Pete Ashton’s Blog

Catching up on my feed I discover a couple of new t-shirt vendors through the TeeJunkie blog which I feel the need to share.

Design by Humans appear to use a Threadless-style model for submissions (hence the name) but only do full-print tees and veer towards the arty rather than the humourous on the whole. Also, considering the large prints, the prices are very reasonable, generally hovering round the $20 mark. It also seems like the designs are chosen because they compliment the shape of the person wearing them rather than just being cool images, which is great to see. I suspect some money will be going their way soon.

Chor Bazaar are based in Brooklyn (I believe) and do an Indian Bollywood chic thing which, I confess, has my irony-hipster-wanker bells a’ringing but a few of the t-shirts put these worries to bed as they tend to the quite lovely. I’m particularly taken with this one:

And so, having purchased the requisite batteries and a 1/4″ adapter as I only appear to have 1/8″ audio cables in my absurdly huge box of cables, I plugged the Thingamagoop into the Mac and started making music. Of a sort. First I discovered the effects in Garageband, which was a lot of fun, and then I realised I could stack them, pretending that I had loads of Thingamagoops. First off, for the visualisation fans, here’s a screen grab:

Fun!

And now for the music.

The first piece has a standard beat that’s joined by a low thundering reverb of a rumble before being topped with some noise. It’s kinda sweet.

After that we pull things back with a single track layered on itself with the copy passed through a bunch of reverb. And it doesn’t stop for over 4 minutes. Perfect for getting that party started.

Finally I begin to figure out where this this can go with a bit of free improv. Five tracks comprising a couple of beats (one 4/4, one 6/8, I think) and some twiddling. I like this a lot.

And now I find I want to do this live. Which means I need a little army of the things. Or a couple of Thingamakits. Oh yes, the Thingamagoop has a big brother!

WANT!

A promotion from Travel, sorry National Express West Midlands, the corp what runs most of our buses in Brum, has the following blurb:

Remember that average West Midlands petrol prices have risen by around 22% in the last 12 months, and with the credit crunch forcing all of us to tighten our belts, dumping the pump and jumping on the bus is the sensible way to save money.

A few years back Private Eye had a series called WarBalls spotlighting pieces of PR puffery that tried to hook 9/11 to whatever product of service they were hawking. While I haven’t read Private Eye for a while now (I’m on a low-fiber media diet) it wouldn’t surprise me if they were doing CrunchBalls or something as I’m seeing this sort of nonsense all over the place of late.

Not only is this classic fear-mongering misery-hawking tabloid bilge but it’s also completely inaccurately. Take me, for example. A few years ago I was living on the edge of my overdraft with some relatively substantial debts I never thought I’d pay off. This, aparently, was a boom time economically. Spin forward to today where we’re all aparently on the verge of financial ruin and I’ve got more disposable income than in living memory. Maybe this is my natural contrariness, my inherent desire to go against the flow like some kind of 50’s bequiffed rebel. Or maybe it’s that everyone’s situations are different.

But what really annoys me about this credit crunch stuff is that it’s being used as an excuse to moan about how we, the great British public, can’t get shit cheap anymore. Not only is a sudden reduction in credit the wrong excuse for why food is a bit more expensive or petrol prices have gone up but it’s immature and selfish. Tightening your belts is something you do when you’re starving and your trousers are in danger of falling down. It is not something you do when you have to buy the own brand cornflakes rather than the posh ones. Sure, it’s a metaphor but if I might extend it these people are like The Fatties from Judge Dredd, shoveling in food at one end and shitting it out the other, unable to move without a belly wheel to support them. In the story there’s a war leading to food shortages and rationing but The Fatties protest. They need their absurd levels of food. It’s their right. That’s what I think of when I hear people moaning about the price of petrol or bananas or whatever. “It’s my right to be an over-consumptive arse because the Daily Express tells me so.”

Chickens are coming home to roost, people. You’ve been getting by with cheap shit and unrealistic loans for far too long now. Time to get real and learn how to deal with not being able to get what you want.

Rant over.

One of my favourite photos of myself is this one taken by Stef at SWSXi in March:

I’m playing with a Thingamagoop, a small noise-making music machine I’d come across over the interwubs a year or so back. This is my first actual contact with one. I fell in love immediately but, it being the last day of SXSWi, I didn’t have enough cash left.

Thankfully they do mail order and today my Thingamagoop arrived. Like a true nerd I videoed the first play (sorry about the audio - need to stop relying on the internal mic):

Now I just need to find a 1/4″ to 1/8″ adapter so I can hook it up to the Mac and start making music!*

*Your definition of music may vary

A few weeks ago Laura Careless talked about making her own peanut butter. As someone who worships at the altar of the peanut in buttery form I had to try this. So today, having written off doing anything interesting due to a touch of the knackeredness, I gave it a go. The results, shown above, are very satisfactory. Here’s how you do it.

Throw a bunch of peanuts in a bowl or similar vessel.

Add some olive oil. Laura suggests 2tbsp per 200g of peanuts. Who am I to argue?

Blend the fucker til it looks like peanut butter should look like. You may find you need to cover the bowl for the first bit to stop the peanuts flying about the room.

And that’s it! If you buy your peanuts in 200g bags (as I did today given this was an experiment) then it’s not much cheaper than by the jar, but I suspect a catering bag of nuts would slash the cost a lot. And, as Laura says, you can experiment with variations on the peanut butter theme. Hmm…

The combination you’d never considered but which makes perfect, natural sense once you see it in action. Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you the inevitability that is Cat and Theremin. Oh yes.

via Jo’s Tumblr

Talking to Dubber today I learn that he and Stef have a plan. Putting together their absurdly hyperactive brains, and as an escape value for their normal work, they plan to release a new website every month and see if they hit the magic formula. Last month it was I So Wish. This month it’s 5alist, taking the obsessional nerditude celebrated in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity and making it all interactive and that. I was initially skeptical, not being someone who does definitive lists (my likings shift like the wind and I have a terrible memory), but succumbed. Like most things, indeed like life itself, if you don’t take it too seriously it’s a lot of fun. Here’s my 5alist. Ooh, and they do widgets!

Brain not ready to blog about the Supersonic Festival but I was Twittering over the weekend. Here’s what I wrote. More info about the bands can be found on the Supersonic site.

Friday

Dinner, and then the madness begins! I have no plan, just a bag full of cameras and a desire to see mad shit on stage!

Four bands in and four new faves. No idea who they are tho. Magic!

Med bar is mad Japanese central tonight!

At Supersonic, watching a man from Osaka set up his GameBoy for the next set.

Saturday

Cath & Phill Tyler. Beautiful.

Supersonic lets you see if local bands can carry a large stage. Courtesy Group carry it magnificently.

Efterklang at Supersonic were as sweet as ever. Now to get scared by Oxbow. Loving the contrasts!

Oxbow. Fucking Hell. I can die happy now. Dunno how rest of weekend will top that.

Fuck Buttons justify their name. Dirty and playful. Wooden Shjips are meaty.

Battles, genius as you’d expect. Harvey Milk are awesome, heavy and slow.

Sunday

Ordered a He Man’s Grill at the Big Bulls Head prior to Supersonic. Much needed sustinence for this knackered soul.

He Man Grill refuses to settle and the doom sludge metal of Orthodox isn’t helping. Blurgh.

Brian Duffy has a big brain. I really hope his talk was recorded. Fantastic stuff.

It has to be said. All facilities at Supersonic are great except the beer provision. Run out if draft. £3 a bottle. FAIL.

Special mention for Yukio Fujimoto who made beautiful music with three pocket calculators, so quiet the audience had to crowd on stage.

Fucked Up were indeed fantasticly. about 13 hours ago from txt

Supersonic is ending on a low rumble. My ears are throbbing and I think I might be dead. Fantastic weekend!

I took 1167 TTV photos over Supersonic. That’s a lot. And now I have to process them. Erk.

When Rich pointed me in the direction of Bellowhead I thought, hmm, looks like they might be a bit like The Destroyers, Birmingham’s finest 15 piece folk dance [insert your own word] band, the reasoning being there’s a lot of them and they appear to be kinda folky. So I went and grabbed some of the music and, yes, they’re a bit like The Destroyers with one extra reason - they don’t really sound like anything else. Which is, of course, a fantastic thing.

Here’s a video trailering their DVD:

What the video doesn’t clear is the range of styles on show on their album, Burlesque, which runs from big band to hardcore twee to ska-punk to mordant discordant 3am ramblings to countless other things all wrapped in an infectious explosion of mighty fine dance-folk. Or something. Fucking amazing and highly recommended.

I wonder if it’s too late to get them on the Moseley Folk Festival lineup?

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