E.P. First Teaser Released

THE PHYLUM FEAST

With the E.P. only a few weeks from completion, we've released a short teaser track giving a glimpse as to the kind of vibe to expect. Should be pretty groovy.

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Also, here's a video of me butchering a couple of the songs

New Phylum Feast material soon to come...

Before I jet off to Hong Kong for the next few months, I'm attempting to record a rough EP for Phylum Feast. Here's a taster of the kind of stuff you can expect to hear

Holi

 

Field Music, 'Plumb'

The opening is more than faintly reminiscent of Pet Sounds’ playful use of sound and instrumentation, with bells glistening and a piano playing softly before Wilson’s shadow falls on the music with the introduction of the cello and violins. This track Start The Day Right begins the album’s obsession of the real and surreal. The cover is an illustration of a petrol station fading into a real image of trees with the occasional cut-out cast of a man with a shopping bag or post box, before the lines of the picture drift into an expansive lilac sky. Field Music’s catalogue is one frequently commenting on the every-day (Sorry Again, Mate) and the unsaid (Choosing Sides) but juxtaposed with lush instrumentation and sympathetic harmonies that give what would be bleak or mundane situations an almost cinematic gloss.  Dreams and nostalgia are prominent themes in ‘Plumb’, especially with the faded romance of From Hide and Seek to Heartache or the touching eulogy of So Long Then, and the band never fail to remain poignant and understated, making this a remarkably touching as well as enjoyable album.

Musically speaking, the album does not leave you wanting. 2010’s ‘Measure’ was a musical feast: a twenty-track double album of riff heavy pop-prog nuggets. I wondered how well Field Music would fare after having invested so much material in their previous album, it isn’t so hard to believe that their inspirational well may have dried. Whilst ‘Plumb’ isn’t short of riffs, it shows an evolution that has been taking place in their albums. Songs like Give it Lose it Take it, from ‘Tones of Town’, became more intricately linked in ‘Measure’, with tuneful lament Precious Plans fading thoughtfully in before their sonically experimental See You Later. ‘Plumb’ is an experience as a whole. There are definite singles - (I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing, Is This The Picture – but unlike the previous album, many of the tracks demand the context of their forbearers. How Many More Times? and Ce Soir are as fundamental to one another as coffee and cigarettes. This is far from a bad thing. The album is less segmented but somehow more succinct, punchier at times but overall an experience through genre and sound, paying homage in kind to the Beach Boys, ELO and Pink Floyd – still remaining contemporary and progressive.

The album may not be to everyone’s taste: Field Music are not ones to dumb down their songs and the shifts in tempo and atmosphere are quick and many. However, with their fourth album the Brewis brothers have managed to make an intellectual and dramatic album, with wide sweeps into dream-like happiness and crushing English modesty.

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Download their track (I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing free here.

New Recipe: Batatas Martinez

This is a dish I invented a few days ago.

If you like food that is light, sweet, spicy, and compliments your liquor then you won’t be disappointed. 

It’s cheap, simple and relatively healthy.  

Cooking/Preparation time 15-20 mins.

Ingredients (serves two)

• ½ jar of chilli spiced Green Olives
• 4 medium closed cup Mushrooms
• 2-4 large Sweet Potatoes
• 1 can of Chopped Tomatoes
• 1 shot of Gin

Wash and chop the sweet potatoes into strips, lightly sprinkle with paprika, and microwave for 9-10 minutes. Microwave cooking will draw some of the moisture out of the potatoes, allowing them to become more crispy later.

Thinly slice the mushrooms and lightly fry with chopped olives in a small amount of their own oil. Here I opt to add a teaspoon of ground coriander  and a shot of gin whilst frying. After a few minutes, turn off the heat and remove the mushrooms and olives from the pan.

Once the sweet potatoes have been microwaved, put them in the frying pan with a tablespoon of the spiced olive oil (from the jar), adding more paprika and ground coriander to taste.

Allow the potato strips to get crispy. Don’t worry if they become lightly burnt, the potato remains sweet and the blackened crispy areas add a smoky flavour to the dish. Once they’re done, replace the olives and mushrooms in the pan and add the chopped tomatoes. Stir until everything is equally mixed and the tomato sauce has heated up.

Garnish with a dry Martini. Bliss.

Film Photography: a euglogy

With the news of the near death of Eastman Kodak last month, it looks like photographic film is on its last legs. Kodak were responsible for a great many industry developments in photography, not least giving the freedom of cheap, personal photography to the consumer. The Kodak story is both important and fascinating, you can see a pictoral representation here, but I extrapolate to consider the mortality of film as a whole.

Young Hipsters live for the moment with a broken fire hydrant during a block-party in Bushwick, Brooklyn

Pixel vs. Grain

This is one of the key debates in the question of film: which is of a higher quality and which is more appealing. Digital cameras are indisputably more powerful in their range of ISO (allowing them to take better pictures in the dark), more adaptable, lending their images far more easily to modulation, and more economic. The latter is one of the most effective arguments for consumers, who feel liberated by their option to take as many photos as they desire without having to pay for the development of unsuccessful shots.

A photo of my father, taken in Yosemite National Park by my mother

What film does have that digital can never imitate is the grain, or the small particles of silver on the negative. The digital pixel forms a square of colour representing what it has detected, whereas film grain is caused by the chemical reaction of the reflected light bouncing off your subject and onto the negative strip. As grain is miniscule and randomly aligned it can often appear more natural and visually pleasing. Whilst a photo can be dismissed as ‘grainy’, it will still be far more aesthetically satisfying than an image that is ‘pixelated’.

It is hard to argue that photographic film is of a better quality than the digital image, given the great many pixels that cameras are capable of using nowadays, but high definition digital images are often distorted if not viewed at their original, large format, often having to be downgraded. This is rarely the case with film, as the grains are interwoven and affect each other to the extent that, viewed at many different sizes, the image looks natural.

LOMO

Timing is everything: I shoot Jack's kick-flip

The Lomography company are at the forefront of the toy camera fad. Inspired in the 1990s by cheap Russian point-and-shoot cameras, their company now has branches in most major cities and have an impressive catalogue of quirky and kitsch cameras offering a range of analogue effects. Their love for Lo-Fi photography has been fully embraced by hipster culture, with many of their products available in that trendy staple Urban Outfitters. It is probably thanks to them that the Polaroid company (whose instant gratification was usurped by the digital age) have seen a small resurgence as The Impossible Project.

This has had a knock on effect in the digital realm too, as ‘hipstamatic’ iPhone apps cleverly glorify their poor resolution by imitating the old and iconic film styles.

However, this has done little to support the argument for keeping film alive. Whilst providing a faithful cult following, the amateur pictures filling sites such as Flikr have yet to convince the average consumer. Meanwhile, the number of photo developing services steadily sinks.

The decline of the ‘Film’ Industry

A coffee-shop view from Nolita, New York

One of the most effective uses of 35mm film has been its use in the movie industry. As a cinema fan, I can’t begin to tell you my admiration for a great mise en scène, or the effect of the silver screen, with its gigantic figures and graceful, sweeping shots. Yet the industry’s use of film, as with Ford’s panoramic epics or Allen’s apologetic nervous tales, is also in decline. This is also reflected in the increasing rarity of the projected film. Some have predicted that by Summer 2012, cinematic film will have been ‘eclipsed’ by digital, as more projectionists lose their jobs to comprehensive projection machines, capable of starting multiple films in different theatres at set times. This would be a lot easier to swallow were it merely the success of a new format phasing out the old, yet this is not the case. Digital movie cameras and projectors have been pushed by the industry since the early 2000s, yet have only just become comparably high in quality.

In the past, amateur and beginner filmmakers have been great champions of the 35mm film, often pushing cheap consumer cameras to their artistic limits, but this is also a thing of the past. Following the photographic consumers, independent cinematographers are also using digital as a cheaper alternative. Other than pixel/grain argument, which does play a part in this area of discussion, it’s hard to criticize analogue film’s shrinking influence in the independent industry.

It appears that these truly are the dying days of film. There will always be at least some cult following, especially for artists who always love the image of decaying industries and redundant formats, but with fewer photo stores offering development services, more photographers developing their film at home and (like Kodak) fewer companies producing film it looks as though this may just be film’s last gasp. My lament for this is not born of a pedantic desire for photographers to be more involved in the production of their images at an early stage, or for the ritual of film loading and winding - with its satisfying clicks and whirs -but for the abandonment of the real and tangible. 
Slowly everything is being lost to the digital age, where it can be more easily shared and enjoyed but equally lost and corrupted. Instead of the charismatic cameras and well produced films that were responsible for the iconic images and movies that western culture has heralded as its great art of the people for the past century, we are opting for an illusion: iPhone apps have replaced Polaroids. We are throwing away the old tools of great artists for imitators.

All photo rights reserved. To see more click these words.

A look behind the Cuban lie

Recently Raul Castro has announced that the he will soon hold a conference to discuss the state of the Cuban communist party, with a view to changing many of their laws and regulations. This will be one of the first times their governing has been questioned in public and may see a new wave of liberation for their people.

As the credit crisis rumbles on and critics begin to question capitalism, I take a look at how Cuba has fared as one of the last bastions of communism.

Some of Havana's famed old American cars.

Since Reagan’s trickle-down theories and the rise of billionaires like Trump and Murdoch, capitalism’s promise of productivity and growth has become somewhat skewed. Despite the boom in economy America saw in the 1980’s, the average income failed to reflect the escalating wealth of the country. Britain’s NHS, high taxation and relatively healthy welfare system bring us closer to that socialist vision Marx had predicted for a post-industrial world, yet still our system is far from communism. With the boom and bust cycle looking less dependable than we’d come to expect it, some argue communism offers a stronger approach.

Poor housing juxtaposes the faded grandeur of Veija, the old town.

Cuba’s revolution is famed for being one of the most successful and popular of the 20^th century. Some evidence to suggest this is visible from the Bay of Pigs military disaster of 1961, in which (on false information) the U.S. military launched an attack to ‘free’ the citizens of the communist regime only to be ferociously defeated by patriotic Cubans within a few days. Cuba, and Havana in particular, had become the nest of American gangsters and mafia. After a history of colonization and slavery, Havana became a town of elegant old buildings, fine restaurants, expensive cars and a poor, downtrodden people (as beautifully portrayed in the newly rediscovered propaganda film Soy Cuba).  The revolution brought equality, education and health care to all. It destroyed the prostitution and racketeering that had strangled the country. Or so the two circulating newspapers of Havana would have you believe. 

An old deteriorating school

Wandering the streets by day or night, I was called over by stern looking men with their hands securely fastened to the shoulders of young women, asking if I would like a partner for the night. Cuba now has become another haunt of the sex tourist. Old Europeans can often be seen walking along the Malecón, arm in arm with a beautiful young Cuban girl. At least I can also add that I saw evidence of sex tourism in which these roles had been reversed, as the young, portly, glitzy-looking man accompanied the middle-aged English woman staying across from us for the week.


Drugs also were readily available. A man beckoning his dog in the night near me was calling, "Charlie. Charlie? Coke? Cocaine?" I didn't have the heart to bring this up with two medical staff we met later in the week (who will remain nameless for protection), talking candidly in their living room. They had many positive things to say of the current system other than the apparent drug-free underground. Despite the national hobby of smoking the cigars that many of them had spent their whole day making, cancer had been cured in Cuba! There was a special toxin found in the poison of a scorpion that the first world had yet to be privy to. Instead they claimed most people died of heart disease due to bad diet, though they admitted having no MRA machines in the hospital, along with many other important life-saving devices.


A frequent topic that came up was the heavy policing of Cuba. They claimed that even the lowest paid cop was paid higher than any other profession in the country. We saw many policemen, and were at times followed and watched for no particular reason. They claimed that far more were in plain clothes. Also, as we bore witness to, police could stop any car at any moment for speeding (having no cameras or equipment to measure this) and impose fines that could not be avoided. Add to this the 4 television stations running 24 hour propaganda and a picture begins to reveal itself of nation that isn't quite so happy with communism.

The view from the Malecon

Another aspect not often told of Cuba is the poor housing situation. Their system is one of a housing lottery, sometimes paying out but often resulting in small, cramped and deteriorating buildings. Recently the government has allowed the profits from the sale of a house to return to the previous owner. This is a great movement away from the old system of painstakingly paying off your mortgage, only to be penniless again when buying new accommodation. 

The romanticism associated with the crumbling 19th century buildings, 1950s American cars and passionate salsa culture are all alive and true and very much a part of Cuba, however it is naive to think that this is how the people truly live. Our friends told us that there were widespread food, water and housing shortages. Whilst the image of that sun-speckled, rum soaked country laughing in the face of western capitalism is one we'd all like to believe, it appears that behind the music is a far more sinister story.

A view of the city from a tall building in the Vedado area.

All photo rights reserved. To see more of my pictures, visit www.flikr.com/sullivana

Why Everyone Needs A Liquor Cabinet

A Liquor Cabinet is not a privilege, it is a right.

Times are tough, days are long and you deserve a rest.

With higher tax on alcohol, more people are drinking at home these days, as an alternative or a precursor to a night on the town. Alcohol in excess is undeniably unhealthy and I’m not promoting it on-record (Off-the-record we can discuss it at length in the pub). But if you are going to drink, why not slosh some class in your highball?

Here are a few simple cocktails to lubricate your soirée

Godfather

an easy classy standard, good to ease you into your liquor

1 part Amaretto (best: Disaronno)

1 part Scotch Wiskey

Garnish: Orange peel

pour the wiskey first, add the amaretto and swirl

Cosmopolitan

an effeminate and fundamental accessory

2 parts Vodka (best: Absolut)

1 part Triple Sec (best: Cointreau)

1 part Lime juice

2 parts Cranberry juice

Garnish: slice of Lemon

cocktail shake it

G & T

surprisingly fruity take on the traditional

1 part Gin (Hendricks)

3 parts Tonic Water

Garnish: wedge of Cucumber

pour the gin first, add the tonic and swirl. Hendricks a must.

Chilli and Ginger Martini

my favourite cocktail, as served at Bacchanalia, see below for more

3 parts Gin (best: Bombay Sapphire)

1 part dry Vermouth (best: Noily Prat)

Garnish: sweetened stem of Ginger and hot Chilli Pepper

pour into separate glass to mix and strain over the ginger in the cocktail glass. Rest the chilli pepper on the lip of the glass, allowing the cocktail to absorb the heat.

Havana Mojito

made the way they should be made, as I drank them in Cuba

4 parts Rum (best: Havana Club Añejo 3 Años)

3 parts lime juice

Tonic Water and Sugar to taste

Garnish: Mint leaves

pour the rum, then lime over the rocks, add the mint leaves (do not crush) and the tonic water. Stir. Fall madly in love.

If these libations aren’t a cause for celebration, we are at odds.

All these and more are served to an excellent standard at Manchester’s Bacchanalia, by far my favourite cocktail bar in town. Also, weekdays from 5-8 is happy hour with two-for-one cocktail deals.

Your tongue should never suffer the blows your brain gallantly endures. Thanks, brain.

Phylum Feast

I've been trying out some new songs with my drummer under the name Phylum Feast: check out some of the latest tracks below

Ramen by Adrian O'Sullivan

East River by Adrian O'Sullivan

Threads by Adrian O'Sullivan

More to come soon I promise.