Blind Voyeurs: In The Studio - Ep2 - BIG CITY

I've just uploaded a new Blind Voyeurs studio video. It's a bit shorter than the last one. This one was filmed around Spring '08 - just never got round to editing it.

So here it is in all it's Vimeo glory. I've also uploaded it to youtube on BlindVoyeursTV.


Blind Voyeurs: In The Studio - BIG CITY from Steve Beck on Vimeo.

Diggnation Live at London FOWA Expo 08

I've just booked my Pass for this year's Future Of Web Applications Expo at the London Excel Arena to see Diggnation recorded live. I missed them last year so I'm really excited about it. We're probably gonna have to get a hotel or something to stay the night cos we'll be going to the after party!

For those that don't know what Diggnation is here's the episode from their last live Diggnation at NVision in San Jose...

The Archive

Woo! Double post today!! I've just seen this video and I have to share it with whoever occasionally glances at this corner of the internets.


The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Paul Mawhinney was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. Over the years he has amassed what has become the world's largest record collection. Due to health issues and a struggling record industry Paul is being forced to sell his collection.

This is the story of a man and his records. I hope you enjoy it.

Blind Voyeurs: In The Studio - Episode 1

Jamming in the studio Saturday 13th Sept 08



The BV boys have a new studio to play in. Interestingly it's situated underneath a pole dancing studio in Southbourne! This is the first in hopefully many insights into what actually goes on in there. This week we decided to take a break from recording and decided to have a jam - to see if we come up with anything interesting.




Blind Voyeurs: In The Studio - episode 1 from Steve Beck on Vimeo.



Blind Voyeurs on Myspace

The Watchmen

I've just started reading this last night....



I'm only about 30 pages in but already I'm hooked. I'm reading it in preparation for the movie. Here's the trailer...



Boner!

New music video for Blind Voyeurs

So, I figured it'd be good to submit something to Vimeo as I love that site and I thought why shouldn't I showcase some of my material!? This video is a short snippet of some of my live visuals for Blind Voyeurs gigs put to some music. The tune is called Chemical Burns.

New tune + New Visuals = New Music Video.



Blind Voyeurs - Chemical Burns (DEMO v1.02) from Steve Beck on Vimeo.

It's also on YouTube. If you've got a profile on there and want to fave it, comment it, rate it. Feel free

Blind Voyeurs - Stoner Jam

Here's my first video from Vimeo. Wanted to test how long my videos can be cos YouTube is limited to 10 minutes. It appears that the only limit on Vimeo is by the size of the video file! Sweet.


Blind Voyeurs - Stoner Jam from Steve Beck on Vimeo.

Vimeo

Just discovered a nice video site called Vimeo. It's like YouTube but without all the pointless videos of some guy being kicking in the nuts! This one's more about art and small magical packets of peoples lives. The videos have a better compression and are a lot better quality than YouTube. There's even a HD section. I've signed up, gonna start making videos and put them on there. Here's some of the cool stuff that you can find on there...



Stairwell from Ted on Vimeo.


HV20 Canon LOCUSTS - The Eighth Plague from scope2000 on Vimeo.

Pitchfork.tv

Check it out! It's a new video site from pitchfork.com. They have videos of live gigs, interviews, exclusive videos etc of lots of really cool bands. It's currently one of my favourite sites. Bookmark it

Classic moments

I loved playing this gig. This was last May at the bank holiday weekend. My band, Blind Voyeurs, aired the track Chapter13 for the first time and it went down really well. Was really nervous about playing it at first but I soon got into it. Here it is recently uploaded to our YouTube channel...



This is proving to be a bit of a nightmare to record unfortunately!! We'll keep working on it though - I think it HAS to be on our first album

New Cloverfield Viral Footage

Since I heard about this film last year I've been been following the secrecy of JJ Abrams latest venture called Cloverfield. For those that don't know it's basically a moster movie where the plot 'Revolves around a monster attack in New York as told from the point of view of a small group of people.' (imbd) From what I've read it's going to be filmed in a Blair Witch style using nothing but hand held cameras, which should be interesting.

Anyway, a couple of short viral films have surfaced recently which show fake newsreel clips from around the world about an incident at an oil rig. One of the films is below...

...the rest can be found HERE - but they're essentially the same thing but in German and Spanish.

24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot

Just seen this on digg.com and had to show it to you. This is probably the first time the technobabble on 24 is accurate!! Enjoy.

Since Fox will not be airing a new season of "24" due to the writers' strike, they plan to air this version, originally filmed in 1994.

digg story

Lots of exciting stuff...

There's a lot of stuff I'm excited about at the moment. Just stuff that's either coming up or stuff that's just happened. Obviously my main excited thing was moving in with Lisa. The rest are as follows...

Star Trek XI
They're currently in pre-production stages of the new Star Trek movie. In case you didn't know, this movie goes back BEFORE the ORIGINAL Star Trek and will likely covers things like Spock and Kirk at the Space Academy. Recently they've done a casting call for extras. Would love to be in America right now!!
Click here for more Extras info

iPhone
I'm sure that most of you would've heard about the iPhone and that it's just come out over here in the UK. I want one sooo bad - can't wait for January 19th.. that's when I can upgrade my phone!

Super Mario Galaxy
Coming out on the 19th!! Check this clip...

...say no more.

Wanted trailer
Next up, a trailer has been going round on the internet for a film called Wanted. It stars James McAvoy (from Channel 4's Shameless), Angelina Jolie (in over-the-top clack eye make-up!), Morgan Freeman and Terence Stamp. The trailer looks good... a bit Matrix-esque but I've got a feeling it's gonna be a bit tame. Hope not. There's some amzing thought out visuals such as climbing up and falling train carriage and the bit where Jolie pulls a skid in that red car and bumps McAvoy's character into the car. It's also another in a long line of comicbook-to-screen adaptions that seem to be the in thing at the moment.


Blade Runner Final Cut
Ridley Scott wanted to re-shoot a few scene's for his classic film Blade Runner. I'm sure everyone's heard about this film so I'll skip the synopsis. Basically, in view of all the latest High Def TVs being the way forward and that older films are being converted to HDDVD and BluRay, Ridley became increasingly aware of some scenes that are 'passable' on VHS but become blindingly obvious on High-Def ultra realism... namely the scene with the stripper replicant crashing through shop glass. It was obviously a stuntman in a bad wig! There are also some originally unused footage that has been restored. It should be available to buy soon and I can't wait to see one of my favourite films of all time in the way it was originally intended.

Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
A trailer has been out for a while on this one - but recently a whole 3 minutes of one of the key scene's has been released just in time for Halloween. You can see them HERE. They are pretty graphic and with strong language so a short age verification will need to be done. Fingers crossed it will be a million times better that the first Aliens vs Predator mess of a film.


I've also been getting into podcasts recently. Namely Totally Rad Show, Smodcast and Web Drifter. The Totally Rad Show podcast is a video podcast featuring Diggnation's Alex Albrecht and is basically about films, video games and comics. Smodcast is an audio podcast with Kevin Smith and some friends. It's totally addictive listening. Web Drifter is kinda like a Louis Theroux type video podcast in that the shows host, Martin Sargent, will be traveling across America taking you behind some of the most fascinating, shocking, and groundbreaking sites on Internet.

...and now, the news!

News! I've always hated it. Lisa's all for it and says I should "watch it to keep up to date with current affairs." Fair enough I thought and started watching it occasionally. But as I was watching it I started remembering why I stopped watching it in the first place. I could go on to explain what I'm talking about but recently Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe News Special hit the nail on the head for me. Here it is...







Needless to say, I've stopped watching the news again.

Blind Voyeurs Gig - at Kyps 27/09/07

On Thursday 27th, Sept Blind Voyeurs had a gig at Mr Kyps. I was real excited about it cos it's a great venue with a amazing sound system and proper lights and dry ice. I knew it was gonna feel like I was in a proper band, not a pretend one from granny-capital Bournemouth. Hahaha!!

It was good fun hanging out with the other bands backstage. Before we started some of us were a bit worried about a couple of things - the size of the venue and the projected visuals. We thought the place would be too big and the fact that we didn't have a white sheet to project our visuals on were concerning. I maintained that there was nothing to worry about. The other guys were flapping and saying we should've at leat wore white t-shirts. We told Kat our concerns and she tested the projection for us.... it looked effin' amazing! You couldn't wipe the grins off of the guys faces.

The actual gig went well. I know that I made a few fuck-ups here and there, and the guys know that they did too but they were just minor details.... except at the very end of the very last song Scotts bassdrum pedal fell apart, so we had no bassdrum for, like, the last half a bar! Nobody noticed and, to be fair, looking at the videoclip you really can't tell. Speaking of video clips, here's a couple from BHone...





We produced 50 CD's for that gig, all limited and numbered, and we didn't expect to get rid of many. In fact at the beginning of the night we put about 20 of them around the venue and a further 10 by the front door, thinking that we would need to collect left-overs after the gig. But to our amazement when we came of stage we had people asking us for CD's as the ones that we'd put out had all gone!! We gave out the remainding 20 and even then there were still people that wanted a CD!!!

All the other acts played well too. My favourite bit was at the very beginning when Chris (Little Boat) started playing. Everyone was stood at the back when he started and by the time he'd finished his first track about 30 people had creeped up to the front - it gave him a scare. He said it was like some kinda Zombie film and got everyone to give a Zombie-like moan.

All in all, It was one of my favourite gigs we've played!

Lee's musical knowledge expands...

We had band practice last night and Lee mentioned he'd bought three new albums by Maps, Klaxons and Mogwai. Excellent and well informed choices. What was interesting was how much he paid for them. Before Klaxons won the Mercury Prize Award their album could be found in Sainsburys for 3 quid... now they've won, the album's been marked up to £15!!!! Also, Maps' album was available for £6 and now that's been bumped up to £12 cos of a Mercury nomination. Hmmm, not fair me thinks... but then I guess record companies have to make money on the music they distribute somehow.



Maps - It Will Find You


Klaxons - Magik


Mogwai - Hunted By A Freak

Grooves on the Green

I was proper pissed off that I missed it this year! Can anybody tell me what it was like?

The reason why I missed it was cos we were practicing for a Blind Voyeurs gig at the Central. It was part of an after party band bash organised by bhone.co.uk with Sancho and Toupe.

It was good to see The Central back on the circuit as a venue to bands to play. If they book some good bands - y'know, proper touring bands - it could have the potential of being a great venue. Give it about a year and a small bit of refurb (lick of paint, bit of carpet, some locks on the girls bog doors!) and it could be great. Don't fuck it up, boys.

So, yeah, I enjoyed playing that gig. Had a nice sized, open minded, listening crowd. I think we played pretty well, had good comments anyhow - even an offer to play Strawberry Fields festival next year. Ace!

Here's a clip of us lot playing The Mockery. Sorry about the poor quality - it was off my mobile phone. Also, another apology for some of us having our tops off!!

Daft Hands...

Ok, I've had my rant for the day. Now to restore a positive flow of chi energy for the song that Kanye West has so viciously attacked, here's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger as demonstracted with hands! The first 50 seconds or so are a bit boring and feels odd to watch but wait until the lyrics start and it gets amazing!!

Kanye West is a dick!!

I've just seen Kanye West's new music video and it left me feeling furious and empty. He blatently tries to rip off two of my many favourite things - Akira and Daft Punk. Firstly, take a look at the video....



A little history: At last year's MTV video music awards in Europe, Kanye's video lost to relative unknowns in the Best Video category. Those unknowns were a french group called Justice with their remix of a Simian Mobile Disco song. Justice is now the flagship group under the electronic label Ed Banger. Kanye was furious upon his loss, and got up on stage and ranted and raved about how he was the best and deserved the video yadda yadda yadda. See this video...




Feeling like a large douchebag, Kanye called up Ed Banger and apologized and started talking with the label's owner, Pedro Winter (Busy P) who is incidentally Daft Punk's manager. Winter then introduced Daft Punk to Kanye, who before meeting Winter had no idea who the fuck Daft Punk is (a cardinal sin in most countries).

Then, in a desperate attempt to show that he is in the know with those robot gods of electronic music, incorporated their song Harder Better Faster Stronger into one of his steaming piles of shit known as a song. Influenced by Daft PUnk's vintage sci-fi anime imagery, Kanye opted for Akira as the visual cue for his video. In other words, Kanye stomped all over two of my most favorite things in the world, Daft Punk and Akira, in a desperate attempt to maintain relevancy in the world.

Bitter? You'd better believe it!

Joiners Gig for Blind Voyeurs

Yet again, I've not updated in a LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time - so I'd best fill people in on what's been going on!

My band, Blind Voyeurs, had a gig at The Joiners Arms, Southampton supporting Maps and The Longcut. Tone from BHONE has done a full review of the gig. The nigth went really well and we had a great reception from people who had never heard of us before. One guy said we blew away the headline act! I wouldn't have said so in my opinion but thanks all the same.


Taken on my mobile during soundcheck









Below is an 8 minute video clip from the gig taken by Tone from BHone. In it we're playing The Christening followed by Pale Blue Dot. Apologies for the darkness of the clip!