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Most music lovers have certain labels that they follow, information pills price awaiting releases, viagra 100mg excited by the new directions the people behind these labels have chosen to take. Warp and Planet Mu are two such labels for myself. Years of solid, this web progressive releases have meant I trust their taste – and once again, I think they may have succeeded.

Tim Exile‘s new album bends and shifts between tracks, layering genres from trip-hop to jungle with aspects of punishing techno all combined with stiffly melodic vocals hanging over the top of it all. Each track rolls around almost drunkenly, though perpetually rolling forward – something only possible through the albums astounding production.

There is something about the vocals that don’t strike me as truly necessary. They don’t reach out and suck you in enough and at times and you feel like they’re just sort of there, almost unnecessarily. The tracks speak for themselves; they don’t need Tim’s mutterings splashed across them – often just cheapening the melodies created by his impressive range of synth sounds.

What works much better can be seen in a youtube video of Tim Exile remixing Micachu live. Such an obscure combination that you just know that it could work perfectly, and it does. Well, kind of. It’s interesting.

My highpoint of the album surprisingly comes in the form of ‘Family Galaxy’. It springs from Exile’s past as a Drum and Bass producer (albeit a rather experimental one). On mass, I hate drum and bass. It really is quite ridiculous how much guff can be produced week after week, tirelessly, systematically presenting itself as the same thing. This track however just seems to play with your senses, drawing you in. Then you realise you’re listening to drum and bass and you just have to commend the man. ‘Carouselle’ is also well worth a listen. Truly uplifting experimentations with sounds and melodies it has a kind of dramatic theatricality to it.

This is an album fans of the obscure corners of electronica will enjoy, but not hold up as an album everyone should care about. Intelligent Dance Music is a genre I try to distance myself from (a recent evening spent in a room with Aphex Twin actually scared me away from the genre). This album however seems to bring quite a colorful and enjoyable feel to a genre that seems to thrive in the horrific side of music.

It has to be said I am still trying in vain to establish myself as savvy online shopper. A string of failed eBay purchases led me to become rather despondent about the whole word of online retailing. However recently I found a shop that wholeheartedly restored my faith in the otherwise online abyss.

Hip London based retailer Youreyeslie have emerged on the scene with a shed load of innovative new designers to get our online juices flowing. Branding themselves with the comical slogan “bad taste is better then no taste” its clear to see these guys are not ones for conventional clothing. Featuring everything from bake well tart rings to t-shirts brandishing Nuns with red noses. Their kitsch designs for men and women are sure to make you stand out amidst the city crowds.

The t-shirts feature an eclectic range of styles to suit all tastes from the grunge rockers, hospital the whimsical bohemians to the new rave eccentrics. The site are keen on promoting hand illustration so all t-shirts are beautifully intricate. My favourite has to be the delicate printed tiger oversized t-shirt, I think you will agree he is a handsome beast! I definitely want to take him home.

My Achilles’ heel of the entire website has to be the accessories. They got the entire Amelia’s HQ resorting to excited childish giggles. Each of us tried to conjure plausible excuses to buy a whole bundle of their adorable pendants.The whimsical designs are brilliantly kitsch, taking you on an imaginative whirlwind tour through the fairground, with marching band and tambourine pendants. Then it’s on to the tropical jungle with exotic birds and butterflies and if that’s not enough excitement you’re then catapulted into the realms of outer space with a rocket pendant.

My favourite has to be this bird pendant of two Bluetits, (see a pastoral upbringing has its distinct advantages, well for bird classification at least!) Anyway as an avid bird fan myself these beautifully delicate feathered friends get the thumbs up from me, I happen to think they would be very content perched on my neck.

So give your wardrobe that new leash of life it craves, with free delivery over orders above £50 there is no excuse not to go mad, well that’s my reasoning anyway! Send us stuff by the barrel load, here at Amelia’s we are well and truly hooked on YEL!
I’m sure that all our our wonderful Amelia’s Magazine readers have got a viewpoint on animal testing being conducted for cosmetic products. And I would like to think that the viewpoint is that it is JUST PLAIN WRONG! (Seriously, page what other viewpoint is there?!) I don’t know about you, hospital but I have been under the illusion that we were all in agreement about this, and so were the suits behind all legislations that decided upon animal testing. Apparently I was wrong. Because R.E.A.C.H had got there first. Under this law ( also known as Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals), many more animal tests are taking place as the scientists try to work out which chemicals can harm us. Alarmingly, these include chemicals found in cosmetics and toiletries.

Having found out that one of my favourite brands, Lush, have been campaigning heavily against this, I spoke with Andrew Butler, Lush’s Campaign Manager at Lush H.Q to find out more about this situation.

Andrew, I can’t get my head around this.

“This whole R.E.A.C.H thing is horribly convoluted situation, and a lot of people don’t know about it. R.E.A.C.H is already a reality, people have been fighting it for years, but it went through, largely because its something that people didn’t fully understand, It has been too complicated for the media to follow. R.E.A.C.H affects all products. It is a piece of legislation that is about 10 years in the making, and here’s the backround: consumer and health organisations were concerned that there were chemicals on the market that were potentially harmful, either through direct contact or consumers, or via the environment, and concerned that things were getting into the soil or the water, and getting into food chain or affecting wildlife. The kind of concerns in question were if the substance was an irritant, or carcinogenic, or a endocrine disruptor, – i.e it upset the hormonal balance. and so R.E.A.C.H was designed to be a catch all, and pull together all the diverse different bodies that dealt with chemicals in Europe into one central body and pull together existing information and fill in any blanks that there may be, and this was why R.E.A.C.H came to pass.”

But it sounds laudable, in theory?

“Absolutely, we should be ensuring that dangerous chemicals are not in the marketplace, and anything that is either cancer causing or disruptive of hormone systems should be heavily restricted or banned. But it is the way that the data is collected, and the sorts of data is used to ascertain whether something is safe or not. . And that was something that was not asked of the people who proposed the legislation. The groups were concerned about the chemicals, but not necessarily how the safety would be assessed. Traditional toxicology and eco toxicology involves animal tests, and that has always been the case. Pretty much everything that you can imagine from the carpet under your feet to the painting on the walls has been tested on animals somewhere by someone. Almost everything has been through a lethal dose 50 test which is where a group of animals is force fed a substance until 50% of them die. Its something that is done for virtually everything.

Companies who are concerned with safety testing but also don’t want to use animals have been concerned with the ingredients so there are various mechanism that companies can put in place so animal testing is not used. They can set a cut off date after which ingredients are not tested on animals, or they won’t do business with companies that are testing on animals. There are grave questions about the validity of animal testing, not just the ethics. The animal testing data is not really applicable to people.

As R.E.A.C.H was being developed there was pressure to not rely on animal test data. We ran a campaign in our stores, we collected postcards to MEPS urging them to not rely on animal tests under R.E.A.C.H, we collected 85,000 of those and sent them to MEPS. Many groups, such as Animal Aid and PETA were also campaigning against R.E.A.C.H. In the six years that the legislation was being passed, there were provisions put in place. For example, if animal test data already existed for a particular ingredient, that should be used in place of any new data. So provisions were put in place to minimise it, but not do away with it entirely. ”

I’m sure we already know it, but what is Lush’s stand on animal testing?

Lush goes into the stocks

“For us as a company, we have an objection to animal testing – both because it isn’t ethical to inflict suffering and kill animals in order to assess safety, and we don’t believe that animal tests will result in accurate info, we feel that the animal test data is inconclusive. Generally speaking, animal tests offer an accuracy rate of 40%, whereas the non animal tests are accurate 70- 80%. We are opposed to animal tests being mandatory in R.E.A.C.H. We need to ensure safety without suffering, with modern, non animal testing methods that will give us much more accurate results. ”

When did R.E.A.C.H come into effect, and what kind of ingredients are being tested?

“The legislation passed in 2007, and it has been implemented over the last couple of years. R.E.A.C.H legislation presides over anything that has undergone a chemical process – so e.g. a lavender flower isn’t included, but lavender essential oil would be considered a chemical, because it has undergone a chemical process. Anyone manufacturing or importanting any material in Europe that is over a tone of materials have to register it to R.E.A.C.H, and collectively, almost everything comes under these guidelines. And the deadline for this was December 2008 and the European Chemicals Agency were meant to have sift through all of these registrations, come up with a final list and set deadlines for the testing to be done. 140,000 materials need to be tested and be given safety information. If the data doesn’t exist, animal testing needs to be done. There is a huge degree of uncertainty – how much of that data already exists? How much animal testing needs to be done? Potentially, millions of animal experiments will need to be done. And it tends to be the more natural substances, like essential oils that don’t have all of the data. They are the ones who are going to end up being having to have their products tested; this will be done against their will.”

This is all so bleak! Is there a possibility of a positive outcome?

“We are struggling at the moment, because of the degree of uncertainty. But there is a silver lining. There is the European Cosmetics Directive, which came into force on March 11th 2009, it is an amendment to the cosmetics directive. It says that you cannot test any ingredients for cosmetics on animals in Europe. You can’t even market a product in Europe containing ingredients that have been tested on animals anywhere in the world. So on the one hand you have this, and on the other, you have R.E.A.C.H. ”

Before the last draft of R.E.A.C.H was passed, Lush paid a visit with a manure truck

So which one gets the say so on testing?

“That is a good question! It’s something that has to be tested in court. The whole cosmetics industry sees that there is clearly a conflict. What we need is for more companies to stand up and start questioning this, and to get the British Government to stand up and say that we are questioning this. So our campaign right now is awareness raising. R.E.A.C.H spells the end to cruelty free cosmetics. So if you care about this, you need to be aware of this, you need to start talking about this, and you need to ask other companies what they are doing about this. What are the British Government doing about this? They stood up in 1998 and said no more animal testing. Well they have signed us up to the biggest animal testing programme in Europe’s history, what’s that all about? Lush can engage corporate disobedience, and refuse to toe the line but thats not enough, if everyone is complying with R.E.A.C.H then animal testing will still go ahead. It needs to be collective. And the British public need to get involved too!”

Is there information readily available in Lush stores about this?

“Until the end of Easter there is information in all the stores, it’s being run as an in store campaign. The aim after Easter is to get a more comprehensive leaflet that will be available if you ask for it. There is also always going to be information on our website (www.lush.co.uk/reachout/ ) We are hoping to produce letters to MP’s and other companies, specifically about this issue.”

How has the feedback been from your Lush customers?

“We have had a really strong response. We have run plenty of campaigns about packaging, shark finning, human rights in Guantanamo, all sorts of things and this is one of the strongest customer responses, people have been shocked – they had no idea that this was happening. A lot of the responses have been that this is contrary to my rights, this should be going through the European Human Rights Courts because it should be my right to say, no I am not going to be alright with animal testing.

Information booth outside Lush

R.E.A.C.H is a law, there is not one particular thing that you can do to stop it, but if we do lots of things; if we at least start talking about this, and get large companies to stand up and say that we are not happy about this situation, then we stand a chance.”
If you haven’t come across Etsy before, treatment a bank holiday weekend is a good time to start exploring, find as you could very easily wake up Tuesday morning and find that’s all you’ve done for the last 4 days. www.Etsy.com is kind of like Ebay, but only for handmade items – from cookies to soap, socks to coffee tables – if it can be made, chances are you’ll find someone on Etsy who’s made it. Painter, carpenter and photographer Rob Kalin created the site after failing to find anywhere he could sell his products online. In 2005,the year the site was launched, $166,000 worth of goods were sold. This year, they had already sold $32 million worth by March. The ethos behind the site is responsible for it being such a massive hit in the States, and its starting to become better known worldwide- everyone is reacting against our culture of mass-production and supporting small, home-run businesses where people make things by hand. The following statement fromt the company explains it all…

With the global economic crisis putting finances in a squeeze, Etsy is a great way to maximize a budget. There is an endless variety of unique, quality handmade gifts at affordable prices. Besides being memorable, these gifts are also valuable. They’re made to last a lifetime, not just until next year’s version comes out. Which means less trash for landfills, and more savings for shoppers. Plus, each purchase on Etsy directly supports independent artists and designers.

To ease you in gently, I have picked out some affordable works of art that would be a wise investment and more importantly, might brighten up your home. If you like a seller’s work, click on their ‘Favourites’ tab on the right hand side of the Etsy web page, which will take you to all the sellers they like..and so on until before you know it your cyber basket is full!

Rebellious by Carrina Rothwell
Embroidery is huge on Etsy- these witty pieces really make me laugh.

Aqua interior print by Annechovie
Anne’s amazing paintings of interiors are just gorgeous- if you have a chair, rug or room that you particularly love, commission a painting of it so you can take it with you wherever you go.

I’m afraid I can’t help it by JKLDesign
These paintings are part pop art, part fashion shoot. Check out the photography from this seller too.

Tea Fairy by Winonacookie
Lots of artists on Etsy use old images from vintage photographs and books to create new collages or ‘altered art’. Winonacookie is my favourite, though she’s obviously gained a fair following and her originals are a tad pricey now. Remember- the prices shown are in dollars though- they change it when you check out.

Two photographers making really special work are
Lightleaks and Capree (below).

Their work would look perfectly at home on the pages of Dazed and Confused or Vogue. Nab a print before they make it big.

You can view my favourite spring fashion buys from Etsy by clicking here.
Who would have thought that so close to Oxford Street, information pills headache-inducing caricature of the nation’s identikit high streets that it is, Great Marlborough Street would reside, a civilized and calm conduit of the Capital’s finest culture creators. Culture creators with smart suits and serious rosé habits, who have long since outgrown their boho-clobber. And right between these parallel universes, on the barely-noticeable Ramillies Street, we find the new home of The Photographers Gallery. It is a very efficient three-tier cuboid of display. If Muji did art galleries, they’d be like this.
The prize exhibition began on the 20th of February, and for a few nail-biting weeks of suspense, we wondered where the fickle finger of fate would land, and what arguments we would have to have about it, while the winner went off to Jessop’s to fritter away their £30,000.

The winner, it turns out, is Paul Graham. Graham’s work is pure uninterventionalist America-watching, with a dark profundity to it. A fat man in America pulls on a cigarette like he really needs it outside a drab white building. He’s shuffling about, going nowhere until the end of his fix. And he’s doing the the same again. And again. And again. Some trees in America do nothing. And again. And again. The book that led to his nomination is entitled A Shimmer Of Possibility. It’s all as dry as this, yet strangely moving. A sequence of the book depicts one hard-on-his-luck chap striding across New York tensely, again with a cigarette, yet each shot is followed by a shot of a magnificent, yet naturally composed North Dakota sunset. It’s just the very idea that one man’s drab life and lack of purpose coexists with the world’s beauty. A beauty that cares not at all, but still offers a redemptive temple for prayer. It’s inevitable that this will be compared with Robert Franks’ The Americans. It’s a valid comparison, since critical distance is the backbone of each body of work. But A Shimmer Of Possibility is not an update, but more a change of gear, with all dynamism and gusto drained from The Land Of The Free, the better to imprison them within our gaze. But that’s the book.
The exhibition space doesn’t really have room to display a significant proportion of Graham’s slow narratives. The small selection here should be taken as an existentialist aperitif, and is not necessarily the most potent of his output.

Moving up two floors, you’ll find the three runners-up. Tod Papageorge is responsible for taking pictures of people in Central Park constantly for twenty-two years (1969-1991). These are bizarre little vignettes situated within the expanse of Manhattan’s great lawn. It’s a bit like zooming into a Watteau and finding little scenes depicting the strangeness of twentieth century life. A young couple stretched out on a blanket in the sun. A scruffy man combs his son’s hair in a clearing. In a very compelling shot, a black man lies in repose before a chessboard. The black pieces are his. The white pieces belong to the gallery-going public. Is this a meaningless chance happening, or composed confrontation? It drives right to the core of what apparently out-on-the-prowl photography can be, asking the viewer what they can see, and are they right to see it.

The next encounter is with the work of Taryn Simon. I found her the most fascinating exhibitor here. These photographs constitute a very focused project, to catalogue aspects of America that are normally hidden or unfamiliar. The hydroponic marijuana room at a licensed research lab. A cryopreservation unit that holds the bodies of the wife and mother of cryogenics expert Robert Ettinger. A couple of thousand nuclear waste capsules sitting at the bottom of a watery containment facility in Washington State. A Braille edition of Playboy magazine. Finches in quarantine. The seized contraband room at JFK airport, full of tropical plants, odd food, diseased vegetation, and bushmeat, all awaiting incineration. These glimpses off the radar, though all beautifully captured, lack a consistent visual style. The subject is paramount, to a documentary degree, and each must be captured on its own terms. Simon is really allowing her issues to speak for themselves, be it with humour, disgust, or merely what Stephen fry would call Quite Interesting-ness. It’s a glimpse behind the curtain, bringing your conspiracy theory gland into the real world, for each composition is an altercation between your notions of real and normal, usually wedded, now in uncomfortable stand-off. The most powerful piece is a heart-wrenching portrait of Kenny, a white tiger, residing at an animal refuge, selectively inbred as a status pet by Arkansas half-wits, themselves perhaps inbred. Kenny has breathing difficulties, malformed bones and teeth, and cannot close his jaw. His siblings are even worse off, apparently. Looking into Kenny’s eyes and wondering, identifying, is overwhelming. Elsewhere on the spectrum is an interior of the CIA’s art collection offices. Simple yet sinister, this makes you wonder about all the things you still can’t see, all the dirty interventions by Intelligence Agents in our beloved realm of culture.

Simon’s project is almost journalistic, and the photos need to be accompanied by the little text labels, which explain these otherwise very disparate images. However, if that constitutes a dilution of the definition of a photographer, it’s nothing next to Emily Jacir’s deviation. She presents an archive of the life of Walter Zuaiter, a Palestinian intellectual who was assassinated in Rome by Israel’s Wrath Of God Operation in 1972, after they linked him, perhaps falsely, to the Munich Olympics massacre.
Jacir would have been two years old at the time, and I’m assuming she didn’t take the photos herself. She is an archivist, perhaps a curator, likely an artist, certainly a fangirl, but I can’t see how she could be called a photographer. Photography Prize, remember? It’s easy to redefine art for found objects, but the word photography is a bit more specific than that. I suppose that’s just semantics. It may not be in the right place, but it is worth seeing, and is a tragic memory of this intriguing life. She displays a selection of paperbacks that he had read, along with letters, and old photographs as a way to create some space for the personal amidst the political, the human amongst the historical. And it’s good that not everything here is about America.

The show overall is a pretty still, meditative, even modest affair. Beauty abounds. And thought. The Deutsche Börse Prize turns all of this into a big discussion about art and value. To award one prize is a shame, and probabilistically, only a quarter of people would agree with the choice of Graham, but art, at least, wins on the ground floor, and the second floor. The filling to this Photography sandwich is a shop for photography books and prints and coffee. The hordes of Oxford Street will never know. Don’t be one of them.

The Exhibition runs until April 12.
Monday, what is ed 13th

Enough with the chocolate eating! Music can be delicious as well, so go enjoy your last holiday evening with Bombay Bicycle Club (the band, not the restaurant silly!) at KCLSU (King’s College Student Union). They are launching a very yummy single called “Always Like This” which is the leader one from their new album due this summer.
7:30 pm. £8.50.

Bombay Bicycle Club

Tuesday, 14th

Some Swedish romanticism can`t hurt, right? Well, Loney Dear is back celebrating the release of their fifth album ‘Dear John’ with a full band show at Scala, fresh from an extensive tour around America.
On support duties, welcome Snowbird, a brand new and rather bewitching collaboration from Stephanie Dosen and Simon Raymonde (Cocteau Twins, Bella Union) playing songs of the old and new variety. As if that’s not enough, there`s also the full lavishly appointed and luxuriously hand-tooled 8 piece version of The Leisure Society, a fast rising orchestral folk-pop band whose tour will culminate at this very show.
7:30 pm. £11.50

Loney Dear

Wednesday 15th

Acclaimed indie pop trio The Wave Pictures release their latest album ‘If You Leave It Alone’ on the 4th May. The band is currently on tour in the UK and London fellows can check out the homonym single at ICA this Wednesday.
7:30pm. £8.50.

The Wave Pictures

Thursday 16th

OK, so far it`s been impossible not to go out every single evening in the week. The musical orgy continues on Thursday with all the Berlin coolness of The Whitest Boy Alive, fronted by Erland Oye, formerly Kings Of Convenience. The will be playing “Rules”, the new album, at Scala.
7:30 pm. £15.

The Whitest Boy Alive

Friday 17th

Temper`s Trap new release Science Of Fear is due to 20th April and a preview will be performed this Friday at Koko.
9:30PM. £5.00.

Temper Trap

Saturday 18th

Great music for free? Here we come! To celebrate Record Store Day, Pure Groove will be hosting three gigs where you’ll be able to see Graham Coxon performing live, along with our own Dan Michaelson and Patrick Wolf.
10am to 6pm. Free.

Graham Coxon

Sunday 19th

Everybody is all around talking about “Two Suns”, Bat For Lashes new album. Honestly? When we first listened to it at the office here we all flipped out.
They are playing a second night at Sheperd`s Bush Empire so guarantee your Sunday ticket before it sells out.
7:30 pm. £15

Bat For Lashes

Written by Barbara Mattivy on Monday April 13th, 2009 5:13 pm

Categories ,Bat For Lashes, ,Bombay Bicycle Club, ,Live, ,London, ,Loney Dear, ,Music Listings, ,Temper Trap, ,The Leisure Society, ,The Wave Pictures, ,The Whitest Boy Alive

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