Fear of Headphones

It's not that I don't like listening to music: On the contrary it's because of the music of the world that I object to these things. Why ignore the sounds of buses, birds, air-con systems, the muezzin, beggars, boot-grit, dog-wails, the chattering classes, clattering steel car carcasses, ear-grabs of film music or the passing ill-taste of some fancy driver? Because some pop singer's voice is so damn enthralling? Do they tell you like you are? Right back in your ear? Or do you enjoy regulating your mood with a certain soundtrack? Hawaiian Guitar for rainy foot-soaked bus-rides, thrumming dubstep for choosing non-GM milk and organic eggs down at waitrose? Does the sound of the world offend you so much? Or do you simply need to listen to music as you move around because otherwise you would fall behind, get dragged down in the rapids and drown unmentioned in yesterday's popular, today's mediocre? Is it your Job? To listen on tinny insects, intravenous drippings of unsexed scratchings? To deny the thump and thud, the displacement of the air in your gut as you pass the bass cab... A tear in my eye. I might retract if it turned out that everybody was listening to the frantic conspiratorial diatribes of Francis E Dec, or somesuch. Their need for indulgence and patience would be greater than mine.

It's not, though.

Oh well, each to his or her own alone.

Jeremy Warmsley Cover

I've just designed this cover for Jeremy Warmsley's upcoming single with Transgressive. He seemed very pleased. It's a step away from the lo-fi aesthetics of his previous offerings...

Lines

At the end of which we'll all be wiser, wealthier, wittier, wearier, wistfuller, warier. I like making these line drawings, it is a most therapeutic process, but this quality ceases upon completion and review, except as a mnemonic for my memory of enjoying it. I hope this will suffice.

TVBOMB Website Live

We've just launched tvbomb.co.uk! Please go and check it out. As always, anything you think: this is food and oil to me, and I need it, so tell, tell.

It's been really busy since we got back from Helsinki, and my feet have barely touched socks in which they sit. But we had a good time, and things look good for the future. We should soon see TVBOMB on mobile phones. This will be hilarious, I assure you...

Tvbomb Magazine

I'm improbably pleased about this- we've just launched our first beta of the tvbomb online magazine... You can read it at tvbomb.co.uk
... It is soon to be joined by the new tvbomb website (beta), which we will use as a competition pony, strapping it high with all manner of gustatory delight, free for the price of submission, and subsequent victory. I assure you this will be arduous.

But yes, please take a look and let me know what you think- if you have any thoughts, suggestions, criticisms, specific pleasures, racial slurs, grotesque obloquy, indecent absolutism, sham-humanity, threadneedle-endoscopy, peer-calumny, et cetera, I would love to hear from you.

Likewise if you want to help put together the next issue, we're currently recruiting writers, columnists, designers, photographers, interviewers, rhyme-mongers, hardballers, blackmailers, paparazzi, slime-drudges, skirt-lifters and thugs. Register your interest with me, ok?

Transgressive Records Advert

You thought print ads were dead? Well yes, they are. And in the indie music scene their decomposition is rather more advanced than that of big-budget print-norms like fashion ads. I really have no idea how the fashion industry is able to afford such work: surely the sales of clothes are low, whilst the cost of design, production, events and promotion is exorbitant... Where is that money coming from?



I can only assume that the major fashion brands are built not by the clothes they are espousedly constructing, but by careful investment in parties. Each party must impress enough elite debauchees to ensure the funding and production of the next party. Of course, the artwork must be free- these same debauchees often have a lot of time on their hands, and some fantastic equipment. Specifically cameras.

This is a print ad I made for Transgressive Records, anyway. I do it for fun.

Mouse

Oh! Tiny little mouse! What a happy little mouse! This morning a telltale wave to the edge of my bread bloomer! little gnawmarks in my lovely butter! but what choice does poor little mouse have? This isn't a housemouse, and as such I approve.

But I will still kill you, little mouse. In as fragrant a way as possible.