A few months ago now, as a treat, my girlfriend got us both tickets to Love Lates at the Science Museum in London. Opening their doors in the evening, you are free to browse the museum’s amazing exhibits away from all those pesky youths. In addition to this, she picked up tickets for their most recent paid exhibit: Turn It Up: The Power of Music, a ‘music through the ages’ thoroughfare showcasing the weird and wonderful progression of instruments and sound.
A little early this week with my sister’s birthday looming at the weekend, the focus of my post takes a somewhat familiar theme this time round: siblings and family. When Imagine Dragons first released their single ‘Wrecked’ I’ll admit, I wasn’t the biggest fan. It wasn’t that I disliked it, it just didn’t have that instant effect that so many of their other hits have had on me. But hearing it again and again over the course of a few months, it grew on me, and is now cemented as a firm favourite in fact, bolstered by this gorgeous, touching lyric video.
It’s that time of year again folks! Yes, Christmas, but also Spotify Wrapped, the yearly compilation of all your glorious music listening habits rolled into a neat and stylish, statistical package for sharing on your socials. Fingers-crossed nothing embarrassing crops up this time round, eh?
With hybrid-working a mainstay courtesy of the pandemic, I find myself working in the ‘office’ (dining room) at the house, along with my housemate and his Spotify subscription. Playing most the day, I occasionally whip up a secret Shazam to find out what’s playing, ‘The Hymn’ by FLOYA being one such example. Unleashing an awesome mix of pop and indie, the music video for the song complemented the audio with equally awesome visuals.
Do you ever get it where a random song pops into your head out of nowhere? Usually I can backtrack to where said song came from but in the case of ‘Raging’ by Kygo feat. Kodaline, I could not. With nothing but the chorus ‘Raging, Raging’ running around my head on loop, I sought out the song online. It turns out that despite owning Kodaline albums, it couldn’t be found there, and it appeared in FIFA 17, the game before the one I own. So who knows? Regardless, an awesome lyric video (and wicked tune of course) retained my interest.
Another year, another Wrapped. Once again Spotify demonstrate that they’ve been listening as we’ve been listening, to reveal everything we want to know (and perhaps don’t – those guilty pleasures!) about our 2022 year of music.
Definitely among my favourite artists of recent years, a week ago I saw Sigrid live for the third time, at the OVO Wembley Arena. Celebrating the launch of her latest album, How To Let Go, performing at this venue garnered one of her largest audiences yet, with previous gigs at the Eventim Apollo and O2 Academy paling in comparison. A larger venue of course warrants a larger budget, and this was evidenced by the dramatic boost in production value from lights to confetti to those all-important visuals.
So on Thursday 7th April me and my sister headed off to the O2 Arena, now just a 20-minute bus ride from my house, to see Bastille perform their Give Me The Future Tour. I’d seen Bastille before at a festival but had been way at the back, essentially viewing their performance off a big screen. This time though we had a great position despite arriving a little late, and the visuals were so awesome I couldn’t stop bringing my camera out!
So it’s that time of year again. As we near the end of 2021 and enter the Christmas season, Spotify have wrapped up our listening habits once more with a bow, into a brilliant story to share across our social media (or blog in my case). Always fascinating and filled with surprises, having worked from home the entire year I was particularly intrigued this time to see what I found within.
If you’d have said to me a year ago that I would be attending a drum and bass festival this last Friday, I wouldn’t have believed you. Then again, if you’d have told me a year ago I would have a girlfriend I wouldn’t have believed you either. With her birthday just around the corner, we attended Titan, Cardiff on 17th September. With pyrotechnics, lasers and other crazy visuals it was quite the experience, even if the music wasn’t exactly to my tastes.
Brandon King Design 