Quiet Success
July 7th, 2008
Talented Friends
June 25th, 2008My art school buddy Till Lassmann has just sent me some cool illustrations inspired by the lyrics to the tunes I’ve been posting up here. (With the view to him perhaps one day making a music video with my other talented friend Pete!) They put a big grin on my face!
Take Leave From The City:
Rings & Fences:
Fists At The Sky:
Do make sure to see more of his cool work by clicking here. I say he needs encouragement to do more, more, more!
Arty Biz!
June 24th, 2008Song a week? Lamo!!!! I know… Drawing a day??? Well I HAVE been achieving that for the past while, tucked up in my new studio space in london! Haharr! It’s been really cool man….. i’ve consequently not been able to hang about here much though sadly… the tunes are still-a-brewing behind the scenes. I have just written another kinda cool ukulele tune that i’ll record and upload once the exhibit finishes next week. It’s called ‘Follow The Moon’. Everytime I sing it I feel like it’s got a kind of Steve Martin/Bernadette Peters in The Jerk feel to it… although I have not ripped off the chords from it like Portishead seem to have done in their new album! Rather, I’ve noticed I managed to somehow subliminally choose exactly the same chords from this classy euro-popesque number from the mid 90s. That was one of the first singles i ever bought (on cassette of course). Only the best influences make their way into my songwriting!
Note my exhibition partay (as advertised on flyer below) has changed date! It is now scheduled for Tuesday 1st July 2008 @ 7.30pm. Do come down!
The exhibit will still open on Friday 27th @ 7.30pm, we just won’t be letting our hair down properly till the tuesday evening! Opening hours are as follows:
Friday 27th June - 7.30pm till late
Saturday 28th June - 10am till 5pm
Sunday 29th June - 10am till 5pm
Monday 30th June - CLOSED
Tuesday 1st July - 10am till 5pm then closing party, 7.30pm till Late
Can’t wait to record some tunes again for you dudes! Look forward to hearing all your own news too!
love and hugs
Donna xx
ps. thanks for the sympathetic ‘hand’ enquiries the other week… annoyingly i went and totally burned my right hand fingers making Dave the drummer his lunch on the day of the gig! I had to knock myself oot eight hours later with painkillers, red wine and my hand wrapped in a bag of ice to escape the pain! I’ve never been properly burned before, it HURTS BAD! Be careful lifting cling film from food that has been cooking in the microwave for ages!
Skin has nearly finished peeling off completely and fingers back to normal! Hurrah! Exclamations galore!
What is Art?
June 5th, 2008Had to share this with you!
Amplifico have just been announced to play the Hydro Connect Festival in Scotland this Summer, our first festival hurrah - see the stunning line-up here.
And I am playing the BBC Club in London again next week with Dave (Amplifico) - it’s free entry so do come down! It’s such a great night, the promoter’s a hoot and my mate Azadeh (whose song Sunshine I posted here weeks ago) will be on the bill again too. So come on doon! See my live dates page for more information/links.
Must get back to work! Dx
Wee London Exhibition
June 1st, 2008
Slightly pooping my pants about this one… less than 4 weeks to go! My work will be for sale at this exhibit and during the opening party i’m scheduled to play a few lo-fi tunes too. We’ll be serving some yummy home-made food, but i’m afraid julia and I are too poor to do a champagne reception so it’s BYOB!
Excitingly, last week I signed myself up to a 6 month lease for a space in that artist’s studio I was talking about last post… I’ve been spending quite a bit of time this past week making it my own. I’m almost there! It’s so good to now have a place to go to and make mess without worrying about spilling paint and ink on the carpets.
Well I best stop nattering and get to work! Waaaaah.
speak soon, Donna xx
EDB to LDN
May 22nd, 2008
Ok so I really did not expect to return home from hols to find all that lovely love in my inbox for last post’s ukulele pop song. Thanks dudes! Maybe ukulele pop is my true calling… When I uploaded it, I seriously thought it had a cheese factor so high that it might induce an onslaught of rotten tomato throwage!! So I really appreciate all your cool comments, it’s nice that you’re taking time to give me all this continuous feedback. And very interesting for me to see what tunes really strike a chord with y’all more than others…
I had SUCH a fantastic trip down the east coast. What an incredible 10 days. Jem (www.jebaloo.com) and I followed the route of the Edinburgh to London trainline (a journey we have both made many, many times), this time by car, stopping off to explore, draw & photograph eye catching places and ‘things’ you can see from the train window en route. Using her (not particularly trusty) GPS, Jem had bookmarked all these landmarks throughout a train journey she made a few weeks prior to our trip together, with the view that she’d tackle them all as a continuous photography project/holiday one day. When I showed interest in joining her she decided hell, let’s just go straight away! So we packed our bags and went for it.
With a very tight budget, accommodation had to be camping all the way. The first few days the weather was abismal and this made me, well…… grumpy. Constant rain, wind, the consequent mud and a 2-man tent (and a good dose of PMT) are not a good combination for me (or anyone surely?), especially when i had the knowledge of another 8 days of camping ahead of me. I had no desire to do any drawing and was resentful of all the super plush camper van owning holiday makers living it up next door to me! All I can say is poor Jem for having to put up with me…
Later on day 3 however the sun like totally CAME OUT!! And stayed out for the rest of our trip - the weather was just AWESOME. It ended up being like a holiday abroad. My mood swiftly turned around and camping became FUN. I looked back on my first few days cringing, and thought what an unbearable, moody teenager I’d been. I grovelled. However despite the elevated mood, the drawing/painting thing remained a slooow process…. here we were going to all these beautiful new places and Jem was frolicking around in the countryside and on the beaches with her camera getting to see everything and explore. And there i was stuck in one place, on my arse, in the blistering heat drawing and painting and only really getting one view of the places we were visiting. I wanted to be exploring and frolicking around like her! So I’m afraid I quickly dumped the sketchbooks and paints, and made use of the fact jem had a spare camera, becoming donna the photographer for the week. I hadn’t used an SLR in maybe 5 years? I’d forgotten pretty much everything. So Jem gave me lessons and then I went on to take almost 2000 photos (digital of course!) over the week, it was brill. I’d forgotten the ways of the photographer mindset, you quickly start to look at the world in a totally different way. Everything becomes a photograph, your eyes are constantly darting and scanning 360 for composition. I’m yet to shake it off since getting back… it’s just gutting to no longer have a camera on my person 24/7 to snap away at everything I see! It’s very addictive.
I realise that for most people there’s nothing more tedious than leafing through someone else’s holiday snaps, but maybe one or two of you hobby photographer types like me will enjoy the fact I have put these up here! It has honestly taken me DAYS to filter through the 2000 shots to get to this lot… and there’s still more to go through! Browse away if you wish:
So what’s extra cool is I have returned with an enormous library of pics of reference for drawing & painting. I am not normally a lover of working from photographs, but if I have a real connection with a place in the pictures I find it much more pleasurable to do. Otherwise I find it tricky to conjure a genuine energy in the artwork yeh know? I think you can mostly tell when artwork is done from photographs and when it’s not. I did do a few drawings on the trip though, i’ll post them up another day. I don’t want to saturate you with all this visual imagery! It’s better you savour the taste of each installment like a fine wine…
Thanks to a great friend of mine I have my very first art exhibit in London penned in the diary for next month…. and I am shitting a brick! Very nervous. But also very motivating to have an imminent deadline to work to. Tomorrow I am going to view a small artist studio for hire because I really need somewhere I can leave my materials out and make a mess. I have my fingers crossed it’ll fit the bill because I’m feeling kinda desperate for it. I tell you something, I really took for granted the space I had to create freely whilst at art school. Art school people - milk your space!
On sunday I made a wee trip to Southend on Sea to the best arts/music night I think I have actually ever been to called ‘Sundown’. It’s a couple of my friends who organise it - a jam packed schedule of poetry, comedy, short films & live music. I was so impressed. I had never experienced live poetry recitals that could take me to the goose bumpy inspirational heights that say live music or theatre can. It really opened my eyes to another world. Dockers MC was the evening’s highlight. Poets Fassbinder and MC Angel were totally engaging too (although I don’t think Angel’s myspace does her justice, its not demonstrative of what i saw on sunday night at all!) If you’re in the area, do check out Sundown - they’re really doing the arts proud.
So that night just happened to time in well with a brilliant poetry (tuition) book I’ve been reading recently by Stephen Fry ‘An ode less travelled’. For people interested learning all the ins and outs of writing poetry I highly recommend it. He’s such a gifted teacher and writer - it’s like you’re listening to him speak as opposed to reading a book. And when he tells me to go away and practice exercises throughout the book, I like actually do it…
Well that’s enough from me for now! Next song is on its way… there’s been an unusually full house here since I got back from my trip, so recording had to be postponed till peace and quiet returned.
speak soon, donna x
ps. was not very impressed with coldplay’s first single from new album, but I just bought their second one today, Viva La Vida, and absolutely love it. What say you fellow coldplay followers??
Song 3 - Rings and Fences
April 30th, 2008Not the song I thought I would be posting up next, but I got so carried away with jamming it this week, next thing I knew I was finished! This song is simple, unashamed, ukulele pop. I’ve got to rinse it out somehow! Admittedly, there’s some pretty sloppy instrument playing in parts, but I think it adds to the charm! Instruments used: cheap toy ukulele, slightly out of tune melodica, plastic shaker, glockenspiel, tamborrine & voice.
Sadly I have nae time to post at length about this one as I am packing my bags in a rush for my 10 day drawing/camping trip down the east coast of England (+ a bit of Scotland) starting tomorrow!
‘Rings And Fences’ (6.9mb) Right-Click or Ctrl-Click Here to Download
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Rings & Fences
words & music by donna maciocia
© mdm creations 2008
Delicate, so tender
All those years of bruising
Look at you
All those rings and fences around you
Nothing I say seems to do you any good
How’m I supposed to hit home?
Nothing I say seems to do you any good
Just want you to feel beautiful
I wanna fill you up with feeling good about yourself
And to be unstoppable!
If you can’t love yourself
Then how can you love me at all?
Just want you to feel beautiful
I wanna fill you up with feeling good about yourself
And to be unstoppable!
Let’s get back to the earth
It’s a medicine we’ve all forgotten
Soak in the skies
Put in perspective the ills behind
If you could just see yourself through my eyes
You’d have strength to break down the doors
All that’s in your head is plain wrong
Just want you to feel beautiful
I wanna fill you up with feeling good about yourself
And to be unstoppable!
If you can’t love yourself
Then how can you love me at all?
You’ve made me a better person
You’ve opened my eyes wide
You’ve taken the time to understand me in a way that no one else has
(And it seems you’ve given up and it breaks my heart)
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ps. Can’t believe I forgot to tell you all in my last post….. at the Nizlopi gig in Aberdeen I played two weekends ago Luke (lead singer) asked me to come up onstage and sing improv over one of their songs… and fresh from one pint of (purely medicinal) guinness I was like wahey yeeah and went to run and jump up onstage but only went and fell flat on my face in front of the audience. My consequent 3rd knee cap and 2 foot bruise on my thigh have still not gone away. SO embarrassing, I wanted to die!
Back in Business
April 27th, 2008Hey. I’m back hurrah. What a crappy illness ridden month! I thought I was well on the way to recovery making that last video, but alas, it was not to be… I was almost going to cancel my Amplifico shows in Scotland last weekend cos I was still feeling so poop. I managed to battle through them however, swollen glands in tow! I am glad I did the gigs, because seeing and playing with Nizlopi again was the best medicine I could’ve had. Their shows felt kinda life changing - I have walked away with a fresh perspective on the future. I love that band so much, they have inspired me in a massive way for years now. I also got last minute tickets to see Bjork at the Hammersmith Apollo in London last week. She blew my mind. It was the first time I have ever seen her live, and when she played Hunter & Who Is It I found myself welling up in a completely overwhelmed, happiness type way. To hear a song ‘in the flesh’ that you have loved so much for what feels like a lifetime… wow. I tried to stick the most part of the gig out close to the front of the stage, but the sound was incredibly bass heavy and I came over all nauseous what with being all stuffed up, ill and deaf in one ear! Nae guid at aw fir yer heed pipes! So I rushed to the loos mid show thinking I was gonna puke, didn’t thankfully, then spent the remainder of the gig at the very back which was a shame because the front was where it was AT, but still amazing. What a presence - she is completely unhindered and free spirited. Sigh.
Ok so I have relievedly tackled a monumentous task that was on my list of to dos! I have been making new art, photographed it all and have bundled it together with a chunk of my old artwork in galleries on the site (you can also access these in future by just clicking on the Artwork link on the right) I’ll keep adding to these as I go! It has been a very, very slow start… I can’t believe I ever went to art school for 4 years… it’s like I am having to start again at the very beginning. Artists! Never stop drawing! It knocks your confidence for six when you try to revive your skills years later!
On returning to London last week from Scotland I finally kidnapped my super talented friend Azadeh into my bedroom studio to record one of her own songs. It was my first time of acting producer for someone else, and was loads of fun. It was so cool to hang out making music with another lady in the studio. I am so used to working with blokes all the time, it felt quite strange & nostalgic, like being back at school and giggling at the back of the class in maths with your girlie mate. We had a total hoot and drank sparkly wine till the early hours. Thankfully my midnight tamborrine & shaker playing was unaffected by my being pissed as a fart! Azadeh has granted me special permission to let you download the fruits of our labours in mp3 format here:
‘Sunshine’ by Azadeh (6.5mb) Right-Click or Ctrl-Click Here to Download
Enjoy!
My personal highlight is the 2nd verse “ShooOOooOOooOOooOOooes” - kick ass voice control or what!? She gets it perfect every time.
If you love the song like I do, make sure and tell her your thoughts by emailing her - lolita4sangria (at) hotmail (dot) com - or commenting on her Myspace.
My own songs are well on their way to you too, thought I’d let you absorb the artwork update first. Glad to be back! This thursday I am embarking on a week long trip down the length of the east coast of England & Scotland to camp, draw, draw, draw and paint. Looking forward to it lots. I am going to take a microphone, laptop and guitar with me so that if the weather is good I’ll record my next song rough outdoors and upload it here at an internet cafe on the road!
Word
D x
ps. sorry to people who have emailed and I have not got back to you yet. thanks for getting in touch, i hope to reply soon!
pps. You’ll see I have a new link on the right for Live Shows - this is an RSS Feed-able page for those in the know about such geeky web things!
Excuses excuses eh?!
April 7th, 2008So err…. hi everyone 
That next song you’ve been waiting for…. well… it IS on its way. This past week has brought about a bundle of unexpected positive things I have had to give my full attention, and the rest of my band Amplifico have been down for a few days to rehearse for our gig in London tonight. We want to give it our ALL!!
And now to a shameful name dropping story … we were treated to a plush rehearsal studio over the weekend, and we were rehearsing next door to none other than LED fookin ZEPELLIN!!! Now THAT is a good excuse no?
So expect my next tune probably Wednesday, and then I should be back on schedule after that! Hang in there homies… see you back here very soon!
Donna xx
ps. If yer a Londoner come to our show tonight @ The Bar Academy in Islington, onstage 8.50pm, £7 entry!
