New (rather whiny) Dashboard Confessional cover...

I learned this song at the start of uni, it's pretty fun to sing but I'm suffering from an unknown illness (which is refusing to be cured by antibiotics) so the vocals are kinda whiny. Oh well. Have a listen here.

Some (very brief) mini reviews...

I've been catching up on reading Rock Sound, scoured the new music section for some likely looking artists; here's the verdict:

On Off Switch: female-fronted synth-rock. This is edgy pop, reminiscent of Cobra Starship.

Goodtime Boys: high-energy visceral hardcore punk, with some insane guitarwork and equally epic drumming. This is absolutely wonderful stuff, if you're a fan of Gallows, The Ghost of a Thousand or anything like that then this is definitely one to check out.

Wounds: Interesting, heavy sounds, but the vocals on one track are a bit too droney and don't really tie in well with the music. The vocals on the other track are more expressive and work really well.

(I need to stop using hyphenated words quite so much...)

In terms of photos, I've finished processing all the night walk photos and gradually adding these to Flickr. Here's a couple:



More here.

A Selection of Recent Work

Quick update: Not been doing much on the music review front, due to exams (which I got the results for last week, ended my first year of uni with a 1st, somehow!)

Music
I've been on a bit of a Britney/Alexisonfire splurge. Curious mix, but Britney's self-titled album is packed with excellent pop tunes. Alexisonfire are an incredibly skilled band, it's quite enlightening to see how their sound has developed over the years. I've just ordered a copy of vocalist Dallas Green's album, under the name City and Colour. It should be good. I've had the City and Colour track "Confessions" on repeat a lot too, beautiful stuff.

Photos
I have been processing piles of photos in the past week; I've still got a couple of hundred to finish off, but here are a few shots from the last three months or so...

Night Walk with Alex

This is back from the start of summer term; I wanted a light painted shot of the word "PLAY" for Helicon, the uni arts magazine (the theme for the issue was 'play') so Alex and I went on a wander around Bristol. I was pleased with this shot in particular since it's got all three of the lights on, achieved with a long exposure.

Photosoc Tea Social

I was just sitting and musing with a cup of tea when I caught a glimpse of Matt through Alex's glasses. Not very well executed; perhaps I'll follow it up with something properly staged at some point.

Visit to Bath

Visited Bath for half a day. It rained on us. Luckily we were able to seek refuge in a coffee shop, but we had a look around the Abbey and it was phenomenal.

Durdhambury

A lot of my coursemates were at Durdham Hall and they had a festival a couple of weeks ago. This is a shot of Jon from Null Pointer Exception. If I'm honest I think it's just his awesome hairstyle that makes the shot.

Photo Walk featuring Tom Sturdy

Alex and I organised another night walk, which was unfortunately poorly attended. We took Tom (a non-photographer) along with us and played around with lighting arrangements. This particular shot was Alex's idea. Tom held a flash, providing the light on his face. To be fair, a torch would have been more ideal; this way we had to take a whole bunch of shots and hope one of them captured the moment the flash went off. Unfortunately Alex's shot vanished from his CF card and was unrecoverable, but I've still got mine, and here it is.

As always, many, many more photos up here