Beetlebum

Larsen B » Blur from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Newsbeat.

Been away from the internet for the last two weeks, holed up in our recording bunker, not speaking to other humans. Except for Simon's boozy birthday last Saturday. Which hurt my insides for several days. 

We've been getting our second record together for the last few months, and we've got some new stuff that we're really excited about. So we might not be heard from again for a few weeks, as we're about to take on the beast that is... recording 20 songs, on a farm in the middle of nowhere, with no-one's help. 

The video for Robots Learn To Love will be up pretty soon... here are some stills from the shoot. A shiny new version of Robots is going to come out in the next few months so we’ll be back playing some shows in England pretty soon, and we’re hoping to get out to the U.S. this year to play some shows on the east coast. Look forward to seeing you beautiful America.

Love from Larsen B

Trying to come up with songs that don’t involve strumming C to A minor whilst singing “ooh yeah baby” is proving to be quite a challenge.

Been listening to a lot of Eels… the Hombre Lobo album and End Times…the song “The Look You Give That Guy” is super duper.

Also, when you get the chance, check out this 14^th century bastardisation of Bjork harmony…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5U8p5W-Srw&feature=related

For a composer to invent a time machine solely to plagiarise Medulla is surely a sign of severe mental illness.

Other musicians who went crazy include Aerosmith, Britney, Gnarls Barkley, Beyonce (in love) and Seal.

So in sum, we’re never gonna get by unless we get a little crazy… but not going as far as ripping off albums that haven’t been invented yet or punching a pig full on in the face with a bag of sugar.

Paddy

Just to elaborate on the below mention of cake-cutting, thought this was worth sharing...

Filming down in the village, we found ourselves without a knife to cut a cake we were using in one scene. We asked our assistant Josh to go grab us a little plastic knife... he came back with a machete that was the best part of 2 feet long. Borrowed from the butcher.

Can't decide whether it's a good thing that in quiet little villages, that still have community spirit, a butcher will hand over something that could fell a tree to a complete stranger without worrying that he's a psychopath.

Or, was this in fact madness. If so, I think the only option we are left with would be to go down to the butcher's with an even bigger machete (this would be difficult) and tell him to stop handing out machetes or we'll machete him. It's your classic reverse machete tactic. If we don't blog next week, then you'll know things didn't go to plan.

This Robot will be featuring lightly in the video to 'Robots Learn to Love'. Just lightly though. Don't get too excited.

Hullo.

The past week has seen us shoot the video to ‘Robots Learn to Love’. Was hard work and very enjoyable. Must say a big thank you to the director Andrew Gaston and our unforgettable assistant Josh Stovell and his cake-cutting machete. Call that a knife? I see you’ve played knifey-spooney before.

Had to do some outside shots in our local village for local people, Watamestede or Wheathampstead as it's more commonly known. Not sure if the shots will make the cut, but it did cause us to cross paths with local councilwomen, Annie Brewster who has invited us to play the local fete in June, which we'll record and put online if we play there.

The video is performance based which meant we had to listen to ‘Robots…’ at least 50 times, so that is what we’ve been listening to this past week in a completely non-vain/self-absorbed way.

Here’s a drunk Aussie to keep you amused:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWDb8Zv3-MA&feature=related

Goodbye.

Simon.

Hello peeps.

So. The lovely Miss Anna Gabriel has been up filming us doing our Blur cover for the voice project. The whole thing only took about ten minutes... we made her a cup of tea, played it through, and then released the hounds on her. And she was on her merry way. It should be up in the next few weeks.

The Gold Cup video is finished as you can see below... we've since noticed that a man who looks scarily and unfortunately like Hitler makes a guest appearance at about 1.23... after many enquiries, we can officially confirm that he is not Hitler, just a regular scientist.

And we're getting things together for the video of Robots Learn To Love, which we're shooting this weekend. Come on English weather, you can do it.

On the Larsen B stereo… have an almost unhealthy obsession with the Avi Buffalo record, strongly recommend you to stop what you’re doing and go out and buy it. Broken Bells, Wild Nothing and Tame Impala all also amazing, and definitely standing the test of time.

And some one sent us this link… apparently my Larsen b "tattoo" is at the forefront of modern tattoo style. Nice.

http://tattoo-stylelatest.blogspot.com/2011/01/b-tattoo.html

Bagz

The Gold Cup

This week saw us wrapping a lot of wool around some wires for the artwork we’re doing for Robots Learn to Love… Grannies must have the patience of saints. I want to kill wool.

This in my opinion is a much better way to clean your house

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d1e_1259445749

Working on a video for The Gold Cup, which should be up very soon.

Listening to Big Echo by the Morning Benders and the Age of Adz by Sufjan Stevens… both very great.

Bagz also taught me how to play the drums. Like Supersonic only better.

Paddy

Having been accused of being the most reclusive band in England, we decided 2011 was a good year to actually use the internet.

The first week of the year has been relatively productive. We’re on the hunt for someone to direct our first (proper) video for Robots Learn To Love (due out in April/May), also deciding upon some shiny new artwork for it.

We’re also recording a cover for this fantastic cause next week:

http://voiceproject.org

 so keep your eyes peeled for the link…

The times they are a changing. Since putting all the music I own onto my iPod, I realised my concentration has waned so much that I struggle to listen to a whole album before wanting to change it to something else. So I’m going to try to recover the lost art of actually listening to an album the whole way through, undistracted. It can be something new or old, the idea is to listen to music I’ve always meant to check out.

Having never listened to Field Music’s ‘Measure’ in one sitting, I took in all 20 tracks of it and come out the other side thoroughly satisfied. Awesome piece of work, definitely the best they’ve put out so far. Though I should add I have a perforated eardrum in my right ear, so I could only listen to it in Mono.

Check out this Japanese prank show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo1R17Gq6dg

Simon