* i subbed the crunchie for a vanilla slice ;)
well as you can tell revision is going swimmingly! ha, but there is something to keep me all cheery…i gots a ticket for bon iver so i did!
so your friday treat is the main man himself, with Calgary, from his new up and coming album…aaand a tune from a band called Wye Oak, who are pretty damn good too!
enjoy!
x
Filed under: on the parchment
just thought i’d thrust your eyes towards this dude…Peter Callesen
Peter is an artist who works chiefly with the simplest of materials…more often than not, sheets of plain white paper. his work seems simple, yet aside from the purity of the white material, Peter provides strong messages throughout his art and in fact prove the intricacy of his installations, particularly in his larger pieces. His art offers moments of genuine beauty and his works on both ice and water are just simply sensational…
x
this week my dad has been emptying my grandparents’ house after (finally) selling it following their passing…for all of us it has been emotional, no more so for him as it is the same house he spent his childhood. however, it has also been a time a great discovery and history, as we’ve found hundreds of photos, some dating back to mid-19th century. we’ve also found amazing, retro trinkets including a 1980′s ‘boombox’, some sensational leather suitcases, classic cameras (quickly snapped up by yours truly!), old toys, vintage china/cutlery/etc, and much more! it’s been really quite awesome discovering family history that we had no idea about. and a personal favourite find was my grandad’s RAF uniform, log book, medals, etc…unbelievably beautiful things that filled me with pride and joy…
here are a few pictures i took of our findings…
hmmm…apologies for the quality, but you get the jist!
from top we have: a couple of awesome, vintage suitcases, my grandad/dad’s tin of toy cars (including some that date back to almost a century ago!), two olddd chocolate boxes, a picture of my great grandad in his WW1 uniform with a fellow soldier buddy, a british flag owned by my grandma from VE-Day, a bunch of grandad’s WW2 things (including his medals, RAF badge, a stub from a wax museum when he was stationed in Kabul, and a 1944 five franc note), next his RAF uniform and log book, a couple of trinkets from around their house (including a drawing made by my grandma, a brilliantly classic jam holder and our Clan Davidson emblem), a retro games board, my grandad’s pretty brilliant school photo, an RAF guide to ‘what to do on leaving the service’, a clipping from the local Runcorn paper reporting my grandparents’ wedding, a toy bus that was made in 1920, and finally a leather suitcase packed with photos, letters, books and my grandad’s huge collection of stamps…
x
Filed under: on the film reel, on the horizon, on the mind, on the parchment, on the projector, on the streets, on the travels, on the turntable, on the waves | Tags: aberdeen uni, climate change, hard rain, mark edwards, project
if you’ve been on campus at any point this week, im sure you’ll have noticed the Hard Rain campaign near Elphinstone Hall and King’s College. i really hope that most people will have had the time to stop and take in the pain, shame, beauty and hope that is presented by Mark Edwards’ display….however if not, here’s a little bit of info (taken from the uni website) that may draw you into paying the exhibition a visit…
Artist Mark Edwards, one of the few environmental communicators to have personally witnessed the global issues that are defining the 21st century, will speak at 6pm on Tuesday March 22 in the Regent Building Lecture Theatre on the King’s College Campus.
Mark’s presentation — introduced with photos synced to Bob Dylan’s prophetic 60s masterpiece ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ shows habitat destruction, overconsumption, poverty, pollution, climate change, war, loneliness and despair gathered from Mark’s expeditions to over 150 countries over 40 years. The presentation explores the state of the world and its people, and brings alive the policies, technologies and lifestyle changes we need to adopt to reinvent the modern world to be compatible with nature.
The accompanying 60-metre outdoor photo exhibition will open beside the Elphinstone lawn on the King’s College campus on March 14 until April 12.
The exhibition has been seen by over 15 million people across all continents and has attracted huge public and critical acclaim. It has been shown at venues as diverse as the United Nations Headquarters in New York and national governments including Scotland, Australia, Belgium and Cuba, to the European supply chain for McDonalds, and the community of Wormwood Scrubs prison.
Hard Rain is being brought to the City by the Aberdeen University Students Association Climate Change Project and funded by the Scottish Government.
Jamie Peters, who represents the Climate Change Project, expressed his hope of the benefits the exhibitions and inspirational talk would have on the University and wider community of the north-east, saying: “The Climate Change Project has been engaging students in environmental discussion and equipping them with the tools to reduce their own environmental impacts since last summer. We are hoping that by hosting Hard Rain we can continue to get the community involved in making positive contributions to the environment and allow them to adopt more sustainable lifestyles.
“We have started a number of initiatives that are designed to reduce the community’s carbon footprint, save students money, help them meet new people, learn new skills, and reduce their carbon footprints in as fun a manner as possible. We feel that every single student can find something in our project that they can get involved in and hope that this exhibition will allow us to engage with even more people.”
The Hard Rain Project was established as a charity in 2009 to support educational programmes for schools, universities and colleges, and public exhibitions that campaign for realistic solutions to the interlinked problems of climate change, poverty, the wasteful use of resources, population expansion, habitat destruction and species loss.
here’s a wee interview with Mark Edwards, taken from when the project was on show down in Manchester…
Filed under: on the bookshelf, on the mind, on the parchment, on the plate, on the projector, on the travels, on the turntable
had quite a goodun methinks!…
a fair bit of reading for the diss & a much larger bit of cinema going for giggles!
had a crack at making some of these as part of my procrastination exercise…
made a few cheeky purchases…a soviet typewriter from oxfam for a fiver, a ticket to the scotland-italy game next saturday as a pitstop point on my way home, and my first battered mars bar, from the original ‘batterers’ in stonehaven!
had a spot of man flu, so plenty of custard creams and cups of tea were on the cards…
went on a road trip down the east coast
and wrapped my ears around these three treasures…all absolutely brilliant
x
Filed under: on the horizon, on the muddy fields, on the parchment, on the turntable | Tags: 2011, Build A Rocket Boys!, Elbow, Guy Garvey
As many may have predicted, yes, i am in complete awe of Elbow’s new album, Build A Rocket Boys!
Having listened to the record for the first time (and several more since!) i have to say it has thoroughly met my expectations…Elbow haven’t let their success go to their heads, they’re not that kind of band, they have instead put their heads down and created another stunning, emotional, heartfelt, truly British (and by that i mean northern) piece of genius.
On an Album Chart Show Elbow Exclusive on Channel 4 last night, Guy Garvey mentioned that he wrote his lyrics looking back on his time as a 22 year old in Manchester…(although currently in Aberdeen) I can’t help but let that seep in to my mind when listening, allowing pictures of my own, strike connections with his beautiful words
And talking of beautiful words, Garvey certainly delivers once again…take ‘Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl’ for example…
‘I have a drop-leaf window,
with cats and broken yards
sunflowers and paint cans
and stolen shopping carts
and nothing to be proud of
and nothing to regret
all of that to make as yet’
…I honestly don’t think there’s a better way of describing youth than those latter three lines
Elbow’s northern heritage also once again comes flooding through, meeting like two old friends, with their unique talent to throw in unexpected moments of beauty and soar one’s heart into the heavens, before heading towards the crunch of a guitar, or the slow, fading, tinkling of the keys. Keep your ears pricked, as there’s always something to appreciate, be it the Hallé Youth Choir on ‘With Love’, local piano tuner John Mosley taking to the mic on ‘The Birds – Reprise’, a likely tear-jerking moment on ‘The Night Will Always Win’ or even the cheeky, almost childish bits of piano genius from Craig Potter in ‘Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl’
Here’s a couple of awesome live tracks from Build A Rocket…
oh yeh…and they’re officially playing Glasto too…happy fucking days :)
x
Filed under: on the horizon, on the mind, on the parchment | Tags: Allen Ginsberg, America, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, On The Road, Road Trip, The States
the air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream
over the weekend i finally finished reading On The Road by Jack Kerouac…and never have i been more determined and excited about getting my carcass over to the states
granted, i need to learn to drive first, but the idea of hitting the road with a few good friends (hopefully), a small sack of necessities and a guitar in the back, with little aim but to mooch all over the american country doing whatever, whenever, makes me go all giddy inside!
although based in the 1940′s and 50′s, Kerouac’s account of his mad, unplanned, eventful trips, sensationally jotted down in his racing, frenzyish, ‘beat’ style of writing, has made my head go all in a tizzy, and ive spent hours recently just dreaming of fantastic, idiotic and beautiful moments to be had ‘on the road’ next year!
here’s a couple of awesome excerpts from Kerouac’s passionate and unstoppable work…
At dawn my bus was zooming across the Arizona desert – Indio, Ely The Salome (where she danced), the great dry stretches leading to Mexican mountains in the south. Then we swung north to the Arizona mountains, Flagstaff, clifftowns. I had a book with me I stole from a Hollywood stall, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, but I preferred reading the American skyline as we went along. Every bump, rise and stretch in it mystified my longing. In inky night we crossed New Mexico, at gray dawn in was Dalhart, Texas, in the bleak Sunday afternoon we rode through one Oklahoma flat-town after another, at nightfall it was Kansas. The bus roared on.
Great Chicago glowed red before our eyes. We were suddenly on Madison Street among hordes of hobos, some of them sprawled out on the street with their feet on the curb, hundreds of others milling in the doorways of saloons and alleys. “Wup! wup! look sharp for old Dean Moriarty there, he may be in Chicago by accident this year.” We let out the hobos on this street and proceeded to downtown Chicago. Screeching trolleys, newsboys, gals cutting by, the smell of fried food and beer in the air, neons winking–”We’re in the big town, Sal! Whooee!” First thing to do was park the Cadillac in a good dark spot and wash up and dress for the night.
Dean stands in the back, saying, ‘God! Yes!’ — and clasping his hands in prayer and sweating. ‘Sal, Slim knows time, he knows time.’ Slim sits down at the piano and hits two notes, two C’s, then two more, then one, then two, and suddenly the big burly bass-player wakes up from a reverie and realizes Slim is playing ‘C-Jam Blues’ and he slugs in his big forefinger on the string and the big booming beat begins and everybody starts rocking and Slim looks just as sad as ever, and they blow jazz for half an hour, and then Slim goes mad and grabs the bongos and plays tremendous rapid Cubana beats and yells crazy things in Spanish, in Arabic, in Peruvian dialect, in Egyptian, in every language he knows.
And for just a moment I had reached the point of ectasy that I always wanted to reach, which was a complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiance shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn’t in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but didn’t remember because the transitions from life to death and back are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it.
Filed under: on the bookshelf, on the film reel, on the mind, on the muddy fields, on the parchment, on the plate, on the projector, on the screen, on the stage, on the streets, on the travels, on the turntable, on the waves
it’s almost the end of another year…so let’s review it!
these are all my personal opinions, so please feel free to agree or agressively criticise, sup to you :)
Best Moments Of The Year
- That first look at Mt. Everest
- Faithless followed by Stevie Wonder at Glastonbury 2010
- Going to the Taj Mahal
- Having an elephant back bath
- White water rafting in Nepal
Biggest Mares Of The Year
- Being told I had to turn back with Everest Basecamp just ahead (but at least im still alive!)
- The Tory Government coming to power
- The World Cup…both the event itself and our bid going to pot
- That bungee jump lol
- Come Around Sundown…get it together KOL!
Best Book I’ve Read This Year
- Lustrum – Robert Harris
Best 25 Albums Of The Year
- Warpaint – The Fool
- Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
- Laura Marling – I Speak Because I Can
- Stornoway – Beachcomber’s Windowsill
- Foals – Total Life Forever
- Bombay Bicycle Club – Flaws
- Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt
- Beach House – Teen Dreams
- The National – High Violet
- Lonelady – Nerve Up
- Villagers – Becoming A Jackal
- Gil Scott-Heron – I’m New Here
- GAYNGS – Relayted
- Deerhunter – Halycon Digest
- Broken Bells – Broken Bells
- Delta Spirit – History From Below
- Two Door Cinema Club – Tourist History
- Anais Mitchell – Hadestown
- Perfume Genius – Learning
- Phosphorescent – Here’s To Taking It Easy
- Midlake – Courage Of Others
- Band Of Horses – Infinite Arms
- Interpol – Interpol
- Best Coast – Crazy For You
- Robert Plant – Band Of Joy
Best Embarrassing Album Of The Year!
- Ellie Goulding – Lights
Best 25 Singles Of The Year (From What I Know Were Released As Singles…)
- Foals – Spanish Sahara
- Laura Marling – Rambling Man
- Two Door Cinema Club – What You Know
- Warpaint – Undertow
- Aracade Fire – Ready To Start
- Stornoway – Zorbing
- Foals – This Orient
- Mumford & Sons – The Cave
- Ray Lamontagne And The Pariah Dogs – Old Before Your Time
- Aloe Blacc – I Need A Dollar
- Villagers – Becoming A Jackal
- Bombay Bicycle Club – Ivy And Gold
- Gorillaz Ft. Little Dragon – Empire Ants (not a single, but such a fucking ace song!)
- Arcade Fire – We Used To Wait
- Kelis – Acapella
- Black Keys – Tighten Up
- Interpol – Barricade
- Delta Spirit – Bushwick Blues
- Dum Dum Girls – Stiff Little Fingers
- LCD Soundsystem – Drunk Girls
- Lonelady – Intuition
- Beach House – Zebra
- The Morning Benders – Excuses
- Caribou – Odessa
- The Coral – 1000 Years
Best Embarrassing Single Of The Year!
- Katy Perry – Fireworks
Best Band/Artist Of The Year
- Justin Vernon – the dude is just everywhere, again, making sensational music! he features chiefly on Relayted by GAYNGS (a supergroup including the likes of Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce from Bon Iver, Ivan Howard from The Rosebuds, Joe Westurland and the Cook brothers from Megafaun and Jake Luck and Nick Ryan from the Leisure Birds). Vernon also features on many of the songs from Anais Mitchell’s brilliant folk opera Hadestown, based on a modern story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Finally, he even makes a couple of appearances on Kanye West’s knew record!
Best Gig Of The Year
- Interpol (Edinburgh Corn Exchange)
Best Festival Of The Year
- Glastonbury 2010
Best 30 Movies Of The Year (Released In The UK Since Jan 1st)
- Inception
- Un Prophete
- Shutter Island
- Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
- The Social Network
- Toy Story 3
- Exit Through The Gift Shop
- Crazy Heart
- The Secret In Their Eyes
- Gainsbourg
- Le Concert
- Winter’s Bone
- Another Year
- The Kids Are Alright
- Please Give (not released in uk, but seen and liked!)
- The Ghost Writer
- Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Pt. 1
- A Single Man
- Kick-Ass
- Megamind
- Greenburg
- The Town
- L’arnacoeur
- The Lovely Bones
- Certified Copy
- The Road
- The American
- The Arbor
- Robin Hood
- L’Illusioniste
Plus…The Way Back, Black Swan, Blue Valentine, The King’s Speech, 127 Hours, The Tempest, Never Let Me Go and True Grit (not released yet…but i’m expecting them to be pretty darn good!)
Best Documentary Film
- When You’re Strange – A Film About The Doors
Best Embarrassing Movie!
- Easy A
Best Actor Of The Year
- Leonardo DiCaprio – as it has always been said…he doesn’t make a bad movie. And seeing how both the remarkable Shutter Island and the even greater Inception were released this year with DiCaprio playing the lead roles exceptionally, it couldn’t really go to anyone else!
Best Actress Of The Year
- Julianne Moore – i wasn’t sure who to pick to be completely honest, but Moore’s roles in both The Kids Are Alright and A Single Man were really very very good and im certain she’ll be up there with a fighting chance for an Oscar
Best 10 TV Programme’s Of The Year
- Accused
- This Is England 86
- Any Human Heart
- An Idiot Abroad
- IT Crowd
- Five Daughters
- I’m In A Rock N Roll Band
- I Am Slave
- Secret Britain
- Pillars Of The Earth
Best 5 Exhibitions Of The Year
- A World Observed – Dorothy Bohm – Manchester Art Gallery
- The Doors: When You’re Strange – Idea Generation Gallery
- Wolfgang Tillmans – The Serpentine Gallery
- Skin – The Wellcome Collection
- Exposed: Voyeurism, Suerveillance and the Camera – The Tate Modern
Best 5 Sporting Moments Of The Year
- The Ashes (not over yet, but we’re playing pretty damn well!)
- Rooney And Scholes’ last minute winning goals against Manchester City in January and April
- Amy Williams’ Winter Olympics gold medal
- England’s T20 World Cup Final victory over the Aussies
- Mark Cavendish kicking ass in the Tour De France
And Finally…Best Fish Of The Year!
- Barry…because the other one died…
:) x
Filed under: on the mind, on the parchment, on the stage, on the travels, on the turntable, on the waves
im hot off the back of an awesome weekend down in loch lomond, where i met up with some of the manc lads for a spot of camping and a large splodge of drinking…
you can’t really go wrong with trips like those…particularly amongst the hell and chaos of 4th year university and trying to get everything done at once before it blows up in your face! yup, everyone needs a few evenings sat round a fire, under a gigantic sheet of mind-blowing stars, sipping a few beers with the guys and chatting (and occassionally singing) absolute shit :D
nonethless, it’s back to good ol’ aberdeen for more reading, essaying, planning and presenting…note-making, letter writing, listing and stressing…early-starting, e-mailing, cramming, trying to be pleasing…well you get the idea…fun, fun, fun!
i did however take a bit of time out last night to tune into this being streamed live on radio 1:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/events/mumfordandsons/#p00bk86b
four of my favourite, favourite artists doing what they do best, all for our entertainment? yes please!
i definitely recommend having a little looksie at these clips, particularly the maccabees collaboration with mumford & sons right at the end…it’s absolute gold :)
x
Filed under: on the mind, on the muddy fields, on the parchment, on the plate, on the stage, on the travels
YAY! im going to glastonbury again :)
BOO! in a few weeks i have to hand in/present 6 assignments within a teeny weeny time span of a fortnight
YAY! some lectures are cancelled this week
BOO! i have a tenner a week if not less until next loan day :(
YAY! its time for burritos again for dinnerrrr
BOO! i have to cook them in the dark lol
YAY! liverpool are doing shit!
BOO! united could also do with improving
YAY! im going to interpol, frank turner and laura marling this term
BOO! Gamu didn’t get through on ahem..x factor…ahem:P
YAY! im going to loch lomond on friday to see peeps from home!
all in all…YAY’s win…good times!
x
