Make your own Bayeaux Tapestry with the Historic Tale Construction Kit

Bollocks. Out of the blue I just found out the new Lungfish album is about to drop, and upon perusing the website for the mighty fine Dischord label I found out that not only was vocalist Daniel Higgs exhibiting his artwork in London, but that he was over here on May 12th:

http://www.96gillespie.com/next_up/index.htm
“96 Gillespie presents a rare exhibition of Baltimore’s noted visionary artist Daniel Higgs’ drawings and paintings. This is the first time his work has been shown in Europe.
Daniel’s work is bold, clean, metaphorical; marrying the physical with the metaphysical, the real with the figurative, the sacred and the profane.
Please join us for a the private view on May 12th. Daniel will be here to share his work and music, with a special performance on the jaws harp.
show runs May 13 – June 9 . 2005 gallery hours th – su . 2 – 6 pm”

Fuck’s sake! Why do I only hear about these things a fortnight after they’ve occurred? Anyone read Daniel’s book(s)?

I was in London over the weekend for the first time in ages intending to go see all the things I never have time to go see. I stayed in an amazing hotel which has reminded me that I need to make loads of money so that I can be one of those crazy old rich people who live in hotels and wander around in my pyjamas carrying a cat.Easter Sunday was my Art Day which started with a lengthy walk past the Tower of London and across Tower Bridge to the Design Museum. I don’t know if they knew I was coming but they appeared to have organised the whole thing with me in mind. A whole floor on the history of maps, road signs, diagrams, typography and safety leaflets was exciting enough but the next floor had exhibitions on Penguin Books and Factory Records, not to mention an N64 with Mario to play on. The only disappointment was the shop which was a bit small and not as full of quirky things of wonder as I had expected. I did get some badges covered in the insides of envelopes though. I’m glad someone else notices these things.

After this I went over to the Tate Modern having heard great things about it. I loved the building but I was a bit disappointed by the art on show. There were very few things I liked that I hadn’t seen before and they seemed only to have inferior works by artists I like. I also found the new Modern Art is Important seriousness of the people there kind of tiresome. I think I liked it better when everyone scoffed at modern art, rather than thinking it’s all very serious and clever. Some of it, at least, is supposed to be fun so stop pondering it.

What did I like? The Rothkos were awesome in real life, sucking everything into themselves. All the pop art was fun to look at close close up to see all the human flaws that never show up in glossy reproductions. There was also a great room of prints by one guy, all with similar motifs of flowing body lines and flower overprints.

I was also impressed with the Bruce Nauman exhibitions – a room of colour treated projections of his studio recorded overnight, like a room of CCTV screens with nothing much happening. You’d get interested in the detail of one projection until a clank or thump made you think you were missing something on another side of the room. I could probably have sat there for hours. He also had a sound thing in the Turbine Hall with a series of speakers randomly muttering and hollering at you as you walked the length. It sounds a bit crap in print but in location with all the concrete and the high roof it was great; a child’s voice fading into sinister rasping fading into robotic repitition and so on. There’s a virtual version online.

To be continued with my trip to the THEATRE as I have not yet caught up on sleep and this is getting a bit long.

Maybe that last post was too weighty for anyone to dare post anything afterwards. Which is fair enough, because that week in December should be amazing. So the only fair thing to do would be to point out the gorgeous posters that some beautiful man is producing for these shows, miniscule versions of which are available to peruse at the Damn You! website. I am especially gratified by the splendour of the Jackie O Motherfucker poster. Now if only there were larger versions available for viewing or download somewhere on the ‘net…

So who lives on the Soup Line.?

“Take a map of the British Isles. Draw a straight line diagonally across the map so that it cuts through Belfast and Nottingham”, says Bill Drummond

If you live on this line then he’ll come visit you and make you a pot of soup! Here is a map, here is an article. Come on diskanteers, invite him round.

Oh and check out PLC LTD – they’re market leaders

(wait for it to load, its a mouseover thing so it takes a while on certain pages)

(Apologies for the lack of updates – there’s been something up with the diskant FTP so no blogging or anything else)

Anyway, my dad was down visiting at the weekend so we had another Sunday afternoon jaunt to The Lighthouse to see some poncey art and design.

My main reason for suggesting this was an exhibition called Field Trip which I’ve been seeing advertised around the place. Basically five groups of people making journeys in Scotland and “where they went, what they saw and what they brought back”. I thought my dad would like this, he being fond of walking and Scottish history.

Turns out I loved this exhibition myself. The five journeys were all between different places and with different aims. So one group went on the ferry to Bute to see how things have changed since the days when this was a regular holiday jaunt for Glaswegians, another group went through Falkirk along the canal routes and another up the roads to Glencoe noting the signs and notices along the way.

Laid out as five long display units you could view maps of the journeys, the photographs, drawings and notes of the travelers and 3D architectural maquettes of the main locations with their symmetrical trees and step-graded hills. Along the bottom were laid out the items that the groups brought back, from tourist souvenirs to bits of bark. And then at the end were videos showing parts of the journey and geographical and historical information panels.

The main idea of the exhibition seemed to be to remind people about all the interesting stuff right on our doorstep and try and get us all getting out and about. It certainly worked for me as the Bute display reminded me of how much fun it had been to go on the train and ferry to Rothesay with Mogwai and that there was all this stuff that we could have seen there if we hadn’t spent it breaking our ears. I’m also amazed by the Falkirk Wheel and have vowed to go see it in real life at the next opportunity.

So if you’re in Glasgow in the next few weeks then get yourself to The Lighthouse (they also do wonderful shortbread and have the ponciest, greatest, most expensive shop ever). If not, have a think about your local places of interest that you’ve never actually been to or your childhood haunts that you haven’t seen for years. And send us a postcard if you visit them!

Also, apart from the usual trip to IKEA my dad’s other plan was to buy a new GC game, he having completed his racing game. While we chortled over Pokemon Channel and its rapidly decreasing price ticket in every shop we visited, our dad found himself a likely looking new racing game. Upon getting home he then discovered he had liked his old racing game so much he had bought himself another copy! Now, if only he’d bought Mario Kart. “Oh no! I thought this was a different crazy mushroom monkey dinosaur italian plumber racing game. D’oh!”

I’ve got a new standard in hand-made sleeves for albums that all other records will now need to live up to. Remember how the booklet from GY!BE‘s second album stank like some dead fish you’d found down the back of your sofa and then wiped your arse with? I always that would be the most pungent record I would ever own.

BUT THEN! Thankfully, the brand new Espers LP from our most recent interviewees Time-Lag Records, smells HEAVENLY. It’s a lovely chocolate colour mini-pak sleeve, and as soon as you pull it from its plastic sleeve you’re hit by the loveliest aroma imaginable from a mere piece of (thick, highly tactile) card. Seriously, it’s like taking a hit of pure goodness, or something. Nice music too.

Possibly the greatest piece of band merchandising ever, I bring you the Mogwai Music Box!

I just got mine in the post yesterday after buying it in a nice bit of OH MY GOD BEST THING EVER impulse buying on Friday. We used to play with music boxes like these in a shop called Luckpenny in Elgin when we were kids and those were exciting enough when playing stuff like The Entertainer and Greensleeves. Hearing one play a plinky-plinky Tracy by Mogwai is truly wondrous. Now I have dug out Young Team so I can listen to the orginal Tracy and get the handle turning timing correct.