Tuesday 27 April 2010

not safe for work

ah, those four magic words.

and today i have for you the eagerly awaited return of M.I.A after she dropped that teaser a few months back.

and as usual she is doing her own ting, taking on Lady Gaga by proving that you don't need cigarette glasses and Beyonce to make a monumental, original and bizarre 9 minute long music video.

edit: M.I.A has upset Youtube with all that graphic content breaking a ton of their rules, so get yourselves over to http://www.miauk.com/ if you wanna catch the video

additional edit: thank you vimeo, you have saved the day


M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Friday 23 April 2010

circlular ends

and talking of how far behind The Enfield Advertiser are (as usual) i wanna give you guys the heads up on one of my latest reviews

They Live made their live debut in Hoxton two weeks ago today, and as with the Frank Turner review, i knocked up a couple of reviews, the first has already been seen over at glasswerk, and given time the Advertiser will catch up to

but for those that can't wait, here is the local angle i gave it


They Live @ Hoxton Underbelly 09.04.10


Many are quick to blame reality TV for a lack of creativeness.

But for new electro-experimental duo, They Live, it may be the mother of invention.

Let me share a little background info with you, In 2007 Channel 4 launched MobileAct Unsigned as an alternative to the bland prime-time Pop Idol and X-Factor fare touted by rival ITV.

It featured real bands and took them on real tours and although little has been seen or heard of eventual series winners Envy and Other Sins in the years since, it did make local celebrities of Barnet’s Ginger Bread Men.

Former GBM front man James Richards can now be found collaborating with fellow ‘contestant’ Josh Dickson from the group Mancini to create an agro-electro anomaly that lays both their previous bands to rest.

They are They Live and they arrive amidst a raft of anti-sloganeering slogans and cries for conformity to be shunned, their image is shadowy and mysterious, their recorded output dark and abrasive.

And two months after their first songs began circulating on the internet, the duo prepare themselves to enter the live arena and give their new vehicle a test drive in front of a curious crowd at the baroquely decorated Hoxton Underbelly venue.

Shades of Talking Heads and Pet Shop Boys are updated and clash head on with the noughties sound of Chase and Status and Breakage, fashionable Kitsune and Ed Banger rosters possibly factor into their list of influences, whilst a nod to long lasting dance dons, The Prodigy, is nigh impossible to overlook.

The ever popular ‘email checking’ accusation my well be levelled at Josh by critics as he plays his part from behind an Apple Mac laptop and synth set-up while beside him a sharp suited James acts as front man without a band, delivering confrontational lyrics over the sharply processed beats that reverberate around the room.

Future plans may well expand the band but as a first taster of a new direction their debut gig certainly shows their scope for experimentation as They Live dabble in a scene where genre boundaries are repeatedly blurred, stressed and broken.


Minotaur by They Live  stream only

Thursday 22 April 2010

another dodgy headline

it's all getting a bit wordy around here!!

lengthy posts and such, and i got more words coming your way.

as the sun is streaming in through my window i'm am giving a listen to Deadmau5 in eager anticipation for (hopefully) another review oppurtunity and i'm downloading some Yeasayer stems that i might try to get busy with

talking of reviews, the Advertiser is a little behind the times and has finally got round to printing my re-tooled Frank Turner review that first saw the light of day over at glasswerk, some bits stayed the same, other bits changed and i gave it a nice little introduction for anyone that doesn't already know who Frank Turner is...

Frank Turner @ The Roundhouse 24.03.10
or as the paper titled it
To be Frank, Turner's star is on the rise



Frank Turner's journey to his sold out show at Camden's Roundhouse is a rather endearing tale.
Raised in a village in Hampshire and educated at Eton, young Francis probably broke his mother's heart when he began fronting post-hardcore band Million Dead in 2001.

The London based band achieved modest success and spent four years on the borders of rock's mainstream, releasing two acclaimed albums along the way, but the story takes an unexpected twist in 2005 when the rockers disbanded and Frank's career took a rather different tack.

Because for the past five years he has been peddling his wares as an alt-folk artist, while still retaining the edge that you would expect given his previous form.

Having toured rigorously, with numerous festival appearances under his belt and opening for the likes of Biffy Clyro, The Offspring and The Gaslight Anthem, Frank Turner has been cultivating a burgeoning fan-base and slowly been climbing up the ladder playing bigger and better venues.

And the night felt like a mild mannered celebration, with the Roundhouse gig being the biggest headline slot to date for the constantly charming and affable Turner, taking to the stage amid a rotating cast of players to sing songs for old and for current friends, for family, for love and for frustration.

Faithfull fans chant almost every word along with their folk-punk hero and arms are raised in jubilation as the 3000 strong crowd stretches back into the depths of the former engine shed.
Through pogue-esque celtic punk, acoustic spleen venting and banjo wielding call-to-arms in front of a sold out crowd, perhaps Frank Turner's biggest success lies within his ever grateful and ever professional performance that was delivered completely free of rock star posturing.

And as the evening draws to a close, Turner expresses his appreciation again for an equally appreciative audience as he recounts tales of his earliest shows at Holloway’s considerably smaller Nambucca venue.

But with an even bigger gig already announced for the near 5000 capacity Brixton Academy in December, it looks like the ballad of Frank Turner is far from finished.


Frank Turner - Photosynthesis   stream only

Tuesday 20 April 2010

a destructive force

be  fearful of anything left too long in my presence

it is likely to break

computer hard drives must shudder in their shells when i walk in a room, shitting giga-bricks cos of my reputation

my current computer situation is that the microphone input won't work and hasn't for a long while, the CD tray has given up opening, the mouse isn't actually sure whether it is connected or not most of the time, i-tunes will only open half of the times i want it to and web pages seem to need constant stopping and refreshing in order to try and get anywhere.

despite this i will keep trying to be as equally creative as i am destructive by experimenting and producing music on my weary machine

other computers that i have regular contact with seem to suffer fits and spasms and memory loss

only one CD tray on my 3CD changer stereo actually works, and sometimes even that is close to death and needs a good smack to get it sorted again

the radio in the bathroom tends to leave semi-regular gaps of silence during FM transmissions

a long suffering video player flickered its last a handfull of months ago, before this it had been prone to turning most films into black and white movies at any given moment


and yesterday, my bicycle that i rely on to get from A to B was struck down with a gash in the back tyre, so that it was pissing the magical self-healing green gunk from the inner tube as the wheel spun round and round and was soon flat, leaving me with a walk of shame
i am currently trying to attract punctuality, wealth and a moderately priced house to myself through positive thinking, but i can't help but think that things will continue to go wrong and that i will have to keep struggling through no matter how many times i focus my mind on computers that actually do what you want them to and 3 bedroom houses with a south facing gardens.

this isn't a declaration of negativity, this is an acceptance that things won't be hunky dory all of the bloody time - the world just isn't like that

Monday 19 April 2010

bride and groom

it has been a wonderful weekend.

how much of my personal and private life bleeds into my blog is questionable in my own mind, i like to keep it almost anonymous, so that those that know i write my blog can quite clearly see the real me in my writing but to the rest of the world i could be anyone, but also giving enough little tidbits and insights to keep any voyeuers happy.

and so this post continues, with the regailing of my cousin's wedding in a converted and rather beautiful barn in Ongar.


family weddings are such life affirming times, i'm hardly close to my family so these types of gatherings are enjoyable and equally a little bit uncomfortable.

but it's always nice to hear family tell tales that you either had never heard before, or that you had forgotten or that you hear all the time but never tire of. life keeps rushing by and for an afternoon you take it all in and take a look back and be reminded that you was little once, those long forgetten times...

and then the eating and then the drinking and then the dancing.... and it seems as if i have discovered a way to not get completely drunk... it is called single measures, they just don't do it for me, and the amount i had was definetely not enough to make me feel relaxed on the dance floor (not that i'd let it stop me either)


Sunday was another glorious day, spent in summer clothes and sunglasses and with a picnic in Hyde Park with my girlfriend followed by my first ever attempt at rowing a boat as we ventured out onto the Serpentine (as the queue for row boats was considerably shorter than the queue for peddalloes).

and of course the fact that the sun was out means that i now have my traditional t-shirt suntan that will hang around for the rest of the year and i will never be able to even out no matter how hard i try and no matter how much time i spend in sleeveless shirts

so, after two days out of the real world life will inevitably carry on as normal, but what a majestic couple of days

and congratulations to my cousin and his beautiful new bride

Friday 16 April 2010

geronimo watch


countless websites across the UK shall probably be troubling themselves today over a televised debate between three politicians last night.

i won't.

i'd much rather take a quick look back at last saturday's Doctor Who.


it seems we have more 'David Tennant as Doctor Who' style throwback acting, which isn't particularly nostalgic since he's only been out of the role five minutes. i'm honestly not gonna pass judgement yet, maybe Matt Smith will settle into the role and make it his own, but at the mo it hardly feels as if we have a new Doctor.

We have Amy Pond in a dressing gown (a dressing gown?! a dressing gown?! a million geeks must have wept that she hadn't gone to bed in just a little negligee)

And we also have The Doctor shouting geronimo. again. please stop.


and as for unravelling storylines, nothing yet on the goings on that i thought i had picked up on last time around (yet). the only recurrent theme was a crack in the side of the ship, reminiscent of the crack in Amy's wall - so let's see where that development will lead us in future episodes.



so, should i regularly keep you guys up to date on my observations as this series progresses? bit geeky, i know - and hardly the type of thing my long suffering girlfriend likes to find on my blog

Monday 12 April 2010

penny wise

sofas and geeking out.


but where is the poetry you cry?

where are the tales of woe as i search for an affordable yet grand house to live in?

where are the random internet finds?



wait, wait! i think i've got one!

yes, check this bad boy out! direct from the 1977 J. C. Penny catalogue!

i had been trying to convince my girlfriend that when we finally do acquire a house i was going to lovingly furnish it with a stray dining table that has taken up residence in a front garden down the road from me.

but she can rest easy, i have changed my mind, instead i want one of these to sit round and eat hotdogs at!!




lovingly referred to on this blog as 'some car seats on some old barrels'

and you realy have gotta check out the rest of the post for some real iconic style statements that everyone must be hoping will roll back around and be in fashion again soon

credit where it's due:
check out the full blog post and dazzling images at Save Leigh Ann

Saturday 10 April 2010

sound art experiment number 8

well it turned out to be quite a geek week over here didn't it.

let's remedy that by sorting you out with some free music, the latest installment in the much delayed SoundArt project.

we're up to number 8 and i have already recieved the artwork for number 9 and am brainstorming ideas at the mo, but lets not let this one pass us by too quickly.

may i present to you, the Art and the Sound of SoundArt8

SoundArt8

SoundArt8 by Hunchbakk

and for those of you that aren't quite sure what you are looking at, the above piece of artwork was infact a CD case with cassete tape wound tightly inside, to give the impression of something resembling a Reel to Reel, but also looking like a CD at the same time.

which didn't exactly fill me with inspiration.

instead i decided that it would be a blank canvas for me to work with and decide what i was going to do, which was also rather fitting considering the nature of a blank cassete.

so i set about gathering ideas and even up until the last day working on the track i was still adding ideas as they came to me, much like a cassete tape would be recorded onto over and over.

so i sampled tracks that i heard that appealed to me most, i dug through a pile of minidiscs and snatched short snippets of audio from shows i'd recorded off the radio, i actually sampled a very worn out tape which has quite clearly seen better days.

and although the finished item may not exactly sound like a track that has been worked on for a number of months it still stands as an experimental piece drawing inspiration (and samples) from a number of sources and i would like to acknowledge Big Audio Dynamite, Instra:Mental, D-mob, David Rodigan, John Peel, Steve Lamacq, Eddy TM, Jo Whiley, Akira The Don, Thom Yorke, Bill Hicks and Paul Kaye who all unwittingly contributed.

Thursday 8 April 2010

wrong

i'll admit my mistakes, and when i bitched about the mind-rotting continuity that cripples comics a while ago i had not properly done my research


how was it not obvious to me before? that in my time away from comics Wonder Womans place in the history of the DCU had been restored when Wonder Woman's mother took up the mantle of Wonder Woman and then embarked on a little adventure back in time to the World War 2 era in which Wonder Woman had originally frequented before being retconned and replaced by Black Canary.

it is quite clear now.

thanks Wikipidia

Wednesday 7 April 2010

geronimo part 2

ok, i promise not to lay into Matt Smith too much. there has only been one episode and i will reserve judgement until a later date.

but since there still isn't much to go on, lets just take a quick look at an image shot at the filming of 'The Eleventh Hour'


it seems to me that Matt Smith is rather excited (perhaps he is mouthing the word 'Geronimo') possibly down to the fact that he has found something resembling eyebrows in the props department.

it is also a rather good excuse to feature Karen Gillan in her police uniform again.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

geronimo



so, Doctor Who has started again, which means i have to find another hour each week to fit in some telly watching, having only just gained an hour when Skins finished.

new season, new doctor and new partner!!

i watched the first episode on the ketchup telly last night, and despite my initial dislike of Matt Smith's Doctor, i think i might grow to like him, or at worst, tolerate him, but only time will tell.

i didn't bode well from the start, ok, you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. but i just don't realy like the look of him. but i'll keep an open mind. alot has also been said so far of his lack of eyebrows, this also bothers me.

but onto the actual episode, and it seems that Matt Smith is trying to do his very best David Tennant impersonation - kinda hoping this is just transitional, either a slight homage to the recently departed Doctor, or the after-effects of the regeneration, or just akward acting til he finds his feet and knows how to become his own doctor.

and i'm already slightly bored of this yelling 'Geronimo' nonsense, just because Tennant had the occasional recurring exclamation of 'Allons-y' doesn't mean we need a catchphrase which has already outstayed it's welcome after barely more than one whole episode.

and what?? this Doctor doesn't like bacon?!??!! i'm realy not liking this chap so far.

but despite all this the episode was enjoyable, i won't give up all hope just yet. hopefully the bacon thing was just a mere oversight too!

what about the new partner? a 'kiss-a-gram' in a kinky policewomans uniform? great!


do kiss-a-grams actually realy exist? or would a Doctor's companion that also works as a stripper been a bit too risky for a BBC family programme?

lets hope she remembered to take her nun, french maid and nurse outfits with her when she hopped into the Tardis at the end of the episode.

so what does the future hold? Doctor Who has hardly been subtle when building up stories in the past and it seems we may be straight into it this time too... i'm certain i caught a quick glimpse of Davros, the laptop used in the episode was quite clearly manufactured by Myth and we have already been given the foreboding warning that 'silence will fall'.

just a handfull of teasers that i'm sure will play out across the season in the same way that similar set-ups like mentions of Bad Wolf, Torchwood and Saxon had echoed throughout past series.

we'll see soon enough, i'm sure.

Sunday 4 April 2010

R.I.P Moff Tarkin

ok, Star Wars raps are hardly a new thing, but this well thought out parody track and it's video should make good blog fodder


Thursday 1 April 2010

foolio

april31

has it nearly been a week without a blog post? sorry guys

sometimes the real world gets in the way of the fantasy life i wish to lead and the best of intentions go to waste.

there has of course been the online publication of my Frank Turner review that i mentioned last week, which you can read over at glasswerk.

and i couldn't realy let another month go by without mention of the SoundArt track i have been working on, did i say it may be here in march? well you'll just have to wait a little longer cos i'm still tinkering with bits here and there to get it the way i want it to sound.

i have already been slogging away it it today so i promise that it is getting ever nearer completion.