Tuesday, November 20, 2007

November 07 update

Again, lots of things have happened since I last put blogging fingers to keys! Naomi and I are close to buying a house in Basingstoke (aka Amazingstoke, Basingjoke, Basinggrad), which is exciting - and we should be able to buy a nice house for our money there.

On top of that, I'm still loving my job even though it's busy and the late shifts wear me out. Incidentally, I'm posting this from N's iPhone.

[.... this post ended up being short, but I had lots of other things I'd intended to write, so thought I'd add them on now, while I have a bit more time to write]

edit - - so, by now we have actually had an offer accepted on this lovely place



The location is beautiful, and it's going to be a stretch affording it, but y'know, it's going to be great.

On top of that, there were 2 other things that I thought to myself that I must blog sometime.

1) that I had a conversation with Naomi where we were trying to think of who Jesus would consort with in the modern age (the equivalent of tax collectors, prostitutes etc). I suggested people who put wheelclamps on cars and those people who try to force you to take the free newspapers at rush hour in London.

2) It was raining so hard last night that it _rang_ our doorbell! Twice!

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Hella update

So much to write about. I got an admonishment from my good friend Richard Dixon, now in California, for failing to update my blog in months, though in my defence I've been sans ADSL at home since June, and I rarely find time to use the internet at work nowadays.

Enough excuses. Well, it's been a great few months. The big day was splendid, and really exceeded my expectations in every way. I've yet to update the ambroseandnaomi.co.uk site with pictures, audio recordings etc, but promise to do so as soon as we have broadband at home again. Yes, I know, another promise! Until then, there are lots of wedding pictures of Facebook, if you use that.

In other news, I'm really enjoying my new-ish job. There are lots of good people here, and the work interests me. Exactly what I've been looking for for a while. Things have become a bit complex for Naomi in terms of her department, but I'm sure they'll settle down in due course.

Lots of exciting things over the next few months, including starting to look for a house to buy. Promise I'll post again soon.

Friday, June 08, 2007

New Split 7 Inch

Collides with 7 inch

This is the first occasion on which I've felt inclined to post a picture in this blog for ages - actually, since I got locked out of my flickr account when Yahoo bought flickr and I had to create a Yahoo account to use it, which I promptly forgot!

Anyway, with a little fanfare, here's our new split with The Psyche Out Musikland Big Band. I'm really very pleased with how the record turned out, after a few hiccups and delays caused by the Czech pressing people the record itself came out really well, and Dave did a sterling job on the artwork. The Psyche Out song is absolutely brilliant - certainly the catchiest thing they've recorded yet with some impressively technical guitar playing.

The pressing is on heavyweight, and I mean, heavyweight vinyl. Each record is hand-numbered and has a slip inside so you can claim 320kpbs LAME-encoded mp3s of the same tracks. We're all about bridging that digital/analogue divide.

The idea is that this will be the first of a split 7 inch series, so we designed the packaging in such a way as to be extensible to additional releases by changing the colour scheme and the image on the front. There are a few bands who we've encountered in the last year who we'd love to put out on the label in our first non-Actions release, and let's face it, it'll be a lot easier to boast about how good something is once it's not (partly) our own music. Exciting plans ahead.

If you're interested in purchasing one of the 300 copies made, we're selling them for a mere for £3, so drop me an email to (firstname)dot(surname)@mac.com and we'll sort out paypal.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Did it

Good news to report. I've landed a job with a certain computer company of which I'm a lifelong devotee, and will be starting in 4 weeks. This also works out well, as it'll allow me to tie up various loose ends in my current job. I'm really looking forward to the new job, though!

What does complicate matters slightly is that the work will be in London, so Naomi and I are going to have to look into moving somewhere closer to London, so I can get in for those all-important early shifts. We're thinking of Guildford or Woking, as they offer the right commuting options in both the directions. We also have a decision to make as to whether we move my stuff/Naomi's stuff before or after the wedding in July! Still, these are trivial problems in the bigger picture.

Wedding arrangements are occupying an increasing amount of my time now, though Naomi has done a lot of the hard work already. That reminds me that I need to finish that wedding web site.

The main thing to report is that life's pretty good, and things are falling into place. We're also looking towards the next tour with Action and Action in the autumn. Get in.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Tick ... tick

Well, it's been a month since I last blogged. Slack.

Job-wise things are still up in the air. It's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, actually. I need to find the right thing, and I need to find it soon!

The tour was wonderful fun, and I think it'll be easier to organise the next one, now that I have the experience of having done it once. We're already talking to a couple of other bands in preparation. Psyche Out were tremendous on the tour, and constantly raised the bar on themselves. They're undoubtedly one of my favourite bands, and it was an absolute joy to hear them over the course of the 8 days. I think we were pretty good too. I think touring with a band you're friends with helps you to become resilient and pull off a decent performance wherever you are, and whatever the odds. That's what I had hoped for, and I think it worked out well. I'm not sure which was the best of the gigs overall, but I enjoyed the last night a lot, playing in the cramped basement of Law's house in Portsmouth. The noise abatement people wrote to him last week.

I've watched a few good films recently, too. Apart from missing Inland Empire when it was on in Southampton, Chris VS lent me his DVD of Pan's Labyrinthe, which I thought was solid, and I've also watched both of the Exorcist prequels (one of which was far more coherent and well-realised than the other).

There's lots going on for me at the moment in terms of the wedding, obviously. We ordered the designed our invitations last week, and ordered them today, and I'm also working on a simple iWeb site to answer any detailed questions people will have.

More news soon.

Friday, March 30, 2007

The realist pessimist / optimist debate

It's been a strange few weeks. I've had some job interviews (one of which I came tantilisingly close to getting), but I don't yet have anything on the table. Nevertheless, I'm trying to stay upbeat, and I have a few other ideas which I haven't fully explored yet. For obvious reasons there's not much point in going into detail on this topic.

I've also been keeping other plans in the air as part of this juggling act. The first ever Action and Action tour is going to happen with our friends The Psyche Out Musikland Big Band, from 9th - 16th April inclusive. This is now only 10 days or so away, so I'm quite excited that it's (mostly) come together as planned, through a lot of hard work and persistence. So far the tour goes:

Monday 9th April - SOUTHAMPTON, King Alfred's Pub
Tuesday 10th April - LEEDS, Joseph's Well
Wednesday 11th April - SLOUGH, Eco Bar
Thursday 12th April - LEWISHAM, The Fox and Firkin
Friday 13th April - ?
Saturday 14th April - HIGH WYCOMBE, The Roundabout
Sunday 15th April - ?
Monday 16th April - PORTSMOUTH, 10 Grove Road South

I'm hoping we'll get to play to some new people who may like the music we make. I'm equally happy to be able to hang out with my friends in both bands for what will amount to a short holiday, and I think it'll also help to establish a work ethic and resilience for our band in a live setting. The last gig we played was a let-down, so I'm determined that we become a leaner, more dependable machine.

Almost as exciting is that we have a new 7" record that's planned to come out to coincide with the tour, as a split release with Psyche Out. You can hear both of the songs at our respective Myspace pages, Action and Action here, and Psyche Out here. There have been a few headaches in the last few days as the test press came back from the Czech republic (where all of this stuff is done nowadays, presumably due to UK wage rates) with a problem on our side. Dave has been bothering them multiple times about it, so now we just have to pray that the final pressing happens quickly enough that we have it ready to sell on the tour itself. More stress.

Before any of that happens, I'm going back home to Cardiff (which I also did this week for the annual Cathedral Choir Easter concert at St David's Hall). I'll spend the latter part of Holy Week with my family, as I do every year, which will be a welcome break.

And then there are wedding arrangements to be made, as the big day looms closer. I'm supposed to be booking our hotel in Malcesine (Lake Garda, Italy) today, which will be an expensive phone call. Then I'm meeting Naomi after work to book the suit hire from Moss Bros.

The title of this post relates to the discussions I often have with people who are close to me about whether my views amount to realism or to pessimism. Whatever happens, the next month should be pretty eventful.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Is this the worst band of all time

There's a great Chris Morris radio clip from many years ago when he talked about how Sade was the epitome of the 'production' artist - i.e. no substance, no performance, all-studio.

Today, I came across this travesty which not only somehow encapsulates everything that's wrong with corporate rock (and I know I'm taking on a pretty easy target there), but everything that's so truly vacuous about young people of the age that spent their teens living vicariously through Myspace.

From the way their vocals are CONSTANTLY autotuned, to the preposterous Duran Duran-style hairdos, this band actually makes me feel a bit ill.

As I remarked to Jack and Mike M at the Make Believe gig last week, the kids are not alright.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Sickening crunch

I was just coming back from lunch at the little cafe in Winchester where Naomi and I often eat lunch (today, it was just me, as N was at a meeting) a few minutes ago, when an ambulance came hurtling up the hill of St George's Street with lights and sirens going. The problem is that St George's St is part of the one-way system, and when the ambulance reached the point next to Barclay's Bank, the cars were backed-up from the next set of traffic lights in two lanes.

So the ambulance driver decided that she could pass a Passat in front of her even though there was nowhere for the Passat to go, and there's a central reservation between lanes. She started blowing the ambulance horn, the Passat inched forward even though there wasn't really much further to go, and then she tried to go around it. Remember to picture the central reservation and the backed-up traffic. The ambulance impacted with the side of the Passat with the most hideous sound of tortured metal and plastic. Then the ambulance driver had to pull over so that she could share insurance details with the now-furious family in the car.

I'm left wondering about the fate of the injured person on the way to hospital - there was only one paramedic in the front of the ambulance, driving, so somebody must have been in the back with the patient.

Spare a thought.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Ack Ack Ack

Finally, there was a good gig in Winchester at the Railway this weekend. Alan came to mine for the weekend and we went to watch Ack Ack Ack (you can listen to themhere). We didn't know a great deal about them before going, except that Ash, the drummer from Charlottefield, is in the band, and they were therefore likely to be very good. They reminded me a bit of a jazzier Kill Yourself, with a combination of quite danceable grooves, dischordant guitar played using a slide (none of those sounds on the mp3 are keyboards, contrary to what I'd expected), and fuzzy vocals through a gas mask microphone. I'd highly recommend you check out their 12" if any of this sounds appealing.

In order to get to the point of the evening where we'd hear Ack Ack Ack, we'd already experienced the highly entertaining electronica of Gay Death Probe, and a truly awful hippy-ish shoegazer band The Limes. Still, it was worth it. When we got home, it was straight onto a steady diet of Newkie and Wii Sports.

I wrote Sunday off for any productivity, but am going to have to do those job applications I've been putting off tonight.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Il Neige

We had some snow this morning. I'd stayed over at the Clark household last night, and so experienced the picturesque sight of the fields surrounding Alresford covered in snow, as Naomi drove us to work.

The day became slightly less pleasant when I pulled my back mid-morning. I was only walking up the stairs after a meeting at a normal pace, but something suddenly twinged. It hasn't even gone away despite two Solpadeine Max (that were handily in my coat pocket), and the pain is now moving simultaneously up and down my spine. I guess this means I won't be going to tango class tomorrow night. Yes, you read that correctly. Naomi and I went to this for the first time last Thursday and it was quite good fun. It takes place in a room over Savannah (or 'Savannah's', as people tend to call it, much as they refer to 'Tesco's'). I think you could say I enjoyed it despite myself, and Naomi certainly had a good time too.

I spent the weekend with the other Actions in Oxford, recording a new song for our split 7" and tour with Psyche Out. I think it sounds pretty good, and it's certainly an interesting piece of music for us to do compared with what we've written over the last few months. It's in a much straighter punk/emo style than the more dancing, whimsical stuff we've been writing recently, and should be fun to play live. Reminds me a bit of Small Brown Bike actually, though we have got quite a gently sing-songy part to it too.

Will write more again soon.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

2007: The Future

You are now in the future.

Have been meaning to say sorry - my last post reads as more downbeat than it was meant to be. I'm pretty positive about life at the moment. I had a helluva cold over the Christmas period (when I spoke to DunCANE on the phone between Christmas and the New Year, he pointed out that this happens to me every year!), but still had a good time at home. I miss Cardiff when I'm away, truth be told.

I also picked up a bargainous 320 gig external USB2 hard drive from Staples which I ended up paying only £55 for, which pleased me greatly. That'll allow me to free up my existing 160 gig LaCie drive to be used to edit the video we shot while on tour in Mexico, which will be an enjoyable little project. Not sure which computer we'll do this on.

Oh yes - The Thick of It (Special) is on TV tonight (BBC4). Do not miss it.

I don't believe in 'New Year's Resolutions' as such, but I promise to blog more regularly this year. It's going to be a pretty special year, all in all.