25 July 2009

Black Box Recorder (Queen Elizabeth Hall) 23/07/09

Setlist:
It's Only The End Of The World
Brutality
Girl Singing In The Wreckage
English Motorway System
British Racing Green
Hated Sunday
Wonderful Life
Facts Of Life
Factory Radio
Straight Life
Child Psychology
Start As You Mean To Go On
I C One Female
Do You Believe In God?
Keep It In The Family
The Art Of Driving
England Made Me

Encore:
Ideal Home
The New Diana
Goodnight Kiss
When Britain Refused To Sing
I Ran All The Way Home

Second encore:
Lord Lucan Is Missing

23 July 2009

Clint Mansell and the Sonus Quartet (Union Chapel) 20/07/09

What an incredible gig this was. Clint Mansell, with an exquisite band, performing his transcendental scores in an intimate chapel, before a rapturous and receptive crowd of music and film lovers. And as if that wasn't enough, film-maker Darren Aronofsky turned up to introduce the evening!

Some great highlights, but Requiem's "Meltdown" was a hair-raising, heart-quickening tour de force, and easily my pick for best of the evening, despite other songs being my personal favourites...

Setlist:

Pour l'amour de la mere
Beginnings
England's Dreaming
Stay With Me (from The Fountain)
Death is the Road to Awe (from The Fountain)
Together We Will Live Forever (from The Fountain)
I Can Feel You Slipping Away
Welcome to Lunar Industries (from Moon)
Sacrifice (from Moon)
Welcome to Lunar Industries (Three Year Stretch...) (from Moon)
The Ten Commandments
The Beginning of the End / Meltdown (from Requiem for a Dream)
Lux Aeterna (from Requiem for a Dream)
2πr (from π)
Medley (from The Wrestler)

Random picture 5

Surprised Anna with a little trip to the Shoreditch Festival, thinking we could eat some nice 'world food' and listen to some bands, etc. In the end, the biggest draw was the dog show (winner pictured above) which we spent a few hours watching...

17 July 2009

Spitalfields City Farm and Brick Lane

For the poor folk who grow up in the London metropolis and never get a chance to visit the countryside, there's the delightful "City Farm". They're a little moth-eaten, certainly, but there are lots of nice animals like pigs, horses, goats, chickens, and even guinea pigs!

Since we don't have any pets, this was a nice opportunity for us to recharge our animal batteries. Afterwards we walked back into Spitalfields for a bagel, passing the shoe tree...

Lots of local graffiti...
And an interesting piece of performance art in one of the many Brick Lane art galleries (a man wearing watermelons)...


Nine Inch Nails / Mew / Jane's Addiction (The O2) 15/07/09


That's not the order they played in, but it's the order in which I love them! Poor, wonderful Mew only got a 20 minute or so set, but they sure made the most of it - throwing out some awesome new tracks, and great versions of old favourites.

Mew setlist:
New Terrain
Introducing Palace Players
Repeaterbeater
Special
The Zookeeper's Boy
Am I Wry? No
156

Jane's Addiction setlist:
Three Days
Whores
Ain’t No Right
Then She Did…
Mountain Song
Been Caught Stealing
Ted, Just Admit It
Oceansize
Stop!
Jane Says

Nine Inch Nails setlist:
Now I’m Nothing
Terrible Lie
1,000,000
Heresy
March Of The Pigs
Reptile
The Becoming
I’m Afraid Of Americans [David Bowie cover]
Burn
Gave Up
La Mer
The Fragile
Non Entity
The Big Come Down
The Downward Spiral
Wish
Survivalism
Down In It
Metal [Gary Numan cover] with Gary Numan
Cars [Gary Numan cover] with Gary Numan
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Hurt

10 July 2009

Enjoying the heat

Well, we were the last couple of weeks anyway. This week has been thunder, lightning and even a few seconds of hail.

06 July 2009

June round-up

It's all becoming a blur since I started doing video commissions for the Babelgum website. I work all day at Yahoo!, and either go out and film afterwards, or come home and edit into the wee hours. This process has so far yielded two videos, one about The Great Cake Escape, and another about the London Street Pianos (Anna has a cameo in this one).

In between, I saw an interview with Nick Cave (of the Bad Seeds) at the BFI; completely forgot about and missed an interview with the cast of Torchwood (though I did catch a glimpse of the exquisite Eve Myles afterwards...); attended an interview with author A.S.Byatt at The Guardian headquarters, in which she spoke about Possession, her Booker prize-winning masterpiece, plus I spoke to her afterwards and got her signature on a first edition copy of The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye; submitted my film Cut-out to the London and Venice film fests; dressed up my friend Darren in a Mozart outfit and wandered around City of London at night to play the piano outside outside the Royal Exchange buildings; Anna and I visited The Southerner, a Speights pub near the Royal Courts of Justice that was set up as part of last year's promotion (there was a whole pub shipped from New Zealand by sea, alas this is not it as the Council shut down the original); went to the original Twinings shop on The Strand, opened in 1706 and now the oldest trading premises in the City of Westminster, and bought some Irish Breakfast tea; and last night Anna and I attended a dress up party to celebrate July 4th - US Independence Day...

Update: Just met director Mike Figgis! I was down in Trafalgar Square to film the opening of the new artwork for the "Fourth Plinth", and he was there filming too. Neat! Also filmed Mayor Boris Johnson and artist Anthony Gormley.

Tracy Chapman (The Roundhouse) 25/06/09

Setlist:
America
Sing For You
Baby Can I Hold You
Something To See
Say Hallelujah
Smoke and Ashes
Another Sun
Save Us All
Lovesong
I Did It All
The Promise > Save a Place for Me
Fast Car
Our Bright Future
Telling Stories
Give Me One Reason
Talkin’ Bout A Revoloution

Encore:
She’s Got Her Ticket
Behind The Wall
Subcity