January 15th, 2008 | photography
January 14th, 2008 | comics talk
Right. I opened my new little message board WHITECHAPEL towards the end of last year, to shake it down before the webcomic project it’s bolted to, FREAKANGELS, gets launched. We’re a month away from launch now, and I want to warm the message board up a bit.
So. If you create an indie comic, go to this thread and introduce your work.
Indie comic? Anything that isn’t published by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, a book publisher or an Image studio (but I think Image Central counts). “Indie comic” includes webcomics, minicomics, phonecomics, whatever. You get the idea, right?
So go to that thread and show off. Whitechapel is built on HTML, not BBCode — use the reply interface to post images, links, etc. Don’t swamp it with eight full pages of art or anything, but, you know, show people what you’ve got.
There are currently 1700 people on Whitechapel. Many of them have money. And since I’m also posting this on my website, LiveJournal, MySpace and Bad Signal, there will probably be a few more people than usual taking a look.
Incidentally, if you’re starting out as a creator and/or looking for a place to talk about making comics, you should really visit Panel & Pixel as soon as possible.
And, obviously, those of you who don’t make comics, but like reading them, should watch that thread to see what interesting stuff turns up. I’m hoping for a few nice surprises myself.
– W
January 14th, 2008 | photography
January 13th, 2008 | photography
January 11th, 2008 | podcast
The 4am is a mixtape file containing nothing but music donated directly by new and/or unsigned acts. The 4am is of no set length and is released on no set schedule. The 4am is mixed down to 128 of the kbps. The 4am is inside your house. The 4am is touching all your stuff.
The 4am needs music: If you want your music to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com, including your website address.
The 4am 8 has been listened to by 4428 people as I write this.
9: Poptometry
Opening with BLAMMOS’ recent single “How Do You Know?” We’re doing pop music this week, sort of, and BLAMMOS are definitely a pop band. Click through to their main website from the MySpace link below and you’ll find more free music, videos and other stuff.
“Between Sky And Sea” is from Dive Index’s current album, which in addition to this song features collaborations with the likes of Ian Masters (from Pale Saints). When, on “Between Sky And Sea,” vocalist Natalie Walker reaches the chorus, it’s like warm honey.
Onlooker’s “Cavalier” is the first track off their self-published collection, “Today I’m a Gunmaker,” which is due to hit the online record stores sometime this month. Brandon Whitesell of Onlooker says: “I imagine that this song is about chemical dependence, destroyed eco-systems and biological chaos… and an army of stuffed bears wearing gas-masks and marching through the rainy streets of downtown…” And he’s not wrong. If possibly a bit mad.
“Song In D” has one of those guitar sounds I just love, and Mock Orange are clearly moving towards reaching some Epic Pop Moment one day. Revel in hearing them a couple of years before their inexorable descent towards their Champagne Cheeseburger Cocaine Moment.
I am closing with a Cornish drunk’s idea of pop: Kemper Norton’s back. A statement on “Winterval”: “a slightly-too-late seasonal track about a moment of desperate realisation that those around you are having too much fun and that you will die alone one day.” Which, miserable as it is, is entirely more useful a description than my own “fucking brilliant, mate.”
See you next week, where I shall attempt to return to the disorienting noises and distant clanking sounds you’ve come to expect from The 4am.
BLAMMOS – “How Do You Know?” (3:49)
Dive Index – “Between Sky And Sea” (4:31)
Onlooker – “Cavalier” (5:12)
Mock Orange – “Song In D” (3:44)
Kemper Norton – “Winterval” (5:34)
If you enjoyed The 4am, please spread the word, linking back to this post.
January 10th, 2008 | photography
January 10th, 2008 | brainjuice
I just deleted my entire Facebook friendslist. MySpace allows me to handle “friends”-requests in bulk. Facebook isn’t set up for that. Also, the more “friends” you allow on your Facebook list, the more unusable Facebook gets. So it was getting increasingly difficult not only to see what people I actually knew were doing on Facebook, but also to sort through the daily pile of add requests. Particularly since people never, ever bother to introduce themselves — I’ve actually ended up denying adds to people who turned out to be in the same businesses as me.
So now I’m the anti-Scoble — instead of lifting everyone’s details to Plaxo to be sorted, I just deleted everyone. Ha ha.
So the deal is: if I know you and talk to you, I’ll add you. If you think I should know you and talk to you, for Christ’s sake say something so I’ve got a clue who you are…
I’ve hit a weird power-law thing on MySpace, after having approved some 20,000 add requests — people add me just because they’ve seen me in other profiles, so now I get between 30 and 100 more requests every day…
January 9th, 2008 | photography
January 8th, 2008 | photography
January 8th, 2008 | comics talk
Gosh! Comics in London have asked me to mention that they’re hosting a rare signing with Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie to mark the long-awaited UK release of Lost Girls. The signing will take place in-store at Gosh! Comics, 39 Great Russell Street in Central London (opposite the British Museum) on the 2nd February 2008, from 2:00 to 5:00 in pm. Moore and Gebbie will be signing copies of the three-volume hardcover slipcase edition of the book. For more information visit www.goshlondon.com.
Gosh!
39 Great Russell Street
London
WC1B 3NZ
020-7636-1011
January 7th, 2008 | Work
Spinning out of DOKTOR SLEEPLESS #4: http://grinding.be/. A groupblog run by a crack team of mental patients with the brief to discover and present The Future — particularly the “future” of DOKTOR SLEEPLESS and grinder culture — wherever it lays, in potential, in the soil of The Present.
Imagine: you want to be a superconnected, modified, new kind of human, and you consider your own body to be a work in progress, so you’re constantly looking for new things you can do to yourself (and others) while also keeping an eye on the collapsing planet around you because you want to have enough time to finish your body (or wish to use your many communications-technology devices to record it all as it collapses around your ears). That’s what you’re trawling for and gathering on grinding.be for others to keep up with.
January 7th, 2008 | music
It’s techno, played by a jew’s-harpist and a vocalist/beatboxer from Hungary and a didgeridoo player from Germany. Acoustic Goa.
January 5th, 2008 | brainjuice
(Originally written November 2007, © Warren Ellis 2007, 2008 etc etc)
January 5th, 2008 | photography
January 5th, 2008 | music
STORIES OF THE OLD by Fricara Pacchu: totally the wrong time of year to release it. The first piece, “Bianca’s Beachparty” (which you can listen to at the link) has filled the room with warm golden light from other years. It’s summer music, psychedelic techno, like The Silver Apples made a record with Kraftwerk.
The second track is perhaps more what you’d expect from a Fonal act, being a weird-yet-beautiful piece of global mutant-folk. The third, which has the lovely title “Text-Message From Beyond,” is your actual acid-rock guitar freak-out (with some My Bloody Valentine glide-guitar hidden in the background).
You can buy it through Fonal at the link (their mailorder service is excellent) or on download through Emusic.
January 5th, 2008 | brainjuice
“Happy birthday to me oh fuck I want to die,” Dave muttered to himself as he unlocked his flat door. Twenty-two years old, and the first day at the job he’d always wanted hadn’t gone so well. If you’re working at the Breakthrough Physics Institute, he told himself, you ought to be able to operate a coffee maker without setting anything or anyone on fire.
He was afraid to check email until he was good and drunk, in case they’d fired him during his walk home. Nothing there but a mail from YouTube, telling him he’d been sent a new video. He clicked through automatically, ran the video, and sat there looking at himself. “Happy Birthday!” he said to himself. “I’m drunk too!”
Dave peered at the screen. “I look like shit,” he said.
The drunk in the video said, “That’s because I’m thirty-seven, you bastard. I’m thirty-seven, I’m drunk, and I’ve cracked back-barrier QT!”
“How did you know I said that? This isn’t live cam.”
“I know you said I looked like shit because I said it, you drunken fuck. Listen. I am sending this from fifteen years in your future. Fifteen years of working on time travel — the work you started today after you set the coffeemaker alight. I’m telling them in the morning. But I wanted to prove it first. See, when I send this back in time, into the upload software on YouTube, it’ll turn up in their archive straight away up here, and I’ll know it worked. So, listen, what do I want you to know… I can’t give you stock tips or anything… yes! You’re not too drunk to call Paula! Call Paula! Yes, I know she dumped you, but it turned out she just wanted to do some weird stuff in bed and you kept dropping your bottle. If you call her up now and say, I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, do anything you want with me, you’ll probably stay with her forever. Go on! Call her now! And in fifteen years you’ll invent a way to move information back and forward in time and be happy!”
Dave sat there for ten minutes. And then called Paula.
When he got home three days later, covered in red marks and stupidly happy, he went to watch the video again. But it was missing from his archive, as if it’d never been sent.
(Written November 2007. © Warren Ellis 2007, 2008)
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