Golden The Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh!

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!

2010 in Music - Releases

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!

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.

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.

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?

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!

Everything Beyond These Walls Has Been Razed

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

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...