Zugzwang: A swift update

It's been a long and tiring year, but I plan to do this way more in 2022.

Readers, acquaintances, accomplices.

Earlier this year, I started this newsletter as a thing to pour my endless free time into; it was a different time. The flexibility of furlough allowed me to put hours and hours of time into a free, regular, and joyously not-well-read newsletter.

This was great for a while, but to my chagrin, soon I had to go back to work and reluctantly earn a living by spending 50 hours a week in a place that was less fun to be than my flat, and as a result, the weekly Zugzwang ceased. Not a good time to be had by all.

I’d like to bring these newsletters back in 2022, albeit with much more variety and much less regularity. I’d like to use this as a space for short essays, interviews and assorted bits of writing on the subject of music, chess and anything else that I see fit, whilst carrying on with interviews over the chessboard. I’ve continued to write for music publications like Loud and Quiet and The Quietus, but I’d like to have my own nerdy little space for my own nerdy little thoughts.

In the interim, between what we’ll call “Zugzwang Series 1” and now, I’ve been fanatically consuming music – Ethio-jazz, French chanson, power ballads, the lots – and I’ve joined a chess club, so now feels like the right time to be starting this up again. As well as that, I was interviewed here (and also below) about the obsession I found in lockdown, by my new schachfreund Karl McDonald, and my portfolio of (mostly) music writing has continued to grow.

I will be publishing my favourite albums of the year next week, and then start to work out my writing plans for next year.