shanx.co.uk

Spring Clean, Summer Upgrades and Some New Music

Posted by David | Filed under Music, News, Web

Summer is in the air, the ironic melodic synth pop of The Magnetic Fields‘ appropriately titled album Holiday is on the jukebox album and shanx.co.uk is upgraded with a new look.

The summer weather and Norway’s “Light at Night” at 1 in the morning allowed for some outdoor low-fi (because we know no other way) music with Stefan as part of our “David and Me” project. It was a beautiful evening – “one for the mind and not to be recorded” as a wise man once said. We were visited by a curious beaver, some deer, jumping fish, a skunk (we think) and passers by.

Musically speaking for “David and Me”, melody and simplicity take precedence with bedroom noises from melodicas, ukuleles, glockenspiels and rhythm eggs also making appearances. Magnetic fields and Herman Dune are strong influences. Mostly though, the driving force is some sort of ode to our favourite, sadly departed all-too-young St.Thomas. We hope summer will be kind and give us some recordings of our songs to put out. For now, some roughness (we like roughness!)

- The Willow Tree -

David and Me – Sulking

While on the music front, Billy Spring Band have been busy in the studio recording rough demos for a full 8 or so songs. We have quite a mixture of songs now ranging from a “skrangly” Neil Young rock sound to a smooth jazzy tune all the way to a waltz! Check back here in the upcoming weeks for some rough demos. BSB now have, in addition to our Myspace, an online home with the kind collective of bands @ Snotpope with whom we share practice rooms, studio and equipment. Find it by clicking my banner design below.

Digitally, I’ve been particularly impressed with WordPress 2.8 publishing platform’s features that make running a blog a LOT easier and much more intuitive. Plugins, themes and widgets can all now be installed and activated directly through the WordPress Online Site Admin interface. The sidebar widget housing your e.g. Twitter, Flickr and Last.fm feeds can be adjusted seamlessly using drag and drop thanks to AJAX. Gone also are the cumbersome days of downloading your plugins/upgrades as zip files, unpacking them and uploading them via FTP. One standout plugin is the WordPress InstantUpgrade plugin by Zirona. Once set up, WordPress is upgradable in one click – no more worries about file permissions or overwriting important files.

Watch this space for more music from David and Me and BSB. And, above all, god sommer!