Juana Molina

Went to a wonderful gig last night at the Marlborough Theatre. Juana Molina is from Argentina and her music is acousticy electronica I guess you'd say. She's toured with David Byrne and headlined the Sonar festival.

She does that clever thing of playing and looping bits of guitar or keyboard and then playing over them, but it's never to the distraction of her lovely voice and strong songs. Really must check our her albums.

Hero

Went to see the film Hero at the weekend. It was visually stunning, but not anywhere near as good as the reviews would lead you to believe.

On a completely unrelated note, Brighton is crawling with police cos of the Labour conference. Our office window looks straight down onto Regency Road, and they are searching all the cars coming in. I just dared my colleague to throw a water bomb down onto the police below, but she declined...

Going to Birmingham with a cold

Suffering from the first cold of the Autumn and I'm off to Birmingham tomorrow for three days at our annual conference. John Prescott will be 'speaking', so you never know, it might get interesting. I will be staying at the very glamourous Jurys Inn Hotel - joy.

Hush Collector

We're back in Church Road Studios tonight for a short session to do guitars and vocals on 'It don't matter'. The Hush Collector website should be online soonish, once I've written the words for it. Looking at other band websites, it's a hard thing to get right. Chungking's looks pretty but is a bit of a pain to navigate, Girlinky's I like, but anyone want to suggest some good ones?

Things you learn in pub quizes # 1

Apparently the Apple Mac was named after the McIntosh, a variety of apple favoured by Jef Raskin, who worked for Apple.

What next? The iCox?

Setting Sun pub quiz

Top night out at the best pub in Brighton - The Setting Sun pub quiz. Bizarrely, we won - mainly thanks to Jonathan's artistic skills.

PJ Harvey

Went to see PJ Harvey at the Dome last night and she rocked. She plays a fair bit of old stuff on this tour - Dress, Victory, 50ft Queenie - and it's all good. Her new band are excellent too, the guitarist doubles up on drums on a couple of songs, and the drummer (is it Rob Ellis?) is amazing. Seen her three times this year now, and the best gig is still the one at the Oxford Zodiac back in May. Although her new album probably isn't her best overal album, some of the new ones were excellent, especially The Darker Days of Me & Him and Shame. And the Dome is an excellent venue.

Bare Skin Rugs

Bought the mini album by Brighton band the Bare Skin Rugs at the weekend, two tracks of which were done at Church Road Studios by Julian, who Hush Collector record with. It's a good collection of songs - my only slight reservation is that the vocals are too consciously trying to sound like Tim Buckley. One song is even called Honeyman, but isn't a cover of the Tim Buckley song of that name. Not that there's anything wrong with sounding like Tim Buckley of course. Would like to see them live, although actually think I did once years ago in the Brunswick Square festival thing.

Police cells and Volks Railway

Spent Sunday on two mini tours in Brighton as part of the Open Door programme. The old police cells in the basement of Brighton Town Hall were interesting - especially the story of the man arrested in St James Street in the 1800s who then beat to death the chief constable with a poker. Also interesting to see was the total mess of the rooms behind the scenes in the Town Hall, just one step off the main entrance lobby. The afternoon was a tour, and ride on, the Volks Electric Railway - which was considerably quicker and more comfortable than the Thameslink service I thought. These behind the scenes tours of Brighton are brilliant, but neither was as good as the tour of Brighton Station I did last year - if you get a chance to do that you should.

Things in Herds

Well, no posts for a while due to the horrendous nightmare that has been going back to work after two weeks off.

Gig going activities resumed last night however at The Greys on Southover Street. Things in Herds were headlining and they did a very pleasant line in acousticy / electronicy stuff, with Will from The Customers helping out on guitar (and drum stick). The Greys is a great venue, and apparently was recently voted the 11th best pub in England.