I believe in live music.  A live performance should always exceed the pleasure of listening to albums at home or even through a pair of excellent new headphones walking down a sunny street in Barcelona, which is where I found myself hooked on the psychedelic prog pop ensemble Moodoïd last week.

Having gained recognition through the involvement of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker in the production of their recently released EP, Moodoïd has embarked on a small tour of Western Europe.  The band’s London appearance at OhLaLA, a festival promoting up and coming French acts around the world (to the extent that headliners FAUST only communicated to the Village Underground audience en français) was an incredible sonic outburst of escalating intensity. The drums cut straight through my bones, while the eerie vocals, reminicent of something out of a David Lynch film, grew stronger and stronger with the slow build-up of the songs, somehow enhancing the other instruments. The sudden break half way through ‘Je Suis La Montagne’, barely noticeable on record, was as perfectly executed as it was powerful. Live music should remind you that you’re alive and Moodoïd’s electric, yet casual, Monday performance certainly did. 

Moodoïd’s eponymous debut EP is out now on Les Disques Entreprise.

I have fond memories of Custard Creams. They make me feel very nostalgic; just seeing one takes me back to being ten years old, sitting on a damp rock in the rain in a field with a thermos of tea on some godforsaken walk.

It’s funny that I’ve never thought to make them for myself – funnier still that I never imagined that the ingredients would actually include custard. This recipe from Good Housekeeping is offensively easy, and they taste even better than the real deal, especially when eaten hot from the oven. Plus there’s nothing more magical than the warm smell of baking custard spreading through your house.

Homemade Custard Creams

For the biscuit:

200g plain four
50g custard powder
1 tsp baking powder
75g caster sugar
125g unsalted butter
1 egg
1 tbsp milk

For the cream filling:

75g unsalted butter
25g icing sugar
2tbsp custard powder

One. First, make the biscuit. Put the dry ingredients in a bowl, and add the butter. Rub through with your fingers until crumbly and fine.

Two. Add the egg and milk, and knead together to create a dough. Add more milk or flour if it's too dry or wet.

Three. Cover the dough in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Four. Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper. Roll out the dough, and cut into small rectangles. You can use a guide to help (I used a small matchbox), or go wild and improvise.

Five. Bake them for 12-15 minutes. Be careful because they turn too brown very suddenly (the photos don’t show the first, more unsightly batch). Cool on a wire rack.

Six. While the biscuits are cooling, make the custard filling. Cream together the ingredients until smooth. Spread them thickly on the biscuits, sandwich together and devour.

Five Questions and a Song is the weekly column where we delve into the minds of musical talent and ask them to share one of their newest tracks with you.        

Swedish pop punk duo Vulkano is a dancing riot in a misty northern pine forest. Emerging from the ashes of indie act Those Dancing Days, Lisa Pyk-Wirström and Cissi Efraimsson decided to explore something much more primal. Sharing a vision of spirituality, mythology and mountains, the band has found a completely free flow of creativity which climaxes in their extrovert and turbulent live shows. But Vulkano is not just about music. The project is also an art, film and performance experiment inspired by Barbarella and 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the moment, they’re working on a psychedelic short film which will give fans a glimpse of the colourful Vulkano universe. Today, we’re talking to Cissi about the Vulkano spirit and the outburst of an angry Aquarius.

Photo: Vulkano

Tell us about your band.

We are two girls from Stockholm. Lisa plays the keyboards and I play the standing drums and sing. We always play live with a bass player. We play music to let our inner animals out.

When are you the happiest, musically?

The moment when I’ve written a new song and we play it together for the first time and realise it's amazing. Nothing can beat that satisfaction.

Who's the missing member of your band?

Andrew van Wyngarden from MGMT. He's a genius and seems crazy enough to suit the Vulkano spirit.

When was the last time you cried? [asked by previous interviewees Deap Vally]

When a friend yelled at me. He's an Aquarius and he wanted to know more about the sign, but when I told him he felt offended. I'm more careful now who I talk to about astrology.

What can you tell us about this song?

I wrote ‘Vision Tricks’ at a stage in my life when I felt my life was quite meaningless and superficial. Every day looked the same. I wanted so much, but it seemed like I couldn't make anything happen. The song is an appeal for something more, something bigger in life.

www.facebook.com/vulkanotheband

What do you usually receive in the post? Bills? Advantage card updates? The odd postcard from your grandmother in Spain?

Well, we’ve got something up our sleeves to put to right this woeful lack of Good Post. Our November care package project will ensure that everyone has the chance to give and receive something inspiring and unique in the post.

We'll pair you up with a stranger, and you'll prepare a package of surprises for each other. Each box should be a warming collection of gifts and ideas to brighten the grey days.

Here's what to put inside:

Something personal. Eg: a favourite family recipe, a good book you’ve just finished, a playlist of your favourite music.

An inspiring snippet. Eg: newspaper clipping, a photo or illustration you love, the lyrics to a song that strike home.

A wintry treat. Eg: a pair of gloves, your favourite tea, a mini hot-water bottle. The spending guide for each box is £10.

Be creative – if you include a letter you might even start a pen-friendship! Inject it with colours, scents, flavours; make something that you would be pleased to receive. Think outside the - dare we say it - box, and most importantly have fun.

How it works:

1. Put your name and address in this form by Sunday 27th.

2. We will email you with the details of your swap partner, and this is your cue to prepare the box! You'll have two weeks to do this.

3. Post your box off by Monday 18th November.

4. Take a picture of the box you receive and share it with us on Twitter (#OCswapbox) or Facebook.

The Ts and Cs:

1. We'll share your email address and postal address with your swap partner. 

2. Get a 'certificate of posting' from the Post Office if you're worried about the box you send not arriving.

3. If your box doesn't arrive, feel free to drop your partner an email reminding them. Ultimately, though, this is about the joyful risk of giving without the guarantee of return.

Hat tip to the Curiosity Project, who we got the idea from.

In this new series, Tamara Vos will take on popular packeted treats in an attempt to recreate them at home, for crispier or for soggier. She began with pop tarts.

Has anyone ever thought about making homemade Marmite? This thought struck me as I was standing in a queue at the supermarket, staring wistfully at a jar of the stuff in my shopping basket. After some research it turns out that it is (of course) quite possible, but the process takes ten days – not a feat for the faint hearted, then.

This idea inspired me though to see what other shop-bought treats can be made from scratch, and so this new series was born. Over the next few weeks I will trial and test recipes of well known brands, and see how they compare with the real thing.

The first recipe is one for Pop Tarts, those playful hits of warm sugar and colourful sprinkling. I did some hunting around and settled for a delectably simple recipe from the food blog Smitten Kitchen; all the ingredients should be kicking about your shelves, and the tarts are ready in a matter of minutes.

I found that my pastry was crisp and fresh whilst the shop-bought ones always taste slightly stale, and that the filling smacked of real, homey jam. Enjoy with a big mug of strong tea. 

Homemade Pop Tarts

For the base:

250g white flour
200g butter
Several pinches of salt
Tablespoon of sugar
Splash of milk
1 large egg, and extra for brushing
Cinnamon for sprinkling

For the jam filling:

Five heaped tablespoons of your favourite jam (we used raspberry)
Tablespoon of corn starch

One. Make the jam filling--put the jam, corn starch and a splash of water in a pan, whisk it all together and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for two minutes, then put aside to cool.

Two. Next, the pastry--mix together the dry ingredients, and then knead in the butter until nice and crumbly. Add the egg and milk and knead everything into a dough. Add more flour or milk if it’s too wet or too dry.

Three. Roll out into a thin layer, and then find something roughly pop tart shaped as your guide--we used a large match-box (or be boring and use a ruler). Cut into rectangles.

Four. Put half the rectangles on a greaseproof-papered tray, and brush over with a beaten egg (this will help glue the two layers together). Take your jam concoction from earlier and spread on generously. Be careful to leave a centimetre clear around the edges.

Five. Place the remaining rectangles on top, and then squash down the edges with your fingers so they are sealed. Brush over the tops with egg, then prick air holes with a fork and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Six. Switch on oven to 180 degrees. Whilst the oven is preheating, put the tarts in the fridge. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes, until golden brown.

After the pop-tarts have cooled entirely, you can make up an icing mix of icing sugar, water and food colouring of your choice (pink is the obvious one but we only had yellow in the cupboard). Make sure it’s nice and thick. Spread it over the top of the tarts, and sprinkle over some hundreds and thousands.

Designer, editor and researcher, Steve Kennedy is one third of Planetary Collective, a group of creatives making films that bring the lesser-told stories thrown up by planet Earth to the big screen.

Planetary's first film was Overview, a short documentary about astronauts' experience in space. They're following this with Continuum, which explores mankind's interdependence through interviews with anthropologists, environmentalists and social theorists.

Steve left his base in London over a year ago and has been travelling ever since, so I started by asking him about life on the road, and how he balances Planetary's film work with exploring the world's beauty spots.

You've been working while travelling for over a year. What's planet Earth like as an office?

The last film I edited was done in a tiny, dark room in South London, so it's a pretty massive difference. I've had desks that overlooked Brazilian Mata Atlantica jungle, vast Patagonian mountains and Balinese rice paddies.

But it's not gratuitous: every stage has been massively influenced by the people I've met, the stories I've heard, and the constant expansion of my worldview that has come about from travelling this amazing planet.

What's the story behind Planetary Collective?

About five years ago Christoph Ferstad, Guy Reid and myself got together to form a company that could devote itself to telling the stories we felt were most important in the world--and do it in a way that didn’t compromise on aesthetics and design. We come from different backgrounds, and all bring different skills to the table, but we’re united in believing in the importance of storytelling, the power of visual media and a desire to do something good in the world.

Was Overview the first project you worked on for Planetary? What's the background to the making of the film, and where did you first learn about the Overview Effect?

We had already made a few short documentaries, but Overview was our first serious short film. I heard about the Overview Effect when I was about 15 years old through reading Peter Russell’s The Awakening Earth, and was immediately struck by the idea of astronauts having profound, mystical-type experiences through seeing the Earth from space.

When we first conceived of our feature documentary Continuum we intended to use the concept as the opening chapter of the film, but we decided to also use the idea in a stand-alone short film as a means of raising funding and awareness for the project.

Can you give a little background into your interest in outer space? My impression is that you have a very interdisciplinary reading of it, one not limited to the scientific or astrological but taking in philosophy and literature, too.

It's funny how indifferent people can be about space--I know a few who are not interested in the slightest. And yet, as David Beaver says in our film, "We're in space already, it's just that we haven't brought that into our perspective as we live here on Earth." It's something that's relevant to all of us.

Frank White, who coined the term 'Overview Effect' explicitly calls for the development of a 'philosophy of space'. You might think it's jumping the gun since there is still so much to explore in terms of how we interact with the more immediate environment of our planet--psychogeography and ecopsychology are still fairly young disciplines. But I personally think we need a sense not only of how we are embedded in the world, but inseparable from the wider cosmos.

It’s a subject that runs across a number of disciplines, from astronomy and cosmology to mythology, literature and philosophy, and I try to devour them all.

What's the premise of your forthcoming film Continuum? How's work progressing on it?

Continuum is about the future of life on this planet. It explores where we've come from in a deep cosmological perspective, where we are now both as a species and a civilization beset by numerous interconnected crises, and where we might be heading in the future.

We've interviewed a number of highly intelligent, articulate, and amazing people, but the challenge in putting the film together as editor is to ensure the film is not one-sided or didactic: but rather open and contemplative. There aren't necessarily clear answers to many of the questions we're exploring in the film.

The whole journey has been far more amazing than we could have imagined, but is also taking longer than expected. There's still a lot to do, but it's starting to come together. 2014 is going to a big year.

Find Planetary Collective here, and follow them on Twitter.

Five Questions and a Song is the weekly column where we delve into the minds of musical talent and ask them to share one of their newest tracks with you.

New Norwegian psych-folk band Mona & Maria create harmonious melodies, reminiscent of the grand landscapes of their home country. The act, consisting of Mona Andersen and Maria Knudsen, releases its awaited debut album My Sun on October 21^st. Following the breakup of their former project Bazooka Boppers, the two of them felt the need to create something more personal. “We both had some obscure force inside of us waiting to burst out, and that made us experiment with harmonies. It became our way of bonding”, they explain. The result is a series of low-key and intimate arrangements with a grandiose and dramatic quality to them. We talked to Mona & Maria about their Ingmar Bergman-inspired cover and wanting to be recognised as a band.

Photos: Mona & Maria

Tell us about your band.

We are Mona & Maria and we combine punchy and dramatic arrangements with a stripped-down and intimate sound. Thanks for calling us a band! Most people refer to us as a duo, but we see Mona & Maria as a big family. At our gig at the Øya festival in Oslo, we were fifteen musicians on stage, plus a lonesome tree.

In what way has Oslo formed you as musicians?

We love Oslo, mostly because it’s where we both grew up and for the vibrant music scene and the nature. It’s all about the sea, forests and mountains. Many of our songs have been written on an island in the middle of the Oslofjord called Hovedøya and in a forest. We love the islands in the summer. Nature is massive.

What inspired the album cover?

The cover is inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s movie Persona. When Liv [Ullman] and Bibi [Andersson] slowly lose themselves and somehow become one person mentally. We felt that this was a strong visual expression we could relate to. This blurred-out picture of us reminds us of how similarly we often experience things, and that we don’t always recognise whose voice belongs to whom.

Is there anything you have to do while you're relatively young, or you will regret later in life? [asked by previous interviewee Son Lux]

No, not really. You can do anything. Write a song or a book, hang out with your friends, sleep with your boyfriend or give money to charity.

What can you tell us about this song?

‘My Sun’ is about feeling trapped in security and wanting something larger, but not knowing where to find it, and at the same time being terrified to lose what you’ve already got.

www.facebook.com/monaogmaria

The next issue of Oh Comely will feature a interview with Clare Stewart, the BFI’s Head of Exhibition and Director of the BFI London Film Festival.

Clare's unbridled passion for cinema is understandable given her job, so whilst chatting about the joys and headaches of running a major international film festival I was impelled to ask which films she was most looking forward to screening at this year’s festival. Here is her response.

Photo: Judi Dench and Steve Coogan in Philomena.

"Well, I suppose it's illegal for a festival director to have a favourite film--we love all our children equally--so what thrills me most about this year's festival is how much amazing British work there is. It really is such a strong year for British filmmaking. But then, while British talent inflects nearly every one of our main gala presentations, from Stephen Frears' incredibly moving Philomena to Steve McQueen’s devastating 12 Years a Slave, it’s exciting to look at the Official Competition section and see four films there by British directors.

Photo: Benedict Cumberbatch and Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave.

There’s David Mackenzie who has been very under-the-radar with his film Starred Up, an exceptionally powerful prison drama, which I really think is going to knock everybody’s socks off.

Or if you look at Jonathan Glazer, everybody’s been waiting ten years for Under the Skin, and it completely delivers. It’s an extraordinary, visionary piece of filmmaking.

Then there’s Clio Barnard and her film The Selfish Giant. Clio’s debut film The Arbor was so wonderful, and this one features absolutely knock-out performances from its young actors.

Photo: Conner Chapman in The Selfish Giant.

And finally there’s Richard Ayoade and The Double, which demonstrates his astoundingly coherent sense of cinematic style. Those four films alone would give you a lot to get excited about where British filmmaking is right now, but they're just the tip of the iceberg."

The 57th BFI London Film Festival continues this week. Visit bfi.org.uk for listings.