Sour’s video for Hibi no Neiro. - A little like a fabulous human/web cam kaleidoscope – watch to the end, it will make you smile.
“The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.”
Director: Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland + Magico Nakamura + Masayoshi Nakamura
(via Spike Jonze at We Love You So)
I spent a long time browsing through the short films of the Black Cab Sessions last night, and it made me so happy that I thought I would share them with you too. You’ve probably already seen them, but I live under a rock – it’s cosy under here but I do miss a lot of good stuff.
The Black Cab Sessions is a simple concept. Put a band and a small film crew in the back seat of a London cab and film a totally unplugged version of one of their songs as they spin around the streets of London (or New York, or the Welsh countryside etc). They’re all so full of atmosphere. I love it love it love it. So far I love Badly Drawn Boy, Lykke Li (oh so good), Dawn Landes (with a fabulously bearded Ray playing percussion on a notebook), Fleet Foxes and Martha Wainwright … so far. I have many more to see.
And omg… it’s the Brian Wilson, and his four band members (and the film crew) in the back of the cab. That’s a full cab. and guaranteed to make you smile.
Let me know if you find a stand-out one.
** photos from The Black Cab Sessions blog **
Photo from yesterday’s Age – by Rodger Cummins.
Subscriptions! So good. Sign up once, and then it just keeps going and going. I subscribe to a couple of magazines and a couple of zines, but there are other things which you can keep surprising yourself with every month.
Wilkintie (above): This one looks awesome – Fine art prints for children by fabulous illustrators printed by letterpress
“Subscription to Wilkintie offers you an opportunity to collect all twelve prints in our first series. Each month we release a new print by a different artist, which we will send to you in the mail at the beginning of that month, wrapped in a little parcel of fun. The artwork itself will be a surprise or, if you’d like a sneak preview of the latest release you will be able to view it on this site. But we think the surprise is all part of the experience.”
When you sign up for the subsciption, each of the 12 prints works out to be only $40 each. You could collect the lot or keep your favourites and give away the others as gifts. Single prints are still the very reasonalbe $80 (Australian).
(via @weheartbooks on twitter)
Threadless 12 Club - I gave this fab subscription to Phil for his birthday and Christmas at the end of 2007 – 12 special edition Threadless Tshirts, one in the mail every month. He got a couple he would rather he hadn’t but mostly he got a wonderful and bizarre collection of shirts that he might have otherwise not thought to buy. And now he won’t need another t-shirt for at least ten years.
Emusic: I have the package which gives me 30 songs a month to download from a vast, vast collection of music. The trick here is to remember to download all your songs before the end of your month or you lose them. I spend ages looking through my recommendations from iTunes and fast.fm to find good things to download. I don’t know how I’d cope if I had the 75 songs a month package. My head might explode.
Etsy: I have also added a couple of subscription based services I found on etsy to my ‘etsy favourites’ which display in the sidebar, or find them here.
Do you have any other suggestions? I wracked my brains and probably forgot something obvious.
The space I was mostly creative in this week was actually curled up on a mate’s couch busting out some crochet moves (and after that it was all about Twilight – which is now, thankfully, finished) but I didn’t take a photo so instead I thought I would snap my favourite (creative tool) combination right now; my laptop and my earbuds. Phil gave me a membership to emusic for Valentines Day, and then a gift voucher from iTunes to supplement it so I have been finally catching up with eons of good music, with a special interest in music which is good to write to. I am definitely of the school of people who find some appropriately ambient music extremely useful for inspiration.
I love to write to music. It makes it all happen in my head.
Just this morning I tried a little experiment. I took a scene I had already written, one where a certain gentleman and a certain woman meet for the first time. He’s delivering firewood and is wearing muddy boots which he has to shuck off at the door. She’s in her pajamas and wearing slippers. I think I originally wrote it while listening to Another side of Bob Dylan. I could smell the wood smoke, see the blush in her cheeks. Firing up iTunes, I reread it and played a Sigor Ros song… suddenly the scene needs to be much more epic and sweeping. Get rid of the slippers! More brooding looks! More allusions to a deep connection from childhood! The next song is a poppy little number from Simone Rubi with a slight disco beat and everything needs to be funnier, more flippant. More light remarks about the unlikely attraction to such a hulking mountain man especially when she is wearing some kind of slinky dressing-gown. I skip to a Sondre Lerche song from the Dan in Real Life soundtrack and the slippers are back, and while everything is cheerful, awkwardness pervades and cups of tea are slopped on the table, confidence slips, throats are cleared nervously. Actually, axe the Sondre Lerche, as it is way too distracting. Back on to some cool electronica beats which match my typing speed.
So, you see it takes me quite a long time to shuffle through my music to find the perfect music to make the perfect scene. Some might call it procrastination (and an expensive excuse to buy music). I call it necessary inspiration.
Do you write to music or do you prefer the sweet sounds of silence?
If you do use music, what do you listen to? Maybe I can add yours to my playlist.
Some links:
Kate’s Book Blog – discussion about writing to music.
She links to Largehearted Boy who interviews authors about the playlists which might accompany their books.
Thanks for Kirsty for hosting My Creative Space again this week.
Fleet Foxes – Tiger Mountain Peasant Song – covered by First Aid Kit. Via kitten fluff.
Speaking of finding lovely things on the internet, please have a look at the beautiful website and shop of Taeeun Yoo. These pieces were creature using lino cuts and pencil. So perfect!
via Sarah Jane.
Now it’s late and I have a vampire book to read.
Autumn days are well and truly here. I love it. Grey, heavy skies, drizzle, woodsmoke. There’s nothing better for an inside-day than playdough, and all the better if it’s bright orange.
Stir playdough, cook, cool, play Wake Up by Arcade Fire (via the Where the Wild Things Are preview) very loudly and make dinosaurs.
Check out Specialasaurus. He’s a bit special.
Thank you for your kind thoughts about Amelia’s long fortnight away. She is having a ball and while I was expecting it to be quiet around here, it’s nothing of the sort. It’s as if we have cut off a head, and another has sprung up in its place. Lily is well-and-truly enjoying the space her big sister has left. While she has moments of missing her, and asks when she’ll be back and likes chatting to her on the phone (I don’t think Amelia can understand a word), she’s become loud and opinionated in her absence. We’re having quite a lot of fun.
Image via the wonderful Dinosaurs and Robots
Saturday afternoon and we’re wagging swimming lessons. Just another thing to not tick off the list this week.
So what have you been up to?
I’ve been in stalling mode. House needs cleaning, hair needs cutting, writing needs writing, softies need sewing (I need a little banana slug in my studio to get that done), books need reading, dinners need cooking, plans need planning, weeds need weeding.
Things I have managed to get done lately (brace yourself, it’s been a killer week);
I gave myself a recession-era fringe cut which may have been a mistake.
I made Mum’s You’ve got Friends Chocolate Cake and it worked! I did the 1.5 size recipe and used a big bundt tin and it was a great success.
I twittered about a library book full of cat hair and a fish bone stuck in my throat.
I watched loads of telly… Season 3 of the Mighty Boosh (loved it), Starter for 10 (great), Oscar & Lucinda (lovely), Survivor (oh yes), Lost (to keep Phil company these days), Flight of the Conchords (and bought Carol Brown so I can listen to it all the time), The Jane Austen Book Club (meh), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (still watchable).
I heard myself tell someone that we don’t watch a lot of television. At that moment I actually believed it.
I had lots of coffees, at Bliss, at Snow Pony, at Laurent, at home from a packet of Jasper’s and then heard myself tell someone that we are not spending any money on unnecessary items in 2009.
I downloaded M Ward’s new album, Clementine by Melbourne’s (not Norway’s) Washington, The Lark Ascending (which reminds me so much of that wonderful movie ‘The Year my Voice Broke’) and listened to the Dodo’s a lot while I was pretending to write.
I looked at loads of Oscars frocks and then looked at the NME awards photos and felt a bit relieved that the Brits are still so grungy. Clearly not a stylist in the house.
And in case you missed it, I listed a softie on Ebay for the Bushfire Appeal and it ends Monday!
