David Emery Onlinethehorrors.co.uk
We’ve just launched the new site for The Horrors – we’d been quite happy with the way that the previous video-focused site had gone but it was (finally) time to get something with a bit more content up there.
All textpattern based, as ever, it runs with the ‘activity stream’ format so everything gets fed into the same feed on the home page, whether it’s blog posts, photos from the flickr group, polaroids posted by the band, videos or whatever else. Also watch out for the natural extension of the fading colour trick featured on version 5 of this site, but instead changing the whole background image…
Visit ➔Harry Patch (In Memory Of)
Recently the last remaining UK veteran of the 1st world war Harry Patch died at the age of 111.
I had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the Today program on Radio4.
The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me.
It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.
It was done live in an abbey. The strings were arranged by Jonny.
I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor.
A stunning beautiful song, which falls in the Radiohead canon alongside album closers like ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ and ‘Videotape’. Haunting but with an important message – go and buy it and see for yourself.
Visit ➔iLike launches iPhone apps for Jeff Buckley, The Cribs, Sonic Youth…
Back in May, music service iLike announced plans for a new B2B service that would create and launch iPhone applications for artists. More than 250 of them have gone live on the App Store in the last few days.
And they’re all rubbish. I really don’t see the point in such generic, assembly line production of mediocre apps – is anyone going to care? Wow, you can download an app to listen to 30s clips of an album (err, like you can in the iTunes app), see twitter updates from the band and see upcoming tour dates (insert ticket affiliate link here).
Doubly stupid considering the only way to get decent volume on the iTunes store is to get some promotion backing it up, either on the store/top 10 charts os somewhere else – how exactly are you going to promote an app when there are 249 near identical other versions?
I’m wondering whether it’s already too late to bother with music related iPhone app development – there’s just too much noise and rubbish to get lost in.
Visit ➔The Pope Signs To Geffen
Geffen Records, owned by Universal Music, is producing an album that will feature Pope Benedict’s voice accompanied by the Choir of the Philharmonic Academy of Rome. According to the company, he will sing and recite verses including prayers to the Virgin Mary.
I love the fact that Lada Gaga and the Pope can be on the same label; it’s obviously all about the music for those guys. I guess that when the A&R guys put ‘flowers’ on their expenses in this case they might actually mean it…
Visit ➔In defence of the 2012 logo, 2 years on
It’s just over 2 years since the London 2012 Olympic logo was launched to such derision. Being a prominent design blogger I wrote about it back then. I’ve just reread that post and I agree with everything I said. Which is reassuring.
Actually I think I agree even more. I like the logo even more.
I liked the logo when it was announced, and I still like the logo. It’s far better then this one, at the very least:
Hands-On with the Spotify iPhone App
We’ve been testing Spotify’s iPhone app since last week for this U.S. exclusive. Based on that, our prediction that it could generate big profits for Spotify — and for an ailing music industry — appears to be on the money. This slick app grants instant access to over six million on-demand tracks and your customized Spotify playlists, and it sounds great even on planes, subways, and other places where you can’t get a decent cell signal thanks to an offline playback feature.
Nothing unexpected here, but it looks like it works and works well, although the offline caching stuff looks a little over complicated. Also, I still don’t believe that they haven’t added a way of browsing the catalogue yet – you can still only search, and I can never think of the right thing to search for…
Update: There’s a video of it in action up now as well:
Visit ➔The Big Pink - Dominos
We’ve just put up the forthcoming single by the Big Pink up as a free download on their website – also below for your listening pleasure:
I think I’ve gone on about them enough, now.
Visit ➔Blur - T in the Park 2009 by Danny North
I heard the bands security telling all the togs he was going to run in to the crowd 2nd song, so I set the fisheye to manual focus, focused on infinity (everything in focus from 2.5 feet) and gauged an approximate exposure – which ended up being bang on…
Not only is this a great photo (although I’m not a massive fan of the fisheye look), but click through and have a read of the description of how he took it – inspiring stuff. Must work on that manual focus lark…
Visit ➔