So a few of you who come here regularly might have noticed some subtle changes here recently.
Change is always a good thing, and I felt the old design was getting a bit clunky and awkrawd for what I want to eventually achieve with Pixadelica.org I'm trying to optimise this website and make the every thing more accessible. I'm not sure if the current incarnation has entirely worked, if you absolutely hate it drop me an email personally
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and I'll change it back. Alternatively send me suggestions, I'm always open to new ideas.
Currently I'm working tirelessly behind the scenes to bring a more open and transparent website. Ideally, if you're running a gig, in a band and got a show, or your an artist putting on an exhibition then you would email us and ask us to put an advert and blog post on the website. Maybe you'd join our forums and post there too. EVEN BETTER you would come to this website, sign up or log in, and post your own promotional JPGs and blog posts or whatever. Maybe you have an article or piece of fiction you want to see published in a zine, but you're not sure about email and you want an easy 'facebook style' way of submitting your work for print publication. Maybe you're not sure about seeing your work in print but want to show it to a small circle of like minded creatives anonymously online, get some constructive criticism and see what people really think because we're always our own worst critics. That's a small taste of what I'm cooking in the melting pot right now.
My phone's just gone off and I've been summoned to the pub by forces best kept unknown to mortal beings for now, so more later.
Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience (just in case you really do think this all looks horrid).
This is important, right? Turn that shit off and listen.
Rock music is kids with anti-capitalist riot slogans scrawled on school bags full of spray cans, bottles of mad dog, and other mischief making materials that keeps The Metro up all night. Even if they do all own iPhones and ridiculous MP3 players full of music they stole from the comfort of their own bedrooms.
Rock muisc should be oscene loud good time tunes played by whoever really it doesn't matter so long as they know a tune or two and can celebrate the sheer joy of being human and being alive.
Rock music is NOT four twenty somethings droning bollox about the mediocrity of their middle class existence while wearing their designer sunglasses indoors. Rock music isn't be guitar plus bass plus drums plus vocals equals four equals boring. I shouldn't be able to crack a fart at a gig and watch some idiots guitar strings snap in unison from the noise.
That's it, lesson over. Turn that shit back on, it's pretty damn good.
If you attended our last gig in May, here's a gallery of photo's to help you remember how awesome that night truly was. If you missed our second gig in May, shame on you. Here are some photos so have a look then close your eye's and make believe you were there and that your ears are still ringing from the sonic onslaught that was Inerds Out, Action and Action, and the Quatermass Xperiment. Thanks to Maddie for emailing us her photos.
We're busy finalising the details for our third night on 8th August, which is a Saturday so all of you who have normal 9-5s can come and have a boogie. We're excited about the acts we've booked so far, as well as some Things We Cannot Speak Of Right Now which should make the night unmissable. Watch this space for more details.
Doubledotdash!? have united with Oxfam Music and are hosting a super heavyweight sound clash at the Rising Sun Arts Centre tomorrow night. From the mail out that landed in my inbox today...
we have our very first charity show tomorrow in aid of oxfam, for £5, at the rising sun arts centre in reading, you can witness the following, in order...
REBECCA LAMBERT. not a relation of the highlander, but a young singer-songwriter in the vein of tracy chapman or amy macdonald.
TILEHURST CHILDRENS ARKESTRA. klanging jazz fusion drone from the suburbs of reading.
THE 3.1419 WONDERS a reading supergroup made up from members of international indie superstars PETE & THE PIRATES and the marginally less successful, but no less great HOT SILK POCKETS. DEBUT GIG!
and rounding the evening off in some style...
TALIBAM! talibam! take that moment in 'sister ray' when john cale decides to kick the sh!t out of lou reed as their starting point. they rock the sh!t out in every way imaginable: fury and fun, performance and presence. talibam! are a punk coltrane, noise as affect - everybody in the audience is left smiling. so says drowned in sound. morris breadknife says they sound like black sabbath. make up your own mind.
SO
if you are near the reading metropolitain conurbation, then i request your company. the cider there is tremendous.
If you're not familiar with Doubledotdash and the quality Econo Band Night shows they've been putting on in Reading for years now then you need to crawl out of the cave you've been hiding in. Talibam have been dropped on Reading (presumably from a great geight) all the way from Brooklyn, and are hailed as rock improv noise at it's best. Have a flyer.
Pixadelica's own Jamie Hobley is starting his own zine, combining two titles into a single publication. Amplifier Worship will cover music, and Last Minute promises tp be an experiment in writing fast fiction. Anyone who has produced creative work either for education, as a volunteer, for any kind of project, or as a professional will be very familiar with the caffeine soaked small hours crunching ideas together into something tangible before a fast approaching deadline hits. I personally haven't slept a wink since 1999 due to creative demands. Those of you lucky enough to have grabbed a copy of Issue 0 of Pixadelica's own zine will have read 'Kissing Icarus' and be familiar with Jamie's talent as a writer. Check out the Pixadelica Forums to read more about this new zine and join the discussion. Amplifier Worship also has a myspace, check it out.
It's a Friday Night, here's some noise from Oxford to prepare you all for the weekly herd migration to the local watering hole, the fantastic Hreda.
The following is an opinion. If you want facts, please turn off every electrical device within 20 feet your of person
Lets get this straight right? Chips in. Cards on the table, sleeves rolled up and no hidden aces. Honestly now. We're an art collective. Not even that. We're a loose group of individuals who enjoy music and occaisionally self-publish and promote what we like to call art.
Straight up.
This might need to change
We're currently living in the worst recession of a generation. A generation that now grows up with mobile phones and wireless laptops. A generation hopelessly addicted to inter-connected super-toys we can no longer afford the credit to buy but are told constantly are a requirement for a normal functioning life. The same ways designer clothes and expensive haircuts are also pre-requisites for being socially accepted. A significant fraction of our lives is spent either asleep or for those of us lucky enough at work obliged to do that which we would prefer not to. This in turns enable us to pay the burden of a mortgage, buy the designer sunglasses and fake tans we don't need, or get an expensive haircut so we can go out on a Friday night. We work so we can upgrade the super-toy gadgets that grow out of date faster than we can imagine their replacements. New ways for us to continually 'kill' what little precious free hours we are granted cataloging every waking second of our lives on a rapidly growing globally networked public database of human trivia. We quanitify every thought and feeling and experience into meaningless statistic. Meanwhile CCTV footage, police records, every email ever sent fills our government databases, impossible volumes of human life data quantified again into statistic. Networked private database of human trivia. We scream and shout about privacy and a government wasting millions on ID cards, the physical equivalent of a Facebook profile in your pocket, while posting twitter updates of our daily lives right down to the beer we drink and the meals we eat and the stroke and breath of our every physical activity. We carry web enabled smart phones so the information never ceases. Our trivia, the clutter of our social lives becomes viral and airborne and infects all who are willing to pay for it. All this, in the middle of the worst recession of a generation.
