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SOTT 19


SOTT is a CD swap I do with members of a mailing list I'm on. Everyone comes up with a brilliant mix CD which you then make a copy of for everyone who's taking part. We then mail them off to the list member who organises it and he repacks everyone's CD's and you get a package back with a copy of everyone's mix. I've done about 5 now and last couple have had about 35 participants. The latest one that we're just organising is going to have 49 people involved! That means 48 copies of the CD and the cover have to be made and shipped to the US. It also means I'll get 48 different mix CD's back. That is a lot of new music and to be honest is pretty daunting. I'll never get through it all and I'll bet you there are a bunch of people who never even listen to my mix. It makes it more of a challenge mind you. You have to come up with the absolute best mix you can to make yourself stand out in some way.

I've been sticking songs in a playlist in iTunes for the last wee while and I have about 40 songs under consideration just now. I think this round I'm going to go with something a bit more retro than I have in the past where I've tended to stick to more recent sounds. Having everything in iTunes has been good though and has made me consider things that maybe wouldn't have occurred to me if I was scanning the CD's on the rack. I'll probably post a final track list here when I've got it.

The worst thing about this process though is the cover art. I want to produce something snazzy but I no longer have a working scanner and my printer is somewhat dodgy quality for artwork. I was thinking it would almost be worth designing something and taking it on a disc to a copy shop and getting it run off there. Wonder how much that would cost?

14:36 | 1 Comments, | permanent link

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Charlotte Hatherley - Grey Will Fade


Nice bit of coincidence. Walked into the library on Tuesday and what would be sitting there but Charlotte Hatherley's album! I've been listening to it this morning and it's not all sticking but about half of it isn't bad at all with Kim Wilde and Summer being the best things on it. The latter especially has been on repeat play. Bastardo is growing on me too and after another look at the video just there is sounding more and more excellent (only just noticed that Lauren Laverne is in it). On this evidence maybe Tim Wheeler should be sharing the writing on the next Ash album.

Lazy comparison: the female equivalent of Graham Coxon's Happines in Magazines.

14:22 | 1 Comments, | permanent link

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Charlotte Hatherley video


Can I point you in the direction of this.

It's the the ace new solo video for the Ash guitarist. Not sure I think that much of the song but the video is directed by Edgar Wright and features the likes of David Walliams, Simon Pegg, Julia Davis and Lucy Doo-dah, you know, Dawn from the Office. Clever stuff.

16:59 | 1 Comments, | permanent link

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Dance Stance


Why isn't more socially acceptable to dance in public? Everyone's got headphones on, why aren't they all dancing down the street. Sometimes with the iPod on random or when I'm playing particular playlists I can't help but at least bounce on the balls of my feet when I'm waiting on the train but anymore than that and I'd be getting stares. I can pass it off as just trying to keep warm.

Here in the office I'm on my own right now so singing along to Strawberry Fields Forever is ok and how am I supposed to listen to Prince's Housequake("Shut up already. Damn!") without grooving along in my chair. Thank goodness there are no cameras in here or I'd be ending up on one of those ITV security camera shows.

09:12 | 0 Comments, | permanent link

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I like to watch


As seems to be the fashion these days I've signed up for online dvd rental. The first couple of films turned up on Thursday and they've already been watched and posted back. I think I'm going to enjoy this. I like films and wish I watched more but it's as though I need some kind of impetus to actually sit and devote the time to watching them. These films are costing me money and I have to watch four a month to get my money's worth so that is motivation enough for me to sit down and watch whatever they send me.

First up was 'Being There' starring Peter Sellers and released in 1979. This is a lovely film and I would suggest checking it out. Sellers performance as Chance the gardener is beautifully still and not the sort of acting you would normally associate him with. Chance has been brought up by television never having stepped outside his front door apart from to tend to his masters garden. With the death of his master the outside world is suddenly unleashed on him. Chance is an innocent and everyone he comes across projects on to him what they want him to be without taking what he says at face value and realising he's actually quite simple minded. Chance is talking about gardening or watching TV but what he says is taken as metaphor or it's meaning corrupted and he is hailed as a great thinker and businessman, ultimately being mentioned in a speech by the president and at the end even being considered as a presidential candidate. It's an interesting satire on the effect of television and the world's self absorption.

There are a few laugh out loud moments especially when Chance's comment that he 'likes to watch' leads to Shirley MacLaine's character pleasuring herself on a rug on the floor whilst an oblivious Chance sits on the bed copying yoga positions from the TV but on the whole this is a gentle and fascinating film and with it's final scene (which I won't spoil) leaves you thinking about it long after it's finished.

If Sellers performance were a tree: bonsai

Punch-Drunk Love is an Adam Sandler film which normally would be no recommendation and indeed I might usually have actively avoided it. This, however, was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson who directed both Boogie Nights and Magnolia and as such I was curious to see it. Both of those films were long and at an hour and a half Punch-Drunk Love was, well... a lot shorter. It feels it too, it really feels like a short film rather than a full length. The sort of quirky thing that he might have put together as a film student. None of the characters seem fully fleshed out, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but this doesn't stop it being a mostly enjoyable experience with Sandler being watchable without really blowing me away and Emily Watson being fine as his love interest. Kudos have to go to Jon Brion's score which, with his usual array of vintage keyboards manages to perfectly mirror those scenes where Anderson decides to step up the oddness.

A snack rather than a full meal though.

11:28 | 1 Comments, | permanent link

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That Was The Year That Was


This year was very much a year for musically living in the now. I decided at the start of the year that I would stay away from the reissues and classic albums that I would usually buy and instead concentrate my buying on purely new albums. On the whole surprisingly I stuck to it and was able to resist all those £5 FOPP albums that are usually so enticing. The library was still a good source to hear old music so it's not as though I was that deprived of new to me older things to hear.

The first 6 months of the year especially yielded a lot of purchases with the second half being affected by acquiring a mortgage and the costs associated with that. Still it's not like I had no money for music, I just had to be a bit more careful about what I was buying. Not too much downloading this year apart from minimal things from mp3 blogs and some chart singles that I wanted to hear but not enough to buy them.

This year did however see me buy two singles, the first in a long time and being indicative of the fact that, yes, it's ok to like pop music outside just listening to it on the radio and, no, you don't have to be embarressed about buying it (ridiculous I know). At least not that much. The first of these was the Annie single 'Chewing Gum' since not only was it a wonderful song but it also didn't look like it was going to chart nearly as high as it deserved (think it reached somewhere in the 20's) and the other was Girls Aloud's Love Machine, as good a pop single as any that was released this year.

So despite the vast majority of my purchases being albums I'm going to attempt to write a bit about some of my favourite tracks of the year, in no particular order and starting with this...

1. Morrissey - Irish Blood, English Heart

Irish blood, English heart/This I'm made of/There is no one on Earth I'm afraid of

More than a year before this song came out on You Are The Quarry I heard it in session on Janice Long's Radio 2 show. The fact that I sat up past midnight to hear this is, I suppose, example of not only how long it had been since he had presented any new material but also the regard I had for the man's music. The album isn't flawless but this track was the perfect lead single and a great statement of intent. It was nice to have him back even if (or because of the fact) he hadn't changed at all still being just as petty, scathing, shy, funny, inadequate and Morrissey-like as always.

It's hard to imagine him coming back with any more of a flourish, the song being both musically muscular (kudos to his band and producer) and lyrically strong. It's also more melodically interesting and concise than anything on his previous two albums.

14:45 | 0 Comments, | permanent link

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