Hi-de-hi

Going to Camp Bestival tomorrow morning, bright and early!

Should be fun, I went last year and it had such a nice atmosphere. Hoping for good weather too.

Friendly fires are headlining along with Madness, and I'm also mega excited to see Lissie, - who I missed at Latitude - Stornoway, Kassidy (again!), The Boy Who Trapped the Sun, Pete and the Pirates, The Martin Harley Band... And hope to discover some new talent too. And generally soak up the sunshine and have a nice chilled out time.

It's both mine and one of the friends I'm going with's birthdays whilst we're there, his on Sunday and mine on Monday, yay! So next time I post I'll be 17. I think it's a pretty good age... There are soo many good songs with 17 in the title. Expect a post of those on Monday when I get home..!

In other news, my dad got me a new camera for my birthday, but decided he would give it to me before I went so that I could take photos with it whilst at Camp Besti. So a mixed blessing; my photos will be crisper and less 'fluffy' and 'whimsical' than my lovely disposable shots from latitude, but on the plus side ... I don't have to fork out a small fortune for developing film and I have a new gadget to play with! It's just a little canon but it's much better than my last camera.. And it's got some pretty fun looking modes like fisheye and one that makes scenes look miniature which I will have a LOT of fun mucking around with this weekend!

Adios, amigos, and I shall tell all upon my return!! Ooh plus tales of birthday presents! Woopee.

x

OH and a big hello to all my new followers.. I seem to have had a little influx in the last few days which is very nice! Hi everyone..!

always quiet now.

Flaws - Bombay Bicycle Club

lovely, lovely, lovely.

It is an incredible testament to these lads that, only a year after releasing a relatively heavy, electric guitar based, indie rock album as their debut, 'I had the blues but I shook them loose', they bring out as stunningly delicate an acoustic record as 'Flaws.' All the songs are new ones or covers except for a new version of 'Dust on the Ground', which has had a makeover from brooding rock to an acoustic strum. Both versions are equally good.

I think BBC were a little worried of looking like they were just jumping on the - now incredibly popular - 'Mumford folky' bandwagon, but any suspicions as to this would have been dispelled upon listening to this album, I'm sure. It's beautifully, beautifully fragile; an adjective which I wouldn't attribute to Mumford's hoedown-inducing country stuff.

Well done BBC.. I look forward to their next "loud" album, but it's brilliant to have this contrast. I can't think of any other band who have done this sort of 'strip back' for a second album and have pulled it off. (But feel free to rinse me in a comment if you can think of any, I won't be offended if you prove me wrong!)

A few faves: Rinse me down, Ivy & Gold, Dust on the Ground, Fairytale Lullaby, Leaving Blues.

Here's the acoustic 'Dust on the Ground.'

It was hard to choose which song to post... I decided on this one because of the classic beginning: "Hello.. We are Bombay Bicycle Club... We're in Highbury Fields, standing next to a sanitary towel."

Even if you can't be arsed to watch the whole video.. Just watch the first 17 seconds. They're funny... And look at their sweet little faces... aaah, Jack Steadman. Be mine?

Taking retro to its logical conclusion

I blame coco.

The Maccabees

Mumford & Sons (!!!!)

Despite the hideous expensiveness of disposable cameras, and the even more hideous expensiveness of developing their film, there were some rather nice snaps from the weekend.

THE DEEZ

HOLY MOLY

A new blog layout.

What larks!

what do we think....?

this song is brillo to the extreme.

I am OBSESSED with Darwin Deez at the mo, since seeing him at Latitude - he was absolutely awesome. The whole band had choreographed dance sections. It was sweeeeeet.

Just look...

How cool is he?!

hello, jello

Well,

I'm back from my Latitudinal excursions!!

Super super super fun weekend.

Brilliant.

One not so great thing was that I managed to lose my digital camera on the first night.. I put it down next to me in the poetry tent, skipped off merrily a while later to go see kitty daisy and lewis in a blues brothers' tribute night (AWESOME) and as soon as I reached their stage I realized I didn't have my camera.. But by the time I got back to where I had been in the poetry tent literally 5 minutes earlier it had gone :(

Bad times. SO I forked out for a small fortune's worth of disposable cameras.. which is all well and good, until I went to Boots today and got a nasty surprise when I remembered how much film costs to develop!! So not only am I out the 20 or so quid I spent on the cameras themselves, it's going to cost me even more than that to get the photos themselves...

BUT STILL then one upside is that disposable photos are so fun. I love the fact that I haven't seen my photos yet, and will be getting them on sunday. It's something to look forward to, eh?

SO...

Other highlights of the weekend include...

- BELLE & SEBASTIAN

- buying ball gowns for a fiver (!)

- rushing from the maccabees to the midnight beast to noah and the whale and managing to catch awesome sets from all three

- a Blues Brothers movie night in the film tent, which was set up like a gospel church with live music and an epic priest. Can I get an A..MEN

- having one of my childhood best friends turn up out of the blue

- putting loads of effort into face paint masks for a masked ball that we never actually got to

- eating pure pie (tm). it's a festival tradition for us now.

- the little GAYMERS STAGE, that was where it was AT.

- discovering new bands & comedians (personal faves: Kassidy, Eric Lampaert, Ivo Graham)

- being smushed at the front for Mumford & Sons.. so worth the 2 hour wait

- Darwin Deez's dancing (oooh alliteration)

- meeting Simon Amstell!! yay

- "DMC"s with strangers

- spending the last night in performers' camping... they had REAL TOILETS. What luxury.

I bet I remember far more interesting titbits from the weekend as soon as I click publish post.

One thing that was NOT COOL was some of the clashes.

The National at the same time as Florence...

The XX at the same time as B&S...

NOT COOL, LATITUDE.. NOT COOL AT ALL

But to finish, here is a song by Kassidy.

They are really very good.. I'm very excited to see them again at camp bestival next week!

I will post a few photos once I have them..!

x

off I go...

Heading to a friend's house tomorrow to spend the night before we set out to latitude...

here are some of les artistes I shall be seeing, as long as clashes don't get in the way!

Belle & Sebastian

Florence

Mumford & Sons

Noah & The Whale

Laura Marling

The XX

Yeasayer

The National

Lissie

The Maccabees

I Blame Coco....

To name but a few..!

Details upon my return.

x

howl for your homeland

Johnny's new album, Been Listening, is wonderful.

My favourite track is probably 'Amazon Love', but I couldn't find that anywhere to put on here, so this is another brilliant one, 'Barnacled Warship.'

x

have a heart, have a heart

I'm horribly, terribly, disastrously sorry that I have been gone for so long.

BUT HERE I AM.

RETURNED.

And free for the summer.

and oh my, it will be fun.....

Latitude in a few days baby!!!

Right now I'll try and talk about something interesting....

I think Sleigh Bells are quite cool.

(the band not the .. jingly things..)

I suppose their stuff is sort of.... noise pop? but with a tinge of hip-hop..

so, if you have read this blog at all before, you may notice it doesn't sound like my usual musical cup of tea!!

all their songs are energetic, with super catchy riffs - chaotic, spiky guitar with pop princess vocals over the top.

Winner.

here's one, "rill rill", which is somehow not quite as angular as some of their other songs, it's actually just quite a sweet song, with a well-used sample from Funkadelic's classic 'can you get to that', and I love the bit in the middle when it breaks down into just singing and percussion. PRETTY SICK MAN

And if you liked that, this one is what I meant by 'spiky', 'angular' etc, be prepared to be blown away by the angry start to this song, but dayuummm it's catchy and the vocals just contrast so brilliantly.

So that's enough from me for this evening..

However, I will be posting [vaguely] consistently from now until september! huzzah!

Probably will think of something scintillating to post tomorrow,

over and out.