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OTA : Wordless Wednesday

View from my hotel, Zaventem, Belgium

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Thanks mar

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a nice matter

My thanks to bob-kat for the flattering nomination for the 'nice matters' award.

Correctly, bob-kat and mar surmised that the standard form of the award might not look comfortable on rashbre central, so the art department had a very quick go at a makeover. The original main components are a white low heeled shoe, some pink ribbon and a lot of pink flowers.

This, perhaps slightly edgier, variation uses a red soled, black high-heeled louboutin, some red ribbon and some co-ordinated black-fronted red-backed nail varnish instead of flowers. I think it does the trick. Anyway, the real award picture is here if you want to compare.

I'll do nominations when my brain is working again. And a big thank you to bob-kat.

reserved reversal

Yesterday, after playing with bicycles, I was working in London and then tucked away in a hotel for the evening.

Earlier in the day I'd listened to some of the new KT Tunstall album in my car and was slightly taken aback. The album starts with a track that could easily have been on a Sheryl Crow recording and uses some similar production values too. Nothing against Sheryl, but the point with KT Tunstall was that she sounded like, well, KT Tunstall. The next track continued with a shimmered studio production and for me this hides some of the 'gaps between the sounds' that make the earlier Tunstall albums interesting. The 'eye to the telescope' sold several million, so I guess the record company know what they are doing, but I also suppose that's part of the point. Its not good if all artists get produced in a way that tends to make them bland or derivative.

I'll be in a minority on this, I'm sure, and other people have already said how 'drastic' and 'fantastic' the new album is. But then a strange thing happened...

...In my hotel, I discovered a way to listen to the album that somehow changes my initial impression.

Earlier, I'd copied the CD into iTunes and then dropped it into my iPod.

The hotel had a little plug on the clock radio (as they do nowadays) so that I could play my iPod and I casually selected 'recently added'.

The result was to listen to the same album, but with all of the tracks played in the reverse sequence (ahem on a lo-fi radio system). And you know something? It somehow sounds better! Old vinyls were often put together with care for the sequencing, but I'm not so sure nowadays. Certainly the reverse sequence sets a different initial tone and guides the listener towards some of the more heavily produced material. So when I get a few spare moments, I shall re-cut the album, in reverse track order, back to CD for my car and listen again.

So concluding, what with my PJ Harvey post a couple of days ago, I thought the PJ image from Slane 2003 and the KT 2007 album cover could do with some comparison.

freewheel

I have a special road bike for Central London if I think I may need to park it somewhere. It's green with a slightly peeling finish and has quite a lot of rust showing. There's no fancy speedos or telemetry. The lights are big duracell blocks that unclip with a key. It has a plastic bag over the saddle and both a boingy spiral cable lock and a Kryptonite D-Lock. The saddle is a QR, but I hide the flip switch inside the plastic bag.

The reason is the expected life of an unattended bicycle in Central London is very short. This is a great shame, because London is trying to improve the cycle ways and to encourage cyclists on a series of alternateive and lightly used routes. I think its a great idea and this Sunday's Freewheel Day in Central London attracted tens of thousands of cyclists to zip around some of the best bits of central London which were liberated from other traffic for the day. Parliament, the Mall, Whitehall, Buck House were all included.

It may not be a practical solution yet, but if safe parking security and alternative routes can be provided then it becomes an attractive and interesting way to get around the mainly short distances of the central area.

Thanks, London and Hovis for facilitating this freewheel. Hmm, with Flora sponsoring the London Marathon and Hovis the Freewheel bicycle event, London sure knows which way its bread is buttered (!)

artist

We've all wanted to go to somewhere like the sunny river scene in this picture.

Rosanna's display at the Chiddingfold gallery in Surrey on Saturday captured vibrant scenes with punchy colour conveying a happy mood across a variety of subjects. Working initially in pastels and then developing towards some pure oil painting, the style and detailing are important items on Rosanna's mind right now. There's thought and preparation in scenes like the one above, moving from pencil sketches, through rough painted attempts in an artist notebook, experimentation with paint blending styles and the final crafted delivery.

Whether examining the impressionism of the Japanese Bridge in Monet's garden at Giverney, or musing over delicate fibres for an ink and textile collage, Rosanna is determined to make a style of her own.

Now you've looked at a couple of works from this upcoming artist pop to the gallery on flickr

enchanted braid

"Earth, water, fire and air.
Mix together in the garden fair.
Put in a basket, tie with string.
If you answer this riddle you'll never begin."

I've been listening to the album of a friend with a performance name of i-sense and the album called "The enchanted braid". It contains a riddle like the shape of the elements in a alchemical picture.

Evocative of the mystic middle east, there's four tracks in a sort of song cycle, with commentary and atmospheric sounds of arabic flutes, deep bass drums, synthetic drones and arpeggiated sweeping synthesizers. The subject matter deals with transcendance on several levels, including the ritual of a Pharoh's second death as a path to enlightenment, and the simpler pleasures of love.

i-sense has created a clever album and I'm sure there's more embedded in the tracks than I've found - probably requiring sub-conscious examination. The "sense" of "I" referred to in the artist title is probably a clue to volitionally liberating consciousness from self-restrictions, and I shall enjoy puzzling the hidden meanings.

So whether its about Isis (the spirit) and Osiris (the soul) or a kingdom usurped by Typhon, the elements won't be far from this composition and their intersection at the i of the i-sense.

khalil (sandstorm mix)

white chalk

I've referenced PJ Harvey here before, including that song with Thom York about New York.

I guess PJ's trademark sound has been jagged guitars and a raw vocal style, although listen to her interviews and a different voice appears like a Yin to the Yang.

The latest album officially emerges on Monday, so this is something of a preview, conveying a stripped down sound with piano, harp and some banjo and even a cellphone replacing the heavily bass-amped guitars of the previous recordings.

Interestingly, the vocals sound closer to the interview voice in this album, higher registers and somehow more vulnerable, but a listen to the words soon dismisses this with dark, steely lyrics and some soundscapes that create a chill and atmospheric listening experience. In the past Polly has said that the albums and the lyrics were not about her; it will be interesting to hear the commentary for this one.

So to get an idea of what this is about, here's a few tune extracts in pre-release. Click to accompany your blog browsing and if you like what you hear, then here's an echoey live extract during a recent performance in Denmark.

...or if humbucking telecasters are more your thing then PJ Harvey and Bjork singing "Satisfaction" may be an amusing interlude.

latte

A few minutes sitting in a coffee bar before a meeting today. I was a little early and picked a place at random in Fleet Street to sit and catch up on a few emails.

Turns out one of the people I was meeting was in another coffee bar around the corner.

Fleet Street is the area where the major newspapers used to operate before they all modernised and moved out of the centre. There's still a good legacy of wine bars and pubs in the area and you can spot some suitably business-like people emerging from "The Old Bell Tavern" across the road from where I was sitting.

Nowadays there's still good business from the legal profession, investment banks and accountants in the area and along the road are the Law Court Chambers, often featured on the television news. A short walk in the other direction is the equally famous Old Bailey, site of many famous trials.

The main traffic of buses, taxis, white vans and bicycles is indicative of the area in the centre of the Congestion Charge zone and later this will increase and the streets fill with city folk on their way home. But me, I now have to meet my colleague and then head into a nearby building.

give me a bell

I just read somewhere (in the analogue world of ink and paper) that mobile phones have been going for around 20 years. "This calls for a montage", I thought, "or at least a few photoshopped pictures".

I expect there's already people who don't remember phones with dials, and the idea of remembering actual phone numbers is long since gone. I don't get all misty eyed though because the cellular world offers a lot of advantages with quick text messaging, conferencing, photography and video and I actually miss the text chat facility I had on my last mobile phone, which seems impossible to emulate in the world of Windows on my current one.
Of course, when phones only had to make phone calls, they were a lot simpler, and there's a special law that says whenever its something urgent the phone will throw a tantrum and demand a reboot, which seems to take about a minute. And the last two phones I've had both have qwerty keyboards instead of numbers, so I've got used to typing in part of someone's name now when I want to call them.

So I don't really reminisce for the days of early mobile with short battery life and a burning sensation around the ear after a long call. I'm still slightly suspicious of bluetooth operating on the same frequency as microwave ovens, but I suppose someone has proved that a bluetooth headset can't cook baked beans.

And of course with all the hilarious and imaginative ring-tones around, the old style "bring-bring" bell has also made a solid come-back.
UPDATE: I checked. The first cellphone was used in 1973 by Martin Cooper/Motorola and the first ones sold were 1984. So Gordon Gecko in Wall Street(1987) was cutting edge.

Cookie Socks Shocks

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?
"I've been to London to look at the queen."
Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?
"I frightened a little mouse under the chair."

Shocking news that Socks the Blue Peter cat may have been renamed (allegedly). The phone in competition to name this childrens' programme pet seems to have been overruled by someone on the programme. Apparently the most common/popular phone-in name was deemed inappropriate and substituted for the name of Bill Clinton's cat.

Hmm, I wonder what the original name was, and whether there's any connection with the substitution?

Antonia and the exploding gas cylinders

I spent longer than expected in the fens of Cambridgeshire and beyond today as a result of the exploding gas cylinders of the A14. A truck toppled over and let loose its contents of metal gas cylinders. I first noticed something untoward when the map on my sat nav went red all around Cambridge. First a few warning yellow cars and then a steady procession of little red cars marched across the map like so many ants. And then four 'no entry' signs popped up at the cardinals of Cambridge.

"Hmm", I thought, as I sat in stationary traffic, "I'd better find a local radio station". And so to Antonia on Radio Cambridgeshire drivetime, who announced that there had been an accident and then that the police had closed all of the useful roads in the most of Cambridgeshire.

Antonia Brickell's(?) slightly subversive radio style was quite entertaining whilst I whiled away my normally economical fuel consumption in the gridlock of the month. Radio Cambs lasted a good hour and a half until I finally got moving again and the station faded out of reception.

I can understand the need for exclusion zones around unidentified gas canisters; even if they were described as 'empty'. Notable was the good humour and patience of the long streams of motorists caught up in today's events.