azar o seu, querida*

Meu presente pra quem pretende comemorar o dia de São Valentino.

[On October 10th the feminist collective FC Poppesnor organises 'Stout(st)e dromen' (free translation: wild(est) dreams), a titillating festival about sex, injected with a significant portion of grrrl power. Exclusively for the festival, lingerie designer and filmmaker Murielle Scherre (Ghent) and erotic filmmaker Jennifer Lyon Bell (Amsterdam) team up for an all-new, sexy, explicit short erotic movie! They are looking for open-minded, freespirited men and (especially) women who want to explore their 'wildest dreams' in a short film. Jen and Murielle are full of ideas, and can craft a story/concept that suits what you want to do -- explicit or less explicit. Their film might feature just a woman, or a couple. So men, women, and couples are all welcome to respond. Don't be harsh on yourself! We are not looking for bombshells, but for 'real' people with a healthy, sexy appetite, who believe that sex can be beautiful, fun, exciting and empowering! Be sure to check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUXxX_kOAoo and lafilledo.com (Murielle) and blueartichokefilms.com (Jennifer) to see if their work and their approach to film inspires you. You can make a film with them that's sexual art, or erotic film, or progressive feminist porn -- we can call it whatever we want, as long as it's all about true sexual pleasure with an emphasis on female desire.] [do Facebook]

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Eu volto já, tá?

[para Jaime]

The First Days of Spring – A Film By Noah And The Whale from charlie fink on Vimeo.

“I do see the film and the album as being together, as a unified thing,” says Noah and the Whale’s chief songwriter and singer Charlie Fink about the band’s new record and accompanying film, The First Days of Spring. “But the album very much came first – it has its own internal narrative.”

As with their debut, last year’s Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, the Londoners’ second release follows a structure. There are songs here – Blue Skies, Our Window, I Have Nothing, Slow Glass – that cry out for special attention, for love. But the journey the album takes you on, from the ominous drum tattoo and string swell on the opening title track right through to the strummed acoustic guitar, pedal-steel keening and massed voices that bring My Door is Always Open to its devastating close, is an experience quite unlike that offered by most music being made today.

Charlie began thinking of making an album that was also a film (and, as he sees it, vice versa) last year. The film, shot on a miniscule budget in a tight time-frame – a process one of the producers describes “as making a near feature-length film, for the budget of a short, in eight days” – and directed by Charlie himself, can be seen as a companion piece to the album, as a visual version of it, or as a piece of work in its own right. That decision is very much up to us, as the listener and viewer, says Charlie.

Formed in 2006, Noah and the Whale quickly gained a foothold on a London music scene variously described as anti-folk, nu-folk and folk-pop (a confusing multitude of pigeonholes) alongside like-minded souls such as Laura Marling and Emmy the Great. Both were part-time members of the band at various points, while Charlie Fink also produced Marling’s Mercury-nominated debut album, Alas I Cannot Swim. It was apparent immediately that something unorthodox and disturbing was going on in Noah and the Whale’s songs: that, beneath the surface appeal (bells, whistles, handclaps, ukuleles and singalong choruses), they were working with much darker materials. This tension, between instantly undislodgeable melodies and instrumental textures that encouraged a sunny disposition, and lyrics that looked unblinkingly at the ambiguities contained in love, in words, in life and in death, made the band’s debut album a critical and commercial success, charting in the Top 5 and being certified Gold within just four months. The band toured extensively, in the UK, in Europe and in the US, their superb live shows drawing much acclaim as the album, and earning the band a rabidly loyal fanbase in the process.

[A dica é de Lalai]

[NSFW]