30/05/2007

what's in a blog?

the internet is a wonderful, bizarre, self-referential place.

look at this.

i won't say 'i told you so'! :)

better start uploading that new format.

Cascading Style

It is frustrating me that i can't find an easy way to override individual post CSS. So any formatting that has been inserted to individual posts can only be changed by editing that post. Grrr.

28/05/2007

the words

tape noise

listen, it's in the details

this is the new thing

falling out or falling in
i'm not really ready but i'm jumping in
and the way ahead is very long
and the night is dark and your will is strong
which are worse - the punches or the lies
or the years together now denied?
"and every prediction is coming true
and every prediction points to you"

i can feel the bones beneath my skin
every one is digging in
don't desert me once again
where are you my only friend?
"and every prediction is coming true
and every prediction points to you"

the sun sets on the age of the instrumentalist

"sound machinery de-skills and de-physicalises music, allowing thinking and hearing precedence over gymnastics. practising is no longer necessary." (attributed to kraftwerk, paraphrased by kodwo eshun)

requited love

do you still the scars on my face? do they bother you at all?
do you still hear the tantrums in my voice? will you reach down when i fall?
do you still see the wrinkles on my heart? do they bother you at all?
do you still recognise the selfishness in me? will you reach down when i fall?

'cause when you look at me
and see what's really there
when you look at me
and place yourself there
your love is requited

do you still feel the sweat on my back? does it bother you at all?
do you still feel my wanderlust? will you reach down when i fall?

blending the edges

see the tree growing on top of the dusty hill
drive around here for hours it's all the same
pray all you like for rain but your missing the point
if the roots are deep enough the sheep will sit in the shade

i'll never do it again
i promise i'll never do it again

gloria - the life's already there

listening in for static

i've never been hardcore, i've never been true to my roots
i've never been hardcore, i've never been true to my roots
so look into the future, baby and listen to the future, baby
look into the future, baby and listen to the future, baby

we float around these days and never really enter in
we twist the meanings of useless words that would otherwise mean nothing
so look into the future, baby and listen to the future, baby
look into the future, baby and listen to the future, baby

i've never been hardcore, i've never been true to my roots
i've bastardised every piece of music i've heard
and just strung together every little shard of culture
don't break my fall
i always wanted to know that feeling
don't break my fall
i always wanted to know that feeling

++++++++++++++++++

the rest of the lyrics are yours and cell's.

i have perfect faith that whatever you decide to put up will be excellent for the website. (it's just the timeframe that worries me :) ) i think it would be fine to post it up in a formative state and then let it grow and develop over time. i don't think it needs to be worked out and complete to start - give it scope to continually evolve, even after the album and everything is finished. i still think you should not worry about having to fit any of the existing content into the new site - if there's things you would like to include, that's fine, but don't worry about making it fit if it doesn't naturally - we've got plenty of places to put traditional content.





love, hate, good and evil... which is which?

I’ve been thinking about the new website. And I really like the idea of structuring it more closely to the album. So under the overall framework – ‘I saw this and thought of you’ – a series of graphics and text linked to the songs on the album. Using lyrics etc. We could still include other photos of gigs etc. I’d like to design this also with the album artwork in mind – so the experience of listening, holding and looking is tightly linked. I’m not suggesting throwing out the current sketches – that’s still a structure and aesthetic i’m keen on. If you like this idea – could you send through the current lyrics you have – so I can start putting together some design sketches.

Also – I need to talk to you about possible construction of the TMN package so I can develop a more functional design sketch.

Ps – I hate having a day job

25/05/2007

in my head

i think it's already the title of the album in my head. it fits with what i think the album is mostly lyrically based on - cautionary tales of an odd sort, directed at people who are not me.


do you know how to shift the title bar in the css for this page so that it sits right across the top, instead of starting justified with the text a third of the way in? i think the title image is going to go off to the side once anyone starts looking at it on a smaller screen.

Growing without pains

I have to say - the title "I saw this and thought of you" is really sitting well with me as a title. I find it to be quite rich with emotional resonance for me. what do you think?

24/05/2007

22/05/2007

not quite quicklier

i think the fact that this blog is mostly housekeeping is precisely what could set it apart from other blogs and make it interesting. the idea that people can see the process we go through in making decisions. i could be wrong, of course, but i like the fact that it's a different idea to other blogs. and there's other places for us to air opinions about the world etc (allb, etc).

my opinions on the different sites:
www.telafonica.com - a visual site where you (and me, i suppose) are free to place art/design/anything without concern for necessarily presenting lots of information. it's telafonica's aesthetic place.
www.myspace.com/telafonica www.virb.com/telafonica - this is where we can make announcements, list gigs, list discography etc etc. they're the info sites for telafonica. i'm keen to get virb happening because it is much nicer, but at this stage, myspace needs to be kept up as well because that's where people actually are and actually look at the moment. i'm happy to look after all the content stuff. if you want to play with them aesthetically, feel free, especially in terms of linking them visually to telafonica.com
www.telafonica.blogspot.com - the housekeeping. but also letting people on to the 'inside' and seeing this exact process. as i said, i think that's an interesting enough idea. and there's no harm making it public and have no-one see it. but there might be the odd person who would be interested. again, aesthetics can be edited to match, but aren't particularly the focus.

i don't mind at all that it's spread out over these things. everyone expects that these days anyway, and as long as they all link to each other, it's no different to separate pages on a single website, except this way, people's expectations of what kind of thing you'd get at each site are met at those sites.

21/05/2007

Just quickly

Oh, I've just sent an email to you with a design for JLN. It's not A3, but I could very easily do a scaled up version. Feel free to give feedback that involves adjustments to the design... as long as we have time!

These deadlines sound good, though I wonder if there will be time in there to actually prepare for the show.

In terms of getting a blog public... do you think this blog as it currently stands would be the kind of thing that is interesting? It seems like a lot of it is just housekeeping! I'd like to have a conversation with you about content for the new site - what will we put on the flash site, what will we leave to myspace (or maybe virb)... and what ongoing content would you like to upload in a blog like format. In the meantime, i will proceed with uploading a simple (at least in terms of content) version of the new site - as well as tweaking the CSS of this blog so it's nicer.

Also - I've changed your permissions to admin. Congratulations. Feel free to play around.

don't talk so loud

i've put us down for july at just like now. unfortunately, o||o will be out of the country, so who would we like to ask to play with us?

some deadlines - now we're talking! :) what if we aimed to have a remix e.p. ready for the july show? it's only two months off, but i think it's do-able. if i send out word in the next few days and ask for the remixes back in say 4 weeks, it will give us enough time to put it all together. we will need to get some artwork, of course.

by that time i think we could also have the album recorded and ready to master. i think if we get ant to master it it would be good. i've been listening to a few things he's mastered and it's done very well. so - an album recorded by july 14?

website - any day you're ready! i'd also like to get the blog public, which will involve whatever aesthetic alterations you'd like to happen, or pulling it across to another blogsite etc. i'd also love to have some access to settings etc, which i don't currently have - if you could change that that would be great. p.s. did you see my review on cyclic defrost? another blog for me to contribute to!

if you could get the jln thing to me in the next couple of days, that would be excellent. i'm thinking vaguely a3 in size. i've also got a couple of sketches from phil for tmn thing - quite nice shifts on their logo which i think you will like a lot and which leave a lot of scope to be played with. i also have a packaging format i'm quite keen to use - it's basically 2 strips of 4 cd sized panels which you can origami together to make a nice package. impossible to describe how the package works, i'll need to show it to you physically, but basically you have the front and back of two strips of 4 panels each - so 16 cd sized panels in 4 strips.

and now i shall go back to trying to express myself without exclamation marks.

Trains on rails. Troops on timetables.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to write this post. I actually had a couple of attempts last week which were scrapped because I had nothing interesting to say other than to agree to your questions. Not sure if you got the message through celli… Can we do july JLN?

I agree about the remixing – it makes a lot more sense to trade remixes with people who are interested rather than pay someone who is indifferent. I like your list… I will try to add a couple. If you asked Caribou – why not Four Tet!?

In terms of getting things on track I’m wondering if we need to set some dates down as deadlines. I’m not sure what you’re thinking, but I guess it would be nice to have an idea of when we’re thinking we want to finish recording / do artwork / complete the web stuff / master etc etc. That way we can hold ourselves and each other accountable with specifics rather than just a general feeling of – oh I wish this was done by now!

I got a bit involved with finishing off some freelance stuff in the last week or 2 so the website went on hold – but fear not, it won’t be long. I’ve been pretty much focussed solely on the website stuff and haven’t really thought about the music other than in feedback to you. Sorry you still don’t have those last files. How did you go getting that guitar sound into Listening in for Static?

PS – I should have some initial design stuff for you to look at tonight for JLN flyer and maybe TMN. I was thinking it might be nice to do something for JLN as merch – or just a flyer, something that promotes the event as an on going thing to get people thinking about coming to the next one. Thoughts?

13/05/2007

moving right along

o.k. i feel it time to get things moving along again!

when are we going to play at just like now? july? ausgust? we will get paid this time, if nothing else. but we can ask anyone we like to play as well, as the payment thing means they're more likely to say yes. so we can use it as a first step to setting up the kind of line-ups we'd like to be part of. should we ask o||o if they'd like to do it with us? or someone else?

marcella is coming over on tuesday to do some singing, so i'll hopefully be in a position to start sending stuff out for possible remixing then. my thoughts are that we should just go with people who are basically willing to do it for free, and offer to remix exchange with them. there are enough really good people at our level who i think will do a good job, and get a variety of stuff out of it to make for some interesting possible releases. here's a list of folk i am planning on asking, add any you would like:

lipstick/sunstroke millitia
andy rantzen
tim koch
electrofetish
broken chip
legs eleven
killa leaf
ollo
faux pas
elika
greater explosives
victor x-ray
caribou/manitoba (o.k. this one was just a dream, but i actually sent him an e-mail and he replied with a very nice e-mail saying he didn't have time to remix other people, but thanking us for asking! sometimes you are pleasantly surprised to find that people whose work you really like are actually nice, considerate people - i mean, would you bother replying to some unknowns from the other side of the world if you were in his position? well, actually, i hope i would, which is exactly the point, but he did, so he's gone up even further in my esteem!)

ummm, that's all i can think of for now.

i will get to you later this week with some music updates. any website updates yet?

10/05/2007

any advances on any of the websites?

04/05/2007

Listening in for plastic

I will have a play with virb. I noticed that we can pipe in (note the Zissou reference) external blogs and Flickr streams. I kind of like the idea of being an anti myspace evangelical leader!

I love the idea of a book or zine expanding the scope of visual output attached to the album. I’m 100% behind that concept.

Combining digital and hand printed / drawn / painted stuff is something I’ve been very interested in for a while now. This is kind of the idea I had in my head when I suggested printing all the text on the case and then hand making images. I will try to collate some stuff we can print out and experiment with. My friend was telling me about some stuff he’s done using those inkjet t-shirt image transfers – but sticking on other surfaces like paper, wood etc. I think this could work really well.

I think it would be interesting to apply for a grant for telafonica – though I wonder what filter it would place on the way people interpret whatever we do. What kind of thing have you got in mind?

Update on new site and blog re-design:

I’ve been talking to the boys at work about different options for customising the blog. I quite like the idea of creating a second column for smaller link posts – where you may not have anything to say, just want to point out a site. This happens to me a lot. Also – I got some advice on how to make the site work so that the images scale with the browser, but the menu / other content stays at a fixed size. I think this will be a lot nicer for the text content. I’ve been slightly slowed down this week because I have a freelance project I need to finish – but hoping to have things live V. soon.

I will try to get a whole bunch of telafonica images up on flickr.

03/05/2007

a doing word

http://virb.com/telafonica . why not - can't hurt. i'll send the log-in details and you can go and get busy on it.

what do you think of the idea of creating a zine as part of the packaging for the new album? i also thought of the idea of actually getting some of the computer stuff you are working with printed up properly, then screening and hand painting/drawing stuff over that for the artwork for the album.

also, are you interested in applying for an ozco grant for telafonica? the next cutoff is in june. if we propose something great, they might go for it.

01/05/2007

chicken dance


yes - that's much better, david.

what do you mean, 'teacher tone'?? i only have one tone!


sorry - yep - i like the new version. having those shapes move around as an overlay almost feels like the viewer gets to 'remix' the site in real time, doing their own photoshopping. i really like the image of all our feet. when can i get a cd of all those photos i don't have?! i like the pattern that's currently there, but also like the idea of that changing regularly, but always fitting in to whatever the aesthetic of the whole thing is?


is there an aesthetic for it in your mind at the moment that will grow into other areas? obviously there is the rephotographed photo thing happening - is that something you imagine developing?

i have to say, i'm not really sure about the technicalities of the various blog formats. i am more than willing to learn, but i think at this stage you've got the headstart and i'm very happy to let you make the choice (as long as it doesn't take 3 months :p).
i feel like things have started and are at a point where they can start heading out into the world.

head over here and have a look at the download figure. archive.org has updated their system so that now anytime the tracks are played via any link anywhere on the web it is recorded - before it only recorded direct downloads from that specific page. so the numbers have skyrocketed in the last week for the most recent releases - i'm guessing because there's probably links to them that are still active on different blogs around the net. older releases haven't seen the figures skyrocket. a bizarre place this internet - you could never dream of those kinds of figures in an actual release - even in terms of just listens. imagine if we sold 100 copies of a cd - each person would have to listen to it 16 times just to get up there - which i seriously doubt would happen in the 5 months it's been up.