Symbolic Forest

Number two argument why I need to buy a digital camera: scanning photos really is the most boring job in the world.

I intended to post sooner about last Sunday’s Shimura Curves gig, but ended up writing all sorts of random nonsense which has since been deleted instead. I should really have written about the band too, because they really were rather good. They’re rather hard to categorise, though: laptop electronica, dronerock guitar, but above it all some lovely polished girl-group harmonies. The chap who came on before them, singing along to the best 1980s Casio rhythms, wasn’t so great,^* but we found ways to amuse ourselves during his set by standing in front of the ventilation fans and pretending we were on the Baywatch credits instead.

I tried to take photos of the band, but the lighting was truly awful. A complex mauve backdrop was projected over the whole stage and the band with it, turning natural-light photos into an abstract mass of blurred shapes. Still, here are the best I came out with. The order of the band photos reflects their on-stage positions. I hope none of them mind how bad the photos are; and I like the way K Shimura seems to have a halo.

* a couple of days later I was chatting to Anna Shimura in a pub, and I mentioned that I’d been at the gig. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I remember standing in front of you during the first act, and listening to you slagging him off.”

Keyword noise: gig, harmony, live music, London, music, photography, Shimura Curves.

Another new month, and I’m back home with sunburnt arms from wandering around London. Time to start scanning all the photos in, I suppose; there’s a few more London scenes that I want to write about too yet. I mean, I haven’t even described any of the gigs I went to, first the Shimura Curves, then Montoya; or the art exhibitions, or the random tourists, or the people on the tube.

I met up with Kathryn, an old school friend a young friend from school, whilst I was down there. “When are you moving to London, then,” was one of the first things she said.^* I wondered what made her say it; and it made me wonder why I haven’t already, given that I’ve been idly mumbling that idea to people for the last year at least.

* Well apart from “where the hell have you been? I’ve been to the pub and left again already!”

Keyword noise: holiday, London, Montoya, music, Shimura Curves, sunburn.