12/09/2007 by john.

International award winning Brighton sculptor, Jamie McCartney, has done it again with his green machine, Car-bon Miles, a road car converted to pedal-power. He has now won the Kyoto Prize for the cleanest, greenest vehicle in the first ever UK Art Car Parade. Jamie made a triumphant return to his seafront studio on Sunday, where the car is now on show. See: (www.jamiemccartney.com/latest.html)

A new phenomenon has swept the streets of the UK as acclaimed specialists in outdoor performance Walk the Plank, created the UK’s very first Art Car Parade in Manchester on Saturday 8th September. See: (http://www.artcarparade.co.uk/)

Michael Trainor, Curator of Art Cars 2007 explains… “An Art Car is a drivable installation - any vehicle which has been re-imagined, re-styled, re-modelled, or completely metamorphosed by an artist. Vehicles can be decorated, sculpted, adorned, illuminated or bejewelled to create “transports of delight” in the shape of cars, trucks, bikes, mobility scooters or even pedal or solar-powered contraptions!”

As one of 14 commissioned artists, Brighton based sculptor Jamie McCartney, joined around 25 other vehicles as they took the streets of Manchester by storm. An accomplished artist, Jamie completed a degree in Experimental Art at the renowned Hartford Art School, the oldest art college in America. His degree and years working on feature films has made Jamie something of a maverick and ideally qualified to create a car which most people could only imagine. Never shy of controversy, he explores the boundaries of what is possible and acceptable. His last award was the Erotic Signature international sculpture prize for his piece ‘The Spice of Life’, now on permanent display in London.

Jamie is one of the talented artists from all over the country who was specially commissioned to transform vehicles into weird and wonderful mobile artworks to take part in the event: the first ever Art Car Parade in the UK. Art Car Parades are a huge phenomenon in the USA, with the first, and by far the largest, in Houston with 250 Art Cars on show, attracting over 200,000 spectators annually.

To realise his ambitious Art Car, Jamie enlisted the help of local engineer James Fleming. Their blend of art and engineering has produced a transport phenomenon. From his studio on Madeira Drive Jamie has earned himself and a place in the history books as a winner in what was a spectacularly successful inaugural Parade.

Over the coming weeks Jamie and James will add solar power to the vehicle to light it up in time for the UK’s first Illuminated Art Car Parade in Blackpool on October 21st. See: (http://www.festivaloflight.co.uk)

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12/09/2007 by john.

How to Make Music in Your Bedroom
By Nicola Slade
Virgin Books, 23rd October 2007, Paperback, £6.99

The definitive guide to becoming a DIY Music Artist

With the multitude of technological advances of modern day such as the internet and a wide range of adaptable software available to anyone with a PC, it’s about time we made them work for us. This book explains how to do exactly that with regards to recording, mixing and editing your very own music from your very own bedroom.

The concept behind, ‘How to Make Music in Your Bedroom’ is automatically supported by the recent success of artists such as Lilly Allen and Seth Lakeman, who used the types of techniques which can be found in this book to catapult themselves onto the music scene. The Artic Monkeys are another new band who also made use of the vast range of file sharing networks found on the web to promote their self made album.

Nicola Slade shows how anyone can record and mix killer music from the comfort of their bedroom. The author explains what hardware, software and mixing equipment is required, and includes a history of the digitisation of music, advice on marketing and promoting your music and contributions from DIY music artists who have made it big.

Key facts about the ever expanding and changing world that is the music industry:

• Seth Lakeman spent just £300 pounds on his album which he made in his kitchen. He has now been nominated for the Mercury Prize.
• MySpace claims to have 35 million unique users.
• Napster was one of the first file sharing programmes to appear on the web in 1999, with this came the birth of illegally downloaded music.
• The number of legally downloaded music is rapidly rising whilst the number of physical purchases of music is slowing declining. This has therefore changed the way in which music is marketed and produced.

The Author, Nicola Slade, is a well respected music journalist who started out at the respected The Fly magazine. She then moved on to edit music websites such as the Mean Fiddler; currently she is writing for Music Week and is the co-author of Download: The Lowdown.

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