This had the makings of something awesome, mostly because I knew nothing about them whatsoever other than an genius wee video they have recreating The Thing with action Figures (see below). The gig was in Mono…not stereo, don’t get confused…and certainly don’t say that things sound better in stereo, not the case. Support came from Findo Gask, again a name i’d heard but knew nothing. They were great, all kitted out matching kraftwerk-esque outfits and played music that could only be described as end of level boss music for any game on your amiga.
To the main event, I’m not a massive John Carpenter fan but was keen to see in the crowd who was…they were easy to spot. The band is made up of 2 french guys and I can only describe them as creepy version of air. A massive high Five to both guys (I only got to high five the keyboard player on the way out) but the drummer was amazing…and my word was he french. Loved the gig and glad this kind of stuff is going on, the venue was mobbed so hopefully this will open a few doors to more kind of stuff like that. High Five GFT.
Took my big slr to the gig…glad I did, got some belters…they’re here.
First gig of many this month, yeasayer @ Oran Mor. This was upgraded from king tuts due to demand, Mostly due to what looks like their successful support for bat for lashes earlier this year. Since then they have a new album out which I have to say is very much on constant repeat. Arrived good and early to catch the support Javelin just cause they sounded quite interesting. Turns out it was just two guys, one singing and the other battering a drum pad. It all loooked a bit made up on the spot, more like watching two guys in your living room, than an actual gig but funny with the occassional bit of mad dancing.
Then to the main act, I really liked them at Bat for lashes but wished I knew more about them. This was a good crowd although it was a total mixed bag, some had clearly done their homework and lots of singing followed by silly dancing quickly kicked in. The venue was packed and the first song off the new album sounded magic as an opener. I think it’s only once you’ve heard the album can you appreciate how much is going on in it, Watching live you soon realise (minus the drummer), everyone is pretty much juggling two instruments. Loved it, great atmosphere, good bit of banter but most of all a nice change of musical scenery.
On a childish note we decided the lead guitarist looked a cross between chris de burgh and rambo (first blood).
Another mini disc dug out the collection. The vines, where did they disappear to? 2002 at the height of their career and big nme hype for their single get free…then poomf gone. It is actually a rather average album, one of which I will never own on CD and never download so I quite like the fact it will only ever exist on mini disc.
For ages now I’ve been thinking about doing this, last night I got the ball rolling. I have a massive collection of Mini discs. I very much jumped on the bandwagon as soon as they came out. It still is to my mind the coolest format to keep music on. For ages now it seems my art work is getting smaller and smaller so it seemed like the right thing to do. Recently been doing alot of stuff with hand drawn type, looking back over my mini disc collection I tried to put nice writing on them but it just ended up looking like child scrawl. So I thought a nice wee project would be going back and turning each mini disc into tiny pieces of art. I’ve got some great albums and mixes that only exsist on mini disc so it only seems fair to do them justice. There’s plenty to keep me busy. I love that beck album, beck at his beckest. I think that was the last album I had to make it onto mini disc before everything went proper digital…sad indeed. I stilll very much use my mini disc and occasionally can be seen walking about with my portable…I’m so cool
The final dimension are about 3cm x 2cm.
Watercolour and 0.2 ink for the geeks.
Well it’s all busy busy at the momment. Been trying to design my wedding invites so haven’t had much time for anything else between that and work. So Friday I got in from work put my feet up, got all my arts and crafts gear out and did a bit of painting, didn’t feel much like dinner as I’d had a huge lunch. Saturday morning up at 0440 barf-a-rama, nasty. This continued through most of Saturday and left me just grumpy and run down on Sunday. I’d had food poisoning before but this seems to have just come and gone in enough time to remove my weekend and have me just fit enough to get back to work on Monday. So as a fingers up to illness I took it upon myself to do something constructive. After the loss of the awesome fontCapture website I found an alternative. It’s called scanahand and is part of FontCreator. So basically you hand draw each individual letter on the given sheet then scan it in, The app seems quite simple and does do what it says on the tin but it does look to have alot more functionality in terms of kerning and letter spacing. The wee app is $49 and seems to do the business. I did look about for free alternatives but it seems they don’t want to play and want you to pay instead.
So here it is if you want it my no frills, no fuss, food poisoning inspired font…running on empty. Enjoy. Some more up on Dafont this one will be soon.
I’m a massive fan of twitter, I like the nonsense that goes with it. This little doodle was part of a little flickr group setup called skull nation It’s great to see loads of others people takes on it. This one took me a while a turned out to be a bit of a beast. I normally doodle on the train to and from work but I got quite into this one and the train proved pretty difficult, worse though was the reactions of others on the train thinking they were clearly sitting next to a nutter. There’s a bigger one on flickr.
Been so busy of late trying to sort my wedding invites It’s been difficult to make time for anything else. They should be sorted soon though so there will be a splurdge of activity. I’ve been making toys with my sewing machine and also have about 8 doodles on the go at the momment. This one I kind of forgot about, started it ages ago. Loads more of it up on flickr. I keep this doodle book in my camera bag, luckily I keep scans of all my stuff, some rain water crept in and splodged a good bit of my older ones. Bigger one here if you want to look.
HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL! Hope it was awesome and everyone started 2010 as they meant to go on? I’m not assuming everyone is going to be drunk all year round. I had a great festive period, travelled about between Stonehaven, St andrews and Glasgow. I had a magic Christmas haul including a great book on making stupid sock creatures, ALL the where’s wally books and a SEWING MACHINE! Not been blogging much just been taking it easy and generally sitting about in my pjs constantly eating, drinking, drawing, watching films and playing board games.
First day back at work today and it is very much a shock to the system, breakfast…not a time I’ve celebrated much in the past few weeks. Need to get back into routine, 3 meals a day instead of just constant snacking. Lots of things to look forward to this year, biggest one is getting married. Not long either…April…zoiks. Is it wrong to be looking at holidays on your first day back?
This doodle has been ages in the making. Started back last september when I had just bought my holga. It’s not actually taken me that long to do, just every couple of months I had a new camera to add to it. The final piece is on A3 and was drawn in pencil before ink. Scanned it then added a wee splash of colour in photoshop a nice shade of fudge. There’s a bigger one here if anyone wants a looky.
I’ve still a few other doodles in the making that have just been floating about a while, will get them finished at some point. It’s all been a bit hectic of late.
Morrisons deep filled mince pies. 6 for £1.19 or 2 packets for £1.80…I wasn’t fooled, I only bought one pack. Packaging was particularly chirstmas tacky, stars, christmas trees etc and the pies themselves on the cover didn’t look that great. Now these pies claimed to be deep filled, not the case as the pies turned out to be mostly…case. These were hard work and really dry, needed alot of tea to get it down. I gave most of these away at work…just because I couldn’t endure the pack. I still have a cheeky tesco finest one at home, still on top at the moment.
Overall a disappointment pay the extra 4 pence at tesco as it stands. I was going to give these pies 3 out of 10 but for some reason they’ve annoyed me while writing, so now they’re only getting 2.
