It was great to see Shana Cleveland, frontwoman of one of my faves La Luz, accompanied by Will Sprott, live in the somehow spooky St. Pancras Old Church in London.
Grimm Grimm on opening duty.
Keeping a blog up to date, in between day job, second job, writing attempts and everything else in between, is…hard.
Enjoy an exquisitely random selection of my latest work in cult London venues Moth Club, Scala, Shacklewell Arms and more. Next up, I’ll be taking pictures at FILL, the Festival of Italian Literature in London in Notting Hill, at the beginning of November. See you there?
In pictures: Surfbort, Tinariwen, Bodega, Audiobooks, Porridge Radio, Squid.
They Might Be Giants popped up on my music app thanks to a very insisting algorithm. Birdhouse in Your Soul was always lurking at the end of my playlists, and I diligently skipped it.
Until, one faithful summer day, back from a daytrip to the seaside, I didn’t. And I loved it!
They are weird and great and funny and cerebral. Their gig at the Barbican Centre didn’t disappoint.
See for yourself:
Gosh, it's been ages since the last update - apologies!
A lot of changes have happened in some areas of my life and, while I haven't stopped photographing for a second, I somehow branched out of event photography to try my hand at different things.
Positive experiences, but it meant I neglected these pages for a bit too long.
So. I'm back with a bang(er).
London based Black Mask are purveyors of the finest synth-based pop-culture inspired anarchy, and I wholeheartedly invite you to listen to their gem David Kronenberg 1664 (and their equally good Jay Reatard's It's Not Easy snappy cover).
For all your visual media needs, here's a gallery of their excellent performance yesterday at SET, Dalston.
Incredible performances by the mighty Paul Haworth, Martha Pailing, Moa Johansson, Shannon Marie Mulvey and Grace Frohlich *in order of appearance*
From bread fingering to Maroon 5, coat stealing to cross dressing, a night of theatre like no other. Enjoy.
From the same man that draws what are my probably favourite cartoons at the moment, here comes Montero. Groovy and drenched in sounds that heavily reminisce the '70s, this band makes honest, dreamy pop it SO NICE to move your body too.
They opened for Mac DeMarco all around Europe.
Here's few snapshots from a Shacklewell Arms darker than usual (sigh).
On this note, I have seen several fellow music photographer use flash in a lot of smaller clubs. In almost ten years of shooting people on stage, I perhaps used it only twice and only in very difficult situations such as punk or electronic gigs.
What are your feelings about it?
My 6D doesn't even have a flash...ha!
Billy Bragg is a lovely chap.
He's got the strongest Essex boy accent and enjoys telling joke after joke. The crowd enjoys - whether he's talking about hipsters, eating a puffin ("it tasted like eating a penguin"), Portland, Oregon, Brexit or Woody Guthrie.
He's such a natural storyteller it's almost impossible to resist him.
But he is also amazing at being a musician and, when he's playing some Woody Guthrie, this lovely old chap turns into a prophetic spirit of our time. It's a good show. A raw, simple show that makes you think. Chapeau.
Yes, they have the best name ever. And yes, they are dynamite.
Few snaps with my prime lens while trying not to dance to their irresistible surf-rock.
Check out the full gallery on my flickr profile!
I had so much fun shooting this awkwardly funny improvised piece!
Follow Percy and Joseph on a slapdash vacay around Smithfield Market, courtesy of City of London's Culture Mile.
Click here to see what the lovely chaps at Slap Haddock are up to.
Ever since seeing them opening for Arrows of Love back in 2014, I was eager to see The Riddles on stage again. Welcome back!
It was silly, incendiary and awesomely rock 'n' roll.
Life is busy and I am overworked, and sometimes if you make the mistake of not processing your images straightaway, you can end up accumulating pictures and forgetting to publish them.
Well, I didn't really forget in this case, because I really wanted people to see them. Ezra Furman live at the Barbican Hall was one of the best gigs I have seen this year, if not one of the best I've ever seen.
It was a hard one to photograph, but here's my stab at trying to convey the intensity, depths and bittersweet-ness of this amazing solo show, celebrating the twenty years of record label Bella Union.
Messy, sweaty, explosive rock 'n' roll from Nashville.
Quoting a friend, these guys were dynamite!
See the full set on my Flickr.
I started out as a music photographer.
Or, better, I one day decided I would bring my friend's decent compact camera to a gig and I'd take pictures with it.
They were terrible pictures. Underexposed, grainy, inventively framed. You can still look at them, and feel better about yourself as a photographer (I sometimes do).
But that's okay, that's how you start out. I will always remember, at that same concert, observing an unknown, more professional photographer waltzing around the stage, trying angles I could have never thought of and never, ever using their flash.
It was mesmerising. I still think of it as my first, fundamental photography class.
Years later, I would become friends with that photographer, but that's another story.
My point is - it could have never happened without music, and without live music.
It's still my favourite thing to shoot, the one that I do automatically, without even thinking about it; the one I even enjoy editing (!).
Some promo shoots have happened every now and then though, and it's been a privilege to have been chosen to do them. It's storytelling, it's a glimpse into what an artist thinks of themselves and who do you think they are.
It's extremely personal, but requires precision and organisation.
Here's five of my favourite portraits of musicians taken over the years - always a challenge, and always a pleasure.
Everyday a photographer wakes up, and tells themselves: I need to update my portfolio.
The chance they'd actually done that by the end of the day are, practically, zero. Zilch. Nihil. So. Well. It took me just three months to get round doing *this*.
It's not finished - the idea is to add new pictures on a daily basis.
It's not complete - for now, most of the pictures are my most recent works.
But.
It is pretty.
I hope you enjoy browsing through this varied, imperfect, electrifying collection of pictures, as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Ciao!
