Babysweet Sessions

Our Two Door Cinema Club documentary had it’s only Norther Irish premier/showing at the 5th ever Forfey Festival. Hannah and I were a little nervous about people showing up to watch it but to our delight the place was packed. It was in the mighty 1951 venue at about 00:30 in the morning. The ever so kind Neil Gillespie introduced Hannah and I and we mumbled a few words before returning to the back of the room and staring at the floor. Someone said they had to stop themselves clapping after each song as they kept forgetting it was a concert. That is what the target with filming a concert is I guess, capturing the atmosphere in its raw form. It is also worth mentioning that if you are signed up to Two Door’s newsletter that not only will you be getting a rare early demo of theirs but you will also get to watch Cigarettes in the Theatre from the documentary. You should have been signed up in the first place! I imagine it will probably find it’s way onto one of them there networking sites at some point.

Besides the great honor of having our work shown at the greatest festival on earth (maybe im crazy eh! I am basing this on experiences at Benicassim, Glastonbury, T in the Park, The very First Tennents Vital, Oxegen and all those other darn rainy events and SXSW (SXSW is infact the exception and the the greatest in America, Forfey best in Europe OK) the line-up really delivered. In my heart of hearts I felt the line-up on paper wasn’t as strong as last year and that the festival may not have lived up to my fond memories. However it truly did and was maybe my favourite Forfey experience ever. The sound in the Hey Shed was absolutely magnificent. Iain Archer was out of this world and along with Adebisi Shank were the highlight of the Friday (besides our film….wink…taxi). The atmosphere for Lowly Knights was possibly one of the most perfect atmospheres I have experienced. Not Squares were sensational. SixStarHotel had Hannah Banana in tears and to be frank I was biting my lip. I don’t know what it was. Neil made a peace sign at some point and it did something to me. Did anyone else get emotional? David Clements can raise his leg and snap it down in a finer fashion met by ney one else me eye hath seen. Bad Operator… Bad Operator became B.O. The crowd chanted B.O…B.O. People were smelling their armpits in a saute to the majestic one. It is a difficult deal to be a DJ at festivals in the middle of the day. People maybe aren’t ready to boogie woogie and so just watch. I don’t have a clue about DJ’s. Watching a DJ at work confuses me. The first few tracks came with folded arms and happy faces. Someone somewhere decided enough was enough and started to tap their foot. Suddenly the place went bezurk. There were shapes being thrown on the Lie-To Floor that would baffle Stephen Hawking and Peter Jones. The last track, a remix of Get Back by Kowalski, wasn’t enough. There were chants of more…please more… This chant was shared when I was packing the car to go home.

Anyway, there will be two documentaries out in September if not sooner. This is for certain they are edited and completed. Just waiting for the right time to unleash. We are busy moving our lives over to London. Somethings have already been arranged for the big smoke and so babysweet should be busier than ever. 

forfey campfire singalong model 0.2

*27/07/10: we have taken down the trailer for a little while for top secret reasons. it should be back in a month or two.*27/07/10

So we have been online for one whole year this month. It’s time to have a long, meandering blog to celebrate. Above us you can see the trailer for “You Think You Know, You Don’t Know: A film about Two Door Cinema Club”. It’s the finest thing we have ever made and we are very proud of it. It is having it’s Northern Irish premier at this years Forfey Festival. The festival also boasts an incredible line-up with some adrenaline pumping through ol’baby for Cast of Cheers, SixStarHotel, Not Squares, Captain Cameron and Continuous Battle of Order. The last band will be referred to as TCBOO from here on in. I was in the same shed as them last year but wasn’t able to savour that as I was filming the Forfey (fawr-fee) film and was stressed. I saw them two weeks ago at the Trans Festival at the Waterfront Hall. The gentlemen are butchers. They are quite fantastic live. The front man has so much charisma it’s unique and he barely calls on it at any point. 

I have been working on a documentary about Tom McShane’s album recording. I will detail that in a later blogg but if you can read then read about it over at Alternative Ulster. Anyway it was a really pleasent surprise to see TCBOO frontman featuring on Tom’s album. We interviewed him and discovered he sings in a country band with Tom which you can listen to here. The diversity in this man is quite fantastic. Tom is a huge fan of the album. He said to me that he felt the album “PTTRN SKRS” (pronounced P-A-T-T-E-R-N  S-E-E-K-E-R-S) was a landmark album for Belfast and that although there weren’t exactly pop hits on the album it will stand as one of the more important released from this fair city. Make up your own mind and have a listen here. And after that think about how babysweet would never ever make a video for this band….or would they?!

"two high class gentlemen - model 1.AC4"

It is a beautiful thing that our film has the pleasure of being at the Forfey Festival this year. It was at last years festival where babysweet really got its self back together after about Two Years of floating through the nothingness. Those years where the lost years and you could have found me in a bad mood in any one of those 730 days. It was at HaNnAhS suggestion that we made a documentary about the Forfey Festival. It was our first serious project since the mood had been escaped. It is quite remarkable how we have developed since then I think. We didn’t film Forfey in widescreen because I felt that it would cause problems in the edit. The way to improve is to do things I guess. Anyway it will cement a productive year when the film is screened on the dear old Farm this August.

(i spoke about the film on radio 1 and you can listen to it again here) *from tomorrow

At the beginning of next month we are making a video for our oldest of subjects. We are still working out the idea. We have also experienced different preferences for song choice. This will be a hard one to crack. There are a few music videos in the pipeline. I know I have said that before with the whole “One Film A Month” shit. That didn’t happen because of the bands canceling, not us me lud.

Here is a poem by John Darnielle. He is the lead singer in The Mountain Goats. They are one of the most lovable bands on the planet. They have 17 studio albums though so where to start?! If you like this poem you can read more at his blog Last Plane To Jakarta.

THE TEMPLE AT THE END OF THE COSMOS

gonna go out on a limb here
and say that somewhere out beyond the final star in the universe
there is a building
standing on a grassy hill

suspended there in the final iteration of all seeing
like the cover
of some trippy science fiction
paperback

and since I am feeling emboldened to describe things
seen by few and remembered by fewer
let me further speculate that there is a record player inside the building
and speakers in the windows on the second floor

the speakers point out toward the small field
whose terminus is the void;
the turntable to which they are connected
plays a ride for revenge album

the album is called wisdom of the few
its sleeve is on hi-gloss stock
and it’s an awesome record
no matter what anybody tells you

if you listen to it now as many times as you can
then when you arrive at that final floating island
it will feel very familiar to you.
on the other hand

if you wait
then you’ll be really surprised
the choice is yours,
as mr. case, my algebra teacher, used to say

"oh! we hear ya John"

Cheers John.

Here is a photograph of me at Flat Lake Festival where we had secret, uber cool, mega, fantastic secret test screening of our Two Door film last month.

"this ain't no pocket novel Claud!"

 

Here is a letter talented photographer man bang bang mcclean sent

The Roy of the Rovers man always had a tear of blood streaming from his eyeball

Here is my current facebook profile picture if you know where it is from then you should be a bobby

"how one yearns to read but shant"

The clan from which my dear love came

"the clan from which my love evolved"

*27/07/10: we have taken down the trailer for a little while for top secret reasons. it should be back in a month or two.*27/07/10

Above is a short trailer for our film “You Think You Know, You Don’t Know: A film about Two Door Cinema Club”. It is quite a mouthful. All footage in it was shot by Hannah, myself and our friend Will. Once I learn of the plans for the release of this film, I shall let you know.

Take care, Take flight.

We started filming in May for the beautiful, the elegant, the magnificent, the soon to be huge Kill Krinkle Club. The single is called Moon and was produced by Declan Gaffney who has worked with some other really small, indie as hell band called U2. The video went through many ideas in a very long day in May. We went through many, many ideas lot’s of which didn’t make this video. Technically we went through about three shoots in this video.

I was only present on two. Justin and Elina went out in Dublin and took hundreds of photographs which made up the beach scene and the scene where Justin is bombarded by lots of kids or “corner boys” as my father would have said. The other photos of Elina and Justin in the jogging gear where taken by the ever sexual Shannon McClean. Shannon has taken lot’s of pictures for Pitchfork and regularly has his work showcased at the All Tomorrows Parties Festivals. Surely he is the photographer with the most indie-cred in Belfast. I guess that depends if you like Davey Berman, Marky Kozelek etc. Stephen Malkmus asked him to be his tour photographer and Shannon didn’t even respond. Or was it the other way round? So get your cheque book out and get him to take your picture.

In conclusion. We hope you like this video. It is a hectic collage of a billion ideas.

We have been working away on a video for Kill Krinkle Club song “Moon”. For quite sometime. We took a break from this to document Tom McShanes album recording. It should be a short documentary in the same vein as our evening with Lowly Knights Video.

Besides editing this, I have been day dreaming about listening to Continuous Battle of Order on my Ipod whilst sitting in a Japanese Hotel.

There will be a new video very soon and then I will update this page very, very soon. 

Why not have a listen to grandforever.bandcamp.com and maqke some lunch.

Shit pun granted. It’s doesn’t even make sense. Last Friday Hannah Banana and I were invited along to No Alibis in Botanic, Belfast to film the evenings events. Lowly Knights were hosting an evening for a lucky intimate crowd of 50. All tickets sold out in a hour and there was the same amount of people on the waiting list. The band played through every song they have ever released except for “Miracle” from their debut E.P. The laid back atmosphere meant there was no need to worry over playing songs for the first time such as “Winter” from their follow-up EP or completely new songs all together. This video features two completely new, unreleased songs: Buckle Under You Just Like Before and Burning Powder. It also features the title track from their second EP- To The Hum of Distant Voices: The Hollow EP.

The Knights also shared the stage with their friends and companions and so we had poetry courtesy of Maria McManus and acoustic performances from David Clements and Rachel Austin. The later two performers make an appearance in the video. For the rest of May we are set to finish our music video for Kill Krinkle Club and then early next month possibly start a new video. I think about these things too much and as a result am feeling burnt out and uninspired. I need an alternative hobby. One day of mental rest will be the Roccer 2010 football tournament. Babysweet Sessions are entering a team and have been christened Babysweet Athletic Club de Sportif. In a modern day tragedy Hannah Banana will be in London and unable to take part in the tournament. Last year she helped inspire CSKO Walski through the group stages before lack of fitness meant a swift exit in the Last 16. We were compared to Real Madrid which I think I was fair. Anyway that team has since gone into Administration and from the flames we shall rise. Our target is to get out of the group stage. Who cares after that. The real excitement will be scoring a header in the dying moment to put us in the hat for the knock-out rounds. Can you imagine?

Babysweet Athletic Club De Sportif recruitment poster version A/B - 1

Governors Publicity Photo for Propaganda and to quash the rumors

As you can see we have put a performance of Undercover Martyn, from our forthcoming Documentary on Two Door Cinema Club, online. There are certain things to explain about the film but the beautiful people at twentyfourbit.com, our favourite music website, have done it for us here.

In an earlier video blog which you can see here I stated the babysweet intention of one film a month. It is universally accepted in parliament buildings around the globe that this policy seems behind schedule. However I am pleased to inform you dear followers that it isn’t. If I was a politician I could say that “Get Back” came out this year, although seeing as it was actually filmed in 2009 I will not lead us down that path. What I will say is that we have made our Two Door film and have four music videos planned between now and the end of June. The first one that you will see is in fact being filmed this very weekend. Once the shot list is completed I think I will post it here for you to see how close to or how far removed the finished product is from the intended vision. 

It is with great honor I tell thee that we are making a video for Kill Krinkle Club. They consist of Justin from Ireland and Elina from Sweden. They are more electronic than anything we have worked with before and we have a shot list in preparation that should produce our finest music video to date. At this stage we desperately need someone with a Van to help is pick something up on Friday and then help us move stuff about on Saturday. This saint will be credited and receive 2000p. They may also get a free cd?

After that three videos will appear online in June. That will take us to five or six videos by the end of June. One film a month end of story.

I promise we have been busy this year. I know we haven’t had anything online for quite some time but we have been working harder than we ever have. We have a documentary on Two Door Cinema Club in the “can” as they used to say. I figured it was going to appear online at some point this month, thus the numerous status updates indicating so. However after discussions with the good folk helping navigate the ship of Two Door it seems you may have to wait a while longer for the full film.

Your best bet to see the full version before the end of the summer is to join us in crossing your fingers and hoping it gets into some film festivals. At this stage the full film lasts 55 minutes. If the film doesn’t get selected then it is likely you will see a “taster” closer to 15-20 minutes appear online at some point before the full film is unveiled in which ever manner becomes the mid-wife.

After four months of thinking in front of my inbox, I am now putting myself into a rehabilitation program and will begin working on a backlog of music videos. cheerio.

The Documentary on Two Door Cinema Club is coming very soon, I hope. It’s standing at around 53 minutes at the moment so hopefully the longest babysweet session ever will make for the lack of online activity. We are currently awaiting approval from the management and then all will be revealed.

take care.