just a quick one to say: don’t be expecting any posts for the next week or so. in case you’d not noticed, it’s christmas, so i shall be engaging in festive revelry.

to you and yours - merry christmas and happy new year. have a good ‘un!

i’ll be back in the new year with lots of new stuff.. if you’ve seen the slightly redesigned home page then you’ve seen a taste of what’s to come.. roll on 2007!

it’s only 4 days til christmas! how exciting!

if you’re looking for a festive desktop, do try my fun snowman picture. i took it last night on a very nifty nikon d50 that i’ve borrowed for the forthcoming festivities. it’s well weapon.

blah.

look at my flickr page! it has the snowman.. and lots of other stuff.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scpgt/ (or more specifically, click here)

from the site:
GOTH FETISH FASHION - YUNGFUKTOI.
Photographer: Will Pearson, of EyeRevolution.
Where: London, England

Fashion Shoot for cutting-edge goth and fetish fashion label Yungfuktoi. It really exploits the format to show the clothes off in an atmosphere of edgy debauchery. Often appearing in separate places within the same shot, the models are able to interact with each other in wholly unexpected and exciting ways.
Using the panorama format offers some distinct advantages: This way of shooting also allows us to showcase outfits from the collection in different poses and from different angles within the same shot �? a new and exciting idea for a fashion label.

from me:
i didn’t realise that anybody outside the hotel industry really used quicktime vr but i’m happy to be proved wrong. while ordinarily the format is used to ‘explore’ rooms, this nice implementation of it focuses on the clothes (/lack of). it’s a nice twist.

it reminds me slightly of that bit in fight club where the narrators apartment gets ikea-ized.. but without the text. if these panorama shots had rollover bits which actually told more about the clothes, it’d be perfect. as it is - they’re just cool images.

for you:
http://www.willpearson.co.uk/panoramic_photography/yungfuktoi/index.php

despite the fact that there’s at least 11 days left of photo taking opportunities in the year, TIME magazine have released their collection of what they reckon are the best photos in 2006. as always with these lists, the photos are dominated by images of war.. and while i find that kinda tedious to an extent, there’s no denying that the photos are great. all are worth a look.. it’ll take a few minutes out of your day and you’ll be completely enriched by it.

http://www.time.com/time/yip/2006/index.html

“anything the mind can conceive can now be brought to the screen!”

this promo vid thing is great.. i love the awfulness of early special effects on films like clash of the titans and sinbad etc.. it makes me feel all superior ha!.. i jest.. Ray Harryhausen is unfuckwitable.

really though, while modern day sfx are clearly much better and all realistic and cost tonnes of money blah blah blah, there’s still something wondrous about seeing a grown man fighting a bit of plasticine. as for the technique of filming from 40 feet away so that the actors look like they’ve been shrunken; genius!

more fun here:
a collection of Harryhausen classics
7th voyage of sinbad trailer
and my personal favourite - clash of the titans trailer.

the week just gone, ending december 17th 2006, produced the following chart:

1. Sage Francis
2. Girls Aloud
3. Atmosphere
4. Sean Price
5. J-Live

i listened to sage’s ‘road tested’ live album a lot last week.. i had to give my girlfriend a lift to the airport and sage francis is always good driving music. i kinda forget how good the live album is. super stuff. really does a good job at conveying the superness of his live show.

the girls aloud appearance here is, i’m ashamed to say, completely my own doing. their greatest hits album is poptastic. ’something kinda ooh’ is my shit. i’m going to see them live next year.
let us never talk of this again.

the final three are pretty much staples in my weekly listening..
atmosphere are my ‘overall top artists’ on last.fm, and the reason behind that is simply because they’re consistently quality. this week i was idling away with their back catalogue.. some singles and the lucy ford ep’s.

sean price’s ‘monkey barz’ and ‘all of the above’ by j-live are essential listening for any self respecting hip hop fan. both for different reasons.

blah.. i really will start doing more with this last.fm thing but not just yet.. all good things etc.. next week’s chart will decide my christmas number 1! how exciting

view my full last.fm profile to get an incredibly up-to-date representation of my musical tastes.. scpgt profile at last.fm

this video from Saturday Night Live, starring justin timberlake, is very funny.

it’s the dancing that gets me.

good stuff.

i’ve been meaning to do something with this little last.fm chart that i have on this site for a while now. (if you can’t see it, look in the bottom right corner of this screen. it’s quite clever, and i did it all myself. i’ll write about the process at some point.. ). it currently sits there and updates itself weekly, based on what i’ve been listening to, while also constantly updating things that i mark as ‘loved’. that’s it. sometimes however, the top 5 doesn’t really tell the whole story; so i thought i’d start occasionally writing about the music too. like now.

the week just gone, ending december 10th 2006, has produced the following chart:

1. DJ Shadow
2. Nas & Statik Selektah
3. PANIC! at the disco
4. Incubus
5. Nas

so i’ve been listening to dj shadow a lot, because you know how you always listen to an artist a lot more when you’re about to go and see/have recently seen them. in case you missed it, i saw shadow on thursday last week. he was very good. on the whole, i think that the private press is my favourite album from him.

i’ve also been listening to the new Nas & Statik Selektah mixtape (the prophecy 2) for the new nas album. i suppose i could’ve just got the full, proper album, but this mixtape is full of rarities and classic nas verses over other people’s beats. really enjoyable. worth a cop.

next up, Panic! at the disco. my guilty pleasure. i’ve seen them live twice this year and both times have been uber-enjoyable. much fun abound.

incubus, just out of curiosity i listened to their new album. i’m not a massive fan.

and finally, rounding up the top 5 with nas.. some other tracks off the new album. good shit.

i’ll probably make more of this feature in the future, but for now, thus concludes my wrap up.

view my full last.fm profile to get an incredibly up-to-date representation of my musical tastes.. scpgt profile at last.fm

last night, as part of my birthday festivities, i strolled down to the bournemouth international centre to catch dj shadow. he was supremely dope.

although i’ve not technically bought ‘the outsider’ yet, i think i can still safely class myself as a fan. when ‘endtroducing’ dropped, i was one of the many that jumped on the shadow bandwagon. i went out and got all the following singles (the cover of ’stem’ is still so dope to me), and i started looking for other quannum/solesides shit. blackalicious were the ones that most attracted me, but still, latryx and maroons had their role to play in my soundscape.

blah.. rambling.
my point is, dj shadow put me onto a gang of other artists which have provided me with years of enjoyment, and his own music has always been dope, so i was very excited about seeing him. he didn’t disappoint at all. played everything that you’d expect him to play, across a set that lasted the best part of 2 hours. really quality stuff. he brought out lateef for a couple of tracks (including ‘lady don’t tek no’ which was a blast from the past) and also got chris james up to sing his tracks off the new album (that’s chris james, the lead singer from ‘stateless‘ who were the support act and were actually pretty good).

fun times fun times. really enjoyed it.

as a brief sidenote before showing off my measly camera-phone pics, i feel obliged to say that i do like the new album. hyphy isn’t ordinarily my cup of tea, but a bit of e-40 and david banner (in small doses) isn’t a bad thing. also, the fact that it doesn’t really sound like endtroducing or the private press, is a very good thing. progression anyone? the reason i say that is because at the start of the show, he did this little biography spiel, and the crowd cheered at appropriate milestones. until he mentioned the release of the new lp, at which point people booed. he then made a little crack about people wanting him to constantly put out the same old shit, and people cheered. numpties. josh - if you’re reading this - pay no mind. onward and upward. in fact, quite unexpectedly, the moments when he played newer tracks, were probably my favourite bits of the set. dropping the track he did for cage amongst some endtroducing stuff killed it for me.. ill.

so yeah. look at some of my photos (there are some more on my flickr page). i really need to get a better camera.