Crabbed Into Sunlight

Some records I enjoyed in 2011

2012-01-02T17:59:00.002Z

Much like many other people, I'm posting an end of year list on a neglected blog. I've compiled a rough list of what I've been listening to in 2011, in a vague order of preference. It hasn't been easy as I've listened to some things a lot whilst walking about, and other ones I've only played a few times on the record deck. But you get the idea. If I tried to sort out a proper system of picking the best, it would still take me weeks to listen to all of these again. A lot of the lower ones have barely skimmed past my ears. All the links lead to audio or video on other sites so you know what I'm on about.

1. A Winged Victory For The Sullen - A Winged Victory For The Sullen

2. Necro Deathmort - Music of Bleak Origin

3. Vessels - Helioscope

4. Astrohenge - II

5. Battles - Gloss Drop

6. Lafaro - Easy Meat

7. That Fucking Tank - TFT

8. Cloudkicker - Let Yourself Be Huge

9. Reigns - The Widow Blades

10. Machinefabriek - Sol Sketches

11. Down I Go - Gods

12. Three Trapped Tigers - Route One Or Die

13. Wiht - The Harrowing of The North

14. Dark Castle - Surrender To All Life Beyond Form

15. Alright The Captain - Snib

16. Khuda - Iecava

17. Milieu - Eufloria

18. White Hills - H-p1

19. 65daysofstatic - Silent Running

20. Amon Tobin - ISAM

21. Earth - Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I

22. Altar of Plagues - Mammal

23. *shels - Plains of the Purple Buffalo

24. And So I Watch You From Afar - Gangs

25. Wolves In The Throne Room - Celestial Lineage

26. d_rradio - Forecast

27. Grouper - A I A : Dream Loss

28. Devin Townsend Project - Ghost

29. Kid Koala - Space Cadet

30. Umber - Morning's Pass

31. Radius System - Architects of Yesterday

32. Primus - Green Naugahyde

33. Spindrift - Classic Soundtracks

34. The Field - Looping State of Mind

35. Dressed In Wires - Golden The Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!

36. Ulver - Wars of The Roses

37. Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will

38. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Tao of the Dead

39. The Pattern Theory - The Pattern Theory

40. Amplifier - The Octopus

41. Absu - Abzu

42. Gnod - Ingnodwetrust

43. Misty's Big Adventure - The Family Amusement Centre

44. Juffage - Semicircle

45. Half Man Half Biscuit - 90 Bisodol (Crimond)

46. This Will Destroy You - Tunnel Blanket

47. Maybeshewill - I Was Here For A Moment, Then I Was Gone

48. Warm Digits - Keep Warm... with the Warm Digits

49. Trumpets of Death - Teeth + Teeth = Teeths

50. William D. Drake - The Rising Of The Lights

Next year I am looking forward to new releases by the likes of Wodensthrone, Dextro, Manatees, Northerner, Neurosis, Latitudes and countless others...

The Argos Challenge

2011-09-18T13:14:00.000+01:00

Here's a fun game for 2 or more players when visiting an Argos store.

Without looking at a catalogue, each contestant must randomly enter numbers into the stock checking console until a real item is found. Whoever gets a result first is the winner. This isn't as easy as it sounds. As an optional extra, the winner gets to own whatever item they found at the expense of the other contestants.

The Ikea Challenge

2011-09-18T13:08:00.001+01:00

Here's a fun game for 2 or more players when visiting an Ikea store.

The idea is to collect as many pencils as you can physically hide about your person before you reach the checkouts. Once outside, you each count up your pencils and the one with the most is the winner. As a reward, they get to claim all the pencils from every contestant in the game.

Golden The Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!

2011-09-15T21:38:00.001+01:00

I haven't posted here in a while. Not because I'm too lazy (well, that was one factor) but because I've been too busy! I'm going to try and post a bit more often to show what I've been doing. Here is one such thing.

This landmark occasion marks my first album cover. Better than that, it's an album cover for a noisemaker who I listen to regularly, and I really enjoy this particular collection of his tunes. The drawing used here started life as a messy red scribble representing some blood to be placed under a hammer-shaped logo for a fictional metal band. However that didn't look very good and I scrapped it, but mucked about with the splatter in some basic photo editing software (I normally just do stuff with pens) until I came up with the black and white outline shape.

Initially, it looked like an awesome beard. I uploaded it to a popular social networking site and Dressed In Wires himself contacted me to ask if he could use a piece of my artwork for an album cover. I think I suggested the scribble in question as I had no other use for it but I still like it, and it seems to suit his sounds quite well. After I pointed out it's beard-like visage, he sensibly decided to invert it for the album cover. The packaging is hand made by him, with my art on stickers applied to the cardboard case. This is it:

When mucking about with it, I also put two together making a sort of explosion effect. This got used in some teaser trailers for the album which you can see on THIS PAGE where you can also order the album. Get a move on though, there's only 25 of them in total!

There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shrew

2011-05-09T19:10:00.000+01:00

WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

I seem to have folded into the stereotypical view that a blog is a miserable pile of secrets and taken up poetry.

This stems from waking up at 7am one Friday morning with a misquoted children's rhyme in my head, and found it stupendously easy to add new lines to it. It is currently Monday, so this is how far I've got after a weekend of thinking about this madness.

Essentially this piece is a combination of "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" and "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly" ...with a bit of a twist. It's very much a work in progress and potentially could go on for a very long time. Let me know what you reckon!

So then, here we go:

There was an old woman who lived in a shrew
How she got in there, nobody knew

The creature was bulbous, his eyes fit to burst
His quality of life was really the worst

As for the woman, she ran out of space
Her objects and trinkets came out of his face

At this point she considered buying a house
But opted instead to move into a mouse

This wasn’t much better and the mouse also died
There simply was not enough room inside

Down by the river, she entered a vole
A little more spacious, but out of control

The poor thing went mental and jumped in a lake
Hitting the bottom, his legs they did break

Still in the water, she discovered a frog
And loaded her possessions into his gob

She struggled a lot to get everything in
Her stuff tore a hole in the animal’s skin

Afloat on the surface, she encountered a duck
At first this seemed like a stroke of good luck

But the duck was soon uncomfortably overloaded
When she was done moving in, the poor thing exploded

To be continued...

The Gentleman Ghost

2011-03-16T21:12:00.004Z

Recently I was reminded of a small press comic that I have really enjoyed reading several times, entitled The Gentleman Ghost. It is probably my favourite work (so far) of a chap called Jack Fallows, who also runs the small press bit of my local comic shop. His site tells you all you need to know.

Rather than attempt to explain what is so good about the comic, here are some samples taken from his site (click the images to make them bigger):

I particularly enjoy his blow-dried moustache.

Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what the comic is like, and what sort of stuff Jack does. You can buy his stuff here at reasonable prices.

His comic "The Big Bang" is also very good indeed, but the two episodes published so far don't give too much away just yet... I'm sure it will be a masterpiece when it all comes together though!

Green Slime

2011-01-05T19:50:00.005Z

Recently, it was the birthday of a horrible man named Philip Heckles. Don't worry if you haven't heard of him, I wish I hadn't. He probably doesn't even have a Wikipedia page... Nah he doesn't, I just checked. This is the closest result for some reason.

Anyway, I was wondering what to get for him for a short while. He tends to spend money on gifts for others, but I've been a bit skint. So, as usual, it was time for an in-joke present. Easy enough, he's obsessed (and quite rightly so) with this 1968 factual documentary* film theme tune:

...so I did a quick scribble based on it. It looks like this:

The picture is 2 different green inks applied to a piece of A4 size white card with a wooden kebab skewer and a little plastic spray bottle. You may notice I got the quote wrong. That is because I didn't watch the clip before making this, and I didn't really have a plan when I started. Also, the words I use are our own twisted variation of the lyrics**. I painted a nice wooden frame dark green and varnished it to make it look slimy.

That was it basically, present sorted. Upon receiving said gift, his reaction was "it's a picture!"

Well done Phil, your age and intelligence go hand-in-hand.

The Smallprint***:

*Well, 99% of it based on real life events.

**A poor excuse.

***I can't actually adjust the size of small section of text, just the whole article. But you can pretend.

2010 in Music - Releases

2011-01-02T01:58:00.001Z

I haven’t really sat down and thought about a countdown of top albums this year, but I always make a note of what albums I’ve bought throughout the year (that are released during it) then just mark off what ones were really fucking good… then try to arrange them in some sort of rough order. This isn’t exactly fair as some albums get a billion plays since January, others only get 4 or 5 plays, over the last week! I also decided to combine releases for artists who have proper churned stuff out this year.

Regardless, here’s my attempt to organise some records I’ve enjoyed this year:

1. Astrohenge - Astrohenge

2. Teeth Of The Sea - Your Mercury

3. The Declining Winter - Scenes From The Back Bedroom Window EP

4. The Green Kingdom - Prismatic / Remixes

5. Altar of Plagues - Tides EP

6. Triptykon - Esparistera Daimones

7. Khuda - Palingnesia

8. Working For A Nuclear Free City - Jojo Burger Tempest

9. Cloudkicker - Beacons / ]]][[[ EP

10. d_rradio - Parts / Seasons EP

11. Alcest - Écailles de Lune

12. Gold Panda - Lucky Shiner

13. Brave Timbers - For Every Day You Lost

14. The Moscow Coup Attempt - Transmissions From The End of The World

15. Mass - Paint By Numbers

16. We Are Knuckle Dragger - Doors To Rooms EP

17. Lafaro - Lafaro

18. IO - Materioptikon

19. Dead Meadow - Three Kings

20. Rose Kemp - Golden Shroud

21. Fieldhead - Riser EP / Long Train Journeys / Reference Line

22. Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart

23. The Dark Sky Singers - Like No English

24. Mogwai - Special Moves

25. worriedaboutsatan - Heart Monitor EP

26. 65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway / Heavy Sky EP

27. Wolf People - Steeple / Tidings

28. Baths - Cerulean

29. Admiral Angry - A Fire To Burn Down This World

30. Scott Kelly -The Wake

31. Gallops - Gallops EP

32. These Monsters - Call Me Dragon

33. Unkle - Where Did The Night Fall

34. BXI - BXI EP

35. The Books - The Way Out

36. Mender - The Happy Medium / Resonant Tense EP

37. Quack Quack - Slow As An Eyeball

38. Autechre - Oversteps

39. Silent Front - Dead Lake

40. Drum Eyes - Gira Gira

What have I missed then? I must point out that I didn’t find the time (or money) to buy every album I wanted to, so yes there are big gaps in the shape of God Is An Astronaut, SWANS, Grinderman, Chickenhawk, Humanfly (I only have that album on tape so it’s only had a couple of plays so far), Enslaved, The Phantom Band, Sleepy Sun, Melvins, Zach Hill, Bardo Pond, and so on… I’m still waiting for the postman to deliver the 2010 releases by Talons and Conquering Animal Sound too.

There’s also a load more that I didn’t mention as the list would end up going on forever. A top 40 is already too much to try to figure out! Feel free to discuss any of the records I have or haven’t included.

In 2011 I am looking forward to new releases from Vessels, Manatees, Three Trapped Tigers, Mogwai, And So I Watch You From Afar, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Necro Deathmort, The Pattern Theory, Alright The Captain, Dextro… the list goes on!

2010 in Music - Visual

2010-12-31T11:46:00.004Z

Normally, I don't see many music videos. I've never had a TV with music channels (I don't have a TV at all these days), and I tend to listen to music when drawing / painting / reading / sleeping. So a visual element would be wasted on me.

However, the internet has changed all that. I still haven't really gone out of my way to search for any videos, but a few have made themselves known to me. I'll explain how as I go along, I suppose.

Be warned though, this is a very mixed bag of serious and stupid videos, both of which appeal to me. Trying to organise them into a sort of "top ten" isn't easy... but I'll give it a shot! Well, it became a top twelve during the writing process, but I can pretend it's deliberate... one for each month? Regardless, feast your eyes and ears:

12. Dressed In Wires - Let The World Be Wary.

I can't put this any higher, cos all the footage is nicked. But it works well with the track, suitably weird and dark. I had to include some DiW somewhere.

11. Kunt And The Gang - Use My Arsehole As A Cunt (The Nick Clegg Story)

I forgot to mention this fella in my live round-up, but I spent the whole gig grinning from ear to ear at the crude level of humour. This variation of Use My Arsehole... has a political edge, and got to number 66 in the UK singles chart at Christmas. Bravo Kunt!

10. Holy Fuck - Red Lights

OK so I've only just seen this, and will probably think it's very silly when I look back on this post, but I did thoroughly enjoy it on the first watch. I haven't even bought this album yet.

9. Triptykon - Shatter

If you ignore all the metal video clichés here, and just enjoy the long shadows and general grimness, I think it's quite good. I may well be biased due to how much I've been enjoying Triptykon this year. I didn't see this video until they were added to the Bloodstock 2011 line-up though. Tom G. Warrior looks a bit like the Emperor off of Star Wars here. Or the Pope.

8. We Are Knuckle Dragger - Explanations With Connotations

This video is all about smug faces. You'll see what I mean. It's also the best use of Penshaw Monument since it's original purpose as an altar of ritualistic goat sacrifice*. I saw this video as I've been keeping an eye on whatever these chaps do, just because I like their noises. I even went to a Halloween music video shoot for their next single Tom Ryder. The resulting film features my housemate Mark dressed as a Thwmop from Mario.

7. Dextro - Momentary

A simple idea, well executed. You can see a lot of time has been spent recording a lot of footage, then combined in the most visually appealing way. This was also my favourite track from 2009's Winded (which topped my end of year album list), so it's good to see a suitably hypnotic visual representation of it. There's also an excellent video for Ring Cycle from the same album (and a 12" released this year), but as I mentioned, this track is my favourite.

6. Mountains Became Machines - The Screening

I've just had to expand my list to make room for this gem I'd almost forgotten about (it seems older than it actually is to me, as I've listened to this single loads)! I like how the presentation of an old documentary or infomercial about television becomes quite sinister and imposing with the musical accompaniment, but still almost triumphant with the addition of vocals near the end of the track. It's a real shame these guys called it quits this year!

5. The Moscow Coup Attempt - The Travelers

Another prime example of a great visual representation of a piece of music. However, TMCA deliberately creates work in this manner, having made soundtrack pieces in the past. This album was released as a DVD, a full audio visual experience as opposed to an album with videos added later. But this track stands out to me, both musically and in film format.

4. That Fucking Tank - Mr Blood

I can't post a link to this as the première was only held last night. But it was a really professional and suitably bizarre piece of film. I'll update this when it's been added to Youtube.

3. Blockhead - The Music Scene

I can't say I'm a huge fan of Blockhead, and after picking up this album (promo copy, £1) I still only really like this track. Even then, it's probably because of how blown away I was by the video. Superb trippy animation and a great concept for a film piece (I enjoyed the comments by Youtube users, trying to figure out what was going on). It was really tough deciding if this should be higher in the list!

2. Amon Tobin - Esther's

This is more like a short film than a music video to me. The level of quality is astounding, and the idea is really cool. Amon Tobin's glitchy music has always featured robotic style album artwork, and it's great to see a full video to go with the theme. This must have taken ages, which you can tell not only by how great the video is, but the fact that this track was originally released in 2007. The video was released as part of the Ninja Tune 20th anniversary celebrations this year, much like the Blockhead one. This one just stole the glory for me as I'm a big Amon Tobin fan, and seeing this inspired me to have a good old back-catalogue binge. I do think the doorbell should ring at the end of the video though.

1. Grinderman - Heathen Child

The daftest, most ridiculous thing I've seen all year. Nick Cave and co. dressed as giant romans, firing lasers out of their eyes.

So there you have it. Did I miss any other treats this year?

*This may not be 100% true.

2010 in Music - Live

2010-12-28T16:15:00.000Z

2010 has been a bloody good year for music, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve crossed some big names off my “to see” list, but added just as many to it by exploring new releases. No change there then. Before I attempt to go on about records, some live highlights this year have included:

Roadburn Festival, Tilburg, The Netherlands in April. Holy shit. This was the best collection of bands in one weekend I have ever known. Dream Of An Opium Eater, Goatsnake, Altar of Plagues, Triptykon, Yob, Enslaved, Thorr’s Hammer, Moss, Garcia Plays Kyuss, Nachtmystium, Church of Misery, Jarboe and of course our local doom heroes Bong. So many intense performances in such a short space of time. Incredible. Tickets for Roadburn 2011 have been purchased.

Mono & Glissando, The Brudenell Social Club, Leeds in March. The atmosphere was beyond words here. A sold out gig, remaining in complete silence for the two band performances. Both of which were incredibly stirring and powerful in their delicate sound construction.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Barrowlands, Glasgow in December. My first venture to the Barrowlands, but definitely not my last. Godspeed played for a whopping 2 and a half hours, without any breaks. Background visuals were enthralling but not distracting, the sound was controlled and powerful as required. Purely mind-blowing.

King Creosote at Henry Boons Yard Bar, Wakefield in April. It’s not often that anyone good comes to my hometown. Henry Boons isn’t really a venue either. So I knew this was going to be something special. I’ve been a fan of KC since I saw him support and out-perform Arab Strap many years ago in Newcastle, and I’ve seen him a couple of times between then and this gig. But this was only my second time seeing him play solo. His skilful acoustic guitar and accordion playing fits perfectly with his beautiful and/or comedic song writing. Another lengthy set with a beer break in the middle, very good value for money. Decent sized crowd, and people knew all the words… unexpected!

Vessels, Quack Quack & Juffage at The Library, Leeds in January. Vessels are one of my favourite bands, and this gig was also my introduction to the incredible Juffage, who I have now seen a load of times and I even had him play a gig in Sunderland. As well as great sets from all the acts playing, there was a four-way drum battle between the two drummers from Quack Quack and the two drummers from Vessels, which was intense and bloody noisy! Also, I got wrecked with Tom Khuda, who can’t handle his booze.

Gold Panda at The Cut, Newcastle in November. You can’t beat going to see a musician and ending up drinking from the rider, having awesome banter with all the bands and just feeling very welcome around the people you’ve paid to go and see. It makes it all worth it.

That Fucking Tank. Four times in various places. The New Wave Of New Wave Of British Heavy Metal is a new song they’ve been blasting out, and I’m hooked to the point of chasing them down whenever possible. Not that I wasn’t already fanatical about them.

Taint and Manatees at Trillians, Newcastle in August. This almost didn’t happen. I’m so fucking glad I got in touch with the bands to make sure it did do though, and holy shit it was worth it. Manatees always blow my head off, they make exactly the sort of noises I want to hear. Taint played incredibly well too, and it sadly turned out to be their last tour.

Gentlemans Pistols and Trippy Wicked & The Cosmic Children of the Knight at The Borough, Sunderland in October. I helped to get this one sorted, and it was a roaring success. Trippy Wicked were excellent as ever, and I was blown away by Gentlemans Pistols who I hadn’t seen previously.

Scott Kelly at Trillians, Newcastle in December. Powerful vocals and song writing, slow guitar playing, intense silent atmosphere. Perfect.

Alcest at Damnation festival, Leeds in November. You had to be there.

Black Mountain and Wolf People at TJ’s Woodhouse Club, Leeds in September. Heavy psychedelic blues rock masters Black Mountain delivered exactly what I wanted to hear, at a suitably ridiculous volume. Wolf People were a late addition to the bill but were the ideal warm up.

Part Chimp at The British Wildlife Festival, The Brudenell in Leeds. My ears are still bleeding.

Throughout the year I also soaked up a load of performances by Lafaro, We Are Knuckle Dragger, Khuda, Alright The Captain, Future of The Left, Humanfly, These Monsters, Maybeshewill, The Pattern Theory, Dextro, Kong, worriedaboutsatan, and countless others.

I’ve spent over 90 days or evenings at musical events this year, so I could continue with this for quite a while, but I’ll round it off now.

It’s also been absolutely incredible to go on tour as a merch monkey for Wodensthrone, and be able to see some amazing performances by Wolves In The Throne Room, A Forest of Stars, The Axis of Perdition, Haar, Cloaca, and of course Wodensthrone themselves. All whilst getting messed up on Dr Thunder and having a bloody good time. …and we met The Hairy Bikers at Watford Gap services.

I wonder who I’ll see in 2011...

Wall Painting 2

2010-11-17T22:14:00.003Z

This is a bit of a disappointment...

You may remember that I have been working on a wall-sized painting in a bar in Sunderland. Here's the blog post with all the details.

Well, the bar recently closed, changed hands and is due to re-open at some point I suppose. But I've been informed that my wall (and everyone else's giant artworks) have been painted over. Completely blank white walls again. Hours and hours of work gone. Just like that.

I'm glad I took photos of the process so I still have something to show for it, if only a tiny snapshot into the monumental amount of work involved. I'm also pretty glad I didn't soldier on and finish it in the last couple of months... it would have really annoyed me if I just got it all sorted before it was erased from history.

In the future, I think I'll stick to canvas so I can at least get my work back if a place closes down. Can't really take a wall home with me... nowhere to put it.

Supermutant Animal Duels 3

2010-11-15T20:05:00.002Z

Hello Supermutant Animal Duel fans! It's been a while. Your DVD discs of season 1 and season 2 must be getting mighty worn out by now. But fret not, season 3 is finally here! We've assembled the best selection of ludicrous animals... the worst possible film directors... and some especially terrible special effects*.

Supermutant Animal Duel season 3 box set contains the following ten fights:

Morbidly Obese Wasp vs Anorexo Squirrel

Junkie Mole vs Crack Parrot

Fluffy Mammoth vs Zombie Lobster

Venomous Raccoon vs Hermit Pig

Furious Worm vs Colossal Midge

Stealth Whale vs Mind Trout

Broken Swan vs Miserable Budgie

Atlas Moth vs Sat-Nav Caterpillar

Paraplegic Kangaroo vs The Tourettes Giraffe

Shifty Pigeon vs Benevolent Sky Moose

*none of this is real. Still, a man can dream.

Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

2010-09-16T17:37:00.002+01:00

Last night, I met a man who claimed to be a millionaire. Bizarrely, this is the second time this has happened, and both situations were incredibly random. Which is why I think these stories need to be told...

Millionaire number one was a very strange Irish man who I encountered in Sunderland one night when out drinking with a few friends. My initial introduction to him was when I heard him laughing just after a girl had fallen down a full flight of particularly painful looking stairs in a bar. Everyone immediately kicked off about the fact that he was laughing, so he looked for a quick escape route. Being the nearest person to him at the time, he began to talk to me. I then tried to get rid of him by returning to my other friends, but he just wouldn't take "go away" for an answer and decided to tag along. He then paid himself and 3 of us into the next bar / club / thing. It was at some point in the queue that he mentioned being a millionaire, and wanting to spend his money with some good friends. How he got his riches remains a mystery... if he was even as rich as he claimed to be. How he has no friends better than us was easy to find out.

Inside the bar he showed very little social skills, grabbing a barmaid by the arm to get her attention, shouting "Oi!" at a barman to get his attention, and slapping various blokes on the arse for no reason whatsoever. He was a terrifying man to be around, but we thought he would eventually get a round in with the wads of cash he was waving around. He didn't. He did, however, invite us to his private box at the Sunderland stadium for a football match the next day. We politely declined as he was a complete mentalist. After a short while, he said or did something stupid to a bunch of guys nearby, and then told us to leave as he was about to get into a fight. We haven't seen him since, thankfully.

Millionaire number two was essentially just a horrendously drunken Asian man with lots of money about his person. He stumbled into The Brudenell in Leeds with a pint in his hands, even though the bar was already closed. He started dancing to The Pattern Theory who were playing the encore of their headline set. Then he started shouting and trying to get me and Jeff of Juffage fame to dance with him. We politely declined but he began to be a nuisance. So, the promoter asked him to leave. When he refused to do so, his pint was confiscated and taken outside, but he then paid the full entry price to come back in for the last 1-2 minutes of the last song of the night.

During this mess, he had been waving his money around, and he did have quite a lot of cash on him. I hope for his sake that he didn't get mugged on the way home, as he wouldn't have a clue what happened the next day. After the gig had ended, he continued to be annoying in front of the merch stand, potentially explaining the lack of sales after the bands had finished. Then he got into a fight with some bloke who was trying to get him to spend all of his riches on our merchandise, which sadly didn't work.

The real highlight of his presence was when he finally decided to go home. It took him about four attempts to get his leather jacket on (more specifically, to get his arms in the correct sleeves), and then proceeded to do the whole "OK, I'm going now, bye!" thing several times before actually going, even though no one was paying him much attention.

I wonder if either of these two chaps were actually loaded... or just mental...?

The Poster Theory

2010-09-11T20:58:00.005+01:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything here for a while. This is because I've been really busy for a change. One of the many things occupying my time of late has been the organisation of a gig for The Pattern Theory, and the designing of the posters for the event.

As I type this, the gig is now just a week away and everything seems to be coming together at last. The gig posters were placed in various record shops and bars in Sunderland and Newcastle, including within the venue itself. However, someone decided to specifically tear down and screw up all of the posters in the venue and the bar opposite for some reason. Thankfully, I also got a load of flyers done so hopefully people will still hear about it.

The venue itself also printed out a couple of the same posters, but at A1 and A0(!) size. The A1 version can be seen on the outside of the venue:

Here it is again, with a bit of zoom action:

The A0 size one is supposedly inside the venue at the top of the stairs, but I haven't been in the main room since it was put up... just the little room for a gig or two. I've already been told I can have the massive one after the gig though, which is a pretty cool souvenir as far as I'm concerned! I think I'll attempt to get everyone who's playing to sign it too.

I've also designed some similar posters to sell on the night in question (and at the band's earlier Leeds date). These are A3 colour prints, with four different designs available. All the patterns are taken from my first set of triangle rubber stamp experiments. I got 30 of each design printed, making 120 in total. This is what they look like on my wall:

They seem to blend in with my boring wallpaper rather a lot.

You may notice that the top left design is slightly paler than the other three. This wasn't deliberate. The first of the four designs, as used on all the flyers and posters, was stamped directly onto some fancy card, then scanned. I did this specifically rather than stamping on white and copying it over, so as to get a more warm and natural appearance to the picture. However, the other 3 designs were stamped on white as I don't have any more fancy card like that.

The background for those posters is a scan of the back of the same piece of card that I used for the first one, but for some strange reason it came out slightly darker. The stamped designs were also tampered with in terms of colour saturation, so as to mimic the first design instead of appearing in their original stark grey colour scheme.

Anyway, I'm still pretty pleased with the four designs and after asking a few people which design they prefer, each one has had a few votes. This is helpful as I was worried about selling out of one design quickly and still having 30 left of another.

Supermutant Animal Duels 2

2010-08-26T13:55:00.002+01:00

Oh dear, it's that time again. More ridiculous animal fights. Part one is here if you don't know what I'm going on about...

So, the films in the season 2 box set are:

Annihilation Prawn vs Surveillance Duck

Electro Possum vs Necro Stoat

Ghost Owl vs The Infinite Shark

Astrosnail vs Time Vole

Frozen Chicken vs Hungry Mule

Punchy Octopus vs Soggy Lion (From The Rainforest Of Lions)

Happy Puppy vs Speedgoat

Murderous Eel vs Agoraphobic Sparrow

Sadomasochistic Kitten vs Vampire Platypus

Kamikaze Maggot vs The Incredible Whelk

So there you have it. It's been suggested that I attempt to sketch all of these creatures... maybe someday if I find the time I'll have a go at a couple of them.

Thanks for all the suggestions and contributions to this particularly socially relevant topic of discussion. Season 3 is coming soon...

Recipe: The Colonel

2010-08-09T20:35:00.005+01:00

To follow up from the last recipe, here's another drink for your banquet.

For this concoction, I'm going to show you the sketch before telling you about it. See if you can guess what it contains just from the diagram.

Right. Yes, it looks like a power station cooling tower. That is because the drinking vessel of choice for this one is a vase. Preferably pale blue, with a frilly top bit and cut glass squares all over the outside.

Why? I have no idea. Before we go any further, I'd like to point out that this drink was invented by a man called Darren, who lives in Blackpool. He is a most peculiar fellow... if only for making this abomination. I had no part in the making of this... thing. It was all his own work, although he had been awake for at least 24 hours and drinking heavily throughout.

As you can see, this sketch is a lot darker than any of the other things I've drawn. Darker in colour, and in atmosphere. This thing could summon many a demon. The dark liquid in the vase is primarily based around vodka and coke, normal enough...

BUT THEN!!! The chunky bits you can sort of see at the bottom (which actually looked that ominous in the flesh) are actually... flesh. Chicken flesh. And bones. This is because the drink was devised after a KFC bucket or two had been devoured by a hungry family.

So, you've got KFC chicken leftovers, vodka and coke in a glass. Anything else? Sure... might as well throw in the leftover gravy dip too!

I can't describe the flavour as I wisely decided not to partake in it. After being out drinking the night before, waking up and being pestered by children and an angry hangover... I just didn't fancy it. However, it smelled very strongly of all the key ingredients.

Naming it The Colonel is a stroke of genius though. Bravo Darren!

And now, some sad news:

This is the last of these recipes for now, as I've run out of disgusting food-based experiences. No doubt there will be more though. If anyone actually ever makes all the things I've mentioned, then you deserve a medal for bravery... and a bucket for vomit.

Recipe: Thunderhonkey

2010-08-07T03:16:00.004+01:00

A delicious alcoholic shot.

There's not much to this one, it's all the rage at parties and I bet after reading this you'll give it a go yourself...

Thunderhonkey. I know the name sounds a bit racially dubious, but it actually stems from my housemate Jamil mishearing the word "spider". I don't exactly understand how that works, but then... he is a little bit mental.

The premise behind this one is to get drunk whilst enjoying a flavour sensation. Or, it was just what was to hand at the time. I think someone had left half a bottle of sambuca after a party (lets face it, no-one intentionally BUYS that stuff) and we were sat at the kitchen table with some shot glasses. On the table there was the key ingredient... a jar of jalapeño pepper slices.

Naturally, a slice was added to each shot. The two contrasting flavours kind of work together, as they each make the other seem "not as bad".

A variant using a red chilli slice was later invented, known as a Bleeding Thunderhonkey. The effect is much the same. You can decide for yourself which one this is, since it's not in colour:

Oh, it needs to be chewed too. You wouldn't want to get a jalapeño stuck in your throat, gently sizzling away... requiring to be washed down with more sambuca.

Gig Poster: Maybeshewill

2010-08-06T21:42:00.004+01:00

Here's the second of the two posters I've been working on recently, for a gig I'm co-promoting with the chaps at Blank Promotions.

It's for a band called Maybeshewill, who I have seen more times than it is possible to shake a stick at. They generously donated a track to my very own Notes magazine issue 2 ages ago, which people seemed to enjoy listening to rather a lot!

The poster design is pretty simple, the background was just a piece of white card that I covered in various blue pens, inks, paints, pencils and plenty of water to make it all bleed into one mass of colour. Using various different substances for this is interesting as you can't always predict which pens will bleed, despite what the labels say!

The typeface was sketched up in the style of my recipes on this blog, because I've been enjoying doing that sort of stuff recently. I can do it lazily in bed at the end of the day, then wake up to find my work is already done.

Each letter was drawn twice, one fat and one thin. Or whatever the politically correct term is. Wide and narrow? Chubby and stringy? I dunno. All the letters were roughly drawn outlines to begin with, which I then re-drew over the top once more to improve (or worsen) the overall shape of the letter.

To decide if I should use a fat or thin letter in sequence, I flipped a coin. An old five pence (the size of a current ten pence) with a bit of masking tape on either side with an "F" or a "T" on it. I made the F bold there, did you notice? Anyway, this was a very time consuming affair and not something I would recommend. I mean I had fun... but it was pretty boring cutting out all the letters twice with my dodgy photo editing software thing.

There was a bit of cheating when ordering some of the letters, like if there was two of the same letter in a word I made sure to have one of each type... and I gave MSW a fat M before I started flipping the coin. I quite like the end product though, so it's not all bad.

I also drew the Maybeshewill butterfly logo in the same style as the letters, just a rough outline drawn twice, and slapped it in the dead centre of the poster. I originally drew the butterfly from triangles which I've also been using quite a lot... but it didn't fit in with the rest of the picture so I scrapped it.

Anyway, here is the final thing:

Also playing are &U&I, my old pals Ryoga and one-man wonder Dextro.

What do you reckon? I think the butterfly logo was a bit of an obvious choice, but if you recognise it already then you know what the gig is about before you even read it... which I suppose is a good thing! I tried to do it in my own style at least, and I think it worked in the end.

Again, I'll be printing some of these up to sell, but just the background and butterfly with the words "Maybeshewill" (in big letters) and "Notes Magazine" (hidden in a corner) on them.

Gig Poster: The Pattern Theory

2010-08-05T00:40:00.007+01:00

I've not posted anything in a while, because I've been very busy working on two gig posters for events that I'm organising. They're done now, so I may as well post them.

Here's the one for The Pattern Theory, which I posted a previous entry about when I was working on it. The background is a piece of card, and the pattern is ACTUALLY rubber stamped by hand on to it. The main typeface was all hand drawn and scanned in, then used where needed. I did a whole alphabet and numbers, in case I decide to re-use it for a later project. The smaller words were written down as required, scanned and placed on the final design.

Also playing this gig are two excellent one-man band projects: Juffage and Dextro.

I'm thinking about printing some fancy posters with some of the other patterns on them, so you can choose which one you like. What do you think to that idea? It will probably cost me more, but I like a bit of variety.

Recipe: Noodle Pizza

2010-07-27T21:08:00.005+01:00

Why stop at one student snack when you can have two... at the same time!

Missed a meal and need to catch up on stodge?

Can't decide between noodles or pizza?

Have BOTH my friend!

Noodle Pizza is something I have encountered twice so far. Once, I made it. I was living on whatever Aldi would sell me for dirt cheap... so pasta, noodles, and pizza as an occasional treat. It was fun being a student. I can't exactly remember WHY I made a noodle pizza of all things, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

I believe I cooked the noodles separately, then added them to the already cooked pizza. I then added a bit of cheese and stuck it in the oven for an extra minute or two for optimum meltage. The resulting meal was actually pretty good. I will have used spicy noodles without a doubt, and probably a spicy pizza too. For once, I have just posted an actually edible foodstuff.

The other time I encountered it was as a Halloween party snack, made by someone else. They had taken it a step further and added green food dye to the noodles whilst cooking them. This was a bit too much for me, plus it was cold by the time I found it. I politely declined, as did almost everyone else at the party in question.

You really don't need a sketch of this one, but I did one anyway in case you've never seen a pizza before. It's very rough as I don't exactly expect many people to actually look at this blog. If anyone asks, the noodles are burnt.

They look more like scribbly pubic hair here though. I wouldn't suggest putting that on a pizza.

Supermutant Animal Duels

2010-07-26T14:53:00.003+01:00

This mentalism starts from seeing the films Megashark vs Giant Octopus and Komodo vs King Cobra which are both terrible. After seeing the second of these abominations, we decided to make up our own ridiculous animal fights.

There have been too many to remember, at various intervals as this is a recurring conversation. I for one think there is still a great deal of scope for this particular topic.

However, when the conversation was in full swing last night, I decided to write a few classics down. They're pretty interchangeable... I was just saving two animals per duel in the order they were devised. Feel free to suggest your own. So without further ado, here's the Supermutant Animal Duels DVD box set film listings:

Pandaman vs Lazer Fox

Awesomehorse vs Thunderbug

Death Otter vs Stabby Frog

Battlepig vs Turboslug

Nuclear Mollusc vs The Phantom Microbe

Napalm Sloth vs Waterhawk

Solid Hamster vs Rage Turkey

Slippery Badger vs Massive Shrew

Vertical Panther vs Stupid Elephant

Solar Bear vs Spring Limpet

Season 2 will probably crop up at some point.

Recipe: Jam Limpets

2010-07-25T14:23:00.003+01:00

As promised in the last recipe post, here's another little piece of cooking gone wrong courtesy of Graeme.

In an attempt to make some jam tarts, he in-deliberately invented another jam-based sea creature. The shape of the tart casings somehow came out... well... limpet-shaped. As if that wasn't enough, the jam within them was some kind of bizarre mixed jam, which was stickier than even the best superglues. It did such a good job of sticking to the roof of my mouth, my teeth, and my internal organs... that I can easily imagine these blighters in a sheltered rock pool, or stuck to the hull of a ship. These things have the potential to sink many a vessel with their stodge-based crust and ability to grip onto anything, probably even whilst underwater.

Anyway, as usual, I did a little sketch:

I for one can't wait to see his Jam Sea Anemone.

Recipe: Jam Crustacean

2010-07-23T22:40:00.004+01:00

Not so much a recipe as a picture of wrongdom. Back in my old house, a frequent visitor called Graeme would occasionally turn up with baked goods. He still does this in the new house, as the recipe after this one will illustrate.

He seems to like making cakes, buns, cookies, biscuits, tarts... but with his own unique twist. Doing something wrong. Not a specific thing, but something. Well, the Wine Pie which he was involved with was a specific bit of wrong... wine and pies do not mix.

The Jam Crustacean is a sort of cake. A cake that didn't rise, and became a funny shape whilst being cooked. The surface of the cake was also hard and quite shiny. Basically, it should have looked like a cake, but actually looked like a crab. I'm not just saying that because I'm a crab enthusiast either, this happened a fair while before I'd even read a Guy N. Smith book!

Here's a little sketch of it:

As you can see, I took the liberty of adding some legs, pincers and eyes.

The line across the middle is where it was sliced open and filled with jam. You can't have a Jam Crustacean without jam.

I have no idea how you would achieve the construction of one of these things, and I doubt that Graeme does either. I think he just makes these things by accident, possibly when trying to turn lead into gold.

Satan's Crustaceans

2010-07-20T15:17:00.002+01:00

I really want to form a band called Satan's Crustaceans despite being in no way musical.

I did a bit of research to see if there were already any bands under that name, and found this incredible article. Seems like a good blog to follow...

I also conducted a bit of a search on Myspace, and found this selection of hilarious crustacean based bands:

Ben Cheddar And The Potato Crustaceans
New Age Crustaceans
Midlife Crustaceans
Crustacean Armor
The Friendly Crustaceans
Killasauras The Crustacean
Crustacean Village
The Hot Crustacean Band
Harmonicus The Crustacean
Auto Erotic Crustacean
101 Crustaceans

Which is your favourite?

I think Satan's Crustaceans is free for me to use! Now to draw an awesome logo... and do nothing with it.

Rock Star Breakfast

2010-07-19T22:57:00.004+01:00

Caution: This blog entry was written out of complete boredom whilst in Wakefield, and may therefore be long-winded and incredibly pointless.

This morning I woke up in a spare room in the house of a man called Steve, from a band called Khuda, in a place called Leeds. I was there of my own accord.

The night before I had attended a gig at The Cardigan Arms, a jolly good pub in Leeds. The gig room upstairs is pretty much under the control of a man called Tom, also from a band called Khuda. He made everyone some veggie-friendly curry, which was very nice.

The line-up was Khuda, Alright The Captain, Orders Of The British Empire and Magnapinna. I made sure to get there a bit early as:
a) It was a Sunday and there's only 1 train every hour or so from where I was, and if I hadn't got the one I did get, it would have been a further hour and a half wait.
b) I wanted to hang out with the Khuda and Alright The Captain boys. Last time they played at the same venue we all had a great night and a bit of an afterparty at Steve's previous abode.

After a 25 minute walk from the train station, in the extreme Yorkshire desert heat, I was in need of a pint. Leeds Pale was my drink of choice, and I headed into the venue room with my first of the night.

I immediately felt welcome when seeing Tom and the guys from A.T.C. and joined them in a bit of a sit and some banter. After a while, some bands played.

Khuda were on first, and I have seen them perform a solid set on a number of occasions. Their album is due out soon, and I can't wait to go and buy a copy... despite having the mp3s and artwork to hand already. The set here included a couple of new ones, which sounded great, particularly the set opener. There were some problems with a string break, a tuning issue and Tom being half-deaf for the least manly reason ever (which I won't go into). Regardless, I enjoyed them as I always do!

Next up it was Alright The Captain, who also had a selection of new tunes to play. I was well impressed with all the material on show here, and I think the particularly loud and heavy sound within the venue for the whole night made this set stand out more than the previous times I've seen them. I may have even enjoyed it a touch more than on the CDs I have!

The next band, Orders Of The British Empire are doing the full tour with Alright The Captain, so I expected them to be good, even though I knew nothing about them. I wasn't let down! Heavy post-rock sort of stuff, played really well in an almost pitch black room. I was very surprised to hear this was their first ever tour, because they were bloody good!

Finally, the ever-incredible Magnapinna. I can't even begin to describe how well these guys play. They must practice a lot. So much force goes into the kick on the drums, the kit had to be moved and fixed on more than one occasion during the set!

After a speedy load out (it over-ran a bit) and me buying an A.T.C. shirt and an O.B.E. CD, I piled into the front of the O.B.E. van to get to Steve's house. We actually managed to beat him there, even though he set off (on foot) considerably earlier. We listened to a tiny bit of an Elvis Presley interview CD whilst on the road. Not very entertaining.

Plenty more banter was to be had, along with a beer and some daft film or other on the TV. A lot of the conversation revolved around all the bands / venues / promoters that Khuda and O.B.E. have encountered so far, and I was surprised at how many of the things mentioned were also people & places that I was well aware of or had encountered.

After a good lengthy sleep, I came back down to the living room (which also housed the smell of boys) and found the boys from O.B.E. on the sofas and floor. After a cup of tea from a heat sensitive mug showing a woman in (and out of) a bikini, we devised a plan for what to do next. As I had no idea where I was for walking back into Leeds, I jumped back in the van for a trip down to a guitar shop and some food, after we had said our goodbyes to Steve, and O.B.E. very generously gave me a T-shirt.

We went for some grub in what we originally thought was a Wetherspoons, but ended up being some other pub. All day breakfast was £8.45! However, there was a two for £10 deal, and it was well worth a fiver. I say it was well worth it, I actually had mine paid for by James the guitarist. As there were five of us, Dan the drummer decided to buy two for himself (at £1.55 extra, you might as well, eh?!) but with the actual intention of sharing out the second. I ended up having some mushrooms and black pudding out of it anyway.

Breakfast talking points seemed to revolve around more bands, venues and promoters, tour plans, set lists, recordings, mortgages and poo. All the usual band stuff then really.

Then we walked to the guitar shop, which was much further than any of us expected. More than half way to the station in fact, which was a bit rubbish because two of us were heading that way, but my stuff was still in the van. So I walked back with James, we drove back to the guitar shop, and it was here that I said my goodbyes to the band. Apart from Dan that is, as he was getting the train to Nottingham instead of jumping in the back of the van. A wise man indeed.

We walked to the station from there, and I then went of to Jumbo records to get a hold of the Quack Quack album, which is awesome. Back to the station and then home after that. Home to the world of boredom.

So that's what I've done with my day, how about you?

Being Sir Michael Parkinson

2010-07-16T19:13:00.004+01:00

I started making a little montage of Parkies cut from those bits of junk mail from Sun Life Direct. Somehow, it seems like they found out, because they recently gave me a whopping FOUR letters at once! Each one features a good 4 or 5 pictures of Parky, but I'm trying not to repeat myself... yet. When I have enough pieces of Sun Life mail with his face on them, I'm probably going to do a full film poster style effort of Being Sir Michael Parkinson. Anyway, here's the little selection of different Parkies (some of them are just different sizes of the same face) so far:

You may notice a selection of chlamydia propaganda too... Again, it comes in the post and is considered funny enough to go on our upstairs toilet wall. I'll make sure to post more pictures of some of the other treats soon enough.

I can't say I have ever seen any kind of Parkinson based TV programs. I just find his envelope-printed face amusing.

Wall Painting

2010-07-15T18:21:00.006+01:00

Painting on walls.

Normally, I stick to drawings and paintings on a small scale, no bigger than A4, and normally much smaller. However, I was asked to "help out" with a wall-sized version of the famous M.C. Escher picture "Relativity" absolutely ages ago. I'm pretty sure it was St. Patrick's day 2009 actually. It's on a big wall on the stairs of a bar in Sunderland called The Hive. All the walls are painted / being painted by various people in various styles.

Over a year later, and it's not finished. I can give you a good selection of excuses:

1. I'm doing it on my own now, and have been almost for the entire duration.

2. I can only paint on Sunday nights for safety reasons, and when both me and the staff are prepared to stay awake... so not very often.

3. I normally do tiny things, so this is a big step up!

4. It's a picture by Escher. Not exactly the simplest of things...

5. I can't really do realistic looking people. Someone else is going to have to fill them in, probably before I can finish off all the handrails.

Anyway, despite the excuses, I'm prepared to post a picture of it so far... although when I last saw it, it had a few additional stains and bits of graffiti on it. I suppose that's the risk of having it on the stairs which lead up to the blokes' toilets.

Click on the picture to see it bigger and therefore better. I can't really get a straight view of the picture as it's on some stairs. But you get the idea.

I told my dad I was doing a spot of wall painting when he last decorated the living room of my folks' house in Yorkshire. So he had a go himself. Not an Escher picture, but everyone's favourite big red guy, Satan:

You can definitely see where I get it from. Sadly, he then painted over this... but I'll always know that he's under there, somewhere.

The Pattern Theory

2010-07-14T20:16:00.017+01:00

I'm putting a gig on in September, my 2nd one so far. As well as sorting the venue, bands, etc. I'm doing the poster design. I enjoy doing this kind of thing, but it takes me ages.

For this project I made a bunch of triangle shaped rubber stamps and make a few interesting patterns. A bit obvious considering the band name, but the results came out pretty well as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the work in progress poster idea, with a typeface that I also did myself:

What do you reckon? The pattern shown only uses one rubber stamp, which has a sort of "T" shape cut out of it. I did a few more using the other stamps I cut out, some of which you can see here:

Which is your favourite from the bunch? The last one is pretty similar to the final one to be used on the poster, but I thought it was better to just use one stamp rather than three different ones.

Check out the band to see if you think my design suits their musical style:

The Pattern Theory

Cheers for any feedback!

Boots

2010-07-12T17:23:00.008+01:00

Less than 2 weeks ago, I turned 24. My housemate and good friend Jamil decided to get me a paint-it-yourself figure of a monkey called Boots. The box indicates that he is from a TV show called Dora The Explorer, which I can't say I've ever seen... though I've heard people mention it. Usually in sentences that begin with "I really hate that program called..."

Anyway, the suggested colour scheme of blue, pink and yellow looked horrible on the box art, and since the character is of no relevance to me, I decided to just paint him like an actual monkey. I say actual monkey, I mean generic cartoon monkey. With gold boots.

I didn't use the provided bright acrylic paints or horrendous plastic fibre brush, otherwise it would have looked like a child did it. It seems unfair how they provide such terrible tools for children, they're never going to do anything good with them. No one is!

Anyway, without further ado, here is Boots the monkey:

As you can see, he's in a bit of a stupid pose. He's sort of looking skyward, but based on the size of his massive head, I suppose it was necessary to prevent the figure from falling over. I took a photo to show more of his face anyway:

Horrible little bugger, isn't he? I wouldn't trust him with any kind of footwear, especially golden boots. If anyone is wondering what his back looks like, then here it is:

Why anyone would wonder what that looks like is beyond me. What, have you never seen a monkey's back? I suppose it does show off the "copyright 2007 Viacom International Inc." thing, which I also decided to paint gold. Finally, how's about a close-up of his disco footwear?

As you can see, I also gloss varnished his boots and the word "Boots" on the stand.

I had a good few hours of entertainment out of this £1.50 statue designed to be painted by a child. Let's face it, they would have only done a balls job and then given up.

He now sits proudly on a shelf above my desk. I was also given a similar paint-it-yourself figure of a horribly sculpted Spiderman, by my housemate Ian. That abomination (Spiderman, not Ian) is getting painted next... Keep an eye out!

Wallpaper

2010-07-11T19:46:00.004+01:00

Have you ever tried to get to sleep, and failed repeatedly? Is your bed near a wall? Then I presume you will have spent a good few hours looking at the patterns in the wallpaper, making faces from the lines...

Last night (well, about 6:15am today actually) I started to devise a picture on my wall. I could definitely see a body and limbs, and some jagged teeth... then it pretty much all fell into place.

I tend to keep a pen to hand when I go to bed, just in case I fancy drawing something before sleep (I do a lot of my sketches there, last night I did a full typeface!) so I thought "sod it, it's my wall!" and decided to draw in the weird thing I had seen. If only to see how it would look.

Obviously, it's very crude and I have no idea what it actually is. Some kind of cyclops with a fat belly, pointed ears, elephant feet umbrella stands on his legs, and arms which have claws despite the lack of fingers. His pose suggests he is falling over whilst drunk, lamely clawing at an invisible wall for some support. Well, here he is:

I reckon I might paint him in full colour someday, if I can be arsed. I don't generally take paints to bed though. Oh, and give you an idea of scale, he's about 25cm across and 20cm tall.

I guess it looked better at 6:15am...

Recipe: Wine Pie

2010-07-10T01:08:00.003+01:00

Never make this.

I can't stress that enough, this is the most revolting thing I've ever encountered. Well, probably.

The basic premise of this dish, is to create a pie with a high alcohol content. When we made this disaster a few years ago, there was very little method to our madness. Basically we bought a bottle of cheap white wine from Booze Buster or similar, and some pastry mix to create a lid for the pie. So far so good... but what would also be in the pie? I mean, you can't just have wine sloshing about in the glass bowl we were using for a pie dish with a pastry lid on top, can you?

Some genius decided that bread would do an excellent job of soaking up the wine, and would then be edible. Wrong on both accounts. Regardless, a selection of slices of white bread had their crusts removed, and were placed in the bowl. Wine was added during the process, to create a "layered" effect... in actuality it was more like a "mush" effect. Here's a little sketch to show you the process... though as stated, it is never to be copied:

The lid was then stuck on top and glazed (probably with more wine) before the whole thing went in the oven for a fair while. There was some concern as to the safety of the glass bowl either cracking with heat or exploding due to the masses of wine within it. Thankfully it was fine, but probably got binned soon after.

The resulting product, our wine pie, was the worst thing. The pie crust was fine, a good solid pastry mix, nothing could possibly go wrong there. We even ate this bit of the damn thing, because you actually could.

The contents of the pie were not so appealing, in fact I would say they were definitely inedible. A gooey mush of white bread doused with warm horrible wine which had somehow changed flavour for the worse whilst inside the oven. We all had a go at eating some, but just thinking about it now makes me feel shameful to have done so. It doesn't make me feel sick though, strangely... but not something I would go back for seconds of.

I'm sure the resulting carnage was left to one side for a good week before being thrown out. It didn't mature with age either, it just went smelly.

Never make this.

Giant Crabs

2010-07-09T23:20:00.003+01:00

Recently I purchased three more Guy N. Smith crab books, bringing my total up to a healthy eight (including a graphic novel). The new ones in my collection are Crabs Unleashed (a book of three short stories), Crabs Armada (a single short story) and Crabs' Fury (the graphic novel).

I am now only missing Crabs: The Human Sacrifice, the rarest in the series, but apparently it is due to be re-released someday. I'm happy to wait as all the books I have bought direct from Guy N. Smith have been signed, and the recent order also included a keyring, bookmark and fridge magnet... plus some info about joining his fan club and attending "CrabCon" at his house!

Anyone reading this and thinking "crikey, these books must be good if you go so far out of your way to collect them all!" would no doubt enjoy a review of them. Well, I do intend on doing this someday... but not right now. I want to finish my collection and then I can rate each book on a scale of 1 to crab. Crabs' Fury actually contains a very enthusiastic run down of events in all the books, but leaves out Crabs: The Human Sacrifice as one to read yourself. This is because a) it's really rare, b) it's really good and c) it's getting re-released and they want you to buy it.

Anyway, in the wait for me to buy and read this book (when it is released) I thought I should give you a sample of giant crab horror. I found this recently when browsing the internet looking for giant killer crabs, as I often do. It makes no mention of Guy N. Smith, but it is too close to the content of his series of books to not be a homage. Unless they've just not mentioned him in the hope that no-one has heard of him. Enjoy!

To follow this up, The Onion News Network also posted an article about giant crabs a while ago, that still features relevant information. Again, I think they must be aware of Guy N. Smith, though this is much less directly linked than the last video. Still a cracking watch though!

Click-Click-Clickety-Click

Recipe: Pie Sandwich

2010-07-08T14:47:00.003+01:00

A nice easy one to follow, this is a good way to use up you last few slices of bread, and a specifically bought pie of your choice. Better than any other sandwich filler anyway. Mine's a steak and kidney! Scotch pies fit quite nicely into a teacake.

Be prepared for a meal made of pure stodge. The most filling thing you could possibly imagine. You may experience some ultimate drymouth before you access the gravy within the pie too.

Here's a completely unnecessary sketch of how to build your own:

Stodge.

Crabbed Into Sunlight 2

2010-07-07T22:40:00.000+01:00

...this time it's crabbier.

In actual fact, the name of this entry does not refer to a film. It's not even a sequel to the original Crabbed Into Sunlight post really, I just wanted to re-use the name. Adding a "2" just saves confusion. Or generates it, whichever.

The other night I decided to sketch out a quick banner idea for this here blog. It was just a tiny messy scribble when I was half asleep, so it's far from perfect! It looked like this:

I think the crab needs to be further to the right and should use his other pincer to grab the bloke. That way you can see the crab's malevolent face (but no lips). The text also needs re-arranging. Basically, this is a bit crap so far, and therefore isn't being used up top. I thought I'd post it anyway though, just for anyone obsessive enough to follow my work progress.

Even though it's only a 3/10 effort, I then decided to colour it in a bit with inks and brushes. Just to see how it looks, really. Here it is:

Again, it's just a tester so you don't need to tell me how messy it is, etc. I am well aware.

I'll get it re-done someday, to a higher level of crabbiness. Keep your eyes peeled for Crabbed Into Sunlight 3!

Book Review: E.L.V.

2010-07-07T14:39:00.001+01:00

I originally posted this on a forum and thought a few other people might like to read it too. Copy and paste ahoy!

I recently re-read this book:

E.L.V.

For about the 4th time. I've had it a while, and always enjoy it. I then read the sequel which is also rather good but gets more and more difficult to read as it goes along, probably why part 3 never made it to print!

So what is it? Well, E.L.V. stands for Evolution Limitation Volunteers, whose job is to travel back in time from the year 95 SEGS in order to prevent houseflies from growing to the size of cathedrals. They also have a problem with mice, but not the usual type. These are more like modified computer mice, with a twisted sense of humour. They have destroyed 99.9% of the world's books, and corrupted the computerised data storage (but not everyone thinks they have!)

It is a very funny read, with time-travel mechanics in the vein of Bill & Ted and humour similar to that of Terry Pratchett. Daft things happen, but they also end up being something clever. You sort of piece together what has happened to humanity as you go along, and everything is explained in the end... but not in a way that makes you feel stupid.

The main character Trafalgar Hurlock is instantly likeable and you share his views on the people around him. He's also useless (much like Rincewind or Arthur Dent), and asks for a lot of help from his future self. The sequel involves him fixing all the things he originally needs help with, which is why it begins to get so complicated! However, it is just as funny and even more clever with it's historical interferences.

I first discovered this book via my dad, whole stole it from a ship's library. He then got the sequel from a different ship! They're the only books he thought of as good enough to steal and re-read. So they must be good, huh?

Amazon has them for next to nothing, so why not take the risk and give them a go?

Hope you enjoy them as much as I have done (many times)!

Recipe: Kebabanash

2010-07-06T19:08:00.000+01:00

Here's the first of a selection of recipe ideas which I have crudely sketched diagrams for.

Kebabanash is a rare delicacy found on the morning (or afternoon) after a houseparty or night out. It is made by using a tray of leftover kebab meat as an ashtray, which adds a unique seasoning flavour. Finding a tray of kebabanash has been known to double or even triple your current hangover. Eating it is not recommended, but I bet some poor mug has done, somewhere. It would probably make your microwave smell horrible too.

Breakfast treat.

I'm Spinning Around

2010-07-06T02:45:00.000+01:00

I don't play video games. I don't have the time, or rather I prefer to spend my time doing other equally pointless things... like this. However, I will happily watch someone else play games, and occasionally demand that they do things that I would do. This normally involves jumping off cliffs, blowing stuff up, and basically doing it wrong.

Some games don't need any suggestions though. They're already stupid. I particularly enjoy it when something funny happens that shouldn't be funny. A serious game, but with some dodgy dialogue or actions... I suppose it's time for some examples.

Hitman: Blood Money is a recent (revisited) classic in my house, the best thing about the game being displayed in this here video. They picked a good piece of backing music for the subject matter, though Kylie Minogue's "I'm Spinning Around" is usually what people sing in my personal experience.

Next up is some Sherlock Holmes game. I dunno, I basically got sent this video and found it to be right up my street. The presentation of the whole video is spot on!

Here's a nice slab of dialogue from an RPG called Infinite Undiscovery. It goes on a bit, but the funny part (as far as I'm concerned) begins around 4:55 in, and ends around 5:10. You'll soon hear what amuses me. How anyone can take that seriously beats me!

Finally, a clip from the recent Alone In The Dark game. Just one line made me laugh, which is heard around the 7:30 mark. Feel free to skip the rest, I could only find walkthroughs.

Do you know any other video game funnies? Like I said, I enjoy watching these stupid bits more than I would enjoy playing the games in full.

And now, I shall drain all life from this land, and ascend... TO THE MOON!!!

Book (well, comic) review: Pbrainey's Book of Lists

2010-07-04T00:44:00.000+01:00

For anyone unaware of Pbrainey, hello. I'm not entirely surprised you haven't heard of him, as until late last year, neither had I. I met him at a Leeds comic thing, and swapped a copy of my very own publication Notes magazine for part one of his time-travel epic "There's No Time Like The Present" of which I recently bought part 12. The final part is due out very soon, and I'll be doing a review of it all when I have it. He tells me he doesn't normally do swaps as he tends to end up with some rubbish he doesn't like... but he seemed to enjoy Notes, thankfully.

He's a prolific comic book writer and artist, very methodical and a great story-teller. He also answers his emails, posts various blogs and is generally an all-round good egg. Some people say he looks like Howard from the Halifax adverts, but you should never say that to his face. Personally I think he looks more like a Megabus driver called Norm:

As you can see in that photo, he did this thing called "The Book of Lists". What's that then? Well, as mentioned he's very methodical, and self confessed to being quite obsessive about particular things. As such, he keeps a book of lists. Lists of what? Everything. Lists of things his workmates eat, lists of things to worry about, lists of farts, lists of drunken occasions, lists of lies, lists of compliments received... it just goes on and on! Some of the list subjects are incredibly obscure and make you laugh before you even begin to read them...

The book in question compiles a vast selection of these lists, but drawn out in a comic book style. This is highly entertaining. Many sections are funny, some are serious, but all are very honest and open. He concentrates on the small details that make you laugh but are normally quickly forgotten. Things we can all relate to and understand, even things you would never publicly discuss but always think about.

I guess it's easier to show you what I mean than to describe everything, so here are some examples taken from his website:

http://www.pbrainey.com/BookOfLists/i_forgot.htm

http://www.pbrainey.com/BookOfLists/gym_donts.htm

http://www.pbrainey.com/BookOfLists/lies.htm

The last of these three example pages features my favourite picture in the whole book, which you can see at the bottom right hand corner.

Since I bought this book (originally due to lack of patience with the frequency of the aforementioned There's No Time Like The Present series, but wanting some more Pbrainey action) I have read it a good 5 times at least, from cover to cover... and sometimes I just pick it up and read a random one. I've also shared it with a few people, and what happens is always the same: I pass the book to someone, to show them a particularly funny list. They laugh, then read the next one... and the next... until eventually they reach the back cover. Then they start at the beginning and read up to where they started off originally! That is definitely the sign of a good book in my eyes!

You can read a load of his comics for free on his site here:

http://www.pbrainey.com

You can also buy the Book of Lists from there, for the very reasonable cost of £10.95 including postage and packing (within the UK). That might sound like quite a lot, but I've easily had my money's worth out of it already, and I will no doubt re-visit it on many occasions to come!

...or you can just read the freebies and have a little chuckle to yourself. I especially enjoy this one:

http://www.pbrainey.com/gang.htm

WA-HEY!

And on that bombshell I will leave you to read at your leisure, and hopefully you'll give the man a few coppers. Enjoy!

Beard Basket

2010-07-03T17:07:00.000+01:00

Right, here's an attempt to explain one of the greatest facial hair designs known to man. Well, unknown to most men, as it was only invented a few months ago. But it's going to catch on, believe me.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Beard Basket

The basic premise is that you grow a good strong Lemmy style mutton-chop moustache combo... and then grow the front bits really long. When they reach a good length, you can then weave them into a little basket. Just big enough to house an egg.

Perhaps you could start with a quail's egg and work your way up like people do with those earplug things. If anyone reaches the level of ostrich then they deserve a medal. Standard chicken would be a good compromise.

The middle bit of the chin needs to be perfectly clean-shaven. This keeps stains to a minimum and makes sure passers-by get the best possible view of whatever egg you have on display. Perhaps a nice blue duck egg. Of course, you can decorate your egg with colourful Easter designs, or just draw on a face. Maybe even a full series of faces on a collection of eggs, ready to represent your mood as you keep a straight face to prevent egg movement.

This new fashion craze would be particularly well represented by the metal scene. Not only do eggs make a great canvas for corpse paint, but wearers of this fabulous new invention would allow their eggs to swing about freely as they headbang. This would soon become a dance-off style competition, with the first person to cover their own face in eggy residue the "winner" and therefore the most metal person in the room. Obviously.

Spillages would need a spot of Febreze or maybe even a blast of Cillit Bang to maintain a healthy clean beard basket.

Alternative rules to the egg-face game include weaving elastic into the beard to create a miniature catapult, or growing the beard basket to be particularly low in order to play a variation of conkers.

You can also use the basket to store other items, such as a spare key, a lighter, a tiny flask of mead, some business cards, a collection of marbles, or perhaps a lucky charm.

Chinese style moustaches can also be weaved into a similar basket, though this may compromise some of the structural integrity.

Finally, why not have an egg and beard race with your friends, by seeing who can get theirs to hatch first? A good clean chin would even allow you to regurgitate food for the tiny bird nestling in your facial fuzz.

The possibilities are endless.

Migraines & Hayfever

2010-06-29T20:32:00.000+01:00

I've just got back from a short trip to London, where I encountered the mythical beast known as "Hayfever".

I say mythical beast as it seems to be one of those things that people say they have and you go "yeah, whatever" and don't actually understand what they're complaining about. A few sneezes when you're near a plant, right?

After discovering that this is not the case, I thought I should describe my own experience just in case anyone who thinks like I used to do reads this. But first, I want to tell you about migraines.

Migraines seem to be a common excuse for not doing things, and I always thought it was like a bad headache... a poor reason to go lay down for a bit. This seems to be the general consensus so I went along with it. I guess you never really know until you have one. Sort of like the flu... you think it's like a bad cold, but in reality it's a horrendous period of time in which you cannot move without wanting to vomit, but are unable to even do that.

So the migraine for me was probably the worst thing I've ever experienced. Sure, a headache is part of it, but the worst possible full head pain... add to this a constant feeling of dizziness, confusion and nausea... and it's pretty much the worst time of your life. And it just goes on for days! They can be triggered by all sorts of things like stress, heat, noise, lights... and I think mine was a combination of many factors.

Anyway, I'm not one to complain too much, I'm just making sure that you know migraines aren't just an excuse to not do anything. You simply can't do anything when you have one, it's horrible. Going for a lie down in a dark room with some paracetamol is actually the best thing you can do when one is taking place.

Hayfever is another new one to me, first making itself known on Friday, just 4 days ago as I write this. I was in a park on a hot day, where lots of dust was being kicked around. After a few hours of being there, my right eye begins to become irritated, like there is something stuck in it. A few hours of poking and prodding at it, and nothing comes out. I decide to pay a visit to the chaps at St. John Ambulance, who have a look in my eye with a torch and then tell me it's hayfever. "EH?!" was my instant reaction. I've not been sneezing or had any bad reactions to any plants before in my life! The bloke with the torch asks me if it feels like my eye needs to be scratched, which it did. He then says he takes a tablet every day for hayfever himself, and that I can go buy some from the nearby medicine stand.

This being a festival, the tablets were £5 for 7. I told them to keep them, and that I would just put up with it. Bad idea. As the day went on, my eye continued to water and feel really sore from being poked too much. Sort of like having a load of soap and/or onions in your eye at all times. My right sinus began to hurt too, and eventually a headache of almost migraine category spread from the front to the back of the right side of my brain. I even tried washing out my eye with water at one point, which didn't help either!

So there you have it. Two of the most common complaints that people make are actually horrible. Who would have thought it?

Next time: Something considerably more positive.

Listen Right,

2010-06-22T19:40:00.000+01:00

Listen right,

This is a post about my favourite way to begin a letter.

The story behind this one involves my housemate of many years, Jamil... and some berk who was living here when we moved in, called Ian. This Ian character was a terrible human being who was very much all about himself, especially when it came to money. He would avoid paying bills, buying essential household items like washing up liquid (but using whatever had been bought), and refused to chip in to the council tax. We even had to change our internet password to prevent him using it since he wouldn't pay the phone or internet bills!

His reasoning for not paying the council tax was that he shouldn't have to pay it when another three of us didn't need to at the time as we were students or unemployed. That's the law, but he was such a skinflint that he went down to the council offices and changed our housing type so that the landlord had to pay the council tax instead.

In order to pay this new bill, our rent got bumped up by £5 a week. Not a big problem on a weekly basis, but that's a extra £260 a year each, which we would rather have kept and just paid the council tax ourselves. It wasn't a problem for Ian though, he was living in the tiny spare room and only paying £25 a week even with the added £5. He was also working a lot, or playing with his expensive games consoles and iPhone. He could have easily just paid his share.

We decided we'd had enough of this berk. He said he was going to move out at the end of the year, but we couldn't really cope that long. It's very awkward being in the kitchen at the same time as someone you never want to speak to or be around.

So, Jamil wrote him a nice letter, which is presented here:

The bit about TV license was an issue because the housing type had been changed to a student flat instead of a family home. This means each person needs to get a TV license for their own room. Thankfully, we got it changed back when he moved out, but the rent is the same. I suppose it would have gone up at some point anyway, but it's always good to be able to pin the blame on an utter berk.

Signing it from "The Lads" seemed a bit cheeky of Jamil since he did it one night when wrecked and the rest of us were asleep. However, it needed to be said, and it's pretty damn funny to look back on now!

Thankfully, rather than talking to any of us, he wrote us a letter back. It isn't anywhere near as succinct, and sadly not even as hilarious. You can tell he's a berk from his bad use of words though:

It was still a long time before he moved out. It felt like forever! But thankfully we saw the last of him ages ago now. These letters are still present on his old room door, for pure comedic value. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed re-visiting them and reminding myself of a terrible time that came to pass. Life is pure bliss compared to back then!

So, the phrase "Listen right," is now regarded as a classic motivational letter opener. I can already imagine using it in many everyday situations:

Listen right, can I have a job?

Listen right, do you want to go out tonight?

Listen right, sorry for your loss.

...and so on. In the immortal words of Neil Buchanan: "Try it yourself!"

Sean Bean's Haunted Computer & The Tiny Hot Water Bottles

2010-06-21T18:31:00.000+01:00

Since I've only just started this blog, I feel like I should share some treats from before I had it. Things which you may or may not have read before (depending on how well you know me), but are still relevant as ever. One fine example of this is here for your viewing pleasure. It begins with "Today..." which was actually written on the 13th of May 2010. So not that old, news-wise. I hope you enjoy it (again)!

Today I went to donate some blood, my tenth time (I got a medal and everything)! To mark the occasion, I thought I'd share my two most memorable blood donor stories. It's kind of all in one big lump of text, but you'll hopefully follow it easily enough.

The male nurse who stuck the needle in my arm today looks like Sean Bean as Sharpe. I always expect him to make some terrible Sharpe pun when jabbing me, and I hope to one day catch him humming "Over The Hills And Far Away". Next time I go, I will try and sneak a camera in there... but he really is the spitting image of Sheffield's favourite son.

Sean Bean, male nurse

Sadly the illusion is ruined by his mackem accent, but he's always in good spirits and makes better conversation than most of the other staff. Rather than the usual "are you a student?" or "are you doing much tonight?" questions, he tends to spout some utter madness. It normally starts with him asking if whatever T-shirt I happen to have on is a band shirt, which it almost always is. On a previous occasion, he told me how much he was looking forward to going to Sonisphere or similar, to see Metallica and Linkin Park. I'm sure the real Sean Bean prefers some brutal speedcore, but as stated, this bloke just looks like him.

Anyway, I always look forward to seeing him at the church I donate in, just to see what mental things he's been doing in the last couple of months (you'll see why when you read on). He's pretty entertaining, even when he's just singing along to the cheesy 80s crap on the radio.

Today his banter was lacking, and he stuck to the usual "are you alright?" stuff. I tried to make some japery as he said he had to wait 3 minutes for some alcohol cleaning stuff to dry on my arm, by suggesting he gets a pocket fan. Sadly he took the serious route and had a minor rant about health and safety. I suppose you have to have some consideration for such matters when handling bags of blood all day.

However, I will never forget the sheer insanity of my first conversation with him, many donations ago. He was on tea duty, so he has to make conversation with anyone who's just had a good old bleed. It was a quiet time of day so I was the only person he had to talk to for a short while. After the usual t-shirt conversation (I actually wasn't wearing a band shirt for a change, I remember) he randomly asked me if I was any good with computers. I'm not an expert, but I'm typing this now... so I clearly have some knowledge. His predicament involved him not being connected to the internet, something I have experienced many times but not something I can fix. However, that wasn't what he was seeking help with... He told me that despite not being online in any way, he had received an email... from himself!

This seemed like a matter of great concern to him, as the email had contained a polite message along the lines of "Hello Sean (or whatever his real name is), How are you today?"

From this short phrase, he jumped to the conclusion that his computer must be haunted. Yes, really. So yeah, there's that story. I hope you liked it.

Sean Bean's offline computer

The other (non-Sean Bean based) blood donor tale of madness is simpler to explain, but equally ridiculous.

This one took place during one donation during the winter of... some year or other, I can't remember. A while ago anyway. One of the female nurses (Sean Bean is the only male one, I think) was doing the needle insertion and such, and complaining about the cold. It is cold in that church, pretty much all year round... but on this day it was noticeably chilly.

The nurse in question (who didn't really look like any celebrity) told me she enjoyed the job of taking the blood from people as opposed to doing the admin work or questioning people before they bleed... because the pint bags of blood were like tiny hot water bottles! At first I thought she was making a joke, but she held on to my completed donation for quite some time, and then placed it in my own hand, without asking my permission to do so. She's right, they are mighty warm... but is it not weird how she gives them all a good squeeze to warm her hands up? I can picture her offering to pack up at the end up the day, just so she can get all the bags of blood out when everyone else has gone home... to have a bit of a roll around in a big pile of them.

Warming the old fingertips

You don't have to be mad to get a job with the blood donors... but it helps!

I can't wait to see what happens next time...

So there you have it, an old post brought back from the dead. Expect plenty more of these, I initially started this blog to post a couple of reviews that people wanted to link to. Maybe I'll actually post them someday, instead of the usual random stuff. Maybe.

Vampires Can't Whistle

2010-06-21T02:14:00.000+01:00

Recently I had the pleasure of watching the 1985 comedy horror film "Fright Night". It was very silly, but reasonably enjoyable thanks to it's high levels of preposterone.

Whilst watching it, a random discussion arose... can vampires whistle? Think about it, the fangs would be a bit of a hindrance at least. Don't ask me how this question came about, there will have been some reason, lost in the mess of the day.

Eventually we came to the conclusion that no, vampires cannot whistle. Furthermore, when they attempt to do so, they just end up blowing a raspberry. This is now accepted as a fact around the house, and there tends to be at least one vampire whistle performed every day.

I did my best to find an image to go with this madness, but I couldn't find anything in the end. I suppose it's not a common topic of discussion for most people.

Everything Beyond These Walls Has Been Razed

2010-06-17T17:34:00.002+01:00

Here's a visual treat for you: a music video by "Reigns" a mysterious two-piece who create haunting background music with dark lyrical themes. Check out the video, and there's some more words below it.

Did you like it?

Reigns' album "The House On The Causeway" (featuring this track) became an instant favourite of mine late last year. Every track is an exceptional piece of music that stirs and provokes interesting reactions from the first listen, but further plays unlock the bizarre content within the lyrics. I have vivid images in my mind for each and every song, something I don't always find with music. I tend to find that specific music reminds me of a time or a place where I was when I first heard it, or where it was prominent in my life... but this is something very different. I don't have that kind of relationship with this album, instead I feel like I know places and people within the music itself. Apologies if that's a bit "deep" for you, but give it a go and see if you feel the same. The album was released on the excellent Monotreme records (home to many a great musician and band), check them out here:

http://www.monotremerecords.com

The visuals in this particular video (not the same as the ones in my mind, by the way) are created by the incredibly talented Phlegm, one of my favourite artists. He creates comics with little point, illustrations for a lot of my favourite bands (particularly The Mirimar Disaster, who sadly called it a day in early 2009), various graffiti projects, and is currently working on a large book of stuff. I don't really know what's going to be in this book, but I've put my name down to get a hold of one, no matter the cost. An all-round hero of illustration as far as I'm concerned, and I'm glad his art has been used for a video by yet another band I enjoy so much. Check out his work here:

http://www.phlegmcomics.com

Finally, all the visuals and music were combined by Medlo, also known as The Media Lounge. Once again, I heavily admire the work carried out by this lot... A selection of incredible music videos and live background visuals for the likes of 65daysofstatic, The Low Lows, Aaron Stout (featuring more Phlegm design), Digitonal and King Creosote, amongst many others. They've also made many short films and behind-the-scenes type extras for various projects including 28 Weeks Later and Four Lions. As if that wasn't enough, they've also done some crazy full length feature film remix projects, including 'Nam 2, a mash-up of various Vietnam war films, and a remix and re-score (by Digitonal) of The Shining! Busy chaps, huh? I've managed to pick up 3 DVDs by them at 65daysofstatic gigs, and all them get regular watches.

http://www.medlo.net

Crabbed Into Sunlight

2010-06-16T16:49:00.002+01:00

Hello, whoever you are.

You are reading the inane ramblings of Dr Jonas Christ, a semi-fictitious character who you may have just imagined. Unlucky.

The title of this very blog, Crabbed Into Sunlight stems from the age-old tradition of the word replacement game. You will have all played it, it's the one where you swap a word from a film title / band name / book title / TV series name / etc. for a word of your choosing. This game usually revolves around profanities and/or genitalia.

But for me, it's all about the crabs. What kind of crabs, you ask? The giant, bloodthirsty, man-eating menace type of crab, as documented by the world champion pipe-smoker, Guy N. Smith.

What a hero of our times this man is. Although, I disagree with him on one point: crabs, giant and menacing or otherwise, do NOT have lips! Glowing red eyes, fine. An impenetrable carapace, fine. A hatred for mankind, fine. Lips? No.

Crabbed Into Sunlight is a fine example of a crab replacement band name, originally based on the enjoyable sounds of Dragged Into Sunlight. I expect you know how the game works now, if you didn't already. Dragged Into Sunlight don't like to face the crowd they play to, use a lot of smoke machines and strobes, and their stage set-up features a trident of candles and a big ol' skull. See for yourself:

http://www.myspace.com/draggedintosunlight

The idea of being crabbed into sunlight appeals to me greatly, I mean being dragged is one thing... but the crabs I enjoy wouldn't be very careful about the task in hand, and a limb or two may get severed in the process. The hatred for mankind found with all crabs is also relevant, as Dragged Into Sunlight have an album titled... well, Hatred For Mankind. This all ties together very well indeed, doesn't it?

I'm using this name for blogging for a number of reasons. Mainly, I couldn't think of anything better at the time. I do have a long list of alternative crab-based things, many of which I'll no doubt end up posting about. It's also very unspecific in it's own completely nonsensical way... I have a few ideas of things to write about here, and it made sense to pick a name which doesn't relate to any of them all that much. Plus, it's so damn catchy and swish!

I used to post gig reviews, but replacing part of each band name with the word "cake", but that lost it's charm. Crabs are therefore better than cake. Combining the two is not recommended.

So, that's about it for this introduction bit. Now for some real posts...