It wasn't meant to be like this

A whole month without posting? How slack of me! Anyway, it's not just my posting levels that weren't meant to be like this.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought would could be my favourite single of this year. It's called Crying Blood, and it's by VV Brown, and it's bloody brilliant. It's retro pop, with a big nod to 60s girl groups, but couldn't have been made any time but now. And it's only two and a half minutes long. It makes you desparate for more. On the flip of the 7" is an Andy Weatherall remix, but it's not a patch on the original in my opinion, because how do you improve on something that's perfect in the first place?

You can have a listen to it, and watch the video, on her myspace http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm%3Ffuseaction%3Duser.viewprofile%26friendid%3D213056871&ei=0rUvSZWOO5zP-QaCz4DDCw&usg=AFQjCNFyUJRKEZmtVW4ODJKa68tLJ7b0OQ . Myspace also has tour dates, and I saw that she was playing down here last week, so I thought I'd go and see what else she had to offer. And I'm sorry to say I was let down. Crying Blood is an amazing track, but nothing else even came close. There were some other retro pop songs, but they didn't have the energy of Crying Blood. There was a Rolling Stones cover which didnt do much for me, and some other songs which left me disappointed. It's a great great shame, cos if she'd rattled through ten songs similar to Crying Blood in the space of about twenty minutes, she'd have had the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand.

Oh well. As someone I spoke to said - there's nothing wrong with a one hit wonder. But let's hope I'm proved wrong, eh?


In other photography type news, I went out a couple of weeks ago and took some photos like this:

It's Shipley Windmill, out in the middle of Sussex somewhere, taken as a long exposure, bathed in moonlight. Inspired by Flickr Member The Big Bambooly ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/bambooly/ ) who kindly drove and was very patient while I asked dozens of questions about how to get the best shots.

Like Like A Motorway

As the title of the blog suggests, this isn't going to all be about photography. Music is probably a bigger part of my life, and as the weather turns and the light's not so good, I doubt there will be so many photo opportunities between now and spring.

So then. Music. I could briefly mention what I'm loving at the moment. It's been a good few weeks for new releases. I could wax lyrical about the 808 State reissues - I've only bought Ex:El so far, which is probably the album that got me into dance music (but that's a whole other blog post I reckon). I could enthuse about Those Dancing Days, who were great live at Kings College last week, and whose album "In Our Space Hero Suits" not only has the best title of the year, but is also one of the best pop albums this year. I could rave about Rikkalicious, the new 12" by Hervé and Kissy Sell Out - a real dancefloor killer. But I won't because they've got nothing to do with the Title I used.

Six weeks ago, I went to go and see Saint Etienne at Queen Elizabeth Hall. It was a brilliant gig (though my opinion is probably biased being such a big fan). It had never occurred to me, though, how timeless Like a Motorway is. It sounded just as fresh as anything any of the Nu Rave kids are putting out these days. So I figured I'd try and play it amongst a whole load of new stuff when I next DJed, and I ran aground slightly. While live it sounds vital and NOW, on cd it's just a touch too slow (110bpm vs ~125bpm), and production has moved on a bit since 1994, or whenever Tiger Bay came out. So, I've taken it upon myself to spruce it up a bit. Speed it up, and beef up the bass. I haven't done much, just enough that I can play it out without it sounding too out of place. I worked on the version from Smash The System, which was a good move and a bad move. It was good because STS was remastered, so that's the best sounding version to work from. It's bad because it only uses the single version, rather than the extended version on Tiger Bay, which means I had less to work with. Anyway, you're probably bored reading all that, and want to listen to it (hopefully). Get on the download here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/scv4qd

second post

Is it meant to be autumn now? It didn't feel like autumn at the weekend. But then summer didn't feel like summer. The weather was perfect. Good enough for me to get shots as good as this:



I spent sunday afternoon wandering round some Brighton Photo Fringe Exhibitions ( http://www.photofringe.org/ ) (I'll learn how to do the HTML stuff soon, promise), with a friend who's also into their visual art. I don't know if it was the company, the inspiration from seeing the other photos, the light, or just sheer luck, but whatever it was, it worked.

The photo hasn't had that much post-processing either. It was shot directly into the sun (which you're not meant to. tut tut), which made it overexposed and gave the perfect white background. Then all I did was ramp up the contrast and bring down the brightness.

I've taken one of the set into http://www.thevaultimaging.co.uk/ to get printed up to hang on one of my walls somewhere. I've resolved to start getting a print made up every month, so that I've got a bit more to show for my work than just some ones and zeros on a hard drive.

Hello

Everyone's got a blog these days. Even my mum was asking about starting one the other day. What she'd post about, I've got no idea. So it's about time I had one. People who know me probably think that I spend far too much time writing words on the internet already. They'd probably be right. But I can't really get away with posting about photography on music sites, or posting about music on places like Flickr, which is why I'm here. Hopefully this will give me the impetus to keep on top of my photography, and also to search out plenty of new music. What's in it for you, I hear you ask? Well, you get the pick of my photos, and the cream of my music selections, which I reckon isn't a bad deal.

So kicking things off, I'm quite pleased with the sunrise photos I took this morning (full set here http://www.flickr.com/photos/rob_orchard/sets/72157607928846199/ )



and tonight I'm off to see Ed Meme and The Forms (http://www.myspace.com/edmemeandtheforms) at The Hope in town