Last week actually marked a significant milestone in my music fandom – 20-July was exactly twenty years since I first attended a live, professionally promoted gig. That first show, by the way, was the (free) Heineken Festival in Roundhay Park, Leeds – I went to two days of it. The Thursday night I saw Back […]
After last year’s exhausting run of gigs, 2013 was even crazier. I saw 66 days of gigs – seeing nearly 160 live sets in the process, in three countries, six different cities and including three festivals. What was interesting, though, was that maybe I hit saturation point this year. While there were a handful of […]
Part four of my 2013 rundown – and this was a difficult list to do. Very difficult. And for the first time in a number of years, it took until the last week to finally decide once and for all on the top five in particular.
2013 has been a really, really strong year for music.
It has been noted recently that there have been a dearth of “club” shows in the industrial scene, at least in the UK, of late, with pretty grim predictions for 2014, too. But in the meantime, there have been the odd show to restore faith somewhat that strong bills can occur, with support acts as […]
Of the industrial scene’s great survivors (FLA, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, KMFDM), all four have now been active for over 25 years, and aside from 242 (who seem happy with revisiting their past with admittedly amazing live shows, which is no problem for me – I’ve seen them five times in the last five years […]
As Infest 2013 looms this weekend – and with the announcement that there won’t be an Infest in 2014, either – I’ve decided that it is time to look back at the twelve Infests I’ve attended previously (I’ve been to every one since 2000, and of course there wasn’t one in 2009).
Amazing how time flies – the beginning of next month marks ten years since I started blogging, so the corresponding post next month may be slightly different to usual. In the meantime, here are ten songs you should hear from the past month – with, for the first time in a while, a heavily industrial […]
I’ve looked at this kind of thing before, but from a different viewpoint (/024/Changing Direction), where bands changed direction decisively for what they would likely protest is “artistic reasons”. I’m taking a different tack this week, and it is inspired by a few things (like many of these posts, they are frequently in the works […]
So…I’ve looked at the best gigs, live venues, and gigs at the London Astoria, bands at Infest, bands I’ve *not* seen live…but I’ve never had a look at live albums, somehow, as my girlfriend pointed out last week.
Front Line Assembly’s lengthy career has seen them take a number of turns, adapting their own sound and co-opting others as members of the band changed, with varying degrees of success. Their initial industrial sounds evolved enormously as technology progressed, took in all manner of metal influences in the nineties – arguably resulting in their […]
A couple of years ago, I posted the best of the 90s, and the best of the 00s, from my point of view.
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 […]
A good year for music, so here’s twenty albums I think were great this year.
The use of sampling in music has been around for some time now, and at points the use of it has approached levels of extraordinary musicality and ingenuity. At other points, of course, it’s been used in obvious, unsubtle ways – and as a result frequently becomes something of a monster hook. And why not? […]
Hearing one of these tracks (Nena, since you ask) at, of all places, a friend’s wedding reception, got me thinking about songs about nuclear war or nuclear weapons – and not to mention that the past week saw the 65th anniversary of the only two uses of such weapons in anger (over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, […]
I’ve recently been raving about Concrete Lung‘s debut EP (my 9/10 review here), so I have been keen to see them live to see how it translates in the live arena. Happily, the answer is resoundingly positive.
Start of the month, so another quick roundup:
Following on from Tuesday, here's part two of my 90s albums rundown. This is fun, even if a little time consuming – and it's reminding me of songs I've not heard in a while, in some cases. As per Tuesday, there is a Spotify playlist accompaniment once again, with no omissions this time.
Last but one – those just outside the top twenty.
