Wednesday, February 11, 2009

On a Lighter Note...

Good Afternoon, Morning and Night

I hope your have your hyperventilation-bags at the ready…

We are grateful for your patience and even more so for your impatience. As you know we have been busy seducing our new record label, the classy and top of the class 4AD and are now ready to shower you with album news.


Camera Obscura’s new album will be called My Maudlin Career and will be released on April 20th in places which aren’t the USA and April 21st in places which are. Not long eh? I suggest you draw up some sort of chart and tick of the days and maybe rating your excitement out of ten or trying to find a new word to express it everyday. This is what I will be doing for sure.

The album will be preceded by the single French Navy at the beginning of April and you can hear the title track on myspace RIGHT NOW but you can also purchase it from itunes or get given it as a present when you register at camera-obscura.net. We’re super generous and don’t you forget it. (This is the track I got to play Abba’s piano on, swede-pop/piano-trivia/pointless information fans.)

To celebrate the release we will be doing some special live shows. The deal is; you all come from miles, counties, countries and continents around to fill the shows and let us know that everything is going to be alright. And we will play songs for you and try to scrub up nice.
23 April - Shepherd's Bush Empire, ....London.....
Tickets on sale 10th Feb 9am - www.livenation.co.uk....

26 April - Barrowlands Ballroom, Glasgow. Tickets on sale
12th Feb 9am - 08444 999 990 / www.gigsinscotland.com....


I'd also like to annouce that due to family commitments (including being a proud dad) Nigel will no
longer be a full time member of Camera Obscura. But watch out for him
popping up at live appearances from time to time.

So much love

Carey and the band....

Thursday, January 29, 2009

John Martyn 1948-2009

Rest In Peace

x

Friday, January 23, 2009

Here is a News. Our Website is Down, But...

Hello you few

Our website was smashed to smithereens recently by some bad types, all of whom I imagine eat exclusively from Pizza Hut and cannot imagine a world without curtains drawn. A new, improved site is on its way very soon, though - really - so please please please bear with us.

While you wait, click here to head over to our Myspace page, and go to the blog, where Carey has some real news for you. Happy New Year indeed.
Bye for now!

xxxxxxxxxxx

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Tweenuts (or Oh, Christmas Twee, Oh Christmas Twee)

I'm supposed to be keeping warm in my wind tunnel of a home by completing four years of miserable renovation work, and not by cranking the heating to my preferred "What Grandchildren?" setting and drinking hot toddies.
But there's no one around to stop me. Hah!

Just a quick recommendation today, and a bit on the previous side (although not quite as premature as the early-November Christmas trees dotted around the city; is it depression, escapism, cheery defiance, cheap irony or all of these? - discuss).

It's already spectacularly famous, and probably namechecked in all the usual weekend supplements at this time of year, so accept my apologies if I'm telling you something you already know (a renowned fault of mine), but if you haven't heard the beautiful soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, do yourself a huge favour and get it right now - it's on the net to buy or steal according to the dictates of your conscience.

You are dead inside if this treasure does not warm any part of you.

Wishing all peace-loving, casually patriotic Scottish types worldwide a happy Saint Andrew's day tomorrow. All non-Scots are welcome to join in. You can guess how we celebrate these occasions.

Kenny xxxxxxxxxx

Monday, November 24, 2008

Friday Night Lights

Hello all but mostly Scots I apologetically guess.

Just wanted to draw your attention to event of the year that is me going out on a friday night. All in the name of work of course.
Tracyanne and I will be guest djs at the Modern Lovers club night in Edinburgh. As ever, I incite you to come along and make us appear popular. I'm sure there will be some sort of fun involved.

This week the band are trying to get into the Christmas spirit. You can find out how successful we are in the near future.

Elsewhere, I have been reading The Easter Parade by Richard Yates, listening to Nothing but Love by Attic Lights and am looking forward to seeing the reformed Vaselines do a special show in Glasgow soon.

Happy birthday Lee and super congratulations to our manager Frank and lovely Ciara on the arrival of a baby that is called Hugh.

love Carey x

Saturday, October 11, 2008

A room with a brew

Good evening. I was thinking I might try and assuage these non-specific, generic feelings underachievement by writing a blog for you.

I am staying in this Saturday night doing such satisfying tasks as hoovering. The satisfaction of the flawless floor is not to be sneezed at. This is not some sort of anti rock and roll, stay at home, protest. I felt a bit like going out this evening but Glasgow is horribly full of bouncing drunken football fans today and is best avoided.


Yesterday I was asked by my musical friend Victoria Bergsman to recommend her something to read which inadvertently triggered the old website-guilt. I’m sorry we’ve been a bit slack at updates but I promise that we will sort it out before the new album emerges. In case anyone is interested in what I came up with, and as some lame attempt at rectifying my bookish silence, I will list what I sent her at the end of this transmission. Before you go fumbling around for pens and paper, you could go and listen to the late-summer reggae sounds drifting from here myspace.com/takenbytreesmusic.

Cultural summary and Current Affairs: I have been watching the tv version of Brideshead Revisited and not finding time to go to the cinema to see the reportedly average film. I have been listening to Chariot Song by the Beep Seals. I read On Chesil Beach and it was sad. I was disappointed with the Guardian’s guide to the Piano and Keyboard which wasn’t very exciting at all. I did go and see I’ve Loved You So Long which was pretty beautiful. I have been listening to Richard Hawley’s recording of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry made with Jools Holland. I have been remembering how much I enjoyed the documentary Young at Heart. I have been making walnut pesto.

We’re off on tour again next week. I think I am looking forward to it although I am nervous about playing a gig as close to my Kentish home-turf as I’m ever going to get. If you live in or near Canterbury, please come to the concert so my parents don’t think I’m unpopular. We’re all quite edgily excited about our first trip to Asia although we’re frightened of the humidity. There will be sweat.

We’ll have some news about the new album SOON I think. Be patient.

Take care
Carey xx




Maurice by E.M Forster
The Bandini Quartet by John Fante
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
And pretty much anything by Carson McCullers.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Big Tuckshop in the Sky

The Big Tuckshop in the Sky.
A snapshot.
Or
Why I Hate Flying.




I have turned into a disturbed autistic hunchback, bent over with my hands over my ears in a stubborn clamp and my elbows holding a book open, trying to shut out the noise of two hundred boisterous holidaymakers and an endless scream of announcements.


Three rows in front Lee and Kenny are trying not to think about the possible cons of taking a flight on Friday the 13th, the eyes of the cartoon woman clutching her life jacket and whistle bore morbid and unblinking into theirs from the unsafety information on the back of the headrest in front.

The air, laced with aviation fuel and microwaved pizzas retailing at the bargain price of £3.80, begins its own journey in and out of the mouth of every passenger and makes my skin smell wrong.

The excitable and therefore voluble ladies in the row behind finish every identical anecdote with, It was absolutely hysterical. I nearly am.

After another ear-splitting announcement telling us how we can buy perfume Kenny the soundman says, It’s just a big tuckshop in the sky really.





Whingingly yours, Carey