Memory of a Festival: 011.1: Festival Kinetik v4.0 – Phase 01

There were points over the weekend that perhaps, just maybe, I was thinking just how completely insane it was to fly a 6800 mile round-trip just to come to an industrial festival. And then there would be another moment that made it crystal clear that it was definitely the right thing to do. So, below […]

Memory of a Festival: 009: Infest 2010

I think it took until the dawn of this year’s Infest until I realised just how much I missed the festival in its year off last year. All it took was a few minutes of being back in (nearly) familiar surroundings, of which more in a moment, with various familiar faces of friends new and […]

Into the Pit: 090: Skinny Puppy – Live at The Forum – 18-July 2010

Long-lived bands in industrial music are nothing unusual – it sometimes feels like few of the big names in the genre have ever really gone away since the 80s – but to have a band still sounding as vital as Skinny Puppy frequently do is a rare thing indeed. This was the third time I’ve […]

/Tuesday Ten/103/Animals

I’ve been concentrating on elephants a lot of late, thanks to the elephant parade in London and my attempts to get all 258 on camera, something that I completed on Monday – see my flickr set for more detail (click on Impossiphant).

Into the Pit: 087: Rammstein – Live at Wembley Arena – 04-February 2010

I’ve at least started heading to gigs in 2010 rather earlier than I did last year, and I picked a good one to start with, too: Rammstein at Wembley Arena. I’ve never been to Wembley Arena before, and I’d not heard a lot to recommend it, either, with many stories of atrocious sound. Of course, […]

Memory of a Festival: 008: Damnation Festival 2009

This year’s variant was in the same location as last year’s very busy one, but with some much-needed changes to the way things were run. The good news, for a start, was that the stage times over the main two stages were at least partly staggered so that not everything clashed, and with a reduced […]

Into the Pit: 080: Three Trapped Tigers – Live at The Harley Sheffield – 19-August 2009

Last night took me to a small, back-of-a-pub gig for the first time in a long, long time. Those nice folk at Drowned In Sound have been running a small handful of “DiScover” gigs at The Harley in Sheffield’s university district over the past year or so, and this gig on the latest DiScover tour […]

/Tuesday Ten/070/The Sound of Summer?

Driving down to Cambridge on a warm summer’s day last Sunday got Daisy and I thinking about songs that we associate with the summer. Certainly, there are some songs that simply “work” better, or suit my mood more, when the sun is shining (and likewise similar happens with other songs during the winter).

Into the Pit: 076: IAMX – Live at Corporation Sheffield – 16-April 2009

Anyway, last night was my first attendance at a gig at Corporation in some time, for IAMX supported by KIK. After meeting up with friends in a nearby pub, we headed down late enough, so we thought, to be able to avoid support act KIK, who I’ve seen a fair few times before and wasn’t […]

Into the Pit: 073: Modulate – Live at thesubculture Leeds – 05-December 2008

Despite a slightly late and frustrating train journey – where two teenagers sharing an mp3 player were singing only loudly, and badly, to the chagrin of much of the carriage – I somehow got to the venue just in time to be in place as ESA came onstage, and the pounding beats of Your Blood […]

Memory of a Festival: 006: Damnation Festival 2008

Like what appeared to be all of the UK metal community, I headed up to Leeds yesterday for the long-awaited Damnation Festival, the biggest incarnation yet of the one-day metal festival that has had something of a nomadic existence over the past few years. The queue to get into the venue was huge at 1630 […]

Into the Pit: 064: Woolstock 2008 Day One – Live at thesubculture Leeds – 30-May 2008

As a result of an early deviation for food first, I missed both Action Directe and Uberbyte – of which both sets I’ve heard many good things about. My excuse for missing them? I hadn’t eaten all day, really, and I seriously needed that meal!