…the neon hub blog…

VBS, the TV arm of influential youth magazine VICE have created a film with renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky. The film will form part of a series of one on one talks with influential people on important issues.

Professor Chomsky chatted to Kate Albright-Hanna, the Director of Video for New Media on Barack Obama’s revolutionary digital election campaign.

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Mien Tay on Kingsland Road is an easy stroll away from the NEON office and lately we seem to be going there more and more, once we went for lunch and dinner.

The food is divine and the service sweet but NEON are stuck in a self-induced Vietnamese Groundhog Day. We can’t stop ordering the same dishes, generally some or all of below – depending on hunger and/or guest.

NEON are putting this down in writing to state that from now will not order any of the below and move on, stepping away from our fix. But you can try them and you should, but be warned they can take a hold on you ….

1. Salt, Pepper and Garlic Squid
   This is the original addiction. So amazing rumor has it one man repeat ordered this dish 7 times in one sitting.
2. Chargrilled Quail with Honey, Garlic and Spices
   “At just £4.50, this (quail) is one of London’s most affordable luxuries” says Love Food Love Drink
3. Fresh Green Papaya Salad with Dried Spicy Beef
   Light, fragrant, bursts of spicy beef, this is perfect balance to order with heavier dishes
4. Sliced Beef with Watercress & Fresh Lime
   An alternative way to enjoy beef, sliced thinly and cooked in the lime juice
5. Seafood Hot Pot
   Perfect sharing/prawn pinching dish, vast amounts of food and a boiling pot of broth to cook it at the table

Full menu can be drooled over here.

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On November 11^th NEON are going to be at the Proud Galleries in support of  fundraiser juggernaut Natalie Legg and her charity event FTBC on the QT.

The event is a celebration and a thank you for a successful 2009 and a look forward to 2010 for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer. Heralded as the most iconic charitable fashion campaign, FTBC has raised over £11 million for Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s lifesaving research work.

The knees-up will be hosted by Pearl Lowe with music from Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Suffolk indie boys The Cheek (NEON is a new fan, check Do Nothing), folk-pop singer-songwriter Jharda and a DJ set from model Ben Grimes.

NEON may get in trouble for not keeping this to ourselves but we had a sneaky peek at the entry wristbands and trust us you don’t want to miss out on these. Natalie has promised more surprises that she cleverly did not tell NEON.  Tickets are £30. See you there!

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NEON always knew our friend Taffy was a handsome chap, and if we ever forgot he would never be too far away to remind/tell us. So we were naturally very proud when he graced the cover of Design Week, despite being covered in dripping paint he’s under there somewhere.

Taffy features in Boo Ritson’s latest paint orgy Back-Roads Journey, a two-site show about a fictional road-trip across America. Part 1 is titled The Diner and showing at the Alan Cristea Gallery, here Boo introduces the characters in a small town diner. Part 2 features our painted face chum at The Gas Station and follows two characters from the diners as their lives cross along the road. This is showing at the Poppy Sebire Gallery.

Boo Ritson paints the subject, literally, the results photographed while the paint is still wet. There is a window for this of 20 minutes before the household emulsion dries and Taffy is forever a trucker in a Hawaiian shirt.

The results are vivid and it is such an unusual technique you want to stick your nose up close to the pictures and touch to see if it is actually wet.

Both exhibitions close on November 21st and it is pleasant ten minutes Mayfair meander from Alan Cristea to Poppy Sebire to catch both Part 1 and Part 2. If all this glossy Americana gets you in the mood for Yankie fare Goodmans and Automat are local.

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To help build awareness of the site Havana Cultura launched a Twitter Treasure Hunt this week and the prize is for two VIP tickets to Gilles Peterson’s Havana Cultura album launch party in Paris on 26th November. The winner will travel to Paris with a friend via Eurostar and spend three nights at The Hotel Amour – NEON wants to enter just for the name of the hotel.

The treasure hunt will run for two weeks via the Havana Cultura Twitter profile. On the Monday, Wednesday and Friday 2 clues will be posted, the first at 1pm and the second at 5pm. The ‘clues’ hope to encourage participants to have a good look round the site while searching for the answers.

How to enter – follow Twitter account @_HavanaCultura_
Find the clues via the site
Reply with your answer
To catch up the hashtag is #havanatreasurehunt

The winner will have to answer each question and then submit a final tie breaker – the winner will then be chosen at random.

NEON has recently spent a lot of time browsing Havana Cultura – a site that has been developed to give modern Cuban artists from the city of Havana a platform to showcase their work through videos. The featured artists present video clips demonstrating creativity that there is a thriving artistic scene beyond Buena Vista Social Club, introducing themselves through their favourite spot in Havana explaining how the area has influenced their careers.

NEON’s fave video is from composer William Vivanco reflects on the Malecón – the huge walled walkway between the sea and the city when, at high tide, kids play and Cubans wait for the huge sprays to cool them down.

As well as launching the site Gilles Peterson has collaborated with Havana Cultura to produce a 2-disk album that is the culmination of a year long project that saw Peterson travel to Cuba to find the very best new talent in Havana. The album features over 20 musicians and artists recorded across 28 tracks to celebrate Cuba’s freshest sounds that range from Latin, Afro-Jazz and Fusion to Hip Hop, Funk, Reggaeton and Pop. The album also includes a number of traditional Cuban classics re-recorded by Peterson.

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Loads of serious stuff has happened since 1994 we’d probably all like to wipe out, 9/11, Iraqi war, tsunami, hurricane Katrina, cloning, collapsing of banks, droughts, famines and sinking ferries…..

Well we can wipe it out – well for ten minutes or so at least.

Dust off the Doc Martins, crack open a Bass Shandy, put D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better (if only we knew) and settle into some magazine material circa 1994 courtesy of VICE, all up there to usher in their 15th birthday, celebrated later this month.

Check out a pre-Kids photo shoot with Chloë Sevigny, an editorial crusade to save teen drama My So-Called Life, a defence of Tonya Harding, the mean-girl ice skater behind the clubbing of Nancy Kerrigan plus loads more time warp material.

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NEON recommends the new album ‘Gold + Green’ from Architeq AKA Sam Annand, due for release on the 26th of October via TIRK Recordings.

‘Gold + Green’ is a complete electronic album in the sense that it is a good listen from start to finish without allowing dull repetition to sink in. The album moves between dub, soulful vocals, electro sounds and jazz instruments in a smooth but trippy style.

We have hosted opening track ‘Twilight’ below to give you a taste of the album. If you like this you can find more information about this release on their MySpace Page and on the Tirk Recordings Website.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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Movida. Oh the memories of bribery-champers, quasi-celebs and random mobile numbers …… but now we are all grown up and serious and professional and mature and stuff we’d never go back. Wrong. NEON is going to Movida tomorrow night – for professional reasons you see, to help out at a friend’s fashion show, and we kind of like it. No queuing, no paying, no standing, now flirting is networking and a little nod will make the guy at the bar serve us first.

The fashion show is the launch party for Lipstick and Lace Boutique and being held in association with Veneer London.

Not only is it stuffed full of fab clothes and accessories but online women’s boutique Lipstick and Lace Boutique intends to bridge the gap between personal service of high street shopping and comfortable convenience of online shopping. The ‘bridge’ is via a telephone call to site owner Sally. Give her size, colouring, budget, details of event and so on and she will talk you through suitable options. Come Christmas the perfect solution for fretting boys (and party girls who can’t face the cold).

A complimentary cocktail reception will kick off at 10pm followed by the fashion show at 10.15pm, showcasing some of the current collection. NEON will be kitted out in Lipstick and Lace gear – the wish-list includes the Collar Tunic and Victorian Lace top both by Ceci Tokyo-Yuki, the Black Rabbit Cardigan and Waistcoat by Folia, every single pair of leggings, treggings, jeggings and jeans and the 1960’s vintage Charles Jourdan sunnies would do nicely too.

May need Sally’s help to pull off wearing it all at once though.

NEON blog readers are invited, drop us a line for no queuing, no paying, no standing VIP invites. We may even celebrate with one of those annoying ‘look-at-me-I-just-bought-a-jeraboam’ sparklers. Maybe.

Black Rabbit Waistcoat by Folia

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NEON loves Madrid and Madrid loves NEON, we can say that because this amazing city loves everyone, Madrilleno or not. We may have this view because circa 2003 more time was spent hopping from club to club than strolling around the Retiro or marvelling art at the Prado, pues nada, the place rocks. A recent office debate decided that it was cheaper to leave London for the weekend than stay in it. I cannot think of a better weekend jaunt than Madrid and the perfect excuse would be for Hypersounds.

Hypersounds is a series of concerts, performances, installations and panels by artists based around sonic investigation, featuring experiments with “creative possibilities of sound and its various spatial, emotional and aesthetic interactions”.

The event will take place simultaneously over the 13th and 14th of November in five unique spaces in the two buildings of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

There are 20 planned activities – highlights include live performances by Various Production, Umfeld, Tender Forever and Shit & Shine, sessions by Spanish and international DJs and two sonic installations by the Dutch artist Edwin van der Heide.

The line-up also includes the Spanish premiere of ‘Amplified Gesture’, a documentary part of the latest David Sylvian release ‘Manafon’.

Easyjet flights from Luton (£70 return) + double room in the cool De Las Letras hotel right on the Gran Via (from £75) = weekend spend £220. Did we mention entry to absolutely everything at Hypersounds is completely free?

Adios amigos!

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NEON had the pleasure of spending Friday evening in the city of Leeds to meet local bloggers. The meeting was held at Azucar, a South American inspired tapas and cantina bar in Brewery Wharf. The bar is partly owned by Howard Marks who lives nearby but evidently does not blog as all we saw of him were publicity shots on the walls.

The meeting was hosted by Havana Cultura – the cultural initiative from Havana Club. We all checked out the impressive website, discussed their Twitter campaign (launches October 19th), the Gilles Peterson/Havana Cultura CD launch (October 26th) and upcoming Havana Club parties planned for Leeds and Manchester.

During the evening NEON met a wonderful group of people, discovered an amazing array of blogs and had a real insight into localised blogging. In the big smoke blogging is prolific; industries are created such as The Underground Restaurant thanks to ease of communication, bloggers are recognised, respected and remunerated such as the Dos Hermanos with their book deal and what started life as the Slutty Fringe music blog has now turned into a go-to culture and lifestyle site. It’s exciting and fast moving and possibilities are endless – we all know the Belle Du Jour story and next in line for blogger exploitation is fashion (just)teen Tavi.

It was obvious from speaking to local bloggers that the unique magic of localised blogging was the desire to nurture community rather than their respective sites. As well as producing excellent blogs with great content there is a overriding communal pride for Leeds and the surrounding area.

NEON hopes that this will not be left behind when these blogs will inevitably be swept up and pushed into the limelight as it is this pride that produces such honest and entertaining reads accessible to all, whether you live in Leeds or not. See our previous post for the hot list.

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