Beach House Review

I went to see Beach House and reviewed their dream pop, beautiful, snazzy, nonchalant, cool performance. Wraghh adjectives! They were wonderful (no hyperbole).

HERE - Suit Yourself Magazine

The Cinematic Orchestra Review

HERE is the finished article for Amelia's Magazine with great illustrations from Matilde Sazio and Karina Yarv 

The Cinematic Orchestra with The London Metropolitan Orchestra and Heidi Vogel – Live at The Royal Albert Hall, November 2010

A Review of The Cinematic Orchestra Live at The Royal Albert Hall, November 14. Featuring an interview with their vocalist, Heidi Vogel

Illustration by Matilde Sazio

Johnny Flynn Interview

Well, well - here is the product of my fuzzy interview with the very musically talented 'folk' man, Flynn.
Illustration by Abby Wright.

Brownie Points

Admittedly, I have recently ranted on quite a lot about the joy of romance, as previously mentioned in the last post. I do love time with 'just us' to prance and festoon about, BUT blimey! Charlie really pulled out the stops this weekend. He visited Under The Thatch, a fantastic website that is perfecto for the all encompassing 'romantic mini-break' and came up with a corker of a thatched cottage in Cardigan Bay, Wales. 
Under The Thatch are a not for profit organisation, with all the ££ for the rental of the properties going towards preserving other old beauties. I quote: "We're here not only to sell you a holiday but also to ensure that traditional and derelict buildings find new uses, and that the local economy benefits from our trade." 
And trust me, as the boy is from Jersey he is massively NOT into the deserted holiday home (abandoned all winter, screaming all summer), these places are not devoid of people visiting. They are packed out all year round. 
The one he picked had all the attributes of a mini break dream: built in the 1750s; thatched roof; wood burning stove; bath with feet; shutter windows; massive doors leading to garden/the hills; Le Creuset pans and cabin bed. Rustic. Charm. 


I will whack in a couple of pictures, because I am aware that this is sick, and no one wants to read me harking on about my weekend away. So here it is:

It was a beauty. 

So this morning, I thought I should check out some 'gifts for him' on the internet before I patrol the streets and end up in his favourite beaten up bookstore. I went to Liberty's (the ultimate Christmas zone) and the first page of 'Gifts for Him' showed me THESE TWO: Contained and liquidated 'French Lover' and 100ml of 'Fantastic Man'. £125 of NO. Too far? OUI!... I wonder who will get one/both of these in their stocking?

French Lover, 100ml, Editions De Parfums, Frederic Malle

Price £125.00

Fantastic Man Eau de Cologne 100ml, Byredo Parfums

Price £125.00

MY WEEK- Oooh it's like reality tv innit?

Obviously the big news this week is the Royal marriage... but apart from this, in my life, I've been doing my two remainder exams this week. Terribly exciting, I know.

After massive harangues with the exam people over where I was doing them, generally allowing the flat to fall below my set standards (yeh- really high - course) and TRYING to revise to the absolute maximum and not despise the flippin things - they are finally over (no idea how I have done - self teaching doesn't allow for ticks, crosses and smiley faces). I am mightily happy about their exit/fianle from my life. Although very apprehensive as to the actual results.

Anyway, here is some documentation relating to my exam week in the way of photos.
Day One: Francois life jealousy. He does nothing all day and clearly feels no pressure to do anything either.

Day Two: London. Distracted in Liberty by lamps in the form of dogs. Fantasy home (if ever have a home - cue, woe is the 20 -something of today) would have this lamp.

And this chair.

Day Three: Cinematic Orchestra at Royal Albert Hall. All over distracting. Yet focusing. (See below for pictures and await my review...) Long trip journey home (clearly for shocked boy across there on tube too). 2am Monday morning get back Bristalll.

Day Four: Look to cat. Again. Is he actually very wise and is an old man trapped inside a ginger cat? Look to twitter. Twitter is definitely NOT wise. I like the effort that some people go to though (see longcat)

Day Five: EXAM (location = palaver = get there by train)

Bournemouth. Beaches and the biggest shop for walking aids I have ever seen. Look carefully for the Christmas Cracker. I am sure I would really like Bournemouth if I spent more than a minute there - and if my minute spent there wasn't taken up with internally screaming. I had a lovely taxi driver though, who zoomed me to my train and waited for me to get out of the exam for ten minutes. Parked on the curb, he told me I was 'lucky' he was still there. Definite highlight. Managed to get my pilates on time and munch (/save from boys clutches) on my (designated) half a cadburys bar that night - nom, nom, nom. Thanks Bournemouth Taxi man.

Day Six: Interview with Johnny Flynn on the blower. Skype didn't work. His US 'cell' didn't work. I am not looking at my BT bill. It will be sick and very wrong. Lovely chat though. I do find myself wanting to actually chat however, and have to remember that it is an interview. i.e. all about them darl. (it does get lonely being a 'freelancer' though - hence cat obsession). I did try forget that he is a very attractive man.  (Evidence follows)

Day Seven: EXAM. Location: the newspaper in Bristol. Well... we'll see.

I am now simultaneously cooking for our weekly dinner date with Will and Kate, cleaning the ramshackle house (must change bed, as put duvet in sideways last time) and packing to go away somewhere with the boy - who is taking me somewhere (because I have in my most exam harassed states, discussed romance a lot recently, indeed even mentioning Keats...?) he is really romantic... I have been told to "remember that we are skint." If I get cold, I will cry. Other than that, weeeeeeee!

Zvroooosh!

Cinematic Orchestra: Live at The Royal Albert Hall, November 14

Don McCullin - Shaped by War, Victoria Art Gallery

Engrossed in the scene of a hideous death, fear and life deserted from their blank, muddy faces, it is difficult to pull away and move on to the next photograph. Don McCullin’s Photography Exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery is a scene of shuffling, empathy sucked postures and admiration.

But no one here knows what it is like to witness these scenes in reality, or indeed, to have any true comprehension as to what it is like for the people in these harrowing photographs. It is awful to be here and yet extremely humbling and in a way, utterly brilliant. As McCullin has said: “Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”

Don McCullin took his first published photographs in 1958. They were of the street gang he was part of, haunting the cafes and derelict buildings of Finsbury Park, where he grew up. The Observer liked his raw and honest pictures; a subjects’s inner characteristics captured by the lens.

McCullin continued to capture images of Britain, focusing his lens on the previously undocumented. The unemployed and the destitute are blown up in black and white, their woes glinting through their eyes. Their distress unmasked.

There is one picture of a late middle-aged woman in the 50s being carried off by two policeman. She is wearing a mid-length tweed coat, and holding a black, hard briefcase. Her hair is covered by a head scarf and she is wearing black, stern, angular glasses. One policeman has his arms under hers and the other is clutching her ankles. Her gaze is fixed upon the camera, her eyes defiant and there is the hint of a smile on her lips. This woman is strong and proud, the policemen scurrying around her horizontal body, in contrast, are flickering, flighty and unfocused.

Another photograph is a terrifically sad face. A man, with a neckerchief around his neck looks through the camera lens. His concern and his ‘being’ is somewhere else. The title of the picture explains the scene: 'Gypsy Watching the Police Evict his Family, Kent, 1961'. 

McCullin travelled to Berlin on his own accord in 1960 to take pictures of the Berlin Wall being erected, dividing the country like a knife. It was his documenting of this that made McCullin's international reputation. He said: “There was an extraordinary atmosphere, real Le Carré-land, but strangely, I felt immediately at home. It was as if I was wearing the right clothes.”

The remainder of the 1960's and 1970's were spent covering events of global importance for the Sunday Times Magazine, including the Vietnam war, Northern Ireland and Cyprus. McCullin’s photos capture moments that would normally be hidden from view.

There are two pictures that are particularly shocking, taken in Lebanon in 1976. McCullin was shadowing Christian Phalangist squads who were searching out Palestinian men in order to execute them. One photograph shows two men with their hands up, next to a staircase, one with a hat on, both with eyes enlarged. Their families running down the stairs, faces devoid of anything but horror at that second’s situation. The next photo below, shows the men dead on the floor. Nothing and no one else around them.

McCullin would have been stood there, where the exhibition attendee stands now. But in cold, hard, reality. What can it possibly be like to document this? Each photograph tells a terrible story about our humanity. It is impossible to articulate the emotions on the faces of the people in these pictures, what is painted on their faces is so beyond the depths of most people’s experiences. As McCullin has said: “I realised that you could shoot photographs until the cows came home but they have nothing to do with real humanity, real memories, real feelings.” 

McCullin has wrestled with the fact that he has been witness to so many awful scenes. He describes it as a guilt and he has suffered from depression as a result for many years. Regarding the observer of his photographs and their own difficulty in comprehending the images, he said: “I want you to look at my photographs. I don’t want you to reject and say: ‘No, I can’t do that. I can’t look at those pictures. They are atrocity pictures.’ Of course, they are. But I want to become the voices of the people in those pictures.”

McCullin’s work has proved so painful and memorable that in 1982 he was forbidden to cover the Falklands war by the British government of the time. In his later years, he has increasingly taken pictures of landscapes. Of Somerset rivers, streams and frosted mornings. He says it is therapeutic to his wounds, like an apology for all he had seen. However, the photographs still have a stark quality. They are dark and hold the vulnerable, real quality that the war photos do.

Towards the end of the Exhibition, a striking face is hard to miss and almost sums up the feel of the whole display. It is a photograph of the face of a shell shocked US soldier, in Hue, 1968. Next to the picture is a test copy of it with post it notes attached. These are the instructions from McCullin for the development of this mesmerizing picture. ‘Darker’ , it says, indicating under the helmet, where the soldiers eyes burn into the abyss of the unimaginable. 

McCullin has said of his gloomy pictures: “I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness.”

When eventually exiting the Exhibition it is impossible not to feel drained. These are incredible photos and should be seen. For all that have suffered, including McCullin himself.

There was a time when I was gallivanting about Oz, when I became a bit tiresome of the old white sandy beaches and craved a fireside. Shucks!

As soon as it turns REALLY COLD- like now, I think back to a November and indeed a whole 14 months where I was really, really WARM. I like to think about emigration at this time.

This was where I was exactly six years ago (I should probably just go away again...SIX years- uh). Just turned 20 on an onion field now working in the desert (pretty much)

Here a few pictures. You can see how awful it looks...

Western Australia, Broome, Cable Beach: 22km of beach.

And by the Lighthouse at the end of the 22km of beach. Atmospheric sunset, celebrated with fanta and pizza.

And finally - the little den we made ourselves with our tents/cars etc. in the abandoned campsite opposite Cable Beach. It was too hot for the seasonal people in their caravans, they had all gone back down south for the summer.  I can't explain how ridiculously humid it got during the 'build up' before the wet season fully took hold and everything became sodden. 

During this time (pre soak) I worked in a bar until three or four am and then tried to sleep on the mattress outside. We all slept on the exposed mattresses - although actual sleep was only possible between the fourth and sixth hours after midnight, as then it got all obscenely HOT again. Cockroaches, spiders and snakes meant nothing to me during these slumbering quests. (That's until upon leaving Broome, I fell asleep in my bikini, on a rock in a national park and woke to find a massive monitor staring nonchalantly at me. They move fast.) 

Everyone allowed themselves to be crazy during said BUILD UP. This was fueled by copious rum, short shorts and ute pick ups. In fact we started this section of our adventures in the Northern Territories, where there were no speed limits on the road at all. Zvrooosh! Which made for some tense moments in The Woman, our gold saloon car. 

Emotions and feist among the Aussies got seriously intense. I think now's the right time for me to just clarify how far away from nothing we were:

Unlike me in my extreme greenhouse bar, the boys worked at the 5* hotel across the road from our camp haven. Nicole Kidman/the Oz suuuperstars stayed and played at their hotel. Christian would charm the women guests as a route to bask in their air conditioned rooms. The boys actually worked pretty hard sometimes and often we would feast on the food left in the superstar fridges. 

One of my own food joys was my banana milk on Weetbix (no 'a') fresh from the (just about still open) reception. A low point was cold Magi noodles (no gas) with peanut butter and beans.

When it rained (eventually - December) the German boys we were traveling with whacked on some German techno/bass in their car and we danced with actual elational joy in the droplets.

Looks like paradise aiiit.

Amelia's Magazine: Interview with Blythe Pepino of Pepino

Click HERE for my interview with Blythe Pepino of Bristol band, Pepino

 Illustration by Abby Wright. 

Walking home from an evening out is sometimes a slow affair. With the chill of the air rushing through the leaves, the wind whispers, clarity in its breath. This is the time of night, when only the workaholics and the creatives are studious. It is a beautiful time to bask. As it is right here, even the most ridiculous ideas become utterly feasible. And indeed I have planned elopements to South America, psychoanalyzed the health food shop assistant down the road and delivered eloquent obituaries to dead film stars. Oh! It is here when high emotion is reached! When nightingales sing! Sweeping statements are made! And also when nothing at all can be said. Thinking, thinking… thinking. The boy has learned to accept the pace of these evening meanders, the ‘profound’ findings and flighty musings escaping my consciousness. Sometimes it is possible to revisit or even create these times of mesmerizing purity and definition. Often this is through music, which has this indescribable ability of transportation. Pepino is one such band.

I saw them on stage for the first time a while ago and was surprised at the effect they had upon me and all around me. The audience and I were transfixed. Pepinopossess a range of beautiful components. They are ethereal foxes, taken from their country spheres and told to become urban tearaways. Embracing the task before them, they have assessed their situation, screeching and singing melodies to the heavens, they lull strangers and ask questions why. Lead singer, Blythe, 24, has a passion that comes with ease as she recalls the circumstances from which her comical and hearty lyrics originate from. Her terrifically ranging voice soars and plummets with vivacious sensitivity. Listening to their album, Redface is one of those songs that you listen to on repeat, holding you in its clutches. It moves from slow and dramatic to vulnerable and reflective. Meanwhile Rocky, like many of Pepino’s songs, have a touch of grunt and cheeky hilarious flashes, combining with high pitched, sweet, backing vocals and violins swaying and jumping.

Clutter, a response to the cleaning of people’s houses, is a thumper of a tune and their wistful beauty of a song about growing up in the country, The Birthright (not written by Pepino), is rose-tinted and beautiful. The violins and cello add to the juxtaposed sounds of soft drawn out vocals and gusty propelling sounds. Like aTori Amos or Imogen Heap… or Tinkerbell with balls. They’re a contemporary girl de force and unavoidably likeable. Blythe is also in a band called Bizali. Now taking a backseat, she is going full throttle with leading Pepino into the unknown. They have the talent of the few and they deserve the acknowledgement of the many. I meet Blythe after she has had a difficult weekend. I have spent the day working for free at the Bath Chronicle, she has been working in a pub. We blame the fullness of the moon for feeling a bit… strange. Then look up to its plunging light, before I try to work out how to use my dictaphone.

For the interview click HERE

Amelia's Magazine: Interview with Marion Foale of 60's label, Foale&Tuffin

Click HERE for my interview with Marion Foale of Foale&Tuffin fame and later knitwear legend.

                                                                                             Illustration by: Nina Hunter

You may have noticed that Britain’s fashion scene has been ‘yarnbombed’ of late. Knitwear is everywhere. The term itself refers to covering street furniture, including stop signs and phone boxes with knitted garments, such as long scarves and soft tea cosies. People generally festoon the knitwear to make a point and highlight an issue, such as a charity’s appeal.

The wool adorning act follows from the last two years of the enormous and triumphant return of knitwear to fashion. Its rise coincides with the soaring popularity of vintage and collectable clothing.

That’s why style pioneer of the sixties and knitwear legend Marion Foale’s informal talk at Image Boutique in Bath’s Milsom Place on Monday was quite the fashion event. For over thirty years Marion Foale has hand-knitted the finest wool and cotton jackets available in the world. Her designs are inspired by the glamour of the forties. They are exquisite in their fit and form, always with emphasis on femininity. Each jacket takes over 300 hours to make using only the finest cotton and wool yarns.

Min Stevenson, owner of Image, said: “We sell Marion Foale jackets every season, people love them. We were very excited to give our Foale fans a chance to meet the maker of such a superb collection.”

*Marion Foale with Min Stevenson, owner of IMAGE boutique where Marion talked to her fans.

Wearing one of her own red, swing cardigans, Foale chatted in a relaxed manner to her avid fans. She spoke of her background in the fashion business during the swinging sixties, and her successful knitwear collection from the seventies onwards.

I felt a little out of place, standing there with the PR lady and photographer, discussing the miniature quiches on offer. Most of the women there could afford the £400 prices of a Foale piece, and looking at their fabrics and immaculate complexions, most were certainly members of Bath’s elite.

However, when I fought through the ladies, and eventually cornered Marion for an interview, I found she was incredibly friendly and talked of her sixties past with delight and relish. She was equally lighthearted when discussing starting a business in knitwear with no idea how to actually knit. Gutsy.

Click HERE for the interview.

    

Illustration by: Abby Wright 

Flourish

They closed the door on us at 5.20pm tonight. Being Friday and all, Sherry wanted to get in an early sherry to celebrate the end of the week. She waddled over the black and white lino and shut the creaky old door. “Uh what a week!” she said to Millie, the timid trainee florist. She has said this same sentence at the end of every week since we got here, me and my family. 

Initially, we’re weren’t really sure what happened exactly. One day there we were, basking in the air. Our leaves twisted towards the Yellow God’s giving hands. I lay on my sofa and we chatted to the Insects. Occasionally we would invite the Bees for dinner, but most of the time it was just us bunch of Green Ones swaying in the air. We feasted all day from Yellow God’s bounty and breathed without a thought in our stalks. We knew nothing else, so we didn’t think we were lucky. Of course we did hear tales, but my sofa was attached to me, and I had my Green Ones around me. I just couldn’t imagine that changing.

Then darkness.

We were taken in a truck somewhere for a long time. I had to hold my breath and look down as the Yellow God had been sucked out of the sky. I felt unsteady in there and my neck hurt. I also had a deep sense of loss and drowsily wondered where my sofa was. Upon looking down I saw where before my foundations lay. My beloved sofa had been chopped away, taken. My legs looked like weeds. 

It came back to me. This was it, we were being taken to the floristry. Like the Birds had fluttered and the Bees had whispered. Yellow God would now only exist through the panel of human creation.

I learnt this to be glass. 

In the night our breathing made the glass go misty and then drips would flow down like tears. I know these are like tears because a lady came in on our first day here. She was howling like a wolf. The droplets shooting down her face were tears because she was sad. She was sad and ‘crying’ Sherry said, because her pet dog had died. Died. That’s the end they think. 

Now I have knowledge of many human emotions. People come in to florists for congratulations emotion, wedding emotion, baby emotion and sad things like dog death emotion. 

Millie talks to us Green Ones a lot. She is very different to Sherry and will look at us deeply. We know her secrets. Whereas Sherry looks at us like we are dolls. Recently she has been looking at us like the worms used to. I’m not sure what this means.

It’s been four weeks here. This night the Yellow God has been furthest away. The glass is crying a lot. We touch the glass, we look, we wait. Unsure of what we are waiting for. I know it’s around 2am because I can see people walking past, either really fast, or droopily. Sherry says 2am is the sort of time glass gets smashed on a Friday, because of these walking people. This fills us with huge fear as we have become attached to the shielding glass and don’t want our legs to break by humans pulling our necks again. It also makes us excited though, as we’d like to breathe again. Properly. 

This is also normally the time when we see Millie walk past. She is much less timid at 2am. Tonight she shouts at the people she is with, ‘Will be there in a minute”. She presses her face and hand up against the glass and looks right through us. She says; “One day I will have a floristry and it will have a mud bottom and no roof. There will be millions of wild plants stretching to the skies and lots of pretty flowers dancing on the bottom. They’ll all be singing and people will only be able to sit here with a cup of tea and a cake or a martini. They can’t ever buy my plants for they are for living in my garden with me. In harmony. It will be wondrous, oh plants!”

She congratulated at our stalks and leaves and for a moment it was like being back on the sofa. Then she walked off pulling her coat’s hood up, lifting her shoulders and closing her hands tight.

The next day Millie stayed after Sherry to clean up. Sherry had overdone the sherry the night before. “Thanks Millo, you are so sweet.” Milly walked around to her bag after the door was shut, and picked some scissors from her bag. She came up to all of us Green Ones and snipped a branch from each of us. This did not hurt.

“Now you shall flourish in my garden too and your children will live a happy life with a million friends and no glass between you and the Sun.”

I had no idea what she meant but she looked like she was in congratulations emotion again and last night and tonight have been the only times I have ever seen her do this, and I liked Millie. So the Green Ones and I all twisted towards her and hoped that the little parts of us she had in her bag would feel congratulations too.

Soon after this (maybe two days), I was taken by a baby emotion. I sat next to a television for a long while before I could take no more and I died thinking of the Yellow God and congratulations. I hope the people felt some dog death emotion and put me outside, so it was not the end. 


For this, a song by: Martha Tilston, Artificial - click.