Well over a year ago I went with a few friends to see Wild Palms at the Ruby Lounge in Manchester. This gig had come out of the fact that a good friend of mine's sister was involved with the guitarist - a good enough reason as any. Also, three members of the band had slept in my now-ex boyfriend and I's bed a few months prior while we'd been away and well, we felt somewhat entitled to see them for free.
While I enjoyed the gig, I don't think at the time, I realised how much a year later I would enjoy their debut album Until Spring. Touted as a 'Band to Watch in 2011' by the Sunday Times, they have enjoyed a good amount of success,although they are very mush so deserving of more.
'Delight in Temptation' is their first major release from Until Spring. Before it was even tipped as a single it was pretty clear that this was a standout track on the album. Catchy guitar riffs mesh well with a good layered beat, making this one of my must have tracks on any Summer '11 playlist.
As a Londoner through and through (SW14 represent!) I have spent a good deal of my life on public transport. As much as I always complain about trains breaking down and various signal failures, I still feel incredibly blessed to live in a city like London that has such a wide variety of transport to choose from. When I was at school it was all about Southwest train services in and out of Clapham Junction during the week, and trips around and about southwest London on the 33, 337, and occasional N10 buses on the weekends.
Today it is all about the underground.
I haven't spent this much time on the tubular since... well this time last year, but with an increased amount of time on the tube each day you begin to look at travel in a different way. In particular I've begun to look at the iconic underground map more closely. I think in recent years the map's artistic beauty, with its coloured straight lines, has taken over it's practical use as a guide of London, which it was never intended to be.
The people at London Tubemap have in light of this, taken it upon themselves to redraw the underground map as we know it.
The new map is a much more fluid approach to London's over and underground geography. And while is doesn't paint the travel zones that the traditional map does, I think it would make for a much better tool for London's tourists who often use the traditional map as a 'accurate' representation of the city.
Two perspectives:
What do you think? Should Transport for London consider a change to a new map with a more accurate representation of London's geography? Or should they keep the traditional map alive?
I've found that I'm a bit of a broken record, repeating apologies every week for having forgotten to post the previous week. I should probably stop playing Angry Birds and Cut the Rope on my commute and actually put some pen to paper or fingertips to touchscreen and write something.
I thought that being a student you were always busy having to write essays and read articles. Work life is twice as busy and working from 10 till 18:30 everyday leaves very little time for anything else, this includes cooking real food, cleaning, and having a social life during the week. I've also officially said goodbye to napping in the middle of the week.
Anyway, I digress.
At work, when I'm not actually staring at spreadsheets and mobile app-related sites, I do get to spend free moments looking for music. For the last 16 weeks I've been able to compile these tracks onto Spotify, however tracks 16 and 17 are pretty special and can only (for the time being) be found on Youtube.
Both tracks are by a new band I've discovered called Young the Giant. Recently they've been getting good press as a 'one to watch' and I have been. Their eponymous album is a great summer listener and I suggest 'Every Little Thing' and '12 Fingers' as great tracks. However for the Mixtape I have chosen a Two Door Cinema Club remix of their single 'My Body'. Mixing the best of both bands, this is a really good blend of what each band does well.
16/52
Young the Giant - My Body (Two Door Cinema Club Remix)
While I don't follow the hype that surrounds the voice that is Adele, I do think that 'Rolling in the Deep' is a tune and a half. I also think that this Young the Giant cover is something super special and one of the better covers of this song I have heard.
I might have been a little worse for wear yesterday. Sunday was a wino-fulled, overly sunny, declarations of love to the sons of old family friends kind of mess of a day. Hence no post AGAIN on a MONDAY. I realise that there is little point in calling it the Monday Mixtape if I am going to forget every week to do it on a Monday.... but hey now, it'll happen one day.
Johnny Flynn is pretty cool. Still not an artist I know a lot about, but this is great song with certain lyrics which might have been applicable to the situation this weekend. I wish I had time to write more, but I am still working through my embarrassment of Sunday afternoon.
I write this post from an Android handset. As trying new things has extended from my personal life (leaving university, living on my own etc), to my work life as well. I shall explain:
Three weeks ago I started a job as a marketing assistant at an interactive media production company that also have a smaller sister company that makes mobile phone applications. I work primarily for this sister company. My previous experience in marketing was at a music label where I did a digital marketing internship last summer. The world of mobile phone apps it seems is a different beast altogether.
While my main interest when it comes to marketing is music, I was not going to pass up a good opportunity to have a job in which I could learn in and develop my marketing skills. But mobile apps is something that I'm definitely still learning more about everyday.
While I can't say that I'm unbiased towards our apps, as a user of them for the first time on my first day of work, I felt that as a user I really did enjoy playing the game app Nano Panda that the company developed. It works on a similar format to other popular game apps, but it has pandas and atoms (did somebody say awesome?!)
While I'm definitely not trying to sell you anything, if you get a chance, try out the free version, it is genuinely a lot of fun.
Aside from playing and marketing the game, I've also learned a lot about how apps (of both the mobile and online (i.e on Facebook) variety) work. Today I spent the day in a studio listening to and providing help for a voice artist in making demo sounds for an internal project. These sounds will then be passed to animators so that the actions of the character match the correct sound. Sounds simple, but the work that these people do to make these apps exciting and innovative is incredible. I feel like I need to do their work justice when it comes to the marketing in order to make everything "worthwhile".
With most jobs like this there comes a perk and this one is no different. My company phone has not only helped me understand mobile apps and phone technology, but weirdly is also helping me with my depth perception issues.
Double win?
I used to be quite closed minded about new technologies: mp3 players, blu-ray, touch screens.etc. but I really think I'm beginning to embrace these things (except maybe blu-ray, I still fail to see the point when DVD players still exist).The fact that I can write this post in a 'Blogger' app proves to me that this type of technology really is the future and that the innovative minds that I work with are going to the ones that take us there.
I hope that having exams, going to interviews, and starting a new job are sufficient excuses for being relatively silent over the last few weeks. Needless to say, I am super tired when I get home from work (hello commute). However, I have been thinking about awesome tracks to put up in the time away and have a few for your listening and visual pleasure now.
There is no denying that songs have stories: whether it's a story within the lyrics that evoke emotion or if it's something that you - the listener - have experienced that the song conveys well. It could also just be a moment in time that you remember well because you were listening to a song that will now forever be remembered because of what was happening in your life.
This first song is not only amazing in its own right - just listen to that main riff in the melody - but I will probably always remember my last trip home from Manchester, you know 'the trip', the last time you'll be a student trip when you say goodbye to your housemates, not knowing when all of you will be together in the same place again. It was the end of an era and I'll always remember Friendly Fires 'In the Hospital' playing as I was driven down the M6 towards London with one of my housemates. Unfortunately I do not have a photo of the unique setup that the van required for us to get home (let's just say it was a two seater van and I was in the back sat on a deskchair between a bicycle and the door).
12/52
Friendly Fires - In the Hospital
The next track is a bit more 'I just like this band/song' of me.
Looking through my albums you might notice that I like a number of bands with the word 'club' in their names: Two Door Cinema Club, Bombay Bicycle Club, and Tokyo Police Club are definitely a threesome that express this. Weirdly, TDCC and TPC have actually toured together; I can only imagine the billboards advertising that might have been a bit of a mouthful to read.
Tokyo Police Club are from Canada and released an impressive second album Elephant Shell. I'm still working through the third one Champ and have yet to determine if I like it as much as the second (the album that increased their visibility). Anyway, 'Tessellate' is from Elephant Shell and is a good example of their sound.
13/52
Tokyo Police Club - Tessellate
This week I discovered turntable.fm, you need to have friends on Facebook that are already registered in order to gain access (an air of exclusivity perhaps... nah, just pretentious). However, it is an amazing amount of fun. I think I wasted 20 minutes of my lunch hour playing on it. I decided to go where most of my friends were which was Katy Simpson's 'Pop Etc.' room. I know Katy from my student radio days (which let's face it, were the other week), and I played a few rounds. You can vote whether you like the song or not and if your song is terrible you get booted off the virtual decks.
So in honour of the awesomeness that was turntable.fm I have added one of Katy's picks, '3 Little Words' by Frankmusik to the mixtape. It is a slight departure from my usual set, but hey it's about 'trying new things'.
Today I was offered my first 'real' job as a marketing assistant in an interactive media company. I start next week and I'm very much so looking forward to this new step in my life. As I was getting the tube to the interview (hello long commute across London), a track popped up on my mp3 player that reminded me that even if this opportunity didn't work out for me, everything would eventually fall into place, much like it did with university three years ago (that was an ordeal if I ever saw one).
So for all my friends that are currently panicking about finding jobs/internships, or for those that are just trying to figure out life. It's going to be ok and you will eventually find yourself doing what your supposed to be doing, it might just take a bit of time.
