UNKLE: War Stories
I love this album more every time I listen to it. (*****)
Tom Middleton: Lifetracks
(*****)
Fink: Distance and Time
(***)
Coldcut: Sound Mirrors
(***)
My Watching the Fireworks photo is to be on the cover of Belgian band Monza's new album, Attica! The album will be released in Belgium next month, and isn't available in the UK. But I'm really excited to see my photo on their website.
The image above is a wallpaper image, freely downloadable from the 'Downloads' section of the Monza site. I cropped the original image hard before uploading it. The uncropped image is seen here for the first time.
A number of buildings in London around the Thames are being illuminated with low-energy lighting for an event called Switched on London. The event raises the need to balance the importance of lighting in the nocturnal urban landscape with the need to save energy.
Being low-energy, some of the buildings weren't quite as stunning as I had hoped, but it's worth a stroll nevertheless. But you'll have to be quick; it finishes tomorrow, 14th February.
The picture is of Southwark Cathedral, but there are a few more in my set on Flickr.
I'm really chuffed that this photograph has been published in the December 2007 edition of Artforum, a New York-based art magazine.
It's a large-format magazine, and the photo is a double-page spread. I had to do some careful processing to get a high enough image quality for reproduction, but it was worth it to go into the shop in Tate Modern this afternoon and see my photo in the magazine on the shelf..
The subject of the photos is Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, a crack in the floor of Tate Modern. The space was invaded by a mobile clubbing event, which filled the hall with dancers gyrating to music on their ipods.
I caught up with Andrew last week for a pub lunch in the Surrey Hills, and then a stroll around Polesden Lacey, cameras in hand. It's one of my favourite spots, and one that I don't visit as often as I would like, now that I live in Ealing.
By the time I took this photo, the light was fading, but there was just enough sun peeping above the horizon to paint the trees with gold.
I took this photo on Sunday in the Great Court of the British Museum. One of my Flickr contacts left a comment that the people look notes on the stave of a boring tune, which made me chuckle.
View it large on Flickr here.
I spent the Easter Bank Holiday with my parents in Newbury, and had a stroll through the town I once knew so well. As a child, it seemed an exciting place with big shops, a new shopping centre, and a great sense of history. In the early 1980's it was described as Britain's fastest growing town, but the recession of the later '80s hit hard, and it feels as if the shopping centre never really recovered.
It may not be the centre for shopping that it once was, but it seems to be establishing itself as a pleasant, well-preserved place to live and to visit. Much of the town centre has been pedestrianised, and it's possible to sit outside in in the market place and enjoy a coffee. It used to be a car park.
I remember Beynon's being a rambling old store in the 1980's, but I don't know when it closed. The Newbury of my childhood was a place of unique shops; Beynon's was (I think) a small department store, Daniel's sold beds, and Toomers was a department store with a wonderful brass front. All gone now, of course. Is a chain eatery progress?
The Beynon's sign made the news in the 2005 election campaign. The conservative candidate, Richard Benyon, had a campaign picture with him standing outside the building. The 'Beynon' sign was doctored to match his surname. Did he think no-one would notice? He still won, with a small majority.
At the heart of the marketplace is the fine 19th century corn exchange. As a teenager, the fine facade concealed a rather worn-out interior. I remember going to a seedy gig there, and various amateur dramatic productions. Nowadays, it's been refurbished, and is a centre for the arts, and the Newbury Spring Festival.
Close to the market place is Newbury Wharf on the Kennet and Avon canal. Newbury grew in prosperity in the sixteenth century as a centre for the cloth trade, with the wool man Jack o' Newbury being the town's most successful son. The wharf was the place where wool and later cotton was brought into the town, and finished cloth taken away. Nowadays, you can take a trip on a canal boat from there. Adjacent to the wharf is the old Cloth Hall (above), which now is home to the West Berkshire Museum. When I was a child (before the formation of the West Berkshire unitary authority) it was the Newbury District Museum, but inside, very little has changed; a fascinating collection of long cases covering a vast array of subjects, presented with sober-looking labels that offer a level of detail absent in more modern museums. It seemed boringly old fashioned when I was a kid, but now I appreciate it for mostly resisting the pressure on most museums to offer a 'visitor experience'.
When I left Newbury in 1986 to go to Bristol University, I wasn't sad to leave a town that was down at heel and seek excitement elsewhere. It's a sign of approaching middle age that I like it more and more. But I'm not ready to leave the bright lights of London just yet.
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