New music: Interpol - Self titled

"The month of September; summer ends, classes begin. The coming of a new season is in the air as autumn approaches. A time of year when the natural world slips into a slumber, and Interpol releases it's fourth studio recording. The self titled, self produced, long-player will be available world wide in mid September."

You don't know how long I've been waiting to read that! Interpol are one of (if not actual... tough call with MCR though) my favourite bands and I've been scouring the interweb for news in the past 6 months or so. Note to Interpol: you're really hard to search for when you share the name of a world-wide police organisation. Or maybe you meant that. You clever weird bastards.

So you can download their new song, for free from www.interpolnyc.com - it's called Lights and it really doesn't disappoint. Insanely melodramatic and melancholy lyrics in Paul Banks' gloriously baritone voice, with a guitar line that builds throughout the song to finally break the tension. That's what's so good about Interpol, that amazing ability to create tension within the songs; sometimes it breaks, sometimes it doesn't. What draws me, unquestionably, are the lyrics though. Beautiful in their ambiguity yet so accurate in their empathy, I literally can never get bored of deciphering them and extracting new meaning and relevances in my life. Because let's face it, that's what makes great lyrics; finding the representation of yourself in there. Plus I'm a massive emo, inside. And a little bit outside too.

Rumours are that the Interpol LP (eponymous, always a sign of getting back to your roots) is a return to 2002's Turn on the Bright Lights; which most fans seem to be pleased with. I'm not too bothered really; I love all the albums, although I actually prefer Our Love to Admire; mainly because of the edge of darkness in the song's themes and lyrics; it felt like an album of anger, of betrayal, of utter resignation to how things are. But then Bright Lights has of course the epic NYC and The New, two of my favourite songs. Basically; I'm happy either way. Give me a smattering of lyrics like 'I've had seven faces, thought I knew which one to wear; I'm sick of spending these lonely nights, training myself not to care...' and I'm off in my melancholic glee.
They're touring the UK in Nov/Dec and I'm going to see them on 6th December at Brixton. That's 6 months away. Sigh. They're one of the only bands in my music collection that I haven't seen live and I'm trés excited.  I think tickets are still available.

So we'll have to wait until September for new Interpol, until then, I don't think I'll grow tired of their back catalogue. So good.

Introducing mflow: It's going to be huge...

The music industry is changing. We know that. What with the digital economy bill being pushed through parliament last week (boo), and a general shift from buying physical music, to buying digital downloads, and now, with spotify, not even owning music anymore, things are moving pretty fast.

The latest music tool to hit t'internet is mflow - billed as 'spotify with twitter', it's a new way of sharing music (yep, sharing music, legally!) and discovering new music in return:

"We believe that music's better shared...

We don't want to be told what we 'might like' by a software program.
We don't want to stare at an empty search bar... "a whole world of music at my fingertips, and I can't think of anything to look for..."
We don't want to have to subscribe to anything.
We don't want adverts.
We just want a way for our mates to send us music they think rocks."

It's quite simple really - you download the software, register, then start following people (as you would in twitter) - they 'flow' songs that they like, and you get to listen to 1 full preview, then after that, (any) 30 seconds of the sog . You can flow songs that you like to your followers, write a little comment about why you like it, and so on. The great thing is that if any of your followers buys a track after you've flowed it to them, you get 20% of the price! Which is nice. The downloaded songs can be moved to your itunes folder and played on any mp3 player and ipod.

They haven't got the extensive library that itunes does yet - but they're getting there. And if you're going to buy a track off itunes - check if it's been flowed to you already, and you may as well buy it off mflow instead - then you give someone 20%! Sharing is caring, folks.

It works best if all your mates/network are on there; I'm always saying 'have you heard this song?' to people and they're like 'eh'... now you can just send it to them. It's great. If you're already someone who uses twitter a lot, then you've got the right frame of mind to use mflow - that desire to share something new and fresh that you've discovered with the world. It's my favourite part of it.

I think the only downfall is that you only get 1 full preview - sometimes you need to listen to a song a few more times than that. Spotify, while it has adverts, obviously lets you listen as many times as you like. I wouldn't mind mflow having adverts if I could have unlimited plays.

Unfortunately, I was lazy and never got round to downloading spotify... now you can only get it through invitation only! And you can only give invites out if you pay for it. Well gutting. So if any of you have an invite, wang one over my way, cos I am silly.

Mflow is currently in beta - which means you can only try it at the moment if you have an invite code. Luckily, I have three left! If you want to try out mflow, the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post get a code off me! Don't say I'm not generous.

When it comes out of beta then anyone will be able to download it I'd imagine. But by then everyone will know about it and you won't be one of the cool trendsetters. You have been warned.

If you already have mflow and want to follow me on there, search People for 'Rachillustrates' - then you can start receiving my awesome taste in music.

Check out mflow's blog.

It's not a fashion statement, It's a deathwish.

Ah, Halloween. Literally my favourite celebration of the year. I even prefer it to birthdays sometimes, much more fun. Not sure if it beats Christmas though. Hmmm.

Hello, yes, silly pose, guilty.

I inevitably try and go for something more obscure every year, aiming to involve as much blood as possible. I can't be seen as something as drab as a witch/vampire/ghost, (don't you know who I am darling?) No but really, you have to be creative on Halloween, copping out with a shop bought outfit is laaaame. But that's me.

The bath was determined the safest place to chuck red liquid around.

So last year I went as Claire from Heroes, after being caught by Sylar and brain taken out and put back in. So basically a cheerleader covered in blood! And I like being covered in blood. So this year, I had to think of something equally as cute and horrific.

You know that cheesey chat up line 'Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?', well thank god no one's ever said that to me, but the answer this night was, 'yes of course it frickin did, there's blood everywhere, I'm probably haemorrhaging internally!!' Which is the only suitable answer.

I never figured out what I did wrong to be thrown out of heaven, probably coveted my neighbour's wife/oxen/plasma tv, but it hurt a lot and I had to drink tonnes of alcohol to make it better.

Little wings, lots of blood, messy room (not mine!)

All us girls made a proper effort, the lads were suitably boring and went as... 'lads'. Or, normals, pre-apocalypse. In my mind.

We all trekked (stumbled, giggled, marched, choose your verb) into town to Blast Off at Wolves Civic. It was epic, we rocked hard, my ribs hurt the next day = mission success.

The title of this post, btw, is the name of a My Chemical Romance song, from way back, and it's rather good. My Chem are the only band you should be allowed to listen to on Halloween. If I ruled the world.

They are quite definitely my favourite band and have occupied that spot for about 6 years now, and I did a little dance when I heard they are back in the studio recording their 4th album. Oh Em Fucking Gee. Ray says: “I think the direction of the new album is a perfect mix of what we did on Black Parade and what we did on Revenge. After Black Parade, we were ready for a more aggressive sound, similar to Revenge, but even harder. Because we had toured behind Black Parade for so long, we wanted to do the complete opposite of that this time out, almost kind of de-construct ourselves.”

Yes, oh yes.

La Roux & Dan Black @ Camden Roundhouse - iTunes Festival

Last night I went to see La Roux play at Camden Roundhouse, with Dan Black supporting, as part of iTunes free London festival going on all July. What an awesome night! Getting free tickets to a gig is nice enough, even better that I love La Roux, and once I'd found someone to come along with me, (cheers Kylie, saved the day!) we had ourselves a great little night out in London town :)

Fern Cotton and Dave Berry were there presenting for itv2, how special:

Me and Kylie getting a bit sweaty in the crowd, ah fun times:
So as I said, Dan Black was supporting, I hadn't really heard much of his stuff before, checked him out and like what little I heard, but he was immense! Really enjoyed his set, we were dancing and bobbing along, first time I've enjoyed a largely unknown support act for a long time. His music is what I'd describe as Electropop mainly, little bit of an indie feel (actually, I detect a slight early Radiohead feel, in a good way) and a slight leaning towards the melancholy in his lyrics, as well as entirely danceable, which means he gets a thumbs up from me! Loved it, I'm definitely going to get his album when I have some cash.



Nice set, very neon/brightly lit/crazy. Also, if Jesus was a rocking post-indie keyboard player who likes to go a bit mental, he would look like this:

So then La Roux came on, and I have to say I think I enjoyed Dan Black a bit more. He seemed to have much more energy... although I really like La Roux's style and songs, and she hit pretty much every note perfectly, I just didn't feel as invigorated as I thought I would. Having said that, when Going in For the Kill and Bulletproof came on, everyone rocked out a bit more and it felt really good to do some crazy dancing. She had an amazing jacket on though, not entirely sure if you can see it properly, but it was white and had no lapel, with massive plastic gems on. Sooo cool. She's a bit stylish, that girl.






A really great saturday night! Ace to be back in London (again woohoo), I'm making a pleasant habit of this.

Lastly, the road opposite the roundhouse is called Crogsland Road. Which I found hilarious and I don't know why. Crogsland. Heeheee.

A drawing a day: Day 4 - drawing in the park

Today I spent the latter part of the afternoon and evening chillaxing in West Park. Such an amazingly hot and sunny day, the lads were kicking a football around while I drew our array of technology in the grass. It was a super quick sketch as I only had my diary and pen with me, but I didn't care because I was in such a good mood, listening to 23 by Jimmy Eat World was my inspiration. Hence the scribbled lyrics. Lots of summer tunes :)

Check it out. Beautiful amazing sunshine. I was just lying in the grass finding strange animals in the clouds...
....and taking emo pictures of myself. Ha.

Tommy got sleepy :) awwww.

Pretty damn awesome day. Before all this chillaxing, I was in uni painting our degree show. I'm posting pictures of this in a sec :)

To see the rest of the drawings in the 'A drawing a day keeps the bad thoughts away' series, click here.