animal collective merriweather post pavilion

I've been listening the new Animal Collective CD in the car recently. It came in a neat little digi-pack with an outer box of optical illusion and an inner sleeve with their name on it. The album also seems to have a sort of double layer, and I've noticed that a few of the reviewers have referenced 'Beach Boys' and surf sounds as part of the description, perhaps because of the Press handout?

That's not really how I heard it, with it being a little reminiscent of how I'd imagine a 70s prog-rock group like "Yes" would play dance music, if such a thing were possible. There's plenty of layers of synthesizers and soaring guitars, with a kind of electro pop back-beat. There's some proper lyrics that move it from pure dance to something with stories. Probably an analyst's delight.

I'll define its genre as 'blog-rock' because it's one of those bands where the fan following is generated from on-line leaks of tracks and subsequent discourse. Part of the new music model and something that Amanda Palmer commented on during the gig on Wednesday. The need to find the connection from the artist to the fans in new ways. In the ballroom we all texted our email addresses to a special phone number during the gig to stay connected.

I suppose the difference is between the musicians who are in it for the long haul (AnCo started back somewhere in the nineties, I think) versus the sleb-based X factory productions speedily filling Mr Cowell's deep trousers.

In the UK around 80,000 sales of a single attain a chart number one to promote an album. Almost better for the record company to save the marketing budget, just buy up the quantity and get the chart position for the subsequent album.

Lily Allen just made the top spot with 'The Fear' describing celebrity vacuity, sold as an £2.97 EP with every track laced with ***** words. Not banned; yet the Palmer single about stark teenage denial banned everywhere except, intriguingly, the BBC.

I understand the need for innocent uplifting pap pop of the "It’s my time, my moment, I’m not gonna let go of it, I’ll stand proud, nothing I’m afraid of; I’ll show you what I’m made of, that its my time now" type. This can be used in song contests, stadiums and for political speeches with equivalent ease. "Clear the decks, light the lights". I almost feel a java song generator moment but I'll save it for another day.

Fortunately, whilst the labels such as 'progressive' and 'underground' may be deeply unfashionable, there's still enough alt.you-name-it music around to keep things interesting and even a resurgence in the old Yes-like bands with Rick Wakeman being granted permission to perform '6 Wives of Henry VIII' at Hampton Court after waiting a bizarre XXXVII years.

But enough dismantling, I feel should probably reach for a tie-dye tee shirt to just listen to Animal Collective, perhaps whilst staring at the cover art.

John - will this do?

Amanda Palmer Electric Ballroom

A swift drink at the World's End in Camden last evening, appropriately accompanied by growling and sinister death metal from the juke-box until Julie said it was making her feel ill.

So our happy band wandered the one hundred footsteps to the Electric Ballroom which was filling with the followers of Amanda Palmer, who has been in town giving snowman construction lessons and preparing for this new European tour.

First up Göteborg's finest - Detektivbyrån - who played a sort of drum n' accordion set, punctuated with xylophone. The good natured crowd applauded well enough and then after a short refuel break, Amanda appeared. The already loud applause flipped up a few notches as she seated by the Kurt Weill, but the coolsters of Camden didn't all surge to the front and there was actually enough room to stand and enjoy.

A great blend of songs, many from the latest album, some Dresden Dolls tunes (Backstabber, Coin Operated Boy) a cover or two - somehow part of a Muse track got worked in - and also some new material. Amanda was complemented with the Danger Ensemble for some of the numbers, who performed around her and into the crowd flaunting *ahem* all manner of things during the extensive set.

A few serious moments as she talked about UK censorship and the narrowing of differences from America to UK and a tongue in cheek modification to the already ironic version of Oasis.

I know it's a flying visit to the UK, but there were some witty observations about Londoners like they didn't really know how to make snowballs until the instructions were published in the Guardian. Additions to the musical part included a picture auction and a couple from the audience being invited on stage to profess their love for one another.

There was a finale which involved "Katy Perry" and a then a mini photoshoot which has created some great flickr pictures, far better than mine.

A great evening. Amanda, don't be a stranger to the UK.


oooh, and here's Et in arcadia ego's excellent review

guerilla theatre

Thanks, Andy, for spotting this little example of theatre in unusual surroundings.

Andy's blog also promotes a certain amount of West End theatre, and its good to see the more spontaneous type, like the above, as well. Oh, not to mention Andy's folk singing - here at Havering Folk Club

all of our bus stops are belong to me

Yeah, I know.

But I couldn't resist.

snow car in the world

This is quite close to where I had to abandon the car yesterday.

I'd managed to drive part way to a meeting but during the journey it was cancelled, so I turned back. I couldn't have gambled on cancellation, though, and so had started out extra early. A kind of Catch-22.

On my way back, the side roads were not gritted and after being surprised by another struggling motorist driving sort of sideways, I then found my own car deciding to protest.

The various 'I know better than you' safety lights came on and it refused to move along the road. I finally got to disable the anti-skid-protection using a special button in an attempt to keep going. This allowed me to drive another wheel-slipping noisy metre before a very loud beepy warning came on and a large part of the dashboard started flashing red. I didn't know it could do that.

I had to admit defeat and snuggle it to the kerb for later retrieval. As I left it, I noticed sort of pungent tyre aroma and the black iced snow in front of the rear wheels.

One backpack, boots and gloves later, I was enjoying a walk through the still pretty snow.

this snowman has matching hat and scarf

The white stuff affected plans somewhat today.

I didn't expect to be walking along the road admiring snowmen at a time I'd originally expected to be in a meeting. Of course the transport infrastructure was suffering today and caused delays and reschedules.

My next meeting is a conference call, where I'm sure we will swap tales of today's snowy adventures.

'sno snow y'know

Pah. Fooey.

I see shadows.

I see fluffy white clouds in a blue sky.

The buildings around me are looking sort of yellow in a strange light.

Whilst all around me the twitterverse is talking about #uksnow and bad weather. This morning we had a snowflake fall here. I saw it. Then a little later another dozen or two. I held my tongue out to see whether it passed the tongue test. Nope. I couldn't catch a single flake. Mainly because they were smaller than grains of salt. This picture from rashbre central on 5 Jan 2009 has much more of a snowdrift than anything today.

And now this yellow light.

Sunshine.

I quite like it.

gardening notes

I said I'd look out for signs of Spring and noticed these robust looking shoots pushing through the earth in the garden today.

I don't think they are from the Mars plant which inhabits part of the garden, secretively burrowing underground and then re-appearing unexpectedly with space suckers which, when cut, squirt toxic Martian space juice up to a quarter of a mile.

time to use the iPhone pub detector

We are using the iPhone pub detector this evening to select a venue.

It doesn't tell you how good the pub is, but it does tell you where the nearest ones are. It seems like a fun thing to have on a phone, but then I also have the Star Wars light sabre module which glows and makes all kinds of laser beam swooshing sounds when you move the phone around.

My low serial number iPhone is one of the original ones with the aluminium back, but on the whole, around London, I don't notice the lack of 3G because of the pervasive wi-fi.

Another £1.59 well spent was the GPS Motion-X software which lets the phone run as a GPS tracker, similar to a Garmin unit. Of course, the built-in Google maps does that as well- eerily telling me exactly where I am when I think I'm lost, but the Motion-X creates a waypoint database, which is sort of handy for photography for recording where & when. It can run in automatic mode or you can save waypoints at will, as well as exporting them as pins onto Google maps.

But now, off to GPS reference 51.512668,-0.13168 the pub.


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carcam revisited in iMovie

A very quick re-cut of the carcam from before Christmas, just to try out a few of the features of iMovie 09. I usually edit video with Final Cut, but thought it would be interesting to see whether Apple have fixed the strangeness introduced in the last version of iMovie.

My general view is that they have. The initial interface is fairly different from most AV editors, and it took me a while to figure out how to un-hook sound, multi-track and similar. Its all there, as is precision editing, but you have to click around a little bit to find it.

I suspect I'll mainly still use FCP for video, although this package with its transitions and titling is quite good for quick editing and comes with all new Mac systems. Once I'd imported the video and a soundtrack, it was only about ten minutes to bash together this little comp. It took longer to remember the quicktime settings to embed it with scaling.

The ability to publish straight to youtube was an interesting little addition too. It takes all the decisions about compression and frame rates away and just does it. Youtube is policing the DRM rather well though and decided not to let Regina's song through.

internet 1969

Time to play spot the differences. Any thoughts?

bagging a bug bag for face faceoff

I keep a reusable bag in the car boot for when I'm buying a few groceries or similar. I should estimate I've bought around ten of the bags at different times, but they seem to disappear of their own accord, long before they've worn out. So today I bought yet another one to restock the car. It also gave me an excuse to experiment with Apple's new iPhoto face recognition software.

I noticed that iPhoto lets you access an Aperture library, which is where I keep my photos stored. I grabbed 2-3 folders of maybe 100 pictures with a few consistent faces, taught the names to iPhoto and it then ran through the pictures getting the names mainly right. It missed a few but didn't guess any incorrectly.

Hmm, I thought, maybe it uses shapes and dates. So I then tried it with the ladybird on the shopping bag. I taught it the name and showed it 4 almost identical photos of the ladybird. It didn't have a clue. So it seem that the Face recognition isn't going to be fooled too easily with alien shapes.

My next experiment will be with the new ironic film soundtrack loops available in Garageband.