late night shopping

Thrill and highlight of the week for me at the moment is late night shopping. If my week was to be graphed, wednesday night from 6 until 10pm would be a thin but glorious peak whilst the rest of my time troughed into oblivion. Roll in at 6pm and meet a combination of any of phil, ben, will, liam, jake outside HMV and proceed to walk around the town without aim or constraint for four hours.

This week for example, I rock up to find philip, benjamin and william waiting for me and make my entrance, boxer-style, only to turn around and see the specral form of liam tomlin gliding towards us like the groke out of the moomins. After making conversation with a pair of girls, one of whom is a friend of phil's, one carrying a cello and the other a flute, we head into HMV and spend hard earned money on cheap and bad CDs. Liam complains loudly about the sorry state of affairs that is our lives and reminds me that I will be visiting Falmouth on sunday for luke's 18th and that, being the grinchy grouchy asshole that he is, he will not be drinking. Back outside of HMV the air smells of that smell that you only get on late night shopping, a mixture of onions and donuts and old fat and too many people. We head through the crowds to subway and spend further money on what can only be described as a loose sandwich. I leave disappointed. Classy as ever, we stand around a bin in a group as it begins to rain, until a police officer asks us, and I quote, why we are "standing in a group". We reply because it is raining and he moves off, apparently appeased. We stand in another alleyway under shelter as the rain gets heavier and heavier before finally pouring down like a miserable waterfall. Having bought drinks to sate the unique salty thirst only a subway can give, and the rain abated, you we wheel and deal through the crowds once more, aimless as ever. We run into the cello-and-flute clad duo outside GAME working through an energetic version of "come all ye faithful" for small change. They ask us to sing along but we just stand and hum and clap. After a quick visit to more shops, still yet to purchase any christmas presents for our respective families, Liam decides he will head home, biking out in the rain. The four of us that remain stand and watch a ramshackle jazzband set up whilst a man shakes a bucket of coins at us expecting a donation. We continue to stand and he shakes his head in disappointment. After a performance of rock around the christmas tree and joy to the world, we leave for the highlight of the evening, hot fresh donuts. We are joined once again by flute and cello who are also chasing the sugary donut dream before heading off for the night. We go for one more victory lap of the town as the shops begin to shut and finally head to the bus stop. Will makes his own way home, I leave phil and ben at the stop, run into a bailey, make stilted conversation with my peers and head home.

Sainsburys: Spagetti Rings and 8 Pork Sausages in Tomato Sauce

No. No no no never again. On opening the first thing that sets alarm bells ringing is the thin transparent liquid floating on the surface of the beans. I close my eyes, pour the contents of the can into a jug and stir vigorously.

Sausages are present, and, as promised, there's eight of them. Eight textureless tasteless sausages. Mmmmmmmm. The fact that they know precisely how many sausages there's going to be in each can is disconcerting to me, it somehow makes the whole meal seem even more artifical than it already is. With Heinz Saucy Bangers, for instance, the number of sausages seems analogue. It's not stated on the can so there could be one or there could be five. It's all down to the luck of the draw. Here, though, we know from the outset that there's eight sausages to work through, eight horsemen of the apocolypse waiting inside the can. It's like being told the exact time and date that you're going to die. Maybe i'm exaggerating but either way you know you're in for a shock.

And a shock is exactly what you get, a shock to the system. The first thought as this hits your tastebuds is "oh my god, salt". I honestly think that there's more salt than spaghetti in here. I can only imagine that the people who made this must have tasted it, realised it was flavorless, googled "how make flavor", found that adding salt made things taste good, and poured in a good kilo of the stuff. The spaghetti's only redeeming feature is its texture, though this is offset somewhat by the watery sauce it's presented in. Sausages, as mentioned above, are forgettable.

The packaging just about sums up the contents. It looks like something thats been blasted from the bad end of the seventies to the present day. I mean, they didn't even try to make this look good, the cover shot looks like a pile of saturday morning puke with someones severed finger fermenting in it. "Serving Suggestion", proclaims the package, boldly. I've taken the liberty of mocking up my own serving suggestion, as below.

Though this isn't the worst thing I've ever eaten I wouldn't recommend it to anyone sane. Sausages may be frequent but they ain't good. Desperate times only.

aesthetics 1/5 - weak. out of date
gastronomy 2/5 - salty salt. would you like some salt on your salt
sausage frequency 4/5 - see above

Heinz: Big Saucy Bangers

This is surely the ultimate in sausage and beans. Although heinz have taken a risk with straying from the traditional reconstituted pork sausage recipe the risk has certainly payed off big time. Due to this change in texture I'm not sure that this product can truly be included in the same category as other competitors - it may be in fact in a league all of its own.

On opening the can the first impression is that of a strange breed of fish floating in a briny red swamp, until one pours the contents into a jug. Only two or three sausages are featured but they are large and wholesome, as opposed to the often watery or textureless items found in conventional beans and sausages. The beans and their sauce are large and thick, and not too stong tasting - just the right balance between tomato and bean.

Heinz have clearly put a lot of effort into their bangers and beans, modelling the packaging after a mock newspaper article announcing the glory of these sausages. To summarise I would highly recommend heinz "Big saucy bangers" as in the upper echelon of beans and sausages. My only complaint is the small number of sausages provided, though their quality more than makes up for it.

Aesthetics 5/5 - good, colorful presentation
Gastronomy 5/5 - I almost genuinely enjoyed eating this crap
Sausage frequency 3/5 - room for improvement (and more sausages)

Out of a lack of any other will I've decided to just repurpose this blog into a beans and sausages review site. Over the next few posts i'll be documenting and analysing the different brands of beans and sausages available today, including pros and cons, as well as controversial alternatives such as spaghetti and sausages.

I have purchased a Zenza Bronica ecently, fulfilling one of my few dreams. Have only just been able to use the thing this weekend though, due to my ridiculous amount of overtime and college work.
Rocked to St. Ives today and came across a tame seagull perched on a wall, tame enough that it was permitting people to get literally face-to-beak with it. I walk up with the camera and hold my lightmeter next to the bird only to snap back and elicit a girlish shriek as the inquisitive bird snatches the meter out of my outstretched arm. I take it back, heart racing (as it's not even my meter, I've borrowed it off the college) and the gull looks at me as if to say "what did you expect". I take a few shots, taking care to keep a firm grip on the meter, and walk away. Will post here when I've dev'd and scanned.
Going to sleep before I enter a coma.

I can only apologise for my lack and irregularity in posting as of late but I simply do not anymore have the drama required to sustain my flowery texts.
Tonight, however, I was snapped from a Wolfgang Voigt-induced trance to see my parents at the door speaking to a stranger who had apparently been standing there for some time. I head downstairs and am filled in via the conversation of my parents and our neighbor, also at the door, whilst the woman rambles on and on about needing to find No. 2. We eventually manage to persuade her to leave and she ambles into the road only to continue to stand, steadfast as a rock, for a further 20 minutes.

Eventually I assume the neighbor called the police, because they rocked up in a squad car and had a long, hard talk with the woman, still standing immovable in the same position. I look out the window again later and both woman and police had vanished, so I guess they either persuaded her to leave or carted her off to a cell.

At the moment I am doing very little work in any lecture and need to pick up my game before I come to the end of my courses still with empty books

At the moment i'm spending my days working and the time off shooting and scanning, having borrowed the bronica for three consecutive weeks. Have had my memory stick stolen and subsequently purchased a 320gb hard drive to make up for it.
This week I got hold of illmatic by nas and fell in love. Have had it on near-repeat alongside slint's spiderland since wednesday. Am also currently rocking nat king cole which is just blissful.
Recently I've been running the whole produce department at sainsburys by myself, slowly elevated to the position of manager whilst all my colleagues take holidays. 8-5 on sundays brings a new definition to hard graft, I find.

I've recieved Wolfgang Voigt's 4CD box set Nah und Fern, a collection of his work under the Gas moniker, and have been working my way through it this week. Thursday night was Gas, friday night was Zauberberg, last night was Konigsforst and tonight is Pop. I've fallen asleep before the start of the third track every night so far and I don't expect that to change today. The music is brilliant, washing waves of sound punctuated by that relentless kick, more like a heartbeat than anything else. think i'm in love

have returned to college as well progressing with the same old shit, have hired out the bronica over this weekend and shot three films two of which i'll dev tomorrow and the other was a transparency which I had to send away. Today I have worked from 8am until 5pm on fresh foods which was an experience and a half, and very chilly as I haven't been given a jacket. If I have to ever shift so much as a single yoghurt in the rest of my lifetime it will be one more too many.

11:11 : a brief review

This album is god.
As good as I had hoped, if not better. The duo are still on top of their game and have apparently picked up a few new tricks in the intervening years since the previous album. 11:11 is dedicted to Rodrigo and Gabriela's most loved musicians and those which they find most inspirational; everyone from carlos santana to dimebag darrell, and as such each track has something of a twist from each of these artists interweaved within it. "Gimmick", I hear you scream, red faced, eyes popping. "Gimmick". And indeed this is what I thought at first, when I read the press release, but on listening it's become clear that these two really know how to make an album that just works. Buster Voodoo has its wah-wah pedal, Logos has some kind of violin-sounding thing, Atman has a goddamn electric solo.
Production remains as tight as on the previous effort, this time courtesy of rod y gab themselves instead of John Leckie. The stage is somewhat wider and the bass hits as the pair hammer away on their guitars perhaps more pronounced, though that may just be my speakers.
Good as it is, though, I'm not yet ready to say that it can topple their self-titled third work off its perch. This may change over time though and I'm sure i'll be able to report back after multiple listens.

On a side note I can recommend ordering from play.com, as I recieved a "limited edition" copy with DVD extras I wasn't expecting, including live tracks and a studio tour.

11:11

I have placed a hasty preorder for not one but two copies of rodrigo y gabriela's new album, 11:11. one copy is for me, and one copy is for a friend of our family, simon stanton, the man I have to thank for introducing me to the band.
Two songs have been pre-released as a taster, and the second - "Buster Voodoo" - is, simply put, awesome. It starts off with the usual blazing rod-y-gab fare, but then something I could never have expected: one of them pulls out a wah-wah pedal and lets rip hendrix-style at breakneck speed. I'll no doubt post a review of this album once I recieve it, but for now I can honestly say that this is the most excited I have been about a release all year.

Lizard Point

Doomsday

Recieved my results last Thursday. Woke up "early" (read: 9am) and boarded an 18 for the first time in a couple of months. Arrive, literally shaking with trepadation like a tiny child, and roll into Fal building with other greasy students, head to the table with my corresponding exam number on it and claim my dreaded brown envelope. Open it up to see I have achieved exactly what I wanted / expected: an A in English and photography and a B in graphics and chemistry. Am especially pleased with photography grade of 193/200 overall, including 80/80 on my exam. I am a photography nerd.
Yesterday I jailbroke my iPod and have since pimped it out to my heart's content. Will post a screenshot tomorrow for those who care about such things. I'm still waiting on the update to the frankly abysmal facebook app, roaring and gnashing my teeth every time I open the app store and am faced with the stony gaze of the "all apps are currently up to date" screen.
Soon approaching my 20kth play on last.fm which will be the biggest thrill I'll get all holiday

Clark - Body Riddle

Just a quick note to remind everyone how sublime this album is. I mean seriously this is amazing stuff, I just listened to the whole thing through for the first time in a while and fell in love all over again

Music of the Moment

Luke Vibert - Marvellous Music Machine

Bristol

Recently visited the banksy exhibition that is currently on at Bristol museum, drove for three hours, queued for three hours, drove viewed for two hours, drove for three hours. All in all pretty awesome, thought the dilution of banksy against actual museum exhibits was a liiiiiiittle too weak.
Have managed to get the first of my recordings onto the PC and will post them here as soon as I can find a way to post an mp3.
Also of note at the moment is my work on my photography prep, for which I am currently writing essays on anything and everything that interests me.
Am currently waiting for the arrival of like viberts newest work, "we hear you", and today I bought rodrigo y gabriela's self-titled whilst picking up miles davis' "kind of blue" for the bargain basement price of 2.99.

I have spent the last 48 hours in what can only be described as PC hell, my computer bouncing from bluescreen to bluescreen without either any prior warning or apparent reasoning. Have eventually got the sod running again after no less than three reformats of the hard drive. To top the trial off, iTunes today decided that it today was not going to install the drivers for my iPod properly, leaving the device in DFU- Limbo once connected. After an hour of frantic, fraught googling I manage to locate the correct section of windows' myriad device settings and, with a little prodding and pushing, convince the damned drivers to install. iPod syncs perfectly.
In other, happier news, my microphone has finally arrived and tonight I made my first recordings. Headed out aiming for the "underground" section of lemon street car park and sit silent on the floor forten minutes whilst the water crawls by and gulls wheel overhead.
After said ten minutes I head up top with the intention of simply getting the gulls as they fly shrieking overhead but, as I approach the uppermost door, I realise that the top surface of the car park is in fact the chosen roost for a fairly large flock. I open the door and crawl out at the pace of a slug, trying not to disturb the gulls as they chatter among each other and fight over the best spots, sneak my microphone out onto the floor and sit meditative for thirteen minutes as gulls shout at each other and the sky, the yelling punctuated by thuds as more birds land on the metal fence of the car park or drop onto the surface, bowling other sleeping gulls out of the way like some kind of cannonball. A security guard marches up top after around 14 minutes so I take this as my cue to leave. Things I have learned today include
-turn off my phone or else I get that rhythmic interference on the recording
-might want to bring something to sit on
-gulls are ace

Cinema Club.

Gentlemen's Club never materialised due to adverse weather conditions and was replaced instead by a visit to cinema club the following day with Josh and Daisy. Recieved a text from an unknown number at 1pm asking me to roll into town, to which I oblige, keeping the sender of the text a thrill for myself by not asking their name until my arrival - revealing it is in fact none other than crazy Josh himself. We watch the proposal, which is a fairly entertaining comedy about a woman trying to get a visa and falling in love with her secretary.
Driving last week was more succesful than the prior lesson in that I actually manage to make turns and change gears as opposed to grinding along the road as if possessed by the devil.
This week I have spent a total of twenty four hours in Sainsburys, stacking shelves. I eagerly await my next pay packet on the 14th. Keeeeeeeeeeeeeen for cash, though I think I may save up the majority of it for a new camera. Perhaps. Or maybe i'll just blow it all on vinyl and alcohol, it could swing both ways really.
At the moment I'm listening to a lot of merzbow which can't be healthy, in preparation for the imminent arrival of my microphone and the beginning of my forays into sound art to accompany my photography. At the moment I have this fantasy of going and spending a whole day at roundwood quay with just my cameras and my microphone and my internal ecstasy.

Gentlemens Club

Currently eagerly awaiting tomorrow's event in which myself, liam tomlin, Samuel Mackenzie and daisy woodall (and possibly Simon dunstan) will roll in syncronisation into Truro and drink the night away. Dress code will be smart casual and faces will be unshaven, with the obvious exception of daisy. Imagine, if you quite care to do so, a twisted, testing version of the mad hatter's tea party in which the tea is replaced with straight liquor, the table is replaced with a conglomeration of truro's bars and the cakes are replaced with one-stop, whilst the guests themselves are replaced with grimly underage alcoholics in desperate search of a thrill, so that the entire farcical situation now no longer resembles a tea party but instead is a dead ringer for a scene from some badly written sitcom - and you may well be approaching the course of tomorrow night. No doubt as our bodies alcohol content approach critical mass someone will end up dead, ideally myself, and the other three or four youths will be detained indefinitely in Truro police station

Holidays.

I am now three or four weeks into my holiday and I am yet to have another driving lesson due to an increasingly farcical state of events including my own contraction of swine flu (now past) and my instructor's apparently regular bouts of illness. I'm talking regular as in, like, train regular.
At the moment I am spending most evenings shooting out-of-date colour film around Truro. I'm up to seven or eight rolls and have only had one developed as of yet, after my next payday I intend to go on some kind of perverted binge and get the whole lot churned out in one day or something stupid.
I've ordered a microphone to go with my minidisc recorder as well, so you can soon expect this blog to be flooded with the sounds of Truro and it's surroundings.
Here's a nice story from my existence recently: my first payday rolled by, headed to town, check balance, realise only £130 has gone in. I was owed £250, so the glum eyes of the one-three-oh staring back at me cause a fair amount of stress. On arrival at work later that day I speak to the lady in charge of cash and she realises that they have paid me 15 hours short and also taxed me £33 on my £165 wages. I elicit a noise similar to a rodent being gently pressured and ask why. The woman hands me a "student declaration form" and promises I will recieve all the money with my next paycheck. I smile politely and leave the office.

I decided I would treat myself having been paid and bought some HD555s to replace my now-broken HD201s. The step up is fantastic and I've essentially only taken them off to shower since they were delivered

nine inch nails

After months of waiting and sleepless nights and hours of nin on repeat, yesterday I finally boarded the 0729 train from Truro to London Paddington alongside Callum O'keefe. Train journey is relatively uneventful, though boring. We sit opposite a business-looking man with an iPhone.
Arrive in London late, at about 12.30, and wander aimlessly for several hours. We purchase unlimited tickets at £5.60 and head to oxford street followed by Leicester square, up regent street, and back to oxford street again. I spend £30 on vinyl in HMV and come away with two godspeed you back emperor LPs and the White Stripes' icky thump.
Head to the concert at just after 5pm having eaten a greasy mcdonalds on oxford street. Arrive, see a queue and think to ourselves, must suck to be in that queue, we have presale tickets. Then we realise the queue is for the presale tickets. I elicit a loud "you have to be fucking joking" and roll to the back of the queue.
Three quarters of an hour later we recieve our tickets and head indoors. We head round to entrance H and resume queueing. The doors open at 18.30 and after a mass exodus around 15000 people have taken their seats in the cavernous arena.
The opening act is Mew, a danish band, whose sound is so poorly orchestrated the guitarist shrieks and squalls like a merzbow record. They leave the stage after four or five songs and are replaced, after a short interlude, by Jane's Addiction.
They put on an impressive show, with vocalist Perry Farrell clad in what appeared to be black latex trousers and howling like a wolf. The bassist (eric avery) is godlike and the crowd shriek like girls as he roars away machine-like.
Soon though it is all over and JA leave the stage after an acoustic encore featuring a steel drum.
We wait impatiently for nin to start as the roadies check the equipment again and again, time ticks by and suddenly Trent Reznor takes the stage and starts singing "now i'm nothing", the opener previously exclusive to the 1991 lollapalooza festival. The house lights drop as the band rip into "terrible lie", the crowd by this time whooping and salivating like wild animals. Trent spend the show throwing shit at the crowd, across the stage, at other band members; by the end of terrible lie his guitar is hurled offstage and the mic-stand kicked into the press-pit as stage hands feverishly try to retrieve the detritus.
The band work their way through a number of their older material and obscure covers - including Bowie's "I'm afraid of Americans" - and also touch on their more recent output with the deafening 1,000,000 and the stomping survivalism. Highlight of the evening is undoubtedly march of the pigs, where the band cut out leaving just the crowd and trent singing in some evil unison before the man stops and stands centrestage, eyes shut, dripping sweat, arms stretched out wide whilst the front row bay like dogs.
Callum and I have to pack it up early in order to board the 2345 train back, and we only just make it even then. The journey is nightmarishly uncomfortable and the train takes an unbearable seven hours to crawl across the country. My ears ring and my back and legs ache.
Get home at 7 and sleep from nine til' three. Head to work at 5 after an omelette, get in at 9 and collapse in front of TV.

Weds

Awake to the sound of the phone ringing and, in my 10am sleep-haze, simply lay back and let it ring out. Get up, call back, take mothers sewing machine to Bosvigo, head home, sit eating rice crispies. Got dressed at some point in that sequence as well.
Head to town later in the day to check the whereabouts of my EMA bonus and run into none other than the glamorous Miriam Carter who has spent the day jobseeking, without success. I head to the bank, check my balance, quietly celebrate as the machine confirms my £100 has rolled in, and subsequebntly head back and stand with Miriam at her bus stop until the 85 rocks into town. We discuss job prospects and my state of affairs at sainsburys as well as the everpresent pain that is driving.
Head home again. Spend the remainder of the afternoon in a haze sitting in front of daytime television and intermittently mustering the strength to head outside minolta in hand.