end-of-year-best-of-list_roundup2012.rar

Two thousand and twelve - wow what a year that was. It's hard to compress a year's worth of plans, achievements, losses, travels, worries and changes into a few lines, but a year's music best of comes pretty close to summing things up. I must admit though that compared to other years I was not as music-savvy as I usually am, due to a combination of events and that uneasy feeling you get when keeping up with the year's releases becomes a daunting task rather than a burning passion. As a consequence, for example, I barely had any time and mind to focus on the year's more droney and experimental end of releases. 

It was also a year when I felt that (for the first time) I could not get my head round certain types of music or understand what the fuss was all about. Case in point would be Jam City's Classical Curves, most stuff from the Tri Angle camp (which was my favourite label last year) and Actress' RIP. Then again, lack of time might have played a part in this. It's actually funny to note that I haven't mentioned any indie album - I have long abandoned any attempts to make some kind of sense of indie music in it's present form (if it still exists, that is). 

Ok then - here's a list of 12 albums in no particular order apart from the first two which I particularly enjoyed..

1) Sand Circles - Motor City

A perfect retro-futuristic blend of BOC-style slow moving melodies 

with some tasty early Detroit techno beats and synths slapped on. 

Made walking the streets of inner-city London at night quite an experience. 

2) The Descendants OST

Technically 2011 I think, but I only watched and heard it in 2012.

To tell you that I was totally obsessed with this collection of Hawaiian

songs for around 2 weeks is an understatement. I don't know of any

other album that can take you to the same heights as a first-class zoot 

without actually inhaling any of the holy herb. Chillwave as nature intended.

Voices From The Lake - S/T

Watery, dubby, discreet, gentle, perpetual techno. The one track

posted above doesn't make any sense at all outside of it's album 

context. A very patiently rewarding album. I'll never forget the

moment when the melodies from that 6th track crept in..

Daphni - Jiaolong LP

Sounds exactly like that great set we had danced to a 

couple of years ago in Old Street when we thought we would be 

seeing a Caribou gig but got a Caribou DJ set instead. It was 

a very good night.

Pausal - Forms

The only drone/ambient album for this year. This reminded me alot

of Stars Of The Lid-style airy/nebulous ambient music. That's very easy

to get wrong of course, but these guys made it sound majestic. Plus

points for the great album cover artwork too..

Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland - Black Is Beautiful

I think this sounds very similar to a typically hip East London neighbourhood. 

Stylistically messy, not all the tracks are great, and some of them are outright 

hipster-weird-for-weird's sake but it kind of makes sense as a whole. If there's

one album that sounds like urban 2012 it would be this.

Grimes - Visions

Yep, I like it too.

Musette - Drape Me In Velvet LP

Any album with a crescent moon on the cover just has to be

a Lefty Le Mur favourite! But really, this sounds like a Central-

European musical odyssey being played on a 1920s grammophone

sat atop a steam boat gracefully gliding down a moonlit Danube.

Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras & The Congos - Icon, Give, Thanks

A flawed but very interesting album this one. Both parties use 

totally different musical languages from different eras and it's this 

tangible struggle to find some middle ground between the two that 

makes this album a winner. That and the guy singing on 'Jungle'.

Desolate - Celestial Light Beings

This is what Burial would have sounded like should he have

been brought up in a block of 60s flats in a dodgy Parisian

suburb. Evocative urban electronica peppered with continental 

European influences - perfect for a grey, grimy day. 

Lone - Galaxy Garden

Upon playing it for the first time, this track actually had me 

burst out laughing. It's kind of like a hyperactive kid - abit crazy, abit 

all over the place and just can't stop moving. I initially wouldn't 

take it seriously but hey, it works!

There's other key albums which might have made it to the list but which I haven't had time to thoroughly get into. Stuff such as Vessel, Chromatics, Lambchop, Laurel Halo, Ariel Pink, Grizzly Bear, Cat Power..

Anyway, here's hoping to another year full of great music (although truth be told, 2011 had better music) and great memories!

 

 

Latest Transmissions

Seeing as the weather was so utterly dismal this week-end, I spent the better part of it sketching and coloring up a visual interpretation of those weird forms I posted last week. I'd do all the Lemurian alphabet in this style if I had enough patience but I don't so 3 or 4 are probably enough for now. Here's one..

I'm quite happy with this particular illustration because of various reasons - 

1) it actually looks and feels like an illustration. I always thought that my stuff was more fine art-y, graphic design-y or graffiti-y rather than illustration (which actually is what I studied after graphic design).

2) it's personally a gathering of loose ends of sorts - visually, topically, methodically..

3) I graduated from BA (Hons) Illustration feeling as if I had a significant amount of unfinished business to attend to stylistically. My final project was a stylistic hodge-podge and looked a mess as I'd used three different printing processes to create a concertina when I could and should have used just one. As crazy as it sounds, I could not for the life of me find a line, a technique, a method or something that felt mine. That left me in a bit of a panic and feeling as if I had just wasted a precious three years which seemed especially true upon comparing my work with the very accomplished work of some of my classmates'. It's taken me an additional one and a half years of additional visual exploration to start feeling as if I'm getting somewhere.

Anyway, onwards and forwards..

Lemurian

This last week was spent digitising/creating a new font or whatever you might want to call it based on what I call the Lemurian script. Here's a sneaky-peek..

Nieuw Werk / Wolken

Holy flying mackerel, that took a while! Settling in was far from speedy, but I've started doing some new work during these past few days now that the dust's settled a bit. The first few bits of drawing seem to be concerned mostly with clouds and wishy washy fluffy stuff. That might be due to the sky being a bit more visible out here in London's Zone 3 (as opposed to Zone 1)? I don't know. I like them though and I might do a little something with them this week. And while we're at it, I've thrown in a track by Shlohmo that reminds me of the white stuff. 

Dust, sweat and a mind full of ideas..

Work for sale at Patches Market, Malta

Next Sunday the 8th of July will see yet another installment of the now firmly established Patches - Malta's handmade product market (which is, by the way, run by my camera hugging/brush wielding sister Denise Scicluna). This will be I believe the 11th edition yet, and as much as I've always wanted to take part I've never really had much of anything to sell really. Up until now that is. 

So, this time round I'll be having a stall at the market. I will be selling some prints and books of mine but the exciting bit for me is that I will also be selling works by other Maltese (or related) graphic artists. These include - Ken Borg, Thomas Cuschieri, Adrian Gauci and Sara de la Mora. We'll be selling a variety of graphic goodies ranging from prints (riso and screen), artist and comic books, postcards, accessories etc, most of which I believe is going to have been available in Malta for the first time.

For my part, I will be having 3 or 4 new risoprints, a selection of postcards and copies of my book The Birth of Culture up for sale (see pics below). If you're not in Malta at the time then of course do please get in touch if interested in copies of the prints or the book, but for you graphic and illustration enthusiasts who will be in Malta at the time - we expect to see you there!

Update

I've been busy and it's been a while, but here's a little update - I'll be taking part in Malta's Patches market on the 8th of July where I'll be selling copies of my book The Birth of Culture, prints and other visual goodies. More info about this later..

Exercises in Style

Here's a couple of details taken from a digital illustration that I've done in the last couple of days. I don't have much of a history with digital illos as I've always preferred getting my hands dirty on a collage rather than changing the hue of a bunch of pixels, so more than anything this is abit of a test to see how my work would look when processed through Photoshop. I'm not unhappy!

Fresh Linework

Propmaking

Me and Sara recently did some props for a video by London-based songstress Carrie Haber. Unfortunately the project will probably never see the light of day, but those on top are how it would have looked like. Photos by Denise.

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...meanwhile, back in Malta..

www.patchesmarket.com



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The Birth of Culture - a handmade book

This weekend I finally got round to producing and finishing the first few copies of a tiny book I'm calling The Birth of Culture. This book is really the first step in an attempt to inject anthropology with illustration - two disparate fields which I think have much to offer yet rarely cross each other's paths (I'll be posting more on 'anthropological illustration' sometime in the next couple of weeks).

The Birth of Culture then is a book about culture in its most generic definition - a mold of some sort that shapes the lives of a group of people through a series of habits, norms and beliefs. The theme here is not just 'birth' but also this constant motion that over time can be seen as a pattern or a cycle through which cultures pass. The various stages of this cycle are represented as different chapters starting from the conception of a culture (as influenced by its geographical environment), evolution over time, cross-cultural exchange etc. I found that the easiest way of representing all this was by using symbols, or visual languages (scripts). Language (verbal and written) can often give a good idea of what a culture is all about, and I've used different invented scripts to demonstrate the myriad different ways which cultures can find themselves evolving into. It is this precisely these impossibly different ways in which human culture manifests itself and learning about what causes them to become this way which I find so compelling in anthropology.

The idea for the book's subject came over time from reading old historians and travellers like Ibn Battutah and Herodotus. As I had remarked in another blog post, it had kind of dawned on me that cultures are in constant motion and that a culture may disappear but it never really dies. As anthropologists around the world are more than aware of, the globalized nature of today's world means that cultures (especially minority ones) have never had existing so hard. On the other hand, international human migration is probably at one of its highest levels ever and while this might be endlessly fascinating to witness from an anthropological point of view, it is also - and i say this cautiously - understandably creating tension which comes along with cultural mixing within integrating societies. Therefore, creating this book is a way for me to humbly console the modern panicked anthropologist and a quiet reminder that the use of culture can often be a double edged sword - a ticket for discrimination or an opportunity to celebrate diversity in all its human forms. Lastly, it is also my first attempt in making anthropology abit more visual and accessible for the curious public.

The book is almost a 100% handmade (only the printing was not done by hand, but even that was done at home) and involves a mixture of linocut, letterpress and rubber stamp printing processes. All artwork and design was also done by myself. It consists of 48 saddle-stitched pages, measures 14x9cm and is being printed in an edition of 350 copies. Copies can be bought for £10 each (not including postage). Please email me at info@leftylemur.com if interested.

Berlin

 

 

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