Here and Now - ZINES!

So yeah, experimented with Blogger's 'Dynamic' layout. Didn't like it at all, so impersonal and black and white. At the risk of sounding like a three year old, where were the colours!? Bah.

Anyway, the good news is that the Zines are done and printed and looking great! Above you can see the cover bearing a photograph I took during the short burst of snow we had down here in Bath, looking up at the snow ledged on the bush brings an interesting perspective I felt. And I was stuck for ideas and had gone through several covers in the process. Believe me, that one is the best out of what I came up with. By far.

The Zine itself has short stories, some illustration which I'll post on here soon, the contributions were fantastic, and some photography by myself and Red, and if you would like one, just email me with your address and I'll post one out to you! And it will be free too, I just want everyone who wants one to have one!

My personal email is: dont_talk2urself [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk

(I have to type it out like that because otherwise dirty spammers will try to send me shit. And I don't enjoy shit)

What you can also do, which would be very cool, is join our Facebook group! HERE

Also on that note, I am looking for more contributors for the Zine, so if any writers or illustrators or photographers would like to have their work published then contact me and I'll see what we can do, hit up that email above and lets get going.

We are only a one man operation, and so I use the 'royal'/'made up' 'we' when I refer to ourselves, or I mean me, or.... whatever. Anyway, what I mean to say is, any support is much appreciated!

Updates, Connection Problems and Lucien Freud Exhibition

So, how bloody annoying  is it when your laptop that perfectly works for two years suddenly decides that the internet connection it's been perfectly connecting to for two years isn't there anymore?

Yeah. So, until I sort that out I am very much afraid (((Hyperpower))) may sit still for a few more days.

Anyway, UPDATES!!

I've progressed exceedingly well with the Zine, out of 16 pages I have 14, and am thinking about upping the content to 20 pages, but printing costs have to be considered too. I have several contributions from some very cool people and am waiting on some more. I think it's going to turn out pretty cool. When I can, I'll post some photos of the process.

Today, I went to the Lucien Freud exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and believe if you get the chance, go. Freud's portraits are astounding in their intensity of attention to detail and I would think, though not meaning to be photographic, obviously, in many cases better than a photograph. Freud seems to capture the sitter, in his very laborious and time consuming process - apparently David Hockney's portrait took 130 hours! - and the sitter's essence. They're not only time invested in to the painting but emotionally invested too as Freud talks to them.

The exhibition is so good and it'll be on until the 27th May so definitely check it out. Here's the website HERE

Zine Progress!

Yeah, this isn't very exciting , it's just I have the layout and format of the 'zine sorted out the other day and I thought I should document it on here. I've actually gotten to the point now where I've started to design individual pages and the cover and back cover designs and asking for contributors, so yeah I've been busy in this mini-hiatus from the flurry of posts of recent. Hopefully normal service will resume soonish...

(((Hyperpower))) 'Zine?

For a while now I've been thinking about making a 'zine, a self-published magazine of sorts with the DIY ethos and wabi-sabi nature. Of course printed media is never going to revive itself from it's inevitable death, much to the Newspaper Man's grief, but I find the physicality of a magazine enticing. It's permanent and real. Something to grip with your fingertips and experience.

It'll essentially be an artefact of a time and place, and that tangibility is exciting. And it's a bit of fun too.

So yeah, this may be in the works in the background, and I'll make sure to record its process on these here pages, with the layout and writing and illustrations and photography.

Keep an eye out.

On Writing: The Death of the Review

As a music record review writer I have found the form itself has been cheapened considerably over the last couple of years. Of course the fact that anyone can start up a blogspot and write about music makes the writing landscape so varied and interesting and colourful, but it also means there’s no filtration device. The degree of quality writing in reviews has cooled significantly.

I believe a review has it’s own art form; the writing has to be informative of the subject that you are reviewing, but it must also be entertaining and persuasive. Pure information is a pamphlet. A well-reasoned and thought-provoking discussion is a review.

This is not only restricted to digital media, which is a common misconception, printed media too have been on this slippery slope and continue to flail in their shallow puddles of vocabulary. To appeal to mass audiences does not mean the writing has to be dumbed down to the bare-essentials: clichés and a formula.

In the Music and indeed the Art industry, nothing else is as important as having your work be quality and unique, so why should it be different when you’re writing about those industries?

Here I break it down where I think the quality of reviewing is going awry, and follow with how I think a review should be.

…

A New Year

I'm always astounded when I return to this often forgotten, tiring little corner of the Internet that I call mine. It sits ticking away gaining a frankly unbelievable amount of pageviews that are wholly undeserved. Since (((Hyperpower)))'s carnation there's been over 14,000 visits of which I am wholly thankful for each every one. I hope, like I keep on promising, to fill these pages with more content over the next year, there'll be more art, music and I will probably be using this space as a gathering place of all of my writing that is published on other sites.

But, that's saying and not doing so I'll leave you with a cool tune off a cool record.

Chelsea Wolfe - 'Pale On Pale' off the record Apokalypsis

Hey! I've a Photo

Also I have some more HERE. They're super cool so, yeah, GO FOR IT, or don't. Or head here, that's super cool too.

Oh Man....

So, July may not be as fruitful as June was, what with it's singular post, as I'm roadtrippin' down to Rome and then Bloodstockin' when I get back so July may be another neglectful month. However, before I go on the 17th, I hope to put up at least one or two posts about artists that have caught my eye in the meantime.

I don't know why I put that image there, I quite like it but don't know who did it....

Some O' Mine Photographs....

(click each image to enlarge, the top image does look much better when clicked on)

So in Bath it has been glorious weather recently, absolutely beautiful sun, and it is the first day of the year where I've only gone out in a t shirt. Obviously with trousers too, not just the shirt.

On campus at Bath Spa we have a stunning lake which is brilliant for lounging around on a sunny day under a tree, which is just what I did for three hours yesterday reading Ernest Hemmingway. It was good. Then I found a spider had crawled onto my collar which was not cool. Not cool at all.

The bottom image was at a ruins of a mill by a stream which is also on campus and I had to climb through some thicket to get there. It's the view through what I guess was once a circular window.

(((HYPERPOWER)))

Both me and Lizzie have been thinking about setting up a blog for a while now and we've just got round to doing it. Hyperpower will be a place to share some of our own photography with some of our thoughts and ideas behind the images, and also a space to show some of the photographers that inspire us. Along the way some music will be thrown in too.