Ways of seeing

Friday, 26 February 2010

Owen Pallett

To move the tone away from sad things, I had the great pleasure of meeting the lovely Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) towards the end of last year for a shoot for The Stool Pigeon. The wonderful people at Domino were fantastic as always and were brilliant in showing me into a disused office space next door to their own offices where I decided to take a few snaps... Admittedly the sunlight was VERY strong so making the overall image very contrasty (a fucker to print I'm sure), but I liked it.

You can listen to Owen's beautiful music here:

http://www.myspace.com/owenpallettmusic

Golden Lane lady

Not to continue with the theme of death but I just wanted to dedicate this photo/post to the little old lady who lived on my estate who passed away recently. She always had an eye (and clear appreciation) for the young indie lads I happen to know and always made sure she wore a good high heeled shoe when she could. She'd feed the pigeons most days (not to everyone's liking apparently) and occasionally gave me a very beautiful smile. I was sad to hear today that she's gone.

(the above diptych was taken on my Mamiya RZ on slide film xpro where I live)

Postscript: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucylovestodance/4497455265/

Wednesday, 17 February 2010

Gladys Moss

Today, was my nan's funeral.

On the day of her death, I walked around 3 Buxton Court where I took these photos.

They are nothing much to look at but with their familiar paths tread in my mind's eye, they mean something to me.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

There's more to life than books y'know, but not much more...

http://more-to-life-than-books.blogspot.com/

A wonderful project I am honoured to be helping out on. Photos by me (unless otherwise stated), words by Dan Richards.

Tuesday, 9 February 2010

Girls on tour (Krakow, Poland)

In the New Year, me and three lovely ladies (Kate, Annette and Nicola) donned our thermals and headed to Krakow to drink lots of good vodka, eat lots of cake and hang out in Krakow's uber cool Jewish Quarter, Kazimierz.

Bars/cafes I would thoroughly recommend are Singer (dark, candle lit and open late, all tables are made from the old Singer sewing machines. Definitely not a tourist spot, so drink beer or your vodka straight unless you speak Polish...), Cafe Mlynek (vegetarian place for food, coffees and drinks. With friendly staff who serve the finest honey latte and pesto and mozarella sandwich I've ever tasted...the pierogi was pretty damn good too - shit, I'm missing this place already), Arenda restaurant (OH MY GOD, ONE OF THE BEST MEALS I'VE HAD IN A LONG WHILE!), Club Lubu Dubu (great place for a night out, even on a Sunday!). We went to a nice bar that played The XX but sadly can't remember what that was called (possibly Propaganda?).

On our last night we had dinner in a very quiet and rather strange authentic Polish restaurant. When we entered the dimly lit restaurant you felt like you were walking into a eastern european period drama. The place was completely empty, apart from two wizened old men who were engrossed in playing (beautifully I hasten to add) a endless duet on violin and piano (we were there for a good 2 hours and they were playing as we left with no sign of stopping), thankfully completely oblivious to our presence, whilst two smiley girls in tradition garb stood awkwardly in the empty dining room. Food was good, service was lovely but the taxidermy that proceeded our entrance, strange.

Anyhoo my photos are thus:

(all shots taken on 35mm slide film then cross-processed on my LC-A+)

I urge everyone to go. We all had a really lovely time.. and brought back a fair few bottles of vodka.

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

Some music rambles.

Tonight, I saw two very fine bands play.

Firstly, I went to Rough Trade East to see the mighty These New Puritans. A band, I've come to love over the last few weeks. I first saw them play at Truck festival two years ago when I was photographing for DiS, but if I'm honest, I remember being impressed by them but didn't really follow it up and they became yet another band I thought good at the time but left in the mental-note-file of 'will listen to when I get home..' and never did.

Then in November, I was very kindly asked by the nice boys at The Quietus to photograph behind the scenes at their new video for We Want War (as blogged here:http://lucytakesphotos.blogspot.com/2009/11/sneaky-peek.html ). Was a great little shoot to do and I've included some of my shots for your perusal below. But we'll get to those in a minute. Firstly I simply MUST tell you how brilliant their new album is (I know I'm no music journalist so I apologise for my attempts to explain...).

'Hidden' is simply a masterpiece. On first listen, my complete love for the single We Want War (since I saw the final product of the video, as seen below, I hadn't been able to get enough of it... cue song on repeat constantly) coloured my judgement. I was rather addicted to its warlike, tribal drum beats, the swell and flow of the string arrangements, accompanied by Jack's chanting mantra. All of which combined, almost reaches into you and FORCES you to dance. On more listens (as in, I've had the album pretty much on repeat) you realise that this happens throughout the record. Songs like Three Thousand (the intro sounds like a battle ship going into war... until Depeche Mode circa Black Celebration start playing on deck), Fire-power and Attack Music are very similar in their bloodthirsty intent whilst the more beautiful, softer moments of the album like Hologram and White Chords maintain that persistent drumbeat but lull you with softer tones, xylophones and horns into a warmer, safer place of refuge. Non-more so than the album's finale '5' that exudes this exact feeling of cocooning warmth combining glistening glockenspiel, swooning brass, playful woodwind arrangements with soft school-choir harmonies and Jack's whispered words. All of which, completes Hidden with a sense of well deserved gravitas.

Despite all these luxurious brass arrangements, soaring choirs, slicing sounds of knives being sharpened and melons being smashed (to sound like a human head splitting), Hidden manages to maintain a stripped simplicity. The album revels in luring you in with its swelling orchestral movements, then in turn rushing at you like a bulldozer with relentless drums (that I really can't get enough of!). The heavy basslines and massive drumbeats reach into your innate sense of rhythm and make you want to, for loss of a better phrase 'lose your f**king shit'.

In other words, I seriously recommend people buy this album. Oh and I warn you, if you ever happen to hear this played in public whilst I'm in the room, stand back. You're either with me or against me on this one...

Here's the video and below are some of the photos I took. Poor lot, having to jump in that pool repeatedly... they looked frozen!

A fine band indeed.

The second band of the evening was Memory Tapes. Now I say band, as it was Dayve Hawk accompanied by a lovely man who was his drummer (I'm terrible with names sadly). I had the great honour of meeting both fine young gentlemen alongside Memory Tapes' manager David, on Sunday in Hammersmith as we met to shoot some promo shots.

A lovely day was had by the glistening Thames, climbing on to small jettys (if you can call them that...) photographing into the sunshine, then talking about working in Whole Foods, The Wire and the British/US education system's decline over gin and tonic.

Alas I have no album to rave about of Dayve's, however after tonight's performance of pure ecstatic fuzzy pop I feel this shall change and I will have to purchase Seek Magic. I had a great time at The Social, and the only negative thing I have to say about the gig was that there was not enough space to dance like a crazy as the place was totally rammed! The people love Memory Tapes... and here, the people are very correct indeed. I'm sure the Luminaire gig tomorrow will be totally storming!

Here's a little choon taster...