Return to a room full of paintings

It was a dark and windy night as Balustrade returned to the room full of paintings. Some say it was to conduct dark and mysterious rituals which would see both Lex and Carts dig deep into their soul and experience only the darkest elements of the human experience. While some would say that they met to have a cup of tea, chat about Bath City and continue work on their new songs. Some would further say that those things are one and the same!

Anyhoo, you'll be pleased to know that we managed to make Balustrade practice for two weeks in a row this week (no exams, deadlines, colds or sporting contests to distract us this time around) and so we continued to work on new song 'A Room Full Of Paintings'. After much deliberation we came to the conclusion that this is in fact two songs masquerading as one and so our homework for this week is to extract these siamese songs and hopeully come out with two new tunes at the end of that. Either that or we'll end up with a load of musical offal that will need to be sent to the creative incinerator round the back of Carter;s dad's studio.

In other news I wanted to wish a quick note of good luck to Damien (of Katie and Damien fame) who is apprently running the Brighton Half Marathon with a tiger (or for some tiger charity, I'm not sure, I never read my emails properly!) however good luck to him and I hope he doesn't get mauled too badly.

Also while I'm typing away I thought I would tell you what is entertaining me musically on my headphones at the moment and that would be the new Klaxons album which is very good indeed. As is the new Shins album and the debut record by The View. So until next week (or until someting monumental happens in the meantime!) stay safe kids and see you soon!

An evening with Lanegan and Campbell

Greetings Balustrade fans. It must be quite a monumentous week this week to warrant 2 blog posting from us, however I just thought I would post a few thoughts having got back from a very peculair evening's gig-going.

I went and saw Isobel Campbell (of Belle and Sebastian fame) and Mark Lanegan (of Screaming Tress fame) play some songs from their fantastic album Ballad of Broekn Seas. Now as you'll all know having read my albums of the year post, I was rather fond this particular record and so was looking forward to seeing the two of them perform it live very much. Alas, I was flying solo as Cart's could not get a Visa cleared for him to leave Bath and quite what he would have made of the evening I do now know.

It all started off harmlessly enough with the support band, r rather support singer who went by the name of William Something or other. A combination of Tom Waits and Sufjan Stevens he sang some rather fantastic redncekc songs about moonshine and marrying your sister and as a reward for being quite so good I bought some badges and CD from him.

Alas, the featured act of the evening was not to be quite so rewarding an experience (for fan or badn!). Now, delicate flower Isobel Campbell has something of a reputation for being 'a bit precious' at the best of times. But on this evening's perforamce it is hard to imagine why she bothered going on stage at all. Whether she was singing out of tune, giggling at the rest of her band because she forgot the words or generally magaing to shake a shaker in time to a song this was a long way from being a polished performance from the wee lass. Perhas she had had too much whiskey celebrating Burns night or seomthing?! Thanks goodness then for the treacle voiced Mark Lanegan who sounded like he had been gargling creosote (credit to Neil for that remakr!). When he was onstage everything seemd OK, but when he skulked off things seemed to go to pot - however not even his prescence could prevent a very ill-advised stylophone solo that sounded like something from a vintage Black Sabbath show.

In the end though, the disappeared with as much gusto as they arrived (in other words, none at all) and left us feeling a sense of bewildered confusion and slight annoyance at having paid for the priviledge of watching this spectacle. All of a sudden a Balustrdae gig doesn't looks so bad when compared with these so called 'professional' musicians!

Blooshed!

January 22nd 2007, and Balustrade have only just finished their first practice session of the new year. The overlong delay was caused by Lexington having to revise for his exams because he’s… well, I don’t really know why… Anyway, iot emerged this evening that we can’t really remember most of our old songs. So, we played our newest composition – Rain Brigade – and followed this up by getting the raw bones of a BRAND NEW SONG down on paper. It started as a Gomezy-bluesy thing, but soon got a wee bit darker / more Arab Strappy…. We’ve called it “Room Full Of Paintings” as we wrote it in a room full of paintings and I’m going to be very interested to see how how it evolves. Can’t really write for long this evening as I’ve got to (a) translate my scrawl into something intelligible so that we can sing the song we wrote again and (b) got to find some cheap Kingsbury Manx albums on t’net. Until I see youze all again, this is captain cartino signing out.