David Peach

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  • Priest by Priest

    Priest by Priest

    I’ve been on a bit of an Electronica / Synth-Pop binge recently, and Priest’s debut L.P, eponymously-titled, fits that habit like a glove.

    Priest, formally X priest X, is a pseudonym of singer Madeline Priest and producer David Kazyk. Their songs feel like glorious walls of electronic sound.

    I think I’m right in saying that this could be categorized as Dream-Pop – it creates a certain mood and atmosphere with walls of layered synthesizers and other such instruments throughout the album. When I say Dream-Pop, you may start imagining ethereal soundscapes with no real punch. Well get that thought out of your head right now – just get it out.

    The beats here are solid. There’s nothing mad going on with the beats – no surprise, off-beat time signatures – but this album is all about the atmosphere it’s creating. These beats give a solid drive for travellingthrough that atmosphere.

    Electronic Upbeat Melancholy*

    *Term Coined.

    The lyrics and singing style feel melancholic, but the layered background and driving beat give the overall sound an upbeat and positive feeling. I’m not of the belief that all music needs to be happy happy joy joy – in fact I love a bit of sad music now and again – this is simply the impression I get when listening to Priest’s album.

    Madeline sings kind of softly over the deep electro-geography of the opening song, “The Game”. Not soft as in weak. It’s soft as in using her voice as another layer within the song. With other songs, like “Heartbeats” and “Waiting For The End To Come”, her voice belts out with gusto. It’s nice to hear an artist who can give it some whelly, but only when it’s needed.

    Even though I’ve only been listening to this album for about a month or so, it already feels like an old friend. It’s one of my current go-to albums to listen to while I’m coding (building websites).

    At home in the 80s

    This album feels like it would be at home equally in the 80s as it is now.

    In fact one of my favourite songs from the album – “Waiting For The End To Come” – always brings up an image in my mind of two 80s kids dancing at some nondescript disco as the closing credits start on some John Hughes film. Think Molly Ringwald and Jon Cryer from Pretty in Pink.

    The end of our sermon

    You should now head off and take 40 minutes or so to listen to this modern 80s electro classic. You wont be disappointed. I myself am already looking forward to Priest’s next album. I’m really interested in seeing how the sound will progress with future releases.

    Thanks for taking the time to read this review.

  • On writing my album reviews

    Three weeks ago I launched a new website side-project.

    This was a purely creative outlet for me, doing something I’ve wanted to do for a while — write album reviews.

    Well, they’re not specifically reviews; more like recommendations. When I hear albums I want to share with people, I now try to write a little piece about it.

    At the time of writing this, I have not long finished the third album — Priest’s eponymous debut. But I am already starting to worry that I’ll run out of ways to describe these albums.

    I know that they are all different and I know the thoughts I want to get across to readers, but I’m just worried that I wont do these artists I love listening to justice.

    I’m going to continue this in the same vein as the 100 days project, except I’m going to publish one every week on a Tuesday evening. I just know that if I tried to do one a day the writing would be even worse and I’d probably fall behind and end up not actually doing any.

    So a realistic goal like once a week should be manageable. You can see the reviews I’ve got scheduled on the coming soon page. Cheers, Dave.

  • Honeymoon by Lana Del Rey

    Honeymoon by Lana Del Rey

    From the moment I first heard her previous album, “Ultraviolence”, I was hooked. Honeymoon then became my most anticipated album of 2015.

    And I was not disappointed.

    From the moment the first strings on the title song began, I could feel that this was going to be another unforgettable dive into the cinematic, haunting world of Lana Del Rey’s music. In fact I recommend listening to this album for the first time in total darkness on your own if you can.

    This isn’t required, but it really helped me to absorb the music as much as possible.

    Melancholy

    The melancholy of her previous album is still present but feels more upbeat this time around. You can hear this notably on the album’s first single, “High by the beach”.

    Not that melancholy is a bad thing at all – some of my favourite music is just that – what I’m trying to get at is that her unique sound is still there, but she’s taking it into new places.

    She’s an artist who isn’t afraid to push her voice to the front and centre – often making her sound vulnerable and alone.

    This is demonstrated perfectly in “Terrance Loves You”. This is minimally backed through the opening verses, and builds to a soaring chorus, still managing to stay somehow minimal – just herself, piano and strings.

    Well I lost myself when I lost you
    But I still got jazz when I’ve got the blues
    I lost myself and I lost you too
    And I still get trashed, honey, when I hear your tunes

    From “Terrance Loves You”, Track 3.

    The sound of the album

    She often harmonizes with herself backed by minimal, reverbed instruments – pianos and light strings. This helps create that unique world I mentioned earlier: haunting; cinematic. Saying that however there are plenty of uses of light drum beats in this album – often when building to the climax of a song, never just for the sake of having a drum beat.

    The melodies throughout this album are gorgeous too. The pan pipe sounding intro to Salvatore is a great, hypnotic example of this, which she replicates vocally for the chorus.

    Ah-ah-ah-ah, Ah-ah-ah-ah, Cacciatore.
    Ah-ah-ah-ah, Ah-ah-ah-ah, Limousines.
    Ah-ah-ah-ah, Ah-ah-ah-ah, Ciao Amore.
    Ah-ah-ah-ah, Ah-ah-ah-ah, Soft ice cream.

    From “Salvatore”, Track 10.

    My favourite song on the album would probably have to be 24. It’s a crowning achievement on a great album, which show’s off something that I’ve been saying for a while – if she wanted to, she could write one hell of a bond song.

    In fact Spectre has recently been released – the 24th bond film. Coincidence? Or is this a cheeky wink from Miss Grant? I’d like to think the latter.

    In Conclusion

    If you’ve never listened to a Lana Del Rey album before, this is as good as any to start with. My personal favourite of hers overall is probably still “Ultraviolence”, but this album also has a couple of my favourite songs of hers.

    If you have heard her previous albums and are yet to listen to this one, wait no longer. You wont be disappointed.

    What are your favourite songs of Lana’s? Let me know in the comments below.

  • Bento box at Mount Fuji

    First time trying octopus balls too. Very nice.

  • Inner critics and just getting on with it

    I have just written this post and then lost it without saving. I am annoyed. That said, I’ll try and rewrite without rushing too much.

    I’m always tinkering around with this website. As a result I tend to sometimes get bored with it. I feel the design just looks dull and uninspired, and find that my backend could be a lot cleaner… phrasing. I then feel that my website needs to be improved – and as a result rebuilt.

    This is the inner critic talking.

    You know that guy/gal right? They are the one that sits back doing naff-all and only pipes up to say something when you’ve created something, or are thinking of doing so, and says “That’s shit – what are you thinking?”. The inner critic is a fecking wonker (intentional fake swearing) and needs to be put down.

    Something I listened to last week really hit home with me about this. On this episode of The Web Ahead podcast, Jen Simmons talked with Jeremy Keith about understanding the web. I am always inspired when hearing Jeremy talk about the web and building for it

    This is when the site never gets launched because it’s never quite good enough. The number of designers who haven’t launched because it doesn’t look quite right, or the number of developers because they haven’t finished writing their own CMS.

    Jeremy Keith on The Web Ahead episode #110

    In this episode He and Jen were talking about how people – in general – are so used to publishing on the web through a service – or gatekeeper as they called it. Also they mentioned about people’s habit of self-censoring and imposing their own restrictions.

    It was after listening to this that I realised that my own reasons for thinking I needed to rebuild my site were all self-imposed reasons and that it was stopping me from actually writing stuff. I have been concentrating too much on the tools of publishing instead of actually just publishing.

    So this entry is a way for me to try and break that habit. Let’s see how long I can keep it up for… phrasing.

  • Swan cake

  • Kacey Musgraves at the Birmingham Institute

    One of the best concerts I’ve been to.

    Although the wait in the queue outside lasted about half an hour, we were soon inside the small-modest sized venue, heating up with the ever-growing crowd and singing along to Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).

    The opening band, Sugar & The High Lows, were pretty good. They soon got the crowd revved up and ready for Kacey and band for their opener: Pageant Material.

    Kacey and her band were spot on – one of the tightest performances I’ve heard live. And her voice was just as perfect as it sounds on her albums. The songs weren’t precisely the same as on the albums – and that’s a good thing. The band’s improvisations – and indeed the covers they did – were performed with style.

    As a note to self I must rememeber to take plently of water and not wear my coat inside again – by the end of the night I was dripping. I look forward to seeing them again on the next tour.

  • What Is The IndieWeb And Why We Need It

    Facebook, Twitter, Google plus – all places that help you to publish easily – and for free – on the web.

    But guess what, the web is already free – or at least it should be – and many people’s only notion of publishing on the web is through one of these, or other, third party silos. It doesn’t have to be this way.

    And it shouldn’t be this way.

    Where are we now?

    In the beginning there was the web. This completely revolutionised publishing and gave everyone a chance to have their voice heard. 25 years on and that is still the case. Only now we have these monolithic silos that have made publishing even easier, and for free (zero cost).

    The problem with free though, is that it comes at a price. All of these companies that offer you the opportunity to publish and get your thoughts out there, are doing so to serve their real customers – their partners and investors. You see, every piece of information you pass into these silos, whether knowingly or not, is used to help profile you and your friends. This profiling and tracking goes on to help make you more susceptible to targetted advertising – the core business model of most modern-day tech “startups”.

    Imagine a world where everyone’s thoughts and opinions are only published through one of the current “Ministries of Truth”, where the publisher only shows what it wants to show; hiding what it wants to hide as it “currates your timeline”.

    We desperately need many more independent avenues of information and points of view from people, not corporations, if we are ever going to get a chance at a more free on open world online.

    The Indieweb

    The Indieweb is an initiative; a community, with the aim of publishing on ones own website and taking back control over the content that they publish.

    Everyone who has access to the web has the potential – and it’s not as hard as it may seem – to get started publishing with you in control. The Indieweb isn’t about jumping through hoops to publish in a particular way either – the whole point is to do it your way and under your terms.

    You should be able to publish and present your content in exactly the way that you want to. This post is about introducing you to the concept of the Indieweb – to the concept of your being in control of your own writing and publishing.

    To get started on your path to online writing freedom, head over to the Indieweb site now for advice.

  • Implementing Jams

    Jams were a type of content popularized by the website This is my jam.

    This is my jam has since gone into read-only archive mode. This is such a great way of closing a website — especially one whose content is mostly community-created.

    I started to use the site at the end of last year to start saving songs that stood out to me at a particular time.

    Thanks to This is my jam for making me an archive of my own. This means I haven’t lost all of my data with them just because they have closed doors.

    I still love the idea of saving individual “jams” though, so I have implemented it on my own site as of today. I have also pulled my old jams into my site. Going forwards I look forward to documenting any new and/or forgotten gems that I hear in the future. They will all be found on my Jams page.

  • Worship the Satsuma

    So this was happening on my desk this morning

  • On rethinking my database structure

    I’ve been using Laravel for my personal website for about eight months now and haven’t looked back since.

    This huge advantage to my rebuilding it in that way — from its original WordPress foundations — was that I had a crash course in using Laravel as well as learning some best practices as well.

    Now that I have been using my site daily for all this time, I have found places where it has got messy — unavoidable through the learning experience — as well as places where I want to refine how I publish.

    At the moment I am using what are called explicit post types. Meaning that I manually choose which post type a particular post belongs to before publishing — picking the appropriate create form to publish from.

    However I have been thinking more and more about implicit post types — post types whose contents define what sort of post it is. Going the way of implicit may also see me abolishing the need for post-type-specific areas of my site.

    I could still do this to some degree I suppose. e.g. If a post doesn’t have a title, it’s a note; If it has a location, it’s a checkin; etc.

    The only way to see how this is going to go is to build it and actually publish with it for a while, I guess.

    Update 8th February 2021: I now use WordPress for my website and have done for a few years now.

  • 100 Albums #2 – The Wall: Live in Berlin by Roger Waters (and various artists)

    A couple of weeks ago I went to see the one-night-only showing of Roger Waters’ The Wall at my local cinema. That performance rekindled my love for that album – indeed Pink Floyd in general.

    Yesterday I revisted an older performance of the album, which was given at the Berlin wall at the time when it was being torn down.

    Very apt.

    This performance of The Wall is unique, in that many of the songs are performed by guest artists. My personal favorites of these perfomances are Bryan Adam’s “Young Lust”, Paul Carrack’s “Hey You” and Van Morrison’s “Comfortably Numb”.

    For any fans of The Wall, this album is a milestone performance and must be experienced.