Julien

Julien Assange giving speech at Ecuadorian Embassy

Oil on Canvass

Love Theme by Renu (Music video)

Rosie May - Be.

Dream girl... you are real, ethereal, beyond illusion.

If we dream together we can achieve everything

If this is just a dream - wake up and start living our dreams, loving our dream!

Let's dream of a better world.

Who loves the little boy that still loves the world.

Who gives him strength and hope.

Who inspires him to be a man

and to fix the broken pieces.

You are he fairest of English roses

child within, woman without

wild beauty, goddess, genius.

finding yourself understanding the universe

passion - for life and love and art

tiny hands creating radical ripples 

in endless time and space

Sensitive ears - listening to the cosmic orchestra 

tinkering with vibrations - playing sounds

deep radiant eyes that see the magic beyond

the superficial discontent and irrelevant distractions

soft lips that proclaim the truth

before melting my raw armour with a single kiss

glowing skin reflects the divine light of a nearby star

a simple smile that fills hearts with joy

and a gentle touch that opens up the nerve to feel

embrace this environment 

deep breaths set the steady rhythm

let your spirit energy flow now

unblock - overcome

love is the power

that can heal all

I am here... just close your eyes and feel,

create and share a wonderful world with me.

Midnight Radio by Renu (Music Video)

SMASH THE BOX - ADDICTED - OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

icon- smash my box

Ariane is in London for a month or so, with her catalytic energy, to record some new tracks, make a video and launch her new website. She flies between London and Byron Bay regularly to maintain her double life. Byron Bay is a small hippie town on the east coast of Australia, legen is that there was a festival there in the 60's and people just stayed and built a town, apparently it's become quite touristy over the last decade, but where hasn't? In Byron Ariane plays the hippie mother, looking after her gorgeous miniature replica Scarlet, taking yoga classes and relaxing on the beautiful sandy beaches. But when she is in London it's pure rock and roll. She lights up the london scene with her refreshed energy and suntanned charm.
Over the years she has worked with the likes of George Michael and Kylie as well as her own projects such as the awesome "Trigger". In recent times she has graced the stage for Alabama 3, The Crookers and Mike Chapman and she is currently working with D.R.U.N.K. and The Mad Professor.
The next month will be full of creativity, we are going into pre production for the video today so watch this space.
here's the link to the new website

http://www.smashmybox.co.uk

"untitled" by Rosie Jones and Sam Hamilton

It had been hot all day. Stuffy hot. Muggy hot. The hot that sticks in your hair and fills up your throat. I was hot. And boy was annoying.

Everything boy did was annoying.

Everything boy was was annoying.

And his presence of annoyingness filled the house.

His muddy shoes. His bad music. His half-empty coffee cup. Oh wait, that’s my half-empty coffee cup, but it could be his and that annoys me even more.

I sit by the window. The gloopy room sticks to my clothes. My brain is shuddering like electrified mash-potato, my feet are itching like ten-tonne earthworms.

Boy enters the room.

Boy looks at me.

Why is he looking at me? Does boy want to say something to me?

Well, I will not look at boy. I will not talk to boy. Not today. Not in this suffocating heat soaking into my body with waves of tarmac kisses.

I press my hand to the glass and pull away suddenly as if I have remembered something. But I‘m not sure what. I am horrified to see my humanness smeared across the window.

“Why don’t you just say it?”

The sky breaks into a thousand million raindrops. I can hear them falling down my cheeks. I run. My legs feel lighter than I thought they would.

I am riding the waves with a hundred white horses galloping at my sides. We charge through doors of broken-handles and half-painted wood. We pound down the corridor of odd shoes and half-read post. And then we take control of the latch.

My claws twisting the metal as I feel the bulge of boy’s energy flying down the hallway in pursuit. I turn to face it but just as it is about to touch my skin I throw open the door and let the blanket of torrential streams suck me into the twilight.

I am Girl.

Girl dances. Times stops. The window frames her portrait as the rain hammers on the pane. My mind is clear of the anger now as I watch her gracefully pirouette across the car park. Her bare feet splash in quickly forming puddles and her clothes are hanging heavy from exposed flesh. The rain brings a natural freshness with it, cleansing my body and soul of the suppressed anguish that has held me in bondage all day. Lightning illuminates the dusk sky with an electric charge far beyond my drenched lover and her divine ritualistic dancing. An essence of great loss is left in the atmosphere. An all-encompassing powerful energy, so real and intimidating has disappeared without a trace.  I catch myself reflected in the glass; tears mirror the trickles of rain.  Moments later the thunder roars through me, futilely chasing after the glow of light that has long gone. Girl is oblivious to nature’s spectacle behind her. Girl is lost in her own imagination and writhes to the steady rhythm of the storm, releasing her suffocating emotions. Naked now, she leaps up to the sky trying to embrace the charcoal clouds. I love Girl. I am Boy.

The downpour is angry. It falls on me in heavy clumps. Buckets of thick raindrops thump against my head. My breath absorbs the aerial ocean spinning around me.

I bring my hands to the sky. I allow my body to be swallowed by the endless blanket that beats to the hard drum of my heart.

I am nature. I am all.

My body cuts and spins. It flies. It cries. It burns.

I tear at my clothes and scream to the heavens.

The sky is lit by the chorus of the darkest angels, breaking me into the hot streams of freedom pouring down my skin. I want to reach them. To be free. Free of this retched body.

I leap.

I feel my soul burst out with outstretched arms… before hitting the floor in a puddle of mud.

I am naked now. Lying on the floor.

I look to the house. I start to cry.

Boy is watching me. Boy loves me.

Girl has fallen to the ground. She is breathing heavily. She saw me watching her just before she fell and in that moment she remembered that I love her. I saw it all in the flick of an eye. I feel the urge to be with her intensify until I am standing at the door with the storm blowing in my face. I run to her as the door slams shut behind me.

I am soaked through in the few steps it takes to reach girl, but I still feel the cold flooding as I kneel beside her in the puddle. She looks into my soul with confused eyes. “why?” she cries out in pain.

I pull her close.

“why do you love me?”

what kind of a question is that. I have no idea why I love her. Sometimes I’m not sure I even do. I say nothing. I just hold her close. We wring out the tempest with our embrace. Squeezing every drop of love from each other. She runs her palm across my slippery face and now I can see that she loves me. But she hates me too. Still.

She is right to hate me. Still.

We kiss like we are in an old fashioned movie, lovers reunited after a long war.  Peace again, and love, and everything is going to be calm.

 But wait.

 I can feel girls energy changing, a thought in her mind erupting into despair.

 Shit what have I done now?

I feel weak. His embrace holds me down to the floor. My insides pulling me towards the ground. I can feel my center pulsing but the communication to my limbs comes in rare transmissions.

His eyes are there in front of me. He is open out to me with loving shame. I see his honesty, I see his passion and I see his doubts. I love boy.

But I hate boy. Because it hurts to love.

I want to close. I want to shut down. I can see him seeing too much. I look to the house.

I look to the door.

I look to boy.

“Tell me you have your keys.”

Girl pulls away and looks me square in the eye.

TELL

She says the first word of the sentence and I already know what she’s about to ask

ME

By now I know the answer to her question and I am filled with fear

YOU

Hang on how is this my fault it was you who came out into the rain

HAVE

When you fell, I thought you needed my help so I ran out of the house

YOUR

I only did it because I love you

KEYS

Shit NO… I run to the door already knowing that it’s locked.

When it doesn’t open I do what any man would do and give it a good kick

“You Fucker”

I watch boy’s futile attempts. He clouts and thumps and rattles. He tries corners, cracks and latches. His will has been set. His eyes dart with stillness over the walls and windows. I see boy.

I see boy hurl his body up the rose bush, scrambling up the wall with insect-sucker legs. I see boy fly through the air onto the roof and steadily slip down the chimney. I see boy propel himself through the kitchen window. I see boy rip open the wall with his bear hands, eating the bricks with blood-stained fingernails. He is the jaguar. He will not give up. But I am cold. And he is useless.

I slowly collect up my ripped clothes as I watch boy’s doggedly-determined attempts of feeble entrance. As his focus has turned away I can distance myself. I laugh as I watch him find something new to blindly fix. But he was the one who broke it.

My clothes are unwearable and as the adrenaline seeps from my body I can feel the ice accumulating in my toes and fingers. But boy is concrete to his task to set the world’s wrongs to rights. He can’t even see me.

See us.

See our nakedness. See our stupidness. See our pain.

I walk over towards him. Everything feels real again. I can feel the ground press against my feet. The wet grass surrounding my paws with crisp soppy cushions. The air sodden and fresh.

I tap him on the shoulder. His face is buried in mechanics and physics. He looks frustrated to be interrupted. But for the first time, in a long time, I show him me.

I let him see.

I am naked. I am cold. I am girl. You are boy. We are ridiculous.

My hair sticks to my face. My hips, my bum, my boobs, all sticking out and awkward in the night. My separate fingers. My scars and bruises. It’s all ridiculous.

I let boy see me for my eyes.

We start to laugh.

Our composure melting. Cracking from the brows and cheeks. Little fireworks exploding in our chest.

He is stupid. So am I.

The laughter is honest. His smile is beautiful.

The smile of a thousand faces. I have seen him stand as a million men, but their smile is always the same.

I feel my body calm but alive.

The laughter settles. We are left standing. The ground feels even now. I take him by the hand and lead him to my studio.

Girl is laughing at me. And now I am laughing too. And the relief of the last 24 hours anguish eases seamlessly away with the wind. Girl takes my hand and we are walking towards my shed.

Well. Technically it’s her art studio, but, I built that shed. I created it 3 summers ago, with my bare hands... and a few power tools.

I built it for her. With love. And I loved doing it. I was so proud and Girl was so happy. She let me stay that first night and watch her paint wildly. It was a wonderful night, so pure. I fell asleep on an old blanket and when I woke up she was still painting. I don’t remember what I said, but it was the last time she let me in there. Here.
Here, inside her studio, her soul, where I now stand dripping muddy wet puddles onto the floor. Standing in wonder of her creations, staring. Girl is staring at me. Reading every micro reaction. I stand for a moment to gather my thoughts and then I look at her. Into her eyes, beyond the surface. 
"It is beautiful."

ROFL Comedy Show at the Finsbury

The Finsbury has changed over the last couple of years from what was essentially a rough football pub into an arts and culture venue with live music, theatre and comedy.
It's presence, on the periphery of the warehouse district in Manor House, has been essential since the closure of the Oakdale Arms 18 months ago. Nights like Looking Sound have become massively popular amongst the artists in residence giving The Finsbury a new lease of life. The owner's open door policy to the arts has made it the most lively and culturally diverse pub in the area.
Tomorrow night is comedy night...




    HEADLINERS - ABANDOMAN - Winner of Hackney Empire New Act of The Year award 2010 - 
check this out from their support slot at the recent 
Ed Sheeran gig at Brixton Academy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqbJSAyQ6sY 

This will be our 31th Show and we are excited about bringing one of the world's best original, interactive,hilarous and entertaining musical comedy acts to the stage at the Finsbury.

If you have not been before, we offer chocolate to the front row, have comfy seats, a beautiful room lit by candles and the fun starts at 20:30.

Did we mention that the show is free entry?

Tonights line up is below:
Phillip Wragg
Gatis Kandis
William Lee
Kevin Connerley
Josh Bunting
Chris Le Mottee
Gary Sansome
John Kearns

You certainly get your monies worth.

The finsbury pub

336 Green Lanes, N4 1BY London, United Kingdom

View Map · Get Directions

The YuYa - Kill Lucy (Unofficial Music Video) - Directors Cut

Epic fail by day job records...

The Yuya are good friends of The Dream Society. We have worked together on a few  projects, had some fun and nailed some good music videos.
 So when they came to us and asked if we'd like to make the video for their latest single we were thrilled.
The Record company are small and independent and we all know each other, so, pulling in a few favours we made the video for the smallest budget possible. £250 in fact.
As requested we turned it around quickly and within 3 days of shooting we presented the band and the record company with a finished video.







The record company weren't happy with the video the way it turned out so, much to the bands horror, they recut their own version




I'll let you decide.

whatever you think... it's a great track by The Yuya
Kill Lucy will be released on 19th April on Day Job Records.

CYouNextThursday @ Platform Bar.

Tonight I'll be going to this marvellous monthly comedy night, hosted by my good friend Sharney

at Platform Bar in Nettle House, Hackney.

  Platform, for me, is one in a long tradition of underground urban art houses that has made my time in London so colourful. When I first arrived in1992 there was a place in Brixton called Cool Tan Arts Centre. I had never been anywhere like it. It was an old DSS building that had been squatted by a community of artists. They held music events, workshops, poetry nights and art exhibitions, you could smoke weed and drink herbal tea. I loved it, but inevitably it got closed down, eventually.

  At the end of the 90's The Drome became the centre of London's underground club scene with an anything goes, squat party attitude. From Thursday to Sunday, every weekend in London Bridge there was an indoor festival, where freedom reigned and London was cool. This was also closed down.

  About the same time in a then deserted Old Street, an art gallery bar opened with a policy that if you wanted an exhibition you could have one. It's open door attitude created an air of freedom and rebelliousness. The Foundry gave everyone a chance to live out there artistic fantasies and helped some people with raw talent to refine their ideas. It became home to cool hipsters, anarchist groups, societies outsiders and the rich city boys who worked round the corner.  I held my first exhibition there in 1999.

  It was a unique creative space with no rules, in this massive, authoritarian urban sprawl. The Hoxton/Shoreditch art scene grew up around The Foundry and eventually it was overpowered and forced out by a  chain of Art hotels, but not before it had helped change the landscape of London forever. It survived for over 10 years and when it was eventually closed down in 2010 it left a hole in the variety of nights out that London has to offer.

  Bars like Platform in London Fields are fulfilling the need for venues like this in our great city.
Through a secret door in what looks like a disused tower block in Hackney there is a small oasis of creative freedom and a bohemian atmosphere that makes me glad to still be part of this vibrant artistic city.

  If you get the chance to, please go and hang out there, because, as history tells us, these places often exist for only a brief moment in time

http://www.platformlondonfields.com/
http://www.platformlondonfields.com/events/

Young Legionnaire - Spiders

The Wildhearts drummer Dean Pearson is about to land in Venezuela to do a mini tour with Young Legionnaire...
He is also the person most scared of spiders I know... his flatmates have been filling his head with horror stories, good luck Dean

Losers

I'm listening to the demo version of the new Losers album and it's awesome.
I can't share the new album but here's a bit of classic Losers to get you in the mood...

Abner Harris

great to see Abner Harris in London tonight.

He's been living in Budapest and is back for the summer...

I have always been a big fan of his artwork, 

we have a lot in common in aesthetic and philosophy

http://www.abnerharris.com/

Metamodernism

Mark Jeffreys pointed me towards this description 
"The metamodern structure of feeling evokes an oscillation between a modern desire for sense and a postmodern doubt about the sense of it all, between a modern sincerity and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy and empathy and apathy and unity and plurality and purity and corruption and naïveté and knowingness; between control and commons and craftsmanship and conceptualism and pragmatism and utopianism. Indeed, metamodernism is an oscillation. It is the dynamic by which it expresses itself. One should be careful not to think of this oscillation as a balance however; rather it is a pendulum swinging between numerous, innumerable poles. Each time the metamodern enthusiasm swings towards fanaticism, gravity pulls it back towards irony; the moment its irony sways towards apathy, gravity pulls it back towards enthusiasm."


http://www.metamodernism.com/2010/07/15/what-is-metamodernism/ 

Laser Cutting

if you want artwork laser cut to perfection out of pretty much any material go call Ewen... he's brilliant
http://www.lasermake.co.uk/

Filming with Little Wonder

My old friend Giada popped round yesterday with a film crew making a gorilla documentary... it was fun and I'm looking forward to seeing the edit.
check out all her you tube videos here

The Century of Self - 1 - Happiness Machines

I think Adam Curtis makes brilliant documentaries...
really good investigative journalism from the BBC

Imperial Leisure Tour Starts Today

City

Imperial Leisure - Death To The One Trick Pony

review of Imperial Leisure's new album "Death To The One Trick Pony"

Polarbear 'Jessica'

The beatMolls - Space Cowboy

wow I just found this on youtube

this was the band I was in when I was 19
I think we recorded this in 1996

Blast From the Past - T23 and the Psychedelic Circus

Dans ma Poitrine

Warehouse in Arena - rooms to let

warehouse to let

Wildthings Records Website is live

after years of waiting Wildthings Records have finally gone live with their psy trance website
wildthingsrecords.co.uk/

Nice One Beardy

Jesus It's A Musical - Episode 7 - Joseph's Song - My Baby's Gone 7/14

Rise of the Foodsoldiers

Imperial Leisure - London To Brighton - Official Music Video

Djanan Turan - Cikis Var Offical Music Video

LesboPop - We don't need no... (Official Music Video)

John Lee Bird Exhibition

this is on at the moment
more details here

Music by OO is an instrument

here are a few of the tracks from my favourite album of last year.
It's a really original sound and I recommend everyone have a listen

OO is an instrument

The Dream Society

check out The Dream Society website for lots of fun and games

The Dream Society

Wildthings Records

I'm doing some work for DJ Beardy at the moment helping with his new releases on Wildthings Records...
here he is playing a wicked set at Timegate in 2011

Wildthings on you tube

Website Update

so I've just spent the last 2 days updating my website and going over all my internet stuff that's been left dormant for as long as I can remember.

check it out if you feel like it
http://www.toonpunk.net