A fantastic advert for Nike by British director Guy Ritchie, offering a brief exhilarating glimpse into the lives of professional footballers. A great idea and brilliantly executed, make sure you check this out!
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Terrible, terrible game. Fiorentina dominated from start to finish, save a few fleeting chances from Rangers, but after 120 minutes of no score the match went to penalties.
Barry Ferguson missed the first and every Rangers fan could be forgiven for fearing the worst, but after Alexander saved a penalty, Vieri skied his over the bar, letting Ibrox favourite Nacho Novo (pictured above) score the winner!
Fiorentina fans must be inconsolable, but bring on Zenit St Petersburg in two weeks!
Decided to take the plunge and move my blog over onto Wordpress. I’m really impressed with how much it’s improved since I last used it.
Compared to writing my own blogging software, which is what I’d done previously using Rails, everything is easier. The admin interface is superb, with the post, media and plugin management all top notch. Check this evaluation of the Wordpress 2.5 interface (which was designed by Happy Cog no less).
Still using the default theme at the moment but I’ll create a custom one soon, if only just to get rid of the horrible justified text!
Haiku by John Maeda. Arrangement by Public Design Centre.
The Jesus and Mary Chain are one of those bands that I missed out on first time around thanks to my age (they were massive in the ’80s) that I absolutely love now.
Loud, dark, drenched in feedback and at times complete bastards, their legacy was not just for their music, but also their live shows - tales of near-riots, playing with their backs to the audience, on-stage fights between members of the band and even walking off half-way through a set all contribute to a fearsome reputation.
I’d already seen them once before at last year’s Meltdown festival which was curated by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp (this year it’s Massive Attack at the helm, but the line-up seems a bit shit) and as good as it was, the Royal Festival Hall wasn’t the ideal venue. It was basically like a theatre, with high ceilings and all-seated, so I was pleased when we turned up to the Roundhouse with it’s stripped-back an more authentic feeling space.
Something I didn’t pick up on at the Meltdown gig but which was more noticeable in this smaller venue was that William (Reid, guitarist and brother of singer Jim) was being helped out by another guitarist. It didn’t take anything away from it, but I must admit I was surprised he needed it, as he sounded as good as ever to me.
Opening with Never Understand and The Hardest Walk from Psychocandy, the ringing feedback which is their hallmark makes a welcome and sustained appearance, the atmosphere is great, I think most of the crowd lull into nostalgia and believe it’s 1987 or thereabouts and so begins a great gig.
I don’t have a complete setlist but Some Candy Talking, Taste of Cindy, Just Like Honey, Sidewalking, Far Gone and Out and the once-banned Reverence were all played, with only Far Gone and Out sticking in my mind as sounding a bit rough around the edges.
A cover of Pink Floyd’s Vegetable Man made a rare appearance, along with a mumbled comment from Jim about it killing Syd Barret if he hadn’t already been dead. That’s what the Mary Chain consider humour.
More importantly though two new songs, All Things Must Pass and Dead End Kids, sound surprisingly good for a band who’ve been apart for so long. Let’s just hope it’s a sign the long-rumoured new Mary Chain album will actually happen.
This was a good, highly enjoyable, gig. Sure, some of those who were there first time around may not agree, and who knows, had I been there then I might have thought that too. As it stands, I’m loving their gigs and hope they’re around for years to come.
Long live the Mary Chain!
After two good years at tictoc, I decided it was time for a change and have started a new job with ThirdEye. I could list plenty of reasons for the move, but ThirdEye’s reputation and international setup (they have offices in Glasgow, London and New York) and the chance to work on more visual and user experience driven projects clinched it.
I’m really excited and optimistic about the move, and my first two weeks have flown past. I’m working in their digital department, run by the renowned Flash developer Hoss Gifford. Already well under way with my first project, a viral game using the excellent Box2DFlash engine, so hopefully I’ll be able to post more on that soon!
I was trying to install PHP 5.2.5 using Litespeed’s handy admin interface (saves ssh’ing into the server), but kept being met with the following error when it was trying to compile;
configure: error: libpng.(a|so) not found.
Turns out it’s related to my system being 64-bit (I’m using CentOS 5 on Slicehost) and where libpng is installed and so on. Found the answer in this PHP bug report where we specifically tell configure where to look;
./configure --with-libdir=lib64 …
Sorted!
I can’t remember another gig that’s changed my impression of a band as much as this one. To me, the Texan post–rockers Explosions in the Sky have always been firmly associated with their mellower contemporaries such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Mogwai at their introspective best. It’s a delusion no doubt caused by The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, the album of theirs I’ve listened to the most, being short on the heavier moments which so impressed me live.
The support for the night was Eluvium, an ambient post–rock solo act (never thought I’d use those words together) that I’d heard promising things about. After arriving slightly late, there was a comedy realisation after five minutes that what I’d dismissed as backing music between acts was in fact the support! In my defense, he was off to the side of the stage, crouched with a guitar behind a laptop and was playing with a fairly long delay, so I assumed he was a guitar tech. After that inauspicious start, things got better as he continued with his set while I was actually paying attention and in the end did more than enough to convince me to check out his music in more depth.
Explosions themselves were simply outstanding, effortlessly managing to be leap between the intimate and the gratuitously loud and frantic. Accompanied by an great lighting performance that made the band look as epic as their music, they seemed to thrive playing in front of a crowd, and the way they brought their music to life was incredible — comparisons with Mono wouldn’t be unjustified.
I’m not familiar enough with the songs to be able to name a set–list from memory, but I’m pretty sure Greet Death, The Moon Is Down and A Poor Man’s Memory were all played.
After overhearing someone mention it at the gig, and confirming it from a news article on their official website, it seems the band are planning on taking an extended, possibly permanent, break after their current tour (“After June 2008 we plan on dropping off the face of the earth for awhile so these will probably be our last shows for quite some time. We hope some of you can make it out.”).
Should you have the chance to see them before they do, I couldn’t recommend it enough.
I’m going to follow a trend I’ve noticed recently and look back over the past year in terms of the music I’ve enjoyed. Given these are all going to be personal choices, there’s a good chance that you might think the following bands and artists are absolutely shite! If that’s the case, why not leave a comment with some of your alternative choices—the less mainstream the better, but anything goes here!
Without further ado here’s my 10 favourite albums of 2007, listed in order of goodness™.
Without doubt my most anticipated album of last year, Radiohead’s seventh studio album In Rainbows was released to an almost unprecedented amount of publicity thanks to their decision to release it online under a name–your–own–price payment structure. Some bloggers went as far as saying it was a move that signified the death of the record industry as we know it — a little hysterical perhaps, but there can be no doubting the impact it’ll have on the distribution models used by the labels in the future (see Amazon’s growing success in convincing the majors to sell DRM–free music).
While that’s all well and good, the way we get our music is of little consequence when compared to the quality and I’m glad to say that Radiohead didn’t disappoint. Since Kid A, where they radically shrugged off their reputation as the most innovative rock band of their generation—arguably becoming the best band period—it’s a pleasure to see an artist as commercially successful as Radiohead still defying the expectations of the masses and doing their own thing.
Opener 15 Step is almost certainly designed to remind us that the electronic themes of Kid–A, Amnesiac and (Thom Yorke’s solo album) The Eraser are an integral part of the band’s style now, with it’s heavily–treated bass and distorted drums accompanying Yorke’s vocal. An electric and bass guitar make a muted but sustained appearance, occasionally lost amongst the drum and bass like breakbeats as the song nears its end — no doubt a hint of what’s to come. If that was subtle, then Bodysnatchers is screaming their rekindled love of guitars from the rooftops. One of Johnny Greenwood’s best riffs in years and combined with a fantastic distorted guitar sound, this just grows in intensity until the chilling climax with Yorke shouting “I’m a lie” before repeating the closing refrain “I’ve seen it coming”. A glorious return to the rock band we know they can be when they want to!
Perennial fan favourite Nude finally makes an album appearance, having been around in various forms for several years now, and it’s as haunting as ever. Other personal highlights include All I Need, which isn’t the typical love song it may initially appear to be (“I only stick with you because there are no others”), Reckoner, which evokes more memories of the ‘old’ Radiohead and Jigsaw Falling Into Place, the lyrics of which are almost a narrative, which I think is describing an encounter in a nightclub with a girl the narrator shouldn’t be with, possibly an ex (“Jigsaws falling into place / There is nothing to explain / Regard each other as you pass / She looks back, you look back / Not just once / Not just twice / Wish away the nightmare”).
Album of the year, without question.
It always feels a little strange when you’re enthusiastically recommending someone like German composer Ulrich Schanuss to a friend, as while it’s easy to recognise that this is a very good album, it doesn’t really have the instant jaw–dropping impact of more aggressive electronic acts—Ted by Clark is as good an example as I can think of at the moment.
That said, I heard little better last year than Goodbye, which is another glorious cross–pollination of the ambient electronic and shoegaze genres and, as the title would suggest, is the last of a trilogy of albums including the undisputed classic A Strangely Isolated Place and his debut Far Away Trains Passing By.
It may be unclear what the future holds for Ulrich Schnauss but based on his output so far, it looks promising!
The timing couldn’t have been better for me discovering Conelrad, as I was gradually becoming bored of my complete Boards of Canada collection through prolonged over–exposure, yet still found myself craving something along the same lines. A recommendation from Tom, this is ambient electronic music at its finest and has been an ever–present in my listening habits since.
I don’t know much about the artist other than it’s one guy from the U.K., but the lack of information only adds to the allure and this is an accomplished debut record coming after only two E.P.’s — 2005’s Not A Gun and 2007’s Community Shelter Planning.
Freely available from the Conelrad website, I’d recommend grabbing all three while you still can as it surely wont’t be long until he’s snapped up by a label.
Planet of Ice may continue 2005 release Menos El Oslo’s crushing decision to no longer use the crazy song titles that had featured on their debut Highly Refined Pirates—examples included “Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!” and “Lets Play Guitar In A Five–Guitar Band”—but there’s no such disappointment with the music here.
An indie rock band with vocals so smooth you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s pop, they’re not shy of integrating electronic influences and synths can be found frequently in the background, most noticeably on Dr L’ling. The guitar work is excellent throughout, with Knights and Double Vision having some great solos. They follow the rock template by having some mellower moments as well, such as on Part 2, with it’s mix of acoustic and soulful electric guitars working together beautifully.
Anyone not familiar with this band should definitely check them out.
The first band signed to Air’s Record Makers label, French outfit Turzi are an intriguing propsition — an intoxicating mix of shoegaze and electronica, with hints of surfer rock and psychadelic overtones. At heart a rock band, I really am struggling to think of one single band to compare them to — no bad thing, as it shows how varied they really are.
From the driving post–punk of Animal Signal to the Jean Michel–Jarre evoking Acid Taste (all the song titles begin with the letter a, hence the album title), this is one of the most surprising, unexpected pleasures I’ve heard in a long time.
Another instrumental post–rock band, this time from Seattle, Joy Wants Eternity have an altogether more uplifting sound than God Is An Astronaut or Efterklang. Perhaps the thing that impressed me the most about You Who Pretend To Sleep is how cohesive and coherent it is as a whole – even more impressive with this being only their second album.
Opener Existences Rust lulls you into a false sense of security with it’s gentle first 20 seconds, but then launches straight into it with a great fuzzy guitar noise that’s a good indication of what follows. I instantly felt a similarity to both Mono and Explosions In The Sky so fans of those bands will most likely love this too, but Joy Wants Eternity have more than enough quality to warrant a listen on their own merit.
It was only a month or two before Parades was released that I first heard Efterklang’s 2004 debut Tripper and couldn’t help but wonder how it’d passed me by. Following in múm, The Album Leaf and Sigur Rós’s footsteps, this Danish quintet tick all the post–rock boxes, with their frequent use of heavily layered strings, brass and choirs all combining to spectacularly grand effect.
Typically for the style of band, they describe their music as containing “emotionally charged orchestral movements containing grand romantic flourishes”.
Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Au Revoir Simone are an all–girl synth pop band hailing from Brooklyn, New York, who make pleasant, dreamy songs with vocals being performed variously by all three members. Their first release, the mini–album Verses of Comfort, Assurance, and Salvation, sat being criminally overlooked in my iTunes library since it’s release back in October 2005. It wasn’t until I read a favourable review of this full–length debut that I gave them a proper listen and they haven’t disappointed.
Signed to Moshi Moshi in the UK, I doubt they’ll ever have anything more than a cult following, which is a shame, as they’re undoubtedly better than the majority of pop artists I’ve heard. The album’s stand–out tracks are Sad Song and Fallen Snow.
This is the third album from Irish instrumental three–piece God Is An Astronaut, following 2002’s The End of the Beginning and 2005’s All Is Violent, All Is Bright, and they clearly chose to stick with a winning formula. While it may not have any balls out triumphs like Suicide By Star, which was my pick from their last album, its emphasis on slow burning melodies that gradually increase in intensity—and, possibly for those not into the post–rock scene, interest—represents the evolution of a slightly more mature sound.
The progression away from a more frenetic, invigorating, sound was a recurring theme in post–rock music last year. Pelican’s long awaited City of Echoes had nothing like the earth shattering monosyllabic drone of Drought or March to the Sea’s cardiac–threatening swells. Perhaps it’s a sign of bands conciously striving to ensure they’re not seen as simply rehashing past glories. Whatever the reason, there’s just as much need for the more serene, chilled out style appearing on Far From Refuge and, even forgiving the self–congratulatory wankyness of the second last song Lateral Noise, it rightly takes its place here.
LCD Soundsystem, a.k.a James Murphy, the New Yorker also jointly responsible for dfa Records, has always been something of an unknown quantity with me. Undoubtedly talented, his mix of dance, electronica and occasional hints of punk influences blend together to form catchy, danceable tunes. So why the uncertainty? Probably because on the two albums so far (the self–titled debut was released in 2005) there are always songs I just cannot stand – almost unforgivably in this case it’s the opening trilogy of Get Innocuous, Time To Get Away and in particular North American Scum.
Thankfully, starting with the relaxed electronica of track four, Someone Great, everything suddenly gets so much better. It may just be me, but it’s almost as though the pretentiousness disappears and the focus is on making cool music instead of trying to live up to a reputation. Other standouts among the remaining five songs include the lengthy but good All My Friends and the slow, piano–backed album closer New York I Love You.
It may not be a classic, but thanks to the second half of the album redeeming the first, Sound of Silver is a worthwhile addition here.
Discovered a handy open–source application for OS X on Sourceforge last night called Grand Perspective, which allows you to create a visualisation of the relative size of your files. You can specify a specific folder or your entire disk and the program will scan all your files and create an interactive graphic that lets you identify what’s using the most space – great for finding things you’ve forgotten!
