Monday, December 05, 2011

This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult

This gem comes courtesy of Erika. Thanks Erika! (Therika)


Roy

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Hair Of The Dog

I've been helping Jonnie with his installation coming up this weekend, involving 8 Niftymitters.. Do come along, it is going to have to be good.



A full length album of material from Jonnie Common’s debut 'Master Of None' remixed by a talented bunch of his personal favourites. Available as a limited screen print with download. Featuring:

GEESE : DEMS : FOUND : BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD : ONTHEFLY : RIVER OF SLIME : GRNR : A LA FU : MIAOUX MIAOUX : THE JAPANESE WAR EFFORT : CAUGHT IN THE WAKE FOREVER


Nov 25 - 27 : Jonnie Common Sound Installation

Jonnie Common has worked with Zero Waste Design to produce an interactive sound installation at MONO that lets users mix the elements of his debut album with the added potential for lo-fi surround sound to be achieved.

If that’s not all, an exhibition by illustrator David Galletly will also be shown over the weekend featuring drawings and murals related to ‘Master Of None’.


Nov 27 : Exhibition Closing Party

live sets from: BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD + DEMS + GRNR
special guest DJ sets from: FOUND + THE JAPANESE WAR EFFORT

7.30pm : £4 : MONO : 12 Kings Court, Glasgow, G1 5RB


INFO + TICKETS: WWW.JONNIECOMMON.COM

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Flux Pinning in Jazz



This video is great for two reasons:
  1. It demonstrates the faintly unbelievable
  2. The soundtrack
Thanks to Carlo!
Roy

Thursday, October 13, 2011

A Song of One Hundred Years, Adam Beattie

A Song of One Hundred Years by adambeattie

I played as a consultant of Adam Beattie regularly for a couple of years after graduating, and have very fond memories of the experience. Indeed without Adam there would be no three headed Inspector Tapehead, seeing as Chris too was a consultant at that time, and Jonnie was unashamedly in thrall to Adam's croonings. It is fairly damning for us then that since he parted our close proximity, Adam has continued to improve without pause, revelling amongst a host of excellent London consultants. Of course we still meet occasionally and the meetings are all the more delightful for their scarcity. In a good way.

My favourite of his songs that we played together was Man Running, a track realised in boldly different colours on his second album We'll Wave From the Shore. When we played Man Running it was something of a heartfelt, rich, tearjerker, almost rubbery in its rubato (as was oft the way in that lineup, much to Adam's delight). It got me in the same way that pretty much any brass band playing Nimrod or Danny Boy does - when we played it at the Abu Bozy album launch in the Tron, I got pretty carried away with the old deep-sighing of the harmonium!

Anyway the point of this essay is that a couple of years ago Adam nonchalantly whipped out a song that has come to replace Man Running in my top spot of Beattie tunes, in the form of A Song of One Hundred Years. An astonishing bit of song writing, he has now put it into zeroes and ones and uploaded it to Soundcloud as a preview of his third album. In Adam's words, it is "A song I wrote for my grandfather George Craigie, who died last April 2010, at the age of one hundred years old." Listen to it above, and enjoy.

PS. As you can see, the effect of any dose of Beattie is acute sentimentality such as this!

Roy

Saturday, October 08, 2011

The Cinematic Orchestra - 'Entr'acte'

Kate Hartman on TED

This excellent Ted talk by Kate Hartman, has almost all the things theSlog is interested in: design, glaciers, funnies..

Thursday, September 29, 2011

JWC at the DBL

One of two videos from a recent outing with Jonnie Common to the Diving Bell Lounge:

L@tDBL - Jonnie Common - Shogun from Precious Productions on Vimeo.


Jonnie's excellent recent album is listenable and buyable here.
I cemented a rock solid professional reputation by fucking up two takes royally before getting this, still ropey performance, improved endlessly by some delightful cinematography by Extreme Man, Richard. Eg. here is Richard filming himself kitesurfing.

Enjoy, Roy

PS.

I've just read the caption for this video on vimeo, presumably written by Richard or Jolene, with much amusement! If it is Richard, we are clearly regarding each other with similar suspicion, me of him being some kind of superman, and he of me being a potential architect and assassin. One of those accusations is true, and the other is sort of true, see if you can work out which.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Enez live video

Stu put up this film recently from the Enez gig at St. Andrew's in the Square in May. For those that missed it, enjoy!
Roy


Jag tänker så titt from Stuart Macpherson on Vimeo.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Ph.D.


Here's my thesis in a nutshell as provided by the lovely wordle.
Dr. g

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Ian Shearer in Other Lives


We put in a column to the Guardian about my dad earlier in the year and it got printed today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/aug/17/ian-shearer-obituary

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Unfold

May I recommend the Tru Thoughts Unfold podcast, such as this one? Why, Thanks.
Roy

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Receipts from 1976

Receipts from 1976 by Spherical Roy
Receipts from 1976, a photo by Spherical Roy on Flickr.

My dad kept receipts from seemingly the most significant purchases since around 1970. I've uploaded some of the ones that are most interesting to me, seeing as they document things that I have seen or used all my life.
The full set is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/royshearer/sets/72157627348481212/


Roy

Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world

Another great TED talk, this time about algorithms, man/machine interaction, terraforming.. It's got it all! Thanks to Carlo. from Roy.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Cumbrian Cake Criminals Cautioned!


Via Pa Johnson.

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Geordie Bees on the web



Ahoy! My mate and loyal Slogger, Dave, is a paid up bee fanatic, and, having persuaded Culturelab at Newcastle Uni to get him some bees and a hive, now has webcams online! Brilliant. I've added the live feed from the front door of the hive to the sidebar of theSlog. Thanks Dave!
Honeybees are of course in danger of dying out, so as well as being an interesting things to do, keeping bees is actually a very socially responsible thing to be doing. There are a few campaigns to save bees, such as this one.

Roybee

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Flickr update

Massive photo dump over at flickr from one half of your listeners. December 2010-June 2011.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Inspector Tapehead Duress Code Tour Video, BOSH.

Back in September, just after Duress Code's release I went on tour with Inspector Tapehead, and the tour video is now online, in not one, nor two, but three acts. Count em.

Now, Youtube stats show that for every 30 people that view act 1, 1 switches off after that, and a further 7 don't make it to act 3. So you better buck up folks, as I know readers of theSlog have approximately 50 percent more time on their hands than blogs with better employed readerships..

Duress Code is out on Song, By Toad and available here. We are playing at the Caves, Edinburgh on Friday evening and Brel, Glasgow on Sunday afternoon.

Roy Tapehead, enjoy... we did.



Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Lack of Entropy

I am listening to Radio Magnetic's alleged jazz show, Entropy, notable in its absence from the feed for about a year. It is good though, so I wish it was on more! Well worth a listen if you're interested in a variety of jazz beyond the limited one which is generally meted out in Glasgow. As myself and I dare say my dBassian colleagues are.
What exactly would it take to get more jazz on Radio Magnetic, beyond the annual excitement of the jazz fest? [NYK would have had this sorted, but we won't go into that].

One of the many enjoyable features of Entropy of course is Andy Watt's rather forgetful/shambolic delivery/technical operation which I'm sure is down to merely the infrequency of his shows!

I can see I've sold this really well, so am going to stop before you change your mind. Entropy is a podcast downloadable here or subscribable here.
Roy

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Grampian Mountains

Grampian Mountains: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Tasty new site from Craig..

Roy

Sunday, April 24, 2011

N'awlins

Last weekend in New Orleans.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Enez gigsss

Hello. I am 33% of the way through a run of Enez gigs. The first one got a rather good review in the Scotsman last week, although they spelt Tristan wrong.:
http://living.scotsman.com/music/Music-review-Diego-Laverde-Tistan.6750043.jp


And the subsequent ones are bound to be better, given that Tristan should be able to use both hands for em. The first is this Saturday at Ceol's Craic, the Gaelic club at the CCA. Ticket info here:
http://www.cca-glasgow.com/page=236B7D10-868E-4F86-A306909B378E5655&eventid=02AFC0CE-930E-4F16-974FAC647562E9F0

And then we are playing at St. Andrew's in the Square in May:
http://www.ticketsoup.com/tickets/tristan-le-govic-harp-jazz-2011-12688/default.aspx

We've got a rather old myspace here, which sadly was prior to Lise's joining on vocals:
http://www.myspace.com/eneztrio

Spherical Roy

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Open Source Ecology



Gareth astutely pointed me in the direction of this inspiring open design project with some of the furthest developed results I have yet seen! Apparently springing mainly from one team in Kansas at what they call the 'Factor e Farm'. Impressive stuff.

More at openfarmtech.org

In other news, I also love the Guardian

Beady Eye
The Roller (Beady Eye)

You might not recognise this three-and-a-half minutes of what future generations will see as a massive leap forward in our culture. But mark this day in your diaries, because this song – which sounds like will.i.am has travelled to the year 3098 and collaborated with aliens – will change how we see music forever. Not really. It's just standard Oasis from 1996, and over the guitars, we think we can hear the faint sound of Damon Albarn laughing.


Issy Sampson for The Guardian, 19th Feb

Roy

I love Liam Gallagher

"I heard that fucking Radiohead record and I just go, ‘What?!’ I like to think that what we do, we do fucking well. Them writing a song about a fucking tree? Give me a fucking break! A thousand year old tree? Go fuck yourself! You’d have thought he’d have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week. You know what I mean?”

Roy

Monday, February 28, 2011

The Foghorn: A Celebration

BBC iPlayer - The Foghorn: A Celebration: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

For theSlog readers in the UK:

I can thoroughly recommend this Radio 4 documentary about foghorns.

That is not a joke, it's a really interesting programme!

Roy

Friday, February 25, 2011

Ditto vid

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Andy Gangadeen talks

BBC Music Showcase - Musicians' Masterclass 2011 - Andy Gangadeen on working with Chase & Status and The Bays: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

For anyone interested in drums, programmed or live, these shorts with Andy Gangadeen of The Bays and sessioner for all sorts of pop acts, are essential. Well I liked em anyway.

cheers Jonnie!

Roy

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Tapehead Live at the Diving Bell Lounge

Live at the Diving Bell Lounge (MUSIC) on Vimeo: Last week Jonnie and Chris and I went along to Marcus' beautiful east end studio to record these tracks for Precious Productions, with some quite flattering results:

Live at The Diving Bell Lounge - Inspector Tapehead - Fillet of Bozo from Precious Productions on Vimeo.


Live at The Diving Bell Lounge - Inspector Tapehead - I am your pedigree from Precious Productions on Vimeo.


Enjoy, Roy.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

SICK


SICK

Theatre Modo's acclaimed production, Sick, starring official theSlog clown Suzie Ferguson, is on in Stirling on Feb 4th. Highly recommended by this blogger.

Roy

Friday, January 21, 2011

Ditto

I'm currently doing percussion for a show in Edinburgh, entitled Ditto. The List had this to say:
http://www.list.co.uk/article/32023-ditto-explores-how-8-12-year-old-children-listen-and-respond-to-music/#

It's on at the Traverse on Saturday at 13.30 if anyone fancies a skeg.
Roy

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Loops Haunt

Chatting about music I love today I couldn't help but include Mr. Loops Haunt, whose set of elaborately soulful glitches at the decidedly botanical N_ilk in September had me writhing with glee, as many will attest. Only I realise I've never paid him the courtesy of a link from theSlog so here goes. But best experienced loud, on a grassy dancefloor.
Enjoy.
Roy.

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Delapidation

A fascinating photo essay on the Guardian site today from Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre in Detroit, Michigan.



Roy