Category: Blog

Posted on

100 Days : Day Six (95)

Missed yesterday’s entry by 50 minutes — been sat in the bath listening to this week’s episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage.

Finished The Last Of Us: Left Behind. Another great addition to the world and characters from the original game. Although the relationship between Ellie and Riley was doomed, it was still nice to see their friendship. It gave more depth to Ellie’s character too.

Cant wait to get on to Metal Gear Solid 5 next. Just need to power through 1-4 first. I don’t have to, but I’d like to experience the whole story.

Posted on

100 Days : Day Five (96)

I think I may be addicted to playing Bitcoin Billionaire. It’s annoying because I know it’s a waste of time and yet I still find myself tapping away like a mad person.

Discovered a new album through some random listens today — Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans by Uffie. From the first song on this album I was hooked.

Tinkered with my site again tonight. I think I’m gonna add in a playlists post type too.

Think I’m gonna now have an hour or so on The Last Of Us: Left Behind. So far I’m loving it.

Posted on

100 Days : Day Four (97)

Slept in till 10:40.

In the early afternoon we went for a run around Kingsbury Water Park. A load of the water’s-edge trees have been cut down, not sure why though. When we got there it was nice to see that the car park was pretty empty – no masses of people to avoid when doing our laps.

Later on, after getting caught up with the new X Files series, Lizzie cleaned out and changed Moomin while I washed up and Cooked the tea.

I’m quite impressed with myself in keeping up this 100 days so far.

Posted on

100 Days : Day Three (98)

Today I saw possibly the worst film of my life – Dirty Grampa – at Vue, Star City.

I think in parts the humour actually offended me. I couldn’t believe this was the same guy I’d seen in Jackie Brown.

On a more positive note, me and Liz did go for a nice meal at the Green Man in Middleton. My only quarm was that my otherwise nice burger came on a bloody brioche bun.

Then on the evening we watched the first episode of the new series of The X Files. Despite the mixed reviews I actually liked it.

Posted on

100 Days : Day Two (99)

My fish and chips have just arrived.

Currently sat in Sainsbury’s cafe once again. My nectar points are gonna be through the roof by Christmas.

I’m thinking about restarting the ecommerce CMS I started for my last 100 days attempt. Except this time not part of the 100 days. Cant help thinking it’s a waste of time as there are already so many. But if I treat it as a learning curve, then it will have some benefit.

Randomly thought about how far we’ve come with technology and yet I’m sat here stirring my tea with a wooden stick.

Posted on

100 Days : Day One (100)

Mid last year I heard about the idea of the 100 days project.

In a nutshell, you pick some form of creative pursuit — no matter how simple or complex — and commit to performing that action every day for 100 days.

I put the idea to some co workers. One person out of a few interested people actually completed it.

I failed in that challenge.

So I decided that I’m going to start again with an alternate take on Jeremy Keith’s 100 words for 100 days. My plan is to write 100 words the first day, 99 on the second, 98 the third etc.

This is the first.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.