My blog looks emo. It’s true.

I’m not too worried though, because I know that you all read it on buzz or google reader, and mostly you never get the chance to notice how carefully my sixteen year old self designed this frankly stunning single column layout with unsubtle influences from the White Stripes. Back then, the black roses looked so emotive. My blog was an edgy display of my personality with carefully placed saturated images. Scroll down and look at the section titles, ‘erratic’, ‘archaic’. Wonderful! These things convey so well my grasp of the English language and my ability to find adjectives describing the same ideas as the rather more lacklustre, ‘asides’ and ‘archives’.
Writing on this blog kind of feels like pulling out your high school diary and writing a new entry. Everybody knows that between the ages of 16 and 20, one changes so irreversibly, that memories of bygone days can only be recalled with a whimsical sigh.
*sigh* I was so crazy and genuine back then. Hormones, they’re wonderful things.

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*sigh*

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But as I was about to say, I have every determination to rebuild this blog. I don’t mean this in the sense of redesigning it, because I’m just too lazy for that. I’m too much of a perfectionist to use a theme, since I’m a web designer and all. I wish cyberspace could be more like physical space. In other words, I’d love a blog that could collect clutter in an untacky way. Maybe I should design a blog with no proper archives, so it just fills up after a while and you have to empty some of it into deep storage. That could be fun.

This brings me to my thoughts on modern interiors. You might thing my commenting on this is a little pretentious, but don’t judge me so quickly. After all, I have been to an exhibition on Dieter Rams at the Design Museum on Shad Thames, so I’m really something of an expert. I dislike modern interiors because they don’t react well to the things you own. I don’t like that you put something on your bare coffee table and it stares back up at you. Neither the thing you put on the coffee table, nor the table itself, have any personality at all. Were I the socialite type, I imagine the circumstance would be like introducing two people at a party and them hanging around each other but not talking. The problem is really that the things we have in our lives nowadays are simply too numerous. Back in Victorian times, there were a very limited variety of things one might put on a table. One might put ones hat on the table, or perhaps ones clothbound edition of a commentary on Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians. It is almost certainly the case that any Victorian thing could be put next to just about any other Victorian thing and it would look settled, contented and nonjudgmental.

The trouble really came with electricity. There have been so many design trends in the world’s history, but one design trend that has never occurred is the one of connecting everything with a wire. That is, before it was necessary. No matter where you put a wire, it looks terrible. Trying to hide a wire only makes matters worse, because it is still there, and you know it’s there. Bind it in a cable tidy all you want, it’s not going to go away. One day you will want to replace your keyboard, you’ll untie your cables, and you simply won’t be prepared to put them back together. Cables wait years for these days, but come they will.

Source: Clever and Easy

We don’t have truly cordless appliances, and we won’t for a little while at least. What I propose in every house is a charging room. This is a room wholly dedicated to charging appliances. 50 years ago, there was the utility room to keep all the unsightly chores out of the way, and the most unsightly chore today is the charging of appliances. Restyle them how you like, charger plugs will always be annoying. The most judgmental of all clutter is the charger plug. It doesn’t look right anywhere. This is especially the case in the UK, because there is no way of placing a British plug on a desk and it not looking wrong. Anything you put a charger plug next to will look terrible, be it the Mona Lisa, a complete set of Calvin and Hobbes books or Salisbury Cathedral.

I am convinced the decline in interiors came with the introduction of the standardised plug socket. You can have your beautiful Edwardian interior, but you try stretching the plastic coated wire for your standard lamp across it, and plugging the hefty black plug into the stark white socket and you will discover that instantly the whole room is degraded. Surely it was this realisation of how easily the appreciation of their work was destroyed that lead designers in the modernist era simply not to bother with decorating things in the first place.

In fact, modernist design was a statement against the plug, and the appliance. At least old fashioned carpets hid wires to some extent, but designers decided this was less than ideal. In a conspiracy that has lasted through most of the last century, right up until the present day. Designers have created glossy brochures for their pristine, well placed furniture and in almost none do any appliances having wires appear. Once you have bought the white carpet or polished your concrete floor, your next impulse is to check your e-mail. You plug your laptop into the wall, and your cables stretch across the floor in a scrawl, as if the designer himself had written, “There! You did that! Screw you and your sheep like devotion to the work of Edison.”

Below is a picture of my coffee table. As you may notice, it is not a typical coffee table, in that it doesn’t have coffee stains or coffee table books. Instead, it has a large selection of pointless crap I can’t bear to admit I’m never going to use. Click on the image to see all the notes on flickr.
Every table I have ever used has a small selection of pointless crap that serves no purpose (the broken pens on my desk at home, the toy Austin mini my friend gave me when I was 13 and I’ve had on my desk ever since, a couple of change banks in the shapes of a pillar box and a Vauxhall Camper van etc).

As far as the internet is concerned, bloggers are the Tower of London’s Ravens or Gibraltar’s Barbary Macaques. You think we’re useless, but that’s because you’re still living safe under the wise governance of our Queen and her Government. If you have flown or swung away, it’s time to come back. The internet is in danger.

Bill Bailey

Source: Brian Marks

This evening I went to watch Bill Bailey at the Leicester Square Theatre. The venue only had ~400 seats, which served to make the whole thing a whole lot more fun. It was small enough that anyone in the audience could (and did) shout anything out that they felt like (including a comment about having Chives with Barnacles). At the end, I met him, although I forgot to shake his hand and have a picture taken with him. Fortunately, my friend didn’t, so the encounter wasn’t completely wasted.

Apparently, the show had a theme. A couple of things were mentioned about evolution, although, it seemed, a little incongruously. His act didn’t seem to be one that reacted well to being linearised into any kind of a story. The highlights were definitely the songs. One was a two-step remix based around the sounds of a Tesco self-service checkout, along with a video that was pure genius. There were sing-a-longs of ‘La Bamba‘ and ‘California Dreamin’ ’. Apparently, the call and response involved in the latter made us look like 60’s zombies. (See below)

This time last week I went off to see Vampire Weekend at Rough Trade East. They have just released their new album, Contra. They put on a pretty good show. I can’t remember the exact order or content of their set list, but I can remember that, from their new album, they played:

1. Horchata
2. White Sky
3. Holiday
4. California English
5. Cousins

And from the first album:

1. Mansard Roof
2. Oxford Comma
3. A-Punk
4. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
5. M79
6. Walcott

Altogether it was a good show. Despite standing quite close to a pillar (the worst support acts of all time SWIDT), I got a good view of the stage. There wasn’t a whole lot that distinguished their show from the album. There weren’t any wild guitar solos or stage dives, but I guess if I wanted that, I’d watch some other genre than alternative rock. Probably the biggest thing to make this a ‘live version’ was the even more exaggerated screaming than usual that Ezra Koenig added to Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa (”Is your bed MAAAAIED, is your sWET-eR oOOoon”).

The worst thing about the show was undoubtedly the fact that they turned up an hour late. Let’s just establish something right now…

You’re a flippin’ indie band! People aren’t seeing you because you define their teenage existence or something. They’re seeing you because they like the sound of your music. If you’re going to turn up an hour late and your audience isn’t jumping around and screaming when you arrive (which they weren’t), consider providing them with deck chairs.

I’ve been working on a new playlist of less taxing music. If you’d like to use it, or would like to add to it in any way, please do. I’ve made it collaborative. It’s supposed to be music that will be appreciated by people like me, but will not be hated by everyone else (so Panda Bear is out).
In addition, I’d like help on a Christmas playlist. At the moment it’s just Sufjan and ‘Fairytale of New York’, which is hardly a good mix or a good start. If you can think of any other Christmas songs that are good, put them on. I know I couldn’t.

The Playlists

• ‘Light Listening’ Spotify Playlist
• Christmas Spotify Playlist

Iannis Xenakis is responsible for making music so effective at turning people away from a love of earthly things that Le Corbusier enlisted his help in the designing of ‘Sainte Marie de La Tourette‘, a Dominican order priory. Perhaps his greatest achievement was, ‘Akanthos‘, an impressive piece for reproducing the precise sound and atmosphere of listening to opera whilst a wasp’s nest is dropped onto the stage. After this untimely event, the orchestra mostly attempt to carry on playing despite the vocalist’s obvious and somewhat embarrassing expressions of pain. Occasionally, a wasp will land on some instrument or another and be swatted off with a bow or some other implement. The singer, unable to remember her lines, simply runs backwards and forwards across the stage sounding like a brave little girl having antiseptic applied to a grazed knee. Mostly, the music goes on as intended, but now and then some virtuosic trumpeter or violinist will attempt to lessen the singer’s embarrassment by playing over her screams. These short riffs and melodies are unrehearsed, but a considerate and thoughtful touch.
Xenakis’ music is certainly ground-breaking and intelligent. I am sure it has inspired many truly brilliant pieces of musical art. This particular track, however, is still completely horrendous. As for the singing, it’s awful, but probably painful screams are better than the words Mozart has put in the mouths of classical musicians.

And Elijah turned to the people and lifted up his voice with a shout, “When you meet together to celebrate the feasts, do not serve wine and steak as the pagans. I shall not permit you any longer to come into the assembly with your feet unshod. Let a cloth be woven with an intricate and skilful pattern. Let it be sown into a tube and given to the elders. Let them wear it as a sign and remembrance under their sandals, so that you may remember that you were brought across the red sea on dry land. Remember that your shoes did not wear out, nor did your feet travel unprotected through the wilderness where you wandered in sin those 40 years. Let your food be quiche and your drink Robinson’s barley water all the days of the feast.” And a great cry came up from all the children of Israel, for the yoke of Elijah was hard, and his words as the midday sun in the wilderness.

Looking for Ms. Locklear

There’s two films that I’m really excited about that are coming up. The first one is from RhettandLink and is already available on DVD:

The BQE

I’ve been looking forward to Sufjan Stevens’ next album for a while. Sufjan is a man with things to do, and by the time he’s finished his 50 states project, the states will have either ceased to exist as an entity, or they will have added more to the mix. Still, this new project is looking to be good fun. It’s orchestral, but still recognisably his. As usual, I don’t care about the deeply embedded local stories that this project unearths, but am looking forward to the music out of its context all the same. The film is effectively a long music video. Hopefully it will not be so arty to be unwatchable.

God Help the Girl

UPDATE: God Help the Girl is a film from Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian. As yet, only the soundtrack has been made. It’s very twee, but there is a great sound despite the frequent sickliness. The film is set to be shot in 2010.

Obviously, if you don’t already know about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Where the Wild Things Are and Up, you should check them out straight away.