PRINTAPALOOZA!

In order to celebrate the opening of my online shop, I will be offering a buy one get one free deal on all 9″ x 6″ prints ordered before the end of February. That’s right: the end of February!

In addition to this, I will shortly be adding some larger prints to the shop (12″ x 18″ or 30 x 45 cm.) If you order one of these, you can choose two other designs to have printed at 9″ x 6″, for free! That’s right: absolutely free. Just make sure to send me a message letting me know which designs you’d like, otherwise you will get a lucky dip.

As always, if you’d like to request a photograph from my flickr that’s not in the shop, send me a link and I’ll let you know whether it’s possible.

Thanks for your support!

Back to School

A grey song for those grey days.

The Temper Trap

Very exciting to see one of my photos in NME this week alongside one of Laura’s reviews. Below: the column, the magazine cover and the original photograph.

Copyright Leah Pritchard / NME / IPC Media

365 Albums

Here’s an extract from the first post on my new blog, 365 albums:

“So here’s my idea: an album a day for the next year. When I think about how much music I normally listen to — on an average day, about 7 or 8 albums — it seems like an easy task. The twist is that I want to listen to albums I’ve never listened to before. I’m going to go a bit easy on myself and allow albums I heard years ago or albums I’m mostly unfamiliar with, but I want it to be an album I can learn something from. Within each post, I’d like to be able to write a brief history of the band, the album, or the context of its release, thus allowing me to get something from the experience whether I enjoy the album or not.”

[review] Volcano Choir – Unmap (2009)

The songs that would eventually end up on Volcano Choir’s debut album started out as musical fragments exchanged between Justin Vernon and instrumental five-piece Collections of Colonies of Bees in 2005. Throughout Vernon’s rise to fame under the Bon Iver moniker, these exchanges continued, until the band Volcano Choir was finally conceived in 2008. ‘Unmap’, which is the result of this collaboration, is a series of dream-like compositions which juxtapose Vernon’s unmistakable vocal style against Collections of Colonies of Bees’ own brand of experimental folk music.

BEATLES REMASTERS!

I have never been much of a Beatles fan but things change and I am willing to let them. My mission: listen to all of the remastered albums by the end of next this week (I need a challenge). I feel like I’m Julie (of ‘Julie & Julia’ fame)

Albums down: 2

Albums remaining: 14

Days remaining: 4

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Update: Sunday 27 September, 15:14 PM

I may or may not have inadvertently listened to what I would consider the best albums first, which is making this challenge all the more… challenging. However, I will persist. 9 discs to go with 9 hours remaining. So far: impressed by A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Let It Be; indifferent towards Abbey Road, Beatles for Sale, Magical Mystery tour; a tiny bit averse to the first disc of their self-titled (/The White Album.)

Albums down: 7

Albums remaining: 9

Days remaining: 1

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Update: Sunday 27 September, 16:40 PM

A Beatles-induced headache is starting to take shape so I am taking a break with some Sleater-Kinney. The albums I listened to in the past couple of hours were Revolver (which I knew the best out of all of their albums) and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I have to say my opinion of Revolver remained the same and Sgt. Pepper’s failed to exceed my expectations in any way. Not saying my expectations weren’t pretty high, but I don’t see myself getting a Lennon and McCartney tattoo any time soon.

Albums down: 9

Albums remaining: 7

Hours remaining: 7

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Update: Monday 28 September, 10:03 PM

So it turns out I ended up playing scrabble last night and completely forgot about this. I’m certain I will finish off the last few albums before the end of this week though and write something a little more explanatory when I’m done. How disappointing.

Albums down: 9

Albums remaining: 7

Hours remaining: 0

Although We’ve Come to the End of the Road

Still I caaaaaan’t leeeeet gooooo. It’s unnatural. You belong to me. I belong to youuuuuuuu.

So the summer is finally coming to an end. It’s been a great one. I’ve had the pleasure of going to three festivals since August, in three different countries, finishing up in Dorset last weekend at End of the Road. Highlights were Dirty Projectors, Blitzen Trapper, Neko Case, Motel Motel and Efterklang, but I saw so many great bands it’s tough not to name them all. End of the Road in general is a dream festival in terms of size, setting and atmosphere and definitely wins best festival of the summer from me (best line-up still has to go to La Route du Rock though, I still can’t quite believe that happened.) In short, if you take any interest in the line-up next year, go!

Some of my favourite photos from the festival after the jump (full album here.)

Starting Over

My old blog decided to die when I attempted to edit the code again and I didn’t really fancy spending hours trying to find where I went wrong so I decided to cheat and hook myself up with WordPress. Here’s a song I recorded and posted shortly before it went down:

Lover’s Spit

I’m going to spend some time over the next few days trying to work out how to customise this and get all my links back up, and possibly upload the content from my old blog, but we’ll see how that goes.

I should really think of something to say about this but I can’t, so I’m just going to mention the fact that I am so psyched about the Pavement reunion. Yeah, everyone’s reuniting, blah blah blah… but none of them matter to me as much as this one. I am in disbelief. I feel like I’ve just been told that Elliott Smith never died.

SQUEE!