2010 in Music - Visual

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 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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!