Le Shouvre

So for those that don’t know, Le Shouvre’s designer and blog updater extrodinaire – moi – also started a band this August, called Royal Native. My friend Jules and I have been doing our best to overcome the obvious and significant obstacle of basically always being in different countries by building up a bit of an online presence.

Anyway, today marks the release of our debut EP, L’Orangerie. We have recorded a fair amount of music in the fifteen days that we’ve actually seen each other since mid-August, and this particular bundle comes mostly from the time we spent in an old orangery in Normandy. Five songs that span a range of genres and emotions, and will hopefully offer an accurate slice of the sort of music we make, and of what’s to come in the future.

What’s more, we’ve put the EP up for free download – so there’s really no excuse not to give it a listen. All you need to do is send an email to:

orangerie@royalnative.com

… and you’ll receive an immediate automated response with a link to download the EP. And no, we won’t bother you with other crap.

If you hate it… well, at least you didn’t pay for it. And if you love it, then why not take a trip over to our (recently revamped) myspace, website, soundcloud or twitter page… some inquisitive exploring will reveal a host of other songs, and plenty of surrounding information, should you desire it. Go on!

(Shameless plug over.)

How. Cool. Is. This.

…well, apart from the Age of Empires music in the video. Found through Abduzeedo.

Political preferences and positions aside, does anyone else think the British Prime Minister could pull off a mullet?

These sketches my friend Lyle and I did for a laugh are like a “before and after” series from a drug trafficking documentary. “The one they call El Marrón was last seen at the Mexican border two years ago. Police can only speculate his whereabouts now – but suspicions suggest Cuba….”

This is partly to show people that I haven’t just been sitting around not painting shoes for the past month. Well, I have indeed not been painting shoes… and I have indeed been sitting a fair amount, in various places… but for good reason!

My friend Jules and I embarked on a musical journey, the product of which I can now reveal: Royal Native. Thus far only the Myspace is presentable, but a website is almost finished, and numerous other seeds have been planted amidst the varied soils of the blogosphere, too. All songs were written, performed, recorded and produced by the two of us, as well as any artwork. As more Royal Native stuff is finished, I will no doubt want to show it off here as well. In the meantime, however, I’ll let the selection of songs speak for themselves…

(And for the audiophiles amongst us, higher quality versions of the songs can be found on last.fm)

Have you ever been so angry that your rage becomes all-consuming, preventing you from being able to function? If so, allow me to suggest to you a method for venting such paralyzing emotions: writing eloquent, sophisticated prose. That’s what the folks at Hot Rant do, with hilarious results.

I highly recommend jumping across to Hot Rant, and browsing through their catalogue of tirades. The themes for their anger vary, but the vast majority of the time it’s something that you’ve probably been enraged by as well. (Also, there is clear evidence of Hot Rant co-founder Fred’s love/hate relationship with terrible 80′s action films, but judge that as you may.)

Best of all, they love having guest contributions. My Wimbledon obsession has awakened in me a distaste for the British media, so I sat down the other night and channeled my indignation into a hot rant of my own, which you can read here.

So if you’ve got a fury that can’t be soothed, get writing…

http://hotrant.blogspot.com/

http://twitter.com/leshouvre

That’s right, Le Shouvre has joined the twittersphere! Despite knowing almost no one on Twitter, and barely being able to use the site itself at this point, I have endeavored to set foot into the world of microblogging. As the wise Rafiki said, It is time.

So if, for whatever reason, you feel compelled to see mini updates of the shoe-designing process as I progress from one commission to the next, go check it out. Follow me, even…

I’ll try and figure out how to take pictures with my webcam and upload them to Twitter (sounds like it shouldn’t be too complicated, right?), so people can at least see work-in-progresses and various random sketches as they unfold.

“Bananaz”, the film that documents the Gorillaz phenomenon from its conception and through its consequent successes, was released on DVD on June 1st. But, for those who weren’t aware, the entire film is still available to view online through Babelgum. Definitely worth checking out for anyone who’s a fan – the music seems to get more emphasis than the artwork, but I suppose they were a band, after all.  Maybe its just the footage they ended up using (which spans 7 years), but Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett are both portrayed as completely bonkers, which makes it seem even more amazing that the whole project got off the ground in the first place, let alone that it achieved international popularity.

Not sure how much longer the film will remain online to stream – I remember hearing that it was only going to be for a month, but so far it’s been up since late April, so who knows.

Watch it here