#dead-ends

The Burial of the Dead Another New Studio ‘April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.’ TS Eliot: The Waste Land  April has been a great big steaming waste of time. Everything I’ve tried has turned out badly and in the end I’ve had to put everything away and start again. I ended the month reading an article…

Wading Through Mud (Another New Studio) This has been a busy couple of weeks since my last post (link to post) with work on the NHS Barnsley project which is progressing but will be the subject of another post when it’s completed. Distractions aside I continued to work on the large drawing I’d started but didn’t post last time out. Large Rose 11/08/23 Then (11th August) it looked like this, there…

Place Markers, not Milestones

Guy Debord, The Naked City, 1957

For today, after experiencing some drift myself, I’m putting this here as a placemarker. If you’ve followed the blog you’ll have an idea of what I mean by that as the work I’ve been doing is psychogeographical.

I’m struggling to articulate the work and its underlying theories without establishing a road map and this situationist approach seems to be the most…

Showing the Love of Jesus Without Dead-Ends

The best way we can show others the love of Jesus is by talking to them about Him. This can be as simple as sharing a helpful verse of scripture, telling your own faith journey or letting someone know you’re praying for them. Keeping it simple can be difficult, though, if you’re tempted to engage in conversations that lead to dead-ends.

InActs 17:16-33, Paul faced this challenge when he saw…

I’m pretty sure @copper-cable​ deserves some of the credit for breaking this chain mind you

Rule: Set your music playlist to random and list the first ten titles that play 

This was actually slightly challenging since I don’t really have a single centralised music playlist. The closest would be the 4 folders on a USB in my car that I listen to while driving, but to avoid biasing one particular set of songs I thought it best to skip between the folders as I went. And the results are these:

Dig Lazarus Dig by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ♫ I don’t know what it is but there is definitely something going on upstairs ♫ This sure is a song. I don’t really have a good way of dewcribing it except to say that it’s a bit weird and I’m not 100% why I even like it. Incidentally I initially mistyped the artist as Nick Cage and the Bad Seeds and boy do I wanna know what that would sound like.

Laura by The Scissor Sisters ♫ Sh’mon! Sh’mon! Where is your love? ♫ What the fuck is “Sh’mon”? And what the fuck is this video? It’s in a hairdresser, I turn away, I come back and they’re excorsising a creepy zombie dude in a cemetary or something? Uh, anyway, simple catchy song, sick guitar in second chorus, killer sax in the outro. Pretty cool.

Higher Ground by Red Hot Chill Peppers ♫ I gotta keep on trying, ‘til I reach the higher ground! ♫ Right off the bat with a completely un-ignorable bassline and keeps a good rock on from start to finish - punchy, catchy, some nice guitar fills and that classic RHCP energy (not to mention some top notch 80′s video editing). It’s actually a cover of a Stevie Wonder song, but if you ask me the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ version is... on higher ground.

Bust a Move by Young MC ♫ Some girls are sadistic, materialistic, looking for a man makes them opportunistic ♫ Not gonna lie, there’s a chance that this song is just a little bit sexist. But the funk is undeniable. The guitar is simple and effective, the bass just oozes cool  and the lyrics are well constructed and fun if not entirely agreeable.

Solace of You by Living Colour ♫ Gotta go inside, back where it started, back to the beginning ‘cos that’s where my heart is ♫ A quite soothing song from an otherwise loud metal kinda band. The guitar tone and riffs are easy on the ears, accompanied by heartfelt singing and fast yet gentle drumming that, along with some African (I assume?) backing vocals lends the song a laid back tribal feel.

We’re Much Preferred Customers by Dissoaciatives ♫ Age is just a number, drawn on empty faces ♫ This song is rather subdued and a little trippy, with strange layered voices and nonsensical lyrics (as I recall, the writer was in a “show up and write lyrics on the day of recording” point in his career) and various other noises. It all kinda comes together though if you ask me. I don’t think this song has an official video, if you wanna see what they’re about on that front try Horror With Eyeballs, which is exactly as weird as it sounds.

I Am The Walrus by The Beatles ♫ Umpa, umpa, stick it up your jumper ♫ Thanks for that brilliant contribution, Ringo. Vimeo Link because Youtube doesn’t have the actual song for some reason? Unlike the Dissoaciatives simply not prioritising lyrical meaning, this song was apparently written to be intentionally nonsensical. Needless to say, it makes for a rather fun and silly song from the strange side of the Beatles.

Breaking All Illusions by Dream Theater ♫ *soloing for like 5 full minutes* ♫ Now we’re in the thick of it. This here is some real Progressive Metal (though on the more accessible side of Metal if you ask me). Starting with a two minute instrumental intro and lasting over 12 minutes in total, this song coverse a range of tempos, tones, time signatures and musical styles (the disco bass at around 5:20 is my jam) and of course in true DT fashion there’s a nice long and varied instrumental breakdown in the middle that makes up almost half the song’s total runtime. A Dramatic Turn Of Events isn’t my favourite Dream Theater album by a long shot (Portnoy whyyy) but this song stands its ground to me.

Short Skirt Long Jacket by Cake ♫ I wanna girl who gets up early (GETS! UP! EARLY!) ♫ Alright, fine, something a little more radio friendly. As far as Cake goes this song is actually relatively well known, and the reasons for its comparative success are fairly apparent. It’s funky, it’s catchy, the vocals are easy to follow and not particularly demanding, and that trumpet gives the band a nice and unique sound. I don’t think this is actually their best song mind you - anyone who likes it should try some of their other stuff - but it’s the one that came up and rules are rules so

Unnatural Selection by Muse ♫ Counterbalance this commotion, we’re not droplets in the ocean ♫ Despite the overall trends of my music tastes, this somehow ended up being the heaviest song on the list. Oh well, Looks like I’m going out with a bang! This song starts as pure hard rock - heavy chugging guitar, aggressive lyrics, catchy chorus, overall a fierce and punchy song. Comparable to High Ground actually, but instead of getting its point across capping off after the three minute mark it instead does something rather different and slows the fuck down. Not that it sacrifices its intensity, mind you, instead becoming even more dramatic and overblown in that special way that only talented wankers like Matt Bellamy can pull off. This is a Muse song through and through, and it’s a good one.