bitsofbobs

Another really quick month has nearly flown by. Been having lots of fun. Lots of busy weekends seeing friends & family. Even managed to squeeze in some fishing and caught my first trout on the fly, gutted, cooked and ate it (A real man moment). Had a ceilidh at a good school friends wedding party in the local town hall where I grew up. Been doing lots of drawing and finding lots of great online projects. Inspired by all the great all the splendid wee projects via twitter I’ve set up a group on flickr. The idea’s easy. Make an awesome spotify playlist and draw/design/make an album cover for it…just for fun. Here’s the group here.

So here it is, sit back and let it massage your ears. It’s a little earlier than usual (but still going to add tunes until the end of the month) is this months spotify playlist. It’s a monster, It’s almost hemorrhaging awesome music.

For the doodle geeks here’s a bigger image of the artwork.

Another month flown by. Great month for holiday goers. Feels like everybody I know has been away on holiday somewhere this month including me & the wife. Finally got round to getting away on our honeymoon a full 3 months after the wedding, it was well worth the wait. Mauritius was the destination…WE LOVED IT. But now the honeymoon period is over and it’s back to it. So If you’re struggling a bit with the holiday blues here’s the best stumble of music over the past month. If you’ve stumbled over this by some musical doodle accident then I’m trying to get other people involved in it. The idea is simple every month put together a playlist of music that somehow finds it’s way to you…twitter, radio in the pub etc then just doodle a cover for it. EVERYONE loves music in some shape or form.

You can find the playlist here.

If you want to see the doodle that bit bigger, you can find it on my Flickr here.

It’s not looking good for my ye olde Ipod. The headphone jack seems to be playing up so I can only hear through one ear. My Ipod has gone deaf in one ear…he is old bless him. Gutted. It’s going in to get fixed and in the meantime will have to make do with my mini-disc player and old compilations from 2001 ace-ics!

Well, another month has flown by and before you know it we’re in June! How did that happen? I’ve still alot of blogging to catch up on as a few regular readers keep pointing out. It’s all been busy busy, I’ve doodles literally fizzing out of me. I will get round to putting them somewhere useful, but for now here’s my usual (actually only the third) spotify playlist of my months best music. Whether it’s new music i’ve never heard or classic tunes that had come into conversation or one of the many twittering friends has recommended some music. It’s all here.

As for the doodle. I regularly doodle, Mostly on the train or in the station but of late i’ve been cycling into work. This has really thrown a spanner in the works. The doodle came from a phrase that was used in an episode of six feet under which I somehow missed first time round.

So please enjoy it’s a good eclectic mix of old, new and with a twist of madness. It’s here.

Also if you want a bigger picture it’s here.

What a month it’s been, as you can see I’ve not blogged in a while. Why? I hear you cry…cause a few weeks back I got married…WOOHOO! it’s another blog post in itself, I’ll get there soon. But for time being here’s another bit of doodle art and a collection of music that’s got me through the month. Spotify just had a massive update making sharing playlists a load easier but I like my monthly album challenges, so I’m going to keep battering them out.

Here you go…it’s a tad eclectic…ENJOY

Bigger one up on Flickr

I’ve been a busy bunny of late…probably too busy if i’m being honest. I get married 2 weeks tomorrow, I can’t wait…but have to so i’m dealing with it. Not been a great deal of blog activity for a while, been making so much stuff for the wedding but don’t want to ruin any surprises…so expect a blog splurge in a couple of weeks.

One thing I do always make time for is music, I’ve done nothing but sing spotifys praises but still haven’t bit the bullet and bought premium. I can’t keep up with all the music my ears want to listen to so i’ve made a little mission for myself…EVERYDAY make an effort to chuck any music that grabs my fancy into a playlist and At the end of the month draw up a cover for it and share it with anyone that will listen. I love finding great music and spotify is great for ending up on musical tangents. A couple of rules to self, no doublers one song by one artist per playlist. No genre restrictions just anything goes. It is a tad eclectic but there are also some great albums in there to.

The doodle was just a pen and ink scanned in then using fellow workmates (defmech) nifty little colour scheme generator colortoy, (which I just couldn’t do without) filled in using photoshop. I hardly ever get round to colouring stuff up so it makes a nice change. I’m going to hard sell colortoy cause it is awesome…Also he made it into a wee Iphone app which I recommend to, lots of new exciting things on his next update well worth the pennies.

So, I’ve rambled enough here is the playlist ENJOY…everyone loves music and I know there’s a big doodling/blogging/music loving community out there so if anyone wants to play this game…feel free, it’s only a bit of fun. Might make a Flickr Group. Also a bigger drawing up on Flickr.

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.

Bigger one up on Flickr.