Hari Deakin AKA Mihke

This stop motion video was made by my gorgeous friend Hari. She is one of the loveliest and most fun people i know. The video's pretty cool too. 

Crystal Castles doing The Cure, Not in Love - Robert Smith

I love this. I saw Crystal Castles live at one of the festivals over the summer. Alice Glass, admittedly a bit of psycho, put absolutely everything into her performance and it was incredible to watch and be part of.
Take classic pop The Cure song and punch it through a wall at Crystal Castles and this, epically, is what you end up with.

Daft Punk & Tron: Legacy

I'm getting a bit excited about Tron:. One of the longest awaited sequels in film history, the new electro-power movie follows the original 1982-er starring Jeff Bridges. This time round, Bridges is there again, along with Michael Sheen and Olivia Wilde, as is a big budget and some potentially mind-boggling 3D effects.



BEST of all though, is the new Daft Punk dance tracks. The soundtrack is going to be released on the 22nd November. I was just listening to Zane Lowe and apparently the French duo also have roles in the film too.
This is the theme:



The is going to be released on the 26th December in the UK.

Brother - a band off of Slough

I like this. It's the return of Gritpop with lashings of unashamed cool kid swagger from Brother. Zane Lowe has tipped them, and played the first single Darling Buds of May twice this week on his show.

Jessie J

This is Jessie J - Radio 1 have just added this, Do it like a Dude, to their playlists so I predict we'll hear a lot more of her shortly. Head to her MySpace for more songs. Her voice is amazing in the more acoustic videos too.

London

I'm feeling pretty London. Right now, sitting in Starbucks, reading Dazed, Radiohead is lurking somewhere in the background. iPad is sitting on top of my half read Sunday Times Style magazine. It's started raining outside and King's Road beautiful people have pulled out their beautiful umbrellas and are continuing to look beautiful. But they don't really look like they're enjoying it. My caramel machiato has never tasted so good.

I've seen a lot of effortlessly cool today. Red loafers, butterfly graphics on big canvases under arms, camel coloured jumpers, tweed suits and riding boots pedalling bicycles, anoraks with espadrilles, well worn Churches brogues, satchels over Levi's, green trousers with cardigan. I love a man in a cardigan. And I love umbrellas.

Checked shirts, the return of the Mohawk, Breton stripes, old lady with leopard print umbrella, McQueen skulls, KRSC, handle bars with tassels on,studded cuffs, sherbet lemon knitted vest. Sunglasses under umbrella? No, that's just illogical. Fred Perry sporting jacket, navy with yellow stripes, cable knit cardy, the Chelsea boot in it's original setting. Court shoes with grey knitted tights, red bandana, green hair, elbow patches, stripy blue socks. I fucking love socks, they're the most underrated article of clothing.

Cotton hoodie under jacket, flares, cut off trousers, rolled up trousers. Sunday Papers and BlackBerrys. Indiana Jones hat, Desigual prints, sandwiches, chunky silver chains, cigarettes, woven colourful handbags, red lipstick, red polo shirt, cake.

100 Club Oxford Street - I Am Arrows, Sketches, David J Roth

I went to 100 Club on Oxford Street last night for the first time. Sadly, I also heard on the same day that it might be closing soon.


I went to see I Am Arrows, Andy Burrows’ band, who I’ve been going on about for a while now. Two bands were on before them, Sketches and David J Roth. They were both amazing live, I hadn’t heard of either of them before.

My photos aren't very legible but I like how they came out for the I Am Arrows shots.

So this is Sketches...

And then David J Roch...

Then loads of people came out of nowhere for Arrows, it was brilliant! Such a good atmosphere, I had a really good night.
 

The Very True London Word

I am subscribed to The London Word, a lovely blog with lots of articles about reviews of things in London. A post flashed up today whacking the nail on the head exactly for me and countless others, I'm sure. It's all about how living in London, you feel this irrational urge to read every single book ever written, dance at every gig ever played, ponder every exhibiton in every museum and just generally aspire to be the most cultured person on the planet. The point, made very well by Paul McGhie, is that if we're running all over London sucking up as much culture juice as possible, there's no time left to enjoy anything, which was probably the object of the excercise in the first place.

Below is a list, that I have unashamedly swiped straight from his article, of suggestions of things to do to help us all out and discover what you really enjoy.

• Make a list of the things in your life that give you the most pleasure – be it gardening, modern art or spending time with your family – and focus more of your time on that
• Learn that you don’t have to be doing something all the time. Book a night in your diary every week just for you, when you don’t go out but go home and spend some quality time alone, doing nothing
• Keep a thank you diary, where you note down the positive things that happened to you each day
• Discover something new about the area where you live. You might realise that you don’t have to venture as far to experience the hidden gems of London as you might think.

 Read the full article here.

Dakota Fanning, The Runaways and Tatum O'Neal

There has been a lot of hype surrounding the not-so-little star as of late. Dakota’s new film The Runaways is out on the 10th of September and we hear it might be a bit of shock to those who still picture her as the small blonde child who seems to keep running into aliens (War of the Worlds) and is BFFs with a spider (Charlotte’s Web). Not that we at Handpicked, are quite up there with those who saw it months ago at Sundance, but from what we gather Ms Fanning is phenomenal as the 15-year-old Cherie Currie, a member of the The Runaways (breakthrough all girl band of 70’s fame, all underage and controversially human-cannonballed into an American tour unsupervised at very tender ages) alongside her fellow Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart who plays Joan Jett. When my copy of Dazed got to me earlier this month, I didn’t recognise Dakota on the cover. It’s a beautiful shot by Mark Segal (and a horrible Blackberry photo of it by me):

I watched Paper Moon a couple of weeks ago and its not often that a reasonably slow paced, black and white talkie obviously made on a budget draws me in but it really is a gem of a film. I mention it now because Tatum O’Neal who was 10 years old when cast as Addie Pray in the 1973 film now portrays Cherie Currie’s mother in The Runaways. Tatum O’Neal remains the youngest person to win an Academy Award. In Paper Moon she starred alongside her father Ryan O’Neal; she was heavily affected later in life by fame. Sadly there were lots of controversies regarding her father abusing her when she was young which he firmly denies. She also dated Michael Jackson in the late 70’s. Now having slightly disgraced herself (for want of a kinder term) it’s interesting that she was cast in this film with very current young actresses and a $10 million budget.

Thinking of the similar fame that Tatum O’Neal and Dakota Fanning have been subjected to in youth, is it likely that Fanning will go through a rough patch as O’Neal did? Is The Runaways the beginning Fanning’s rebellion? I hope not and I very much doubt it. Dakota, born Hannah Dakota Fanning, comes from a family with strongly grounded Christian morals and also from a very planned childhood. Her parents supported her talent, sending her to auditions and relocating the family to Hollywood, showing not only that she went down the path of formal auditions but stage school and proper training too.

With some speculation and very little proof, I doubt that Tatum O’Neal would have had such a structured background. The daughter of thespian parents, she would not have had her roots as firmly planted and it was probably easier to go off the rails in the 70’s and 80’s without too much hassle than it is today.

At sixteen, Dakota is ready to launch her adult career and step out of her child star roles and from where I’m standing, she’ll do it with style.

Here is Tatum O’Neal looking lovely with her father Ryan O’Neal at the premier of The Runaways in LA earlier this year and then below is the same pair from Paper Moon in 1973.

Images courtesy of www.zimbio.com and Diaro de Bizzarices http://diariodebizarrices.blogspot.com.

David's Lyre - Tear them Down

It's been a good bank holiday, still a full day of debauchery to go. Need some good background music today. Below is the official video for David's Lyre Tear Them Down and then after that is David's Lyre playing English Roses for The Mahogany Blog.

Octopus Rooftop Pool Hayward Gallery

It’s a funny season summer. To be honest you’d think that people might get bored of talking about the weather, or bored about talking about how much we talk about the weather. But no, never us Brits. We’re always to hot or too cold, too wet, too dry, never happy unless we’re talking about how we could be happier.


To round up to my point, what do you think of this weather?! There are still lots of things going round in the city which have high hopes of sunshine and could not be held in winter time, but only the Great British Public would spend £11 on a ticket to an exhibition and head to a rooftop pool with overhanging clouds and dubiously heavy rain.

Nevertheless, I really quite fancy it. Perched atop the Hayward Gallery, sits an octopus shaped pool at the heart of the Ernesto Neto exhibition. The £11 gets you into the exhibition but if you feel the sudden urge to jump in a pool you will have to pre-book by calling 0844 847 9910. The exhibition lasts until 5th September.

Why not?

Cineroleum, Kensington Palace, Loud Tate, Hungamunga and a beach at Whitechapel

Maybe it’s because I had a week off last week or maybe it’s just that everyone feels the August weather is betraying us, but it has been a long week. This morning I got into the office at 8:50 and no one was in. After a thoughts of apocalypse and ‘the end is nigh’ had passed I checked my calendar to find that, yes, indeed, it is still Friday and not the weekend yet. See, our office is usually, without fail, a hub of coffee-making, cereal-eating and thinking-about-working activity by at the latest 8:45 every weekday.


At the end of a long week, nothings better than a productive weekend. Here are some things going on this weekend...

The obsession of pop-up shop culture is still going strong. If you throw ‘pop-up’ in with the word ‘derelict’, you get a definite East Central kind of feel out of this one. That’s where you’ll find me on this, the opening night of Cineroleum. It’s a hand-built pop-up cinema on Clerkenwell Road; the brainchild of a group of local young artists and architects, the cinema is showing a choice of wonderfully selected films. Tonight is Rebel Without a Cause, unfortunately but not surprisingly sold out, there are more on over the rest of the weekend (also sold out) and then a combination of The Long Goodbye, Night of the Living Dead and The Third Man make up some of the rest of the showings over the next three weeks. I love this page of their website showing the construction of the petrol station turned cinema. Tickets are only a fiver, click here for more info.

Kensington Palace this evening anyone? The much celebrated and well received Enchanted Forest Exhibition is holding a bit of do this evening. It finishes at 10pm (good pre-party for going out elsewhere), it costs £12.50, you can dress up like an idiot, run around Kensington Palace spying on puppet shows and participating in fun frolics then take your mischief elsewhere.

Another event that we’re super excited about is the Loud Tate Festival, at, believe it or not, the Tate. If you head south of the river on Saturday, you should find frolicking somewhere near that rather large red brick chimney, a free festival aimed at those who enjoy a little bit of art/culture/music. The frequenters are predicted to be young and free, so bring your skinny jeans and high tops or turned up chinos and espadrilles, down with the kids man.

After a Saturday night I plan to spend at Cargo, there’s a choice of two on Sunday. Two city festivals, Hungamunga and the Beach at Whitechapel. The first is £10 a day and from what I hear is £10 entry, once in, there are DJ’s, live acts, burlesque shows, paper mache, drawing, painting, knitting and sewing with all the materials provided free of charge. The latter, the now not quite so weird idea of a beach in the middle of the city, takes place near Whitechapel High Street, is free and includes the following: beachcombing for holiday novels, a rockpool of authors’ epigraphs and literary volleyball. Interesting. And free – even better.

Vampires Suck Trailer

Why we forgive Americans.

The Wanted

Who doesn't love a bit of manufactured modern-day boyband action? Check out my March prediction. The Wanted were named Number One this week. Here's their excuse for the hotspot.

Noir Magazine

I like the look of this one. Noir Magazine is launching on August 8 online and will printed bi-annually as well as having a special for LFW.

Unfairly, I think a lot of these magazines are put into similar classes purely because the thing they in common is their individuality. Again, as a generalisation, they all have massively clever and creative people working and imagining them creating beautiful, up to the minute articles, artwork and ideas. I love these types of magazines, like ANother and POP. It's such a treat when they arrive in my letterbox.

Noir will be available from MagCloud (a brilliant place to find similar material) and I'll be stopping off there shortly.

Secret Garden Party 2010 - until next year

My festival season is officially over. It really is quite upsetting. Secret Garden was amazing, one of the best weekends ever. I finally got to see I Blame Coco live after all my agitation, the atmosphere and free spiritedness had me feeling like I was born 30 years too late and I have discovered (and my friends agree) that I would make the world’s best groupie.


Here are some photos…

This is was floating in the lake and they set the fireworks off in it on the last night. All the paper burnt away leaving just the frame. I think the people got off first too.

This is the view from the top of the bank looking over the lake towards the entrance on our first night.

Fancydress in its prime, me and two friends on the Saturday night.

This is Marina and her Diamonds on the Friday night.

A pretty shocking photography display of the Gorillaz.

And these are just a selection of the photos I took of I Blame Coco. They were brilliant.

Grizzly Bear at Latitude 2010

I really enjoyed these chaps at Latitude. They were the final live act that we saw at the weekend and they put on an amazing show. I think I first heard of them through the Twilight soundtrack. Not sure, can't remember.

Rob Sheffield Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Man’s Quest for True Love and a cooler Haircut

This popped up this week. Rob Sheffield is a music journalist, most famously for contributions to Rolling Stone and this, his second book, was released last week. His first book, entitled Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, was released in 2007 (your Wikipedia knowledge is as good as mine on that one).
Hopefully, you’d expect someone who has made a big name for himself as a journalist, and a music journalist at that would be able to make a book interesting and a good read. That’s not a build up, I haven’t read it yet. I’ll let you know when I have. Here's the link to Amazon, where I'll be going once I get paid.

And here's a picture from Wikipedia, just show them a little love.

Secret Garden Party!!

Ah I'm so excited! I'm off to try and find a Unicorn horn in my lunch break today. Here's Gorillaz Sound System Festival Rehearsal, its been preparing me.

Slow Club, Yeah So

Just up my alley. An alley full of simple melodies with nice lyrics and a song with a lovely story. Tastefully straight forward.

Latitude Festival 2010

I got back from Latitude on Monday after a glorious, culture rich festival but a hellish journey back. Usually, I would be prime candidate for promoting public transport but a 3 hour wait, two trains, two tubes and a bus with a rucksack about three quarters of my weight has put off a little.

Not to linger on the negative though, I feel like we really took the best advantge possible of all that was on offer at Latitude. Kevin Bridges, Josie Long and Russell Kane were my top picks from the hours of time spent in the Comedy Arena, four music stages with Florence (a great set, beautiful costume and the whole crowd singing happy birthday to her little sister Grace), Vampire Weekend (I had forgotten how much I loved the first album, they were brilliant live and embarrassingly, I knew aaaall the words to every song), Rodrigo y Gabriela were absolutely captivating, I couldn’t take my eyes off them, The XX, I wasn’t really a fan of before but the performance was amazing, honestly absolutely flawless and the atmosphere was probably one of the best of the weekend. And then talking of atmosphere, my friend wanted to go see The Feeling (not top of my list, bit boring and mainstream) but they were just so happy to be there and had the whole crowd singing and dancing, it was a really happy set. Here are some photos I took, Florence and the Machine, The XX and Vampire Weekend.

The big downfall of the festival for me was the I Blame Coco set (which, if you click here, you can see I’m completely obsessed with). I arrived, after a certain amount of persuasion with a friend who hadn’t heard of her, in good time and we were busy making our way to the front just as Lissie were finishing off their set. They finished off and loads more people moved in and just as we were feeling a little smug about our front row spots, the organisers came on stage and told us to move out the tent. Not cool. So off we went and waited for 20 minutes away from the stage whilst they tried to prevent the tent from falling down. They then came to tell us that it would take up to an hour and a half before the band would come on. Reluctantly we left to go watch something in the Comedy Arena and made our way back an hour later to find out we’d missed it. I’m really quite sad that I didn’t get to see her. I did take this photo whilst she was standing outside rolling a cigarette waiting for the tent not to collapse though. Best picture of a van I've ever taken. And she is playing at Secret Garden so all is not lost just yet.

I Blame Coco Playwright Fate

I did say yesterday that I thought Quicker would be my favourite song that could well appear on the album The Constant but I think I like Playwright Fate EEven more. Thats how fickle I am. Just give me some new music and I will inevitably love it. It also looks spookily like the club venue I was at two weeks ago Shunt under London Bridge (bloody brilliant by the way) and I am hideously embarrassed that I am putting these onto the Internet myself but only as a point of comparison, I swear. And, its only the tame ones.

Again, either no one has put a good version on Youtube or I'm just too technically retarded to find it (very likely the latter) but I just found another site so if you are reading this then please click this link to hear Playwright Fate by I Blame Coco. It's immense.

I Blame Coco - Coco Sumner - Quicker and Self Machine

I hope this is the next song that Coco Sumner releases after Self Machine (out on 12 July). It's called Quicker and I think I like even more. There are only three videos that I can find on Youtube and they are quite poor quality. One is below, here is a link to MTV Live sessions which is really good but I can't embed it. I'd recommend over the video below.



Her album, The Constant is released some time in August I think.

iPad

So I've been meaning to post about myPad for a while now and the reasoni haven't is just because I don't really know where to start. Not the strongest opening sentence, i'll agree. Now I have the controvertial mix of my BlackBerry as well as the iPad, which I do have to admit is not particularly ideal. I don't have the experience of the iPhone to launch me into what I assumed would be the complete amazement of the Pad.
I must say that although have enjoyed it thus far, I do feel very novice still. It's amazing, dint get me wrong, I think it really is a beautiful thing and a massively clever thing to think so much out the box but still I'm not sure what Mac are trying to get at. I know people have been completely slaughtered for suggesting that it's just a big iPhone and I can see why, the 'experience' is completely different, the screen is incredible and these of use is so well thought out, but the are things that even I can say it is obviously lacking. The big one is a camera, it really feels like it wants one. Other things that I don't like about it are that you can't have tabs open just a load of different pages, I do sort of understand why because it would get crowded but it's just because I'm a tab overloader on my laptop, I like to have loads open and see what's there so I can come back to it later. The other feature that I dislike is the separation of all the iPod features. There is an iPod button on the home screen but then also different ones for the videos, iTunes and App store. Obviously I'm just being slow but I still click on iTunes nearly every time I want to go to my music. I haven't got to the stage where I've gone app crazy yet, though have got a couple cool ones. I love coloursplash and tweet flow is great but I went for Kindle instead of sticking with iBooks because it's much much easier to find free books on the Amazon equivalent to the on screen reader. Downside is that kindle is Linked to the American Amazon site so I haven't worked out how to get the benefits of all the books I've bought off the uk shop.
Having said that, rant over, I am sitting outside on a gloriously sunny London evening with miPad on my lap having watched two episodes of Boosh last night and my music has been on full throttle for the last fifteen minutes and I've got 88% battery left. I think that is rather impressive. I feel like a geek carrying it round with me and I would have an aversion to reading on screen books in public transport. It's a little too accepting of the Internet age for my liking.
I need to get used to it and I'm very much looking forward to the day that I feel that I am.

Secret Garden Party art Installations

This all sounds terribly exciting. I’ve been doing a bit of Secret Garden Party website stalking and they’ve put up some of the installations that will be at the festivalo. Here are some that I have nicked straight off their website. I hope they don’t mind.

Great Little Place Event

I've spoken about these lovely folk before, on Heather Loves Jelly and on the Handpicked Collection of Gifts Blog. Great Little Place find lovely little places all in and around London to go to eat, to play or pogo stick if you so desire. They are holding their first event of sorts on Thursday 8th July and it should be a lovely spectacle and a nice place to meet some nice people. The tickets cost a fiver (you can get them here) and there are only 50 of 'em so they'll probably be gone pretty shortly.
It's being held at a Three Blind Mice on Ravey Street (map it out here),it's smack in the middle of Old Street and Shoreditch High Street stations - it's a brilliant pub with pints of character and good beer.
GLP people have got some things on their itinerary for the evening, singer and pianist Holly Walker is tipping up, who I've never heard of but they assure me in the newsletter that she's the bees knees. They've got the Youtube video on their homepage.

Here's that ticket link again.
And do follow them on Twitter, @gr8littleplace.

National Pride, Murray Wimbledon and the World Cup

It’s been a sporting month, hasn’t it? We were so so sure about the football, the ENtire nation had a wave, of frankly, completely unrealistic optimism. After all, the glory and pride of 66 is as thin as a pin, no one knows who any of those people are anymore anyway. Nobody is really talking about the fact that today’s ‘team’ have come crawling home with Wag tails between their legs. It was out of reach from the start.


Then there’s the tennis. We’re definitely going to win the tennis! Come on Murray! We all choose to ignore that you are particularly grumpy, English hating person because we love to cling to any possible glory we can muster. It’s this beast of competitiveness that explodes out of the Brits at any mention of sport bursting through our lion-tattooed chests and shouting down any Spaniard who might get in our way.

Labrinth Transmission #2

Now this isn't usually my cuppa soup but this video is absolutely brilliant. Labrinth collaborated with Tiny Tempah for their song Frisky and I'm sure will end up somewhere on the charts if he isn't already.

Girls Ultimate Guide to Festivals - Essential Item Number 3

As has been said before, after number one and number two, comes number three and this one I’m a little wary about.

I got this from work (Handpicked Collection – brilliant gift ideas, if ever the occasion arises), originally made by Bill Brown, it’s a lovely roll up mattress. I’m sure I’ll be the most comfortable person not in VIP but the fact still remains that even rolled up, it is huge. I had to get it home from work last week on two buses and it wasn’t really great fun.

I’m hoping that whilst strapped to a rucksack I might survive and actually fit through the train doors. Fingers crossed.

H&M Launch Online in September

So H&M have announced that they will be launching online on the 6th of September. I don’t think I’d ever been on the website before today but I had great fun on their outfit maker...

The leopard dress looked amazing in a big Style feature a couple of weeks ago. It might well end up contributing to my festival wardrobe sooner or later.

It’s so surprising though that all these high street brands haven’t made the transition between shop and online. Working at an online retail company, I suppose I am a bit biased and apparently no one ever makes money out of mail order. But look at Asos – when Nick Robertson released the Christmas sales figures their site usage was up by 112% from the year before.

Topshop seem to have got it right too. I feed my shopping addiction via online channels. Topshop online and Asos are my main weaknesses purely due to their ease of use. Topshop had a bit of a revamp recently and I think the general change is for the better. I do think they need to be a more imaginative with their creativeness though. They are so creative in their styling, direction of models and range of design and designers that they could do with a wee injection of that into their website.

Asos is massively overcrowded and there is a lot of sifting through products to be done – the feature where you can see the clothes on the runway is useful but for some reason I don’t really have great expectations for Asos to be hugely creative. They don’t really need to be either; they’re obviously doing very well as they are, why change it?

ASDA G21 Festival Parka, or wait, is it Louis Vuitton SS11?

In my latest plight to be ultimately prepared both with amenities and fashion during festival season, I bought a parka on Friday. I tried doing it during a two and a half hour phone conference the day before but the work karma gods were against me. However, just after I placed my order from, wait for it, ASDA, my Vogue newsletter popped into my inbox and look at this!




So a cheap parka is my essential item number two. £18 from Asda is my first choice. Brilliant when it looks like a Louis Vuitton SS11 too.

This Music Business and some wellies.

“2010, bang smack in the midst of political and financial uncertainty, and yet, Glastonbury sells out in 24 hours.” James Wilkinson – Figaro Digital Magazine (I read it for work ok - and yes, I’m still a geek).

It’s a good point though. I’ve talked before about how the great British public are spending selectively on their fashion choices and I think these two issues are roughly in the same ball park. Or at least in adjacent ball parks. Without repeating myself too much, there hundreds of studies producing thousands of results about how people are investing in their fashion pieces. There is less holiday time on offer because everyone wants to make a good impression on their job that they’ve clung onto through the recession by the skin of their teeth and no one can afford to go away anyway. A long weekend at a festival is the way forward.

Popularity of festivals seems particularly rife this year. Last year it really took off and lots of people who hadn’t been before discovered that when you go to a festival, normal rules of society don’t apply. This is the quintessential point that is making these same people return to them and what is attracting even more people. Society doesn’t apply. Where in the real world do you live in a tent, walk round with facepaint without seeming weird, where loo roll is worth its weight in gold and where you give out free hugs to anyone who takes your fancy? This wouldn’t deserve a first glance let alone a second at Reading or Glastonbury. People take their children and scrawl their phone numbers across their limbs; you wouldn’t do that in many other crowded places, would you?
So why wouldn’t everyone to get in on the action? The answer is that they do and we’ll all be out in force this summer – limited edition Hunter wellies and all.

Bringing my nicely onto my promise from yesterday. The Girl’s Ultimate Guide to Festivaling. Now I bought these babies a few weeks ago and thought they haven’t seen much action outside in the mud yet, I have wandered round my flat in them on numerous occasions. Well, I wasn’t going to let them sit there and stare £125 in my face. Wellies is an obvious one for festivals – never make the mistake of thinking that wellies are ugly and you’re just going to take some Converse or just a pair a flip flops. It will be a mistake and it will most definitely rain if you neglect to take wellies. Another snobbish point to make – fair enough to try and find some more original looking wellies, but the days of those ones with the roses and stretched skulls are well and truly over. They’re pretty gross and everyone knows they come from the garden centre.

Festivaling - Secret Garden, Latitude

So I may have touched on the festival season a couple of times before (here, here, here and here. oh and here. But just to warn any poor soul who may be sick of it, I most definitely am not. I'm planning on doing A Girl's Ultimate Guide to Festivaling. It's going to tbe great, wait and see!
I was listening to the radio this morning as is the norm, and they wouldn't stop talking about how everyone will have an incredible time at Glasto and not to worry if you're not going because you can always watch live coverage on the tellie. OR if you really feel like you're missing out and really have very little to do with your time, please do click here to watch the live web cam. I couldn't think of anything more unsettling.
So in order not to annoy, I shall post all my festival preparations as they happen in the run up to the festivals I shall be attending. This way hopefully I won't come across to smug about my Great British Summer.

Fun starts tomorow.

Noel Fielding's Art Show in Soho

I'm a fan of Boosh, I watch it most nights before going to sleep. It's right up my alley - hugely ridiculous with stupid storylines that you can completely believe if you're in the right state of mind.
SO I'm defintely putting a date in my recently neglected diary to go and see Noel Fielding's Art Show on Greek Street. It starts on 5th July and my diary doesn't have to have much space to fit in the show as it's running all the way until 5th January next year.
Serge Pizzorno off of Kasabian has produced an original soundtrack that will accompany one of the installations downstairs in Maison Bertaux where Noel's Summer Art Show is being held.

Here's what he had to say about the exhibition:

"Summer looning, moon madness and Phoenician champagne. Works on paper, pastal burp-ups, art from Mike Fielding, the human mistake, shapes in the darkness and a live happening (masks provided). A tiger with Chlamydia, bin bag portraits and an animated installation with sound haystacks provided by Sergio of Kasabian. Guest of honour "the surrealistic mange tout".

Spark, I Blame Coco, Marina & the Diamonds, Pearl & the Puppets - Branded Music

I must be going through a music phase at the moment. Next on my list of tunes to obsess about is Spark. She’s an eighteen year old East Londoner who prides herself on red lipstick and Elnett. Reminds me a lot of La Roux except Jess Morgan (aka Spark) is probably from Hackney Wick instead of Brixton (I make no secret of being a South London snob). In any case, that’s massively unimportant, I downloaded her free single ‘Shut Out the Moon’ (click here to do the same) which I do like but I think my favourite is ‘Scream’ which can be heard on her MySpace.



I find this trend of (especially female) artists labelling themselves as a band quite compelling. I don’t really understand what they get out of it. It seems to be a bit of a British thing too. Thinking about it the ones I can think of off the top of my head are all my favourite ‘bands’ of the moment; Marina and the Diamonds, I Blame Coco, Spark, Pearl and the Puppets.
What is it about? Does it give these girls a name to hide behind? They are all young and it could be a form of protection. I doubt it though. It can’t be an accidental trend. I think all these talented people come up with a name to create more of a brand for themselves. The producers have seen an opportunity and seized it. A brand sells more than a name, they can make it a catchier name and the brand can evolve into more aspects than just an eighteen year old girl. The brand is the collective noun for the set, the style, the genre of music and turns into adjective for describing all it involves.



Look at the term Gaga an enormous household name, it’s become a cliché to say, ‘that’s very Gaga’. It’s the same idea as these young British female artists, not just creating a name for yourself but creating a brand that producers hope will catch on.

Having said all that, very stupidly, the name of my blog has only just occurred to me in context with this. Why did I choose to name it Heather Loves Jelly? Because I hoped in the future it could have the option of being something more than just another blog. But I haven’t decided what yet. Watch this space ( ).

I Am Arrows

New favourite band alert! Hello I Am Arrows, I can't remember how I came to hear about these chaps a few weeks ago but I downloaded the free single Nun (yes please and thank you) from their homepage and had it on one of my 'preparing for festivals playlists' and it really is brilliant. So that said, it appears below.



The frontman is former Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows. The bands aren't alike at all, Burrows has written the songs and the two bands are in completely different genres. Arrows is very easy listening and nice, relaxed poppy kind of music (i don't do this for a living, excuse my pathetic attempt to describe music). It's a bit like a British version of Maroon 5 except much more talented. I'm enjoying it and i'm definitely excited about seeing them at Secret Garden.

Robyn Body Talk Part 1 - Dancing on my own

I love this song. I bought the album off iTunes yesterday and its absolutely briliant. Only £5.99 too. Yes please. Here is the video for Dancing on my Own, the first single from the album.

Bindis for Festivals? or am I going a bit mad?

I quite like these. With Secret Garden Party in mind (it has the brilliant theme of 'Fact or Fiction?') and after going to the Topshop Bandstand event this weekend (forgot my camera - and don't feel it justifies a post without photos of the beautiful event) I've gotten over the initial worries of wardrobe and have firmly now moved onto pondering the extras.

The Topshop event in Regent's Park had little tent dedicated to what I'd call 'Grown Up' face painting. They used beautiful jewels and pretty designs, not full frontal, all over your face bonanzas but tasteful and very cool little ideas. I just came across these bindis on avaa.com that launched in the last couple of days. They might do the job with a bit of help.

Laura Thomson Wins Graduate Fashion Week

Laura Thomson of Manchester University School of Art took home the top prize from Graduate Fashion Week. Bet she's chuffed to bits. I love the collection, it's quite grown up in comparison to some of the teddy bears (Danielle Ferguson, University of Salford)and bondage themes (Bobby Charles Abley, Ravensbourne College of Design). Click here to read my last post on GFW.

Here are a couple of photos from the Graduate Fashion Week's Blog of Laura's collection...





Teddy bears from Danielle Ferguson, University of Salford...



Bobby Charles Abley from Ravensbourne College of Design likes bondage...



These are a couple of my faves from the show...

Amber Hards, UWE Bristol - I LOVE this, so elegant and feminine, she's created those shapes very cleverly. I think I'm going through a bit of a phase for this kind of thing. I bought the dress below from Topshop last week - its a beaut.





I love Naomi New from Northumbria University's fringing and structure. Very bold and beautiful. I imagine that the gals over at Bitching and Junkfood like this look a lot.



Sara Wadsworth, University of Central Lancashire with beaUtiful patriotic prints. Reminds of the new season Paul Smith bikini.



And the new Paul Smith bikini: