David Emery Online

The Horrors at Rich Mix

I’ve written much praise about The Horrors and their forthcoming album, ‘Primary Colours’ already and it’s been quite gratifying to see that I’m not the only one with that opinion – it really seems to have turned peoples perceptions around (witness the Quietus track by track review for example).

Two quotes I’ve heard stand out (although the first is flagrant hyperbole):

“Strange House [the first album] is their ‘Pablo Honey’”

“They’ve finally got the music to match their look.”

So it’s with that weight of expectation I journeyed down to Rich Mix in East London to see their ‘launch gig’. As is the norm with this kind of thing it was half full of industry types (see Conor McNicholas of the NME’s twitters for example) but I don’t think that really mattered too much – it was a gig that was always going to have a separation between band and crowd as none of them will have heard any of the songs (bar Sea Within A Sea) before.

If anything it created a slightly charged atmosphere – it’s rare you get a set of more passionate fans then Horrors fans (the confirm – on the whole – quite nicely...

OnLive Makes PC Upgrades Extinct

You may never buy a new video card ever again. Actually, the only PC gaming hardware you might ever need will cost you less than a Wii, should OnLive’s potential live up to its promise.

[…]

The concept is simple. Your controller input isn’t going from your hand to the controller to the machine in front of you, it’s going from your hand to the controller through the internet to OnLive’s machines then back again as streamed video. Whether you’re using a USB gamepad, Bluetooth wireless controller, or tried and true keyboard and mouse, the processing and output happens on OnLive’s side, then is fed back to your terminal, with the game “perceptually” played locally.

Very interesting, especially considering the rise in netbooks and other low performance, connected platforms (cough iPhone cough).

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable

Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors.

A absolute must read article. RIP the newspaper industry; long live journalism.

Open-washing and the Camel Open Circle …Jerk

Camel doesn’t really believe in openness — let alone grok the concept — let alone give a shit about openness — but since all the cool kids are doing it, they’re happy to co-opt the label to win points. Let the backfire begin.

At the height of cynicism, we have a company whose primary business is architecting new schemes to kill people with their death products, aligning their brand with “openness”. Consider the line crossed.

I don’t get how Camel – or their agency – thought that this work. ‘Open’ has jumped the shark quite thoroughly, although whether it was actually anything other then a pointless buzzword (see ’2.0’) is up for debate.

Hard Day's Night

On Monday evening – in one of those lovely coincidences that makes everything that little bit more fun – we launched two things that I think I worth highlighting.

First up at 20:00 we released the new Super Furry Animals album ‘Dark Days / Light Years’ as a download from their site. To coincide with that, and to make things that bit more exciting we also did a webcast of a live performance of the album in its entirety, shot in their studio in Cardiff. Happily, everything went to plan (although I did have to switch computers twice in in the minutes leading up to the webcast as I managed to lock up 2 other ones in quick succession…) and even more happily the album is great – I’ve been a fan of SFA for ages but wasn’t a fan of the last album (I think they lost their edge slightly). This one is a definite return to form, and well worth checking out.

After that had all calmed down at the stroke of midnight we launched the new site for The Horrors which features the new video for ‘Sea Within A Sea’ along with a free download of...

Textpattern Admin Themes

dds_admin_style is a Textpattern plugin that enables two features for the Textpattern Admin:
1. Select a style saved within Textpattern as the admin CSS.
2. Set a unique favicon for the admin.

A nice set of themes for the admin section of Textpattern – one of my current bugbears with Textpattern is how old-school the admin interface is (along with the lack of rich text controls) and this solves that problem nicely.

Also, check out David DeSandro’s site – who made the plugin – as well; it’s very nice.

The Dead Weather - Hand You From The Heavens

Jack White + Alison Mosshart (from The Kills) – it sounds as good as you might think it would.

More information here: http://www.thedeadweather.com/

And you can buy the track on iTunes as well: http://tinyurl.com/deadweatheritunes

The Dead Weather – Hand You From The Heavens

Pitchfork Redesigns

Obviously nicer then their previous old-school design, but it’s all a little generic, isn’t it? Take away the logo and you’d have no clue that it’s Pitchfork – it looks like a slightly inferior Drowned In Sound.

Also, they’ve taken the nicely designed pitchfork.tv and genericised that too, taking their embeded video player – which was my favourite embeded video player, due to its simplicity (yes, I have favourite embeded video players…) – and ruining it in the process (it even autoplays if you embed it!). Oh well…

Fun with Augmented Reality

Love this Mini augmented reality ad:

Feels like there’s some really cool things you could do with this technology, now that it’s hitting the mainstream.

Fucked Up

Loud.

Really loud.

So loud that I’m now seriously considering getting ear plugs (the idea of which freaks me out in a slightly odd way). I was half deaf for at least 24 hours afterwards.

I am – as the photo above had maybe tipped you off – talking about the lovely Fucked Up, who played the Electric Ballroom as part of the Shred yr face 2 tour with Rolo Tomassi & The Bronx. I’ll admit that I’d never heard any Rolo Tomassi before – just heard of them – but they were good fun. Possibly a little shouty/screamy for my tastes but that was certainly made up for in energy and enthusiasm.

However, if we’re talking about energy and enthusiasm Fucked Up will take the crown every time. Damian – the singer – spent only one song fully clothed and on the stage; it was quickly shirt off and into the crowd, where he remained for much of the set. Luckily that energy is backed up by great songs so the crowd matched their fervour. I guess it can be summed up by the fact that I went home after Fucked Up – I’d used up all of my CF space...