July 2008
Old posts
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07.31.08I see you in your room, you’re wearing your bedroom costume
Well I’m having trouble sleeping lately, I’m not sure why it might have something to do with me completely screwing up my body clock or it could just be because it has been so boiling hot that my body feels like it’s attached to a furnace. I’m not sure.
I figured it was time for another music post, I’m probably going to make it a regular thing, I get through new music pretty quickly and I hear it’s good to share these days. I’ve spent most of these sleepless nights in bed with my headphones on listening to music at full volume I’m probably breaking my eardrums to be fair but it just never seems the same unless I hear it loud enough to burst a blood vessel. So this is my sleepless summer nights playlist.Download links underneath song samples (right click - save file as)
Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head have been on my musical radar for a fair few months but I hadn’t taken the chance to listen to them enough if I’m honest, though with song titles like ‘Beard Lust’ I knew I had to give them a go. The release of their album ‘Glistening Pleasure’ seemed like a good excuse to me and what can I say, I’ve fallen in love with them.
Their songs remind me of a less slutty ‘Gravy Train!!!!’ and ‘Gameboy/Gamegirl’ with a slight witty edge, there’s a joyful and playfulness to their songs with sometimes slightly out of tune vocals but it works perfectly. I am very glad to say that the album hasn’t been overproduced which in this case is good. They’re the sort of band that shouldn’t be perfect and actually you really should go buy the album it’s a great danceable little thing with barely any bad songs on it.‘Bedroom Costume’ is in my opinion probably the most danceable song on the album, with a 1950’s sounding chorus line that you can’t help wanting to dance around too. It’s a gleeful little number about mutual peeping toms.
‘Beard Lust’ has to be a favorite just from the topic alone, because we all know everyone loves a hipster with a beard. I also wonder if it is the only song in existence that covers the topic of beards, I’m not sure but I’d hazard a guess that it probably is. Again it’s a happy song with imperfect vocals, the song completely changes at around the 2 minute mark though and is probably when it really comes into its own for me. Go beard love!Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Bedroom Costume - Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
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Beard Lust - Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
I would say I got over ‘The Dresden Dolls’ a long long time ago, however I decided to give Amanda Palmer’s solo effort, ‘Who Killed Amanda Palmer’ a go anyway. I wouldn’t say it was a change of pace for her at all, and to be honest most of the songs may as well have been released as a Dresden Dolls album. This doesn’t mean they aren’t good songs in themselves, it just means it seems like more of the same from Palmer which probably isn’t a bad thing, when you’ve found a formula that works stick to it but even so I would have liked to have seen something different from her.
If I am honest most of the album is a bit low tempo for me, it does however make good night time listening especially during this hot, sticky summer nights. Two of the songs on the album really stand out for me, they are the most upbeat sounding even if they actually have rather dark, depressing lyrics. It almost makes me feel bad for wanting to tap my foot to them.‘Runs in the family’ is a ditty of a song with repeating beats with vocals that flow through them perfectly, it reminds me of various Dresden Dolls songs but still stands up on it’s own. It is about allergies, aliments, and various other things that seem to effect families that and wanting someone to fill you up.
‘Oasis’ is by far the happiest song on the entire album when I first heard the opening notes it made me smile, the tune itself is perfect and there is a point in the song where retro style backing vocals get overlaid with Palmer’s singing and it all comes together wonderfully. However the song itself isn’t a happy one, the lyrics are about rape and abortion it tells an interesting story of a girl at a party who becomes pregnant but doesn’t care because she’s sent a letter to Oasis. All of this aside however the song itself is magical sounding.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Runs in the Family - Amanda Palmer
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PNAU are an Australian dance music duo, who released their self titled album last year however their popularity has been slowly building around the internet and my like for their album has also been slowly growing. Other than the fact that they are both rather attractive the album itself is also pretty good though I have to admit I dismissed it the first time I listened to it, but it keeps cropping up on shuffle and I keep adding stars to songs.‘Embrace’ is by far my favorite on the album and features the amazing ‘LadyHawke’, the song itself is a slow builder but is totally worth it. The chorus is a joy to listen to and have a very familiar feeling to them, as though you’ve heard them somewhere before. Give it a try it might take you a while to fall in love with it, but you defiantly will.
‘Lover’ is also a standout track on the album for me, it has a more dance feel to it than Embrace and is a good song for the dance floor, again it’s a slow builder with a long musical intro that has plenty of electronic blips to keep you entertained. When the lyrics kick in however is when the song starts to work, there aren’t much in way of actual lyrics but what there is there is rather sweet. The song itself takes various twists and turns which I enjoy in a song.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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Finally, it’s time for something a little bit different. I don’t like Hip Hop, at all really however I do love a good remix and a good mash0up even if said genre is involved. Which leads me to E=603 has been compared to another mashup artist I like ‘Girl Talk’ where I can defiantly see the similarities between the two I have to say that I have listened to E=603’s latest album ‘Something for Everyone’ a whole lot more than I have listened to Girl Talk’s latest.
E=603, cuts together hip hop and R&B tracks laying them over indie and dance numbers, the songs are constantly changing which means there is little way to get bored and they are really great to dance to. The album has no gaps between songs and each one follows on from the last wonderfully, also the great thing is it is available in full for free on E=603’s site, go and download it here and eagerly await the new one that is supposed to be released this month.‘Crunk Colony’ starts off like the kind of song I would hate, that is until ‘The Postal Service’ backing kicks in after that is just a whole mp3 of amazing with the bleepy beats of The Postal Service merging into the guitar riffs of ‘The Strokes’ and it is this kind of thing that makes rap music listenable to me. Give it a go, you’ll be surprised.
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07.29.08A combination of lazy daysA
s bad as it is my past few weeks have been an incredibly lazy affair, not that I’m a lazy person however I have had a complete lack of things to do so I’ve spent my days watching trashy movies, and asian cartoons which is actually something I completely enjoy and don’t feel is an entire waste of time. I just wish I had more things to be getting on with, much like emily I’ve done very little in terms of photography since college finished. I constantly find myself at 2am longing to take photographs. It always happens to me in the early hours of the morning some strange need to shoot takes over me. However the lack of college leaves me with a lack of people to shoot, a lack of decent equipment and on top of that a lack of money leaves me with no way to get any film I’ve shot developed anyhow. I’m not letting it get me down though a short hiatus is sometimes exactly what you need to collect ideas and have your passion build again, ready to unleash it all again when you next get the chance.
And next year for me I think is going to be completely about that, gathering myself together, getting everything outlined in my head, redoing my entire portfolio. I have a list of people I want to contact and just hope good things come out of it all.The de-cluttering of my room has been put on hold it would seem, I threw out another bags worth of things but it has pretty much come to a standstill, mostly due to the fact that I bought what are possibly the worst ASDA bin bags known to man I swear I’ve seen thicker toilet paper, they split the second you pick them up which ends in me leaving a trail of leaked rubbish across the floor from my room to the bin outside which honestly isn’t the best of situations.
I completely changed the layout and design of the blog last week, Jon moved it onto his server for the time being until I can afford my own and I’ve spent the past few days sorting out plugins, widgets and getting the layout a lovely shade of blue. I adore pale blue it is probably one of my favourite colours, not to wear though, I don’t suit blue at all. I’m not even sure which colours I do suit to be fair, I’ve looked up that whole what colours to wear for your skin tone only to realise I can’t even work out what my skin tone is. I had the same trouble trying to work out my skin type I need some sort of personal style/life coach I think. I need to make some actual money first though.
07.22.08note to self: you have too much stuffO
ver the last two days I’ve been tidying up parts of my room, mostly in anticipation for having to pack away and move out which admitedly isn’t until next month but for once in my life I thought I’d get a head start. So far I’ve only tidied some draws and part of a corner of my room which is nothing really, yet I’ve somehow managed to fill three bin bags and have now run out actually. I’m totally surprised by how much clutter I have, I constantly forget that I’m a hoarder or at least an invisible one it seems I don’t like throwing away bits of paper, old project assignments, old bills I just sort of hang onto them. Paper and cardboard boxes which I have a pile of ontop of my wardrobe attributed to the fact that there’s never anywhere to put them, they’re my next battle I’m going to squash them flat and force them into our overflowing bin somehow.
There’s something very therapeutic about getting rid of a whole bunch of things you’ve ‘kept’ for no real reason its on a different level to tidying up, tidying up is just moving things about that you own and cleaning up a bit this on the other hand is looking through things and going ‘why the hell did I keep this’ along with ‘do I really need this’ then having to convince yourself that you no longer need a bill from two years ago. My clothes are going to be the last thing to sort out, there are a whole piles of them that I don’t wear and won’t ever wear again but its so difficult to get myself to throw them out but it is one of those things that I have to do, I have to cast off old possessions once in a while I feel it helps me grow to get rid of things from the past - especially clothes from 4 seasons ago. I just wish I had money to buy a bunch more, but that would just be defeating the point of de-cluttering. I however have to keep myself on track.
De-cluttering Tips:
- All paper must go, if its a scrap, if its an old magazine, if its an old bill or if you have no idea why you kept it or what it is for get it in the recycle bin.
- Don’t think about it, learn to cut off your brain. Become a robot with your sorting.
- Don’t talk yourself into keeping something, because you will find yourself going ‘oh but i might wear this moth eaten pair of gloves I bought two years ago again.’ Trust me, you’ll never wear them again and neither will anyone else.
- If you find it impossible to cut off and find your brain questioning what you’ve just filled a bin bag with ask yourself, do you love it, when did you last see/use it, do you even need it? Chances are you probably don’t.
- Just do one room at a time, or you’ll end up exhausted.
- Find places for the things you want to keep, or if like my room there are barely any places for clutter start a pile of the things you want to keep and when all the clutter is gone find places for things in your keep pile, it can be quite rewarding to give your room a new look.
- When you’ve cleared out enough junk, move furniture around it’ll make the room seem even more new.
- Open up your cluttered drawers or a box you’ve been shoving junk into and just dump it out onto the bed, this is what I do. This way you have to force yourself to sort through it otherwise you’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.
- Put loud and happy music on while you’re de-cluttering, sing along if you have to it will make it seem like less of a chore
- Most of all make sure to keep it that way, or at least convince yourself you will even if you know that in a few weeks time you’ll be back to where you started.
07.15.08living monochromatic and macbook charging
L
ife lately seems to have been incredibly monochromatic, lacking in colour and quite frankly rather dull. I like my life to be colourful and interesting with lots to see and do. Instead these past few weeks since finishing college have mostly just been day after day of intense boredom with nothing at all to do not helped by the fact that not a day goes by where I don’t think of how much I want to be back in Tokyo, and everything seems to remind me of when I was there.
I think I’m in need of a night out to be honest. I haven’t been out in months mostly due to lack of money, as well as having far to much college work that was due but obviously all done and dusted now but the lack of going out is really starting to have an effect on me, and the lack of money hasn’t improved. In a perfect world I would be being paid right not to shoot photographs and I’d be busy every day, but as I’ve mentioned before it’s about who you know and not what you know a lot of the time and I’m not meeting many people sitting in the house because I can’t afford to go anywhere. So it’s a bit of a never ending circle really, and the job hunt continues.
And just like life things seem to happen at the worst of times, when I have little money at all my macbook charger has broken so I’m forced to use my old ibook. I mean really though, what are the lifes of these things, It’s almost like apple make them deliberately to give up the ghost after a year along with their batteries. I would like to know however how i have managed to go through three batteries and four chargers over two computers in the space of three years. It’s almost like they design their chargers for the wires to fry when you have the least amount of money so you have to sit and wiggle them frustratingly until they say charging then sit holding it in that spot for an hour until you’ve got enough charge to use the machine it’s a very silly ordeal. You can always see it coming though, when your charger is about to go. I knew it was going to happen but it still seems to just jump out at you like a smack in the mouth, ‘POW’ you’ve got to pull out £40 you don’t have to get a new one. I’m not sure how they can justify charging so much for a charger. All of this aside I still adore macs and if I could land myself a photography job that paid me well enough I wold love to upgrade to a powerbook, but right now I can’t even afford a ‘Richard and Judy’ summer read let alone a laptop computer.
07.06.08oh Doctor!
I
had been waiting on the edge of my seat all of this week for the final episode in the current season of Dr Who and now it’s all over for another series, and I am left without anything at all to watch on a saturday night. I almost wish I myself could go back in time to a point where I hadn’t seen them all and have them all on again because as we all know saturday is the most boring televisual night of the week, if you don’t count wednesdays.
The finale however was an amazing piece of television everything came together gloriously, and in the end quite tragically. David Tennant didn’t regenerate which I think was the most obvious thing that was going to happen yet had the most speculation around it and yes, I ended up quite upset by the end of the program and actually had to hold back tears, I’m a wuss though but I really don’t think it’s an easy watch viewing someone (ie: Donna, played by Catherine Tate) who has always felt they were worthless as a person save the world (for the 3rd time) and then have to have all of the memories that actually make her feel like she is worthwhile erased, that plus there is very little scope now for her character to return which is a shame because she actually ended up being my second favorite companion even after initial doubts, and if I’m honest she even almost caught up with Rose in terms of likeability for me.
Speaking of Rose, she got quite a happy ending which was nice though I also feel was a very clever way of Russell T Davies to allow for David Tennant’s return even if the current doctor were to regenerate, though Tennant’s return is something I myself wouldn’t grumble about. I guess that is it now until the christmas special, which see’s the return of ‘The Cybermen’ something that seems exciting but actually I can’t say I’m that pleased about, the repetition of baddies is getting a little old but I’ll let it pass because after all it will be a welcomed return of the program.
However I’m confined to having nothing at all to watch on a weekend now, and nothing at all to speculate about during the week. The weather has been terribly dim these past few days and I’ve had no money at all to go out and do anything which makes the rest of summer seem like it is going to be horribly boring, but hopefully I will be wrong, I have been before.
