It’s been a long time since I hung out on MySpace – these days I just log in to delete spurious messages inviting me to gigs in America – but after connecting with my co-producer Myles Clarke on there last year (he emailed me) I had to accept there are a lot of people still using it. And as my lovely new site isn’t quite ready yet it’s a good interim solution for this impatient girl to start sharing her new tunes.

So please, listen and tell your friends!

I could *perhaps* have picked a warmer day to spend lying down in the mud, arm outstretched, but I think the frostbite scare will have been worth it.

Today I popped in to Prangsta in New Cross to try on some fabulous dresses to use in tomorrow’s countryside shoot with Tim Collings, I did bring a gorgeous specimen home but sadly couldn’t stretch to this one as well…am now obsessed with making my own bustle overskirt with padding so if anyone can help with that please let me know!

In other news, I can reveal that I’m going to be shooting the video for She Makes War’s debut single “Let This Be” in North London a week on Wednesday. Directed by yours truly and shot on a glorious Red One camera, it promises to be a fantastic day’s shooting with some very talented people on board, so watch this space for behind the scenes footage and photos and remember you can always keep up with me on Twitter, too.

[The parts in italics are what I would have added if I didn't care about them getting pissed off and ignoring my whole email...also read Seymour's post for God Is In The TV for his delightfully verbose message.]

Don’t Close Down 6Music! PLEASE. You idiots – how is this not obvious!!! You will deny people with non-mainstream musical tastes from being given the opportunity to hear amazing material from lesser known but more vital bands than those who are peddled to us by the majors – how much more watery weak British R&B can the nation stomach? How many more documusosoap singles must we scream along to, clawing at our ears in pain and frustration? – plus those smaller artists (myself included) will be denied the opportunity to reach those potential new fans. 600,000 listeners might seem paltry to you as a big institution but is a life altering number of people to someone like me. There are numerous obvious ways for you to cut back in other areas of your operations which will more than cover the relatively small running costs of this vital station – I for one would happily forsake much of your appalling display of “comedy” programming in return for a decent radio station, BBC Three is a waste of space and this really is stating the bleeding obvious but you know Mark Thompson gets paid a lot, right? - I hope you see the importance of doing so.

Yours sincerely
Laura Kidd
She Makes War

Isn’t it beyootiful?

So, the album is done done done so now it’s on to video treatment writing, website making, photo planning, costume designing busyness – this was yesterday:

Lots and lots of electric blue tulle plus the expertise of the lovely Maradoll equals one outfit almost ready.

Mister B helped of course:

Oh, and mastering commences on Wednesday.

I spent yesterday afternoon around Brick Lane visiting Spitalfields Market, the Sunday Upmarket and the Vintage Market upstairs at the Truman Brewery searching for key props and accessories to tell mini stories in my forthcoming photo sessions with Laura Ward. It was a fruitful and fun mission, helped massively by visiting Sydney dwelling friends Tim and Belle who listened to my wacky ideas as if they were perfectly reasonable. Friends, I love you for that ability!

A visit to Headmistress‘ gorgeous stall at the Upmarket led to a bit of soul searching and an interesting discussion on Twitter regarding the ethics of wearing feathers. Though I’m no longer vegan I’m still a strict vegetarian – no parmesan, no Bloody Marys (unless you take out the anchovy-filled Worcestershire sauce), no gelatine and certainly no leather or suede about my person – and though conversations about food choices happen all the time I’ve never discussed the wearing of feathers with a fellow veggie. I’d seen one of the beautiful Headmistress headbands on a girl in a club and really wanted one for the album photos, so went along to ask questions about where they came from. Big thanks to the girl on the stall for being totally honest about the fact that the feathers come from guineafowl and other birds that are raised for meat. So, they’re not killed for their feathers alone but the feathers are a byproduct of the birds’ death – they’re not collected while they’re alive. So, no headband for me!

As I walked away I threw the question out to my Twitter buddies: “Vegetarian ethics question: is wearing a headband decorated with feathers akin to wearing leather?” The majority of people said it depended on how the feathers were obtained – if the bird was still alive when the headband was made then no harm, but the likelihood of that scenario was going to be pretty slim. If I ate bird hopefully I’d have no qualms in making use of a byproduct of that food choice by wearing feathers – if the animal’s dead anyway then better not to waste anything – but we all draw our own lines in the sand and this is mine. Thankfully for the photos’ sake I found a Japanese couple in another part of the markets selling headbands with big glittery motifs on them and got one of those instead.

So, yesterday’s haul consisted of a glittery headband and green wool military cloak (both pictured), some vintage spectacles and a massive fake fur hat. Add some fluttery dresses, my new superhero boots and lots of face paint and I have some fun dressing up box moments ahead.

After an intense day at the studio I’m listening to freshly recorded new song “Olympian” on my cool new Altec Lansing speaker. Embarrassingly, it may be the best sounding speaker I’ve ever owned – I never got too in to hifi amps and speakers and whatnot and though I have okayish monitor speakers for home recording/rehearsing the tiny cheap mixer I use seems to change the signal to crappy regardless. Must sort that out.

Anywayyyy, I Audioboo-ed just before we started recording this afternoon:

Can’t wait for you all to hear it, I love how it came out.

Oh, and the “Give U More” video has had 5507 views. Sheesh…thanks everyone for watching!

Here are the lyrics (with links to the things they reference), in case you were wondering what on earth I’m banging on about:

“Give U More”
music by Redroche, lyrics by Laura Kidd + Hal Ritson

One of the signs of the decline in our time
Is that every other line is a dubious rhyme
I need a Scroobius rhyme to inject and infect my mind
Stacking “Back To Black” back to back with “Back In Black”
And the Rat Pack in the rack, mac
I need a gap – rewind, press play and release the jack

I wanna give you more
I wanna give you more
I’m not gonna open my arms to the sunrise
I wanna give you more
I wanna give you more
I’m not gonna take you higher boy

Sharper, stronger, sweeter than before
Brighter, faster, deeper take it all
Sharper, stronger, sweeter than before
I wanna give you, I wanna give you more

Cos I’m a NaNoWriMo dynamo
With my fishnet skates and my Dollymix flow
Just a pillarbox redtop jamming with my beatbox
Rolling on the street with the B-dog
@ w-a-double r-i-o-double r-l tweets
I’m the urban spacegirl baby
Here’s the twist – I do exist

I wanna give you more
I wanna give you more
I’m not gonna open my arms to the sunrise
I wanna give you more
I wanna give you more
I’m not gonna take you higher boy

Sharper, stronger, sweeter than before
Brighter, faster, deeper take it all
Sharper, stronger, sweeter than before
I wanna give you, I wanna give you more

Now it’s time to sing along…all together now…

Here are the fruits of our labour, with big thanks going to the excellent crew at Aponia Entertainment for all their hard work (please also see here for the making of videos, made by Melissa-Lynn Dozois and yours truly):

My Twitter buddies will know I’ve been previewing snippets of some of the tracks online via a pretty marvellous podcasting website called AudioBoo, check them out below in this, the (hopefully) final running order of my shiny debut record (album name still top secret!):

1. Scared To Capsize – buy EP version here

2. A-Hole

3. NIMN

4. No Fireworks – listen to demo here

Big thanks to Kat Arney for the gorgeous harp playing, this is her warming up:

5. Slow Puncture

6. Eye Spy – buy EP version here + watch video here

7. Olympian

10. I Am

11. Chicken Shit

13. Like Liars

Thirteen is lucky, right?

What are your plans for the week, dear readers?