DEATH — A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Charlie

Another new year’s resolution of mine and Fröken Karlsson’s was to get up earlier on Saturdays and do more exhibitions. So, with this in mind, we eschewed an afternoon of utter horror in the January Sales and went to to the Wellcome Collection’s current exhibit. And with all the talk of dry months and gym memberships, what better than an exhibition centred around death?

The exhibition is curated from a huge private collection, hoarded over the years by former art dealer, Richard Harris. The eclectic miscellany brings together paintings, trinkets, historical artefacts, sculptures and modern art, each one either ruminating on the nature of death, or serving as a memento mori.

The tau tau sat at the centre of all this. A carved timber figure, dressed in simple garments, with a toupee covering it’s woody baldness, sat on a tiny oaken armchair, with eyes white as paper.

According to the blurb, each tau tau represented a deceased person and would sit guarding the burial site of their dead counterpart — protecting them from the living. Wikipedia has a great article.

For all the vicious deaths on display, this was the one thing that really stuck in my mind. Macabre and sinister, I could feel the calm gaze of the tau tau reaching into my soul.

Death — A Self Portrait runs at the Wellcome Collection until February 24th.

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OPENING THE FLOODGATES

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Charlie

As many do at this time of year, I’ve started making lists — lists of bold actions that if performed will hopefully make me fitter, healthier, more productive, that kind of thing — all in honour of rolling out of the twelves and into the thirteens.

Amongst other more interesting points, such as learning Swedish, regular swimming, calling Mum more often, and not eating a McDonalds for an entire year, I’ve entered the new calendar with the intention of writing more blog posts.

As you may have guessed by now, I could not think of a more fitting way to take up the pen in one’s hand and start this new phase of literary enthusiasm than by writing a blog about how I’m going to write more blogs.

At least if I set the bar this low, writing regularly should be a much less daunting.

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LOLCAT – TEH EXHIBISHUN

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Charlie

 

The next exhibition curated by Soapbox & Sons will be a group art exhibit ‘exploring the weird and wonderful world of LOLCATs. I am very excited to report that I have been selected, with another 34 artists, designers, illustrators, animators and writers, to create my own LOLCAT interpretation. Tying this all together is the aim of raising money for an as-yet unannounced cat charity.

Above is a sneak peak of the piece I am currently designing.

 

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EARTH – A JOURNEY

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Charlie

 

the bees made honey in the lion's skull

As part of my present for our third anniversary my better half treated me to tickets to go and see Earth at the Union Chapel in Highbury. The sense of wonder and awe that I felt within the venue was quite overwhelming. The band were perfectly suited to its grandiose natural reverb and its phenomenal architecture.

Although I was already a huge fan of instrumental post-rock, my love affair with the cult stoner/doom band started with a coincidence.

Rewind three years and I had been on one of my many trawls through the Fopp just off of Cambridge Circus. Being an avid buyer of actual CD albums, for their superior audio quality and their packaging and artwork, I will (contrary to popular advice) sometimes pick up a record because of my first impression of its cover. This is what happened with Earth’s The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull. The glossy, dark brown sleeve was simply foil-blocked with beautiful, gold calligraphy. Compared to the hundreds of other over-designed, maximalist record covers on display, this was a stylish slab of gothic minimalism that I felt needed to be a part of my collection.

Parallel to this, I had just been recommended Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by a friend. As the film adaptation was in the hands of John Hillcoat, whose direction I had previously admired in The Proposition, I decided to acquire the novel so I could finish it before the movie came out.

I had started reading the novel several nights before, but as sometimes happens with me, it didn’t catch on first attempt, so I sat down and began again. Only this time, I had left on the Earth album in the background, quietly droning away. With this track in mind and the ashen blue cover of the novel in hand, I was instantly transported to the landscape of the story. I’d never before been convinced that a book could be soundtracked by music, but I must have stumbled on a perfect pair. Though Nick Cave and Warren Ellis did a brilliant job with the film score, I will always regard Dylan Carlson’s work as the definitive soundtrack.

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ANTI-MALARIALS GO BACK UNDERGROUND

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Charlie

mosquito

Travelling to Uganda is not without its dangers. Malaria is one of the biggest killers on Earth, and to even consider visiting a Malaria Endemic area without the requisite anti-malarials is tantamount to insanity. So, over the last few weeks I’ve been researching all the various drugs on the market that can cope with the more virulent strains on offer in Africa. The side effects of taking these can be quite exotic, and I’ve heard many a traveller’s tale of friends-of-friends succumbing to hallucinatory reactions. In some cases people have even allegedly considered suicide. Unfortunately, this newly-announced Malaria vaccine is still in the trial stages, so I resigned myself to pills.

When I finally pulled my finger out and visited the nurse at my local clinic to obtain a prescription, I was quite astounded to find that I was no longer allowed to be prescribed Malarone, one of the more expensive drugs on the market, which I had been offered on my first visit. It’s also the drug with the least list-able side effects, something I want to avoid on the short trip I’m taking. From what I could gather from the NHS penned letter the nurse was reading me, it was essentially down to cost, that the Government has decided that it’s no longer going to subsidise this, more effective, form of Malaria prevention. And that it has, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided that it’s spending too much on Malaria treatment to the tune of several million pounds per year.

Politics aside, I still needed my drugs. So I visited Boots on the off-chance that somebody might be able to point me in the direction of a Malarone prescription. As it happened, they did – their very own online prescription service. It was expensive, I spent over 70 pounds on 21 pills. However, for peace of mind during my trip and, hopefully, the lack of any debilitating side effects, I handed over my wedge. Fingers crossed.

I can confirm that I am in no way affiliated with Boots.

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I DO NOTHING BUT THINK OF YOU

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Charlie

Ryan Gosling as Driver

Recently I managed to convince my better half that going to see Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive was indeed a good idea. And even after factoring in an awful evening’s travel courtesy of TfL, we both came away from the film utterly spellbound. Much has been made of the film’s incredible cinematography, masterful direction and that career-defining star turn in Ryan Gosling. Much has also been made of Clint Martinez’s indelible score, which I picked up at the first opportunity. But the soundtrack isn’t purely constructed from Martinez’s eerily beautiful, synthetic ambience.

Interestingly, the lack of dialogue attributable to Gosling’s character (the man never introduces himself and his character is credited simply as Driver) gives the four or so lyrical soundtrack pieces in the film the chance to perform a unique and prominent role. Unlike many instances in modern cinema when songs are selected to support obvious narrative details (worryingly the one example that really sticks in my mind is the use of Joe Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him in There’s Something About Mary) the songs used in Drive provide the audience with our only glimpse into the motives of Gosling’s man-on-the-brink. The lyrics of these songs may appear naive and emotionally one-dimensional at first glance, but they help to reinforce, and even drive, the narrative of the film in a convincing and fitting way.

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HE PLAYS IT WITH A WHAT?!

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Charlie

Of all the non-album tracks Sigur Rós have recorded, Hafsol is by far my favourite. A real slow burner, the song straddles a musical line somewhere between Holst’s Mars and Mogwai’s Yes, I Am A Long Way From Home.

I find it frighteningly joyous when a piece of music such as this, that I’ve been listening to for some time, comes alive in an unexpected fashion. Hafsol has a hypnotic bass line that rhythmically underpins the entire song. Georg plays a single note drone for much of the intro, which then changes to a chord progression during the chorus. However, it’s not the intricacies of the part that I want to highlight here – I was really quite taken aback by the way Georg plays the bass. It’s not using a plectrum, or his fingers, but a drum stick. A DRUM STICK!

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DANCING WITH THE BIG LADY…

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Charlie

A Big LadyAs I’ve recently been putting together a portfolio website of sorts, combining my design work and music work, I began thinking about how I might produce a blog that could combine my interests in the two – if you like, a blog that backs up the content of my portfolio.

So, in your hands lies the very beginning of this journey. I hope to make it an enjoyable ride, a ride where people might read about things they might not normally read about – by this, I mean design that I admire, and the finer points of bass guitar playing. I shall also point interested patrons, such as yourself, in the direction of anything I deem fantastic that the interweb has to offer.

Now, the name. Surely this is the most intensely difficult facet of any blog to get right? I wanted something that had an element of graceful mystery about it, something that didn’t immediately scream: “THIS IS A DESIGN AND MUSIC BLOG.” So, I cast my mind back to a concert that my father took me to at the Royal Albert Hall. This particular gig concerned one Mark Knopfler, of Dire Straits, on what I believe would have been the ‘Kill To Get Crimson’ tour in 2008. Between songs, Mr. Knopfler would take to the microphone to tell stories of touring with the backing band. When the conversation turned to Glenn Worf, the double bass player, it was commented on the fact, that between shows, Glenn could be found backstage, “dancing with the big lady”.

For me, this phrase became synonymous with playing double bass. When I eventually acquired a three-quarter size double bass of my own, it was named, unsurprisingly, The Big Lady, and I too was destined to be found, forever more, dancing in her company.

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