For the tenth time – I started writing a seemingly ever-expanding review of the annual festival in 2003 – here goes with my coverage of Infest rundown for 2013. As usual this is mainly covering each of the bands in turn from my point-of-view, with a few other opinions as we go, and I’m well […]
This weekend saw me back again to my previous home city, to attend the now annual Resistanz Festival, which joins the much longer-running Infest in now offering two major industrial festivals a year for the UK. Last year was broadly enormous fun, with a good mix of new and old bands, and I was looking […]
For my first new interview on amodelofcontrol.com in four years or so – I’ve only ever conducted interviews with bands on an “as and when” basis, if I’m being honest – I’ve thrown a few questions the way of one of London’s brightest prospects right now, Blindness. These were questions e-mailed to the band, and […]
There are your regular gigs, and then there are gigs that feel like something a little more special. Gigs that are worth going out of your way for.
My second visit to Antwerp for BIMFest – I first went last year, which was reviewed here – was once again enormous fun, featuring a city I’m now familiar with, friends old and new (and the usual crazy connections close to home), and of course a whole load of music, of which only a few […]
It has been a while since I’ve been able to attend a Blindness show – since February pretty much every show they have played I have been committed elsewhere, so once this show was announced, and I realised I had a clear point in my calendar, it was finally time to catch up once more.
Probably one of the weekends of the year I most look forward to is the August Bank Holiday Weekend.
Getting to see some of my favourite bands over the years really has been a trial. Either I’ve missed shows, been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or said bands simply don’t play the UK very often. The latter is the case with Primordial, who according to their gig history have only played […]
It isn’t often that it takes a band nearly ten years to reappear after a first album, without completely disappearing from view and/or being forgotten. But somehow, that is what has happened with Sulpher. Well, I say disappear, but what actually happened was that Rob and Monti in particular ended up working with other bands. […]
Last year, the first Resistanz festival in Sheffield was one of the talking points of the “scene” in the Spring, and due to family commitments that we couldn’t miss, we couldn’t make it. So, an early decision was made this time around to ensure that we would make it north this time, and return to […]
My horizons continue to expand to new venues, for me, anyway. In the past couple of years, since I returned to London, I’ve been to most of the smaller venues on the northern side now, and this gig took me to The Lexington, an Islington venue that is rather better than I thought it might […]
If nothing else, I couldn’t suggest that this night didn’t offer some variety in terms of the bands onstage. Going from garage rock, to political polemics, to deeply emotional, electro-rock. Kind of.
I’ve been following Blindness for a while now, and having picked up their debut EP a long while ago now (and promptly putting it in my best of 2010), seen them live once last year, I’m now making more of a concerted effort to see them live again – and this was the first opportunity […]
So for one final flourish this year, in a year where I have attended more gigs and seen more bands than I have done in a long, long time, I headed outside of the UK once again, this time for a weekend visit to Antwerp for the two-day, tenth-anniversary of BIMFest. Despite a grim and […]
It has been a while since I travelled this far for a gig in the UK. Let me explain: I love Front 242. And given the news that old friends of mine in Je$us Loves Amerika were announced as the support act for this Glasgow show, it was not a difficult decision to head north […]
In a flash, that is Infest over for another year already. A weekend that shot by – of fifteen bands, a good many DJs, many more friends new and old, some silly moments, some serious moments, a fair bit of wonderfully cheap booze, and whole lot of fun and silliness (and thanks to assisting Tails […]
By the time Monday dawned, I was starting to flag fast. To get through thirty-six bands – and to actually try and see all of them – while doing some touristy stuff and finding time for drinking in cheaper bars, too, is an exhausting enterprise, I can tell you.
As Sunday’s show began, it was plainly clear that the early bands were going to suffer from the same issue that Infest Sunday does – that everyone had a very, very heavy night the night before (myself included, although that was mainly because I was so buzzing following 242 that I couldn’t possibly sleep for […]
Just in case I thought this weekend couldn’t get any better or more fun, Saturday’s performances ended up being probably the finest day of live industrial music I’ve ever seen – and that was even with at least one act that I really, really don’t care for.
After a day exploring areas out of downtown Montreal (and having the wonder that is poutine from La Banquise), it was back to Metropolis for another evening of industrial music. And the Friday line-up was a pretty heavy duty one, too – including the two British acts on the bill.
