#anyway this was mostly bg practice for me and I got to use a bunch of different brushes :]

[riraro489]

The Time Gear was returned... So why?

Why is time still stopped in Treeshroud Forest?

@heropartnerweek Day 5: Frosty Forest | Treeshroud Forest | Forest of Shadows | Mystical Forest

[booburt]

Hi, I've been wondering for the photography AU what general time period it's set in, what type of camera(s) does Koby use (it looks like a canon to me but seems to make polaroids, at least that's the surface level observation I can make from my extremely limited knowledge on cameras), what type of photography he personally enjoys and the type he usually does for work (if he does it as his profession too). What does Koby aim to capture with his images, the casual mundane life of an average person, an unreal, etheral sight in a place the average person can't go, Luffy's luffiness, etc? Also what's the general budget Koby has towards camera equipment (doesn't need to be that exact, just a general "he's broke" or "He spends all his money on lenses" would suffice)? My questions are kinda vague here because I'm going to research more about photography later. Thanks in advance :D Oh yeah and also does Koby travel, if not what's the general landscape of his nearby area. You don't need to answer this since I'll probably make it up but it'd be good to know.

okok i wrote this all in the few free periods i got earlier take what you will ^_^

also a doodle i did ages aaaaago with a bit of slightly illegible info in my awful handwriting (sorry)

actual answer vvv

- its a modern au!! so set like. now!

- koby uses sony cameras primarily but yes he does have a few canons (nikon confuses him)

- he has a seperate polaroid camera!!! he usually prints digitally from sd though

- for type of photography, he started with a passion for ocean and landscape photography, mostly beaches and any scene with water in focus. he also has an interest in portraiture but his love for portraiture only comes to play when he meets luffy. cheese cheese cheeeesyyyy because luffy smiles and hes IMMEDIATELY enamoured. anyway, he starts to study and practice portraiture in depth because of the pretty boy he met in maths class and eventually works up the courage to ask him to model for him. they get super close and eventually start dating; luffy likes how dedicated koby is to his work and how cute he is when he blushes.

-SORDY got carried away with the sappy lovey stuff. koby sells his landscape/wildlife photography at local stores as a side hustle thing haha. but he doesnt really do it professionally, he much prefers to keep it as a hobby / simple income.

- koby aims to capture the beauty of colour! he loves vibrancy when shooting with a softbox or some other source of light he will usually use something to change the hue rather than plain old bw on a simple white bg

- following on he HATES shooting black and white photos unless theyre negatives because idk i think he would think it looks cool. what a guy

- with luffy photography he just likes catching luffys smile or just luffy in general; whipped dud!!! he thinks he is gorgeous

- ahahhhh budget budgettt. lenses are fucking EXPENSIVE!!! he uses a 50mm that helmeppo got him for his birthday one year (rich kid stuff. he knew koby likes photography and searched Best Lense For People Pictures and bought the first one he saw) the 50 is canon as consequence so koby uses canon for loofy pics. he has an 18-55mm he uses as well.

- he is broke yes. koby does have a minimum wage weekend job to pay for living expenses but all in all that boys pockets are empty. luffy is the breadwinner (miss rabbit with the one zillion jobs) he works about 4 different jobs and is happy to pay for anything koby wants despite kobys adamant NOs. like i said he gets helmeppo to pay for a bunch of stuff and helmeppo pays on his dads card LOL.

- koby does travel! mainly by train or boat, not often does he go to an entirely different country but he has previously a few times. when he does go abroad he takes luffy with him!!!! (he looks pretty in the snow. he likes taking pictures of him in snow)

IM SO GLAD SOMEONE LIKES MY AU ENOUGH TO ASK ME THIS MANY QUESTIONS LMAO i had fun answering all of this !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[brudenellgrooveleeds-blog]

Behind the Decks: Luce

First up in our new Behind the Decks series, we spoke to one of our favourite selectors to have burst onto the Leeds scene in the last year, the wonderful Lucy Williams. Set to make her BG debut at HiFi tomorrow, Luce will be bringing sonic splendours to our favourite funk and soul basement as we raise money for SARSVL and Leeds Women’s Aid. Bubbling with excitement, we sent Ed Gordon to find out a bit more about her musical tastes and attempt to uncover a few of her secrets. 

Hi Lucy, thanks for agreeing to sit down with me and talk about yourself ahead of this Friday. Firstly tell us about yourself, perhaps just a quick and basic introduction for those who don’t know you. Well, I’m Lucy. I’m Luce when I play records. I’m 21. I study textiles at Leeds College of Art. I’ve lived in 6 different places, mostly farms in the countryside surrounding across the country then mainly York but I’ve found my home in Leeds. I like weird and strange music. Is that enough?

  ~~  A party starter? liem - If only (Lehult) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82NUfPBHxYs   

That’s a lovely, well rounded introduction. Let’s waste no time and get into the details! What would you say got you into music originally and do you have any early influences from childhood who have shaped your tastes today?

I don’t really know what made me start to purchase records as I didn’t have decks or anything, and I never ever saw myself being any sort of DJ really. But I just started to buy them as little personal tokens maybe, of songs and sounds. I really liked from the first record store I visited - YAM Records in Peckham. After a while I had all these records lying around the house and owning them was still very important and personal thing to me even without the decks. When I was still at that stage, everything I bought was for myself and my shyness stopped me from putting myself and my collection out there. I just didn’t feel the need or want to. It simply didn’t occur to me to take my collection and go to anyone’s house and listen to them as I didn’t see why anyone would want to listen to them. I think the one of those moments for me which defined my attitude and I guess what started me playing was something my old boss did for me. Whilst I’ve always been a little shy about my hobby of collecting music, after a while he was someone with whom I felt somewhat comfortable for the starting to discuss music and the fact I collect records. I think he mentioned early on that he collected himself for a number of years, and DJ’d big parties in sheffield and other cities, and yet the fact he was always so receptive to the things I had to say music-wise made me see myself and music in a new light. Eventually he ended up telling me that he had some turntables just gathering dust in his garage and he offered to lend them to me. I honestly couldn’t accept this gift! Maybe at the time I could see myself having one and I would have been content just listening to a record at at time as I never thought it was possible for me to play on a pair. But he was insistent. He said just to take them and use them, practice and get playing as they weren't getting any use anyway. It’s thanks to his generosity that I’m here playing. I probably would have eventually saved up and bought one, but I think having the pair and mixer really gave me the confidence to just start experimenting.

~~ The record you play the most often? Solange - Mustang ~~

Wow, I guess we all have to thank your old boss! It’s nice that he seemed to recognise your passion and drive and give you the tools to get to where you are so early on. What was coming to uni and starting to play music and getting involved with the scene like?

Yes, I’m very thankful to him and I’m really not sure I’d be playing in the way I do without him doing that for me. When I first came to university I was put into halls at liberty park, there were a bunch of guys that me and my flat mate Heidi met, who were into their music as well. From the start we were wanting to go out and explore the music scene, and we did go out a lot; nearly every weekend there was something on and we went to things during the week as well. The guys in particular all liked to DJ. Within the young DJ scene from the rave/club culture scene I started to notice there was this definite divide between the genders and this is where the male dominancy started to stand out for me from seeing no females playing at any of the nights we were going to. Whilst it was nice to be around all these new tastes, experiences and knowledge which did impact and rub off on me, I still felt like that I just didn’t know what I was talking about and had nothing really to input maybe realising now more than at the time that this was because I was the minority gender wise which was intimidating and just not confident or outspoken enough. Maybe because I didn’t know any different I think I just accepted this is how things were and didn’t even know how to start or to get involved or play music. I kind of felt embarrassed talking about records because I don’t know maybe because of a mix between the lack of confidence and things I was noticing within the scene. My house mate Meg asked me to play at her exhibition and this got me into playing in a different environment other than my room, which was a nice introduction I guess, and I liked doing favours for people and she and the other girls in my house at the time were always really complimentary of my collection! I then got asked to play at the bar for a few more nights by the owners, but they were quite picky on what genre they wanted, which i really didn’t want to adapt to. I never played digital so the option to magic new records out of nowhere obviously wasn’t going to happen. And the idea of scrapping playing my own tunes and not retaining my ~artistic integrity~?! Na, no thanks, I scrapped that and got put off for a bit.

It’s been awhile since then so what happened to change that? Are there any other influences would you say helped you get to where you are in a more positive way?

I couldn’t place my finger on it or work out what was missing from my experience of the music scene, there was always something on and i’d be up for experiencing new DJs as well as most of my favourites leeds had to offer. One day I thought back to my roots of when I first started going to festivals and leaving york to visit other cities to experience a range of music before coming to leeds.  For me it was always about the music first and I think I was just going to nights and places because others were, or I wanted to be social and not alone. I think once I realised this, I had a little head-shift and I started to reassess why I was going out and how to really enjoy myself. Last easter when everyone had gone home I went out on my own this enabled me to focus on the music and not be bothered about getting fucked up. I  just started losing myself in the music and having the best time in the world doing so. Not having anyone around me to judge or distract me made this a totally different experience and I was finally beginning to understand it. I bumped into Raf Bogan who I vaguely knew at the time from going into Outlaws, He introduced me to his house mate George on a night and invited me back to his for an afters. But there was something about him and his friends that I’d never really felt before and I wasn’t sure what it was, but it compelled me to go back to his and listen to some records with him and his friends oh and of course Alex T was in the situation haha! I remember having a really nice time and I think what was conducive to this was simply a combination of the lack of pretentiousness, and that they were so inclusive. We were all just sitting back and chilling and taking it in turn to put some records on. Whilst I didn’t get involved there was no macho ‘fighting’ to play a tune; everyone just seemed to be content to sit there and enjoy each other's music and I felt much more at home in this situation. There was barely even any mixing going on, and I enjoyed that. After this happened a few more times I mentioned that I owned some records the reaction I got was needed when they enthusiastically invited me to bring them over and play them.

~~ Your most interesting/weird tune? Ralph Mcdonald - The Path  ~~

Keep going! You’ve just suddenly exploded over the Leeds scene. Tell me all about getting started with this and why do you think this is? Hahaha I don’t think I’ve exploded but I’m playing a fair few gigs at the moment at least which is kinda crazy really! Quite early on I got invited to play a Leftovers which is this monthly sort-of techno night at Hyde Park Book Club. I think book club are great at putting on all these little dinky, local based and driven events. I’ve had some stuff displayed there from an art collective (Imprint) that me and my course mate Alice set up together . Something that I remember from early on is the guy who invited me to play (Ryan) said I don’t actually have to play techno at all and it can simply be an experimental set, and I think this breaking down of rules and boundaries was liberating in the sense that i could literally be myself and not have to impress anyone and express my music as if it was an art piece. I still haven’t properly learned to beatmatch as that was something that a lot of dudes are obsessed about, and I think my refusal to engage with that so far has just been my way of giving a fat middle finger to the establishment and anyone who says that I have to do things in a certain way and be confined by their rules. I’ve always enjoyed just really fucking around with sound and I think that’s what drew me to playing records so much. Having that ‘touch factor’ is something that can’t be emulated in any other way, even by a CDJ. Ill often touch, slowdown, twist and turn my records to get them to make sounds you’d never normally hear and that’s something that I want to bring with me when I play rather than just hearing a load of songs just beatmatched. I’ll change the mode of the sound and just make things a bit strange, but that’s how I like it.  Anyway, I played this leftovers set in my fashion and people seemed to really enjoy it! It was so nice to have a positive response to something so personal! Since then I’ve been invited to play a number of occasions, all of which I’m enjoying so much. And in addition, I think by playing in my way and being a girl that’s doing strange things, hopefully I’m helping to bring a small change to the Leeds Scene as it were. ~~ Your best random find? Tapan - The City  ~~

I think you could be quite right there. I’ve actually had the pleasure of playing with you for a long b2b the first time we properly met at Love Muscle and I was enamoured with your selections and the way in which you played them. For me personally it was such a refreshing way to think about music and DJing. But what do you think about the current state of the Leeds scene as a female DJ who’s now recognised and playing out? I think there are still so many barriers to overcome similar to the ones I’ve faced, and ones I’m still facing today, but In Leeds in particular I’ve noticed something is stirring and changing all these preconceived notions. Raf and George, Ed Keys crib the broken Mechanics lot, recently Dom (D.Glare) have all been so encouraging of me and my tunes that I can’t help but feel a bit of confidence finally. Joe Gill and Sean down at outlaws have got me down there a few times to play which has been a sweet opportunity as its chilled, lovely environment lets me practice and do what I want really! And I’m also thinking that the way that you guys (Brudenell Groove) and Michael (Love Muscle) are doing parties and breaking down barriers in a really positive way is fundamentally altering the way that people are suddenly thinking about how, when, why they are doing events. There is still so much to go, but I think we could be in the center of something special that’s happening right now. It’s just important to get people playing who might not have the confidence and want to do something that might be weird and different and I think I really encapsulate that demographic at the moment, but there are so many more just like me who also need these opportunities. Some examples off the top of my head are Tami and Zoya, who are recent female DJs within the scene whose mentality and energy of wanting to get involved is commendable and contageous. Zoya and I set up our Bath time sessions LSR show together which is really fun, and it’s been amazing to see her gain so much confidence already as I saw she was feeling a similar way to how I did last year. It’s just amazing to see people's perspective change by taking all seriousness away and fucking shit up!! 

Well let’s hope they come to Springwatch on Friday and find inspiration! Is there any advice you’d like to give to someone, perhaps like a younger you, who is looking to start playing records or just playing out in any manner? Perhaps you could also name a few inspirations of your own? Yes come to Springwatch haha! Hmmmm… I think something I learned which took a long time but was one of the most important things for me is just to learn not to give a fuck. For so long I worried about what others thought of my records and music tastes and lack of technical ability so I never had the courage to put myself out there until I had the backing and encouragement. Now I still obviously care about what my friends think of me, but I have that nonchalance about what others think of my music as I know it’s what I like and I know there will be people who enjoy it, and that’s simply all that matters. For any girls in particular there are some great people who have encouraged me and there are more girls getting involved and my advice to all of you is simply to just go out there and take it. Demand it! There are some really cool groups like Slut Drop who are coming together and making girl gigs a thing that happens Cat Pattersons SWEATSHOP Holly O’brians FEM FEST where I got to meet a some other female DJs and and experience a really fun light hearted opportunity which has also been a great exposure for females! BG and LM are also great for this but lets all try and take whatever we can and make sure those opportunities are there for us as well!  Some inspirations for me have always been strong female DJ’s and musicians who have succeeded in this industry despite the heavy barriers facing them. Beatrice Dillon, Lena Willikens who played at On-Rotation just last friday and her radio work has been a big source of inspiration for me. Others such as Helena Hauff and many of the women who’ve made wicked tracks and been featured on the XLR8R podcasts are all worth listening to.

~~ An emotional tune? Wilson Tanner - Sun Room (the whole album!)  ~~

Fantastic recommendations! Lena in particular was probably one of the best nights I’ve ever been to and I will be following her very closely soon. But for now let’s get back to Luce! As I said earlier I’ve been very lucky to have played with you a few times and I’ve always been blown away by not only the quality of your selections, but also the depth and variation you seem willing to buy. You don’t seem bounded by genre or anything really, so what’s your secret for finding tunes? Is there a specific sound or process you go by to purchase a record? I see music as sound and art. I feel like i've gained my own perspective about what music really is,  There’s something about owning the physicality of a record and it becomes your little thing and you can hold it in your hand and say that it’s yours. Record shops are great if you’re like me and need at least a solid hour or two to dig. I don’t like being under any time pressure when visiting new record stores, simply taking my time going into hunting mode, nice and thorough. I think when I was traveling I’ve always enjoyed going to the record shops in different countries and buying music from that country. Even now when I go to a new place I’ll go to a store there and try and pick out something new. I don’t really have a method really, I just find stuff that I think is interesting, weird, different and had just distinct sound. And sometimes I’ll just go with my gut and buy stuff that I want even though I don’t know why. I’ve occasionally bought records from stores that don’t have a listening station, but I just really liked the art and had to have it there and then. I think having that real lack of self-restriction in my purchasing means I get things from all over the shop. I can start in the techno section and walk out with some folk music from Pakistan.  We have to wrap up this interview now, but thanks so much for talking to us Lucy and we’re very excited to see what wonderful things you have in store for us at HiFi this Friday!