Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Arkitekts

The Arkitekts @ La Fête de la Musique, Paris

The Arkitekts are a French independent rock/pop trio who formed in the middle of November 2003.

But their musical roots go back to the 1990s when front man on guitar and vocals David Law and drummer Vortex shared the stage in the group Flyshoes, who played about 300 concerts in France.

With the addition of Tom Bass on bass guitar and keyboard (often played at the same time!) to complete the trio, The Arkitekts play an interesting mix of slightly goth, slightly grunge, slightly psychadelic, slightly epic guitar rock ... maybe think The Doors meet Bauhaus downstairs at an avante-blues jam in a prog rock squat.

I caught The Arkitekts playing at La Fête de la Musique and enjoyed their set thoroughly, probably spending an hour of the evening enjoying their tunes ... I even bought the CD, Parfums du Silence.

One of the things I enjoyed about their live set was the utilisation of two microphones by David Law, one was connected directly into their PA, but the other microphone was first passed through a delay (or reverb?) effect pedal which enabled the vocalist to create some unique and cavernous vocal sounds. It is certainly a nice little trick I will be experimenting with when I get back home to my collection of musical toys.

The Arkitekts still playing hours later @ La Fête de la Musique, Paris

Also Tom Bass’ uncanny ability to play both bass guitar and keyboards at the same time helped to add several layers of sound to the mix

The band were entertaining and really tight and created a huge sound for a three piece, with a mix of soft and hard rock sounds, often used to build tension within the songs. There was also a regular group of onlookers enjoying their set at La Fête de la Musique.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Ring My Bell

The Triffids (featuring Rob Snarski) at the Perth International Arts Festival

This blog has been a labour of love and loath for over four and a half years now. It is always a time consuming process to manage the posts, researching bands or contemplating gigs, choosing and uploading photographs and writing the posts.

In that time Something Old, Something New has received over half a million hits, a (small) number of thoughtful emails and comments, an equally small number of emails and comments slightly less thoughtful, far too many emails with nothing to do with music or what is posted here and a handful of downright rude emails and comments. This is my blog and I choose which comments are posted.

Writing this blog also enabled me to purchase tickets to The Triffids show at PIAF after they had sold out, thanks to Mr Graham Lee.

But apart from that I haven't received anything for the many hundreds of hours which this blog has consumed ... all by my choice I admit.

Recently I received a rude and nasty email deriding the quality and composition of the gig photographs taken by me and posted here, referring specifically to The Triffids PIAF event.

A day or so later I was advised that one of the very same photographs were shortlisted to appear in the online tourist guide Schmap.

I have had a number of other photographs taken around the world published in Schmap, but it was nice to receive some recognition for the blog content, particularly in the light of the amount of negative and neutral responses generally received.

This photograph has since been accepted and published in the Schmap guide ... it's here if you're interested.

January 2010 will be the fifth anniversary of this blog and most likely also it's demise.

It appears that most visitors are only in search of free music, and the tracks which I post are usually rare and always very short lived ... many of the emails I have received are requests for the re-posting of songs ... if you missed it the first time around, then it's too late, too bad. I'm more about posting information on and links to the bands than their music. And that's another reason for taking a step away.

Something Old, Something New will remain online as an archive of links and references, particularly for some old bands from Perth which otherwise have no online presence, but there won't be any additional posts.

In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying the music which rocks my world. There's still some life in the old boy yet, but the tinnitus is setting in.