Androgyne Annie

London 2012: Happy happy joy joy

London 2012: Gold medals for these faces please.

Al Bello, Getty Images

Adam Pretty, Getty Images

Harry How, Getty Images

Al Bello, Getty Images

Adam Pretty, Getty Images

What's the matter with your life

Is the poverty bringing u down? 

Is the mailman jerking u round? 

Did he put your million dollar check

In someone elses box? 

Music, amazing stuff.

Today will be a Prince day!

Got treated to a great Prince documentary last night in bed (love love love BBC).

I used to play his records all the time but hadn't heard his music in what easily could be 15 years, pretty weird how you can lose track of music which was once your world, I could sing along with all the songs word for word and loved every second of it (well, at least until Sign O the Times, he lost me after that one).

♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫

There's something about u, baby

It happens all the time

Whenever I'm around u, baby

I get a dirty mind.

♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫

It's your thing

The beauty of words:

Sentences I wish I wrote but didn't, there are so many.

Here's one:

Beauty's only skin deep and the body is a shell, if somebody shares a secret then you're not supposed to tell.

It's an extract from an Ian Brown song called Eternal Flame and honestly although this man is brilliant as a lyricist, I do find his music purdy hard to listen to, too predictable at all fronts to say the least (and please stop with the hiphop).

But simple sentences like the one above, they make me shiver every time I see or hear them because remembering the first time I heard them will never leave me.

In the mean while I'm compiling my Spotify Summer 2012 list and obviously I'm a hopeless romantic with this one in there:

:D

Well fuck me, I LOVE that song!

In love with

Jamie XX - Far Nearer

The steel drums!

Who would've EVER thought that you could have a main role for steel drums in a song that doesn't remind you of wooden huts on the beach (with  3 percussionists on the porch, smiling at you like a happyhappy joyjoy Eddie Murphy) and cocktails.
Yes.
This is my summer tune of 2012.
It makes me happy. 
And I need all the happy I can get.

I knew it I knew it!!!

Pop music too loud and all sounds the same - official

My favorite position

Done!

Nudge nudge

Hihi

FINALLY!

The sun is out!

This was yesterday evening while we were waiting in the sun for the water taxi  to bring us to Maria Bonita where we had diner with some dear friends in Rotterdam. 

I love my friends.

I love Rotterdam

I frigging adore the water taxi!

Very amusing Winston

Hillary

Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Decadent Dementia

Oh joy.

She's right you know!

Aaaaah

Weekend is almost there!

alt-J (∆) and why.

In an age when everything about a new band is splattered across various social media, Alt-J are something of an anomaly. From refusing to show their faces in early photos to the kerfuffle over their name (it’s the keyboard shortcut to make a triangle symbol on a Mac, obviously), they’ve already marked out themselves as oddball geeks. Lyrically, their debut ‘An Awesome Wave’ continues in this vein. “’Til morning comes, let’s tessellate”, Joe Newman croons in possibly the nerdiest come-on in indie-pop history. In the same breath he declares his love for triangles (“my favourite shape”) over a smouldering guitar groove. It’s hardly a knicker-dropping missive, but good god, they make geometry sound sexy.

It’s this bookish sensibility and penchant for a sexual metaphor that ranks them alongside Wild Beasts, and it’s little wonder they’ve toured together. But it’s a shortsighted comparison when you consider how the languid melodies, clattering beats and unsettling electronic skits on ‘An Awesome Wave’ veer widely from the forlornness of an Antlers record to the intricacy and drama of early Patrick Wolf.

Like the latter, Alt-J indulge in impatient, complex songwriting. From the twisted a cappella interludes offsetting the distorted vocal and jagged guitars of ‘Intro’, to the wafting clap-happy breeze of ‘Dissolve Me’, each song flits between genres with the rapidity with which one would imagine Alt-J completed their algebra homework. ‘Breezeblocks’, starts as a smooth R&B groove before switching to a magnificent, clattering and sinister plea: “Please don’t go – I love you so!” The ‘In Rainbows’-indebted ‘Something Good’ is awash with piano and soaring melody. And while ‘An Awesome Wave’ might begun as some half-baked stab at a cinema concept album – ‘Matilda’’s drab strum is a paean to Luc Besson’s troubled child-star in Leon – it’s all the better for the added grit, real-life misery and heartache, as ‘Fitzpleasure’ attests. It’s a welcome injection of dirge, adding yet more sounds to the mix with rasping bass riffs and storming vocal before ‘Taro’’s finale, which fizzles disappointingly to the finish line. 

The charm of Alt-J’s musical scatterbrain is that it works. On the surface, this is smart alt-pop, but Alt-J have messed with the formula just enough to make this a brilliantly disquieting debut. In refusing to submit to the rigours of a genre, they might just have made themselves masters of their own.

-Jenny Stevens for NME -

This week

Yesterday I was feeling pretty shit.

I hope it had to do with me travelling to London this weekend, having loads of fun and now I had to get up again to face the shitload of work that was in my mailbox while I snuggled up in my bed once more.

It turned out not to be that bad (got to answer about 158 mails) but it all made me feel like I had a major hangover.

Let's see if it wears off today and I can be my own positive self again the rest of the week.

Festival weekend galore!

I'm knackered.

This spoiled little brat just had two days of festival galore.

Quite a lot for my physic to coop with so I've been taking it easy the whole day now but I need to decide if I'm going out again tonight.

It will be to see D'Angelo, Maceo Parker and Aloe Blacc.

But it means I need to take a shower now and get ready and I don't really feel that happening at the moment.

Here's what I saw on friday at Pitch Festival in Amsterdam: 

The Weekend

Azari + III

I also saw a silent disco (it looks soooo silly), a lot of people I haven't seen for a while and also people I've been in contact with but never met in person. All work related but really chill so that was really nice.

Here's what I saw at North Sea Jazz Festival:

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80

David Murray Blues Bigband featuring Macy Gray 

I would have posted a video but can't find a good one on the net. I love her dress and lashes. 

Rufus Wainright and his band

George Benson

I saw a fraction of Esperanza Spalding, James Morrison but had more important things to do,   like heading to the bar and see some people. 

So tonight it's the North Sea Jazz festival again.

I'm tempted by writing this down so I'll jump in the shower and see if I can find the motivation to actually get my butt into my car again to drive to Rotterdam. I'll let you know if I did.

Imagine your man writing these lyrics for you. Lucky girl Ms. Gallagher!

If I had a gun I'd shoot a hole into the sun

And love would burn this city down for you

If I had the time I'd stop the world and make you mine 

And every day would stay the same with you

I'll give you back a dream

And show you now what might have been

If all the tears you cry would fade away

I'll be by your side

When they come to say goodbye

And we will live to fight another day

Excuse me if I spoke too soon

My eyes have always followed you around the room

'Cause you're the only God that I will ever need

I'm holding on, I'm waiting for the moment to find me

Hope I didn't speak too soon

My eyes have always followed you around the room

'Cause you're the only God that I will ever need

I'm holding on, I'm waiting for the moment

For my heart to be unbroken by the seams

Let me fly you to the moon

My eyes have always followed you around the room

'Cause you're the only God that I will ever need

I'm holding on, I'm waiting for the moment to find me