Girls Names have a new track. The album is being finished off but they’ve been kind enough to impart seven minutes of wonder upon us mere mortals. Click the scrummy artwork for their soundcloud or listen below.
p.s Sickness has resulted in silence. More blogging soon.
3D PRINTING + BICYCLES = DAY OUT
I spend a lot of time with a young man that’s going to be involved in this shindig down at the glorious Look Mum No Hands. It’s a cafe that attracts bearded and non-bearded folk.
Next Wednesday and Thursday you’ll be able to pop along and get stuff printed via a Willy Wonka machine (also known as a 3D printer). The only condition is that the object you want to make somehow makes it easier to attach stuff to your bike. Thus the ‘Clip it On’ moniker. Genius, right?
This workshop is being run by the nice people from Artefact Cafe. A worthy click.
For more of me being sarcastic about 3D printing read this.
A QUICK CHAT WITH JASON REECE AFTER AN ACOUSTIC SHOW WHERE CONRAD AND HE PLAYED STUFF OFFOF THE NEW RECORD, SUMMARISED IN EIGHT SENTENCES.
Jason is jet-lagged after being on a 22 hour flight. He thinks the process of putting the new record out into the world is pretty surreal, but doing hundreds of interviews still hasn’t dampened his excitement about it. He respects the kind of longevity achieved by The Flaming Lips. I think his own band has achieved that too. What I think doesn’t really matter. He’s danced on stage with said Lips dressed as a Gorilla. The costume smelled pretty bad. Bands/artists that still make him act like a fan-girl include Iron Maiden, Slayer and Chuck D.
NEW STUFF SOUNDED GOOD. PHOTO BY ME.
STUFF THAT TOURISTS IN LONDON SHOULD KNOW
I’ve been a walking tour guide here for nearly a year. People say some really stupid stuff to me. Here’s 10 suggestions to make my job and your life easier.
1. The City of London is an area within London. It is London’s financial district and not shorthand for ‘central’ London. A trip to The City involves time spent navigating streets filled with people that are the equivalent of creativity-sapping dementors – their ability to make everything go dark comes from their massive ex-rugby player shoulders obscuring the sun.
2. A walking tour in central London usually costs £10. ‘Free’ walking tour guides actually pay their boss an amount for every person who comes on the tour. If they say “tips are welcome” they actually mean “£10 is a fair amount – I’m sorry the company I work for misled you with the word ‘free’.”
3. Fish and Chips are overrated. British food is ropey unless you want to pay premium prices. At Borough Market you get awesome produce from all over the UK, but it’ll put a dent in the budget of a teenage backpacker. Go for foreign food to avoid paying £10 for a pie.
4. The Time Out website is pretty good. Londoners use it too. Don’t bother trying to find somewhere ‘off the beaten track’ unless it was recommended by someone you trust/think is well dressed (i.e me).
5. The Changing of the Guard sucks, Trafalgar Square is just a square, LONDON BRIDGE IS NOT TOWER BRIDGE, policemen are not there to be in your photo and BIG BEN IS THE NAME OF THE BELL, NOT THE TOWER.
6. If you are in a hundred year old greasy spoon in the East End do not order a flat white.
7. UK stands for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain includes England, Wales and Scotland. Please try not to refer to the whole of the UK as England, but also bare in mind if someone talks about Great Britain they’re probably referring to the whole of the United Kingdom. It can be a confusing synecdoche, I realise that. Sorry. But get used to it.
8. According to the scale of most countries it’s true that London and more northern cities are pretty close. But please please please don’t make the mistake of thinking you can get the tube to Old Trafford or that you can see both Abbey Road and Liverpool in the same day. These places are NOT in London.
9. Buy an oyster card. It makes things cheaper, even if you just use it pay as you go. TFL don’t make that clear enough to tourists because we like the ticket barriers to be an embarrassing experience for you. (TFL – Transport For London).
10. Bring change everywhere in central London as you’ll have to pay to use to loos unless you brave Burger King. London’s best toilets – London Bridge’s new ones are pretty swanky and the ones south of Covent Garden have won Loo of the Year so many times that the certificates obscure the bathroom attendant’s view.
I guide for Muggle Tours Harry Potter Walks, the Story of London “”””Free””””” Tour and the Undiscovered London Tour in the East End.
Outdated album reviews with a few ‘i’ve written this quickly’ hallmarks. CLICKITY CLICK CLICK
This is a Llamicorn wearing Nike Blazers. He was drawn by a member of the band Glass Animals.
A little while ago I went down to the excellent BEAT magazine for a day and while I was there I wrote up some questions for the aforementioned band. Today I have discovered that the completed interview was published on their website two weeks ago. And that the answers to my questions are amazing. Please do read it HERE. Enjoy.
Sorry lads but recently I’ve been super busy doing a little work for Notion magazine, giving Muggle Tours to tourists and learning to like Hot Chocolate. There’s a couple of album reviews in the works and I’m incubating something brilliant. Until then, listen to this.
I’m positive that many of you enlightened folk watched Grayson Perry’s incredible series of programmes on taste and class in Britain. Grayson Perry is the sort of man that inspires my flatmate to have intelligent opinions on his work. These opinions are subsequently plagiarised by myself and others who lack her degree in Art History.
Currently you can go see the tapestries that Perry made as part of the series at the Victoria Miro gallery near Old Street. There really is an inordinate amount of detail in these pieces that you just can’t see on yer telly and I thoroughly recommend a visit. The tapestries are also accompanied by some of Perry’s pots that are equally as exciting and ridiculously meta.
If you do pop along to the gallery (there’s a Maccy’s right beside it so you have no excuse not to), I advise you to clamber downstairs for a gaze upon the David Claerbout exhibition. I won’t even try and describe it because I’ll be sacrilegious in my ignorance. But yeah. Go.
Remember I told you that you wouldn’t be able to get your hands on the Death Rattle cover of Fleetwood Mac? I lied. By popular demand it’s available to stream on soundcloud for a limited time. The mail-out which informed me of this fact also boasted that people from Esquire and Grazia were all over this. You can take that as a good or a bad thing.
p.s Only gets super super good if it’s almost ear-achingly loud.
more substantial blogging coming soon to a URL near you
Suzie McCracken 