Well to me anyway… Todays post consists of a two tracks from two bands that I know absolutely nothing about, but have stumbled across in my various travels. At this stage I plan to acquire more knowledge and obtain some of their albums but this is what we have for the time being. Both these entries have an indie bent but likenesses differ pretty significantly.
I’ve listened to a few of their tracks since first hearing them at work. This track is one of my favorites and so far I’ve been able to listen to it over and over. I’d compare them to Athlete or Snow Patrol but they defintatley have their own unique flavour. I can’t seem to get enough of the marching rhythm they’ve employed for this track.
Another amazing wee gem, and suprisingly I discovered this track from playing Saints Row 2 for PS3. I can’t think of exactly who these guys remind me of, but they have some good friends in Bloc Party and Incubus. Strange combo I know, but the guitar definitely smacks of Mike Einziger’s style. This one has a truly addictive quality to it, which has only left me wanting more.
Which is what I’ve been doing while I listen to my fun music pick of the week, Los Campesinos!. If you’ve not heard of them, they are this ridiculously fun, seven piece, indie pop band from Cardiff, Wales. They play the kind of music which is best served live to maximize the bopping potential. Yes, bopping, everyone does it (those who don’t wish that they did but instead must find solace within their empty empty souls).
I’ve been listening to them alot via Youtube channels at work and deicided to pick up an album tonight, so I got their first one Hold On Now, Youngster which is currently banging along to this post. To sum up it up as succinctly as possible; it’s racy, bangy, charming, happy (in style, not necessarily in the individual song content) and a little bizarre. I don’t think I’ve had as much fun with the lyrics of a song while listening to genuinely great music at the same time.
Anyway, the album is proving a win at the moment. Why don’t you check out some of their tracks on Youtube, their videos tend to mirror their style incredibly well:
Well; I typed out a big long blog review about The National which I was quite proud of, but then I managed to delete the entire thing. Which is the perfect icing to the cake considering I was having a pretty crappy day and was wondering around this evening with the overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t creating anything at all of lasting worth.
Thanks to a few fast and clumsy fingers, I still have that feeling. And because I put heaps of thought and time into gathering links and providing some interesting insights, you’re not going to get anything else out of me tonight.
I think at this point it’s best to take a look and see if anything positive has come out of today.
I think I’ve mastered the art of making delicious guacamole.
It’s sad, that’s about the only thing I’ve felt particularly proud of all day except for my lost post.
So the last week has seen an upheaval of my normal weekly routines, this is because I’ve moved into a new place. As of Friday night passed, Myself and Conan are installed in Sefton St, Wadestown. Some of you may know the place as Luke and Sam’s old Wellington flat, so those people will know where to find us.
It’s been busy trying to get everything organised that we will need to live (the problem with previously living in a flat which was fully stocked), but it’s all worked out in the end and we even promptly had internet and power sorted. My older brother was a huge help with the moving aspect of things on Friday, lending his driving skills to our cause. My mum helped out a whole bunch on Saturday by taking me around town to pick up the majority of the things necessary to have a working kitchen.
I still need to get hold of a heater and laundry hamper; for the flat we still need to get hold of dehumidifier and some seating for the lounge area. Currently our lounge consists of a giant pillow, and a not so giant pillow. Otherwise, it’s looking good at the moment.
So once again you need to suffer through my excuses for not giving you a music update (to be fair, the 48 hour Film Festival stole an entire weekend too!). In my next entry I’m going to be talking about an old favourite, Snow Patrol and a band that I’m currently digging, The National. Stay tuned for that in the not too distant future….
Over the recent months I’ve become somewhat of a music whore. I’ve been finding it really rewarding just to expose myself to a variety of different bands on the off chance that I might like what I hear. It’s been pretty successful and I’ve liked a lot of what I’ve heard so far.
We all have our absolute favorite of bands, the kind of obsession where any of the following apply: We must collect their entire musical catalogue, see them live whenever it’s at all practical, watch TV shows or rubbish movies just to see one of their tracks used and then discuss whether or not it was used appropriately, constantly talk about how awesome they are to all your friends (not noticing them rolling their eyes in unison).
I feel this way about a couple of bands, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to answer the question of ‘what music/bands do you like?’ in anything less then an essay. I think this is a good thing, a really good thing. I’ve always considered that having a very diverse range of interests make you a much more interesting person. It also feels good to know that what you are currently listening to has been informed by your own investigation into awesome music, or otherwise having received recommendations from alternate sources to whatever happens to be in the top 10 charts.
I keep meaning to post more often, but that doesn’t always pan out. From this point I’m going to post at least once a week with my favorite album for the week as well as one of my long standing favorites. So if you are looking for something awesome to listen to, check back here on occasion for some inspiration.
You could also be hip and develop your own musical tastes by killing some time at Last.fm (or other such sites). Alternatively you could check out this fun little site that creates maps of similar music: Tuneglue. Just enter in a band you like and then you can expand it to show a web of 5 or 6 similar artists. Crikes! You say that you already know one of the similar artists in the web?! Expand that to show even more links to new bands!
Hardly wishing to neglect my blog, it just seems as though there has been a lot going on or I have otherwise not been motivated to talk about all the interesting things I want to report.
But here I am, I find myself with some time to address this issue.
As most of you who know me and have heard me talk about music, you will likely be aware that I have quite the obsession with Bloc Party. I would go as far as to say that they are my favorite band and have been so for quite sometime. For the longest time I’ve thought that I had a rather complete collection of all the tracks that they had released, though today I find that this is far from the case. I was looking around Itunes today and realised the extent to which Bloc Party songs have been remixed. I have quite a few amazing remixes of what are already fantastic songs, but I stumbled across a whole bunch I’d never heard and instantly loved.
I find that when you have a music obsession like the one I do, you want to collect everything you can. Part of it is so you can compare the extent of your fandom to other fans.The other part of it is that you adore everything that said band has ever released (regardless of it’s quality) which also means that any new song you can get is the new thing you can thrash as you’ve already well-thrashed everything you’ve got.
Recently my Sassie pointed me to the music blog Tympanogram. I’m glad I came across these guys as they seem to have some similar preferences to my own and I suspect it’s going to be another successful way for me to expand on my musical tastes. Recently one of the authors wrote an entry on some Bloc Party rarities which included a couple of available files. I had already accumulated these tracks through various means, but I left a comment mentioning the fact that I had not been able to find the track Cavaliers and Roundheads. In response to myself and another commenter, I now have the trackCavaliers and Roundheads so a big shout out to Tympanogram, thanks dudes.
I know now that I have a lot of collecting to do, which is a good thing, as it still means there is plenty more for me to experience. As a parting note for this entry, I recently learned that the music video for one of the latest Bloc Party singles One Month Off is a homage to the early stop-motion nursery rhyme projects of Ray Harryhausen.
I will provide you with some links to check these out yourself: Mother Goose Stories. Now compare this to Bloc Party’s One Month Off. Very cool.
Today it was quite difficult to get back into the swing of work. Usually I’m fine on a Monday, but I wasn’t quite with it today. I guess the last couple of weekends have been without a great deal of rest, not really allowing for me to catch up on anything resembling reasonable amounts sleep. I didn’t sleep very well the Friday night just passed and I had to get up before 7:00am for the second consectuitve Sunday in a row. I’ve had shooting for the Winding City Project these last two Sundays. Yesterday was especially trying as it was a lot of concentration and having to keep your energy up for the better part of 10 hours. Not an easy task by anyone’s standards.
I’ve had an interesting experience on the project so far. Intially I had anticipated playing the otherworldly, and more enigmatic Kaellos. However, it became appparent that the project was without two of the major characters, so I took on the role of the slightly more mundane Bram. There were a couple reasons why I favoured the Kaellos character over Bram:
Kaellos is a smaller part and so I felt I would be more confident in being able to achieve what was demanded of me. I also didn’t really have a very clear idea of what Bram was about as he is far more complex and a lot harder to fully come to grips with. I was also concerned about whether I would even be able to faithfully play a character that has a gay romantic plotline.
The primary reason I took on the Bram character was that there was no one else to do it by the time it was planned to get shooting underway. I mean the opportunity to get back into acting would never be dismissed, so it wasn’t like I did it reluctantly.
After 3 relatively successful full days of filming, I’m really glad I have had the challenge of playing Bram. It took a while to even get comfortable with the idea of playing this role, let alone trying to come to grips with portraying a character who, if attempting to sum up briefly, could be described as uncertain. I don’t want to talk about it too much about it for fear of revealing too much about how events and the plot unfolds, suffice to say it’s not been an easy character to try and bring to life.
Which is why I guess it’s been rewarding. I’ve been out of my comfort zone for three whole days and it wasn’t till the end of the Sunday just passed that I actually feel like I’ve achieved something rewarding. We’ve still got a quite a bit to get in the can but it feels like, at least for me anyway, that the really hard yards are over. I’m looking forward to the remaining shots that I have to shoot and trying to be just that little bit more anamated and interesting each time.
Just wanted to quickly say, the green screen set was really awesome, I liked watching myself and Elliot move around in front of it. Mainly because what you get on camera looks nothing like what you are experiencing standing in the middle of an apartment lounge (where the screen was set up).
Obviously, I will have more to report on the project in coming posts, what with all the shooting and rehearsals being full of fun, memorable moments.
So I found out recently that I wasn’t considered for a role in the production of Midsummer Night’s Dream that I auditioned for. It’s not entirely unexpected, I was by no means amazingly good and their were lots of people auditioning so they could easily fill the roles.
The only reason it bothers me is that I wasn’t even considered for a call back. But that’s all one, I guess I feel this way because I actually felt good about the initial audition for a change. Still, it’s not really about whether you can do it, or how well, it’s about whether you’ve got the right look and feel for the director putting the show together.
The producer rang me up this week and asked me if I wanted to be involved in any other capacity on the show, as I had indicated that I had other skills which might be of use. She wanted to put me in touch with the costume designer to work with in a creative capacity. I’m not sure of a name, but I was told that she has previously worked with the Royal New Zealand Ballet, so it sounds like they’ve got someone with experience on board.
It’s by no means an immediate commitment, so I’ve got some time to consider whether this is the kind of thing for me. I’ve done a bunch of costume design previously and have otherwise been encouraged by directors of shows I’ve been in, telling me (where I’ve taken it upon myself to assist in costuming) that I have an eye for detail.
It seems as though there have been a lot of events and various things that have happened since I’ve posted last, though I’ve not mentioned any of it on here. So I will cover various things that I’ve meant to write about in slightly less detail.
After the Star Wars game that I mentioned in my previous post, Giffy and an entourage of friends came down and picked me up to take me up to Waiterere. I stayed over the night and enjoyed the small amount of time that I had with my friends and my Sassa. The highlight for me was swimming in the ocean for the first time this summer. It was kinda overcast when we went out, but thankfully I was peer pressured into it. I love ocean swimming, but mostly only when the beaches are unpopulated by other people, except friends. So while I was a bit skeptical at first, the crashing waves and the presence of friends made it really fun.
I also celebrated my first ever Valentines this year, which turned out to be a relaxing and very lovely affair. In every previous year, I’ve been single come valentines day, so it was a real novelty for me. I’ve never really had anything against the occasion like many do, generally I didn’t even acknowledge it as it’s not really an event that single people get much out of. I mean sure, you can spend time with friends, give a valentine to a secret crush etc, but ultimately the kind of expressions and feelings associated with the day are most rewarding for those in an existing relationship.
I enjoyed being able to do a whole lot of little things to treat my special lady. And not big surprises all at once, but things that would reveal themselves over the course of the day. I also received some very sweet presents too and as I had no prior engagements that weekend, it was nice to be able to relax. It was the same weekend where Jenni linked to a page on http://www.asofterworld.com, which is the first time I’d come across it and I spent a couple of hours browsing through all the old posts. There’s something about the images that makes me really fond of it, but I can’t put my finger on what exactly at the moment.
I’ve auditioned for Stagecraft’s upcoming production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s easily my second favourite of Shakespeare’s comedies, after Twelfth Night, so I thought it would be fun to put my monkey back in the box that is stage acting and see what happens. It turned out that the Director was running group audition sessions which meant that I actually had *fun* at an audition! Usually auditions are tedious things where you need to prepare a random monologue and perform it cold in front of a scrutinising panel maybe consisting of director, producer and stage manager etc. This archaic form of auditioning is not really conducive to finding people who are best suited for a particular role, so I’m glad it was different.
I was a bit rusty at first and the passgaes chosen were not cut in any form, meaning they were fairly convoluted in places. I still had a lot of fun, especially since Grant and Regan were auditioning at the same time as me. Apparently they have 80 or so people lined up to audition for the show, so the director indicated that no one is guaranteed a role. This was also quite daunting as our audition group were talented, animated and as a whole, competent stage actors. That being said, there is still some hope for me getting role, as only about 20 of the 80 people auditioning were male, which means I’ve got better odds for being offered a role
We’re going to be trucking through the remaining filming of Winding City, starting this Sunday. I’m a bit nervous about the whole thing and while the projects’ been pretty cool, I’m looking forward to these first episodes being over and done with. The reason being is that we started in November when I liked my hair, but since then I’ve wanted to get rid of this long, annoying, and frankly unattractive do for a long time. I was a bit miffed that all 4 episodes of the show have been written as occurring on the same night, so I need to wait till all the filming is complete before I cut it off :/
Finally, here’s the intense awesomeness that is White Lion (maybe they are just called Lion?) doing the theme for the original Transformers movie. It’s a must see and must hear for it’s amazing hair metal-ness:
