Faith

New images by Harriet Bowman

Angel

New images by Paul Villers

The Miserable Rich CD Review

The Miserable Rich: "Of Flight and Fury"

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure, and, if I were being sycophantic, the privilege of reviewing The Miserable Rich’s first album. Indeed it was my record of 2008 and still gives me immense pleasure to listen to now. I hadn’t thought at the time that it could be equalled such was its breadth and depth of ideas and sheer hubris in its music making. Then comes this second record.

The first time around I was caught by surprise, stopped in my tracks and actually shaken by what it offered. This time around there is a feeling of ‘fore-warned is fore-armed’ but that doesn’t take away from its sense of powerful beauty, its devil may care attitude to the expectations of the listening public, its utterly compelling nature. The basic elements that defined the first record are all present here: the instrumentation, the songwriting (more ideas here than most people achieve in a whole career), the jaw droppingly expressive vocal performance, the joy unconfined in making noise that one is comfortable with in its discomfort. It would probably be unfair to single out certain passages but it has to be pointed out that there can be few songs dedicated to a chimpanzee (‘Oliver’ concerns that bald chimp that some people considered to be a missing link) or songs that can claim to be the last word in break-ups (for get ‘Blood on the Tracks’ or ‘Heartbreaker’ – ‘Let Me Fade’ says everything you need to know). If there are differences then perhaps one can detect a tad more polish in the production values (just sufficient not to overdo things) and maybe a touch more orchestration - if that’s not an oxymoron when discussing a chamber pop orchestra. The mood, and lets face it The Miserable Rich were never going to soundtrack any one’s Ibiza summer, is a little more Autumnal perhaps. What remains is that this is an essential listen for anybody with sufficiently open ears, those looking for an antidote to the manufacturing process of modern music, a clarion call to those of us bloody-minded enough to yearn for something different, original and distinctive in our listening. Very likely the best record of 2010.

What to do when your MP3 player is rubbish

Buy one of these: a FiiO E5

This cute little device will boost the volume and quality of any portable music player.

The salient facts:
It’s black as all good gadgets should be.
It’s made in China as everything is these days.
At between £12.00 and £20.00 its cheap.
It charges via USB and the battery lasts ages.
It has a bass boost switch.
It has an attractive blue LED to let you know that it is on.
It’s one in the eye for EU beaurocrats that seek to limit mp3 players volumes lest we all become deaf.
Its small.

Anthony and the Johnsons

Anthony Hegarty...quite some voice...

Adaptive Bloom by Justin Goodyer

From the Constructing Realities Exhibition comes Justin Goodyer's "Adaptive Bloom" work. Below is a link to an interview with him from We Make Money Not Art, complete with images taken by myself because Justin asked me really nicely (and brought me a beer). At some point I shall update my website with the full set but for now take a look at the interview.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/09/adaptive-bloom.php


There is also a video of his installation in action

Justin Goodyer: Adaptive Bloom - Bartlett School of Architecture from Ruairi Glynn on Vimeo.

Sebastien Tellier - Look

Beauty the Beast

New images by Bethan Gibbs

SIFF 210

A great video from some guy on Vimeo. Short and sweet. I haven't had chance to find out much about it but head on over to Vimeo if you'd like to check out the original post. Enjoy