New Portfolio Site

Well. This is, I hope, the solution to an issue which has been bugging me a little. Not a lot, you understand, because I'm really not the type to care, but a little is enough to merit measured attention, I'm sure you agree. The problem was that I became uncomfortable using this blog as a portfolio, a place to show my current/recent work &c. I felt I would much rather use it as a visual journal, not a place clients and professional contacts might peruse to get a feeling for my services. I did receive certain threats, against which at the time I defended myself fiercely. Perhaps this fervent ferocity was down to a troubling inkling that my detractors were in fact correct: I had blurred my work/life boundaries to such an extent that I was able to engage in neither effectively, and had to take steps to regain control. This blog was in itself a demonstration of my descent into inhumanity, and made troubling reading for me- the odd snatch of a restrained though angry personality jammed between page after page of hark and trumpeting. Ugly as sin.

And so: http://www.joshuabradley.co.uk is once more a website, and once more it contains examples of my recent work. As with everything, it is still in Beta, and there are issues. Please let me know if you happen to have any suggestions, or if anything is broken or displays badly for you.

I worked with esteemed colleague Mr Lister (real name: "Jayfresh"), javascript extraordinaire, who is currently working with BT Osmosoft on a Thing called Tiddlywiki, an open-source JS framework for browser-edited web pages. It's really very powerful, and runs the content management for my new site. It's early days yet, but J's project, 'Tiddly Templating' strikes me as a compelling new possibility for flexible CMS creation. After my experiences with dishevelled giant Joomla (which actually makes me want to die), and Cold Fusion (ugh) this was a joy. I'm going to work with Jon on developing a non-programmer-orientated set of tools for using Tiddlywiki this way. Very exciting I'm sure you agree.

And wonderfully, this all means that I'll not be bothering you with any more irksome updates on my Absolutely Fantastic Career full of Pure Genius and Inordinate Grace™. Unless I realise there nothing else to report. I will still dazzle you with beautiful shreds from the floor, but they will no longer be sullied by careerist wittering. I promise. To think. And explain interesting things to you. And communicate faithfully. And believe in consensually appropriate truth &c.

ERGO:

My father and I, in fertile conversation, produced the above image. I hope you enjoy it.

Boom Barcelona!

So I was in Barcelona last week working with a creative director on a fairly simple portfolio site for him. I say fairly because it was actually pretty complicated as the budget & deadline (a week) were too tight to bring in other people or get any backend framework sorted out. So the whole thing had to be hard-coded(ish) page by page. And there was a lot of content- this guy was prolific. Seriously. Check out the site here.

Anyway, whilst there, I went to my first bullfight. OK, I've always been pretty ambivalent about that kind of stuff... ritualised killing seemed somehow unnecessary in the absence of ritualised life. Or somesuch. And the demographic who tend to approve of such stuff tend in my experience to be every bit as clichéd (4x4 at Waitrose, Victorian wallpaper patterned wellington boots, country retreat for the odd bank-holiday) as the bedreadlocked, badgewearing, soundbitten solipsist student classes who make up the bulk of the protest contingent.



And contingent there is- Barcelona has banned most of its bullfights: there is only one ring left. As we approach we are flooded in the roar of the protesters, a team of samba drummers punctuate the looping meter of a grand mob of dissident activists.

However, today the ring is packed out. One of the Toreadors, "El Juli" is apparently the best in the world, and we are in for a treat.



What happens next I can't really think about. The fights are pretty messy, apparently, and the bulls are, it seems, gradually stabbed to death. Amazing animals, and some amazing displays of sheer nerve. But not an awful amount of grace. However, my back and legs went tense, and remained tense throughout. I was pretty much transfixed.

I suppose my genuine feeling is really one of slight mystification at the emotion this stuff brings out in people. It seems as if the lead protesters are just riding a PR wave to pick up the casually squeamish (a lot of people) and assign to them rather more intense viewpoints. A pretty standard method for padding out a small movement. But that makes me find the whole thing a little revolting- sure the bad guys use massive media agencies to cleverly manipulate information and sway public opinion, but should you really fight fire with fire? Won't that just burn your house down? I don't know.



It is clear that these bulls are seriously healthy (at first). I was taken to see 'Our Daily Bread' recently. It is an amazing documentary about mechanised farming. I won't tell you about it because you should see it. The bulls we eat are not even bulls. The 'issue' of 500-1000 bulls a year being killed in ritual fashion seems to pale in comparison to the issue of the hundreds of millions of bulls who's entire lives are part of a production line. And that seems pale in comparison to the reality that it takes 5000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of beef (next to 1000 tons of water per ton of grain), we are currently depleting our finite subterranean aquifers at a rate of 160 billion tons per year, and the emerging middle classes in India and China (who will more than double the affluent population of the world) have beef on their shopping lists... Ho ho ho.

Vanessa Caswill

In 2007 I put this site together for a friend, the brilliant director Vanessa Caswill. I thought I would put it up here because I really like the site and her films. You can watch a couple of them on TVBomb if you have Joost. Enough shameless pluggery, sir. I bought the book, which I think is a Dutch grammar guide, at a bookshop in London a while ago. It reminds me of something. It actually has a title and stuff, but I tend to remove it, because it's unsettling.

Mothhands

I made this a while ago, by dipping my hands in paint etc. It's actually huge, but it only exists on computers. I need a big printer. Hands up anybody with a big printer... I'll give you a special apple for the use of it. Oh- it was preparatory work for an album cover which never came to pass. My favourite type of thing.

John & Jehn Photoshoot

These are from a recent photoshoot for Notion Magazine. The people are a French duo called John and Jehn whos music sounds like a combination of Sonic Youth and this special tune I used to hum when imagining the music of one of my little dogs, Pippen. This dog is now dead, and this alerted me to a poignancy perhaps intentional in its indie-music counterpart. It was a fun shoot, we had a beer and they played us a song! It was a Tuesday.

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.