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Styling Your Bedroom

When you are choosing the furniture for each room in your home, it can be easy to look at each room individually. While there is nothing wrong with this, it can be nice if there is a subtle theme or color throughout your home that links each room. This way of linking the rooms of your home can also be achieved by using a similar idea with furniture.

To create this effect throughout your home, you have several options, which we will cover below for how to style your bedroom to fit in with the rest of your home. 

Beginning to Style your Bedroom

The two rooms you will spend the most amount of time in while at home will be your living room and bedroom. Therefore, it is important that both rooms are comfortable and relaxing to ensure that is how you feel when spending time in those rooms. What comfortable and relaxing looks like is very subjective and is mainly based on personal preference. 

However, you will find that there will often be similarities in the furniture that you find most comfortable in both rooms. If you find a firmer mattress to be best for you, it may be that a firmer couch is also your preference. We often find that the material used for the furniture people like in their homes is the same. It is unusual for someone to shop for wooden living room furniture and then switch to metal for their bedroom. 

So, when shopping for styling  bedroom furniture UK, you will likely be considering the other furniture that is already in your home. If you are buying your first home and looking to furnish the entire property at the same time, it is best to consider the home as a whole when choosing furniture. This is so that your home, and the furniture in it, flow as you move from room to room.

You will need to decide if you want to have a common theme or color throughout your home before you can choose the furniture for each room. 

Furnishing Your Bedroom 

Once you have made this decision, you can begin to furnish your bedroom. You may already have a very specific idea of what each room in your home will look like, which will make furnishing the room much easier. However, if you have no idea how you want to furnish it but you know that you want to have white wooden furniture throughout your home, you can begin to look at ideas. 

We love nothing more than looking through home style and furnishing blogs, websites, and dream boards. There is so much inspiration available at our fingertips for home furnishing, with the best part being that you can take the parts you love the most from several places to create your dream room. 

You do not have to choose all of your home furniture, or even all of the furniture for a specific room, from the same store or website either. If you have chosen the color and material of the furniture you want to have, you can then shop in different stores for that furniture type. This can mean that your home will look less staged and more natural. 

It would be best if you also considered color schemes for your rooms while or before shopping for furniture. If you are planning to buy neutral colors for furniture, you will possibly be looking to add pops of color in other ways. Throw pillows that match on your couch and in your bedrooms with similar colors in the kitchen is an excellent way to pull the rooms of your home together. Using a common color of accessories is a popular way to furnish a home and can be as subtle or as obvious as you want to make it. 

If you still need to figure out how you are going to furnish the rooms in your home, we recommend you search for some inspiration. An internet search for stylish bedroom furniture UK will give you a considerable amount of web pages to browse. You can begin by looking at store websites to see the type of furniture you prefer or look at idea boards for full rooms to see what appeals to you. 

Alternatively, we love just wandering around furniture stores to see what we most prefer in person. This is also a great way to visualize and get inspiration for the style of bedroom you would like to have. 

People often choose the style of their bedroom based on one focal point. It could be that you have found the perfect bed or wardrobe and now have to fit the rest of the room around it. If this is the case, then when shopping, it is best to have an image of that item of furniture with you so that everything else compliments or matches it. 

Shopping

When shopping for your bedroom furniture or even the well-known Marco classroom furniture, you will need to be prepared. While it is nice to browse and buy the furniture that you like as you walk around the store or click through a website, however, it is very easy to get carried away when shopping for furniture, and in the end, you can buy furniture that does not fit into the room.

Ensuring that you have the measurements of the room with you at all times when shopping for bedroom furniture is essential. You may prefer to make yourself a floor plan or room plan to mark off what you plan to put where within the room as you are shopping. This can help you to visualize where the furniture will be placed and also keep you on track for the space that you have available. 

Shopping for furniture is the best part, and you can often get yourself a good price if buying multiple items from the same store. It is likely that you will need to have your furniture delivered and so arranging this for a day you will have others to help you to move and arrange the furniture is helpful.

Pink Siifu and Ahwlee Announce B. Cool-Aid Album, Release New Song ‘Cnt Go Back (Tell Me)’

B. Cool-Aid, the duo of Pink Siifu and Ahwlee, have announced a new album called Leather Blvd. It’s set to arrive on March 31 via Lex Records. Along with the announcement, they’ve dropped the new single ‘Cnt Go Back (Tell Me)’, which features Liv.e, Butcher Brown, Jimetta Rose, V.C.R., and Maurice II. Check it out below.

Leather Blvd. will mark B. Cool-Aid’s first album since 2019’s Syrup, which followed their 2017 debut Brwn. Last year, the pair shared the tracks ‘COO’ and ‘UsedToo’.

This Week’s Best New Songs: M83, U.S. Girls, Everything But the Girl, and More

Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.

On this week’s list, we have the effervescent, gorgeous new single from M83, ‘Oceans Niagara’; Everything But the Girl’s comeback single ‘Nothing Left to Lose’, which channels both deep longing and existential anxiety; ‘Futures Bet’, the deceptively smooth and fervently anthemic new U.S. Girls cut that leads their forthcoming album Bless This Mess; ‘Happenstance’, the driving and infectiously danceable lead single from Shalom’s debut album for Saddle Creek; John Cale’s ‘NOISE OF YOU’, the spacey, hauntingly romantic new single from his first album in a decade; the soaring lead offering from the New Pornographers’ latest LP, ’Really Really Light’, co-written with Dan Bejar; Lonnie Holley’s Michael Stipe-featuring single ‘Oh Me, Oh My’, which brims with both urgency and grace; and ‘When the Cynics Stare Back From the Wall’, a highlight from Belle and Sebastian’s new LP that dates back to 1994 and features lovely guest vocals from Tracyanne Campbel.

Best New Songs: January 16, 2023

M83, ‘Oceans Niagara’

Everything But the Girl, ‘Nothing Left to Lose’

Song of the Week: U.S. Girls, ‘Futures Bet’

Shalom, ‘Happenstance’

John Cale, ‘NOISE OF YOU’

The New Pornographers, ‘Really Really Light’

Lonnie Holley feat. Michael Stipe, ‘Oh Me, Oh My’

Belle and Sebastian, ‘When the Cynics Stare Back From the Wall’

Author Spotlight: Josh Riedel, ‘Please Report Your Bug Here’

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Josh Riedel, the first employee of Instagram, says that his debut novel Please Report Your Bug Here was inspired by long nights at a fledgling start-up, and the eventual migration of the company to large, galaxy buildings on campus. The part of the story that’s fictitious, however, is a glitch his narrator encounters that allows him to teleport to a seemingly random place in the world. He discovers it at DateDate, an app that promises a match with your soulmate if you answer hundreds of personal questions, and investigates what technology is exactly at play. He goes to Japan, Las Vegas, enjoying the perks of a well-endowed employer, while sneakily getting friends to help him: Where did he go? And why can’t he replicate the same glitch?

Part love letter to San Francisco, part sci-fi thriller, Riedel provides a deep dive into early 2010s Silicon Valley culture through Ethan, who tells his story 13 years in the future. “Once you sign an NDA it’s good for life. Meaning legally, I shouldn’t tell you this story, “he writes at the beginning of the book.” But I have to.”

Our Culture sat down with Riedel to discuss his tenure at Instagram, identity, and techno-optimism.

Congrats on your debut novel! How does it feel to have this story out in the world?

It’s pretty exciting. I sold the novel in late 2020, so it’s been a while of working on revisions — I finished edits on it about a year ago, so the publishing team’s been doing their thing, but it’s pretty exciting to actually have it coming out.

I have to start by mentioning that you were the first ever employee at Instagram. The book draws influence to Silicon Valley tech startup culture, and it’s easy to connect the plot to your personal life. When you were at Instagram, did you have this story in mind, or was it something that developed later?

It developed later — in college, I wrote fiction and kept doing it through my 20s as I was working in tech, but I was kind of just writing whatever, short stories here and there. It wasn’t until after I left the tech industry and moved to Tucson, Arizona for grad school that I started writing this book.

Our narrator, Ethan, is employed at DateDate, a tech startup with a homely four employees starting out. He’s close with his colleagues, despite mentioning only a new hire, Noma, by name, referring to the founder simply by ‘The Founder.’ Later, when the company gets acquired by the enigmatic Corporation, he’s quickly subsumed by the company’s large campus and glass buildings. Unlike Ethan, I don’t want to break any NDAs, but was this the kind of trajectory that the Instagram office took as it expanded further?

Yes, it was, which was quite a dramatic change. A lot of the setting and these details of place are really drawn from my experience working in tech in 2010s San Francisco. So even the opening pages of commuting to work on your bike, going through these streets lined with Victorian houses, getting into the glassy buildings of SoMa where all the tech start-ups were back then. Instagram started out in this small office in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, and about a year and a half after it started, it was acquired by Facebook, and you know, all these bigger tech companies have these giant campuses down in the south bay. So that part of it, the trajectory, kind of parallels my own working at Instagram.

Yeah, I was going to ask if it was that quick, also. With Ethan, he’s at this small place, and after the acquisition, the next day he’s at this huge campus. I didn’t know if that was just to speed up the novel’s timeline or that actually how it worked in real life.

Yeah, the Instagram timeline was longer. We were independent for a couple of years before we were acquired. In the novel, DateDate is only around for a little bit before it’s acquired. But that actually was not uncommon — I’m not sure about today, but when I was working in tech, it wasn’t uncommon for a small start-up that was getting traction to get acquired by a big company like Google or Facebook. I think in the last few years regulators have tightened up.

So Ethan’s story starts with noticing a bug in the software — a black box that shows up on his content review feed, which seems to be appearing to other users, which eventually presents a big problem. When he’s bored one day, he decides to look up his true match, but a glitch transports him, briefly, to a different world. What made you come up with and decide to go with this mechanism, where technology creates sort of a portal?

I think just writing the story, this happens pretty early. I started writing the novel when I was in Tucson, I just turned 30, I was kind of reflecting on my 20s. I felt my 20s and work in Silicon Valley happened so fast, and I was trying to figure out, ‘What is it about graduating college and getting a new job that compels, at least me, to throw myself into work so much?’ So I started writing the novel in that way, recounting some of my own experience — biking to the office, working in a small office — but then, the portals part is where we take a turn into fiction. I think my fiction had progressively gotten more speculative over the years, and I think a big part of that was working in Silicon Valley, being in San Francisco, where everything is trying out new things before the rest of the country gets to see it. So I think I had this speculative, what-if mindset going on, and that infused itself into my fiction. That’s where the portals came from, then I just decided to keep that in the book because I like the idea of inventing new technology and then not fully understanding how it works. We make these new things, but we might not understand the implications of the new tech totally.

Ethan is really concerned with identity, and after being subsumed by the Corporation, he worries that his individual interests are not being tended to, and that he’s just a cog in the machine. Do you think, with corporate culture and apps like Tinder and such, that it’s a valid concern to have nowadays?

Ethan goes into working at DateDate in this real era of techno-optimism — I think there are some studies that say that after 2015, and definitely after 2016, people got less optimistic about technology. But this is set in 2010, so I think Ethan has a lot of optimism as to what this app can do for the world. He’s bringing a lot into this job that the job isn’t necessarily promising. He’s searching for identity through work, and the app is there, it’s a business, it’s not really promising him everything. But when he gets to the Corporation, it gets really apparent to him, because all of his jobs can be assigned to these different departments. He’s not really special anymore.

DateDate operates on a really interesting premise that says if you answer enough short-response questions about yourself, you are able to find your perfect soulmate. The idea that love can’t be algorithmically solved is called into question a little bit — talk a little bit about this tenent of the job that he works for.

The dating app was another thing, kind of like the portals, that just kind of happened as I was writing the story. But as I worked on the book more I thought to keep it in because I thought it was a good device. I’m really interested in how we connect to each other through technology —  I was interested in that when I worked at Instagram, and also in my fiction. I think dating apps are the most straightforward tool to find like-minded people through the internet. It’s a pretty big challenge to create something like that, especially one that promises to help you find your soulmate. Because I can’t code, I thought it’d be fun to invent my own dating app in fiction, and research and explore how I might create one. It ended up being pretty fun to see what I could do to make it feel like a more authentic match with someone, but also thinking about the app as a business. You don’t get to see your top match right away because they don’t want their user turn rate to be too high — they want to keep people on the app and using it. As I wrote the novel, it’s pretty obvious from the start, but there are a lot of things about how we connect with others that aren’t quantifiable or categorizable. I think as a fiction writer, it was pretty fun to explore that gap. If I was a start-up founder, I don’t know what I would do, but I’d say it was a potential way to find people you might get along with. My company would probably tank.

Whereas some novels’ sense of place are liminal, vague projections that could really be anywhere, this story is inextricably linked to San Francisco. It makes sense that the Silicon Valley start-up culture aspect is there, but how did it feel to write about your city so meticulously?

I really loved it. I was missing San Francisco when I wrote this novel, because I was in Tucson. I love Tucson — I was always telling people they should visit or move there. But all of my friends were in San Francisco, I had these good memories of the city, and it was fun to write about the city being away from it. At some point, I came back to the Bay area for a bit, then I moved up to Portland. That was at the start of the pandemic, so I was revising this novel in the lockdown era and I wasn’t coming down to San Francisco. I feel like I had a lot of longing for the city as I wrote the book — it was fun to write an homage to it while I was away from it, because it is where I came of adulthood, I spent most of my 20s there. I used Google Street View a lot, so I did the thing where you compared the views from 2010 to today and it was so wild to see the changes. Even little things like, in early in the novel, Ethan and Noma stop at a Keith Herring sculpture of men dancing — that sculpture has moved a couple of times since 2010 to different points in the city, so it was fun to trace those things.

This book stylistically resembles a memoir, with Ethan writing at the beginning of the book, in 2023, about the things he witnessed in 2010 and 2011. Why did you want it to be a retroactive retelling of the past?

That’s a good question, I mean, I think part of it is that I was reading a lot of nonfiction at the time. Writing it 12, 13 years in the future helped Ethan have more perspective on events. The story takes place within a year — he’s so wrapped up in work and trying to solve this mystery that he doesn’t have a lot of perspective as to what’s going on. Writing it in the past tense, from 2023, allowed him to give him some perspective and I don’t think he’d be able to tell this story as it was happening.

I liked that the science fiction element of the story got more intense as time went on; when you first started, did you want the novel to head in this direction or was it something that came up while writing?

It did escalate while writing — I didn’t have real intentions for that. Just my other work becoming more speculative, and I was reading a lot of speculative fiction, I think all of that just infused into my work. So it just kind of happened. But it’s funny — I read at a reading in San Francisco a few weeks ago, just the first few pages of the novel. Afterwards someone was like, ‘Oh, what else is your book about?’ and I told them, and they were like, ‘Oh, I never would have gotten that.’ Anna Weiner’s blurb, I think, was like, ‘start-up realism with a multiverse twist’ — it really does head in that direction after some realism in the beginning.

Yeah, I liked how it was a little bit of a misdirection from the synopsis — you’re taken on a completely different ride. And I loved Anna Weiner’s book [Uncanny Valley], so her blurb caught my eye.

Yeah, I loved Anna’s memoir. Her work for the New Yorker, too, has this persona of ‘New Yorker dropped in San Francisco. 

Finally, what’s next for your writing career? Do you want to do more short stories, or do you have another novel idea in the works?

I’m working on another novel — I actually did just write a short story, but those are just about taking breaks from longer projects for me. But I love writing short stories. I actually just adapted one of mine into a screenplay.

Oh, wow!

It’s not going anywhere right now. It’s more just for fun and to learn about screenwriting, because I’m interested. 

That’s so cool — is that something you want to explore more of?

Yeah, it is — I did this adaptation because I was so deep in novel-world, you know, writing the book, and doing the edits, I just wanted to change my way of thinking. I took one of my short stories and adapted it. One of my friends works in film, so she was helping me. I’m really drawn to how visual screenwriting is — the idea of, if one day, the screenplay were produced, the idea of the world you came up with actually being physically in the world, with set designers and actors saying the words — that’s just really cool. It’s more of just a fun project for me, to start. But now I’ve been doing it a bit more seriously.

Part of the reason I did it is I’ll try to sell film rights to my novel, and I was talking to the film agent about that, like, ‘I want to try to see what this is like.’ It’s totally a different genre — I gained a lot of respect for screenwriting. Just with shows I’ve already watched, like Succession, I was like, ‘I’m gonna just read the pilot.’ You already know what happens and can visualize it, but the dialogue is so punchy. It’s a whole different form, and I still like to do what with shows I watch. 

Okay, since you brought it up, you were pitching the book to film agents — who is your dream Ethan?

Oh my god, I’m so bad at this. I’m really bad at remembering actors’ names. There’s this show Sex Education, on Netflix, I think — the main actor [Asa Butterfield] in that is someone I can definitely see playing Ethan. Also, The Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO — there’s a guy who runs the comedy magazine [Mekki Leeper] in that show that I can also see as Ethan. This is another thing where I’d be really open to someone adapting it, and making some changes.


Please Report Your Bug Here is available now.

Artist Spotlight: Rozi Plain

Born in Winchester, England, Rosalind Leyden was 16 when her brother, Sam, took over the open mic night at a small local pub and encouraged her to get into music. In 2008, she made her debut as Rozi Plain with Inside Over Here, a collection of homespun recordings that introduced her hazy alt-folk sound in its barest form. Now based in London, Plain cut her teeth in the Bristol DIY scene, co-founding the Cleaner Records collective and collaborating with Kate Stables of This Is The Kit, with whom she’s spent much of her time on tour. As a solo artist, she’s been broadening her horizons with each album, and 2019’s What a Boost saw her folding in more experimental textures than any of her prior releases.

Plain’s fifth LP, Prize, out today, is built from recording sessions that took place everywhere from the French Basque Country to the Isle of Eigg as well as studios in London, Bristol, and Glasgow. Featuring co-producer Jamie Whitby-Coles (also This Is the Kit) on drums, Amaury Ranger on bass, and Gerard Black on synths, as well an impressive cast of guest musicians including jazz saxophonist Alabaster DePlume, synth manipulator Danalogue, and harpist Serafina Steer, the album is rooted in a communal spirit but shimmers with the same gentle, hypnotic intimacy that has permeated Plain’s music in the past. At the same time, Plain wraps her often perplexing lyrics around winding, subtly complex arrangements without overshadowing the songs’ vibrant warmth and understated candor. She leaves questions hanging in the air, yet makes drifting alongside them feel effortlessly natural.

We caught up with Rozi Plain for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about the making of Prize, her approach to songwriting, reconciling past and future, and more.


A few days ago, I had an overnight layover at the airport, and I listened to your records, in order, from Friends all the way to Prize. I’d already listened to the new album a few times, but the music really came alive in a different way when I was in this barely-awake state. It made me wonder what sort of headspace you’re usually in when you enter the writing process, if it’s more conscious or a sort of dream state.

I feel like there’s different headspaces. There’s definitely moments of writing that do feel like divine intervention or something, and it feels like a sort of mixture of distraction and focus; when you can distract yourself from yourself enough to find focus in a new thing. Sometimes it feels like things are coming to you a bit. But I think that’s also quite rare, and I think I used to think that it had to be those moments; it had to be this, like, “Oh, wow, I’ve just written a song in five minutes.” But I’ve changed my mind about that. That does happen sometimes, but you can also slowly craft a song by working on your stuff, and it can come in a completely different way. It can be really difficult, and then in the end it can still have the same feeling. It’s finding the things that compel you to keep playing them; I want to find a guitar riff that I don’t want to stop playing because it feels so satisfying to play, or a sentence that feels that I really enjoy to sing over and over again. I think I’ve said it before, but wanting to make, like, savory music. I want it to feel deeply, deeply satisfying.

With Prize, did you go more in the direction of trying to slowly craft something and have an added sense of control?

I definitely didn’t try to make it slower than it was because I’m aware of how slow I am anyway. I’m really slow at writing. And also, because it had been the pandemic, we had to wait for quite a long time before we could record the album how we wanted to do it, so I was eager to get on with it. I also had been given a deadline by the label, and then realized it just wasn’t ready. I was trying to make it ready, and then I realized it was not ready, so we delayed it I think by two months or something, the hand-in. And that made such an amazing difference. It like it just I was so stressed about it. I was trying to make it like, “There’s enough stuff there and it’s finished,” and it just wasn’t. And then I sent this email saying, “I can’t hand it in now, it’s going to be a month later.” And the intense relief I felt – suddenly we could make all these really good decisions about it and, like, see the wood for the trees, because I was in a bit of a panic trying to add things on it. And then I was like, “Okay. Okay, this is what it needs.” The extra delay time we gave ourselves, it really changed the album. I feel like it really became mine again somehow.

In what sense do you mean?

I don’t know, it’s like we unlocked the recordings. Also, how we’ve done things before is recording the base of things and then adding a lot of overdubs, and it felt more difficult to do on this album. It just felt like everything had to be so specific. And if it really didn’t enhance it, it did distract from it, it wasn’t worth having it there. So we added a lot of things, and we took off a lot of things as well. We mixed it with Ash Workman in Margate, and then my friend James [Howard] added quite a bit of guitar on a lot of the tracks. I was just thinking, “I think just this one song just needs one…” And then he did it on about seven or eight songs, and it just lifted them all up. It was amazing.

Is there a specific reason all your albums follow a 10-track, 40-minute structure?

I think for this album, it was part of the contract that there had to be 10 songs. But I think there would have been 10 songs anyway. Every album has had ten songs. I don’t know – not that I’ve even realized it before, but I think, “Oh, an album’s got to be ten songs.” [laughs] And I don’t even know why I think that, but it’s like 9 seems too little. But then I love it. I’m not super prolific, I don’t make a massive amount of stuff. I mean, I don’t have thousands of songs to choose from. It’s probably quite a lot of that as well, actually.

You’ve expanded your sound with each album, and though the songs can sometimes get quite intricate and ambiguous, they retain a certain clarity and almost simplicity of heart. ‘Complicated’, for instance, despite its title, is one of the sparsest tracks on the record.

Yes, when we were working on it, we did keep on trying to add things, and then we’re just like, “I think this song just needs to be really simple.” It feels satisfying that it’s like that and called ‘Complicated’. That’s a nice swip-swap. I’m writing about my own experiences, but I’ve never felt compelled to sort of tackle things head-on; I want to make it so people can interpret it in different ways, but to experience meaning in it. I want it to feel like sharing instead of explaining. I want things to feel open.

There are a lot of songs that start with an “it” or a “something,” but it’s never fully revealed what that something is. It’s like you’re entering in the middle of a conversation or the middle of a thought process.

Yeah, yeah. And I do notice that I have a lot of questions in, and I guess it’s stuff that I’m asking myself and other people. It’s great that you can say “you” when you mean “I,” because you’re allowed – because it’s your song, you can do whatever you like. But yes, it’s funny because I did feel really conscious about the word “it” and I did think, Oh my god, I can’t use the word “it” anymore.  [laughs] But you have to use the word “it” sometimes.

As listeners, we’re used to hearing “you” without it being tied to a specific person, but I think it becomes fascinating when the “it” is up to interpretation. Of course, the album begins with, “What shall we call it?”

Yeah. But I am also in my life quite a question attacker. It’s quite a comfortable place for me to be if I’m chatting to someone is just asking lots of questions. [laughs] And I don’t always think that’s a good thing. I don’t think I’m horrifically interrogatory or something, but I think I do ask a lot of questions. It’s great when you can spend time with someone and not asking those questions – not just say, “Oh, how was that? And how is that going? And where did you go then?” That’s like the normal stuff, isn’t it? It feels like a challenge to not do that, but I think it’s good exercise to not do that. Because you often find out more from people when you don’t just get the facts off them. It’s nice when you catch up with a friend, and then you realize you don’t know anything that they’ve been doing. [laughs] But you’ve still had a really quality catch-up.

I know what you mean, sometimes it’s hard when you’re having a conversation with someone to not be in that mode where you’re making it about the other person.

Yes, exactly, just making it about the other person. And then also, when you make it about the other person, inevitably they’re gonna make it about you in a second. They’re gonna say, “And what about you?” Like, “What? Oh no, I don’t want that! I just wanted to get you to do the talking!” [laughs]

How do you think you’ve been influenced by the different places that have been a part of your musical journey, from Winchester to Bristol to London?

When I think about the songs I’ve written, they’ve got a place and a time and an era. Because I guess a feeling you’re trying to capture, intentionally or not, gets tied to time and place. Someone was asking me about this the other day, about moving around, how that affects me, but also, it feels like that’s like been my life for the last 15 years or something. I’ve been touring for ages, in my project or This Is the Kit, and that’s the sort of stuff I do. It definitely does soak in, but it feels like a natural part of my life. That feels like my life experience. I love doing that, and then I also like coming home.

But it does affect your relationship to home, right?

Yeah, definitely. But I think the feeling of home can be a very movable thing. Sometimes it feels like a house and where you live, and sometimes it feels like the people you’re with. There’s definitely times when on tour with my band or on tour with This is the Kit feels like my homely environment. I feel like it changes a bit, but it also feels like the ultimate quest, feeling at home. And it’s cool when you can identify sort of what that is for a bit.

I want to single out the line “Standing up in the full blue of newness,” which interestingly appears towards the end of the record. Do you remember coming up with it?

I actually do, because I feel like had a significant realization a few years ago that – I wonder if I can even remember what my significant realization was. [laughs] It was something like, I realized that I didn’t let my future in on my past; I didn’t trust my future with my beloved past or something. And I didn’t trust my beloved past to believe in the future. And I thought, I keep those things really far away from each other. And actually, of course, they’re completely joined. I don’t even know if anything’s changed since, but I think probably I’m guilty of being a fairly nostalgic person. The fact that things that have happened just sort of become fact – even though those facts can change, but the fact is, they happened. It’s like, if I listen to an old album, I think, “I can’t even remember how I did it – how did I come to all those decisions? God, I must have known what I was doing.” It feels like there’s all this conviction about the past, just because it’s the past now. Because those are the things that happened, and you can write them down. And and then the future, of course, is unknown, and you don’t know how it’s going to be and you’re worried you’re going to do it wrong or you won’t do it justice from how meaningful you found the things that have happened. But you find them meaningful because they happened or something.

Also, my mum proofread the lyrics, and the word “blue” used to be the word “bloom.” And she’d heard the album before and she was like, “Oh, I thought it was blue.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s loads better. I’m changing it to bloom.” [laughs] I sort of never felt very comfortable about having the word “bloom,” it never sat very easily with me. And the word “blue” made more sense. It sort of felt like the bright blue new. And it’s cool, I love that it was a misheard thing. Also, I often don’t pronounce the last sound of a word. I’m always not doing that, I just fade out. So it doesn’t sound like I’m singling “bloom” anyway, it sounds like I’m saying “blue.”

Because there are so few objects actually mentioned in the lyrics, naming the record Prize feels significant. What does it mean to you?

Whenever I’ve named an album, it’s been a lyric from the album. I’ve generally not held that much attachment to naming songs. It’s sort of admin; everyone has to know what song they’re playing, so it’s the most obvious word in it or something. And I’ve always named albums by just going through the lyrics, and after a while, something stands out, I just think, “Oh, yeah, I think it’s called that.” I was going to call it Nothing Will Do, and then it felt a bit faffy, a bit complicated. And then some people spooked me by saying it’s not good to have a negative word in there.

But I really like that it’s a five-letter word. I like the number five. And I like that it’s got a “z” in. But also, I think there’s probably quite a lot in the album about – I don’t even know if I mean competition, but sort of wanting to come good or prove something to someone or to yourself. I guess I’m sort of thinking about close tensions and relationships between myself and different people. People want to be not misunderstood and misrepresented, and I think it’s easy for people to get misinterpreted as wanting to be right or win or something, when, actually, they just want to make sure they’ve expressed themselves clearly and have been understood. Also, it’s quite a fun word.


This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

Rozi Plain’s Prize is out now via Memphis Industries.

5 Dos And 4 Don’ts Of Branding A Clothing Line

The fashion industry is one of the most profitable industries. With the probability of generating high profits, you’d want to put more effort into branding your clothing line. Branding your apparel is what sets you apart from your competitors.

It’s all about captivating and building an image for your target audience. You can create an emotional and long-lasting connection with your customers. On that note, you’d want to master the best practices in branding and meet customers’ expectations. 

Dos

Consider the following tips when planning your branding strategy:

Hire The Right People

You’ll need help pushing your branding agenda. To do so, you have to hire relevant staff. Some of the essential people to hire for your clothing business include the following:

  • Designers
  • Influencers
  • Marketers
  • Stylists

With the right advocates for your clothing line, you can be sure to propel your brand to the next level. On top of these in-house staff members, you may want to hire a branding agency Manchester if you live in the area.

A branding agency can help you develop effective branding strategies, including product advertising and promotion. They can also advise you on launching your company and creating unique branding elements like the logo, identity, and tone. Before hiring a branding agency, share your dreams and goals. This way, you’ll be confident they’ll bring growth to your clothing line. 

Create A Unique Logo For Your Brand

Creating a unique logo helps build a connection with your audience. It aids in brand recognition. When customers spot your logo on a clothing item, they know the company behind it. Such memory goes a long way to creating brand awareness and increasing sales. 

Use a color palette that’s easy on the eyes and visually attractive. One or two are enough. Anything more than that may be too much on the eyes. 

The logo goes hand in hand with your brand name. The two must be combined into a compact graphic for display on your clothes, website, social media profiles, and office. Additionally, you should have a compelling description of the items in your clothing line. The faster your customers can identify your brand, the better it is for your company.

Focus On Quality

One thing that’ll draw customers to your brand is quality. If you compromise on quality, customers may not make repeat purchases. Quality products help increase customer loyalty, which should be your goal, given how challenging it is to acquire new customers. Give your customers a strong reason to choose your brand. This way, they’ll keep coming back for more. 

Ensure Customer Satisfaction

A pleasant customer experience can propel your clothing line to success. Remember, customers can become marketing agents if you do a good job. They interact with their friends, and one good compliment can result in numerous sales for your brand. Therefore, prioritize customer satisfaction as you create your brand.

Tell A Story

Customers want a brand that they can identify with. You can create a story in each clothing item advertised that evokes a connection with the customers. Think about what drove you to launch the clothing line. When customers know your company’s background and the level of inspiration that went into designing each piece, they might be influenced to purchase from you.

Don’ts

Below are four things that can break your brand. Avoid them at must as you can:

Do Not Skimp On Packaging

Don’t make the mistake of limiting your packaging strategy to simple non-labeled packages. Your customers will be more impressed by the products inside the box or shopping bag, but your packaging also counts. Treat packaging as your silent salesman. It tells more about your brand whenever customers walk with your branded packaging materials in town. 

Do Not Overprice Your Clothes

It’d help not to be greedy with your prices, as it can turn your loyal customers off. You may lose them as fast as you got them. It’s crucial to generate profit, but you must price your items accordingly to reflect your products’ quality and target audience.

Do Not Please Everyone

It’s essential to carve out a niche for your brand since it’s impossible to please everyone in the market. In other words, you can’t deal with every customer’s preference. You may want to specialize in one niche, be it sustainable fashion or kids’, ladies’, or men’s clothes. You may also want to specialize in cardigans, trousers, dresses, or blouses. Narrow it down to a few things and give your best. 

Do Not Make Empty Promises

In this line of work, honesty and transparency are key. For instance, if you’re working with clients who order on short notice, it’s best to keep your word on delivering their orders on time. If you don’t, you might disappoint your customers and lose them. Your brand should only promise what it can deliver. 

Conclusion

For your brand to thrive in this industry, you must be strategic. Ensure you adhere to all the do’s while avoiding the don’ts for successful branding. Most importantly, build a good image for your brand. This way, the customers will quickly identify with your merchandise. Before long, you’ll be a force to reckon with in the fashion industry and make a massive profit from your branding strategy. 

Liv.e Releases New Song ‘Find Out’

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Liv.e has released a new song called ‘Find Out’. It’s the third single from the LA-based, Dallas-raised artist’s sophomore album, Girl in the Half Pearl, following the previously shared tracks ‘Wild Animals’ and ‘Ghost’. Check it out below.

“‘Find Out’ is a reflection of the moment in my journey where I’m finally having a realization of what it means to really love yourself and take a moment to observe what doesn’t reflect self love,” Liv.e explained in a statement. “Sometimes you realize you only receive and accept what you feel like you deserve and I finally felt like I deserved more than what I was experiencing. Girl In The Half Pearl overall is a chapter of my book where I take you through the journey of my mind states as I’m experiencing the death of who I once was, and ‘Find Out’ is one of those moments where you experience me losing my rose-colored glasses.”

Girl in the Half Pearl comes out February 10 via In Real Life.

Gena Rose Bruce Unveils New Single ‘Harsh Light’

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Gena Rose Bruce has released a new single, ‘Harsh Light’, the final preview of her upcoming LP Deep Is the Way. It follows the earlier offerings ‘Mistery and Misfortune’‘Foolishly in Love’ and the title track featuring Bill Callahan. Check it out below.

“Originally I wrote this song as a ballad, and visioned it as quite a slow song,” Bruce said of ‘Harsh Light’ in a press release. “It wasn’t until we got in the studio that we realised it needed to be 5 times the tempo! I’m a huge Beatles fan and I think this song really shows that.”

Deep Is the Way is set for release on January 27 via Dot Dash/Remote Control Records.

Albums Out Today: Belle and Sebastian, Margo Price, Billy Nomates, Rozi Plain, and More

In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on January 13, 2023:


Belle and Sebastian, Late Developers

Belle and Sebastian have released their new album, Late Developers, via Matador. Announced earlier this week, the album was recorded in the same sessions as the band’s last album, 2022’s A Bit of Previous, and was previewed with the single ‘I Don’t Know What You See In Me’. Rather than “a collection of lesser-than songs that weren’t good enough to go on the ‘real’ record,” Jeff Rosenstock writes in the album’s bio, Late Developers is “an embrace of the freedom that comes with a jumbo-sized canvas; skilled students left unsupervised to paint whatever picture they feel like.”


Margo Price, Strays

Margo Price has returned with a new album, Strays, which follows 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started. Featuring additional vocals from Sharon Van Etten, Mike Campbell, and Lucius, the LP was produced by Price and Jonathan Wilson and was primarily recorded in the summer of 2021 at Fivestar Studio in California’s Topanga Canyon. “I feel this urgency to keep moving, keep creating,” Price said in press materials. “You get stuck in the same patterns of thinking, the same loops of addiction. But there comes a point where you just have to say, ‘I’m going to be here, I’m going to enjoy it, and I’m not going to put so much stock into checking the boxes for everyone else.’ I feel more mature in the way that I write now, I’m on more than just a search for large crowds and accolades. I’m trying to find what my soul needs.”


Billy Nomates, CACTI

Billy Nomates, the project of Bristol-based songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Tor Maries, has followed up her 2020 debut with a new album, CACTI, out now via Invada Records. “Writing CACTI took just over a year,” Maries explained in a press statement. “I wrote very intensely and then none at all. (This seems to be the way I work best). I picked up old drum machines, mapped out things in my kitchen with the same small micro keyboard I always use and then raided the cupboards and rooms at Invada Studios, to play and experiment with old synths, an upright piano, this weird organ thing. I hope everyone finds their own narrative in CACTI. I think it’s about surviving it all.”


Rozi Plain, Prize

Rozi Plain has issued a new album called Prize, following her 2019 record What a Boost. Out now via Memphis Industries, the songwriter’s fifth LP was preceded by the singles ‘Agreeing for Two’ (which features Alabaster dePlume on saxophone and backing vocals from This Is The Kit’s Kate Stables), ‘Prove Your Good’, ‘Help’, and ‘Painted the Room’. Rozi co-produced the album with Jamie Whitby Coles, who also plays drums throughout Prize. Recording took place everywhere from the Isle of Eigg to a seaside village in French Basque Country as well as the band’s homes in London, Bristol, and Glasgow.


WILDES, Other Words Fail Me

Other Words Fail Me is the debut full-length from London-based musician Ella Walker, who records as WILDES. The album was produced by St Francis Hotel, aka Declan Gaffney, who is known for his work with Little Simz, Greentea Peng, and Micahel Kiwanuka, and also features the Flaming Lips on the closer ‘True Love’. Discussing its title, Walker explained: “It was a name I’d had for quite a while in my head, but the album really grew into the name – it became a lot more symbolic than I ever intended, as writing this album was the only way I could safely and honestly talk about what was going on at the time. I quite literally didn’t have any other words to describe it other than the lyrics in these songs.”


MOLLY, Picturesque

MOLLY have followed up 2019’s All That Ever Could Have Been with their sophomore album, Picturesque, out now via Sonic Cathedral. The Austrian shoegaze duo previewed the LP with the singles ‘The Golden Age’ and ‘Ballerina’. “‘More is more’ was definitely the credo when making this record,” singer/guitarist Lars Andersson said in a statement. “A big inspiration were bands like Pond and the way they manage to fill their songs up with stuff to the absolute maximum. While I definitely tried to give the listener some room to breathe at certain points and while, in good old post-rock fashion, it still builds up and breaks down, it relies much more on simple melody and harmony as opposed to noisy experimentation to transport feeling.”


Obituary, Dying of Everything

Florida death metal legends Obituary are back with their first new album in six years. Out now via RelapseDying of Everything is the follow-up to the band’s 2017 self-titled record, and it includes the previously shared tracks ‘The Wrong Time’ and the title cut. “We did not hit record until we were 100 percent ready,” drummer Donald Tardy recalled in an interview with Stereogum. “With the songs, performances, instruments, mic placements, inputs, how hot are we hitting things, the arrangements. We were very prepared before we hit record on this album.”


 James Yorkston, Nina Persson, and the Second Hand Orchestra, The Great White Sea Eagle

James Yorkston, Nina Persson, and the Second Hand Orchestra have shared a new album titled The Great White Sea Eagle (via Domino). It follows a similar methodology as James Yorkston and The Second Hand Orchestra’s previous record, 2021’s The Wide, Wide River. “Everyone who was playing in the Second Hand Orchestra, in their own way they are all unique and colourful players,” Yorkston said of the process in a press release. “There was no-one there who didn’t know what to do. I would bring them the songs, we would start one – I would play it, and second time round people would start singing and playing, and by the time we had done it three or four times we would hit record and we would be ready to go.”


Other albums out today:

Poolblood, mole; BabyTron, Bin Reaper 3: New Testament; Liela Moss,
Internal Working Model; The Subways, Uncertain Joys; Circa Waves, Never Going Under; Gaz Coombes, Turn the Car Around; Velvet Negroni, Bulli; Daniel Pioro, Saint Boy; Polar, Everywhere, Everything; Tujiko Noriko, Cr​é​puscule I & II; Oliver Coates, Aftersun (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).

Miley Cyrus Shares Video for New Single ‘Flowers’

Miley Cyrus has released ‘Flowers’, the first single from her new album Endless Summer Vacation. The track arrives with an accompanying video that was created by Cyrus and directed by Jacob Bixenman, with movement direction from Stephen Galloway. Watch and listen below.

Endless Summer Vacation is set to land on March 10 via Columbia. The follow-up to 2020’s Plastic Hearts was recorded in Los Angeles and features production credits from Mike Will Made-It, Greg Kurstin, Tyler Johnson, and Kid Harpoon.