majorarcana

Posts Tagged ‘Music’

Oh God, why is the internet so slow in this house?

Hmm. I did promise to say something about my holiday, didn’t I? A post of sorts exists in notebook form, but looking over it, it’s a rather dull effort so I’m probably going to consign it to the ether. The short version is I went walking in the Lake District towards the end of October, and had a very nice time. There’re pictures and everything.

At the start of the year, I had the goal of doing a minimum of a blog post a month, which obviously I didn’t stick to, and then after my personal life imploded I assumed I’d have a lot more time on my hands and thought hey - maybe I can manage two or three a month - but that didn’t happen either. To be honest, I’ve thrown myself into my day job a bit over the last eight months, and haven’t felt I’ve had a lot to write about (although 15 posts is slightly better than what you would have got in the original plan…). I have to rethink what I want to use this place for again, I think. Most of the blogs I’ve followed over the years have abandoned news/links/micro-posts because there are better outlets for that sort of thing now. The trend seems to be for longer essays, which of course takes time and effort. And if I was going to go down that route, I’d like to do something that might actually be of interest to anyone apart from immediate friends and family - as I’ve pretty much done everything a blogger could do to drive casual traffic away from this site over the last few years, it might be nice to come up with something that might conceivably attract an audience for a change. Less prattling about meeeeeeee next year whatever happens, I reckon.

Creatively, as ever, I need to get more writing done. I’m also getting a bit hacked off with stuff I actually make the effort to finish and place ending up with publications that subsequently crash or disappear without trace. I’m hardly prolific, and the fact the one or two pieces I’m proudest of have effectively been in limbo - in some cases for years - is pretty sickening. I recently found out my major completed project of last year, for a book that was supposed to be out last January, probably now isn’t going to be in the book at all, and will likely end up as a promotional pdf. All very demoralising, and I certainly need to rethink my focus next year.

I’d thought about doing a separate best of the year post, but I think I’ll just blurt it all out here: Book: Bad Vibes, Music: St Vincent - Actor, Film: Moon, TV: Err, The Inbetweeners? Was that this year? It was for me, Comic: Batman: RIP - fuck you internet, I loved it.

See you next year, unless I get chatty between now and new year. Have a good one.

Posted on December 26th, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
No Comments »

February Calling

Am late posting about February, which is bad, because I actually did stuff. Firstly, I went along to Gipsy Hill Comedy Night at the Black Sheep on the 13th, a local night for local people with not so-local acts. It was Richard Herring headlining that caught my eye and got me through the door, but it turned out to be a really strong line-up, with four great sets and even a compere who was pretty decent. Also: handy for an early Palace Spice. Then there was Black Box Recorder’s second night at the Luminaire in Kilburn, my second dose of Haines in two months, this time with added Moore and Nixey, and predictably great. March already all the poorer for being a Hainesian desert of a month.

I also caught the preview of Let The Right One In at the BFI, which I was looking forward to after pleasant rumblings from across the pond. It doesn’t get a general release here until April, so for once my movieblogging might actually be of use to somebody. In short, it’s very good. I’ve had the book it’s based on on order from Amazon for a while, and I understand it’s a lot more convoluted, but the film itself is elegantly spartan and understated, with moments of warmth, horror, violence and even (black) comedy. For my money, certainly the best Cold War era-set Swedish Vampire film I’ve ever seen.

Reading for Feb:

The Wine Dark Sea by Robert Aickman

Err, that’s a bit rubbish really isn’t it? I’ve now read all of Aickman’s short fiction currently in-print, however, and it’s definitely been something of a revelation. As a frequently cited influence for many of my favourite authors, I wasn’t really expecting to find much I hadn’t already encountered elsewhere, but Aickman was a true master of the form, and his voice is still very much a unique one.

Posted on March 21st, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
2 Comments »

Snow

As a child growing up in the frozen North, we did, as might be expected, get snow from time to time. For some reason though it rarely seemed to fall particularly thickly or hang around for very long. It was great fun when it did of course, and from even a young age I was able to appreciate the stark beauty of a familiar landscape mysteriously submerged beneath a blanket of frosty, pristine white. One day though,something else happened as well, and my appreciation of the phenomenon was elevated to a whole new level. On that day the snow was much heavier than usual, and when we woke up in the morning it was still snowing - big fat flakes, and thick blankets of them too. At some point either during or immediately prior to breakfast we received a phone call, and my respect for the forces of nature in all their wild and fearsome glory was assured.

School was shut.

Since that day I’ve dared to dream and hope for a repeat performance. And yesterday friend, nature finally came through with the goods for me. Apologies if you were one of poor souls marooned on the roads trying to make an urgent hospital run, or trapped in your own home without food or warmth, but thanks to the wintry touch of General February, this simple cog in the capitalist machine had his weekend extended by a whole extra day, and for that I can’t help but be thankful.

Moving on, I actually had some marginally interesting nights out in January. On the 21st I went to see the League of Gentlemen 10 Years On retrospective at the BFI on Southbank. Three favourite episodes on the big screen followed by a lengthy Q&A with the League themselves. Back in the day the League was perhaps the perfect show for me - a perfect confluence of my interests, influences and obsessions. Since then, despite all concerned having done things of interest, it’s only Jeremy Dyson who’s succeeded in producing something a slightly more adult me has enjoyed to quite the same extent (Funland). As such it was quite sad hearing them all acknowledge those days of mad energy and crazed inventiveness were long behind them, and that to achieve that just once in a lifetime is rare enough.

Then last week I went to the Roundhouse to hear Luke Haines read from Bad Vibes and perform a small set. Incongruously, the venue was shared with Grace Jones, which made for some interesting people-watching in the Roundhouse’s crap bars whilst I waited for the room to open. The reading/q&a/set was disappointingly brief, but let’s face it, you’re not going to draw Haines into a protracted anything if he’s not up for it, so perhaps that was for the best. The book is brilliant by the way, and certainly the only one you’ll ever need to read about Britpop. Many biographies of the period have tended to focus on the chemical and sexual excesses going on behind the scenes with tabloid salaciousness, but to Haines treats all that as tangential to the far more serious business of skewering the ability, talent, and character of his contemporaries (including himself).

My reading for Jan:

The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman
Cold Hand In Mine by Robert Aickman
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner
Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp
The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba
Bad Vibes - Britpop And My Part In It’s Downfall by Luke Haines

The standout book of the month was Bad Vibes, although was a pretty good month all round to be honest.

Posted on February 3rd, 2009
by
nick.brownlow
3 Comments »

Fail

As you can probably see, the Year in Film project went off the rails again in the final few weeks. I blame that last exam, myself, although I doubt I’d have been bothered to go to the cinema nine times in one month anyway. Glancing back at the archives I’m quite disappointed; I didn’t really go out of my way to see anything that was a bit different, and most of what i did see was mediocre, formulaic crap, to be honest. The whole project began as an attempt to try and overcome my apathy towards going to the cinema, and yet if anything I feel even less enthusiastic about it now. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just old and twisted and bitter and see no joy in the dance of flickering celluloid, or for that matter the world. Or maybe it’s the pricing, programs, scheduling, cost/quality of food, comfort, advertising and usual clientele of London cinemas. But really, who cares?

I will be renewing my BFI membership though, which was a great present from the girlfriend, and one I’d wished I’d got more use out of. I’m also considering joining the Ritzy, which I guess is more or less my local cinema, and is also an extremely pleasant place to take in a film. I think I’ll enjoy myself a lot more if I concentrate on seeing stuff I genuinely want to see somewhere I actually don’t mind being rather than places like the Cineworld Trocadero, which is a bit like dying and going to Hell (I imagine).

The Long Blondes have split up, which is shit.

Now the exams are all over until next year I’m going to puts some thought into redesigning the site too, which I never really look at myself, but quite frankly looks atrocious and reflects a half-baked, unfinished design idea I never really thought through properly about a year and a half ago. I’m thinking of just using an out of the box Wordpress theme this time, as I clearly don’t have the patience or photoshop skillz to come up with a decent one of my own (although I did like the fact a colleague referred to it as “the satan worshiping motherfucker” theme).

Friends have stuff out:

JT is a zombie in Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set which starts next week, and will not stop going on about it.
Paul Holden has an iPhone comic out written by Al Ewing. Their Dead Signal was probably the most gloriously mental strip to run in 2000ad in a long while, and of course they were the team behind the controversy-blighted Murderdrome. I’ve been following this, but haven’t posted anything about it because as we’ve already established up-post, I am shit. I have however mentioned it a bit around the office, which may well be the densest area of iPhone ownership in southern England, so hopefully they’ll have snagged a few sales off the back of that.