This is what the internet is made for

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
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Hello Thor presents... ANXIETEAM!

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
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Let's Get Quizzical

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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A: Lee Hazlewood

Anxieteam

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
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Draw Serge

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

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
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