Sleeping Beauty

Showing until this Sunday, 20th December.

Mogwai - 'Burning'

Mogwai Live Film "Burning" Teaser from Nathanaël Le Scouarnec on Vimeo.

New Guitar

A bit overdue this, but I bought a new guitar recently. It's a Fender Telecaster Thinline '69 in natural mahogany finish. I bought it using the 'Take It Away' scheme run by the arts council.

It's a beautiful guitar to play and will feature soon in some of my new recordings. I'll also be playing it live at my forthcoming work Xmas concert with the 'Natural Born Santas'.

Peter Gabriel - 'The Nest That Sailed The Sky'

Taken from the album 'Ovo', 2000.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Tickets are £7. Email me if you are interested in going and I will get you a ticket.

Gohsten - 'Fright Night'

Fright Night from Gohsten on Vimeo.

I made this video for my friends' band Gohsten.

Jigoku (1960)

Nobuo Nakagawa's film 'Jigoku' ('Hell') tells the story of Shirô, a young student who seems to be surrounded by death. First of all, he is involved in a hit-and-run accident that kills a gang member, then his fiancée dies in another road accident, killing both her and their unborn baby. After a string of further deaths, Shirô is stalked and eventually murdered by the mother of his hit-and-run victim and descends into Buddhist Hell (or 'Naraka'), along with all the people who have died around him.

Nakagawa's film is infamous for its unsettling visions of Hell, created on Shintoho Studio's largest soundstage; however, more screen time is actually devoted to the complex set of circumstances that lead Shirô to his fate. The film's depiction of the fragility of human life and the capacity for horrific events to happen reminds me of the much more recent work of Alejandro González Iñárritu, while I found its brutal depiction of the hypocrisies of parenthood and satirical attack on policemen, doctors and the elderly uniquely bitter. Shirô and his fiancée actually emerge as the most innocent characters, and yet they are still subject to the mercy of Enma, King of Hell.

La Fée Verte

Both my recent trip to France and the fact that I've just finished reading Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' reminded me about absinthe. I haven't drunk if for years and felt it was time to give it another go. Thanks very much to James for hooking me up.

Yevgeny Zamyatin - 'We'

'We' is the fictional diary of D-503, builder of the spacecraft INTEGRAL and citizen of Onestate. He begins the record hoping to describe the beauty and grandeur of the totalitarian society he lives in, but as the narrative progresses, his world is thrown into confusion as he falls in love with a resistance fighter named I-330.

Recognised as one of the key inspirations for George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', Zamyatin's novel has a somewhat strange history: after the book was banned by the Soviet censorship bureau in 1921, a rough translation appeared in England in 1924. Facing trouble at home over a book that had not been published in his own language, Zamyatin was eventually exiled to Paris in 1931, where he died in 1937. 'We' was not published in Russia until 1988.

I read this book in the Penguin Classics edition, translated by Clarence Brown. The cover artwork features Anton Brezinski's 'Painting of Futuristic Buildings and City' (above), but I also like the artwork featured on the Vintage edition (below).

Supersonic Festival 2009

I attended the Supersonic Festival in July and enjoyed sets by
Sunn O))), Remember Remember, Caribou, Head of David, Khyam Allami and Arbouretum. The highlight, however, had to be '70s/'80s Italian prog rockers Goblin (above) who played a lengthy selection from their career (including tracks from 'Profondo Rosso', 'Suspiria', 'Zombi' and 'Tenebre') and also took part in a Q&A session. They were by far the best dressed band.