Clevedon Caught II

Another image from the Clevedon Court set.

Clevedon Caught

A couple of weeks ago we visited Clevedon Court, where I made this image of - I think - a marigold.

I took along my RX100, which allowed me to take my Alpha 77 with 50mm macro lens, rather than the Tamron super-zoom, which I would other have taken. This in turn enabled me to make some flower portraits, of which this is one.

Cathedral City

During a few days in Liverpool recently, we made a visit to the Anglican Cathedral, where I made this image with my RX100. I've employed my patented poor man's HDR technique to get some detail into the windows.

Busking It

As you may imagine, there are plenty of street buskers around at the Brecon Jazz Festival - this is an image of one pair. I have no impression at all of the music they were playing, so it probably wasn't up to much.

Anyway, based on my extensive experience, I now proudly present four reasons why a jazz gig is better than a rock gig:

You get to sit down. This makes me sound like an old git, but there are some practical advantages to seated shows. You can see the stage for one thing - this isn't always true when everyone's standing and you're five foot seven like me. And in a standing crowd you're always being jostled by people coming and going - to the bar, the toilets, or wherever - which drives you to distraction when you're trying to concentrate on the performance.

The volume levels are bearable. After a rock gig, my hearing usually takes a couple of days to recover. Where's the need for that? 

The bands are punctual. I have commitments. Despite this, I've bought your album and made the time to take in your local show. The least that you can do is acknowledge this by turning up on time and playing for the advertised duration. Rock bands don't seem to be able to grasp this simple principle of etiquette.

The musicians can play. This was brought home to me quite forceably at Brecon. I was walking back to my car after the last show and passing a pub, I heard a rock band brutally butchering "Sweet Child of Mine". The (female) singer couldn't sing and the guitarist couldn't guitar - the whole thing was a waste of time and effort for all concerned, both band and audience. You don't get that with jazz.

Brecon the Rules

This year, I managed to take in the final day of the Brecon Jazz Festival, and my new RX100 went along with me.

Firstly, in case you don't know, Brecon Jazz isn't a 'real' festival, where you sit in a field and listen to bands that you've never heard of, performing on a stage half a mile away. No, Brecon is much more civilised that that. Its basically three days during which a whole bunch of gigs happen in a few venues dotted around the town and you buy tickets to the ones you want to see.

There is other stuff going on in the pubs - which is mostly rock and blues, but who's counting - and a few open air events, but the real action is at the Memorial Hall or the Theatre or the other indoor venues.

Anyway, I made it to a couple of shows, one of which was Phronesis, the final gig of the weekend.  I made a few images with the RX100, of which this is one. It was taken at the long end of the zoom, ISO500, 1/60, f/2.8, manually focused at infinity so that he autofocus light didn't flash.

Its acceptable, but only just. The composition is not good, but I was sitting where I was sitting. I also saw Sons of Kemet, but I sat way too far from the stage to make any good images in that case. I guess that I have a lot to learn about photographing live jazz.

New Camera Alert

So I finally took the plunge and bought an RX100 - the MIII rather than the MIV. This is one of the first images that I made with it, of Cheddar Reservoir and Brent Knoll, viewed from the top of Cheddar Gorge.

Initial impressions are pretty good, although it turns out to be fairly useless for macro work, so the Alpha 77 still has a use, which is nice to know...

More images from the RX100 shortly.

Mellow Yellow

Sometimes, I find it difficult to think of anything to say about an image of a flower from our garden.

This is one of those times.

Foxy

Its been a few years since we've grown foxgloves in our garden. In the past I've tried to photograph them, without any success.

This year, we have one large plant growing in the shade beneath the buddleia, and I made this image which I'm sort of happy with.

Leaf It Out

A brief return to mono for this image of a leaf from one of the bushes in our garden.

2014: The Year in Electronic Music

The rather belated part two of my Album of the Year series:

All forms of popular music aspire to being jazz. (I'm not sure who said this, but someone must have. If not, I'd like to claim it as it sounds really insightful.)

Arguably, electronic music comes closest to making good on this aspiration. In its ability to break new ground whilst acknowledging the genre's past and bending it into new forms and structures, it is in its own way, Whitney Balliet's "sound of surprise".

Given this, its perhaps worrying that for the past two years, the big news has been about the re-emergence of innovators from decades past. In 2013, it was Boards of Canada's underwhelming "Tomorrow's Harvest" that set the commentards chattering - I had the sense that they were so relieved that the duo had returned, that the quality of the album really didn't matter. 

In 2014, we had Aphex Twin's "Syro", which at least sounds like RDJ is having fun. But it could have been made any time in the last ten years, if not before. Wire magazine made it their album of the year - I mean, really? Adventures in modern music? Perhaps not.

So what else attracted my interest this year?

Vladislav Delay is perhaps better know as one third of the Moritz Von Oswald Trio, a unit which courts a jazz sensibility in their name, as well as their music, but are currently missing in action. "Visa" is his latest solo outing, which is like a warm bath, with its gentle fizz and pop, not a million miles from, say, Oval - which is obviously no bad thing.

Kreidler and long-time associates, To Rococo Rot have both released albums this year, both of which were underwhelming. Perhaps recognising this, To Rococo Rot have decided to call it a day, leaving "Instrument" as their final release. In a bit of a departure, Arto Lindsay provides vocals on three tracks, which appears to have been a final throw of the dice that didn't produce sixes. Kreidler's "ABC" is pleasant enough, but that's as far as it goes. The problem with their warm, analogue take on electronica is that it can very easily bland-out.

Talking of Boards of Canada, 2014 saw them reissue their 1996 release "Skam". Clocking in at 32 minutes, this EP points up the bloated, purposelessness of "Tomorrow's Harvest".

Hauschka is a pianist whose aim in life is to make his prepared piano sound like a bunch of fx, to the point were his CDs are usually filed in the electronic section in music shops. Leaving aside the question of why anyone would want to do this,his latest release, "Abandoned City" is very atmospheric. In much the same way that the nature of the instrument in use has to be taken on trust, I'm not clear if the tracks have any relationship to the cities whose names they bear or whether any of this matters.

Finally, we had the sophomore effort from La Roux, "Trouble in Paradise". A rather muted affair, this lacks the obvious hits of her début, but this actually works to its advantage, the resulting album being more of a finished whole.

So, on the whole, not a vintage year.