Gigs, Trips, Sewing & Potatoes

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
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Stephen Fry - Speech on Catholicism

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
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FISTS tour with Sparrow & The Workshop

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
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Metropolis

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
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Designing food

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
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Brett Domino & Britain's Got Talent

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
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Living in a Super Mario World

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
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