Five Dials giveaway

I won this morbidly titled volume in a Five Dials competition. The esteemed literary mag was asking 'What happens when we die?' on their facebook page. Having a spare moment to dash off an answer I responded with 'Our status updates freeze'. I should have said 'Our status updates become a lie', which at least rhymes with the question.

Anyway, I now have this book to add to the pile. I think it might have some good quotes from Woody Allen and ACDC, who are my twin informers on all important matters.

Night shots

We took the camera into the garden during Earth hour to photograph the stars. However, there wasn't much difference to be seen, so we ended up posing for shots with candles.






The dimness of the candles meant we had to use a long exposure and Biggy kept trying to struggle free, hence his representation here as an amorphous black blur.

'It's lights out for this lightweight'

It's Earth Hour at 8:30 tonight so I'll be killing the lights, getting some candles out and playing poker with Lynda or something. It's surprisingly difficult to think of something to do. I normally sleep in these circumstances.

Anyway, I wish we could get some better streetlamps that didn't fire their horrible sodium glare up into the heavens. It would be nice to see some stars now and again, rather than the unearthly hell-blaze of an Asda or Morrisons.

Follow @darkskies2010 on Twitter and visit earthhour.org for more info.

Sutra

We went to see Anthony Gormley's Sutra at Sadler's Wells. The dance featured Shaolin monks back-flipping and staff-fighting around 30 or so pine boxes, which were symbolically similar to coffins, and were controlled by a small boy monk who had an equivalent set of wooden blocks. I think the themes were something to do with death, isolation, a dialogue between East & West, reanimation, and kung fu! Always a winner.

Or you and your homies will be lying in chalk

Lynda did this chalk drawing of someone dressed like Grace Kelly the other night. It's amazing, but unfortunately I've been reading a few spooky tales of late and it's so good it's beginning to freak me out.

Distant Signal live photos

There was a photographer at our recent Actress & Bishop gig. Johnty aka The Cold Light of Day took a load of fantastic DS photos, and of the other bands playing that night. It's worth checking out his facebook, or heading over to the DS photo page to see his work. Here's a taster:

We're gonna get cooked tonight

Off the booze for a few days. This stuff makes me sneeze.

Why? and Josiah at Heaven

Why? were incredible at Heaven on Tuesday. Yoni Wolf ditched his floor tom and snare for a huge semi-circle in which to strut around like a prize-fighting peacock that's had half its feathers torn out but still has more than enough snarl to take your eye out. The nasty kind. He gave us some shaky looking but well-timed kung fu kicks also. The show was a lot more physical than when I saw them last year.


Josiah's drumming was slapdash syncopation at its best, pure groove. And the man played xylophone at the same time.


Here's Josiah playing an acoustic set as the first man on. Lynda and Dan didn't like this but I thought it was brilliant. He played the bass and a heavily trinketed hi hat whilst playing guitar and put some nice hammer-ons in the mix.

The best bit was when he played a version of Mississippi John Hurt's 'Let the mermaids flirt with me', which has some beautiful lyrics. Here are the guitar chords, check the song out:

C        G      C       F               C
Blues all on the ocean, blues all in the air;
F                  C          D                G
Can't stay here no longer, I have no steamship fare.
   C        G         C             F               C
When my earthly trials are over, cast my body out in the sea;
F                C                    G                  C
Save on the undertaker's bill - let the mermaids flirt with me.


C       G          C               F                 C
I do not work for pleasure; earthly peace I'll see no more;
F             C                 D                     G
The only reason I work at all is to drive the wolf from my door.
   C        G         C             F               C
When my earthly trials are over, cast my body out in the sea;
F                C                    G                  C
Save on the undertaker's bill - let the mermaids flirt with me.

Some of the lyrics are similar to one of my favourite Fiery Furnaces track, 'Rub Alcohol Blues'. Makes me want to listen more to some of the ol' timers.


You can't see very well here, but this was the somewhat androgynous Berlin outfit I Might Be Wrong. They had some slinky guitar parts and crooked beatz. Dan experienced no end of bewilderment at the strange, out of sync rocking of the guitarists, which looked a bit gawky and could possibly be misconstrued as a sexual act. As a grand finale they leant against each other's foreheads and jammed home. 'I've seen it all now', quoth the man.


Another gang of Berliners, Popular Damage. Lynda loved these guys; Dan and I weren't so sure. Arpeggiated keyboards and samples, some pretty cool drumming. It would possibly be great on a different evening, such as a house party in Berlin. They may be so far ahead of things they've gone through eight early nineties revivals and come back with the defining sound of The New Era. Or they might just be a bit rave.

distantsignal.co.uk

The DS website has been revamped. Head to distantsignal.co.uk for updates on writing and recording, gig news, photos and free mp3 downloads.

Memory Japes

We went to the Porterhouse yesterday afternoon with Mike, Nick and Dan to watch the Six Nations rugby. Unfortunately, the only TV visible from our table had dark horizontal lines moving slowly across it, so it constantly looked as though the players were running into mist, or an independence day-like saucer was hovering over the ground. Much beer was drunk, and many japes had, most notably at the size of Lawrence Dallaglio's hands which were the exact size and shape of the facehuggers from Alien. Chilling.

Dan and I then hot-footed it over to Cargo in Shoreditch to watch the Memory Tapes gig, more than a little worse for wear. We didn't have tickets, but Kate had one spare and we were hoping to pick up another from a scalp. But there were no scalps. We noticed that everyone who had used their ticket to get into the gig area had an 'e' drawn on their hands in black marker.



Kate got a black biro and drew the requisite 'e' on my hand in the garden, which was where we saw this photoautomat (snapped especially for Helen. These things are everywhere in Berlin and I think she must have spent 200 Euros in them. By the way, these photos look blurry but they are in fact much sharper than my vision was at this point). Needless to say, our ruse worked, and I don't think the doorman would have had any way of knowing our game unless the biro ink had smudged.

The gig itself was pretty good, although beer was four pounds for a can, which looking back on it was probably a blessing in disguise. I'd never heard the Memory Tapes before, but I was glad to have stolen in. Unfortunately, our sobriety and composure deteriorated further and we had to make for the last tube, wherein we made paper aeroplanes and gave them to our fellow passengers. On exiting the tube, an exasperated TFL worker told me he had lost his faith in humanity because my Oyster card couldn't be read because it was behind a wad of receipts and train tickets. We did our best to restore his faith by promptly heading to the nearest Dixy chicken shack and then on to Dan's to play Guitar Hero on easy, extremely badly with another completely unnecessary can of beer.

Distant Signal EP - FREE DOWNLOAD

The Air on the Radio EP is now available for free download from Bandcamp. If you haven't heard Distant Signal yet, it's the Birmingham-based band I play guitar in. We peddle a medley of riff-based rock that sounds like the soundtrack to Doom II at times.

The thinking behind this is basically that we want as many people to hear our music as possible, and hopefully get a kick out of it. You can help us a great deal by sharing the link with your friends and playing them the tracks.



The download requires your email address so we can keep you posted about gigs and new releases. We won’t spam you (there's no gigs until September when Jon gets back from the Marines in any case), we won’t give your details to anyone, and you can unsubscribe whenever you want.

Enjoy!

Monkey Island 2: Special Edition!

It was always on the cards after the remake of The Secret of Monkey Island. Lucasarts announced today that a special edition of LeChuck's Revenge is on its way. Go here for the official site. I love that these classic games are getting a second airing, and of course, you can still cut back to original graphics for that nostalgia kick.

One thing fans of the originals will notice is how, well... noble Guybrush Threepwood looks now. Like an Edwardian gent. I think I preferred his sheepish slouch. I can't wait to make Lynda play through this and force her to enjoy every second for my vicarious benefit!

If you've still got time for a little more Monkey, check out these Monkey Island movie concept art pics taken from Steve Purcell's blog. He was the guy who produced this great cover art of yore:



Does this mean there'll be a Monkey movie? I think it was probably a daydream and a bit of doodling. I'd rather have a book, or another game but this time without overdoing the anachronisms as far as MI4 did. That's my two pieces o' eight.


Who are these spooky dudes...?

Ed and Maddie walk the country

Ed and his Springer Spaniel, Maddie, are walking from John o' Groats to Lands End in support of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. It will take 40 days to complete the walk, and the duo will cover somewhere in the region of 1,100 miles, walking 20 to 30 miles a day. I'm sure they'll see some stunning sights along the way, though it will be a very arduous journey. Please give generously, if you can, to support Ed and Maddie, and their noble cause.

Siderophobia II

Seeing that it was an exceptionally clear night, I took the camera out into the back garden. I had to wait about a minute for each shot to be exposed and saved. Biggy clattered into the tripod during one minute-long exposure which wrote that one off. Some of the stars are a little blurry when you look closely. I think that may be due to the earth's rotation.

The bright one in the middle is mars

It was strange listening to all the suburban night sounds, like kettles boiling, bins being taken out, whilst waiting for light to finally arrive at my lens from millions of light years away.

Okay so it's not exactly the Hubble deep field, but I turned the sensitivity up high on this one, and it brought out a lot of stars that were invisible to the naked eye.

Siderophobia

We played in The Queen's Arms pub quiz and won last night. One of the questions was to guess what 'siderophobia' meant. Jack accurately proposed that it was the fear of stars. As Wikipedia explains:

A sidereal day is approximately 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds (23.93447 hours or 0.99726957 SI days), corresponding to the time it takes for the Earth to complete one rotation relative to the vernal equinox.

Fair enough, but I thought it a strange thing to be afraid of... until I looked out my window just now at the night. Does no one else find it terrifying that we're spinning around on a lump of rock just about large enough to make itself spherical in an impartial vacuum where the lights keep going out with arguably no instructions except those we've cobbled together ourselves, passing the time however best we can? Maybe it's not so ridiculous to be afraid of the stars.

At least the multiverse might be measurable.