Quick Update (Qupdate)

Not very much of musical note has been happening to me lately (although that's not the only reason this blog's not been updating). Pretty much the most interesting that happened was seeing mopey Scottish indie types Frightened Rabbit (or rather, singer/songwriter Scott Hutchinson) play an acoustic instore gig at Pure Groove records in Farringdon. It was a pretty cool shop, though more of a coffee shop/art space, as wanky as that sounds, than a proper record store. Despite that I did buy a CD (of course) - the Micachu album, which is a lovely bit of slightly avant-garde, wonky pop that is definitely in my top 5 of albums to have come out so far this year.

I've never been to an instore before, so it felt a little bit odd sitting at a table at the front of the shop, drinking a coke, while a band (or one person) played a set a few feet away. It was also odd to see a gig at lunchtime but there was a still a bit of an atmosphere at the venue, a new song was debued, and Hutchinson was in pretty good form, despite breaking a string during said new song and thus struggling with tuning issues for the remainder of the set.

As for my own musical projects, I managed to miss my first complete band practice on Sunday due to coming back from Cambridge too late, and generally being pretty tired and run-down. While I was up in Cambridge I also realised how much I missed performing live (it's been well over a year now) and thus am anxious to get together another project that can play gigs sooner than the band in Reading, who are aiming for late summer, at the earliest. It would also be nice to have a band where I can get out my more experimental tendencies, cause I think I'd continue to feel frustrated without an outlet for them.

Since this is a Qupdate (I'm using this word all the time from now on), I'm compelled to link to all my latest reviews. Since they're all for the same site I can link to my author page on musosguide: http://mymusos.com/author/joseph-rowan and they're the three top reviews there (Pink Mountaintops, Mr Oizo and volcano! for those who are too lazy to click on a link).

Right, that'll do for now, but I'm about to post some slightly-exciting news! Don't hold your breath for too long!