Two things happened between 25th December 2009 and 1st January 2010.  Well, obviously more things than that, but germane to this post are two things in particular:

  • My old friend Ben Walker got a Flip portable recording device for Christmas.
  • A hung-over Nick & Ben decided that the most productive use of our time would be to make some sort of videocast, in which we talked nonsense.

Thus The Peoples Princess (sic) was born.

Below is episode #1, for your viewing pleasure.  Please have a bit of a watch, and tell your friends if you enjoy it.  Also, feel free to email us with any comments, abuse or opinions.  Anything with the words ‘You guyz SUCK!!!!!1111!!! R U ghey or somthin?!?>???!?!?!!!?!  !  LOL!!!’ will be given special preference.

thepeoplesprincess.tumblr.com

emailthepeoplesprincess@gmail.com

Ben Walker http://twitter.com/ihatemornings
Nick Gill http://twitter.com/nickfuckinggill
Daley Walton http://twitter.com/consumerrevolt

A slightly odd one here, but very nice indeed. A while ago, I was reading a book about the history of jazz, and came across a quotation from Clarke Terry, on the subject of race in music. He said ‘a note don’t care who plays it, whether you’re black, white, green, brown or opaque’. To a middle-class Caucasian who used to sit around trying to be a blues guitarist, this seemed like endorsement at last. In due course, Phil, Rosa and I came up with a design, and now it’s in a magazine I’ve never read. Funny how things turn out, huh?

You can buy all the featured prints, as well as many more from Hand & Eye, at Keep Calm’s website

Over the last six months or so, I’ve been getting more and more involved in bookbinding and, hopefully, developing my skills a little in case-binding and various forms of traditional Japanese binding.

In an ideal world, I’d love to be able to do a full apprenticeship as a bookbinder, but I suspect I don’t really have enough time along with all the other things I’m trying to do.  In the rest of this post, you can see a slideshow of several things I’ve made recently- if you’re interested in more details, make sure you select the “Show info” bit in the top right hand corner of the slideshow…

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A little while ago, I and my excellent group of friends The Monroe Transfer recorded a version of Silent Night to send out to our mailing list.  ’A while ago’ being 2 years, and then again 1 year ago, if you’re being picky.  But, given that we’ve played lots of gigs since then, you might not have heard it.  Be clickington below, and you can listen to and/or download it to your heart’s content.  I wandered around in the first snow and listened to it today.  If you get the chance, I recommend it.

(technically, I’m not sure this qualifies as a chiptune per se, as the sounds are made using VST emulators, rather than an NES itself.  I’m sure I’ve ended up using more voices than the NES could handle, too)

A little bit of history: ages ago, The Monroe Transfer were asked to play a gig, and we couldn’t make it.  At the time, I was living with the other guitarist in the band, Jim (who has, of course, now gone on to other things), and we thought it might be fun to do something relatively impromptu with a couple of guitars, some samples and loops instead.  So, I got to writing a few things, under the name of Eileen Benn Clinical Effectiveness Team (after a badge I found in a charity shop).

Of course, we were way too busy, and the gig never happened, and the music was lost down the back of the sofa.  The other day I came across the demos and (possibly because I’ve been revisiting my childhood through NES emulators) I thought it’d be fun to arrange some things for the NES, and to write some new things.  This is the first of those, and is one of the Eileen Benn ones from many years ago.

Also, if you have a poke around on the page you’re taken to, you’ll see that there’s some other music I’ve uploaded- at some point in the future, I’ll make some sort of announcement about what’s up there…

My old friend Ben Walker mentioned a while ago that he was planning a trip to New York with a couple of like-minded persons to do a bit of gigging around offices, front rooms and wherever they could; as per usual, there’s a punning title: Man (hat on).

So, in my usual way, I offered whatever small services I could: I knocked up a couple of woodletter logos in a lunch break at work, and volunteered the excellent Daley Walton’s help in making some t-shirts to help fund the trip.

And, of course, Ben filmed the entire thing and popped it on the internet within about 4 hours.  Clever Ben.

Footnote-sort-of-stuff

The Man (Hat On) Tumblr
Buy Daley’s prints
Follow Ben on Twitter: @ihatemornings
Follow Daley on Twitter: @consumerrevolt

Click our lovely poster to buy tickets...

Click our lovely poster to buy tickets...

So, donning my theatre composer hat (and do click here if you’d like to see a CV of other things I’ve done), I feel I should tell you about Robin French’s new play Gilbert is dead, which is opening at Hoxton Hall in a week-or-so’s time.  Like all the best plays, it’s set in a taxidermy museum in Victorian England, and deals with a man’s struggle with evolutionary theory, and other thrilling adventures.

It should be a hell of a show- the production’s taken over Hoxton Hall, which already looks like a classic music hall, and filled it with stuffed animals (and, seriously, you haven’t lived until you’ve carried a stuffed rhino head up three flights of stairs).  The show has puppetry, dashing heroes, Victorian sound effects, a splendid cast and, of course, music from yours truly, Neil, Susie, Rhiannon and Nicole from The Monroe Transfer.

There’s more general information at the play’s own site: www.gilbertisdead.com and, if you’re hugely lucky, I might even upload some of the music in the near future.

Well, the original Tutti Frutti poster has now completely sold out; however, it seems that it’s going to be featured in the UK edition of Vogue magazine next month, so it seemed a good time to print a new version of it…

Our newly-reprinted poster

Our newly-reprinted poster

As I say, the first edition (signed and numbered) has now sold out; the second edition has a slightly different layout, different colours and is not signed.  Luckily, this means we can sell it a little cheaper.  Just click the image to head over to our eBay store and snap one up…

Another birthday, another excuse to do some bookbinding.  Susie, the beautiful double-bassist from The Monroe Transfer has recently had a birthday and I, in my usual way, have made something a little too late: a notebook (slightly) adapted from classic four-hole binding.  This has turned out pretty well, I’d say; I’m still getting used to a lot of the techniques and materials, so I’m sure this isn’t going to be my finest work (sorry, Susie).  See what you think.


Washi!

Washi!

Japanese paper, washi, is strange stuff.  It’s made in a slightly different way to western paper, with longer fibres, which means that it’s often very think, and very strong.  It also has one smooth side and one rough side; you’re supposed to write/print on the smooth side.  I don’t speak, or read, a single word of Japanese, but I’m led to believe that this is genuine washi, albeit machine-made rather than the more traditional handmade stuff (where you’re talking at least £5 for an A3 sheet).

I’ve not taken photos of the first few steps, incidentally, including my boiling up my own paste to stick various parts of the notebook together, and folding all the sheets (which, for the record, are ‘pouches’: they’re folded into zigzags and bound along the ends of the sheets, meaning that the fore-edge of the sheets are folded edges, and that you’ll only write on one side of a piece of paper.  This seems to hav e come about as a result of Japanese brushwork bleeding through the other side of a single sheet of paper).

Here are the folded sheets, and the twisted washi string for the inner binding (or 'monk's binding', as I think it's also called)

Here are the folded sheets, and the twisted washi string for the inner binding (or 'monk's binding', as I think it's also called)

Japanese binding has two steps; well, obviously more than that, but the actual ‘tying pages together’ element has two steps.  First up, there’s the inner binding (or monk’s binding) which is made by tying two twisted washi strings through two pairs of holes near the spine edge…

Here the washi strings are looped through the holes

Here the washi strings are looped through the holes (note the hammer)...

And here the monk's binding is completed, with the knots having been pounded flat with my little hammer

And here the monk's binding is completed, with the knots having been pounded flat with my little hammer.

And here's the inner binding from a bit of a distance.

And here's the inner binding from a bit of a distance.

I know it’s hard to believe, but that monk’s binding is very strong; it’s certainly strong enough to hold everything together while you punch the holes in the rest of the paper block.  It’d probably hold everything together through general use, I’d say.

This is the cover fabric, backed with washi.

This is the cover fabric, backed with washi.

I’ve left out a few steps here: the fabric was dampened and stretched out to smooth wrinkles, a sheet of washi was covered with paste and stuck to the back of the fabric, and then pasted to that sheet of glass to dry.  In the photo above, it’s dry and ready to be turned into a cover.

The cover pasted onto the book, and the edges folded in.

The cover pasted onto the book, and the edges folded in.

So, imagine I’ve cut the fabric into 2 sections (with my pleasingly sharp scalpel); with the washi backing, the fabric becomes quite intriguing to work with- it can be creased and folded very crisply, and is obviously a little stiffer. The cover is pasted on in the middle, the edges are then turned in and the fore-edge is pasted to the front page.

And the sewing is finished.

And the sewing is finished.

I seem to have opted for a five-hole binding, rather than the more traditional four-hole.  I have no idea why I did this; some sort of mental aberration, I assume.


So, there we go.  At some point, I’m going to make a whole range of Japanese-bound notebooks, which may well find their way out into the world.  Stay tuned…

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Now, it may just be that I’m noticing it more, but it seems that every bastard under the sun is claiming that their new project is all about collaborating.

Photo credit: Kelsey Lynn & Pacific Lutheran University

Photo credit: Kelsey Lynn & Pacific Lutheran University

Musicians collaborating with fashion designers.  Playwrights collaborating with sound designers.  Dancers collaborating with musicians.  And now, most horrible of all, Beck’s beer collaborating with such illustrious artists as Hard-Fi and Ladyhawke, by having their artwork on their bottles.  Collaboration.

Even ignoring the laughable idea of Hard-Fi knowing their way around Photoshop (and, of course, ignoring the horrible world of corporate sponsorship), we’re not talking about collaboration in any meaningful sense of the the word.  We’re talking about disparate groups of people working on the same project.  To call something like that collaboration is pretentious, in the purest sense of the world: it claims to have a level of artistic endeavour that it does not, in fact, possess.  It means that both sides can present themselves as having another facet, that Oh, didn’t you know that I dabble in textile design? while not requiring either party to do anything beyond the remit of their craft.

If your band is collaborating with a fashion designer, your band should be in there designing the funny trousers you want to wear, they should be in there, sewing the bastard things.  If what has actually happened is that someone who makes clothes is making some clothes for your band, then that’s not collaboration.  That’s just someone doing their job.

A converse example: earlier this year, my group The Monroe Transfer released a 20 minute piece of music, with an accompanying animated film, called I dreamt I was a hammer & everything was glass. The lovely Gemma Burditt listened to the piece of music a lot, and she made an amazing piece of work; I can happily say that because I had nothing to do with it.  We’re not claiming it’s a collaborative effort- that would be to diminsh all the work that Gemma put into it, and cast some undeserved credit on us.

On a slight tangent, I can’t help but think this is somehow linked to something that seems to be increasingly prevalent, namely the social approval of art made by committee; whether it’s everyone in a theatrical literary department wanting to have their input on a new script, production companies rewriting screenplays or the mass-audience (and, of course, panel) approval in shows like The X-Factor and How do you solve a problem like Maria? there’s a feeling that lot of people working on something is better than one.  An anti-auteur feeling, if you will.

I love it when people genuinely collaborate on their work (devised theatre for example), but these actual collaborations are so rare that the process itself makes it intriguing.  Really good artists, in any medium, are rare.  Two or more of them who can actually work together in disparate media are like hen’s teeth.  Bandying words like collaboration around, when what you have is people from several different disciplines working on the same project, just demeans the enormous amount of work that goes into any genuinely collaborative effort.

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