Superblog

Pretty Dandy - vintage, handmade and new design homewares

2012-01-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

I posted up on here a fair while ago now (in fact, probably a whole year ago!) to say that I was thinking about starting my own business selling stuff for your home online.

I'm really proud to say that a year, a whole lot of hard work and lots of fun down the line that my business - Pretty Dandy - launched just before Christmas!

I've worked really hard to put together a collection of products which I would personally love to keep and have in my own home. There are beautiful vintage crockery, hand made lampshades, african printed cushions and lots of gorgeous art prints for your walls. I hope that I can give people a place to find things for their home which make them happy and express a little bit of their personality.

So, if you have a spare moment please pop over and visit us:

Pretty Dandy - vintage, handmade and new design homewares

Pretty Dandy on facebook

Pretty Dandy on twitter

Oh and I have an online moodboard where I collect lots of photos of pretty things, inspiring interiors and pictures of kittens. You can see that here.

Thank you!

Becky
x

It's My Birthday!

2011-08-16T04:02:00.000-07:00

Yep, today is my birthday. I'm turning 30. Overall I feel a bit weird about it. I think turning 30 means I have to become a grown-up, right? I have to be sensible and save money and think about having babies and a five year plan. Scary.

So, to rebel against the big Three-Oh I shall be celebrating at Jumpers For Goalposts, my favourite night of playing "arts and crafts" and listening to goofy music. If anyone would like to come and join me and help me celebrate then here are the details:

THURSDAY 18^TH AUGUST

JUMPERS FOR GOALPOSTS

The Alley Café

8pm to latePM

Nottingham’s craftiest craft night returns on 18^th August to bring some calm to our riot-torn city and make everything all music and google-eyes again.

There will, however, be a riot of colour and creative ideas, with arresting creations but NO CHARGES FOR ADMISSION!

We’ll have live music from ‘Santo and Claus’ and you can dance the night away (in your seats while making craft items) to the sonic collages made by DJ's from the fantastic film society Kneel Before Zod... we're expecting amazing soundtracks all round!

And don’t forget, the Alley Café serves excellent vegetarian and vegan food until 9.00pm if you fancy Dinner and Craft and Music.

****

If you're wondering what to get me as a brilliant 30th birthday present, I like cake... and diamonds.

Bex

xxx

Awesome People Hanging Out Together

2011-06-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/page/5

This site pretty much does what the name says & shows photos and occasional videos of awesome people hanging out together. (EDIT: I wanted to show you some actual pictures of Karl Lagerfeld & Kanye West, Shaquille O'Neal & Dr Ruth and Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman, but BLOGGER SUCKS)

There are some hilarious photos, some incredible ones and some which show important/interesting things in history. For example, look for the photo of the physicists where there's about 30 of them and Marie Curie is the only woman. Or look for young Bill Clinton meeting JFK. I also like that it gives you a sense of the timeline of people more, by relating them to other famous people. It's really interesting to see Mick Jagger progress through from being a young dork with Peter Tosh, a hip young guy with James Brown to an elder statesmen with Madonna. It's also interesting just to see who has hung out with who throughout the past century. This sort of thing might make fame actually worth it!

http://awesomepeoplehangingouttogether.tumblr.com/

Bex
x

Pretty Dandy

2011-06-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm in the process of setting up my own business... Pretty Dandy! It's exciting, but quite slow going because I work full time hours. I'd love to be able to give up my dayjob and do it full time, so that's what I'm aiaming for over the coming year. Pretty Dandy is going to be an interiors/homewares website selling stylish vintage, handmade, art & new design pieces.

I've already started to amass some of the vintage stock, and have found some gorgeous things - like a china teaset with a gilt edging and a fifties-style blue flower, some wonderful vintage fabrics which are soon to become cushions and frames old adverts from women's magazines.

I'm also putting together a range of handmade items, such as beautiful snuggly chunky cableknit cushions, placemat sets in clashing fabrics and lampshades made from old mats. Finally there's the art & new design pieces. There are some really exciting things to go in this section, like a coat rack which appears like a living branch growing out of the wall, original prints by artists & illustrators, a gorgeously designed energy-saving lightbulb which can go on show in the best lamps or even just on it's own.

It's really exciting sourcing all this stock and planning for the launch of my website: www.prettydandy.co.uk - nothing there until August, so please add it to your favourites and check back then!

In the meantime, if there's something you've been looking for for your home then get in touch, I might be able to source it for you - email hello@prettydandy.co.uk.

Becky

Beyonce: Run The World

2011-05-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

I just watched this video and had to share it on here in case people haven't seen it yet:

It's insane. The Guardian has an interesting article here about how cultural references are becoming more obscure, with particular mention of the "Beyonce & two Hyenas" shot in this video (1:56). There are countless references in this video, from the Jacksons & Fosse (dancing) to potentially even the news media/ reportage (the setting etc). All in a pop video with incredibly high fashion outfits (check the shoes at 2:17) and an immense cast of female dancers.

The only thing that makes me a little sad is that despite what Beyonce says, girls don't really run the world, and while this video is really interesting and a bit challenging in terms of mainstream pop, it's probably not going to change that.

So, let's listen to this call to make Beyonce's claims real:

Women of the World by Jim O' Rourke

Becky

Gig in London this weekend!

2011-05-18T07:08:00.000-07:00

Hello

Hello Thor are curating one of Rough Trade's legendary afternoon gigs at the Notting Hill Arts Club this weekend. Woop!

An extension of Rough Trade's classic in-store gigs (just with a bit more room, and fewer records), the RoTa shows have been graced / curated by the likes of Hot Chip, The Line Of Best Fit, Warp, Jamie T, Saddle Creek, Fortuna Pop, Truck, Jonquil, Yuck and more.

It's on Saturday (21st May) from 4pm until 8pm and it's completely for FREE.

Warm Brains - new band from ace DIY producer Rory Attwell (Fair Ohs, Male Bonding, Fists). They make fuzzy, dreamlike, carefully-woven, lo-fi slacker tunes as heard on debut single Old Volcanoes.

Fists - recently described as a "one band John Peel show" Fists' sound ranges from bittersweet vocal harmonies to stomping garage rock. Or as Artrocker put it "they sound like a drunken art collective playing country songs they’ve never heard before. Which is meant to be a compliment.”

We Show Up On RadaR - combining the optimism and joy of the Flaming Lips with the melancholy of Daniel Johnston, WSUOR's music is gentle, mischievious and magical indie pop to dream to.

Not Cool - these gutter pop pioneers specialise in frenetic, melodic and slightly demented post punk. Think Fugazi or Pavement, but from Downham, south London.

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=inbox&setup#!/event.php?eid=201457909891967
with super cool poster by Angi from Fists
.
It's gonna be ace!

love Bex
x

FUN-Raising at Jumpers for Goalposts

2011-04-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

Please come along to the Alley Cafe on Thursday from 8.30pm for an evening of music, craft & entertainment. ish.

Becky
x

Jumpers FUNraiser

2011-04-06T07:14:00.000-07:00

Check out the blog here for more info

Get yourself added to the facebook event (& invite your friends too!)

Comment on LeftLion

It would be super awesome to see you there. It's Pretty Good Thursday (21st April), so you've got the day off afterwards (Good Friday). So, why not come and share a cup of tea or organic ale with us, bring some unusual craft materials and a pound or two to donate to our chosen charity and have a good time.

Becky

Peruvian Delicacies

2011-03-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

My big sister now lives in Peru. This means that I now think Skype is one of the best inventions of the last 100 years, I regularly get postcards with llamas on and I worry about her whenever there's an earthquake / mudslide / flash flood / tsunami etc. It's a bit different to when she was just up the road in Sheffield.

It also means that when she comes back for a visit we get to taste the delights of Peruvian cuisine. Ever eaten Peruvian food? Had any in your local Peruvian restaurant? Thought not... there's definitely a reason why. My sister assures me that some of the Peruvian cuisines are actually very well thought of and that posh Peruvian restaurants are opening up in various cities across the world. Based on what we ate on Saturday I might hold off on booking a table...

Here is what she cooked for me, Anders and Abi:

Menu:

Starter - Papas A La Huancaina

This is a sort of cold salad. You put boiled potatoes, boiled eggs & olives onto some lettuce leaves and cover them in the special sauce. To make the sauce you need onions, bread, peanuts, chillies, garlic, condensed milk and feta. Yes. All of those things. Mushed up into a sauce. It's an unusual flavour combination and a strange consistency - not a dish I'll be hurrying to repeat. Initially I thought it was pretty tasty, with a nice light chilli spice and a creamy peanut flavour at the fore. However soon the heaviness of the sauce took me down and I realised I couldn't even face eating the mouthful I'd just put onto my fork.

Main - Arroz con Pollo
This was actually delicious, so I can't complain too much. It's basically chicken and rice, but this basic description doesn't do it justice. In the Cuscenian version you cook the rice in beer as well as stock, adding chilli, garlic and plenty of coriander. It's really tasty, richly flavoured and surprisingly light for a dish with so few vegetables.

Dessert - Picarones

To round off our Peruvian experience my sister had brought home a packet of mix to make Picarones. These are sweet potato donuts. I know. Sweet potato donuts. You fry the mix into little rings and eat it dipped in molasses syrup (or golden syrup in our case). Actually they were pretty nice, but another heavy heavy treat. I don't know how people in Peru eat this sort of cuisine every day.

Luckily she also treated us to a big bottle of posh Pisco - Peruvian brandy - with which to make Pisco Sours - a delicious citrussy cocktail comparable to the fabulous caipirinha, but with less heartburn. I think I can definitely say they were the highlight of the meal for me.

We had a brilliant evening and I love getting to spend time with my sister again. However... next time I'm cooking.

Becky
x

Dr Who!

2011-03-25T03:55:00.000-07:00

As mentioned before we recently held a special magical Jumpers for Goalposts party at the Alley Cafe where we celebrated the magic of Dr Who via the medium of improvised music & craft. Here's the evidence (bit bumpy, don't get motion sickness!)

In case you've never been, Jumpers for Goalposts is held on the 3rd Thursday of every month at the Alley Cafe in Nottingham. Essentially it involves a lot of larking around with child-friendly craft materials (googly eyes, pipe cleaners, lollipop sticks) making wonderful creations for our competition AND live music. That time the live music was the audience, usually it's a proper band. Come down and join in and see for yourself how much fun you can have with glitter glue and a pint of organic cider!

Becky

Flash!

2011-03-25T03:49:00.001-07:00

In Popbitch this week they pointed the reader towards an amazing website. I recommend a visit (needs sound ideally):

Possibly the greatest use of flash on a 
website ever. Don't, under any circumstances,
skip the intro. But you have to wait for the
site to load. That's when the guitar solo kicks in:
http://www.evangelcathedral.net/

Becky

Black Swan, Good Hair and things to do this week

2011-02-15T05:33:00.000-08:00

Hello,

How are you? What've you been up to lately? Have you changed your hair? I like it!

Here's some things we've been up to lately:
- Bird watching - we've got lots of little blue tits, great tits, blackbirds & robins fluttering around in our garden, along with a big fat squirrel that keeps eating all their seeds!
- Getting ready for the awesome new Fists release on Hello Thor records (details in previous post)
- Going to the auctions (it's a different world)
- Making more things on my sewing machine (tea cosies & placemats are my latest adventures)
- Practising for Jumpers for Goalposts (scroll down for more info)
- Going to Just The Tonic (only once, saw Paul Foot & thought he was really very funny)

AND...
- Watching loads of films & TV - round-up & recommends here:

Misfits - If you haven't got into this TV series yet then DO. It's funny, rude, a bit gory, endearing and exciting. About a bunch of asbo kids who get magic powers from a storm. That does it no justice. *RECOMMENDED*

Going The Distance - Anders will tell me off for adding this to my list, but I enjoyed it. If you're a fan of the romcom this strays slightly away from the usual format (by just being a bit less lame and having characters you're a bit more likely to want to be friends with) - e.g. Drew Barrymore is the main character and she's not a control freak like every other female in rom-com land. I liked it.

Black Swan - I still don't know how I feel about this film 2 weeks after seeing it and I'm still talking to people about it. That seems pretty good to me. However, I found it a bit annoying, over-blown and trashy too. It's hard to pigeonhole and hard to describe without giving anything important away. My enjoyment of it was shared 50-50 with annoyance, so this isn't a glowing recommendation from that point of view. I would however still say you should watch it, if only because it will keep you talking. *RECOMMENDED*

Beetlejuice - I am aware that I'm the last person in the world to see this film, but isn't it fun?! I love the bit where they all do a dance around the dining table and I bet that was awesome to film. Plus it has the woman in from all the Christopher Guest films. Love her.

30 Rock - We went for a marathon of the latest series at Bones' house and it was AWESOME. If you've never seen it then it's about Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) who is head writer on a SNL-type of show in America. It's also got Alec Baldwin in and he is hilarious. It's got a really high gag-rate, you care about the characters but it never tries to make you cry and Anders hearts Tina Fey. Watch it from the start, it will be a pleasure and a joy. **RECOMMENDED** (Big time!)

The Baader Meinhof film (I'm getting the name a bit wrong there) - This is often on those "films you should watch" lists, but I wasn't really feeling it that much. It's about a terrorist group in Germany in the 60's and is a bit confusing if you don't know anything about the situation (me) before you watch it. Interesting, some good performances and nice to see a mix of real-life footage and drama, but overall left me a bit cold.

Good Hair - This is the Chris Rock documentary about black hair. It's absolutely fascinating, a peek into a world I knew very little about. AND there is a hair styling contest. It's worth watching for that alone. One of the stylists entered before and her theme was "brokefront mountain" (no I don't get it either) and there was an awful video she made of her and some women dressed in cowgirl outfits with a bit of hay. It made NO sense and her entry in this documentary is even more random. A thoroughly enjoyable film, well-presented, good structure, interesting and funny in places. **RECOMMENDED**

So, that's what we've been up to.

Now on to what's coming up this week:

1 - Jumpers for Goalposts - Thursday @ Alley Cafe, FREE
This is a monthly event we run where you can come, hang out with your friends, hear a bit of music (usually just 1 band will play a few songs) and make something shit out of plasticine and pritt stick and straws. We call that part the Creative Competition and there are mega prizes involved. It's also very hard-fought and sometimes people create actual amazing things, not just rubbish penis-related puns!!

Anyway, this month we are doing something a little bit different. In place of our usual (talented) musical act YOU will be the band. Come and join in as we create an intergalactic jam session on tiny instruments. No musical talent needed (phew!), jsut enthusiasm and a willingness to have a go on a kazoo (no euphemism). We'll be playing a very exciting special TV theme tune... if we can all learn it quickly enough over the night to make our final performance a success then we will film it and share our talent with the world!

2 - Record Breakers - Saturday @ the Arts Theatre, £10 in advance
This is a huge gig organised by Denizen Records which features some of the best musical acts Nottingham has to offer, all together on one stage. Come along to see the likes of Yunioshi, Kogumaza, Dearest, Swimming, Hhymn & Fists ply their trade in this gorgeous venue. There are Late Of The Pier DJ's and apparently a world-record attempt too! You can get £10 tickets, or even get a cheap group booking deal from http://www.hellothor.com/.

what a lot of stuff. I'm tired now. See you thursday or saturday or both!

Bex
x

New release on Hello Thor Records - Fists single - Ascending b/w Stag

2011-01-26T03:40:00.000-08:00

As you may be aware Anders runs a record label with Nick & Tom, based in Nottingham called Hello Thor. They do gigs and stuff and put out singles by amazing bands. Their first ever signing was Fists who have released an amazing 7" and a brilliant EP so far.

21st Feb 2011 will see the release of Fists' next single Ascending b/w Stag on limited edition coloured vinyl with an individually screenprinted sleeve. It's going to be a beautiful thing.

Both Ascending and Stag have already received loads of airplay on 6 Music, Radio 1 and were selected for the 6 Music Rebel Playlist. They are great. You can read more, pre-order the vinyl, download tracks and so on here. If you'd like to support Hello Thor then please do buy from their site http://www.hellothor.com/ - no middle man costs! Oh and if you'd like to hear more from them then follow them on Twitter (@hellothor) or sign up to the mailing list on the website.

You can hear previews of the tracks on the Fists myspace and you can see them live, celebrating the release at a huge gig at the Nottingham Arts Theatre on the 19th February with loads of other amazing bands including:

Swimming
Hhymn
Dearest
Yunioshi
Kogumaza
Injured Birds

AND special guest DJs. It's being put together by a new Nottingham label Denizen Records (look for it on facebook!) and it's going to be AWESOME!

Thanks!

Bex
x

p.s. there are some great photos of the band here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdadesign/sets/72157618427893224/with/3542947105/ by KDA Design

Making things...

2011-01-14T02:55:00.000-08:00

I have been making some great things in my sewing class and with my new sewing machine. I love it, it's so exciting to choose some fabric, spend some time concentrating and carefully cutting, pinning, lining up and sewing. Then to end up with something special that yo'uve created at the end is just great. What a sense of achievement.

Anyway, here are a few little things I've made (cushion, scarf, bag... in that order). What do you think?

Yeah! Even just looking at the pictures now I feel really proud of myself.

Love Bex
x

New Year's Resolutions

2011-01-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I love making resolutions for the New Year and this year have a few I'll be hoping to keep. They include doing something new each week (this week it was learning to play the Dr Who theme on a child's toy accordion) AND doing something I've thought about for a really long time... starting my own business. If you have a moment you could help me keep resolution No.2 by scrolling down in the window below....

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Thank you!

Becky
x

He's behind you!

2010-12-15T03:22:00.000-08:00

I went to the panto at the Playhouse with Anders & Nick last week. Now, I've got to be honest, at about 2 o clock that afternoon I was feeling really tired and really just wanted to ditch the panto and have a night snuggled up on the sofa watching some dreadful TV and taking it easy. Partly this was down to the tiredness and partly down to my aversion to pantos. I've just always thought they would be bawdy, childish and get infuriated by all the "he's behind you" shouting. I think I went to see a particularly bad one as a child. I have a memory of tiny me all red faced and angry being made to shout "He's behind you" for about the fifteenth time. I used to hate it when people deliberately used to pretend not to know/see things. Sounds like I was an angry child. Weird.

Anyway, off we went to see Mother Goose, rather reluctantly, had a quick bite to eat at Cast (burger, very nice) and loaded up on sweeties for the performance. About 10 minutes in I think the first "Boo!" squeaked past my lips. About 20 minutes in I was laughing along at the one liners and ad-libs. Before the first act ended I was joining in with the singing, cheers and jeers with all my heart. I loved it! It was genuinely funny, the costumes and set were bright and spangly, the songs were fun and I didn't have to repeat chants 10 times to get anything to happen. They had a really nice balance between stuff for kids and adults, between playing it knowingly and getting involved in the performance and between the different characters. I've always been pretty certain that the panto wouldn't be for me, but I loved it and would recommend it to anyone.

On Friday we were hosting two gigs - one a proper Hello Thor gig at Spanky Van Dykes, with Injured Birds & We Show Up On Radar playing live - one a Broadway gig with Anders doing the organising, a celebration of Scandinavian sounds called Nordic Noise, with a Cardigans For Goalposts element thrown in.

Thankfully both were a great success, with lots of nice comments and some awesome performances. I won't talk about them all, but just want to record that We Show Up On Radar played with their full band for only the 3rd time. They were great. Having a fuller sound just totally makes sense and gives the songs a proper setting in which they can sparkle. The full band brings a bit more power and confidence to the performance as well as the tunes and everything just seems really right. I can't wait to see them again.

Here are a few of my favourite pics from the evening:

See more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellothor/sets/72157625467734169/

This week I will be:

- Sewing tonight! Yeah! last one before Christmas

- Jumpers for Goalposts tomorrow - not at the Alley Cafe for one month only. Read more here: http://thesecretdiaryofjumpersforgoalposts.wordpress.com/

- Dinner at Angi & James' on Friday

- Daddy Bones' Birthday at Broadway on Saturday - This is going to be great. The Yeah I'll Play It Later DJs will be on the decks, lots of lovely people will be hanging out and dancing. FUN.

- Snoozing all day Sunday please.

See you soon!

Bex
x

Rene Gruau

2010-11-26T08:07:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we went to visit Chloe & Jamie and see our other friends in London. On the Friday we went to see a 12 piece band who play DJ Shadow's Endtroducing through from start to finish and do all the samples live. I was really excited about that and thought it was going to be super cool, it turned out to be super lame. Lewis likened it to when his teachers formed a "rock band" at school. At times it was toe-curlingly uncool. Shame. However, we did get to go to Koko, which looks like this:

Lovely!

Over the weekend we also ate lovely food, caught up with Lewis and Emma, did a bit of shopping at a vintage market and went to see a great exhibition at Somerset House.

The exhibition was of work created for Dior by the illustrator Rene Gruau. His work is so beautiful and luxurious I just wanted to live in that world. You can imagine it feels like silk and smells amazing! He created pieces such as these:

His illustrations are incredibly stylish, yet minimal, confident and sophisticated. I could've looked at them all day. There were some 80's influenced ones which didn't really work for me so much (airbrushed style faces and angular cheekbones etc), but the 50s-70s ones were so good that didn't matter. Even his signature is beautiful. Look:

Anyway, enough wallowing in the glory of bygone days.

Stuff coming up:

2nd Dec - Studio sale at I Dress Myself to say goodbye to Han & Pete. I still can't believe they're leaving Nottingham, and so soon! They'll be missed.

10th Dec - We Show Up On RadaR @ Spanky Van Dykes. This looks set to be a great show and only the 3rd time they've played with their full live band in Nottingham. Look for the event on facebook for full details.

16th Dec - Jumpers For Goalposts @ Tether - For the first time we're leaving our Alley Cafe home and venturing out into the big wide world for a special Christmas edition of Jumpers to help Tether celebrate their final night of the studios. This is going to be FUN.

I reckon there's probably loads of other good stuff coming up too, but I can't remember everything!

Bex
x

Hot Chip & LCD Soundsystem (and other fun things too!)

2010-11-17T01:51:00.000-08:00

At the weekend we went to see Hot Chip & LCD Soundsystem play a massive gig at the Magna centre in Sheffield. It was awesome! We saw Hot Chip here in Notts at Rock City recently and that was an incredible experience. On an ordinary Monday evening it felt like we had been to the carnival and church at the same time. Hot Chip came onstage to squeals like Beatlemania and every person there was dancing and singing.

This time things were different. By the time Hot Chip came on the area near the stage was a swamp of people crowding and pushing, so we retreated towards the back of this huge cavernous room. Inevitably the distance affected our involvement with the gig, so we didn't enjoy them quite as much this time. To be honest, we would've been hard pushed to equal last time anyway, so that was fine. Plus there were still some amazing tracks and their live sound is great. My favourite part is when the Chip that talks (beard & gingerish? Not a singer?) has to run between all his different instruments - guitar, drums, kettle drum - in one song. He really covered some ground.

The real revelation for me was LCD Soundsystem. Anders loves them, and has done for aaaages, which is why we got the tickets for this gig. I've never really listened to them if I'm honest. I've heard Daft Punk, Drunk Girls and a couple of others and they've never really grabbed me. The only LCD song I've really connected with is I Can Change, so I was standing just really waiting for that one song. We were right down the front, near the stage. Shit Robot was DJing and people were really getting in the party mood. Then, the lights went down and we stood in near total darkness and a familiar song started up. It felt both foolish and electric to be standing in the dark listening to I'm Not In Love by 10CC, with strangers all around singing along. After that, lights came up and LCD came out onto the stage and started up with Dance Yrself Clean from the new album:

(This video is really long, but I think it gives a feel of what the atmosphere created is like if you watch just the first few seconds)

It was like a lesson in how to open a gig. I didn't know the song at all, but everyone around us did and were singing along and really dancing. The song is perfectly constructed for this scenario - starting relatively small with James Murphy's vocals and minimal backing, adding in a few more instruments and members of the band as it builds and then halfway through just exploding into a huge sound. It was perfect to build tension and excitement at the band coming on and then gave the perfect release for everyone to sing and dance and (in the case of a man stood behind me who used me as a steadying post...) headbang. It was perfect.

(We had somehow ended up slap bang in the middle of fan boy central with people who knew every word and some people who had clearly taken their drugs too early and were even bouncing to 10CC. )

After both bands had finished they came on together and did a special collaborative cover of a song called "Seabird" by the Alessi Brothers (no, me either). It was really magical. It was like a moment from The Last Waltz for me, almost romantic... It was like a celebration of a tour romance between the two bands and was just lovely.

(as a post-script, I've just listened to the original and it's lovely, but the brothers appear to maybe have a little lisp... distracting and yet very sweet!)

Anyhow, I loved it and I'm really glad we got to see LCD, particularly as it keeps being suggested that this is their last album. And they played I Can Change. Yeah!

Other fun stuff we've been up to (quickly):

- Saw "A Town Called Panic" at Broadway just before it finished. Animated film, you might recognise it from the Cravendale milk ads. it's all created in stop-motion using little vintage toys (cowboy, indian etc) as the main characters. It's really fast and fun and inventive and I'd recommend seeing it on DVD if you can.

- Saw Micah P Hinson at the Rescue Rooms - This was the day after Hello Gore II (pics here from that by the way) and I was in no fit state to be going to a gig. I can't do things two days in a row. It didn't help that he had a harp lady playing before he came on and the rolling sounds were affecting my queasiness. I have nothing useful to add about the gig.

- My dad turned 60 and we celebrated with him. One of the things we did was go for a meal to a restaurant in Sheffield called Kitchen. We had the most down to earth, Sheffield born & bred, waiter you can imagine. Turned out he was a partner in the restaurant, which made sense, I'm not sure he'd have made it as a waiter. We asked what a dish described as Paris Brest with lots of french words was. His response? "Well, it's a choux bun. The chef came up with the name. I think he's probably made all that other stuff up." in a broad Yorkshire accent. Lovely! I ate a dish called 3 Little Pigs which was pork in 3 ways, including the revelation that belly pork is actually delicious.

- Went to Lustre at Lakeside Arts - this is one of my favourite events of the year - a big craft market with beautifully hand made objects from all over the country. Every year I suggest we go to look at Christmas presents. Every year we go and come back with "us" presents instead. This year I got a brooch with a zebra on. I love it.

SO, just to finish off I can confirm that it is Jumpers for Goalposts this week at the Alley Cafe on Thursday. We've got Burly Nagasaki playing, which will be a real treat. Plus we've got a great creative competition. Come down! It's free!

Love Bex
x

Cultural Expose

2010-11-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I'm delighted to say that my work has been chosen to be featured on the fantastic Cultural Expose blog as part of their travel photography feature InterNational!

You can see my pics & read their blog here.

My pictures from Cuba are being featured, along with some tips and thoughts from me on my travel experience. And a goofy picture of me drinking tea.

Thanks very much to the Cultural Expose team for featuring me. Hope you like my work!

Bex
x

Hello Gore II @ Nottingham Contemporary

2010-10-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

AMAZING trailer for HG:II this weekend:

HG2 Teaser from Dan Toporowski on Vimeo.
What a great line up! Without a doubt this is going to be the Halloween party of 2010.

Have you got your costume sorted yet? The theme is B-movies, but given that I haven't seen any we will be interpreting that very loosely. This is one of those occasions on which I wish i'd been better organised. Three days to go. Haven't decided on an idea. Oh dear. We're in trouble!

Full line-up for Gore II:

FISTS
HOT HORIZONS
YUNIOSHI
BLACK POWDER
HHYMN
RED SHOE DIARIES
BONSAI PROJECTS
JOEY CHICKENSKIN
& Hello Thor DJs

Plus! Nottingham Contemporary will be decorated up by the Left Luggage theatre people AND you can have your picture taken in the Garments of Gore photobooth!

All bands will be performing a spooky cover and a track of their own. It's going to be amazing!

Here's the poster by Rob Garner: (I love this poster, it's so cool)

See you on Saturday!

Bex
x

Jumpers for Goalposts, Hockley Hustle & Hello Gore!

2010-10-18T00:49:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post up some details about 3 gigs we've got coming up over the next couple of weeks. You can get more info on the Hello Thor website or read below.

1

Jumpers for Goalposts @ Alley Cafe - Thurs 21st Oct.

We've got Cecille Grey playing live and the craft competition will be spooooooooooky. And it's free.
More info here: http://thesecretdiaryofjumpersforgoalposts.wordpress.com/

2

Hockley Hustle @ Jam Cafe - Sun 24th Oct

We're back at the Jam Cafe again this year, because we had such fun there last year. We've got a cracking line up too. Over The Wall, Moscow Youth Cult, Escapologists, Mexican Kids At Home, Matthew Stephen Cooper, Japanese Sleepers & Make A Halo.

It's all raising money for charity - there are other great bands playing all over Hockley and Hello Thor are really pleased to be a part of it.

3

Hello Gore II: The Return @ Nottingham Contemporary - Sat 31st Oct

Hello Gore is being allowed out for a second time. It's a massive FREE party at the Cafe.Bar.Contemporary with 8 amazing bands playing live. Dress to distress and have your photo taken in the Hello Gore Photobooth. Here's the poster:

Check out Hello Thor's GIGS page for full details on everything above.

See you there!

Bex
x

Gigs, Trips, Sewing & Potatoes

2010-10-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Sorry posting has been a bit sporadic of late. Been busy!

Anyway, thought I would pop up a little post about exciting things that have happened/ are coming up.

Wales
Firstly, me and Anders went to Wales! It was lovely. We just went for a weekend up to Abersoch, and had a really wonderful time. We paddled in the sea, wandered on the beach, pottered round little villages, went out for really good thai food, watched TV all snuggled up on the sofa and visited Portmeirion. Anders has wanted to visit there for years since watching the Prisoner, so it was dream come true time! It's a really fascinating place - like a small European village (a bit like Prague in some places, italian in others - a real mix) but scaled down by about 20%. All the doorways and arches just skim the top of your head and houses look really big til you get up close and realise it's just a bungalow behind a grand facade. It's in a really beautiful location and uses a really fabulous colour scheme.

So, we had a great time and there was a real magic in being away from home and work, just the two of us. Here's a few pics from our trip:

Gig
Last week we saw Fists supporting Sparrow & The Workshop at the Bodega Social in Notts. It was an early show, which I was disappointed about initially, but actually made for a really good event. The crowd were clearly sober and as a result were super quiet during the bands' sets. It made for an unusual atmosphere, and gave a really good chance to appreciate the bands' music, and not just the performance. Often with unsigned/unfamous bands people are a bit chatty throughout - it's hard to keep your attention wholeheartedly on a band when you don't know any of the songs and I guess you're not invested in the music and performance the same way as you are when it's a band you really love and know well.

I really really enjoyed the Fists set. There were some different tunes in there, including "Roll back my eyes", which, in the hushed atmosphere, came across incredibly well. The band seemed relaxed and at ease up on the stage and there was a real warmth to both their & Sparrow and the Workshop's performances, which seemed borne out of a great bond they had forged during their week touring. I love to watch Fists, and often I'm really proud to see a group of my friends doing something great together like that. Every so often when watching I kind of forget that they're my friends and just enjoy watching a band I love. That's my favourite and that was what Friday's show was all about.

I really enjoyed Sparrow & The Workshop too, although I don't know their songs so I was a little bit less committed as a viewer. Their chemistry was really nice to see and I really liked that the drums played a strong part in their sound and the visual. For me I might've liked it to be a little more rough around the edges, but I guess with a beautiful clear perfect voice like the lead singer had that is tough to muster. Their harmonies were lovely and the songs never outstayed their welcome.

Sewing & Potatoes
Now for sewing and potatoes... two topics close to my heart this evening as I am off to my sewing class in Sherwood tonight and I'm thinking about which fabrics I want to take with me to make a cushion cover. I'm really enjoying my class so far and can't wait to get my own sewing machine. It's a bit like when I first learned to bake - a strange alchemy where some basic ingredients get turned into something wonderful to eat/wear/use. I know I'm doing it, but there's always a moment where the things I've combined come together through the oven or sewing machine and a little bit of magic happens and I'm surprised to see a perfect finished product like you'd find in a shop. (well, perfect to me)

The reason potatoes are close to my heart? Me and Anders harvested a little tub full of potatoes which we grew in our own garden and we're going to eat them tonight! I'm really quite overly proud of our small, randomly sized potato harvest:

So is Anders...

GIGS Coming Up

There are 3 Hello Thor gigs/parties coming up:

21st Oct - Jumpers for Goalposts - Magical music & craft night with Cecille Grey playing live and a monstrous craft competition - FREE

24th Oct - Hockley Hustle - Visit the Jam Cafe for a great Hello Thor line-up of cool bands at this nice charity festival!

30th Oct - Hello Gore II: The Return - This is our paean to Halloween and all things spooky. 8 bands playing live - a gory cover & a song or two of their own. Dress to Distress - FREE.

Click here & go to the Hello Thor website for more info about all the gigs above.

Love Bex
x

Stephen Fry - Speech on Catholicism

2010-10-01T06:10:00.001-07:00

The Intelligence² Debate - Stephen Fry (Unedited)
Uploaded by Xrunner17. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

This is an incredible speech by Stephen Fry arguing against the motion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.

Bex
x

FISTS tour with Sparrow & The Workshop

2010-09-29T03:28:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Been meaning to post this up for a while. The very lovely FISTS are touring next week with a great band Sparrow & The Workshop. Here's a cool video from Sparrow & the Workshop, so you can see if you like them:

This will be a great night, wherever you see them, but if you come to the Notts shhow you can get in for cheap too! Email Fists' record label hellothorrecords@gmail.com and they can sort you out to get in for £3.

Mon Oct 4th King Tut’s Glasgow
Tue Oct 5th Night and Day Café Manchester
Wed Oct 6th Brudenell Social Club Leeds
Thu Oct 7th Stereo York
Fri Oct 8th Bodega Social Nottingham

And here's a little vid from the first ever Fists single launch, with Mexican Kids At Home & Harry Merry:

PLUS! If you are artistically minded then get in touch and submit a Zine entry to @fourbeatwalk (twitter) or the Hello Thor email above. The zine will be released in Oct in time for the Hockley Hustle (Jam Cafe) & Hello Gore II (Nottingham Contemporary).

Love Bex
x

Metropolis

2010-09-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday me and Anders saw Metropolis at the Broadway. I'll be honest, I really wasn't sure about going. In fact, I was chatting to Nick on the phone just before, declaring "I don't even like songs without words and they're only 3 minutes long!" I had reservations about the length of the film and the length of time it could hold my attention for without any dialogue. In fact I loved it. It was fascinating and beautiful and I barely missed the dialogue/ ambient sounds (footsteps, doors closing etc) after the first 5 minutes. It was definitely a bit long though and I definitely had a little cat nap at the end. In fact as soon as we got home after I had to go to bed. I felt really drained, I think something in the focus and concentration needed for a film without dialogue with a pretty involved storyline just wiped me out.

The film is amazingly well restored which makes it a pleasure to watch - not like some grainy/scratchy/blurry old films. You could see the nuance of expression and it didn't feel too broad and over-acted because of that. Plus you could really see the details of costumes & sets and (even though it sounds silly) I really appreciated much more how people from the olden days (1927 to be exact) actually look pretty similar to people from nowadays. I think they always look so different in photos - stiff & still - that they feel really removed from me and my life. Seeing them crisp and clear moving and talking (silently) made it feel much more relevant for me. In fact, I thought the central male character was reminiscent of Johnny Depp & Ray Liotta.

There were some amazing things in it, and I kept wondering afterwards how much of the stuff we were seeing had been invented by 1927 and how much was sci-fi prediction genius from the director.

For example, cars... I just checked, and they started being mass-produced in around 1910. Still, there were scenes with four lanes of traffic winding through the Metropolis, which just looked normal to me as a commuter, but in 1927 surely would have seemed a bit crazy?

The Empire State was built by 1931, so I guess the visual of this very tall, imposing, dominant city wouldn't be so unusual at the time. Still, if you were from a small town in England this would have been like Futurama looks to us now I reckon.

There's a scene where the boss of the city talks to one of his workers via telephone & TV screen - like the buzzer systems you get in flats. They were only just inventing television in the 1920s, never mind it being readily available in people's homes.

Finally then, here's the trailer:

And here's a clip I borrowed from Joey's blog, because it shows this incredible dance scene where the evil version of Maria dances and bewitches men into duelling and fighting. Check out how bewitched they are:

Plus you can see some of the effects Lang used, back in 1927 for chrissakes! They did stuff like combining miniature models of sets with real people using mirrors, with everything looking in perfect scale. They also did amazing scenes like the transformation (scene shown in the trailer) manually - exposing each individual piece of film as many as 30 times for shots which ended up lasting only about 10 seconds. Incredible.

I really enjoyed this as an experience at the cinema, and as an experience of seeing the result of lots of people's labours of love looking so beautiful up on screen.

bex
x

Designing food

2010-09-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

I was just reading this article on the Guardian website about designing food:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/sep/15/designer-food-gm

It's a really interesting article and poses some difficult questions which are totally at odds with the way I, and many other people, think about food.

The prevailing wisdom at the moment is that it's much better to eat fresh food from a local source, grown as organically and naturally as possible. I guess the logic behind that is that it's what we used to do before science got involved and it's the way "god" (or the universe) intended it. It seems completely irrefutable to me that it's better to eat food grown outside in the rain and sunshine than inside in a lab, but will this become a luxury we can't afford in the future? And is it true that it's the best way?

I'll be watching and waiting for science to answer those questions I guess.

Bex
x

Brett Domino & Britain's Got Talent

2010-09-08T01:46:00.000-07:00

More magic from youtube.

Check this out:

And then watch this:

Simon is a total doink. Brilliant. Amanda Holden on the other hand... yeesh.

Becky
x

Living in a Super Mario World

2010-09-03T02:38:00.000-07:00

I love that strange convergence that happens sometimes where when you are pre-occupied with something you find it everywhere. I guess the clearest example is pregnant ladies who see loads of other pregnant women everywhere. They're not crazy, just noticing more. Anyway, a bad back has meant being restricted to the sofa a lot, which has meant I've gotten to play the new Super Mari Bros Wii game quite a lot. I keep getting the music in my head. I like the music. That's how much I've been playing it.

Anyway, the magic of convergence brought me this:

Students in Japan created this for a school festival. Amazing.

Bex
x

Blimey

2010-09-01T04:14:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy time for us lately. Anders is working hard on finishing off a marketing course and has been locked away in our little office writing a big assignment for weeks now. Soon it will be finished and he will be free! Free at last! He'll be able to emerge from his cocoon and get some sun on his pale skin. OK, it's not quite that bad, but it's pretty close. Plus he starts his new job today! Good luck Anders!

In the meantime I've been standing in for Anders @ Hello Thor, working hard to help get the Anxieteam record made and launched and up online. It's been really fun and the two launch parties were ace.

Nick & I drove down to London for the first gig last Friday and thoroughly enjoyed our first live experience of the band. It was a little bit nervewracking holding 100 copies of a picture disc for a band on your label who you've never seen live, but they did us proud. I love their onstage relationship. It's a lot like their off-stage relationship, but we get to be a little part of it. Favourite moments... pacman & ghost chase during "Lonely in the Digital World", the Anxieteam song, enjoying DJ miniBurgers' set loads (including a remix of an old Prince Paul track), seeing Nick & Anders appear on the projection screen during the "commercial break" to advertise the new single and texting people I love to tell them I missed them during the "Miss You" track, as instructed by Jon & Jim.

It was a late night drive back for me and Nick, fuelled only by Jelly Tots, Haribo and what Nick calls "Frooty Tooties". I remember demanding that Nick gave me the Haribo in a certain order to eat, an order which only I know, asking difficult questions about his life and loves and lots of "I just want to be at home now" comments. I'm a fun road trip buddy.

The Nottingham gig at the Contemporary was also super fun. Jim & Jon did an interview with LeftLion while we drank tea and watched the Contemporary guys set up the stage and projector etc. That was the relaxed part. After that it was busybusybusy. We were so pleased that loads of people came down for the party, old friends, kind supporters of Hello Thor and new faces. It felt like there was a lot of good hearts in that room and we all really appreciated that. I was in charge of the HT shop, so, tucked away in a corner, I didn't get to see so much of the gig, although I did make a break for it to see the pacman chase scene:

Big thanks to everyone who made me busy by buying the cakes / records / hello thor tees and giving out badges, stickers and Kate's cool Hello Thorzine. It really made my night! By the way, if you loved those cakes check out Star Bakery. It's run by a friend of mine and she makes AMAZING cupcakes (and wedding/birthday cakes too). I follow her on twitter (@starbakery) just to see pictures of them and make myself hungry! Cakes here:

mmmmmmmmmmmmm
Favourite bits:
When I managed to find a yellow HT t-shirt for the nice girl who very patiently tried on lots of sizes & colours til I managed to find the right thing, selling lots of records to nice smiley people, seeing Nick drop a classic Wu-Tang tune on the decks and that propelling Ned onto the dancefloor, the "Donut Batter" song by Anxieteam, wobbling dangerously on a chair to try and see the set from the back of the room and taking lots of "Hello!" pics:

My favourite. See the rest on Flickr.

Unfortunately during all the fun I had randomly developed myself a bad back, so I spent the rest of the bank Holiday sitting oddly upright on the sofa with a hot water bottle, cups of tea, Ugly Betty, a good book and Super Mario Brothers on the Wii. Ok, not so unfortunate, lovely in fact.

I also became addicted to The Great British Bake Off. Firstly, why are so many shows now the Great British this or that? What suggestions would you have for other great titles along those lines? Secondly, how did this show come about, and why are those people SO into baking?? Surely there's only so much drama and emotion you can squeeze out of a macaroon.... apparently not.

Thanks for reading, hope you had a lovely Bank Holiday.

Bex
x

p.s. if you didn't get to come/ have any cash on you to buy the "Let's Eat Soya" record you can pre-order it here and we'll send you a lovely picture disc and the digital files too!

This is what the internet is made for

2010-08-25T05:01:00.000-07:00

Oh Joss Stone, seriously, what were you thinking???

http://www.holymoly.com/celebrity-news/joss-stone-video-leaks-online-it-worst-thing-have-ever-been-made40832

(the embed bit's not working, but you should definitely click the link)

I love the internet. Thanks (and no thanks) to @lewisheriz for bringing this to my attention!

bex
x

Hello Thor presents... ANXIETEAM!

2010-08-24T04:24:00.000-07:00

Look what I helped to do this weekend! Muchos Fun-os.

Puppet Jon & Puppet Jim popped round to help us spread the word about the Anxieteam single launch parties happening this weekend.

Come along to The Lexington, London on Friday, or Nottingham Contemporary on Saturday and experience the (largely) food-based delights of Anxieteam. There will be masks, music, a dance routine, fortune cookies, a ukelele and a chance to get your digital portrait drawn by these two world-famous artists, Jon Burgerman & Jim Avignon, for free!

Support in London comes from caketronica purveyors Yunioshi and in Nottingham from Matthew Stephen Cooper, who sings songs about monsters and murderous birds.

More info on www.hellothor.com or on facebook, search "Anxieteam" or "Hello Thor".

See you at the weekend!

bex
x

Let's Get Quizzical

2010-08-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

Don't forget!!

It's the mega one-off music quiz at Spanky Van Dyke's on MONDAY (16th August)!

I'm organising this superfun quiz to raise money for charity, so I'd love it if you came along and brought a team with you. It's all about music, different genres and different types of rounds, so hopefully there will be something for everyone. Test your knowledge, flex the muscles of your musical mind and tell us the answers to questions such as:

Q: Who teamed up with Nancy Sinatra for the 1971 hit 'Did You Ever'?

So, come along on Monday, 8ish at Spanky's and get quizzical! Your host will be the delightful Joey Chickenskin and live music will be provided by the handsome and talented Rory P McCarthy, who (with any luck) will also be providing us with a LIVE "name that tune"!

Thanks!

Becky

*
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*
*
*
*
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A: Lee Hazlewood

Anxieteam

2010-08-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

BIG NEWS!

A Jon Burgerman poster appeared in Neighbours this week. Yep, Neighbours.

And (even more exciting) THAT means we are now only 1 (tiny) degree separated from Dr Karl and Susan Kennedy because ...

On 20th September Hello Thor Records release the debut single by Anxieteam, the brand new musical collaboration between internationally-acclaimed visual artists Jim Avignon and Jon Burgerman! The single is a superfun journey to the heart of veganism and computer games - Let’s Eat Soya / Lonely In The Digital World – recorded in New York, mixed in Berlin, mastered in LA - is the band's debut double a-side single. Oh and it's a picture disc. Limited edition. Amazing.

Anxieteam splice together merry electronic pop melodies with dry, sardonic lyrics. It is music as colourful and as full of humour as their art, and equally as fraught with doubt and longing. Through the magic of electronic sounds and fumbled strumming on the ukulele, Anxieteam will transport you to a dreamy electronic, lo-fi, blip-bloppy pop world of anxiety, heartbreak and salads.

They have already played a series of bright, super-fun gigs (complete with masks, dancers, salad-making workshops, and digital portrait-making) in New York, Germany and Italy. We are pretty chuffed to announce that they will now also be playing the UK.

We've got TWO massive parties planned - Hello Thor proudly present ANXIETEAM, live in the UK for the very first time:

Friday 27th August
London Launch @ The Lexington (Islington, London)
With support from Yunioshi - £3
Get your tickets now: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/89748

Saturday 28th AugustOfficial UK Single Launch @ Cafe.Bar.Contemporary (Nottingham)
With support TBC - Free

If you want to know more then visit http://www.hellothor.com/ and sign up to the mailing list for exclusive news & updates.

Thanks!

Becky
x

Draw Serge

2010-08-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

In case you don't know, there's a great blog called Draw Serge. I thought that, what with the film coming out and all, now might be a good time to share.

Basically, it's loads of talented people and illustrators drawing the wonderful Serge Gainsbourg, curated by the illustrator Jonathan Edwards (@jontofski on twitter). There are some great images on there. A new one I particularly like is:

Also look for the Felt Mistress 3d Serge. It's great! Makes me wonder whether we could set this as a challenge at the next Jumpers for Goalposts. I'll have to ask the team what they reckon!

I have also just done a Wordle. You probably know about these, but basically you put your blog/ whatever into it and it makes a little word picture of what you talk about. What I've learned is I say REALLY too too much.

You can click it to see it more clearly. To do your own go to http://www.wordle.net/.

Love Bex x

Truck Festival 13

2010-08-05T14:29:00.000-07:00

Some weekends ago we all packed up the car and headed down to Truck Festival. Fists were playing, so Hello Thor was there in a loosely "official" capacity to see them & support them as their record label (and record label's wives!). Or we just wanted to hang out in a field for a bit and listen to music... same thing really.
We arrived later on the Saturday, so unfortunately missed our friends Spaceships Are Cool in the Beathive. It became clear over the weekend, though, that they must have been amazing, because loads of people kept coming up to them and congratulating them all the time. It was lovely.

Truck had a really nice feel as a festival. I don't quite know what I was expecting, but it was definitely smaller. We parked the car, walked to where we would pitch our tents, pitched and walked down to the main stage and that took about 30 minutes. 25 of which were spent pitching the tent. At Glastonbury you'd walk 30 mins from the car before you even got a glimpse of any festival action and the same for the distance from your tent to any music. It makes a really lovely, relaxing, refreshing change. The farm was lovely and felt like a real farm, not just a huge pitch for the festival. For example, The Barn (where Fucked Up and Miss Dynamite played) actually was a barn and actually smelled of cow poo.

Anyway, music-wise we saw a very few things that evening:
- A mild & gentle introduction to the festival from Stornoway
- A little whisper of Darwin Deez as we arrived
- Fonda 500 in the Village Pub late on (always fun)

That's pretty much all I remember... the rest of the time was spent hanging out, gassing, eating burgers from the Rotary Club, drinking booze, dancing a bit in the dance tent, watching Nick offend a middle-aged gentleman, wandering around. In some ways it was kind of nice to not have the distraction of too many music "must-sees" because it meant we got to spend time with friends and not just mission around seeing a million bands.

Sunday
Obviously we started the day with Fists in the Village Pub. They were awesome. Played some new songs which they've just recorded somewhere in Dalston including one of my new favourites "Ascending". It was great to see them in this lovely, friendly festival context, although a little early at 11.50am. Despite this "morning" slot they gathered a pretty decent crowd and many more were drawn in through the set, which is always nice to see.

We wandered around a fair bit and caught:
Danny & the Champions of the World - fun, big country band
The Flowers of Hell - space-rock orchestra supposedly, bit like film soundtrack music - nice, but not high impact enough at a festival I felt.
Fucked Up - we couldn't make it into The Barn (it was ALWAYS rammed in there), so we peeped in from the side of the stage. We could smell the cowshit still, but couldn't see a great deal of what was going on!
Phil Lee - Old country guy who really looked the part and you kind of felt like his whole life was acting the part too, so it was a good show. I especially liked it when he sang about a lady's ugly baby and told us all after it was Willy Mason.
Piney Gir's Country Roadshow - I was really excited about this having listened to her online and really liked the music. We even almost nearly booked her back in the day when we did Supernight. However, I found it a bit creepy - too much schtick, not enough music, like a country cariacature, all mime hands and big facial expressions.
The Epstein - lovely country(ish) harmonies
Unicorn Kid - Super cute young guy bouncing around and having the best time while people danced in a hot hot tent to his music. Will put up a bit of film.

I feel like we saw other stuff too, but I can't remember what. A lot of time was spent on the hunt for food. This would be my only recommendation for Truck... your toilets were clean and had paper at all times, I don't know how you did that, the beer came in compostable cups, the wine in the bar was cold and delicious... but there just wasn't enough nice food. Options were burger, chips, bacon sandwich, wrap, lentil dahl. I reckon a stall with some homemade soups, some stews, more cake etc would go down a treat.

Thanks to Truck from everyone at Hello Thor Records for a lovely weekend and to our lovely friends for making it ace.

Here's some pics:

Love Bex
x

Diane Arbus @ Nottingham Contemporary

2010-07-21T03:15:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Last Friday Anders & I popped down to the exhibition opening for the new show at Nottingham Contemporary. I still really like that building, for me it has a slightly communist feel about the design and I really love the lace panels, such a neat idea to tie it in to the area and give some decoration to what is quite a harsh facade. Anyway, we went to see the new exhibition which is work by Gert and Uwe Tobias (Transylvanian twins - not to be confused with the Cheeky Girls) and photography by Diane Arbus.

I had mixed feelings about the Gert and Uwe stuff. I liked their colour palette and the graphic/illustration style feel of their work, but I really didn't like the figurative pieces. Here's how the Contemporary describes them:
Gert and Uwe Tobias’ large woodcuts, gouache paintings, typewriter drawings and ceramic sculptures combine influences from traditional folk art and abstract art from the early 20th century. Their vividly coloured images, objects and environments evoke a world that is hallucinatory and strange.
I think maybe it's the "hallucinatory and strange" part that doesn't really appeal to me. I tend to dislike whimsy and surrealism and particularly find it difficult to respond to art which combines that with "a sense of humour". On the whole I love humour in art, but probably more when it relates to concepts, rather than funny pictures of funny looking people. It somehow feels linked with that sort of venetian carnival mask look and I'm not keen on that either. Anyway, here are a couple of examples:

(Thumbs down from me)

(images just seen - thumbs up from me!)

It's so hard to try and encapsulate your reaction to a piece of art, isn't it? I will definitely go and look at their work more and see if I feel differently. One thing I particularly liked was the hanging of their work and the transfer of small design elements from their pieces onto the walls of the gallery itself. It was only a small detail, but I think it really adds something interesting to the exhibition.

Anyway, the main reason I'm writing is to say that the Diane Arbus work was really inspiring and fascinating and enjoyable - I'd recommend a visit to see it. I love photography and it's not often you get an exhibition of this size and quality in Nottingham, so I hope it brings lots of people in. The Contemporary say:
Diane Arbus is one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century, an influential figure whose compellingly honest style of photography paved the way for the work of contemporary photographers and artists.
They are wonderful images from a specific period of history and a specific place. They have a distinctly Amercian feel and really capture some of the subcultures around at that time, as well as more general images of children, people in the park etc. This image is one you'll see a lot:

It really captures the humour and humanity of all of Arbus' work. We saw only half of her part of the exhibition and I can't wait to go back and see the rest. It feels like I have a real treat saved up.

Check this out! I just found it online! Me and Anders were wondering at the show whether anyone had done this exact thing:

Brilliant!

Her photographs have an amazing mood and quality to them, the tone of the black and white is beautifully dark and distinct. I'd love to know enough about photography to be able to use black & white like that.

She works often with people on the fringes of society and her aim was to "photograph everyone". I really like that idea.

Here's one more image which I thought was really powerful and beautiful:

Hope you get to go see the show, and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Becky

Today I have been mostly...

2010-07-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

Being a bit distracted. I've been working from home and just found it really hard to get into the groove today. I've done some good stuff, but none of it came easy. What did come easy was:
- sneaking a peek at twitter
- joking around on email with the Jumpers For Goalposts super-team
- making cups of tea
- watching tv for 10 minutes too long after lunch (damn you Come Dine With Me!)
- making "to do" lists so I could tick things off
- popping out into the garden.

It was while doing the last one that I took a few snaps and found a new friend... a teeny tiny baby frog! He's super cute, about the size of a fingertip and we've christened him Bruce. Here are a few pics from the garden, and a blurry shot of Bruce:

Can you spot teeny weeny Bruce on the last one?

Bed time now. Don't forget, it's Jumpers for Goalposts @ The Alley Cafe tomorrow. Live music & craft fun.

See you there!

Bex

Music & Crafting

2010-07-07T01:29:00.000-07:00

I've written about Jumpers For Goalposts on here lots, but in case you don't know what it is.... it's Nottingham's finest music & crafting evening, hosted by Hello Thor Records and starring an acoustic act, DJs, a creative craft competition and MEGA prizes (TM). This month the act is Jake Bugg. Come down to the Alley Cafe on the 3rd Thursday of the month and join in.

Here is the brand new, very exciting Jumpers For Goalposts blog. I recommend a visit:

http://thesecretdiaryofjumpersforgoalposts.wordpress.com/

And you can read more on LeftLion here: http://www.leftlion.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=21877.0

Love Bex
x

New obsession

2010-07-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I've just started listening to a tune off the new LCD Soundsystem album and I'm obsessed with it already.

If I knew how to stream it on here I would... instead you can watch this performance from Jools Holland:

There's something really beautiful about this song, it's so fragile and open and then an amazing tune at the same time. It reminds me a bit of Hot Chip, but with a bit more confidence. There's something really compelling about the fact that it's being sung by a forty year old man with a slight paunch and his shirt untucked too. I really like the phrasing of the verses, the way the lyrics are like long sentences spread out over the melody. I feel like I've known this song forever and yet I want to play it all over again as soon as it finishes. In short, I'm a bit in love with this song. Shhh... don't tell Anders.

love Bex
x

Quizzezzezzezzes

2010-06-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I'm planning a super cool fun music quiz night to raise money for charity and I was wondering whether anyone had any good suggestions for: Rounds to include? What types of questions people like? How long it should be? AND, most importantly... a super cool name???

Please leave a comment with any thoughts, your help would be much appreciated!

I'm doing it to raise money for Bluebell Wood, a children's hospice in Nottinghamshire which does lots of very good work for sick children & their families.

Thanks for your help!

Bex
x

Play-doh-ground event TONIGHT!

2010-06-25T05:48:00.000-07:00

There's an awesome event on in Nottingham tonight. Famous gaming designer Keita Takahashi has been involved with planning the re-development of a children's playground in Woodthorpe for a while now. The latest stage of this process involves an evening of "fun, games and whimsy" as part of GameCityNights at Antenna.

This includes a competition for teams to take inspiration from Keita's work and basically have a giggle with Playdoh to create something that you'd like to see in the park. Whether you want to create an inspired object of absolute silliness or a feat of skilled engineering is up to you!

For more details on this unique event check out the Game City website or the Facebook event.

My New Favourite Thing

2010-06-18T09:43:00.001-07:00

I heart Mario.

Jumpers For Goalposts

2010-06-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

A quick reminder... it's Jumpers For Goalposts tomorrow night at the Alley Cafe.

We've got Hawks & Other Birds playing live. New band out in Notts.

We've got Anders & Holly (Polka Dot Promotions) playing charity shop vinyl as an homage to the wonderful Music Exchange (read below).

PLUS

We've got a great creative competition with some truly MEGA prizes to be won*. Because the band are Hawks & Other Birds and because Nick is a big girl who's afraid of flapping things like birds (sorry Nick! xx) we got to thinking about phobias... so you need to come and show us what you're scared of, via the medium of plasticine, googly eyes, crepe paper and talent.

See you there!

Bex
x

Some pictures from Jumpers past...

* in this instance the word MEGA = a bit rubbish

Go West!

2010-06-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after a slightly disappointing trip into Sherwood me and Anders ventured into Nottingham to find various birthday & Father's Day presents. Turns out WH Smith is pretty much on the money with books for Father's Day and Fopp furnished us with some good CD based treats for our respective Dads (Seasick Steve & that ole Piano Man Billy Joel). A bit more looking for birthday presents and we were ready for a bite to eat (Anders) and a sit down (me), so we made our way up to the West End Arcade, and this is the reason I'm writing this post. I just wanted to say that if anyone hasn't been up there for a while then go now!

Here are the reasons why:

- It's got really cool old 70's signage:

- There are 2 record shops. Yes, two! One's alright (The Heavy Sounds), but doesn't tally exactly with our tastes. The second is awesome, because not only does it stock really good stuff (including local labels like Gringo & our very own Hello Thor), but it also raises money for charity - The Music Exchange should be your new favourite shop. Read more about it here.

- There's an awesome-ly bad new gallery shop. Sorry if you own it and you're reading this, but it really is awesome-ly bad. Sorry too if you're one of the artists featured. It's a really nice place for a gallery, lots of light, big square windows, a lovely little shop, but the stuff in there is random and incredible. I won't describe particularly bad bits, because I just won't be able to help being really rude, but you definitely need to check it out. Me and Anders wanted to buy a whole wall's worth, just because it's so amazing.

- Al's shop Recreation is great. This is it a little while ago, and yes there you can spot Nick, Tom & Anders goofing around.

The shop stocks a brilliant mix of really desirable vintage pieces of furniture, ceramics, stereos etc alongside stuff made by designer-maker-craft people in Nottingham. I've bought a beautiful ceramic necklace in there before shaped like a moustache with a lovely blue floral print. It gets very positive reviews every time I wear it. I've also bought a couple of prints and some really nice T-shirts by I Dress Myself. I'd really recommend it if you want to buy yourself or a stylish friend a present.

- Finally, last but not least, there is the magical, magnificent creperie, Aubrey's. I can't say this strongly enough, GO! We've been for lunch a few times on a Saturday and it makes you feel like you're on holiday. It has only a few small tables, so you have to be lucky to get one, and serves delicious savoury galettes (with lovely garlic mushroom, olive tapenade, raclette etc flavours) and amazing sweet sweet crepes (with ricotta & berries, orange & cardamom and more). Plus the hot chocolate is the best in Nottingham, the crockery is vintage and makes you want to sneak it in your bag when no-one's looking AND they have the papers on a Saturday. What more could you want? It's well worth the walk up from Market Square and away from costa, nero, starbucks & the rest.

One more pic:

Hope you go soon!

bex

Amazing digital art

2010-06-09T07:13:00.000-07:00

Battle of Branchage from seeper on Vimeo.

This is an incredible film showing a digital projection onto an old castle. I love how it uses the fabric of the castle and creates an amazing animation around it and I love seeing it above the town lying peacefully below.

If you check out the website of the people who made it there's also an ACDC vs Ironman one.

Bex
x

Video by Little Kingdoms for "Ace is the way" - Fists

2010-06-08T07:52:00.000-07:00

Fists 'Ace is the Way' from Little Kingdoms on Vimeo.

Don't think I've posted this up before. If not, silly me. This is an ace animation created by a friend of Fists, Little Kingdoms. You can check another of his video's out here: http://vimeo.com/10556873.

Awesome.

Bex
x

Yunioshi @ Nottingham Contemporary

2010-06-02T02:31:00.000-07:00

Saw Yunioshi play the Nottingham Contemporary bar over the Bank Holiday weekend. We very nearly didn't make it and were gutted to miss Japanese Sleepers & Spaceships Are Cool, but were delighted that we made it in time to hear Team Yunioshi launch their new EP.

What a fun gig! We missed the craft section but luckily there were still a man hanging around with foil wrapped round his head, and one man totally dressed as a robot. The sound was awesome as we came down through the building and didn't disappoint when we got into the bar. I had suspected it may feel a bit cold and sterile for performances, but the atmosphere was fantastic and the bar looked really cool. It was a bit like walking into a super cool party in a film.

Yunioshi sounded better than I've ever heard them sound live before, big props to the sound man for that. The new songs sounded ace, the old songs sounded fresh & everything was perfectly in proportion. Here's some pics:

Bye! Love Bex

Stuff What Is Happening

2010-05-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

This went out to the Hello Thor mailing list earlier, and there was such a lot of nice stuff on there I thought I'd post it up here too:

THREE BANDS PLUS CRAFT AND FOOD IN A GALLERY FOR FREE

This Saturday night (29th May), our good friends Yunioshi are launching their new 5 track EP “How to survive a robot uprising” at Nottingham Contemporary. As well as Yunioshi and their super-fun brand of electro funk, there will also be the sunshine pop of Spaceships Are Cool and the indie-folk of the brilliant Japanese Sleepers. Plus a craft competition and, no doubt, something scrumptious courtesy of the Yunioshi catering corps. Free.

TWO BANDS AND US DJING IN ANOTHER GALLERY

Then, the Saturday after (5th June) we’ll be DJing at the launch of the new single by Hhymn at the Refectory (Hooton Street, off Carlton Road, Nottingham). Also playing will be one of our own…the very wonderful We Show Up On RadaR. £3.

TEN ACE SONGS INCLUDING ONE CALLED "LEGO RULES" TO DOWNLOAD FOR FREE

One of the greatest bands we have ever had the pleasure of putting on was the much-missed Death By TV - two 16-year olds from Loughborough who enjoyed drinking lemonade, jumping into each other, and making very exciting, very immature, very fun casio-punk in their bedrooms. They played a few gigs, changed their name several times and then split up to be famous, or clever, or something. We’re super happy that their entire discography is now available to download for free from http://www.methodistleisure.com/deathbytv/. Do it, you won't be sorry.

AND FINALLY

Actually, that’s about it for now. We’ll be back soon, but in the mean time, look out for Fists and We Show Up On RadaR at various festivals this summer (Summer Sundae, Y-Not, Splendour…plus more to come), and don’t forget you can buy their records from our website.

Also remember that we hold court at the Alley Café on the third Thursday of every month with Nottingham’s finest, funnest, free-est felt tips & folk night, Jumpers For Goalposts. Next month (Thurs 17th June) Japanese Sleepers are playing live. Hope to see you there.

Bex
x

Morning!

2010-05-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

It's a grey day today, but after the lovely weekend I still feel all full up of sunshine. Spent most of the weekend working in the garden, and managing not to get sunburned, which is a first for me! I switched some bluebells from the front garden to the back, potted up some cuttings from my herbs, trimmed the hedge, did some weeding, painted the fence, tidied up and began a war against slugs and snails. Now, we're an organic garden, so what to do? Obviously I don't want to stand on them because that's gross & mean, but I also don't want them to eat my newly bought & installed beautiful plants right down until they are nothing but stubs in the ground. [So far they've eaten at least £20 worth...and counting...]. So, I'm trying various things.

First off, coffee grounds, which didn't seem to be effective in the least, but which I've since figured out is at least slowing them down! Thanks to the Little Deli in Carrington for their kind provision in one day of more coffee grounds than we could manage in a week! I've since been recommended digging a plastic cup of beer into the ground and giving them a drink before they (unfortunately) die. For a while we did try taking them round to the park, but apparently they have a homing instinct which works for up to 4 miles, so that's not going to be any use at all! [This instinct has been contested by Joey Chickenskin and apparently I have to put a dot of nail varnish on the snails and see if they come back, if I get round to doing that I'll let you know how it goes!]

Anyway, garden pests aside, it's really nice to work in the garden, to plant stuff and see it grow (or not), to figure out where you've made a mistake and fix it for next time, and then at some point to end up with a bunch of flowers for the bees, seeds for the birds and vegetables for us! It's also really nice to listen to the blackbird who has taken up residence nearby, who Anders described as being "The Police Academy Guy of birds" because it makes all different noises like alarms, bells, beeps and whistles.

I did actually mean to write a whole different post today, but it seems that's what's on my mind, so there we have it!

bex
x

Spring Fling!

2010-05-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to mention that I Dress Myself are having a Spring Fling Studio Sale tomorrow! We're pretty lucky to have such a creative design & printing force on our doorstep, so I hope lots of people will come down and get bargains!

Here's all the info:

This Saturday, the I Dress Myself print studio is opening it's doors for our first studio sale, the Spring Fling. Jon Burgerman will be doodling on the day, Nicholas Saunders will be screen printing some limited edition posters, Norm from Waste will be screen printing some amazing tees and we'll be selling vegan cakes....oh, and lots of other stuff.

Back catalogue tees will be on sale for £10 each and we're putting together a bargain bin of test prints, misprints and random stuff for £5 each. If that's not enough, all our current products will be available for 20% off. All for one day only!

Come to the studio sale:

When: Saturday 22nd May 2010 12-4 pm
Where: I Dress Myself, 32-40 Carrington Street, Nottingham, NG1 7FG

PLUS! It's the final episode of Ashes to Ashes tonight. I haven't seen the whole series, but I'm sad it's totally ending. I love Gene Hunt. He's an amazing creation!

AND I'd like to say a very happy birthday to Mr Joe Wrigley, in case he reads this. See you on Sunday!

Love Bex
x

BURLYYYYYYYY NAGASAKIIIIIIIIIIIIII !!!!!!!!!

2010-05-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Went to the Burly Nagasaki Album Launch @ the Chameleon last night. It was ace. It helped that they'd chosen 3 bands/artists to play with who I really like and that everyone there seemed full of friendliness and goodwill and cheer.

First up was Matthew Stephen Cooper who I've only seen in the teenytiny space at the Alley Cafe when he played Jumpers For Goalposts. It was really good to see him with a big soundsystem and to hear his playing & singing properly.

THEN came the wonderful Smell of Success, aka the very talented Joe & BD. They played some new tunes which BD told us he'd only learned 1 week ago. It showed a little round the edges, but not in a way that took away from how good the songwriting was and they were still full of heart and melody and sounded great. Plus Joe looked super cool with a sharp suit and shades and an old-school keyboard.

NEXT came the big BURLY NAGASAKI set. Having been lucky enough to hear the album when we made the video for forthcoming single Fools' Gold, I was really excited to hear it live. They opened with a supercool Berlin-influenced underground dance piece with an awesome performance art aspect to it in the shape of an awful ear-splitting electronic feedback-type of noise which prompted some kindly help from a member of 20 Year Hurricane who thought that something was genuinely going wrong. Music where people think something is going wrong is brilliant, like the Tom Tomas Club at the Alley Cafe covering Prince and having a member of the audience genuinely concerned shouting "What's going wrong?"! Anyway, awesome intro over Tez & Joey treated us to a full live album set including the following instruments: guitar, drums, saw, keyboard, sandwiches, scissors, ukelele, a giant cardboard gun, an apron and probably more that I've forgotten. There was a brilliant air of rehearsal about it, with a few false starts and a couple of "who begins the next one?" moments. I was really into that, like this was the rehearsal show and next week the whole night would run again and everyone would be note perfect. We were seeing something special with a few charming, minor imperfections which gave it its heart.

I think my favourite moment was the crowd singalong to "look at all the babies we've killed" and then Joey's explanation story about Elvis. Ask him if you want to know what it is.

LAST but of course not least, were Twenty Year Hurricane. Despite Nick's proclamations that their opener was a new song and was probably going to be rubbish it worked really well. The sound in the chameleon is really good, credit to Simon the sound engineer, and it's so nice to hear bands you like playing there. the Hurricane sounded great and even though the crowd thinned a little they still really created an atmosphere. Gareth is ace on the drums, really playing and smiling and involved, Chris on bass is focused and intense and Nick singing has a charm all of his own. (Nick if you read this i mean that in a good way I promise x).

Anyway, few pics here, more Burly gigs to come, can't wait!

Random layout once again courtesy of Blogger. Well done Blogger team.

Bought a Burly Nagaasaki album for only £4. Haven't looked through it and my goodies properly yet as I'm waiting for Anders to return from a stag weekend. Can't wait though, looks choc-full of fun!

bye for now
x
Bex

The Election: Who Wins? You Decide!

2010-05-05T01:56:00.000-07:00

Just read an incredible article on the election on the Guardian's website. I've been a bit wavering, still undecided one day before the election whether to vote Liberal or Labour, whether I know enough about either to make an informed choice is debatable. I feel a lot more involved and aware in this election thanks to the TV debates, but I haven't read any manifestos and still feel I have only a scant knowledge of each party's policies. Anyway, this made for fascinating, horrifying reading. I'll copy a bit in, but I urge you to read the article in full: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/05/1983-cameron-victory-kinnocks-words

On the eve of the 1983 election – which, until this year, seemed destined to represent for ever the low watermark of Labour performances – a young member of the party's shadow cabinet delivered what was to be one of his most compelling speeches. Neil Kinnock knew a landslide defeat was imminent so, speaking in Bridgend, he sketched the world to come. "I warn you," he began, addressing a nation about to descend into the bitterest stretch of the Thatcher era. "I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."

and

I warn you that the economy could slide back into despair. Maybe people have not paid attention to this argument because Gordon Brown has been making it, but the danger is real. A sudden shut-off of the public spending tap could well send a frail recovery staggering back into recession: the dreaded double-dip. It's happened elsewhere and could happen here. The US and other economies are seeing the tide turn, but that's because they've kept the public cash coming. Cameron's aim, played down in the rhetoric because it polled so badly, is to cut spending immediately, ushering in what he once proudly trumpeted as an "age of austerity".

I kind of wanted to copy and paste the whole article then. Anyway, hope you're going to vote tomorrow, however you're going to vote.

Becky
x

FISTS EP Launch gig - 9th April & Fools' Gold Loaves

2010-04-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Isn't it nice to have a bit of sunshine? Mmmmmm.

I realised I haven't posted or put up any pics since the Hello Thor/ Fists EP Launch at the Rescue Rooms on the 9th April. What an amazing night. ALL the bands were brilliant. Escapologists had a hard slot being first on, but totally set the tone for a great night with their performance. Pilgrim Fathers killed with a big rock set and lots of great posturing from frontman Shelf. Swimming were brilliant and it was awesome to hear one of my favourite songs (Tigershark) live. Then Fists rocked up and played the best set I think I might've ever seen them play. It was an amazing way to launch the new Fists Olympic Hits EP and lots of people went home with copies. If you didn't get one you can buy them at http://www.hellothor.com/ or on amazon etc.

Here's some pics (apologies for the variable quality - not much light in the Rescue Rooms it turns out):
(*Random order is due to the intensely annoying new Blogspot editing*)

Fool's Gold Loaf? It's what killed Elvis and recently our kitchen turned into a film studio when we helped Burly Nagasaki to try and make a music video for the release of their forthcoming album. We heard the album too, it's GREAT! They recorded it in a month for the RPM challenge, doing it all in February, and it sounds awesome. Can't WAIT for their Launch Party at the Chameleon on the 7th May (I think). Hopefully some of the footage we shot will also be useable so you might get to see the horror that is a FOOLS GOLD LOAF - AKA A jar of peanut butter, a jar of jam, a whole heap of bacon and a massive buttered loaf. It tasted disgusting and was definitely a month's worth of calories in one go. Elvis used to eat them as a midnight snack. Unbelievable. here we are filming:

Fun!

This week: off to see Greenberg at the Broadway on Thursday (part of Screenlit), hopefully just relaxing on Friday then it's Dolly Disco time on Saturday! It's at Moog, Nick (Hello Thor) & Daddy Bones & Abi are DJing, so it should be ace!

Bye!

Bex
x

General Ramblings

2010-04-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Thought I'd pop a few thoughts up while I'm finishing off my lunch on this sunny Friday.

Firstly, who watched MasterChef this season? How great was it?! I was totally hooked. I haven't been that into it for a couple of years, but I really enjoyed this one. Particularly how John had gotten all slim and cool in his cardigans, instead of his 80's blazers. Did anyone else spot the winner really early on? I thought I was a genius, but it appears lots of people knew, so maybe I'm only half a genius.

Secondly, who watched the new Dr Who? LOVED IT. Can't wait for the next one tomorrow!

We saw Kick Ass the other day at the cinema. Have you seen it? It's a strange film, enjoyable but kind of like it's two films squashed together. There's a super-violent/bloody Tarantino/Japanese style super hero revenge flick combined with a 'nerds at school get cool' film. It was good, but I expected something very different. By the way, if you have seen it, the guy who plays the main character is British, weird right?!

Popped to a little art auction at BackLit studios on Wednesday and accidentally bought two pieces. Well, I say accidentally, it's not like I sneezed and he counted it as a bid or anything, but I wasn't really planning to go hog-wild and buy two things. I love them both though, will try to pop up pictures of them another time. Really i just wanted to mention the studios as I haven't been before but they have lots of exhibitions and happenings, well worth checking out. Apparently there's a facebook group for those of you on there. They are in Sneinton somewhere, just off Carlton Road.

If you're free next Thursday we're doing Jumpers for Goalposts at the Alley Cafe, as we do every 3rd Thursday of the month. If you haven't been before, it's billed as Nottingham's finest, funnest, free-est felt-tips n folk night and basically involves the following elements:

a live act (usually one person and a guitar, but in the past it's hosted keyboards, synths, washboards, melodicas and even a double bass)
DJs (not making you dance or anything, it's a bit small for that, but offering a fabulous soundtrack to your evening)
a craft competition (there are rules and craft materials provided for you to explore your creativity and use your nimble fingers to invent a beautiful miniature artwork. Or you can just put glitter and googly eyes on some bits of old cardboard... it's up to you)
"mega prizes" TM. (I'll let you decide if they're mega or not when you win one)

In general it's one of the nicest, friendliest, happiest evenings of the month. You can have a lovely organic cider, drink a cup of tea, hear some wonderful music and make a magical/shit creation. All for free too.

This weekend we're at the big Hello Thor / Fists EP Launch Party at the Rescue Rooms tonight (incidentally I dreamed about this last night and Barack Obama turned up. He's so cool.) and then just doing general hanging out and relaxing over the weekend. I'm hoping to see Whip It (Drew Barrymore's film), because I HEART Drew.

Right, better go crack on with some work now. Lunch technically finished ten minutes ago.

Love
Bex
x

Fists EP Launch plus "Boy Meets Gay Swan"

2010-04-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

How was your Easter? Mine involved doing 2 hours of gardening and needing 4 hours to recover (#whenyouknowyou'reold). We also went to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake which is just incredible. It's also awesome seeing it in the heart of Yorkshire with my dad, who said afterwards: "It's just the age old tale of boy meets girl, boy's mum won't let him see girl so boy meets gay swan". Of course.

I hope you'll all have heard by now about the big party on at the Rescue Rooms this weekend. Hope to see you there, come say hi, I'll be manning the stall giving away free EPs! In case you needed more info, all the stuff's below. PLUS there's exciting news about who the special guests at the after party are! Oooh!

love Bex
x

FISTS ‘Olympic Hits EP’ Launch Party! @ The Rescue Rooms 9th April 2010

FISTS are a 5-piece whose sound shifts and sprawls from skiffle-punk ('6 5 Special') to country-inflected indie pop '(Cockatoo') to the Stereolab/Velvets drone of ‘Skit’. Live, Fists are a woozy, kaleidoscopic and riotously fun affair. http://www.myspace.com/fistsmusic

SWIMMING manage to combine an avant-garde approach to making music (incorporating experimental field recordings, binaural art, electronica and post-rock) with a knack of writing anthemic, euphoric and righteously poppy music. http://www.myspace.com/swimmingband

PILGRIM FATHERS play awesome slabs of mind melting psychedelic post-rock. Expect inter-galactic riffs and songs that make you think of lazers, monsters and just how incredible this spinning ball of rock we inhabit is. http://www.myspace.com/thepilgrimfathers

ESCAPOLOGISTS have recently regrouped and morphed into the kind of band that makes synth-heavy, drum machine backed, dark pop that bring together psychedelia, hip-hop and electro together in all the best ways! http://www.myspace.com/escapologists

INCREDIBLE AFTER-PARTY IN THE RED ROOM featuring special guests, playing live, the “North west musical cataclysm” that is Apes Fight Back (www.myspace.com/apesfightback) & Frank's Vintage Metal Disco (featuring the likes of early ZZ-Top, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Led Zep, Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest).

PLUS there's still time to snap up an advance ticket for £5 (from Rock City box office / www.alt-tickets.co.uk) and you’ll get a FREE copy of the brand new ‘Olympic Hits EP’ by FISTS - just swap your ticket stub at the merch stand on the night.

http://www.hellothor.com/

Over The Wall, LIVE, tomorrow night

2010-03-31T04:56:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Just a quickie to let you know that Hello Thor are putting on a gig tomorrow night at The Chameleon with Over The Wall, Three Blind Wolves & We Show Up On Radar all playing LIVE for just £3. Plus there will be HT DJs and lots of pre-friday-off-work fun to be had!

See you there!

Bex

p.s. Over The Wall are a great Glaswegian band. Have a look at http://www.hellothor.com/ for more info

p.p.s. Here's a fun game: 3D Pong: http://www.newsandentertainment.com/zFcurveball.html

Fists "Olympic Hits" EP Launch Party @ RescueRooms, April 9th 2010

2010-03-26T03:59:00.000-07:00

Book your tickets in advance through Alt-Tickets &

get the new Olympic Hits EP (Hello Thor) for FREE!

Bex

Cracking London gigs this weekend

2010-03-24T05:41:00.000-07:00

Fists are down in London this weekend to play 2 great looking gigs and I'm really hoping I can get down there and join them.

Firstly, on Friday night (26th March) they're at the Buffalo Bar for a Fortuna Pop party!

FISTS will be bringing the 6 Music-approved (Don Letts, Gideon Coe and Tom Ravenscroft have all been spinning the new EP tracks!) sound of Olympic Hits to our country's capital. Artrocker recently hailed them as making the washboard cool again...and you can't get cooler than that!

Joining them are fellow Hello Thor hero, WE SHOW UP ON RADAR. Fresh from a BBC Maida Vale session and bringing some delightful new songs with him, Andy will be lending London his trademark hushed lullabies for the night.

There's also THE LEAF LIBRARY (Stereolab-like drone rock meets indie pop lyricism) and the Isle Of Wight's MARCEL who "shake the ground and wet the eyes like Wilco". Awesome!

AND Tom Whalley is DJing so expect indie anthems, northern soul, post-punk, alt-rock, French pop and 60s psych alongside 80s soundtracks and a man shouting "OHHHHHHHHH!" at his own records!
It's £5 in advance from We Got Tickets / £4 cheap list if you give hellothorrecords@gmail.com a shout in the next 24 hours.

THEN there's a gig / coach trip organised by I'm Not From London.

I can't seem to find a lot of details about this except for this...
SAT 27th MARCH-
ROYAL GALA / FISTS / HOT JAPANESE GIRL / CUBAN CRIMEWAVE / GIMME DANGER
MILK / CITY SHANTY BAND / ULTRAJELLY / CHRIS MC DONALD & THE LEISURE CLASS / AUDIO MASSAGE DJ'S

It's @ The Stag's Head [Orsman Road- Dalston] and is FREE with a free BBQ.

Both gigs promise to be awesome, please spread the word and get along there if you can!

Hello Thor News

2010-03-17T04:14:00.000-07:00

Thought it would be good to pop up a bit of Hello Thor news, seeing as things have been so busy and exciting with the label in recent weeks.

First off, Fists were featured in the NME! AND they got 4/5 in Artrocker! This is all down to the new EP Olympic Hits, which has also been getting airplay on 6music, BBC2, NME Radio and more. Brilliant news and SO great to see a great band getting coverage despite not being from a hyped city/scene. Let's hope the same happens for more of Nottingham's talented musicians.

We Show Up On Radar played a Maida Vale Weekender for the BBC! You can hear the tracks here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/introducing/sessions/maidavaleweekender/2010/ They sound Awesome. Plus you can download the WSUOR EP from http://www.hellothor.com/, it's ace.

Then, last week Fists played at Rough Trade in London to launch their Counter Culture 09 compilation, which Cockatoo is on. Here are some pics:

They played some old favourites (Finger, 6-5 etc) and the tracks from the new EP, which will be released on 29th March. The new tracks sounded awesome, Weekend and Ace is the Way just work so well live and have a really full, fierce sound.

So, you can buy the new EP Olympic Hits on http://www.hellothor.com/ or you can buy an advance ticket for the launch gig, 9th April @ The Rescue Rooms, and get the EP for free. Not a bad deal. Get the advance booking deal on alt-tickets or maybe on Hello Thor's website.

The EP Launch Party is going to be a huge celebration of Nottingham music, with Fists joined by the wonderful Swimming, the marvellous Escapologists and the mythical Pilgrim Fathers. Hello Thor DJs will be on the decks and there's an after party up in the Red Rooms featuring Frank's Vintage Metal Disco and special live guests. Buy your ticket in advance and get the EP free as a thank you, so that's £5 for a ticket for a mega gig and a free EP worth £4. Good times.

We're so pleased with how everything is going with Hello Thor and are even more pleased that we've had such support from people in our hometown here in Nottingham. Thanks everyone.

Bex
x

HOLES - Prussian Projekte

2010-03-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

Hello

I've been super busy lately (studying, sorting out the next Hello Thor releases and snowed under at work) and so haven't had chance to post about this great looking event...

Prussian Projekte have been doing lots of great stuff - just round the corner from us in Sherwood too! - and this promises to be no exception.

To coincide with the exhibition launch at Broadway there's a free showing of Holes, a great film based on a cracking kids book. It's very charming and stars Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voigt, Henry Winkler (the Fonz!) and Eartha Kitt! As well as Shia LaBeouf before everyone started hating him.

To find out more you can check out the Facebook event or contact Broadway or email info@prussianprojekte.com

x Anders

6music - the debate continues

2010-03-10T04:02:00.000-08:00

There is some fascinating stuff coming to light in the continuing 6music debate. Please contribute to tell the BBC what you want for your licence fee.

Here is a post made in response to this article on the Guardian:

Well I am a 6Music listener and I absolutely HATE commercial radio. The tedious highly repetitive small play list, not to mention the constant adverts gnawing at your very soul.
It doesn't even come anywhere close to what 6Music does.

My listening options are:
1. 6Music
2. My (extensive) music collection.

There is no 3, commercial radio.

Even commercial radio agrees with me here.
Steve Orchard states very clearly that 6Music is of no interest to commercial radio:
http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2010/03/05/13011-radio-boss-commercial-sector-will-gain-nothing-from-6-music-closure

I should also like to point out yet again the crass contradiction that if something "had to close" (presumably to save money) why are you able to put the money into other more bloated stations? You clearly dont have any tangible objectives here. Quality? Its quality. Cheap? Its cheap! Commercial sector? Nope, they don't want it.

I really wish someone at the BBC would put their hand up to admit they simply don't have a clue what they are talking about. Everyone makes mistakes, but decent people put their hands up to them.

Steve Lamaqc has also written an article on the issue on his blog Going Deaf For A Living which is really interesting, and brave considering he's criticising his bosses. I think his point that what’s less clear is how sacrificing 6Music will help is a really interesting one. It seems from everything coming out from the Beeb that they don't really know. One minute the money is being put into TV programming, the next into creating Radio 4 Extra? I mean, WTF? I like Radio 4, but it definitely doesn't need an "extra". Maybe they should combine it with 1Extra and create Radio 14Extra? I'd listen to that.

Anyway, do the consultation, even though it seems like the BBC are very clearly not going to back down. Email the people involved, make your voice and opinion heard. It's your BBC.

Bex
x

I LOVE this

2010-03-03T05:58:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Lewis for bringing this to my attention:

What are the odds that it's real?

Bex

BBC Review

2010-03-03T01:40:00.000-08:00

I'm genuinely gutted to hear about the proposal to close BBC 6music and (in a different way), BBC Asian Network. Both cater to an audience which isn't served by commercial broadcasters and both barely cost anything in comparison to high fees for big name presenters etc etc. I am a long-time BBC advocate and fan, but this is starting to make me question that faith in the corporation.

There's an excellent article here about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/02/rupert-murdoch-tory-media-policy

Please do sign up to the petition about it: http://www.petition.fm/petitions/6musicasiannet/1000/
and write to all these people:
BBC Director General Mark Thompson: Markthompsonandpa@bbc.co.uk

The Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw: bradshawb@parliament.uk
The BBC Complaints Department: www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

The BBC is a right and a privilege, let's get together to protect it from money grubbing Murdoch and the Tories.

Becky

Stuff we've been up to

2010-02-24T05:15:00.000-08:00

Isn't it nice when people visit and you have a special reason to do fun things at the weekend instead of boring chores? We had friends up from London this weekend and we:

... cooked goats cheese and onion tarts and drank wine on Friday night.

... slept late and then wandered round town drinking "the best hot chocolate in the world" (TM) from Aubreys (the crepe place), before heading up to Nottingham Contemporary for the Star City exhibition. I made a "hilarious" joke about the big wheel in the city centre and how our visitors would never have seen anything like it. I'm funny. Anyway, the exhibition, firstly, don't see the exhibition backwards, we did and I regretted it afterwards. Secondly, it's pretty big/long, so don't linger too long over stuff you're not bothered about. Highlights for me included:
- the machine making noises as water droplets fell - it was like a dystopian sci-fi scene, a bit menacing, like it should be in the basement of a multi-storey car park in a horror film.
- the old Russian posters promoting space travel, really made you imagine how people must've felt about space in the old days. It was such a magical, almost spiritual place then.
- the collages of religious icons & rockets - I love icons stylistically and I really like space imagery, so this just really worked for me!
- the 'doctor's surgery' bit made by a husband/wife team who were some of the first installation artists
- And finally, the quote from Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, near the giant spacesuit in the bottom of the building:

"Those who have already been in space yearn with all their heart and soul to return there again and again. With every single day passing, time leaves my flight in the past. Occasionally the wind will whisper something from the tops of tall pine trees and then everything becomes silent. In such minutes I remember the most bright and wonderful experience in my life: the flight into space."

I can't get over how beautiful that is, and how well she captures a moment and a feeling that pretty much no-one else has experienced.

... saw the most random performance I've seen in ages at Nottingham Playhouse. It was called Pregnant?! and involved a PowerPoint animation with a live performance from a Japanese artist which was about being impregnated by rabbits. I can't really explain any further than that to be honest, as that's pretty much the extent to which it made any sense. Despite that, it was brilliant, really funny, the interaction between the animations and the artist was great, surreal and confusing but great. Plus we learned that bunnies ovulate even when pregnant, so that's a new fact for us all there. It was insane, like someone saying "I had this really weird dream, right", only without it being the most painfully boring conversation in the world, because it actually recreated that dream world for you. Ace.

... ate breakfast late, enjoying John's discovery of bacon and eggs on crumpets instead of toast. Super nice, especially when you get lovely local bacon from JT Beedham's instead of horrible, watery, over-salted bacon from Tesco. Then we wandered round the cemetery next to the forest in the snow. It was lovely. I took some photos and me and Anna Ray made this tree:

... Finally, on Monday night we saw Hot Horizons at the Social. They're really good, strong vocals, interesting guitars and some really good tunes. I'm looking forward to hearing the recorded stuff later in the year. Then we popped over to say a quick Happy Birthday to Andy from We Show Up On Radar who was celebrating with an apple juice at the Orange Tree. We heard about his visit to Maida Vale at the weekend to record tracks for the BBC, it's really exciting! Don't know when they will be on the radio yet, but we've heard that they sound really good.

Anyway, enough rambling from me, hope you have a nice week!

Bex
x

Hot Chip – Rock City (15th Feb 2010)

2010-02-17T03:09:00.000-08:00

This gig combined all the hedonism and euphoria of your favourite dance anthems with real heart and soul. Even on a damp, cold Monday night Hot Chip brought the carnival atmosphere – dynamic and dancey, but not at the expense of emotion and their idiosyncratic, lovely songwriting skill.

For the live set, they reworked lots of their material - especially some of the big hitters. Boy From School (the wife's fave) became punchier and less vulnerable. Over and Over morphed into the perfect killer tune – something that got the mosh pit chanting and pogoing like crazy, but still surprised and tickled the headnodding musos at the back (apart from the huge muscle-guy next to Bex, who remained as solid and impassive as a rock throughout).

Yes this was stadium dance at times, but it kept all the subtle, intelligent flourishes that have always marked Hot Chip out as a band of beguiling character. Even when turning everything up to ten and they never trot out some Pendulum-esque 2-D luddite dance-rock.

The new material sounded great too – Brothers being a particular favourite. Guitarist / steel drummer / trumpeter (!) asks us all to vote for it to become the next World Cup anthem and I for one can think of nothing more apt.

Anders
x

(p.s. I did take some pics and awfully noisy video, but my phone has decided it hates me so I can't put them up. It was an AMAZING gig though. - Bex)

We Show Up On RadaR - New video for EP out on 15th Feb

2010-02-14T06:35:00.000-08:00

We Show Up On RadaR's new EP "A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk and a Stick of Butter" is out on the 15th Feb on Hello Thor Records.

Here's a little video for the very lovely "It should be you and me":

We Show Up On Radar - It Should Be You And Me from Joe Hardy on Vimeo.

You can buy the EP on www.hellothor.com or on I-tunes, Amazon etc. If you buy on Hello Thor's website more money goes to the label & artist, so do them a favour and buy it on there!

Love
Bex
x

p.s. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Charity - a brilliant way to give donations

2010-02-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

Hello,

I'm sure you've all been stopped by "Charity Muggers" (what a horrible cynical phrase that is, sorry!) in the past, or have pretended to talk on your mobile/listen to your ipod/not care in order to avoid them. Well, I want to promise that this post will not be the blog version of that!

I just wanted to let you know about a way to give a donation to charity that me and Anders have been involved with for a couple of years. The concept is simple: just donate 1% of your income to charity.

Do it through the One Percent Scheme and it will be donated to smaller grassroots charities which have less experience in fundraising, but do an amazing job on the ground. The One Percent Scheme is run by a group of friends in London, who are also friends of ours. They do a brilliant job of getting involved with the charities, learning about the issues and seeing where the money goes, so you can be sure your 1% is well used.

Anyway, if you're interested, or just want to read a bit more about it or find out what causes we support, then follow this link:
http://www.onepercentscheme.org/public/Home.htm

A new charity which we can vote on whether to support or not is The Choir With No Name:

I think I'll be voting for them.

Thanks,
Bex
x

WSUOR EP Launch @ Library

2010-02-10T02:59:00.001-08:00

Thanks! to everyone who came along as Hello Thor Records launched their latest release at Nottingham Library last week. We Show Up On RadaR's new EP ("A loaf of bread, a container of milk and a stick of butter") is fabulous, a wonderful magical twinkling and yet slightly melancholy gem. You can buy an actual physical VERY limited edition copy at We Show Up On RadaR's gigs, or you can download it from all major download sites. Put it on and hear it sparkle! Go to www.hellothor.com to find out more.

The gig was super fun. We sold out of tea, cake AND handmade limited edition EPs. A resounding success. Plus the small group of saturday afternoon drunks enjoyed the show, so everyone was happy. Make A Halo had lovely funny songs and very nice shoes, the Escapologists' new stuff sounded great and We Show Up On RadaR were as charming and melodic as always.

Anyway, here's some pics from the party at the Library:

Hope you enjoyed it tooooooooo!

Becky
x

Thanks Popbitch!

2010-02-05T01:39:00.001-08:00

For bringing this to my attention:

http://www.takeaweirdbreak.com/

Sample:

Very funny. Thanks also for this joke:
Old Jokes Home:
Q: How many musos does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: It's a pretty obscure number.You probably haven't heard of it.

Tonight I am DJing at the Dolly Disco @ The Alley Cafe. Come along if you like to hear music being played with gaps in between and lots of cries of "Oh no! I pressed the wrong button!"

I have been selecting some tunes ready for the occasion. They currently include:
Vampire Weekend (great live footage), Doris Day, Hot 8 Brass Band (also amazing live footage),Kenny Rogers (live footage from the 70's) and Beyonce, to name a random, yet representative selection.

DJing tonight, Library EP launch tomorrow. Fun weekend!

Love
Bex
x

Hello Thor Library Gig on Saturday!

2010-02-03T04:21:00.000-08:00

Afternoon All,

Just taking a quick mini-break from working hard to mention the Hello Thor Library Gig this weekend. I have been coerced into producing cakes for the occasion. I'm thinking Strawberry Cheesecake Cupcakes. They went down really well at the Chrismoustache party and I really don't mind eating up any leftovers, so I reckon they're a good bet. Any other requests?

Anyway, here's all the info for Sat from Hello Thor:

We Show Up On RadaR
@ Nottingham Central Library
Saturday 6th February (4pm - 6pm) FREE ENTRY

We had such a great time when we launched We Show Up On RadaR’s single at Nottingham Central Library last year (if you don’t believe us have a look at this little film) that when they asked us back we couldn’t refuse. Heck, we even booked a tour of other libraries to follow.

That’s right, this Saturday (6th February) at 4pm we’ll be introducing the world to We Show Up On RadaR’s beautiful brand new EP - A Loaf Of Bread, A Container Of Milk & A Stick Of Butter - in the company of a whole load of books, a heap of cake, a box or two of wine, and, of course, plenty of amazing live music:

We Show Up On RadaR is Andy Wright. Andy makes melancholic, mischievous acoustic pop to dream to. It’s full of contradictions - childlike and sweet, but a bit wrong; terribly sad, but hopelessly uplifting - and is, in our opinion, blimin’ marvellous. Check him out in a recent BBC session here.
www.myspace.com/wsuor

Escapologists are three very talented gentlemen who produce gently reflective post-rock, informed by the likes of Pavement, The Cure and Stereolab. We last saw them tearing it up at the Christmas Covers Party, and can’t wait to see them again.
www.myspace.com/escapologists

Henry Parkinson makes lovely introspective folk pop, kind of like Nick Drake...from Nottingham.
www.myspace.com/makeahalo

It’s all totally FREE to get in and you can read as many books as you like between bands. It’s going to be loads of fun!

We Show Up On RadaR’s 6-track A Loaf Of Bread, A Container Of Milk & A Stick Of Butter EP is released digitally through iTunes, Amazon etc. on Monday 15th February. It will also be available as a strictly limited handmade CD at the library gigs and from www.hellothor.com.

We Show Up On RadaR is also playing gigs at Leicester Central Lending Library (8th February, 6pm), Leeds Central Library (9th February, 6pm) and Norwich & Norfolk Millennium Library (11th February, 6pm).

Sounds great! See you there!

Becky
x

Looking for inspiration and finding Nic Cage

2010-01-27T02:47:00.000-08:00

I was just trawling the internet looking for a pick-me-up as my motivation took a nose dive at work. When this happens I often have a peek at We Are What We Do's website. They are the brains behind a few brilliant books that encourage everyone to do small things to make a difference to the world.

The first one I read was Change The World For A Fiver. Which was a bargain considering how often it has inspired me to do something a bit selfless and/or fun.

Then they unleashed Change The World 9 To 5 on the world. And I unleashed it on my workplace.

Since then they've worked with kids to produce a book called Teach Your Granny To Text and the organisation has grown and grown.

I was just browsing their blog when I stumbled across a Swedish man's blog 365 things you can do which suggests a simple action every day starting with Start A Blog (which I've already done!). That lead me to this rather brilliant and silly blog which I am definitely gonna keep checking.

I think my fave so far is Nic Cage as Ellen

Best. Simpsons. Ever..?

2010-01-14T04:17:00.001-08:00

Just stumbled across this Top 20 Simpsons moments on the Guardian website.

What a tough call!

I'm always surprised when people say they don't love The Simpsons. Some people just don't watch it. That's odd. Some just don't like it. Now to me that shows a lack of intelligence! At it's best The Simpsons manages to surpass pretty much any cartoon, sitcom, TV show, film or musical I've ever seen. To combine such comedy (high and low brow) and pathos in the confines of a half-hour cartoon is incredible. Very few shows have even come close - and certainly not for such a sustained run.

As for my fave moments, I have to agree that any time Maggie puts on her snowsuit is a gem. I also love to see Homer having to win back Marge...Marge singing You are so beautiful to me...Natural Born Kissers is a belter (when Marge and Homer decide to spice up their lovelife)...the bizarre Johnny Cash cameo (which I first saw dubbed into Spanish and had to wait years to find out what it all meant!)...there's just so many.

I could also do a whole Top 20 of favourite Ralph Wiggum moments. Best soundbites are probably "I bent my wookie" and "I ated the purple berries..."

What you saying?
Who's your favourite Simpsons characters? Fave episodes? Quotes? Moments...?

Hello Thor Zine #3

2010-01-13T06:50:00.000-08:00

Hi!

Hello Thor's third zine is now ready to take submissions! Zine #2 looked like this:

Zine #3 will be another lo-fi, DIY production along the theme:

SIGN O THE TIMES

Please submit your doodles, scribbles, illustrations, comic strips, masterpieces, messes to helloanders@hellothor.com. They need to be black & white and reasonably hi-res (enough to be printed A5 size). If you want to submit an actual physical picture you've made with your actual hands then please email Anders for the address to send it to.

Thanks!

Becky

Music-Go-Round

2010-01-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

As I was making hundreds of resolutions in a hungover state on New Year's Day I came up with the idea of having a Music club amongst myself and friends so we can find new music and share mix CDs without too much work. Luckily Chris was also there and came up with both the idea of sharing the files online (rather than having to make and post CDs - hard work) AND with the brilliant name: The Music-Go-Round.

If you'd like to join in, here's how it will work:

1 - Each month someone will make a mix of some of their favourite songs at the moment - new stuff, old stuff, whatever you're enjoying. It can be anything between 5 - 20 tracks. Any less is daft, any more is greedy.

2 - They then drag & drop it into a shared DropBox file - if you want to take part Chris will send you a sign up email - and post a tracklisting up.

3 - We can all download the tracks onto our computers. New music, for free, all you have to do is share a few of your treasured tracks one month in return.

Let me know if you want to sign up and me and Chris will get sorting it out.

Love Bex
x

... now to get started on cooking something new each week and blogging about it...

NYE

2010-01-04T13:54:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

New Year's Eve is often one of the most underwhelming nights of the year. There's high expectations, high prices and high spirits, but sadly these don't always add up to glory. Last year for example, I was ill in bed and too sleepy to stay up for the 'bongs' even! This year, however, was a different story...we had the best NYE EVER!! First we got to hang out at our friend John & Anna Ray's house with an open fire and a game of pictionary. Brilliant. Then we partied (see below). New Year's Day we felt bad, walked, didn't win the lottery, ate Malaysian food and watched Flight of the Conchords. The day after we went to see some art and eat food at Borough Market... all that choice, would it be a hot chorizo baguette, middle eastern falafel-type balls, thai fish curry... or a big fat chip butty... mmm chips, my old friends (to borrow a phrase from Abi).

Thank you to our wonderful friend Emma for organising an amazing 30th birthday bash for her hubby-to-be Mark and for letting us all be a part of it. 70 of us rocked around the Thames on a boat, some of us were drinking smuggled-on raspberry vodka and some of us felt very much worse for wear the next day because of that.

Here's some pics:

Guess who was drinking the raspberry vodka?! Luckily I was behind the camera, so all I have to be embarrassed about are a lot of blurry photos (I hope anyway!).

Oh dear it got messy.... but still brilliant.

While we were down in London we caught the last days of the Seizure installation nominated for the Turner prize. It was fascinating and beautiful. Basically Roger Hiorns (the artist - good name, right?) filled a disused flat with hot water and copper sulphate, left it to cool for a couple of weeks, drained the water and had a look to see if any crystals had formed:

Hope yours was a goodie too.

Bex
x

Brimming over with post-party festive fun

2009-12-22T01:16:00.000-08:00

It's been a great run-up to Christmas what with the Christmoustache Party AND the Xmas Covers.

We'll post some pics from the HT Party soon to show the kind of furry fun that ensued. In short though, we were treated to a We Show Up On Radar set that was short but very sweet and a wonderful version of Blue Christmas from Andy (sporting an equally wonderful moustache). Then Fists rampaged all over the stage. They'd been in the studio all day and drinking for at least a few hours so were considerably looser than usual - but all to the good as they tore into their ever-brilliant set (with a couple of new tunes in the shape of Angi's 50s-style swoon, Endlessly and Pete's Cramps-like Squeek Squirl - I'm completely guessing at the titles). James' onstage banter was AWESOME and Dave's rock stances (foot on bass drum, groin uncomfortably close to Tez's eyeline!) was the shizness.

Finally Hot Horizons took to the stage. I was taken aback by just how HUGE and ANTHEMIC they were. This was stadium pop. Bloody brilliant it was too!

After that, me and Bex got on the decks and caused a bit of a commotion to the likes of Passion Pit and Jay Z by way of Ace of Spades and Killing In The Name Of*

It was a great way for Hello Thor to round off a great year.
Even that though couldn't hold a candle to the institution that is the Damn You Christmas Covers Party. Now in its 6th Year (seems like more than that, no?) this is an opportunity for bands to do unlikely and thoroughly entertaining covers in the name of Mr Claus. My brother came along one year and even though Our Gaz doesn't often attend gigs once the Hellset Orchestra got stuck into Eye Of The Tiger he was loving it!

Some of my highlights from this year's Xmas Covers have to include: Wander Phantom's version of ODB's I Got Your Money, Fists' Breaking The Law & Kids In America, Din Din's whole set (gimp-masked electro!) and Burly Nagasaki's Winds Of Change of course

x Anders

* Christmas Number 1 - HELL YEAH!

Amazing news

2009-12-11T02:48:00.000-08:00

A-maz-ing...

BOTH of Hello Thor's single releases in 09 have made the Artrocker Top 100 singles of the year list. Well done guys!!

Check out the full list here:
Artrocker.com

There's lots of new music to get for free on the list, enjoy!

Bex
x

Hello Thor's Christmoustache Party!

2009-12-04T03:11:00.001-08:00

On the 12th December Hello Thor are holding their Christmoustache Party at the Chameleon. Here's the poster:

Hot Horizons will be playing (people in Seattle like them) alongside Fists, We Show Up On RadaR and probably the (whisper it) Tom Tomas Club... oh dear. Latest news is that Super Fun Team Go! will also be joining this line-up! Amazing!

Brilliant. It's £3 to get in, £2 if you are wearing a moustache. The bigger the better.

Oh, and Me & Anders will be DJing too. When I say I will be, I mean I'll be selecting songs and demanding that Anders plays them.

See you there!

Bex
x

ZINE ENTRIES WANTED!

2009-11-25T02:46:00.000-08:00

Anders is busy putting together the next Hello Thor Zine. The first was on the theme "The Secret of My Success" and was brilliant.

The theme for this one is:

"Live Long & Prosper"

We've already got some amazing entries in but we'd like more so please send us something. We're looking for doodles, illustrations, photos, scribbles etc etc. It will be lo-fi production so greyscale only please. All contributors will of course get a copy.

Email them to hellothorrecords@gmail.com
Thanks

Becky

Petebox

2009-11-25T02:43:00.000-08:00

Petebox just tweeted this video. It's him on the kids TV show Skillicious and is brilliant. Watch the kids trying to figure out how to dance during his opening show, I love their confused faces and some of the moves are amazing.

Bex
x

Brass Bands RULE!

2009-11-20T03:33:00.000-08:00

Becky
x

The Sun

2009-11-13T05:27:00.000-08:00

Now, just to explain before I start... The Sun isn't my daily newspaper of choice. To be absolutely clear about it... I think The Sun is pretty vile, a waste of many intelligent minds, many resources and a vehicle to promote some pretty horrible opinions in a mainstream way.

Anyway, there are a couple of things I want to pop up on here relating to The Sun:

Firstly, check this out for a pretty clear cut example of how hypocritical and self-serving The Sun is. How can they piggyback their anti-PM campaign onto a mother's grief and then blithely blunder on when they make the same mistake they lambasted him for?

Secondly, Ever noticed how Page 3 is used to shoehorn right-wing propaganda into people's brains via the medium of tits? Read this.
Check out Joey Chickenskin's Live Journal (link also on the side of the page) for a pretty funny example... I hope he's put it up there. (Note to Joey: Please tell the full story of how you came about this page of The Sun! Pretty please?!)

So, there we have two pretty plain, basic examples of why it's such a horror that The Sun is one of our most widely-read "newspapers".

Becky
x

Tate Modern, Zombies & Stuff

2009-11-04T10:25:00.000-08:00

Me and Anders went down to London at the weekend for a couple of reasons:
- Some of our ACE friends live there and we don't get to see them enough
- I arranged it as a birthday present for Anders and got him tickets to see Daniel Johnston at the Union Chapel
- Fun

We drove down late on Friday and arrived in Dalston just late enough to chat a small amount with Jamie & Chloe (some of the afore-mentioned ace friends who we were staying with) before sleepytime.

Saturday we had big plans. Anders had a list of about 20 record shops he wanted to go to and I wanted to buy nice things that you can't buy in Nottingham. However, we also wanted to stay in our PJs and hang out with j and Chloe while eating bacon sandwiches, so we didn't actually make it out to start the big plan til about 1pm. We headed straight to Brick Lane and Rough Trade which is pretty exciting. It's a big warehouse-y type shop, all painted white and a bit scruffy with tons of records & cd's and lots of things on listening posts. This is pretty much the most exciting thing in the world to Anders, so he was off and lost to me for the next 3 hours. Whilst in there I saw something pretty cool:

In case it just looks like a record shop this is the Fists single in Rough Trade! As Tez said... "British European..F.....". Indeed.

Anyway, after Anders' mammoth record binge we trundled off to Wahaca. It's the Mexican restaurant set up by the funny posh lady who won MasterChef - Thomasina.
It was GREAT. I don't think I've ever eaten Mexican food before... not like that anyway. I had a mole (as well as about 12 other things, we rather over-ordered), which was rich and chocolatey and really well-spiced and just amazing. I also had Pork Scratchings, which were like huge quavers and not at all like the things you get in the pub. Mmmm delicious.

Saturday night was Halloween party night, which in London doesn't mean hopping in a cab for five mins to get into town. It means traipsing for an hour and a half on bus, train and foot to get to your friend's house. We had much fun dressing up and knew our costumes had succeeded when a small child on the street said "you guys are scary". The most fun part though was the train journey. Lemoncello zombies are the coolest:

At the party there was a Queen of Darkness, a mad doctor, 2 spiders/octopi, various generic halloween-y creations, Cruella De Ville and, of course, Boris Johnson.

Looking good Boris.

Sunday was a lovely day of relaxing, croissants for breakfast and catching up with the X-Factor. A trip to the 3 Crowns in Stoke Newington and dinner with all our lovely friends. I really miss everyone who lives down there and it was so lovely to get time to sit and catch up properly with Mark & Emma and Lewis and everyone. After we hung out with John for a bit laughing at clips on YouTube of Flight of the Conchords and Demetri Martin then after he left we went proper Sunday, snuggled down with cups of tea and watched Strictly Come Dancing and the X Factor results. Brilliant.

Monday we visited Tate Modern. London on Mondays is lovely, I'd recommend it. We saw the Pop Life exhibition which features Warhol and artists since and kind of focuses on art & money as it's theme. It was an exhibition which all four of us had mixed feelings about. There was some interesting stuff there, but a lot of it I didn't like or just couldn't really respond to as art. I touched this:

and set off an alarm. Oops. There was more Jeff Koons stuff there too, but a lot of it was just horrible graphic sexual images of him and his porn star wife. I can't really repsond to that. I really found the recreation of Keith Haring's pop-up shop intersting, particularly as I normally hate Haring's work and find it a bit trite and dull. Somehow seeing a room covered in it blasting out 80's hiphop made it suddenly feel relevant and fresh again. I also enjoyed seeing the Warhol stuff in the flesh and seeing two twins sat in front of Damien Hirst's Dot paintings - despite the fact that the exhibition made me dislike Damien Hirst overall. There were interesting ideas, but a lot of it left me a bit cold.

The best thing we saw was actually in the Turbine Hall.
"Miroslaw Balka's black hole at Tate Modern is terrifying, awe-inspiring and throught-provoking. It embraces you with a velvet chill." The Guardian
This is a really great summary of the black hole currently in the Turbine hall. You walk into a big construction, a bit like walking into the back of a lorry and inside it is blacker than night, blacker than anything I've ever seen. It's so dark it's almost a feeling rather than a sight. It's physically affecting and a bit scary. Read more here.

Anyway, this is turning into the longest post in the world ever. Basically, London was lovely, we saw some art, Anders heard some music, we caught up with friends and ate lovely food and were very well looked after by our wonderful hosts Jamie & Chloe. Five stars!

x bex

Good gig tonight

2009-11-04T02:33:00.000-08:00

I've been so busy I've not had time to think about what gigs are coming up. Or to shout about them. I'm definitely going to this though. SHOULD BE A BELTER!

It's tonight @ The Chameleon and will feature dreamy anthemic indie-pop, synth fun n' games and tweecore treats

x Anders

Hockley Hustle pics!

2009-10-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hello All,

The Hockley Hustle was a real cracker on Sunday... not that I saw much besides the inside of the Jam Cafe! The Hello Thor boys did an amazing job with their line-up and the place was packed out all day as a result. I'll pop a few pics up below and will give Anders the rest to put on facebook/the HT website etc (including the Hello Thor speech bubble pics - there are some classics).

Also saw the Subism live art/illustration going on at Nash. Some really nice stuff was produced and it's a great setting for a gallery...

Everyone was great, but the highlight for me was definitely Fists. It feels a bit like I'm cheating by picking them, seeing as how they are my friends, but they were just incredible. It helped that the place was packed out after Red Shoe Diaries' set (we were having to move tables & chairs to squeeze more people in), the atmosphere was great. Friendly, happy, fun. Fists played a brilliant set, one of the best I've seen in a while, where every tune punched its weight and each one brought something new. You can read some of my tweets live from the event here.

Pics here:

(Sorry no pic of the wonderful Twenty Year Hurricane - camera problems early on!)

Ali - Bonsai Projects

Joey & Tez - a.k.a. Burly Nagasaki - trying to bring it back by playing the saw after their very questionable pre-song banter with the crowd. I heard Tez isn't allowed to talk in future.

The delightfully well-pressed Rory McCarthy

What's wrong Ash? - Red Shoe Diaries seconds before their first tune to a full house

Fists finishing things off in style

Thanks to everyone who came along and all the bands and everyone who made it SUCH a fun day. I had a brilliant time, hope you did too and hope we all raised a bundle for charity! Well done Hockley Hustle!

Love Bex
x

HOCKLEY HUSTLE!

2009-10-23T07:27:00.001-07:00

Yay!

It's the Hockley Hustle this Sunday!

There are loads of venues in and around Hockley hosting gigs to raise money for charity. Now, of course I'm biased, but I do reckon the Hello Thor venue looks like one of the best. Come down to the Jam Cafe on Sunday to see:

4:45pm Twenty Year Hurricane
5:30pm Vom Vorton
6:15pm Burly Nagasaki
7:00pm Bonsai Projects
8:00pm Mexican Kids At Home
9:00pm Red Shoe Diaries
10:00pm Fists

What a brilliant line-up. I'd especially recommend looking out for Burly Nagasaki in only their 2nd ever live performance. They are brilliant, and you might get to sing along too.

You can still get advance £5 tickets, or just turn up on the day and pay £7.50 on the door. The money will go to Oxfam and local NSPCC causes. It would be rude not to.

Bex
x

nottdance

2009-10-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

It's nottdance time again!

nottdance is my favourite arts festival of the whole year. If you think you're not into dance, just ignore that small voice and book to see some stuff anyway. Some of the best cultural moments of my whole life have been part of the nottdance festival and I would urge everyone to see at least one thing.

nottdance09 from Dance4 on Vimeo.

Bex x

p.s. we saw the New Art Club last Thursday... amazing, check them out!

Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee

2009-10-09T04:41:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Went to see a preview screening of "Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee" at the Broadway last week. There was a Q&A afterwards with Shane Meadows, the producer , Paddy Considine and Scor-zay-zee. It was ace. I've read a couple of snotty reviews since (take a bow, The Times) which say "why make a film in 5 days for £48k when you could make it in 7 for £55k and it would be better?". I think it's a great idea and what they are essentially doing is trying to democratise the film-making process a bit.

It helps that the film is really good too. Paddy Considine is amazing as Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee is a natural comedic actor.

It's a mock documentary about a guy who's a roadie, landlord, plumber, manages some musicians and probably more stuff too. Shane Meadows said it's a character Paddy has been doing for years, based on loads of guys they met in the "music industry" (loosely speaking) when they were in a band when they were younger. Le Donk is a bit of a loser, and he sort of knows it and sort of doesn't. He manages Scor-zay-zee (a real-life rapper, not just a character for the film) and tries to get him a support slot when he goes to be a roadie at a big Arctic Monkeys gig.

Contrary to The Times I think the low cost, low time approach has made this feel really real, fresh and fun. Plus when you heard the guys talking at the Q&A you realised that they were so nice, so down-to-earth (Shane meadows told a story about buying a pirate copy of This Is England in a cafe on Alfreton Rd and being genuinely impressed by the quality of it) and so passionate about what they do that it wasn't just an academic excercise for them, it was a way to get back to the basics of film-making for the love of it.

Anyway, here's a little bit of Le Donk for you:

Go and see it at the Broadway, it's on from today.

Bex
x