Jessie J.

Jessie J is absolutely A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. She has supported the likes of Jools Holland and Macy Gray and now she is signed to Universal. Shes outstanding, I can't stress this enough. Her voice is one of my top. Her songs are fantastic and what I love most is that she brings something totally different to the table. Her soulful influences come through to give her such a powerful vibe - she could be jazz, she could be soul, she could be r&b - to be fair she could be anything she wanted. She's worked so hard at getting to where she is - which is commendable but also a little frustrating to see when there's so many people with zero talent waltzing through and getting signed. Jessie J has enough star quality to light up London - keep an eye out for her.

Frankmusik @ G-A-Y 8th August

I was extremely excited to go and hear Frankmusik play at G-A-Y a few Saturdays ago. Everybody loved him, and he had great stage presence. It's always nice when you hear an artist live and it's hard to decipher differences between their live and recorded performance. It seems quite a rarity that singers can actually sing. His vocal range is out of this world and he has a real energy when performing that infects everyone watching him. I remember watching a t4 music show last year with Frankmusik and La Roux, and the presenter awarded La Roux the accolade of 'one to watch' - and although I love what La Roux does, I was very much attracted to Frankmusik. I think his songs are the perfect combination of past present and future. There's obvious synth influences and he gets inspiration from past bands (take, for example, the melodic resemblance to The Stranglers' Golden Brown on his track When You're Around -- my favourite track of the album). With this overt 80s inspiration, Frankmusik catapults his sound to the cutting edge, he's a truly innovative and exciting artist.

I'm very passionate about the talent and potential of this artist - which is why I have to say these next four words: Tim Chester you're vile.

I am all for everyone having their own opinion - but this little sub-human idiot is just unnecessary. Even if you despised a record, there is no way that enough venom could be sparked up in you to create a review of such hatred, so I have to come to the conclusion that this person has a large chip on his shoulder and a tiny penis. I'm not entirely sure why nme allowed this review to be published, but all I can say is that it takes great talent to acknowledge the greatness of retrospective melodies and turn it into something completely original and current. Unfortunately that review was nothing more than the outbreak of an extremely inadequate failed musician.

In conclusion - Frankmusik - keep doing what you're doing - everybody loved you that night and I hope to see you again in the future. ALSO - the album illustration for Frankmusiks' stuff is out of this world - I shall do a blog on the person who did it.

Writing.

Hola. Do you like the pic? It's ME - I seem to have been borderline ginger as a child.. you'd never believe it now! Since finishing my MA I have been doing as much writing as I can - reviewing for Vexed and starting to write some articles that I am enjoying so very much at Canvas - my first published was one on a company specialising in obscure ice cream flavours - hence my picture. ALSO - prim. Magazine is officially available to purchase in print from about 50 stores in London - so I got a copy obviously. It is a major buzz seeing my first article in print!!

Also - I started a poetry blog but shut it down because I find the showcasing of my poetry too shameful to withstand - AND THEN I started a music blog (I'm blogging about music because I can't review unreleased material on Vexed... or at least I don't think I can) - but what I've decided to do is combine the two - so this blog will now cover more than illustration and typography - it will be more of a plethora of pop culture.

Could Be Me.

Could Be Me is a project including many many artists --- "exploring possibility of one artist occupying another's space. It is a visual adventure and an interpretation of the same sentence by different artists worldwide."

How interesting is this - looking at different artists styles on the same statement - it's hard to compare artists, because they are often inspired by different things and basing their work on different topics and obviously using different mediums and techniques. Here, all of these artists are given the same concept and that's it - and the range is unbelieveable. It's interesting to get into their minds - their use of colour and form is especially interesting. Many have used a picture of a person to illustrate it could be me but it's actually paul paper - but what I find most interesting are the people who haven't done that - like the bottom image by Josh Murfitt - a note on a sofa. Very clinical, no trace of humanity, the note isn't even hand written. It's wonderful to try and think about what his reasoning behind this is.

Images in order of appearance: Alexander Binder, Andrea Shear, Cesar Brun and Josh Murfitt.