Blaudzun is a Dutch songwriter fellow. I like this song Elephants because half-way through it goes into a long sequence of unpredictable chords looping over and over.
Here are the chords, nobody seems to have worked em out yet.
Capo on 5th.
Verse D Am G
To me...
F Em G D x2
Am G F Em
[Now we hit the chords off-beat and loud]
G D Am G F Em x2
G D Am G
[Return to normal chilled pace]
F Em G D Am G [repeat]
Meursault did a turn for BBC Radio Scotland, including the long-awaited mashup of Radiohead’s Bulletproof (verse) with La Roux’s Bulletproof (chorus).
Another dude out on the interwebs was thoughtful enough to clip it out into an mp3, but he let the links die so I’m doing everyone a favour, reclipping it and making it available by more reliable means.
Have a listen here or hit the wee down-arrow to download it feverishly into your collection.
And then there was the Edinburgh festival! It was mazin. Many hangovers were carefully constructed and a record number of shows taken in, over one frantic week.
The weather was pish though. Here’s a pano of me and the redoubtable bean in a spiegeltent. See if you can spot us both!
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Then, I was lucky enough to get an insider’s tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral from our very own CJ. Check facebook for a few tantalising pictures, it was very cool.
Here’s a pano from the tippy-top high point, reachable after many minutes of climbing tiny ancient shoulder-crammed spiral steps. All the pano goodness after the jump! Check the old Italian biffer with excessive pairs of glasses.
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So in August I got to spend a bit of time maundering around Soho and Covent Garden. I had a very pleasant time randomly splashing out on designed goods and wishing international data roaming wasn’t kidney-sellingly expensive.
Here’s a pano of the Seven Dials crossroads I took with the jesusphone. The resolution is decent so you can hit the plus sign (down the bottom) to zoom in if you like. Read the posters and such, admire the buffoonery. All the action after the jump!
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freedom, etc.
Here is me funneling their noise through my bodily systems and into my iPhone. On the widget below you can listen, download it, comment it, all that stuff. This is off the latest album All Creatures Will Make Merry.
The other great thing about blasting out Meursault tunes is that I can sing in my own accent without it sounding weird! Bonus (happy now Dad?). This one is dedicated to Brian and Emily who kept poking me to post more stuff.
Technical stuff: got it on the third take. It’s DADGAD tuning with capo on 3rd; check out the videos online to figure it out. The iPhone 4 seems to have put a few clicks in there that Garageband can’t get rid of (low-tech, hell yes). I’d think about adding some overdub to the ahhhs at the end but I’m keeping these recordings as unfucked-with as possible.
I posted about the NYAFF this time last year, and that entry is still on the front page! Oh facebook and twitter, how you have robbed personal blogs of material.
Here’s the festival trailer for 2010 (best enjoyed full-screen, right-click and Watch on YouTube):
[youtube]PY-BvIFT90o[/youtube]
This year I’m committed to:
Come join me in the madness!
A hat, yesterday
Now and again I mess around recording stuff with Voice Memos on the iPhone. Since I managed to get through three minutes of a Veils tune without any major fluffs, here it is in all its low-fi glory. You should be able to play using the widget here. If the play button doesn’t appear below, you probably need to view this post on TF as intended, or just get the mp3. Listen out for the plectrum-hitting-table noise at the end, it’s a highlight.
To hear the proper unmangled version, get Sun Gangs. Old suedefaced Bernard Butler worked on this one, the opening track.
Also this is probably a good opportunity to plug Stu’s band Kontakte, who employ more advanced recording techniques : )
Early in the year I have a bit of post-bonus disposable income, so I indulged in some wallet bukkake and ordered an iPad. Here is what happened.
I’ve used an iPhone for a couple of years now, so that gives you a certain perspective. The icons and such look very familiar. The first thing that hits you is: holy shit there is just a ridiculous amount of screen space. In reality it’s a modest 1024 by 768, but after using a phone it’s pretty striking. I think how you react to this device depends on what you compare it to: is it a big phone, or a small computer?
Although you have this expanse of screen, the icons and buttons are still iPhone-sized. They feel dwarfed, relatively speaking; you have to aim carefully with your fingers.
An iPad, yesterday
At first typing is definitely weird. The reason: no tactile feedback. It is not possible to touch-type on a glass screen. This means you have to look at the keyboard most of the time, which is unnatural; the letters are appearing somewhere up there in hopefully the correct order.
After some time you get used to it, eyes flicking back and forth. I completely rely on landscape mode though (bigger keys to hit). The little keyboard clicks are indispensable.
Last bit of weirdness: an iPad forces you to cut your fingernails really short! Long-nailed typists just receive a series of clacky noises and nothing happens.
Things with big sweepy gestures are lovely. Google Maps is a whole new experience; it genuinely feels futuristic. You are holding a high-res atlas that comes to life in your hands; looking down, you sweep the world below you around, grinning like a retarded god.
The feel of the iBook is great. There’s a wee gimmick where you can grab the page and wave it around instead of just reading the fucking thing. The popup dictionary is beautifully styled and charming.
Random stuff:
form B-12/alpha, please
They operate a supremely closed-off scheme. Trying to talk to a human at one of these places is nigh-impossible without making some kind of offering; usually pumping them with cash for access to your details. Your details basically consists of a number, but they dress it up with exotic branding nonsense along the lines of the CreditPeep 5000 CashSpunker Plus. I’ve spent a month or so pissing around with arch-cockhandles Experian, and convincing them that some other guy with a similar name is not me, and can they please take all his nefarious dealings off my record, thank you very much.
Long story short, that’s now done. If you need to deal with credit bureaus, I can offer some effective voodoo.
Just when I thought all the form-fiddling was done, Amex call to say they’re not 100% convinced of my identity, and could I please fuck off down to the Social Security building and get a note proving my social security number. Well of course, nothing would give me greater pleasure.
If you’re thinking dealing with the Social Security (SS for short – YOU SEE?) would be a patience-mangling, Kafkaesque nightmare, you’d be totally correct and would in fact win a biscuit.
The downtown building squats massive and intimidating. It has FEDERAL BUILDING spackled all over it and cops everywhere. There are 15 entrances and only one is the right one for you, and you have to know what the department name is, exactly and without using synonyms or cheating. You have to negotiate with guards who speak only rudimentary dolphin. Once I found the right entrance I gained 2,300 experience points.
Once in the door you are welcomed with a warm and friendly metal detector scan and body-furtling.
There are 50 floors. Your correct floor is listed in Greek using a 6-point font on a tea-tray stapled to the wall behind a pillar in the lobby.
Once you find the right room, things look more familiar – clerks behind bulletproof glass, people waiting. You dither slightly trying to figure out the waiting system, before a security guard with a table of forms waves you over. He appears to be first-generation Namibian and has only the vaguest idea of what is going on around him. He delivers his opener with all the twinkling intelligence of a poached egg:
IN WHAT BOAR YOU LEAVE?
Sorry?
IN WHAT BOAR… YOU LEAVE?
[Long pause while my brain executes intense pattern matching algorithm]
Are you asking me… where I live?
YES
Ah, Manhattan.
PRESS 1 ON MACHINE
A ticket! Result.
Next, a long wait; expected. Then, called to the desk! I have rehearsed what I will say. The lady is short and first-generation Chinese. I get the first word in:
Hello, so to be clear I already have a social security card [brandish my card] – I’m just looking for -
YOU NEED APPLICATION FORM!
Whoa.
Sorry, for what?
YOU NEED APPLICATION FORM!
But I already have a card, here -
YOU NEED FORM! TALK TO GUARD!
I need a form to speak to you?
[There is a pause]
[People in the waiting room have gone quiet, amused by the exchange and my desperately clear enunciation]
[Clerk looks for the fifth time at the card I am holding against the glass, and in the cold lonely void a lightbulb illuminates]
AH YOU HAVE NUMBER! YOU NEED LETTER!
Normally you go up to clerks on the assumption they know more than you do, cap in hand. I instead walked out full of dismayed sympathy, but relief at accomplishing the mission.
The frustration in dealing with these muppets reminded me of the constant satirising unleashed by Douglas Adams on this topic, both in his books and also in the 80s text adventure game Bureaucracy. Actually the AI in that game surpassed most of the humanoids I dealt with this week.
P.S. the post title is from the Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out classic, here preserved on your intertrout.
P.P.S. So I don’t forget, my social security number is [WPRESS exception in db.getHandle() - too many connections]