Big up for my cousin Jem who just came out of the studio where she sang and recorded 16 songs in front of video cameras to promote her talents on You Tube.
“It’s bluesy-smokey pop with a vocal that draws on the sensual laments of Dusty Springfield”
While her music is not a style I usually choose to listen to, her amazing voice is worth checking out and she’s not bad to look at either !
You can hear more of Jem’s music on her Myspace page Jem Cooke.
Blanched jerusalem artichoke and celeriac with toasted sour dough bread and pomegranate seeds, in a tahini and lemon juice dressing. So GOOD! Antother one of Yotam Ottonlenghi’s fantastic recipes in his The New Vegetarian column for the Guardian, which you can read following this link below. www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/dec/15/weekend7.weekend9
I’ve been cooking big field mushrooms like this for a long time now, since finding the recipe in Robert Carrier’s Great Dishes of the World cookbook. Its really easy: just saute the mushroom in a little olive oil with some chopped garlic and a sprinkling of marigold powder (veg stock). Then add a good glug of red wine and let that simmer down to a syrupy jus. To serve, add a squeeze of lemon juice, chopped chives and some freshly ground pepper.
Cripes I’m crap. This article was drafted yonks ago. For some reason I hesitated from publishing it… well Cibelle is still fantastic and still not got big enough a profile for my liking so here she is. Cibelle is one of the most underated artists out there, I know there are a lot of them, but this gig i went to, below, was f**king brilliant! And i just checked Cibelle’s website and she still doesn’t have the kind of size gigs I’d be hoping for her. Bardon’s Boudoir in April, tho’ there are plenty before that not in London. GO CHECK HER OUT!
Cibelle did a fantastic set at the Jungle Drums party last week. Its a shame so few people actually stopped talking to listen - they’d have discovered some real magic and we would’ve all been able to enjoy the music a lot better. But still, it was better than not seeing/hearing Cibelle live at all… her live set is really something special.
If you only know her albums you’ll be surprised at the experimental / electro / rock twist to her live sound, but it makes seeing her play so interesting and engaging. The live show is heavy on the electric guitar, which is coupled with the use of a sampler to effect, and set backing sounds with, her voice. The drums were an important player too, setting down some really great rhythms.
The time has finally come for me to write the obilgatory ‘about me’ page of my blog - I don’t know why it has taken me so long to do this… I guess for a long time I thought it would be obvious from my categories list what I’m interested in. I’m now a lot more web savvy and know that not having an about me page is a major faux pas, not to mention that it is the 2nd page I look for on every website I stumble upon.
So until I can be bothered to re-instate the default wordpress ‘about me’ area I’m posting it here.
All about me
I am a (count years from 1978 until today) years young female living in east London, UK. I’ve been blogging since 2003, though this website documents only my posts since 2005 (I was doing it by hand before then - don’t ask me why?). I was born and bred in London but before settling here as an adult I lived in Glasgow and Montreal for 3 years each. They are both absolutely fantastic cities that I wish I could live in both at the same time. Instead I’m in neither, so I miss many things, that perhaps I should post about separately.
Art
I am/was an artist (depending on my state of mind) who started designing websites for a living and now I do a lot more web work and spend a lot more time online than I do in the studio or at art galleries. Still, art is always of interest to me and I post about it whenever I see some art worth mentioning.
Music
I also like music - currently on a big electro-folk kick, but my Last.fm profile will give you a better picture, though it does lack the ability to feed in the music I listen to live or on CD only. That will be Leafcutter John, Martha Tilston and Mishka Adams - check these experimental-melancholic-electro, modern-folk and nu-jazz (respectively) stars out.
Food
I love to cook. Everyday. I agree with Nadine Abensur of Cranks, that there is something incredibly grounding about cooking, so that after a busy day at work it is the perfect segue into the evening, to spend some time preparing food. I’m also just into food porn of every kind, so from cookery books (with illustrations or not) to the local grocery store, I’m all over it. Actually, raw ingredients of any kind are gorgeous to me - jars of dried pulses and spices decorate my kitchen shelves and cupboards as a constant comfort and aesthetic pleasure.
I just have to sing the praises of this fantastic north London family bakers, Grodzinski. For a year I lived a short walk from this wonderful bakery’s Stamford Hill branch and I’m not sure I appreciated just how good it was, but now I’m a little further away in Lower Clapton I’ve started to make a point of cycling up there once a week.
My usual shop includes sesame seed bagels, a handful of doughnut balls and a big loaf of granary bread. I only just noticed that it has Hot Bread Shop written on the sign - I’m not quite sure if that is some confused translation of baking or what it means exactly, but it does add to the charm!
Fresh or toasted bagels are probably the best lunch ever, in my mind, and there are just so many different things to do with them. One of the more elaborate ways I like to eat them is toasted, spread with hummus, thin slices of feta cheese, lots of crispy fried onions and a good sprinkling of parsley. You might also throw a slice of tomato into the mix but this idea was quashed when we made them at home this week.
Find your nearest J Grodzinski and Daughters store!
I recently acquired a copy of a great cookbook called Chinese Regional Cooking by Deh-Ta Hsiung from 1979. I have been learning all sorts of interesting recipes and the methods and ingredients common in Chinese cooking. Coincidentally a new Chinese supermarket has opened up at the end of my road so I’m pretty sorted for ingredients. This dish is always a weakness of mine when ordering Chinese takeaway but I always find myself disappointed by the tiny amount of pork they put in there surrounded by tonnes of batter and in a too sweet/simply flavoured sauce. Turns out the sauce is quite simple to make and in terms of ingredients, but it tastes a whole lot better made at home and with proper sized portions of pork. I’ll post the recipe here later.
I just stumbled upon this brilliant article which is actually a presentation given by a designer at a green-design conference, but he’s included all his slides and videos in the page so it works nicely on his blog.
In this article he points to the massive responsibility designers have in terms of being ‘green’, Eg there is the obvious dilemma (for a print designer) that they make money designing stationary and brochures and the more they design the more money they make, when really we should be encouraging companies to go paperless and use email and websites instead (ha! that’s why I’m a web designer ).
But what is most fascinating about his article, aside from the wicked video animation of all the flight activity over the USA in a day, are the ideas he got out of air traffic controllers about how use of fuel and emissions might be reduced:
“Better airport signage = better retrieval of baggage = better turn around time for aircraft loading and unloading = more gates available through operating hours = more aircraft can be landed in a given time period = less aircraft time in the air waiting to land = less fuel wastage from circling aircraft.”
So designers can actually help make a massive difference, and reduce carbon emissions by designing better signage. Now that’s a little more significant than the impact a batch of compliments slips has on the planet don’t you think?
Now that I’ve got my camera back (from being temporarily lost to a friend of a friend’s car… oops!) I can post this photo of Alex’s stunning audio installation in Hackney’s St Augustine’s Tower. This is what you found after walking up the very tiny spiral staircase, accompanied by the sound of a D minor chord which seemed to chase up the staircase beside you and then disappear off, only to return again a little while later. There were speakers installed in the ceiling of the staircase, and in some of the side chambers along the way. The source of the sound was revealed at the very top, alongside the bell (which rang just as I got to the top - wow! that is LOUD), by a customised record player which was not playing a record but consisted of 72 copper plates which were each connected to a speaker somewhere in the tower, and each speaker played the chord as the revolving copper brush made contact with it. All this was hooked up to a synthesiser, with the D minor chord held down by tape. This art installation was not only perfectly suited to the site, but the sculptural/audio creating element was so carefully constructed and considered. What makes Alex Baker’s audio installation and sculpture work stand out, is that he gives the elements which create the sound as much attention as the audio itself, so the work is aesthetically pleasing to both the eye and the ear.
Watch/listen to a video clip of the artwork (mpeg - 40 seconds)
More photos of A Recurring Sequence of Events on my Flickr stream
More about Alex Baker’s art on his website
I seem to be only posting video these days… I’m not quite sure why except that I keep coming across good stuff! So what I suggest is that you watch this video while you have the Four Eyed Monsters video I posted about below/before loading in another tab. This Tunng video is wonderful and hilarious. The bundle of stuff floating through space somehow seems to sum up Tunng’s music, and the way it is animated to the sound fits perfectly. I love Becky’s leg movements sticking out of the planet of Tunng, in fact, all of the various Tunng members are sticking out of the planet in some way or another… brilliant! Best of Haines’ Tunng videos so far, I’d say.
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