Lamb have reformed!!! They were such an underrated band through the initial ten years they were together, maybe now they will get the credit they deserve! The combination of Lou's expressive vocals and Andy's incredibly controlled and nuance electronics make this band something really special. We saw Lou play live with her folk/acoustic solo project, and that was great - but it wasn't Lamb!
This seminal trip hop band were a big influence on Colab's sound a few years ago when we first started writing music. We caught them live for the very first time in Melbourne in March 2010 and it was fantastic - given our interest in all things audio-visual - to see that they had an absolutely awesome visual set up that added a lot of value o the music. To tell you the truth, we weren't expecting that much from the live performance - a lot of MA's music wouldn't necessarily rock-out live: or so we thought. How wrong we were! This was a a 10/10 concert, with songs such as Inertia Creeps coming into their own live in a totally unexpected way. It was also a gig that blended new material with old, and reminded everyone of just how many classic songs this band has produced since they started life right at the start of the 90s.
A novel from quite a populist author but a very dark and quite beautiful mystery that has inspired a new Colab song. It's a work in progress but people we've played it to thus far have really liked it so we're expecting to put it into the new album. The novel keys into a period of history we've been interested in for a while, gaslight New York, round 1890s. On this front, one of the classic recent books written in this period is called 'Waterworks' by EL Doctorow and is well worth a read as well.
This collage artist captured my attention a few years ago with his way of capturing, within each work, a whole belief system; of depicting isolated, idealised communities striving for....for what? Well it's hard to tell. But the vibe of his work is really amazing, what the Saatchi Gallery calls 'deceiving in its complexity made simple'. An ideal to aspire to for many art forms, and an inspiration for much of what I wrote in the last few years. Check him out at the Saatchi Gallery.