El Canto Del Loco, Madrid, 30/10/09 - Concert Photos

I was back in Spain at the weekend; the prime purpose of the visit being to see El Canto Del Loco in concert on the Friday night at the huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge Palacio de los Deportes, in Madrid.
Awesome gig; amazing lights, amazing atmosphere, superb playlist - and great crowd and band interaction.
Will be writing a review up on www.elcantodelloco.co.uk - but for now here's some iPhone pics from the concert...

Tumbleweed...

Or at least there's been tumbleweed on here... my bad.
Been stupidly busy trying to have the day job - coming to an end - and also to make inroads in setting up the new business and spending nights and weekends working on its first projects.
As a result I'm 1) failing to post here anywhere near enough, 2) failing to post on my favourite forums and 3) utterly and completely shagged out.

Still a couple of nice weekends coming up...
This Friday it's off to Madrid to see El Canto Del Loco in concert at the Palacio de los Deports, which I'm giggly like a kid over.
And then the following weekend it's the final race in the MotoGP season; the Valencia GP at Cheste. Repeat giggly behaviour. I'm there as Media for BatiFans, Team Aspar and the other VROOM sites, and also to try and chase some business if poss - as well as being booked in to meet with the Official Alvaro Bautista Fanclub Saturday and Sunday.

So, er.... not many posts here again, then.... ;-)

New El Canto Del Loco & Pere Tutusaus Websites

It's been a busy couple of days with me overhauling and relaunching a couple of my "pet project" sites. I won't call them "hobbies" as they're too important to me, and I felt that given the other rebuilds I'd done recently it'd be a great opportunity to carry on learning about Wordpress and PHP and CSS geekery by giving both sites a complete makeover and moving them from Blogger to my own domains and building them from the ground up with revised designs.

Here's how the new El Canto Del Loco website looks...



And this is how I've reworked the new Pere Tutusaus website, although I've left the branding more or less intact on this one, compared to the hefty redesign of the whole styling that I've done with the ECDL site...



I've also been working on a very cool idea that I've come up with which will also be a WP project; although it's huge by comparison, and also very secret squirrel, so I've got to try and stay excited about it for months yet while I mess around at refining and developing the idea and figuring out if there's any money in it!
Stay tuned...
And stay patient...

Is This The Cutest Beach In The World?

In short... Yes. Yes, it is.

I've just come back from a short break on the Costa Dorada - see previous post - chilling in the (often fearsome) sunshine, supping ice cold Mahou and generally taking a nice break from the UK.
One day though, I had to go for a meeting in Barcelona, and took the train up along the coast - to my (pleasant) surprise, a short distance to the east of Sitges I looked out of the window and thought "Bugger me! I know that beach!" - it was the really cute one with all the beach huts and the sweet retro-looking hotel that's the centrepiece of the promo video for El Canto Del Loco's triffick piece of power-pop, "A Contracorriente"...

It genuinely *does* look fab! I want to holiday there sometime. Badly want to!
Anyway, I checked it out on Google Earth and it turns out it's called Garraf - and I've uploaded a Google Earth placemark here should you want to go look it out for yourself...
And the video can be seen here...

Got some really nice photos of Tarragona, which I'll aim to post in the coming days.

El Canto Del Loco English Fansite - elcantodelloco.co.uk

More than a couple of times I've used this blog to publish news about Spanish band El Canto Del Loco. Well, I've finally decided that rather than knock out the odd story here (although I'll probably do exactly that anyway...), it would make more sense to actually build a news, info and downloads site about them...
As a result, I've built and launched www.elcantodelloco.co.uk - an El Canto Del Loco fansite in English which aims to spread the word about them to people outside of Spain and to pass on news and info in the English language.
If you or anyone you know likes ECDL or is curious then please do point your browser at the site to keep up with the band and their activities (especially if they ever include activities in the UK, which I desparately hope they will...)

Already the site includes info on all their albums; De personas a personas, Personas, Arriba el telón, Zapatillas, Estados de ánimo, A contracorriente, and El Canto del Loco - plus videoclips, desktop wallpaper, weblinks, news on record sales and info on a cool introductory El Canto Del Loco iMix you can grab from iTunes.

Go see...
Enjoy :-)

El Canto Del Loco - "La Película"

Those lucky ECDL fans in Spain get to see in the new year with a cinema release of a documentary on the band, "La Película".
Sadly those of us in the UK will have to wait to see it by other means.
I guess for me that means waiting for it to arrive on DVD and in the hope that either:
a) my language skills have improved considerably or
b) it has subtitles.

Looks good though, doesn't it :-)
Ooooh - and by the way, if you *are* an ECDL fan in Great Britain, then why not consider joining up to the UK Fans of El Canto Del Loco group on Facebook...

El Canto Del Loco - "De Personas A Personas"

Grabbed this off the Spanish eBay the other day - very swiftly delivered and in perfect nick. A beautiful package of text and pictures, featuring a new nudey shoot - and a CD of the Personas album but with a bunch of extra songs, and also a DVD featuring 3 versions of promos for "Eres Tonto", the video for "Peter Pan", plus a 45 minute documentary and also a couple of other goodies like a film about the nudey photoshoot.

It's Christmas and I deserve it! :-)

Peter Pan Appears In iTunes Music Store

No, not some re-re-re-re-release of a Disney re-release - nor any kind of reference to pop zombie Michael Jackson, but to the beautiful video for "Peter Pan", most recent single by the boys from Madrid, El Canto Del Loco, taken from the album Personas.

Like the clip for "Puede Ser" that I posted up here a while back, it's a lovely subtle piece of work, and likewise a top video for an equally strong song. Nice colours, old Super 8 textures, scribbly crayon animation mixed in - it hits exactly the right vibe.
Click here to go check it out... (and buy it if it grabs you, of course...)

And let's hope that now the band are putting a toe in the water with extending their iTunes portfolio, they'll not leave it too long before adding "Puede Ser", "Besos", "Volvera", "A Contracorriente" and their other best videos.
Pretty please guys... :)

ECDL: My First iMix

On pulling together an iTunes 'playlist' gift for a friend today, I thought why not press the other button too and submit it to the iTunes Music Store as an iMix... (that posh/wanky talk for 'playlist' if truth be told...)
And it worked.
So if you fancy a nice easy introduction to one of my favourite bands, El Canto Del Loco then clicking this link should launch iTunes on your computer and take you straight to "An ECDL Mix".
Alternatively just search for 'El Canto Del Loco' on iTunes and you'll find the iMix listed down the right hand side.
It contains the following songs...

Personas
Volvera
Ya Nada Volvera a Ser Como Antes
A Contracorriente
La Vida
Canciones
Son Sueños
Ekix
Peter Pan
Sera
Volver a Disfrutar
Insoportable
Despiertame
Dentro de Mi
Zapatillas
Una Foto en Blanco y Negro
Besos
Gigante

So - a really good combo of bouncy, big, subtle and beautiful.
All in a carefully considered order that's got me through plenty a shite tube journey.
Give them a try :)

El Canto Del Loco - "Puede Ser" Video

If there's one thing that's guaranteed to get me out of bad moods, downers, sulks, being filled with hate at Turner Prize hopefuls (see earlier post), stuff like that... then it's watching this video.
It's by a favourite band of mine called El Canto Del Loco (or ECDL for short) who hail from Madrid. They are awesome in general, but the video for this song has to be one of my favourite things about them (although it's by no means new).
It's a great song - "Puede Ser" - and the video is a masterclass in style.
Shot wide in clean black and white, hugely minimalist - featuring Dani, David, Chema and Jandro and very little else apart from some wandering, nicely paced camera work, a couple of props and some cheeky bits of typography.
Simple, elegant and utterly beautiful; it always makes anything seem a little better.

You can find plenty of their videos on Youtube - including on their own 'channel' page, and they also have some on their 'group' page on Facebook.
If you enjoy those then you should consider the 3 DVD box set "Episodio I" - which contains a bunch of promos, a documentary and a live performance.
(*And most importantly avoids all that godawful compression scrunching that Youtube still manages to do on every bloody clip...)

Enjoy :)