about3am

Christ it's a new year

2011-01-07T03:53:00.000-08:00

I've started many blogs in 2010 and lept up to date with precisely fucking none of them. So I'll be closing down the work ones, the films review ones, the tumblr sites and leaving anything that is left in my vacuous head to this 3am blog. A place online that will always feel like home, where everybody knows your name.

As 2011 has reared it's unforgiving head into the present I'm faced with the dilemma of what to ramble on about. Pete Postlethwaite is dead, Gerry fucking Rafferty is dead and the fella from japan is dead ( though to be fair I couldn't give two tits about Japan)

Happy fucking new year, you bastards.

She Makes War - Disarm

2010-08-13T01:37:00.001-07:00

She Makes War – Disarm

Laura Kidd’s musical baby is She Makes War. The bass player with acts such as Tricky, I Blame Coco and Alex Parks has come a long way and honed her sound perfectly. Her debut album is called Disarm and in it, is the very soul of 90’s America.
As many rock bands ride the 90’s revival, forgetting to shave, screaming and trying desperately to re-create Kurt Cobain, She Makes War opt to relive the sun kissed, happier sounds of Holes ‘Celebrity Skin’ and Weezers debut album. Of course this means the whole album screams influence from the Alt. Rock scene of 90’s America but this is by no means a bad thing. Just like the bands mentioned, She Makes War perfectly weave pop sensibility with angst ridden lyrics and muddy distorted guitar riffs.
With their subject matter, dark guitar lines and dirty rhythm sections, tracks such as ‘A-Hole’, ‘I Am’ and ‘Let This Be’ will all appeal to Hole / Auf Der Maur fans.
Other tracks such as ‘Scared to Capsize’ and ‘Slow Puncture’ show Laura Kidd’s mellow side and show off her vocals talents. With ‘Slow Puncture’ I was brought back to Sheryl Crows second album. Imagery of late summer afternoons accompanied with dirty guitar chords set the album apart from other UK acts at the moment. She Makes War have managed to craft a principally American Alt Rock album with UK appeal. ‘NIMN’ and ‘Chicken’ both have hints of Garbage, Republica and UNKLE. Providing the perfect balance between grunge and pop, that gives the whole album a refreshing sound for the UK scene.

Yes Disarm has clear influences from a previous age and might not be considered groundbreaking, but the thing about Disarm is what it isn’t. It isn’t poor pop, watered down folk music and a ludicrous amount of auto tune and it isn’t going to blow your mind but it will rediscover your appreciation for a well written rock album, without pretences or images. It will remind you of the excitement of picking up your guitar for the first time and playing those Nirvana/Weezer/Hole/Eels covers with your friends in a garage.

The album as a whole is the mature listeners Blood Red Shoes. It’s the warm sun you feel stood in a field at a festival, knowing your having the time of your life and it is a must have for anyone at a loss between chart music and the current UK rock scene.

For more information and to buy the album please visit

www.shemakeswar.com

For fans of Hole, Weezer, Eels, Garbage, Blood Red Shoes.

Inside

2010-01-25T05:35:00.000-08:00

Inside is a 2007 graphic French horror staring Beatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis (little sister to Joe le Taxi’s Vanessa Paradis.) The film begins with a shot of an unborn baby inside the womb. A voice over, clearly outside the womb explains how the baby is now safe and no harm will ever come to it. The shot then cuts to a pregnant woman who has been involved in a car crash. Her husband sits dead next to her as she sits helpless in the driver’s seat.

This story is set on Christmas Eve, as a pregnant Sarah is trapped in her own house with a psychopath hell bent on taking her unborn child from her.
More and more victims are piled up, as people arrive at the house throughout the night to check on Sarah. Finding temporary safety, Sarah locks herself in the bathroom and tries to sit out the massacres downstairs until help arrives.

What starts off as a film based on a dangerous prowler, quickly turns into a sadistic violent and extremely graphic tale of revenge. This film is certainly not for the faint hearted. If you are a fan of other French ‘gourno’ films such as, Haute Tension, Frontiers and expecially Martyrs then you won’t be disappointed. If Wes Craven had made Scream like this, he’d still be locked in a mental home.

Too Many to decide

2010-01-22T06:39:00.000-08:00

Social media really is a massive huge big industry.
An article earlier this week insisted that there were 56 social media applications and sites your company had to be part of.
The article include some regulars and obvious choices, such as;
Reddit, facebook, myspace, twitter, tumblr, youtube and flikr.
Then there are ones I have never even heard of;
Ryze, Tribe, Buzzflash, Wetpaint and Frappr.
Frappr??? This is apparently for tracking where you're clients are coming from.

Are we getting to a point where there are too many apps and social media sites? Has the social media phenomena expasterated itself before its really had chance to stretch its wings and fly? Or are these web technologies just at the very start of their life?

For many, this 'new media' is still exactley that, a very new and in some instances, unknown territory. It can be daunting enough for some to sign up for an email account, let alone try and decide which of these ever growing apps and sites are the ones to use. Why must we have
multiple profiles and avatars and places to have our say? This new change of society isn't all that new though. If we look back through recent history, how were Radios discarded for Televisions? How did we adjust when mobile phones and modems were introduced?
All of these were challenges technology threw at us, that we conquered. Now New Media has stepped up as the next Challenge. It's not something that should be feared by elders and bosses. It should be embraced.

As was said to me at a recent social media get together. Twitter, facebook, tumblr and all the others are just a pub without beer.

See which social media sites are for you here.

http://www.articlesbase.com/online-promotion-articles/56-social-media-websites-every-business-needs-to-be-on-847463.html

A couple of websites to have a chuckle at

2010-01-20T07:18:00.000-08:00

There's been a couple of sites to make me laugh this week. Check out

http://watchwithmothers.net/

http://www.sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com/

Is Paranormal Activity really the scariest movie in 10 years?

2010-01-06T08:16:00.001-08:00

As 2009 saw the 10th Anniversary of the Blair Witch project, we’d be fooled to think the current climate of western horror films would have drafted plans for a remake. After the abysmal Black Witch2 it seems that franchise has been scarred for life.

2008 saw a reinvention of the hand held horror genrein US cinemas with the monster epic Cloverfield. Combining this jerky, sea sick inducing camera work of the Blair Witch with great monster movies such as King Kong and Godzilla, Cloverfield arrived at the perfect time. A time when America was still gripped with the threat of terrorism, the Cloverflield monster arrived ripping up bridges and roads and tearing the Statue of Liberty limb from limb. It was the great success of this and the release of Spanish outbreak film Rec a year before, that brought the handy cam movie back to the limelight.

A year later we see the release of Paranormal Activity. A story of spook obsessed Katie and spook cynic, techno geek Micah.
In an effort to prove his wife is wrong about the house being haunted, Micah sets up a video camera to capture any mysterious goings on in their bedroom while they’re asleep. It is this POV technique that the whole film is shot.
I feel with Paranormal Activity, there’s been an effort to combine features of Rec, Blair Witch and the Exorcist, which are three brilliant films to take influence from, but with the short 86 minute running time, there hasn’t been enough time to build a suitable amount of tension to sufficiently scare people.
Instead of building a suspense, the repetitive low hum indicating the arrival of the ghost broke it at times and the repetition of events took away some of the spontaneity that is needed when making such a cut back horror film.

Before you think I’m just ripping this film, there are some good bits.
For example, I enjoy the way the camera is set up every night to look down the hall way. The vast majority of this, of course is in darkness. As you keep your eyes on the couple sleeping to the right of the screen, your attention from time to time is averted when a light flickers or a shadow moves. It’s here, where director Oren Peli manages to accumulate the tension and builds his armoury for the inevitable ‘big shock’ at the end.

As far as endings go, I thought this was very poor and something that Rec had done in the same year, with a far higher degree of terror.
I do think this would’ve been a truly scary film, if it had the big distribution in 2007 when it was made. Unfortunately due to its restrictions I can’t help but feel it will be constantly compared to its contemporaries.

The director used his own house in an attempt to capture the audience in the much used ‘could this be real?’ trick but for the timing reasons I mentioned above, Paranormal Activity was a dead horse before it could shine.

I’m still a firm favourite of the hand held camera movies as can be seen in REC and Cloverfield but I think it’s time for a change of approach to how this can be produced in horror.

I've seen the blogging light

2009-11-25T05:40:00.000-08:00

Having attended a very informative talk about social media and networking this morning I’ve decided to put more of an effort into my blog. For far too long now I’ve taken for granted the power of the blog. I’m now a firm believer that the blog will play an important part in the future of communication.

As people develop the ability to speak their mind, blogs and sites such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are becoming more and more dependable.
Living on the Isle of Man at this time of year can remind you, just how isolated you are but with a connection to millions of other bloggers and social media users worldwide it has never been so easy to get your thoughts made heard.

Now I’m currently on disc 2 of Dawkins The Greatest Show on Earth so I must get back more blogging during the week.

The good thing about remakes is.

2009-11-23T08:54:00.000-08:00

The good thing about remakes is…..

Over the past week I have been watching some old horror and trying to place myself in the minds of someone living in the 70’s. Being brought up in the 80’s and 90’s my first experiences of horror films were ITV premiers of Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist and the god horrible ( to my memory) Pulse. These films have always stayed with me as being the big scary ones. Throughout the years I’ve been treated to other psychopaths and satanic demons ripping people apart, I’ve watched as teenagers cars break down and students get chased through forests. I’ve even sat back whilst back packers are cut and blow torched and classes of Japanese kids set to killing each other on a remote island.

Through all the blood and the screaming I’ve also become desensitized to some of the real horrors of cinema. This realisation came to me over the weekend when a friend mentioned she didn’t find The Exorcist scary.

I recently re watched Left House on the Left and it didn’t have the same spark it had the first time I’d watched it. This goes for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Omen. But these are genuinely scary films, and in some cases were so horrific to watch they were added to the ‘Video Nasty’ list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Nasty

It hasn’t been a secret that I’m against a lot of remakes and after not being too happy about Transformers, I dread Thundercats and A Team but I think some horror films are really going to benefit from these remakes. So far Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre haven’t topped the originals but they have been far from abysmal, unlike Friday 13^th and My Bloody Valentine, which I couldn’t get into at all. One problem I’ve found with the remakes is the charm of the originals was the poor quality of film. This quality, or lack of made viewers forget they were watching a big expensive blockbuster film and the line was smeared between fantasy and reality.

If I have any gripes about The Chainsaw Massacre it was the good quality of filming and the light used during filming was a lot darker than the original. The scariest thing about the original wasn’t the characters or the shots of body parts hanging up, it was the fact that it was shot in the daytime, and bad things don’t happen at day time, the scary characters aren’t meant to come out until night.

In the midst of these ‘not sure it’ll be any goods’ and ‘god that was terrible’ there are a few gems that will be brilliant. The new attempt at Elm Street for example looks brilliant. Childs Play is rumoured to start work next year and the production team have promised to keep with the spirit of the original and use puppets instead of CG. My big one that I think will benefit from a remake the most will be Hellraiser. With the advances in make up and gore effects Pinheads chains are going to be significantly more realistic and if done well should border an Exploitation film of the 70’s.

Here’s the concept trailer to Elm Street to keep you in the mood for some new/old horror!

http://www.nightmareonelmstreettrailer.com/index.php

A new week, a new blog.

2009-10-27T08:10:00.001-07:00

So, am I going to attempt these once a week now? Well it would be an awful waste of a life if there wasn’t at least once thing to talk about a week.

So here it is. I’m typing this on Tuesday 27th October. 4 days until Halloween, 59 day until Christmas, 6 days from my return trip to Amsterdam and more importantly 1 day until we find out the Sunday acts for the 2010 Bay Festival.
Rumours have been rife with only the premier grade disappointment that can be delivered by a man with lots of money and no idea.
The 2010 teaser trailer for the Bay Festival left us all with high hopes. Using Saltwater, the 1999 single by Chicane as it’s score the video is a few minutes long and shows the highs of the 2007 inaugural festival. Scenes of the Sugarbabes and The Who performing their little hearts out and shots of cheering and arm waving crowds have left the Manx public excited about this year but, can Street Heritage (the organisers) pull off the same level of magic?

Apparently not! The Rumour mill is so far screaming Rick Astley (only 26 years too late on that one boys) and the possibility of whoever from Boyzone didn’t die recently. I do hope to be proven wrong about the Rick Astley gig. A similar thing occurred a few years ago and by all means was a success but come on now, a little bit of knowledge of the music industry might’ve booked acts of substantially larger credentials.

So we wait with baited breath over who will be announced. With any hope the close proximity of this to my house will ensure free ‘residential’ tickets similar to those the Peel residents received in ’07. If these come about I’ll no doubt go up for a look but if the group booking for all 3 nights of £125 goes by anything I won’t be buying a ticket.

Stop moaning I hear you say, Isn’t there anything happy to talk about? I’ll let you know in the morning.

A moment of clarity via the Black Eyed Peas

2009-10-21T02:55:00.000-07:00

This morning, as the drive into work was its usual tedious and overly time consuming as usual self, I had what can only be described as a moment of recogning.
I haven't really had time to sit back and think about this before but I can't remember the last time I was excited about going on a night out. Have I become a stay-in at the weekends kind of guy? I don't mind the idea of being that sort of person, I just wish something or someone had given me a bit of notice about it.

This all came about from hearing the Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feelin" on the radio this morning. I am by far and wide not the biggest Black Eyed Peas fan but the song is about being excited about going out with friends and having a night out. This made me think of all the events I've been to recently I really haven't been that excited about them.

About a month ago I found myself in a nightclub and couldn't relax at all. Instead I was repeatedly amazed by how young the people in there were and by how much of a bastard everyone looked...... In the space of a month I've also lost my ability to drink. Headaches and hangovers are coming thick and fast at as little as a glass of wine and somehow the radio in my car has gone from 3FM and the CD Player to Radio 3 & 4.
All music that is released at the moment, including acts that I like, is shit and don't get me started on the complete farce the already waste of time X Factor has become. My sister (who still has her youth) showed me a clip of a set of twins 'performing' I'm sure we are one step away from wheeling disabled kids and Alzheimers ridden old people on stage and laughing at them. I'm sure Cowell already has that on the cards. Has entertainment become so bad that we're resorting back to gawping in amazement at the Bearded Lady and the Half Man Half Fish?

So it seems I've hit my 30's in my mid 20's. How will I keep myself occupied? I could end up like the cast of Friends, I don't even drink coffee!!! or tea!!! Christ, how will I fit in with the Sunday afternoon Coffee House bastards. If they're all bastards too where am I meant to spend my Sundays?
After a recent spell of serious TV watching I now have a headache the size of Jupiter, so sitting in watching TV all the time is out of the question. Our government should forget about the mega old and the bored, drunk youth and concentrate on us, the middle age at our wits end forgotten about 20 somethings.

Google have their own tsunami

2009-10-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

So I made it through the first 28 minutes of Googles live demonstration of their new Wave product. I'm still convinced that it will be a good thing but the nervous, clumsy presentation the Google reps gave didn't help.

From what I could gather in the first 3rd of the film (that's right the awkwardness carries on for another hour) Wave is basically a very elaborate IM client. It does look like it's going to be very good, providing everyone you know uses it. I get the impression though, now it is launched in it's development / testing phase, facebook will launch a BETA version of their site incorporating similar ideas.

I have an invite on the way so I will let you all know what the craic with it is. Gmail is still the best email client out so I have high hopes for wave.

It's not just skiving on facebook boss.....

2009-09-24T06:39:00.001-07:00

A mere 3 year ago I took my first steps in to social networking. Having split up with my then long term girlfriend and finding myself at a loose end I thought I’d give it a go. People had been talking about Myspace and in my mind it was still a relatively new experience. In the 3 years that have passed Myspace now seems like a dinosaur as sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Twtitter, even the once archaic blog sites have risen from the ashes and become part of daily life for most people around the world.
I know now that I would feel like something is missing if I didn’t check my twitter feed at least once a day.
It seems everyone in the world has one of the above pages and you’re more likely to hear people say to eachother “facebook me” instead of “give me a call”

As a musician / part time graphic designer, sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook have led me to, what were once unimaginable goals. Not only speaking with but also meeting heroes and people of significant inspiration to my work could never have been accomplished without the use of social networking sites.

As was discussed in the below article, these social networking sites are now beginning to take a strong hold on business and corporate marketing.
http://blog.island-webworks.net/2009/09/why-have-a-facebook-page-as-well-as-your-web-site/
The scope for company profit from using these E-Tools is massive. Not only are all these sites free to sign up to but they already have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of members. Businesses can treat these sites as a one stop client database.
“BUT WAIT!” I hear you cry – we are a specialist company and don’t want to advertise our product to everyone. Here, on Facebook you can search for certain people, find out groups that are related to your company and only add people who are already interested in the product. On Twitter there are bots constantly searching tweets for keywords, being re-tweeted by these can also be a work free way of gaining online clients.

Tacky web banners are fast becoming a thing of the past and everything from 140 character tweets to professionally edited video blogs (vlogs) are becoming the norm.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to kick my company into the 21st Century.

Googling martyn cain smashes guitar.

2009-07-31T03:02:00.000-07:00

Behind the closed doors of 3am last night Pabs and myself began more work on our latest CD offering.

It was my turn to play guitar, having not done this in a good long time it took some getting used to. Once I’d restrung it (which was no easy feat*) pedals were hooked up and we were about ready to start.
Our theories here were that by using a different set up we’d get a different sound and therefore pad the song out a bit more. Writers block is a bitch!
Having forgotten to pack the laney amp with me when I left the barn, we tried plugging straight into Logic. We got some ideas down but I think they’ll have to be re done using actual amps instead of modellers.

We were using the extra guitar on Signs and managed to get some interesting sounds, from sparse harmonics to Wild West / Dick Dale esque picky melodies.
I’m not sure how much if any of this will stay but it was interesting to try them out.

A sampler for the e.p. went up on our myspace this week. You can hear this by going to www.myspace.com/planesoverparis

Ben is back on Tuesday, we’re rehearing on Wednesday and I’m off to the Big Chill on Thursday woohoo.

Set for Mannifest is looking to include the following:
Temporise
Someone Elses Sun
Signs
Hospital Patio
Alibi
Narcolepsy

Chances are it won’t be in this order, but will almost certainly involve some lovely samples to compliment the grounds in which we’ll be playing.

***** PIGS ON THE WING*****

Tickets for the Planes / Pigs on the Wing gig go on sale tomorrow (sat 1st Aug) and are Available from the Welcome Centre at the Sea Terminal.
The gig will take place at the Royal Hall on the 10th October and tickets are a mear £10 each.

* As a little Postscript. The difficulty with restringing a guitar comes when you try and tune the strings an octave higher than they are meant to be. I snapped 2 A's and a D before I figured that out.

Writing songs.... the Bear way!

2009-07-20T03:11:00.001-07:00

Firstly congratulations to Steph, who passed her driving test on Saturday morning woohoo!
We celebrated that night by staying in drinking pop, eating crisps and cheesecake and watching Bear Grylls eat a yaks eyeball.
Incidentally, if anyone is ever in the situation where they have to get to the bottom of a mountain, we highly recommend trying it the “Bear way.” This involves ignoring all abseiling techniques and safety regulations, tying a piece of rope to your waist and legging it down the mountain face first with no helmet. It worked for Bear and by god it’ll work for you too. At the bottom of the hill he did then strangle a Yak, slit it’s throat, drink its blood straight from the throat, then eat its liver raw and as previously mentioned finish off with it’s eyeball for, what we can only assume was survival dessert.
I’m not sure whether you’ll have to do this but if there’s a Yak at the bottom of the mountain it might be worth a try.

In other “That’s Amazing!” news, Pabs landed on the island EARLY! You are reading that correct, a flight to the island landed early. I’m not sure what timezone that puts his body clock on but I was speaking to him at half 2 on Sunday morning. I’d say he was somewhere between Florida and Kilkenny now. Hopefully back to Castletown time by Thursday.

Steering things towards a more musical note I’m happy to say that the Barlow and Owen, the Rice and Lloyd-Webber, the Byrne and Eno, the Daphne and Celeste of the Manx music scene have come up smelling of roses again. Ben and I have engaged in more creative intercourse in the barn and have spawned yet another epic melodic zygote.
Ringing out similar tones to Songs for the Deaf and some R era Queens of the Stoneage, but keeping our traditional dark synth bound adventure, we decided this can only pave way for a new kind of genre. Hostile Disco was penned in the barn and god damnit I like it. Try and imagine if you will giving Depeche Mode a crate of redbull and replacing their guitars with jackhammers.

The song itself hasn’t got a name as of yet, but once Mannifest is over we’ll be working like 8 year old Nike employees to get it in the Kaisers set.

For now I will leave you. We have a rehearsal tonight so I will take some photo’s and upload them later tonight.

Mannifest tickets on sale

2009-07-14T01:36:00.001-07:00

Tickets for Mannifest are now on sale. Priced at £55 (inc booking fee) for the whole weekend.
Tickets are available from www.ticketline.co.uk

Pabs is back this week so we have our first rehearsal on Saturday. The set looks like it's shaping up to be pretty full on, all the loud fast stuff is being thrown in. We'll be keeping Alibi in so there'll be a short (well 8 minute) clamer interval before it's back to dancing and destroying your heads off.

There's also a new intro type track coming out of the barn but that will be left for the Kaisers gig. Don't worry I'm working with some samples at the moment to make Mannifest a special little performance.

In other news. Now pabs is back I get my guitar and BR8 back so between now and the end of the year we're going to start work on a very low key, post rock project, which will end early next year. It should be available on CD only (no iTunes download this time).

Thursday trip to the Barn

2009-07-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

After a sunny sunny day we were expecting the barn to be like an oven, it was fine hooraay ! and as a bonus it appeared the hosue band hadn't been playing on our gear hooraay!

Pabs is flying between Las Vegas and Florida and Steph had the first night of her show last night, (bit excited about going to see it tonight!!!) so Ben and I hit the barn for a bit to carry on working on the new Intro.

It's coming along grand, and after spending half an hour playing with a middle 8ty type section we reverted back to our original idea. It's all been recorded on phones and things so there's no chance of us forgetting it. We think it's sounding good and Hamish didn't run away so we think we're onto a good thing.

Things learnt from last night:
Martin Gretsch is a mad bastard, but bloody genius.
This Will Destroy You... will destroy you.
Daddy long legs come in all different shapes and sizes.

I must start taking pictures to prove that we're actually working. Back down there tomorrow ...

Planes in 2009

2009-07-08T03:04:00.000-07:00

hey,
ok so I was thinking we don't have many gigs left this year but they're all pretty high profile ones. So I'm going to keep people up to date with what we're up to in the form on this little blog.

our dates for the rest of the year are as follows

Aug 17th Mannifest Festival
Aug 26th Supporting The Kaiser Chiefs
Sept 12th one off reworkings gig for Anti Cancer charity
Sept 26th @ The Villa Royal Hall.