Official Royal Wedding Brochure - Downloadable Version

A colleague at work asked me if I could make a printable version of the Official Royal Wedding Brochure that's currently doing the rounds, so I duly did.  The format in which it's presented is very restrictive, and doubtless designed to dissuade people from using it for their own purposes, but I couldn't see anything prohibiting it. 
I figured some other people might also like to try and print it out as well, so they can read along to the ceremony, kneel at the appropriate time and enjoy looking at all the nice pictures.  So, I made up this PDF of the brochure which you can print, view, send to your reli's and enjoy without any limitations. 
Enjoy!

Royal Wedding Official Brochure

So You Liked The Mighty Boosh?

I was in philosophy class at the tender age of sixteen when my friend Leo told me about a show called The Mighty Boosh.  Initially I was sceptical; how could a show about two men working in a zoo be entertaining?  But my friend forced the DVD’s upon me, and so after school one night I took a break from my dedicated homework routine, put the DVD into my computer and sat back.  And I was taken on a journey through time and space, a journey I’m still on to this day.  The Mighty Boosh was a revelation.  Each episode was a totally enthralling trip, a juxtaposition of dark humour against colourful, arty and energetic adventures.  

The Mighty Boosh's Bizarre Logo

The first series follows the adventures of Vince Noir, a trend setting hipster (Noel Fielding) and Howard Moon, a trend apathetic 'jazz dalek' (Julian Barrett), Zoo keepers at the Zooniverse, owned by Bob Fossil.  The Zooniverse features a gift shop owned by shaman Naboo, whose best friend and familiar is the ape Bollo.  A diverse crowd to be sure, and every episode they embark upon a surreal adventure.  After a brief and generally irrelevant (but always amusing) introduction, it launches into the episode.  With trips to the afterlife, a trek through a mod-wolf infested forest and journeys to the arctic to find precious stones, every episode features a leftfield story with twists and turns.  Fashion, musicianship, arty-ness and relationships are all commonly explored themes. 

The Cast assembled outside the Mod-wolf infested Jungle Room

The Mighty Boosh has a few things that really make it special.  The banter between Vince and Howard is lightning, with hilarious back and forth between the two.  The balance of Vince’s obvious affection for Howard is juxtaposed with Howard’s disdain for Vince, and his ever changing hipster ways. 

The second factor is the regular breakdown into a song and dance routine.   Every episode features one, sometimes two songs, all of which are memorable and entertaining.  Julian Barrett is a talented musician and wrote most of the music.  Of particular note are their two man raps which they occasionally embark on, known as crimps.  With genius wordplay between the pair, they have become so notorious even the sugar puff monster has tried to get in on the action.  

Calm a Llama down!

The third and final factor that makes The Mighty Boosh so noteworthy is the imagination that goes into it.  I don’t know exact figures, but the Mighty Boosh has always featured a risibly small budget, which is compensated for by the enormous amount of imagination that goes into each scene.  In fact, they played it cleverly by often acknowledging the fact that money hard to come by, sometimes even breaking the fourth wall.  But it never comes across as cringe worthy, with the cheap costumes and unconvincing sets coming across as being intentionally kitsch, rather than financially restrained.      

Six years on, I have trouble remembering what TV shows I watched before I discovered The Mighty Boosh.  I seem to recall watching and enjoying The Office, but aside from that I think it was all dross.  But having watched The Mighty Boosh, it turned me onto a completely new type of comedy.  Comedy with a dark, yet (generally) good natured edge.   

Noel Fielding - The Cockney Hitcher

Possibly the most glowing review is demonstrated from this story.  After watching the first few episodes, I eagerly e-mailed my friend Felix telling him about this fantastic new show I’d discovered.  Having not heard back from him in twenty four hours about it, I e-mailed him again to see if he’d enjoyed it.  A while later, he replied saying that he’d stayed up until six that morning watching the entire first two series.  A wise man once observed “Crack is really more-ish” and The Mighty Boosh has a similar appeal.  

After having consumed both series myself, I found my thirst for psychedelic, surreal, dark commentary barely sated and so I set out to discover more.  And as is often the case with journeys into the unknown, I discovered a vein of riches far greater than I could possibly imagine.  But aside from The Mighty Boosh, very few of these surreal comedies seem to have permeated the public psyche.  

Julian Barrett converses with a coconut

The Mighty Boosh is reasonably well known, as it has unfortunately become something of an indie video bible.  What with Noel Fielding’s increasingly frequent appearances on the uncomfortably hip Never Mind The Buzzcocks, he (and therefore TMB) are quite well known, but there is a wealth of other shows  that a criminally small proportion of the population are aware of.  And so, I’ve decided to write a couple of articles (as and when I think of them) of a few shows that I would consider essential viewing for Mighty Boosh fans.  They all feature a degree of surrealism rarely seen on mainstream television, and all will transport you to somewhere totally abstract while you consume them.  

One of the ways in which I rate the potential of a show is the actors it features, and so I will try and highlight this aspect.  There seems to be a pool of about fifteen actors whose performances always hit the spot, and you’ll find them commonly spread out throughout these shows.  These include;

Noel Fielding

Julian Barrett

Rich Fulcher

Matt Berry

Richard Ayoade

Simon Pegg

Mark Heap

Chris Morris

Matthew Holness

Alice Lowe

Julia Davis

Nicolas Burns

Chris Morris 

Rebecca Front

And probably several others who’ve slipped my mind at this moment.  These people are all acting gods amongst men, turning in consistently entertaining performances in a variety of roles.  Some are more versatile than others, but they all consistently entertain. 

So, look out for my next entry where I’ll recommend you a darkly surreal comedy you've probably never seen!  

It's all a matter of perspective

I recently found these two spectacular images of the Earth, and after marvelling at the beauty portrayed, and the science that made the capture/creation of these images possible, I also started thinking of how these photos embodied the attitudes of their representative countries.  

Please click the pictures for full screen versions, it may take a while to load but it is well worth it.

Earth - The American Way

So, this is Earth as seen by Americans from fourty five thousand kilometres away.  This is actually a composite image, stitched together from thousands of other images, the most famous of which is known as Blue Marble (thanks Wikipedia!).  That link points you to a picture of the Earth, as photographed from NASA satellite Apollo 17, way back when on December 7th, 1972 at precisely 5:39 am UTC.  This is quite releveant, because at this time, over this point on the Earth, Africa and India are fully lit up whilst the East is experiencing sun down.  The photo was taken with the sun behind the astronauts, and shows Earth fully illuminated.  

Along with several other images, it was stitched together to give a 'true color' image of the world.  The original has a 1pixel/kilometre ratio.  A true colour image means that even though it might not be a photo as we know it, it has been corrected to give an approximation of the colours as we see them.  In this case, a lot of the image comes from infra-red sources, amongst other things.  

With it's rich blue oceans and verdant green land, it's a breathtaking image. It is typically American, with it's overly saturated and unnaturally rich colours lending the image an optimistic feeling.  It has a slightly artificial, unnatural look to it.  This is Earth as imagined in a Pixar movie.   

Some Images are more equal than others

And here we have the earth, photographed by Russian weather satellite Elektro-L, from thirty six thousand kilometres away.  This is the first major spacecraft developed and launched by post-Soviet Russia, With it's darker seas and browner terrain, it seems a far more austere representation of the Earth as we know it, bringing to mind war torn pictures.  Somehow, it seems like a far more realistic capture of the Earth than we would imagine NASA's effort to be.   

The Russian images are created from a mixture of near-infra-red and visible wavelengths.  Any details out of our visible wavelength are given an unnatural colour.  All plant life appears red, for instance (representing the infra-red they reflect).  This means that they show the Earth in a way that humans wouldn't see, using the naked eye.

Which means that, surprisingly, NASA's gorgeous green and blue representation of the Earth is actually closer to what we would see if we took a ride up to space (with Richard Branson as our tour guide, maybe).  

It's interesting to note that despite the enormous effect that humans think they've had on the Earth, it's still impossible to directly see much evidence of it from fourty thousand kilometres away.  No settlements jump out, no enormous ocean liners make themselves obvious, and no planes or other aerial craft interrupt this view.  Maybe it would be a different story if this was taken over Europe or North America, but from this view of the Pacific Ocean, Earth looks like a place where calm and tranquility reign supreme. 

Credit to Russian Space Web and Visible Earth for these images. 

Ashok - Plans

Florence reclines

Florence + The Machine’s rise to the top has been has been unexpected, not due to their quality but their unusual style.  With the exception of their karaoke cover of The Source’s You Got The Love, it was not a particularly commercial album.  Featuring luscious and dense instrumentation, with songs like Hurricane Drunk (a tribute to getting drunk in the presence of a former loved one), Drumming Song (a tribute to the unspoken electricity between a girl and a boy;  “When they're standing in front of you and you can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything properly”) and Bird Song (a song about an altercation with a crime witnessing bird, presumably a metaphor) it was a fairly left field collection of indie-soul tunes, dense with gothic imagery and songs about mortality.    

It topped the charts on 30^th January 2010, having spent weeks hovering around the number two slot.   To many, it marked one of the finest albums recorded by a female vocalist in years.  After having had to choose between either the manufactured bubblegum of Girls Aloud, Sugababes, the manufactured agression of 'agaitators' like P!nk or Avril Lavigne, or the forced sexuality of someone like Rihanna, it was refreshing to hear a woman stripped of saccharine, to sing about Love rather than sex.  Florence was riding high, but unbeknownst to many, this was not the first commercially released album she’d been a part of, and in some respects, it wasn’t even her best.

Ashok's logo

There’s very little known about Florence’s first proper band, Ashok.  The internet is supposed to have bought us all closer together, removed barriers and destroyed life’s sense of mystery.  But about the band Ashok, there is a haze of ignorance.  Tumbleweed drifts slowly across their Myspace; it contains a couple of gushing reviews (naturally), a couple of tracks from the album, an influences list that ranges from Dave Brubeck to Rage Against The Machine and some photos of their instruments.  No-one on the internet seems to talk about them.  

Chris' favourite guitar

I was first introduced to Ashok whilst idly browsing the web for Florence rarities.  There are several absolute gems that were not included on the album, and one that caught my ear was a song called Sunday.  The first thing that caught my attention was the unusual style and instrumentation of the song.  Instead of harps and orchestras (Florence’s musical staples) it instead features funky blues guitar and glockenspiel solo-ing.  The second thing was the sound quality.  Being in a band and an avid music listener, I’ve established over the years that most demo’s seem to demonstrate a large amount of unnaturally poor sound quality – presumably to keep people interested enough to buy the album when it’s finally released, whilst not replacing the paid for product with a free version.   Whilst Sunday featured a bit of hiss, it was otherwise crystal clear. 

Ears pricked, I set about investigating a bit more into the background of this particular demo, and discovered that it was in fact no demo; it was the third track off an album called Plans.  Entranced by Sunday, I set out to obtain a copy of the album, and was astonished at what I found. 

Ashok - Plans

There exists only one concrete piece of information in the world about Ashok; their album, Plans.  And what a unique and fabulous statement it is.  The first thing that hits you about the album is the melding of funk, soul, blues and hip hop that defines this record.  Ashok is fortunate enough to feature not one, but two lead vocalists/lyricists – Leo Nathan rapping, and Florence Welch singing, as well as a stellar guitar player by the name of Christopher Lane.  It sounds as though Florence and Chris were the first to meet.  Florence used to sit around at Chris’ house at the age of 16, making up lyrics.  Using this, it is possible to establish a time frame for the band. 

A younger Florence

Florence was born in 1986 on August 28^th, and so at the age of 16, the year must have been 2002.  This must be when Ashok started.  Their album Plans was released on the 9^th of April, 2007 to an indifferent audience.  Around this time, Florence started playing gigs with her friend Isabella Summer under the name Florence Robot and Isabella Machine.  In December of 2006, Florence sang Etta James songs to Mairead Nash (of Queens of Noize) in a toilet, inspiring her to manage her.  Mairead is now F + TM’s manager, and Isabella the keyboard player, so it’s fair to assume that at this point in time, the seeds of The Machine had been strongly sown.  It sounds as though contracts had been signed for Ashok at this point, because her father has this to say in an article for the Daily Mail;

“Florence and her bandmates were 'spotted' by an old-school music manager and there was talk of a contract. 'Don't sign anything until we've had a chance to have a look at it,' we implored. 'Yeah, yeah,' said Florence - and went ahead and signed it.

That's where it all could have gone off the rails. She was 19 and miserable, in the wrong band, life signed away, career over before it had begun. Despite my misgivings, I became a bit of a rock dad, and phoned a friend who was a music lawyer.

It turned out the contract was only binding on Florence as part of the band, so all she had to do was resign. After that we paid a bit more attention.”

So obviously, in 2006 Florence quit the band Ashok, to bring about her own machine.  It's hard to say what could have made her unhappy; her differences were unlikely to be musical, as Florence is known to be a big fan of hip hop and blues.

It seems as though Ashok tried to carry on for a while; they released a music video for Lean From The Middle, filmed with a Florence replacement by the name of Sorana Santos.  It’s worth a watch if only to be shocked at Leo’s appearance (I must confess that from his voice, I’d assumed him to be black – how wrong I was) but it doesn’t seem as though much occurred following this.  Their last update on Myspace was on the 25^th January 2008, and a live performance of Franky Boy that was uploaded on Youtube on the 21^st of the same month seems tired, uninspired and crucially, devoid of Florence.  Tragically, there appears to be only one video on Youtube of Ashok featuring Florence – a gig at Brixton Jamm where Ashok had two songs recorded – Franky Boy and Always Ashok.  These are definitely worth a listen, as the whole band seems to be on great form.  

According to Massimo Alessio Zeppetelli (who has evidently had contact with the band), Leo decided to split the band once Florence had left, resigning Ashok to a small, untouched corner of the past. 

Florence walks away

Regardless of all the turmoil, it appears that Ashok had managed to put aside their differences long enough to find the time to record an album.  

The first track, A New Year’s Anxiety begins with a looped fiddle, a funky guitar riff and a boy and a girl singing in upbeat harmony.  The dynamics between Florence and Leo are downright jaw dropping.  Individually their voices are confident, with Florence exhibiting none of her trademark (and somewhat tiresome) howling.  The interplay is exhilarating, with the pair sharing lines, trading lines and finishing each other’s sentences before leading into a fiddle solo.  The only other contemporary band I can think of to feature a fiddle solo are Mumford & Sons, a dreary nu-folk band whose sound can only be likened to how I imagine it would feel to be too stoned in a wheat field being chased by zombie scarecrows.  Ashok, somehow, pull it off and still look cool.  

Eight people in view on stage - and a ninth off camera

The standout tracks on this album are numerous.  Lean From The Middle starts off with one of the catchiest riffs ever heard in an intro, and features the intermittent percussive qualities of a cowbell!  Leo sings the verse, while the two of them duet on the chorus, and once again the sound they create is sparkling.  Florence’s vocals are silky smooth while the band maintains an energetic back beat.  Funky is a word that comes up a lot in relation to this album, and the first half is most definitely funky.  Sunday is definitely a highlight, as is Under The Thumb.  Up to Gerry Gigolo, this album makes you want to bounce around.  With jumpy guitar lines and stripped down drumming, it is hard to sit still.  After the half way line though, it takes a surprising turn; Gerry Gigolo is the creepy tale of a male prostitute who hangs around old people’s homes, trying to peddle his wares and exposing himself.  With jazzy piano, it comes across as the soundtrack to a twisted film noir.  Florence imitates a pervy granny to great effect.  “You can call me any time, I’ll be waiting by the phone.  At the old folks home”. 

Slo Tune sees Florence singing of “winning the losing race”, summoning an air redolent of Miss Havisham.

The final track on this album is truly unexpected.  All Florence fans are familiar with Kiss With A Fist, the 3 chord indie rock track that gave many of us our first taste.  Imagine if it had been recorded by Dexy's Midnight Runners.  A rousing barn dance, complete with a horn/honky tonk piano duel at the end, is how Kiss With A Fist (amusingly, originally titled Happy Slap) was first imagined.   

Ashok perform to a pond + some people

 Overall, it is fascinating insight into the origins of Lungs, as well as being a fantastically strong piece of individual work.  As with her later album, all the songs have a dark air about them, with talk of death and love the two most common theme’s running through the lyrical sphere.  With a lighter, more upbeat feel than Lungs, Plans has become a popular album at social gatherings.  The mix of rapping and singing is a strange one, but fortunately the pair recognise the game as a team one, and complement each other well.  Florence’s impressive soaring range and Leo’s deep, rough delivery work well, never treading on each other’s sonic toes. 

The album can be purchased from Amazon here, and it’s a purchase I thoroughly recommend you make.

Glitz, Glamour & Formula One

Lately, I’ve been involved in an ongoing debate regarding the nature of Formula One.  My friend put forth the opinion that Formula One was a sport that attracted fans purely based on its glamour. 24 of the world’s highest paid sportsmen, racing multi-million pound automobiles through Monaco’s streets of gold, a battle of wallets.  Naturally, I opposed this, insisting that it was 24 of the world’s greatest athlete’s racing the most finely tuned engineering contraptions risking life and limb to beat each other around Monaco’s tight and twisty streets.  My friend’s only concession was that “the pit stops are quite exciting”.   

Nicole first, Lewis second at the Monaco Grand Prix

Glamour is undoubtedly a large part of the attraction for many people.  I’m sure there are few people who would not trade in their lifestyle for Jenson Button’s Monaco pad, Japanese underwear model girlfriend and enviable job of driving the fastest cars in the world around gorgeous tracks at the weekend.  Thus, taking Jenson as a reasonably typical F1 driver, let’s examine him closer.  

Jenson Button was born to a working class family in Frome, Somerset in 1981.  He was raised in a three bedroom semi-detached house, as the fourth child of Simone Lyons and John Button.  He attended local state schools.  He was bought his first go-kart at the age of 9, and thanks to demonstrations of extraordinary racing aptitude (at the age of 10, he won 34 out of 34 races in the 1991 British Cadet Kart Championship).  By gaining lucrative sponsorship, he worked his way through the ranks to a Williams F1 seat.  He’s now a world champion, but even that required a degree of self sacrifice.  In 2008 Honda announced they were pulling out, and the only way Jenson could retain his seat was to take a significant pay cut.  At this stage, he had no idea what a rocket his team had built him (Honda’s successors Brawn GP took both that season’s titles at a canter).  This is not an uncommon story.  Rumours abound about Lewis Hamilton’s father working three jobs to support his sons’ early career.  

The Hamilton's on the night of their greatest victory

Very few drivers on today’s grid were born with a silver spoon in their mouth.  Working back through a few of the previous world champions, Sebastian Vettel had a carpenter for a father, Alonso a mechanic in an explosives factory, Schumacher’s was a bricklayer.  Clearly, these are not glamorous jobs.  

Undoubtedly a lot of hard work has gone into making the careers of these drivers, but rarely are they born into a life of glamour.  Most drivers probably don’t do it for the glamour either.  While it’s true that a lot of drivers live in Monaco, most probably live there primarily for tax reasons rather than a desire to be constantly surrounded by glamour.  With some European governments claiming more than 50% income tax, it’s easy to see why they do it.  So with the drivers not doing it for the glamour, what about the fans?

I was recently watching an old race (Turkey 2007) and during the pre-race build up, I caught a fantastic interview with someone called Bo Derek.  After initially searching for Beau Derrick, I was soon corrected. Wikipedia tells me she is an American film actress and model who started modelling to fund a new surfboard, an admirable show of entrepreneurship.  I must confess to never having seen any of the films listed in her Filmography but hearing that she’s well known as a sex symbol, has won three “Golden Raspberry Worst Actress Awards” and was nominated for “Worst Actress Of The Century”, I assume her fame is related largely to her blonde locks, generous cleavage and girl next door smile.  The interview went thusly;

A knowing smile

Ted Kravitz: How are you enjoying your Istanbul Grand Prix experience?

Bo Derek: I just feel like the luckiest girl in the world right now, no place I’d rather be.  This is fabulous.

TK: Have you been to many of these events before?  I saw you on the big boat last night

BD: Yes, and I just love F1.  It’s the ultimate. (crowd cheers at something else).  Listen, it’s fantastic. 

TK:  It’s a good crowd.  So who are your favourite drivers?

BD: Fast cars and fast horses

TK: Which drivers do you like the look of?

BD: Oh, I like them all.  I love the sport, honestly. 

TK: (chuckles) Ok.  Well good to see you.

Steve Rider then wryly comments “Bo Derek not going into too much detail of her knowledge of Formula One.  

At a time when the world championship was in the middle of a closely fought four way battle between Räikkönen, Alonso, Hamilton and Massa, one of the most exciting seasons for a while, with some of the most entertaining personalities showing their colours, Bo was unable (or unwilling) to share her favourite driver.

Bo Derek's favourite driver.  All of them.

It’s hard to know what to make of an interview like this.  Is Bo Derek a highly secretive person?  Sometimes, I don’t like sharing my opinions with the world, for whatever reason.  But from a former Playboy model this seems unlikely.  A stronger interpretation would be that Bo Derek was merely hanging around at the Turkish GP simply for the glamour, and the atmosphere of it all.  And to many racing fans, a person like this is the anathema of the racing world.  Hanging around the paddock without a clue what's going on, or any real enthusiasm to find out. 

Bleak, barren and beautiful.  Turn 8 at Istanbul is a sight to behold

A disinterested soft porn star having unrivalled access to the crème de la crème of the racing world, watching the drivers tackle Turn 8 with unparalleled courage.   At first, one can only scream; “where is the justice in this world?”

But then, maybe we have cause to thank fans like Bo.  Formula One at the moment is going through a period of unparalleled health.  Ignore people who have claimed the sport is becoming boring, with no on track action or overtaking occurring.  These are the same people who claim that today, music is staid and unoriginal, food is tasteless and humanity is irreversibly lost in a sea of corruption.  Beyond entertaining thoughts of Kim Jong-Il’s spinning of North Korea’s thrashing, no-one particularly enjoyed North Korea’s 7 – 0 thrashing in the world cup.  And just like football is about more than just scoring goals, Formula One is about more than just overtakes.  

Button leads the field in Australia '09

Think back to Australia ’09, where Jenson Button in the Brawn shocked all but the most owl-eyed observer of winter testing by taking an unprecedented victory.  Belgium ’09 saw Giancarlo Fisichella driving the back of the grid Force India take a shock pole position and second place.  Turkey ’10 where Vettel attempted to overtake Webber and took himself out of the race and relegated Webber to 3^rd.   Abu Dhabi ‘10, where Ferrari broke a thousand Tifosi hearts by failing to see the forest for the trees, covering Webber only to see Vettel take a shock WDC.  In 2010 Australia, China, Turkey, Canada, Silverstone, Spa, Korea and Brazil were all vintage races.  I had the pleasure of being present at Silverstone during the Grand Prix, and the atmosphere throughout was electric.   

Vettel regrets his agression at the start - as things go from bad to worse

These are all elements which it’s likely not all the viewers appreciate, and yet thanks to the allure and glamour lent to the sport by people like Bo, millions tune in every race.  It’s a complicated matter, but essentially, most of the wealth in Formula One world has been bought about thanks to the television licensing deals struck by Bernie in the 80’s.  More viewers leads to more income from sponsorship, more income leads to more money for all involved, and inevitably, some of this is put back into improving the show.  And while most people seem to believe that most of this money has been paid into Bernie’s pockets, it seems evident that some of this money has been pumped back into the sport.  Team budgets have increased to unbelievable levels (although they’re currently being reined in) and we’re now granted unparalleled access to the show.  HD, live timing, driver tracker, every minute of the car on track broadcast.  The fans of today are spoilt rotten.  And it’s all thanks to people tuning in to watch it, no doubt attracted as much by the glamour as the action.  

And as I sit there on the 26^th at five in the morning, with my live timing screen tracking the drivers every move, as we see which team has brought together the quickest combination of driver and car and place it on pole position, I’ll thank Bo and her ilk. 

2:54

2:54 - Hannah (left) & Colette (right)

2:54 are the latest band to join the short, but intriguing line of female fronted shoe-gaze/post rock bands that happily appear to be proliferating.  I was alerted to them while browsing the incredibly promising Great Escape festival line up.  Their Myspace is almost totally devoid of any useful information; a set of demo's, the members names (Hannah and Colette Thurlow) and how to book them are all that really stand out.  I believe Colette plays guitar, while Hannah is on drums.  They also appear to have a prediliction for black, brown and gray.  They’re being produced by a fellow called Charlie Huggall, who worked with Florence + The Machine, Razorlight and The Kaiser Chiefs.  So far, so mysterious.

Listening to the music, things start to get interesting.  The first track they uploaded was a slow burning percussion heavy number called Creeping, which was reportedly recorded on Garageband.  It shows, with the sort of shockingly ratty production only that unique piece of software can allow.  Regardless of their lo-fi sound, the tracks are excellent, with a sound that recalls Joy Division, QOTSA, Warpaint and The Dead Weather.  Their guitars are grungy, the drums propelling, the bass distorted and thundering while the vocals are sweetly menacing.  Dark riffs are accompanied by reverb-y vocals.  They have two demo’s, "Creeping" and "Sugar" which are both worth listening to, but upcoming single "On A Wire" is a noticeable improvement. Opening with a spiky guitar, it soon launches into it’s menacing refrain, “out of time, and I will find you”.  Backed by the B-side "Cold Front (a more melodic number)", it’s due to be released on March 28^th, and that day can’t come quickly enough.

One last interesting fact, their name comes from their mutual favourite moment on The Melvins "A History of Bad Men". 


Download: Creeping (Demo), On A Wire (Demo)       

Welcome

Welcome to my corner of the internet. First, a little about me.  My name is Marcus, I'm studying Engineering, and I'm in my early 20's. 

Already, I hear you asking: "why are you contributing yet another doubtless self indulgent and irrelevant page of text to the already crowded blogosphere?"  A fair question, and one I often ask of others, so I'm going to try and set out my reasons.

Firstly, I'm not a naturally motivated person, and I've noticed myself becoming somewhat stagnant in my interests of late.  Therefore, it seemed to me that one of the best ways of re-lighting my fire would be to write about things that interest me, and hopefully it will be so enjoyable that I'll want to take interest in more things.  Always being wary of doing things simply for the sake of telling the world about it, of course.

Secondly, I've always considered myself to be a reasonable writer, however I recently had an encounter which caused me to question my abilities.  I'm studying a course which doesn't encourage extended writing, and so taking to heart the mantra that 'practice makes perfect' this seems like a perfect antidote.

Thirdly, I've considered it, but never kept a diary of any sort.  Now seems like as good a time as any to start keeping some records.  Since a blog is essentially just a diary in the cloud, I see this as keeping with the times, while performing a timeless practice.  

So, I'll be writing about things that interest me.  It seems very pointless to list my particular interests.  For example, just saying Music is hopelessly vague whilst listing "Avant Garde, Psychadelic, Shoe Gaze, Math Rock, Art Rock, Indie Rock" is ridiculously specific.  Therefore, hopefully by the time people start reading this there will be enough articles to have a theme established.   

So, enough introduction.  Hopefully people will find something of interest on this blog to read about.  Enjoy!