[In case you're wondering, the name of this journal comes from a nice little quotation from the short story by Saki, aptly named Tea.]

The text in the subject of this post is by Italo Calvino, one of my favourite writers.

Why that as the subject? Well, as some of you will know, we have two cats, Bob & Hamish, who’ve lived here since last Summer. These two brothers are by turns acrobatic, majestic, proud, frustrating, adorable, confusing, confused, unreasonably clever, unfeasibly stupid and constantly surprising. And I’ve grown very, very fond of them and their quite different little personalities.

This is Bob…

He is the black one.

…and this is Hamish…

He is the black and white one.

I don’t have too many photographs of them as they tend not to pose well for the camera! But I’ll keep trying.

It now seems strange to me to think I’ll be 36 this year and yet I’ve never had cats before nor any other pets. The last eight months have seen me climb a hugely entertaining if rather steep learning curve, but with Jill’s help I’ve been getting there and now I can’t really imagine Bob & Hamish not being around.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure Calvino was right. I can see the gates of that other city; I just don’t think I’ll ever see inside.

It’s mid evening and I’m currently listening to a subtle and subdued little split-tape by Evan Miller & Gown. It’s the first I’ve heard by either of these artists. The Evan Miller side is beautiful acoustic guitar meanderings against a grainy, lo-fi thunderstorm backdrop (astraphobics, fear not…) which works remarkably well. The piece is called Specter: a truly fitting, if Americanised, title.

And as I type this and listen to the tape-storm, I’m drinking a cup of rather lovely gyokuro in a new Mokage style teacup from Hokujo.

Mogake is a traditional Japanese technique which consists of applying seaweed onto unglazed pots before the firing process is carried out. The salt from the seaweed oxidizes with the clay during the firing and unique and often surprising marks are made on the pot surfaces. This is the work of Shimizu Genji-san, a true master of this art. Of course, I couldn’t resist obtaining a kyusu in the same understated style…

And now the reverse, Gown side of the tape is playing (it’s a very short release…). This piece, entitled Pigeon Church, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, is more electric and out there yet it’s still possessed of a fine, wandering spirit. Is Evan Miller part of, or all of, Gown? I don’t know but I suspect not; it really doesn’t matter anyway. I think I’ll have some more gyokuro as I watch this miniature electrical storm settle.