élan

new blog

2019-03-19T18:00:00.000+00:00

I've started blogging again. Since it's been a while, I've started a new blog. I'll keep this one up, but posts will be on the new one from now on.

now where

2016-09-12T11:05:00.000+01:00

our parents, often and mistakes, grace denton

2015-01-01T14:45:00.000+00:00

Weirdly, just after I wrote on here that I wouldn't be making much work for the foreseeable future, I found out that something I wrote about eighteen months ago had just been published in the anthology about parents by Often and Mistakes. The anthology was compiled by Grace Denton and so much work and care has gone into it. You can purchase this digital anthology at a price of your choosing and the proceeds will all be donated to Simon on the Streets, a West Yorkshire homeless charity. So anyway, Grace does so many ace things I thought it would be good to list a few of them below. This is by no means everything, but some of the things I know about. Grace has been involved in, and initiated so many wonderful projects and she is also an incredible artist. The things she does are always made with great care and sensitivity. But as well as this, they are always worthwhile and positive.

Grace (left) & Rose (right) I don't know who took the photo, please tell me and I'll credit you

Often and Mistakes is Rose Robbins and Grace Denton, based in Bristol. They showcase new work by writers and artists through print publications and videos. We also run comic-drawing and animation workshops.

Judy Works, again if you made this great logo, let me know and I'll credit you!

Judy Works is a girl gang, support network and commissioner set up by Grace, Camille Rearden and Rosa Martyn to support and represent the creative endeavours of people who are non-male identified. The rest of the world is set up to support men. Judy Works is redressing the balance.

Anna (left) & Grace 9right) photo by Tom Copps

The Middle Ones are a band who write and play wonderful songs. They formed in Norwhich and have done so many great and exciting things like touring all over and making records and playing music for plays and doing a year-long residency at Cafe Kino in Bristol. I swapped Anna a Middle Ones 10" for the Tiger + Panda 10" when we went to Norwich. It has my favourite song on it, 'young explorer'. For a while, The Middle Ones were the only band I made an effort to see.

Expensive photo by Tom Copps

Grace sings and plays in EXPENSIVE with Matthew Cheney and Pete Shadbolt, an electronic pop band of 'non-performers'. The songs are dreamy and danceable and remind me of the music of Arctic Circle, which is not surprising because they are/were another project of Matthew Cheney, all round good-guy.

As I said, there's loads more and I haven't really written very well but I just think Grace is a great artist and a positive force in the world.

indefinite hiatus

2014-12-22T19:10:00.001+00:00

I'm not sure if anybody reads this blog. I'm glad I kept up with it for the last five years and it's worth updating now to say that I won't be making so much stuff for the foreseeable future. I've got the chance to do something worthwhile and useful and it's going to take up most of my time. There are still a couple of things I want to slowly finish and I'll still do music I hope. Also I'd like to carry on writing about other people from time to time. Anyway I guess that's it. Back someday.

press release: birds like waves

2014-10-19T17:53:00.000+01:00

Darling, do you promise to love me in the punk times? Love me in the wussy times? The fat wallet times? Baby-mine , you held the chromatic tuner to your lips and expressed a perfect G. Meanwhile, my tape machine sings a rattling A#.

I bus home happy this evening. The city's feelings are a din. Like that one time on Buffy (Season 3, Episode 18, production code: 3ABB18).

Mucus adheres. The mucus of my music adheres to your waxy canals. Thank you for listening.

Things have changed a lot and this is a heavy thing to consider. My love for you is still eternal and tender.

CDs, tapes and downloads to follow.

Today, something just clicked for me and there was no fear.

Birds Like Waves by Sea Glass

birds like waves

2014-10-06T11:49:00.000+01:00

Birds Like Waves by Sea Glass

There is a new thing up on the Polite Records page today. It's one song from an album length collection of recordings I've made for a new projects called Sea Glass. I made these recordings in the summer as something to do. Part of the point of starting a new thing with just me was so that I'd have something to work on when my other bands are not in the same place as me (The Nervy Betters are all over the South of England and Olly is about to move back to Bristol). I'm making a small number of CDs and Cassettes and I'm guessing they'll be later this month so I will write an update when that happens.

special bag

2014-09-01T18:58:00.000+01:00

I made this special bag to hold emergency items so I will always have them for tours and other trips. I made it out of an old pair of Franky's jeans. The zip is from her old coat and the toggle is from my old duffel coat and it has a padded lining too. Contents:

TCP
cotton wool
sewing kit
safety matches
multi-tool
paracetamol
plasters

All the items are inside plastic zip-lock bags for waterproofing. I'm really pleased I made this. I know it's kind of weird but it makes me feel confident.

polite podcast no.8

2014-08-31T09:41:00.002+01:00

Polite Podcasts by polite records

This is the last episode of the second series of the polite podcast. It is a tour diary of the Frozy/Nervy Betters July tour 2014.

Weds 9th July - The Nest, Bath
Thurs 10th July - Gwdihŵ Café Bar, Cardiff
Fri 11th July - House Show, London
Sat 12th July - The Vagina Stereolodge, Birmingham
Sun 13th July - Gulivers, Manchester
Mon14th July - 13th Note, Glasgow
Tues 15th July - Mystery Day
Weds 16th July - Traveling Man Bookshop, Newcastle

There will probably be one more series of podcasts in the new year.

credits

from Polite Podcasts, track released 31 August 2014
live recordings of Frozy and The Nervy Betters by Nicol Parkinson
field recordings by Henry Ireland
photo by Steve Brett

our blood is an ocean

2014-08-20T19:02:00.000+01:00

I get to work on this cool project with my pal Jack. I'm making an animated backdrop and he is being weird and awkward on stage. I think it's going to be really great!

recent things with me in them

2014-07-31T12:23:00.003+01:00

What They Did Next kind of thing

by Graphic Communications dept. at Uni. Plymouth

DIY, a zine compiled by Ellis Jones

for Connected Communities Festival '14

Our writing was translated into Welsh!

polite podcast no.7

2014-07-17T07:49:00.000+01:00

Polite Podcasts by polite records

This is the third in this series or season of the Polite Podcast. It's being published at 8AM on the 16th of July. There is one more podcast in this series, which will be published at some time in August.

credits

from Polite Podcasts, track released 16 July 2014
Thick Like Snow - Oh Peas! (ohpeas.bandcamp.com)
One - Attacked by Wolves (attackedbywolves.bandcamp.com)
Folds - Nick Gunzburg (www.nickgunzburg.com)
Big Sound - Glowy (glowingcateyes.bandcamp.com/releases)

Interview: A-J

theo brown and the folklore of dartmoor

2014-06-27T23:24:00.000+01:00

I'm putting on this Folklore Tapes event in London for my friend Ian Humberstone. It is pretty much like a real event that someone from society might go to. Details are as follows:

Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor explores the hidden tales of seven Dartmoor villages through experiments in sound and vision. It also celebrates the life of the late folklorist and artist Theo Brown, whose publications, papers and woodcuts have lain dormant in the archives at Exeter University since her death in 1993. Using Brown’s unpublished research, Ian Humberstone and David Chatton Barker have crafted an audio-visual retelling of Dartmoor folklore grounded in the moor’s topography, history and folk-culture.

The project was realised as a box-set of seven-inch records, artwork, essays and manipulated 8mm films (shot on-location on Dartmoor) in spring 2014, and the performance will translate these elements into a live setting. The show will include information on Theo Brown, readings from the tales and a screening of the film accompanied by a live soundtrack. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions and share stories after the event.

Expect an evening of spectral pigs, skeletal horses, salted cadavers, hungry rivers and malevolent sprites.

“But if you decide in middle-life to leave the city and go to live alone at the heart of the moor — because you love it and cannot resist its spell — you soon find that in all those years you have learned little about the essential moor. What has been happening is that she has learned the essentials about you, and has fixed her grappling-irons upon you!”

- Anonymous cutting found in Theo Brown Archive papers.

https://soundcloud.com/folklore-tapes

Weds 30th July | St Mary’s Old Church | Stoke Newington Church Street | 7.30pm

£8 on door | £6 adv. (tickets: http://politerecords.bandcamp.com/merch/theo-brown-and-the-folklore-of-dartmoor-st-marys-old-church-weds-30th-july)

we are putting on our own show in glasgow

2014-06-23T15:26:00.002+01:00

polite podcast no.6

2014-06-21T04:52:00.002+01:00

Polite Podcasts by polite records

This is the second episode of a second series ('series') of polite podcasts. Things are as they were. There will be four shows, this time in the summer months and I will be publishing them in the mornings, not the evenings.

This episode was published on 21st June at 4.43AM, which is sunrise on the year's longest day. the next episode will be ay 8AM on the 16th of July. No special occasion this time, but it will be the last day that we are on tour.

credits

from Polite Podcasts, released 30 September 2013
We're Doing it - Ace Bushy Striptease acebushystriptease.com
Mao's Dynasty www.handidiom.co.uk/mao'sdynasty.html
Dirty White Van - King of Cats kingofcats.tumblr.com
The Girls of Summer - Hugh John Noble hughjohnnoble.bandcamp.com

Interviews - Gef Lucena (Saydisc Records: www.saydisc.com ); Nicol Parkinson

music videos

2014-06-11T17:00:00.000+01:00

Video by Grace Denton

video by David Hopkinson

fan art

2014-06-06T17:27:00.000+01:00

I got an envelope of nice stuff in the post today from Stef Purenins and Sarah Graley. Among the many great creative things that they do separately and together, Stef and Sarah are also a band called Sonic the Comic. I totally love their songs. they are making a new album right now and I only just started listening to their last one, Pixel!

Pixel by Sonic The Comic

And if that wasn't enough, they made this cover song of Gravestone by The Nervy Betters!

moving picture show

2014-05-15T18:16:00.000+01:00

I'm doing an animated backdrop for a one man show by a writer called Jack Sanderson-Thwaite. It's a lot of fun to get really into drawing and animating for long periods of time. Anyway, we've done enough work for people to know that it is happening now. I'm pleased to be part of it.

the nervy betters lp arrives

2014-05-14T18:26:00.000+01:00

The Nervy Betters by The Nervy Betters

summer pod

2014-05-04T14:26:00.001+01:00

Oh hi.

There will be a new set of polite podcasts coming out in the summer months. The first of these will be published at 7AM tomorrow morning.

Bless you all...

i work all day with talented women

2014-04-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

I'm not one of your fancy types. I go to work to pay my rent and so on. Because of the casual nature of my job, a lot of the people who I work with are creative people like me. Moreover, the majority of them are women. I've been gradually getting to know everyone and their work and I have been consistently blown away by their talent.

I think that most of them would define what they do as 'fine art', which is not a world that I have much formal knowledge of, but I am (sadly) not surprised to learn that it is still a fairly sexist and retrograde industry.

My personal experience of who is making the best culture right now is not what I see in the majority of galleries and is certainly not what is making the big money. No doubt things are better than they were. But there is still a way to go.

so here is a list of some of the talented young women who I have the privilege of working with. I hope they don't mind my posting these images. I found them legitimately on the internet. I hope it doesn't come across as patronising either. I can honestly say that all of the people listed have made at least one piece of work that has stopped me in my tracks.

Critical Studies Presentation by hilde krohn huse

Eyes of Sand by hanne lillee

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, (Man Cave) by athena papadopoulos

from Games by karis clapperton

cecily tattersall

holly parmley

tiger & panda & goat in stoke newington

2014-04-13T17:24:00.000+01:00

Totally ace flyer by Rosa Tyhurst

business card

2014-04-04T17:51:00.000+01:00

I was going for the "crazy polymath" angle. This is the first time I've used my Kelsey table-top press. I got the plate cut at Centurion Graphics (who I found out about from Steve Brett). I know it's kind of cheating to set it digitally and then cut it to a plate but it would have cost a lot more in time and money to buy the type. I'm pretty happy with this solution and it cost me about £20 to make 100 business cards (and the next 100 will only cost £3.50 now that I have the plate). Another great thing about cutting stuff onto plates like this is that next time I need a new card design, I can try something hand-rendered!

nervy betters pre-order

2014-03-27T22:30:00.000+00:00

The Nervy Betters by The Nervy Betters

Steve Brett is good people. He has my undying devotion. As well as being a great person, he is also a fantastic songwriter. Over the last year or so, we have been recording and polishing some pop songs, with help from our friends. What has come of this is an album of songs, which is now available to pre-order.

The album was lovingly recorded by Steve and mixed with great care by Nico Marcel until the sound was clear as a bell. I'm pretty proud to be a part of this album and I hope you enjoy it.

wine sign design

2014-03-12T13:03:00.000+00:00

I did some sign writing for the organic greengrocers next door...

we're planning a tour!

2014-03-07T22:45:00.000+00:00

photo by Steve Brett

Over the weekend on 18th - 22nd of April, we're planning to play in London, Brighton, Birmingham, Cambridge/Northampton with:

photo by Steve Brett

live in japan by two white cranes

photo by Rhiannon Parkinson

Sometimes It's A Struggle by Palomica

photo by Roxy Brennan

tour demo by The Nervy Betters