Another year, another list. I am sure you music fans have read enough summary lists to make your eyes bleed, but here is another one to add into the best-of pot; my favourite musical stylings of the year. As always, it’s a lot of electronica with a few guitars hidden in there, but 2012 might be the year that I am finally starting to accept and, dare I say it, like R&B – see Usher and Everett James. Childish Gambino almost made the list but as I still can’t bear to like Community, that heart can beat somewhere else.
There’s two entries by John Talabot, so my album of the year has to be his masterpiece Fin. While there are several standout tracks, the record is a seamless after-party journey that stands strong in the age of downloads and playlists. This list, like the rest, is in the order of discovery and personal poignancy. And you can listen to them all in this Spotify playlist.
Another brilliant year at Playgroup Festival near Tunbridge Wells. It has it all. The food. The fun times. The friends. Even the weather didn’t bring it down. I did another review for eFestivals (but also check out last year’s review), and took some more Kodak moments, mostly of all the brilliant costumes from the fun lovin’ crowd. Read the eFestival review here and look at most of the picas some of the on the eFestival’s website and well as my personal favourite snaps on my own Flickr.
If you have never been… next year, just go
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I know, I know. Every blogging Tom Dick and Harry posts their ‘top tunes/gadgets/films/bullshit of year’ during December, so everyone is vomiting never-ending lists through their eyeballs by Christmas. Well I missed that window, and I have been posting my fave tunes of the year for the last two years (see 2009 and 2010), so I am going to post my 2011 list up anyway. Ner ner, ner ner ner.
My list, as always is in order of discovery and personal poignancy. There are some tunes in the list that weren’t created in 2011, but I discovered and fell in love with them that year and thus made my list. The links below go to act’s soundcloud page or a youtube link, and I have made a Spotify playlist which you should defiantly subscribe too.
I’ve held off from putting on some extra additions; I’ve been a long time fan of Metronomy and this year’s album was outstanding. This year also discovered the genius that is James Holden and all the gems on the Border Community label and M83 put on a fantastic show at the Heaven in December, but that is my top list and I’m sticking to it. Top Tune of them all? By far Nights Off by Siriusmo. Not only have I listened to it at least 50 times in the last year, but I can still remember their set at the Black Atlantic/Modeselektor show back last March as one of the sweatiest meatboxes I have ever had the pleasure of dancing to.
More words, this time a review of the Red Bull Studios End of Year party with AlunaGeorge, who I hadn’t heard of before the gig. but are now very much on my radar. The gig was the first time I’ve done a midweek club night for quite some time, probably since my student days, but it was defiantly worth the morning bleury eyes. While I was half expecting, no, hoping, that the night would turn into a episode from Dalston Superstars, it was just great music, a great crowd, and not a bad review.
This is the second of hopefully many posts exposing my domestic picture lusting. But in this post, the poster that was picked, purchased and pinned to the wall wasn’t my choice, but my boyfriend’s. Thankfully, his taste is as exceptional as mine
Click for the larger image
The poster in question is a re-fashioning of the London tube map featuring musicians from the 20th Century. Using Harry Beck‘s original anti-geographical design and a dollop of inspiration from Simon Patterson’s 1992 creation The Great Bear, music writer for The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey, came up with this ‘experiment to see if one intricate network can be overlaid on a completely different one’ back in 2006. He started with a box of coloured crayons and found that each line lended to a a particular genre; pop ran through many styles so had to be circle, while Classical occupying it’s own musical sphere lended well to the DLR. The most eclectic artists occupied the major stations as objectively as possible, with some interesting explanations. As Lynskey wrote on the Guardian Culture Vulture Blog:
“I also followed chronology wherever the path of the line allowed it. Each branch line represents a sub-genre: rock sprouts off into grunge and psychedelia when it reaches South-West London; hip-hop diverges, north of Camden, into old school and New York rap. If I was really lucky, the band name echoed the original station name: Highbury & Islington became Sly & the Family Stone.”
I’m personally quite chuffed that our nearest stops are Tricky and Prodigy, but Bjork being placed at Baker Street is also pretty clever. Ross’ favourite station? Fourtet (Canada Water) intersecting with Avant-Garde and British Folk. I also love that reggae (central) line running through the heart of London. If you also fancy buying the poster to hang on your walls you can here.
Another weekend, another festival, another review. It was my first time attending Lovebox weekender, a music festival that takes place in Victoria Park, London. It’s defiantly one of the better city summer festivals, well organised, but a little pricey (well, it is London). I only went on the Friday, where line-up included the headliners such as The Wombats, Example, Ed Sheeran and Beardyman, but I was mostly there to check out Metronomy, SebastiAn and Hudson Mohawke.
My review for the eFestivals website is here, and all the pictures from the day’s events are here.
Last Thursday I went to a rather good little festival in a place called London. After the fun and frolics that occurred at DazedLive, I didn’t know if my night would end well or would end badly. Thankfully, the festival was pretty damn good, and I got to catch some really great acts, including Toro Y Moi, Solar Bears, CocknBull Kid and Becoming Real. I also took some pretty nice photos.
I haven’t posted in a while. Not that it’s an excuse, but I have been very busy at work, have no internet at home, been having lots of fun… you know the drill.
A bit of an exciting announcement is that I am going to start reviewing festivals and taking pictures for eFestivals this summer, which is pretty exciting. My first review was of DazedLive, a one day festival curated by Dazed and Confused magazine. It wasn’t the most positive of reviews, as the event left me more fazed and bemused.
This is another review for The 405, but this time a review of the mighty electronic music festival Bloc weekend, running strong in it’s 5th year.
As a student I always looked at the Bloc line-up and sighed. Perfectly sandwiched between exams and dissertation hand-ins, this indoor festival is always unbookable for those still hoping to pass their exams. But not this year. With my recovery time booked off and my boyfriend emotionally blackmailed, I was finally going to a festival my ears have been having waxy wet dreams about for years.
I have to admit that I had massive preconceptions after my own massive build-up. I was convinced that sleepy little Minehead, better known in festival land for the more relaxed All Tomorrow’s Parties, would become Shoreditch-by-the-Sea once the hipstamatic crowd arrived wearing dayglo loafers. Arriving via the Bloc bus on the Thursday night confirmed my worst suspicions. We spent the evening curtain twitching from the confines of our chalet watching the herds of 20-year-olds excitedly running around screaming like they had just been let off the leash. We made the wise decision not to join them in the main arena, retiring to a rubber lined mattress, that killed all passions as well as bed bugs.
The Foursquare top-tip is to upgrade on your accommodation – and they are not wrong on that front. The four person chalets appear to be the most comfortable; five bed cram in an extra person via a bunk bed, six beds still only have two keys to share, while the 8 beds are guaranteed party dorms. Distance wise it took less than 10 minutes to walk from the edge of the festival site to the main arena, and food wise it does pay to take the 15 minute hike to the supermarkets outside Butlins to stock up on liquids and other supplies for the weekend. There was a constant challenge to sneak booze past the security lining the arena – the best one was a can snug in the hoodie.
The biggest shock of the festival hit while ripping open the programme pack. Friday night featured many of the programme heavyweights, including Modeselektor, Jamie XX, Magnetic Man, Dopplereffect, Ramadanman & Joy Orbison, all dramaticly clashing. Thankfully the festival arena is small yet roomy enough so people can move comfortably from one stage to another within less than 5 minutes, but it didn’t stop the crowd tweeting their grumbles to #Bloc2011. While I was initially disappointed, I understand it was a tactic to limit queueing times and packed dancefloors. This could have been implemented a little more, such as Saturday night. The queue for Fourtet & Aphex Twin left many disappointed as it snaked around the arena, but many found salvation in the form of DJ Funk when searching for their kicks elsewhere.
Musically the crowd got what they were promised. Each stage was produced by a different promoter/group each night, selecting their own pick of perfection. For me Friday night was spent in the company of the Modeselektion’s finest; Ikonika kept a throbbing pace even after a power cut, Apparat dazzled with sensitivity, but the definite high point accumulated with Modeselektor inviting the crowd on stage for Happy Birthday. After Moderat blew me away mid Saturday I knew I had my musical high point of the festival. But there was so much more to come.
One of the highlights for me has to be the crowd – a 70:30 ratio of tech heads, their mates, and their fun loving girlfriends, always on the same level. Every stage had it’s own visual delights to dribble over, with enough room for flamboyant booty shaking and enough seating for when you get the leg wobblies. And the with a Funktion 1 rig on every stage, tinnitus never featured in your hangover.
In terms of location, tone, crowd I can not fault anything. The hard electronica music may not be to everyones taste, but I have never danced harder.
A few weeks ago I discovered that Protein were hosting a screening of the new Vincent Moon film, a collaboration with the Danish band Efterklang. I went along, wrote some words, and today The 405 are promoting the piece as today’s main feature on the homepage. Huzzah!
Vincent Moon // In Depth
The MTV generation is dead. No longer do we stare at a electronic box to get our music video fix, being force fed a hip-mentality via product placement or being romanced by thonged jiggling asses dribbling sex. Now the box of dreams sells us aspirational reality television, while have eloped with youtube and vimeo for our creative crack (or dopamine fix?). Now we are all critics. Now we make and broadcast our own. The MTV generation is dead. Long live the culture of free. And here I present to you, your king, Vincent Moon.
The Parisian director has put a new prominence on relationship between music and cinema through his experimental films on bands including Yeasayer, R.E.M, Arcade Fire, Grizzly Bear, Mogwai and most recently Efterklang. His vérité filmaking was first noticed by The National, whom Moon befriended shortly after the release of their first album. Moon made his first music videos for the band, provided the photography for the cover of their album Aligator, and later shot the band’s first feature length documentary entitled ‘A Skin, A Night’. The film chronicled the making of the album The Boxer and the lead-up to a performance at London’s Koko, but was heavily criticised by the band’s fans for being too avant-guard & lo-fi, as well as not showing enough of the bands music.
Moon’s early work was also noticed by Chryde, owner of the french blog theblogoteque, who was looking for someone to film weekly video podcasts of indie bands doing impromptu and al-fresco performances. The pair founded and have been running The Take-Away shows ever since, in 4 years they have produced over 200 clips of many underground musicians from the Europe’s blogsphere and beyond.
In 2009 Moon received critical acclaim for his documentary on the 2008 All Tomorrow Parties, a nolstalgic homage to the increasingly popular band curated festival. During the last year Moon has been travelling around the world as a wayfaring nomad, documenting his sights and the sounds via his blog fiumenights, as well as his trusty Panasonic 171.
Stylistically, Moon’s self-shot work is very self-aware as its status as an alternative and often unexpected take on the fan video. Moon sees himself a ‘passeur’, “a link, a connexion, a bridge between people, sounds and cultures,” marrying music and film as one complete entity. His films adopt a warm over-saturated color balance, while the hand-held camerawork produces jumpy shots that either bounce or flow with the musicality of the soundtrack, with long close-ups of inanimate objects or facial expressions that pan out to all encompassing crowd scenes. Much of his work is seemingly unplanned, unchoreographed, and unscripted, but successfully gives the illusion that you are witnessing a creativity in its most raw and unpolished form. Moon is heavily influenced by found experimentations of Austrian Peter Tscherkassky, and the cinematic anthropology and Jump-cuts of Jean Rouch, tries to work outside of a monetary economy, and always releases his work under a Creative Commons licence.
His latest film is a collaboration with the Danish 9-peice Efterklang. Running at just under an hour, An Island was filmed over four days in August 2010 on (unsurprisingly) an island in the Danish countryside. It was released in February but is being distributed in a extraordinary way, via public or private screenings that anyone can host. A contest was launched via Wired.com to find the host of the world premiere on the 31st of January, which was Latvian Raimonds Gusarevs. Less than two weeks later there have been over 500 public/private screenings of An Island all over the world. People can contact Moon via the film’s website to apply as long as they fulfil two conditions; that at least 5 people attend the screening, and the event is free. People can still register to host their own screenings up until the 31st of March.
There are plenty of other public/private screenings taking place, as well the chance to catch it at gigs during Efterklang’s UK tour, check the website for more details, as well as Moon’s own website for his filmography.
East London residents might recognise this cuddly multi-coloured cross-stitch bear, it’s a character created by Graffiti artist Malarky, as seen in Brick Lane.
