View allAll Photos Tagged downsides
An acrobat catches me taking a picture. Ubisoft 10y employee party at the Belvédaire du Centre des Sciences.
Jewel of the Woods - this little guy looks too small to be a woodpecker. At 15cm he's the smallest of Korea's 10 species. He loves to drill up and down along a pine branch.
The only downside of Down, the members of the all-star metal band led by Phil Anselmo, have long complained, is arranging time for the group amidst their other commitments. But they think they’ve found a way to solve that. “Down IV Part I - The Purple EP,” a sludgey, six-song set that drops on Sept. 18, is the first of four planned EPs the quintet hopes to release in relatively short order — at least shorter than the five years since “Down III: Over the Under” came out.
“It’s about getting people more music quicker,” frontman Phil Anselmo ( Pantera, Superjoint Ritual, Arson Anthem, etc.) tells ”It’s obviously easier to knock out six songs rather than 12 songs. Me personally, I hate doing full-length records ‘cause it drains the f*** out of you. And (an EP) leaves ways less chance for songs that you’d consider filler songs to get through. I think it’s the healthiest way for Down to continue to get music out on a reasonable schedule.”
Guitarist Pepper Keenan (ex- Corrosion of Conformity) says he DOES still like to make what he calls “the giant records” (i.e. albums), but he likes both the efficiency of the EPs as well as the opportunity to change styles form one to the other. “It allows us to shift gears between EPs,” Keenan explains. “With Down we have a couple of styles of songs, and it’s sometimes heard to fit a particular song with an album, so we have to put it aside for who knows how long. Now we can we can create EPs that can shift progression and diameters as they progress. That’s our idea — in theory, at least.”
Actually, Keenan says Down has “mapped out” where it hopes to take the other three. “We’re not just shooting blindly,” he says. While “The Purple EP” — which marks the debut of Crowbar bassist Pat Bruders in place of Pantera alumnus Rex Brown — is raw and immediate in a manner Anselmo and Keenan compare to Down’s 1995 debut “NOLA” (“hamfisted is a term they both use) Keenan predicts “Down IV Part 2” will be more fleshed out like “Down III.” The third, he says, will likely be “trippy, acousticy, mellow, cleaner, not bombastic, the kind of songs we’ve been talking about for years but can never place anywhere.” And the fourth? “I’m assuming that one is just gonna be doom as f*** — giant, bombastic, slow, bury-me-in-smoke type of things. Apocalyptic. We’ll have fun with it.”
Anselmo, however, prefers not to promise when the other EPs will surface. “We are the worst; we are liars of the first degree when it comes to telling the public or anybody else some set date or time for the next release!” he says with a laugh. “It always seems like five friggin’ years go by, no matter what we say. But, once again, the reason we’re doing the EPs is to get the product out quicker to our audience. That just means concentrating on a handful of songs instead of an entire record, and it works.”
And, Anselmo adds, the other EPs might not continue the color scheme in their titles. “People are calling it ‘The Purple EP,’ but I had nothing to do with that,” he says. “Left that totally up to..,the press, to the fans. I left it up to everybody else. Call it what the f*** you want, and we’ll move on from there. I honestly don’t care. I don’t know what the next one’s going to be called, if anything. The music speaks for itself.”
Down kicks off an 11-date North American tour on Sept. 18 in Fort Worth, Texas. Anselmo says the group plans to play European festivals during the summer of 2013 and may book other tours during the interim.
14th March 1917. 4th Grenadier Guards.
My dearest mother,
I only received your most welcome letter from Clarges Street two days ago-mails have been taking a very long time lately to reach us.
What do you think of General Maude’s brilliant dash for Baghdad. How I wish I was in his army instead of being on this dreary front interminable desolation. We have as usual, the ever recurrent rumour that our division is going out to rest-I will believe it when it is a ‘fait accompli.’ I have recently been given the charge of all the divisional artillery-I dnt mind the extra work, but I would like it better if we had a change of scene. My little monkey of a horse has got sick, so I have to beg, borrow or steal in order to get an animal to take me about.
I am surprised you have been hearing rumours about the Huns retiring along a great portion of their front. I wonder what is going to happen. The only thing we know about it is that all leave is stopped-except, of course, for the staff. I find that I am entitled to ten days leave on the yearly renewal of contract. I have renewed mine, and I am going to apply for the leave. I don’t suppose I shall get it.
At long last I am easily able to repay you the £8-the remainder of a debt of some years standing-you advanced me some money for a window I was putting up at Downside. I have about £80 in the bank.
How glad I am to hear the picture looks so well-I wish I could see it.
Kindest messages to Gertie.
Your devoted son, Dick.