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.