Northern Irish people don’t do sun.
Maybe that should just be “I don’t do sun”. I do truly love it, but inevitably get toasted. Yesterday, following a period of paddle boarding with some friends down near Folkestone, I was sporting a pair of legs that were exactly on the halfway line between hilarious and excruciating. Purest red you’ve ever seen. The archetypal lobster look, the one reserved for northern twats who fail to apply sunscreen in appropriate quantities. I could hardly put on my jeans by the end of the day for the drive home. Today hasn’t been much better, walking about with a slight wince on my face as the denim chafes away at those dreadfully burnt pins.
I’ve been working on a cinematic ident. It’s a tricky thing to pull off – the sonic equivalent of a logo. It has to say a lot in a very short space of time and with a minimum of fuss. The main difficulty is finding something memorable within that time – and not just some crazy sound, as it needs to be completely at one with the visuals. I want this one to be musically very simple, but texturally very rich, inspired by certain moments in the track below, the marvellous Stokkseyri by Jonsi and Alex. David Holmes played me this stuff years ago and it blew my mind.
In other news, I made a drip irrigation system for my tomatoes from a five litre water container, some silicone gel and aquarium fittings. It works. Win.