The road goes ever on

Hey All,

Just recieved some news from home. That being that my old band back in Brisbane just broke up. At least the band they were after they changed their name and got a new singer post my leaving.

I'm not really surprised, but I do feel a minor sadness about that.

As far as the reasons for them breaking up, as far as I can tell it came down to musical differences and personality clashes.

Two members wanted to follow a more extreme death metal direction, one member would have sided with the first two but he couldn't physically play the most extreme material, one member had too much of a preference to slower, more melodic parts and one member was effectively neutral.

I'll write more about this tomorrow.

Over and out.

J

Not my usual haunt...

But I'll blog from here.

Haff's Caff is closed for Christmas. Which is weird, since the owners and staff are mostly Muslims. Then again, not a lot of traffic in Leytonstone the last two days, so maybe they are right.

It's ten til ten, and yet again I have left myself less than ten minutes to write my entry.

It occurs to me that mayhaps this is a subconsiously deliberate strategy on my part to cover up the possibility that I don't really have much worth blogging about lately.

Being the case that I've been having something of an introspective time, kicking back at home, watching movies and brit comedies, reading magazines, doodling and only surfacing to buy food and check my email.

Christmas was a pretty damn low key affair for me. I SMS'd a few people and emailed everyone on my contact list that I though were worth emailing (apologies to anyone I forgot).

Come to think of it, apologies if I spelt apologies wrong.

Talked to family down the phone line to Australia, which was nice.

My Mother tried to get the cat to talk to me (ginger manx which can't sit still or be quiet) but the international phone thingo went all 8-bit and broke up.

Nevermind.

Looks like this joint is closing.

Over and out.

J

Another quick blog

Superquick.

Christmas Eve.

Not too cold. All is well. Might go to midnight mass. Or not.

Was reading SFX magazine last night and I found a four star review for Kim Wilkins new book.

Some of you out there might remember that Kim Wilkins put my face on the cover of one of her earlier books. I'll find a link when I have more time for those that don't.

I don't really have anything planned for X-mas day. I'm not the festive type.

Might see a movie, if I can find a theatre open.

Over and out.

J

Hey Ho

Not much worth posting.

I've been messing with sounds on the laptop. Sometimes I really wish that I could plug something into my brain to record the sounds that I'm hearing in there.

Of course, knowing me it would probably be intercut with all kinds of static like 'I'm really hungry. Pasta?' and 'Hmm, that girl from Channel Four News is really hot.'

But it's still a nice thought.

After belatedly discovering how brilliant Firefly as a show was, I'm mildly depressed by all kinds of reports that since Serenity didn't do so well at the box office a sequel in the Cinemas is unlikely, pending DVD sales.

So I'm going to tell everyone to buy a DVD of it.

Other than that, it's not too cold, I'm watching all this English Comedy on TV and laughing my ass off and it's dead on nice O'clock so I have to bug out of here (I went shopping for razors, fruit and hot cross buns before I came here).

Over and out.

J

Snarp!

Hey Everyone,

Haven't done much today.

Yesterday I found the complete Series Firefly DVD in HMV for under £20 (in Forbidden Planet, when I checked, it was about £35) so I snapped it up.

For those who don't know, Firefly is the SF television show that Joss Whedon developed as Buffy and Angel were winding down. It screened on Fox for a little less than a season and was pulled off air by the suits. As far as I know it never made it t0 Australian TV, certainly not terrestrial free-to-air.

Needless to say it became a cult classic, partially because Joss Whedon is such a genius for good TV that he could throw a typewriter down the stairs and still create a script worth watching.

Firefly pretty much existed below my radar until I saw Serenity (the big screen feature developed from the TV show) earlier this year and was blown away because Serenity is Fucking Brilliant.

Naturally the first thing I did was fire up my laptop and watched something like nine episodes straight. If you don't know how I could do that, you haven't seen the show. Alternately, you haven't seen me when something has really got my attention.

Explaining why Firefly is so good is a post all of its own, but a couple one particular thing I liked was the way the dirty spaceships would be shot descending to planets pouring black smoke and lurching around uncontrollably, as opposed to the obscenely clean Star Trek equivalents.

Other than that... a minor thing on Monday that had me scared:

I was on the Central Line heading west, and somewhere after Stratford I became aware that there was a clean shaven, clean cut looking young Asian man in the carriage. But what worried me wasn't how he looked, it was how he was acting.

This kid was twitchy. Nervous. He'd bit his nails. He'd get up, look out the window, pace, say something to himself, sit down etc.

This made me nervous. Possibly because sometimes I am a very stronger sender and receiver when it comes to other peoples moods (a trait which has led me to learn how to filter out as much of the outside world as possible when I have to - don't worry if this doesn't make sense, if you've never had to do it you probably wouldn't understand).

But mostly this chaps nerves made me nervous because nervous, muttering young arab men are some of the things that Israelis look out for whenever they are trying not to get blown up by suicide bombers. (not being an Israeli, I don't feel the need to do this often).

In any case, I jumped off at the next station, sweating every second of the way, and told one of the LU staff.

It is strange, because I am not the kind that gets worried about riding on Tubes. Why Monday?

Maybe it was just the watershed of all the stresses and fears of the previous two weeks.

I don't know.

Anyways, I'm out of time here.

Over and out.

J

Yesterday...

Yesterday was interesting in unexpected ways.

First of all, my Mother called my from Australia and told me a bout a book that she had found that extrapolated the principles of the Velvet Rabbit.

Naturally the mere mention of the Velvetine Rabbit managed to make me cry. Like I said, the fucking Velvetine Rabbit gets me every time.

She also forwarded some money into my account. Which was good, since I haven't worked in a while and I was down to beans and budget pasta. Though I did discover that Tuna from a can tastes really good when you mix it with Dolmio Bolognese sauce.

Later on, I was kicking around Leicester Square, thinking of seeing a movie, and someone gave me a flyer for a free standup comedy thing at a pub nearby. After hitting HMV and buying a Squarepusher album (which, when I listened to it today, was a little too jazzy and not mashy and chaotic enough) I headed to the pub.

Upstairs at the Red Lion I saw a couple of Comedians do short versions of their acts. And most of them were lousy.

But I did get talking to the hostess, and a couple of us had a drink at another bar in Soho afterwards. Turns out that in addition to hosting a couple of comedy nights, this girl also writes scripts for stuff.

Which interested me. Because I don't know if I'm terribly good at being funny myself, but I reckon I can write funny.

Anyways, after drinking with the comedians (which was a little surreal, for reasons I don't have time to explain here... maybe tomorrow) I took the night bus home and went shopping at Tescos.

The walk home was notable because even though it wasn't too cold (I could walk without my gloves on) there was frost on the cars and patches of ice under my feet.

Bizarre.

In any case, I have to go.

Over and out.

J

Dang!

Hey All,

As I said I would, I went to the Terrorizer Magazine Christmas Show.

Except a combination of me reading stuff on the internet too long and major SNAFUs on the Central AND Northern lines meant that I missed Leechwoman who, apart from having a terrible name, feature my friend and Terrorizer journo Alex B on bass.

When I managed to track him down he told me there were no hard feelings, since every man and his dog seemed to get stuck on the tube lines that night. Richie (another Terrorizer scribe) himself told me that he spent half an hour between Kings Cross and Camden Town. Which is usually about five minutes at the most.

Speaking of which, later on Richie was so impressed by my arguments regarding the diminishing returns of modern metal he and I swapped mobile numbers so that he could keep me apprised of any shindigs that he was organising, not to mention the New Years Eve at the Marlborough Head that him and others were planning. Nice.

The most notable thing about the show itself was that I took a bruising on the front row as the crowd went insane for Anaal Nakracht (spelling?). The band themselves were a studio concept fleshed out by the bassist and drummer from Napalm Death. Rather gratuitous violent and obscene images were projected onto a screen to the right of the stage, while a small TV strobed a slideshow of images best not described here. I thought that it was rather unnecessary since a) the band were able to hold their own in terms of stage presence, b) the Butthole Surfers did it much better in the 80s and c) U2 effectively killed the hole multi-media rock concert thing stone dead with Zoo-TV.

After the show, while I was hobnobbing around a bloke walked past me that looked just like Devon Townsend (of the Canadian extreme metal outfit Strapping Young Lad) with a beanie on. Not wanting to accuse another stranger of being Devon Townsend (I have done it in the past), I said nothing as he went past.

A minute later I wandered into the bar and a friend grabbed me: "Geez, this has been an amazing night. I just chatted with Devon Townsend!"

Oh well, can't catch them all.

On the matter of the Sydney Riots, John Howard displays again for all to see one of the reasons that I left Australia (ie John Howard IS A TOOL with complete lack of self awareness.)

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/nations-image-is-unhurt--pm/2005/12/13/1134236063912.html

I'm short of time, gotta go.

Over and out.

J

Harg!

Here's something that has been driving me mad while I've been sitting here:

Inadverting dubwars of embedded soundfiles playing on opposite websites.

It's happened to me twice today.

First time I had Adastreia's Myspace page in one window (which plays one of Adastreia's demos) and just for fun I had opened one of their friends' pages in another.

While reading something else (I tend to have a thousand and one windows open at once) I noticed that there were interesting layers of melody and female vocals happening, something I hadn't noticed before.

A second later I realised that said the friends page was playing a Within Temptation track, which was at the same tempo, rougly the same key and featured an Acapella part at the beginning.

Something I think would bother Hilary more than it bothered me, methinks.

The second time I was on the c8.com site listening to Breakcore MP3s of Fanny, the Scottish/Canadian ex-punk breakcore lunatic I mentioned previously, and I noticed that in the middle of a noisy, junglish part there was an ironic female vocal mixed in.

Bingo. Same page again. It has taken a minute to load the track so I didn't realise where it was coming from to begin with.

Speaking of the C8, I've realised that besides streaming the MP3's I can actually download them as well. And wouldn't you know it, today I didn't think to bring my little Flash Key with me.

Lately it's been coming everywhere. So many sounds and things to download.

Today I'm just seeking out arcane information and soaking it up.

Tonight is Lost and reading Kerrang and 2000AD and tomorrow is the Terrorizer Christmas Show at the Underworld, where I intend to do some subtle networking.

Over and out.

J

This Blog is Undercooked...

Take it back to the Kitchen.

Hey everyone.

I've been reading on the internet, in the chatrooms and on the newsites, about the stuff happening in Sydney. The Anglo-Saxon surfer race riots, the Lebanese kids with baseball bats and lead pipes smashing car windows and carrying Glock pistols, the whole nine yards.

Which is all pretty worrying, even if it is two fingers to every Sydneysider who thinks that Queenslanders are more racist than people from New South Wales.

Sure Queenslanders are racist. But people from Sydney are just as racist. Just like people from London are racist.

I hate to say it, but I almost miss Pauline Hanson, since while she was in the limelight she was a constant reminder of the vein of ill-educated colonial retardedness that runs like a river through Australian Culture.

But enough about that.

My ego demands that I talk about me.

Me me ME!

It occurs to me that I have neglected to mention that about three days ago the washing machine in my flat had developed a terrible lead. This is not too soon after I washed a load of jeans where the spin cycle sounded like a steel dragon grinding his teeth.

In between mopping feverishly, I did the only thing I could: I called my Landlady and pleaded for help.

My landlady, let it be noted, is a total champ and told me that she would sort out getting it fixed on Tuesday (ie today). Yesterday we established that since the leak was coming out of the washing machine and not the pipes, a plumber was not going to be any help. So the washing machine could be fixed or replaced. Since fixing the washing machine, including parts and labour, would be more than the machine was worth, she actually bought a new washing machine for the flat.

Which we took delivery of tonight just after six.

Neato. It looks like a slightly updated version of the old one. Hopefully it won't develope a leak any time soon.

The East European chap who installed it told me that when washing to put in no more than eight pieces if clothing at once.

What? That equals about four days worth of clothes. Roughly.

I guess I'll have to be a bit more frugal in the amount of stuff I put in there. Bear in mind that I was only loading it to about two thirds full, in any case.

Exciting stuff.

Oh yeah, I also went to the HMV and collected an address to send my CV to.

Over and out.

J

Hello, my name is Jason...

And I'll be your Blogger tonight.

After blogging last night I still felt like going out, but I didn't feel like a Saturday at Slimelight All-Nighter.

So I took the Central Line to Bond Street to go to the Marlborough Head. During the week the Marlborough Head is a rather gimmicky take on the Trad British Pub, but on Saturdays the Metalheads take it over.

On the way I looked in the window at a HMV on Oxford Street (I usually haunt the other end of Oxford Street, so this one was relatively alien to me). And to my surprise, they had a 'Seasonal Staff Wanted' up in the window. Nice. Hadn't spotted that one.

So tomorrow I'm going to head in there with a resume and pick up an application form. At this point I am exploring any and all avenues of employment, since money is starting to run really short.

Arriving at the Marlborough head it was full to the rafters with leather jackets and long hair. Some my tall skinny friend Mick was spinning some thrash-metal in the corner. And second surprise for the evening, I reckonised the members of DeadBeyondBuried, a technical-death meatl band from Romford, Essex that I saw playing with Adastreia at their second show. They were there with some ohters celebrating the birthday of a friend of theirs named Big Bill.

I'll mention the words Metal, Essex and Big Bill and let you use your imagination to fill in the mental image. Chances are, you're probably right.

Not to be disparaging, of course. I joined them, sipped coca-cola and chatted til it was time to head home.

Since we were all heading east we jumped on the Central Line.

Following the Herd, I jumped off at Liverpool Street, thinking that they were stopping to get food.

Nope. Changing for an overland train east.

Luckily I discovered that this train intersected with the Central Line at Stratford. So I jumped off there.

Most of the revellers were so drunk that they had been missed the train that the rest of us got on at Liverpool Street Anyways.

Tube to Leytonstone, walked home, bypassed the late-night-maccas (thinking of leather trousers) and home. Fiddled on the laptop, watched tv, went to bed.

I might have forgotten to mention it, but I am trying to thing of ideas for short stories I can sell to 2000AD. The FutureShocks etc.

I've been keeping a notebook of any and all ideas for stories that I've been having. Not a lot of stuff (in 2000AD I read that a professional Comic writer should have a dozen ideas for stories every day... that scares me) but it's building up.

In any case, Friday night I wrote a short treatment for one of the stories, and this morning I had an idea for another short story based on a sinister Knitting Club of old ladies.

Will write it down when I get home.

El, if you're reading this, take a look at this Flash Game.

http://www.samorost2.net/

It is kind of boring as far as games go, but the artwork is incredible.

I wonder, if I set myself a goal to write five treatments a week would I be able to meet it?

If you count it starting from Friday, that means I only have to come up with three more.

There's a thought.

Over and out.

J

Hey

The Sick and Twisted last night was pretty damn trippy.

There was a live laptop act with a stage name that doesn't bear repeating here that was absolutely bizarre.

I didn't do much dancing because over the last couple of days my right leg has been hurting, specifically in the hip and in the knee. I could facetiously say that I must be channelling my cat Elmo, who had a run in with a car once and still bears the orthopedic scars.

But it's probably just the cold.

I'm feeling down right now, but I was happy before.

A couple of weeks ago I read something about Adastreia playing a show somewhere in Essex, but tonight I can't find the entry saying where it was.

It doesn't matter, I most probably missed their set anyway.

I'm paying rent this week.

My landlady is coming over Tuesday because the Washing Machine has developed a terrible leak (part of the reason I was running late was because I had to mop up the water while a load washed. Fortunately I'm close to up to date with my washing).

I'll pay her then.

I think I've figured out an interim solution for my Kick problem.

I'll try it out tomorrow.

Over and out.

J

Hey

Sorry about the boring headlines this week.

I seem to be fresh out of wacky things to lead off with.

Anyways...

The last couple of days I've been messing with my laptop, trying to programme some noisy tekno silliness.

But I've been finding it frustrating trying to create the right Kick drum sound.

Ideally I'd like a big, booming distorted gabba kick sound. Refer: any ATR record etc.

But even if I take the 909 preset kit on Cubase and run it through a the stock plug-in set at the most ridiculous levels, the best I will get is just a lousy belch, sort of an 8-bit bottom-burp.

Messing around with some of that stuff I've managed to make a few loops of Merzbow sounding stuff (for those who don't know, Merzbow is a Zen-looking longhaired Japanese chap who spits out CDs of the most terrifying noise at an insane rate).

But Merzbow stuff isn't what I'm trying to do. At least not right now.

In any case, when I try to export the loops as WAV files so that I can drop them in and out, I run up against problem B: pushing the levels as hard as I have to get the right sound sounds okay when it is just MIDI, but when I try to push it into a WAV file it results in an irrititating popping sound at the beginning or end of the loop/sample.

Gadzooks.

I'll figure out a solution. It shouldn't be too hard.

Yesterday I tried trawling the interweb for a public domain sample of a Gabba kick, but the best thing I could find was under the Burping Kick column.

The grand irony was that if I wanted that kind of kick sound in the past what i would do was select the Hip Hop Kick from my SR 16, plug it into my sampler and run it through my Metalzone pedal. The sampler managed to play these thing without popping or clicking, and the overloaded input could actually create a nice distortion on its own.

I'll ask around at Sick and Twisted tonight to see what other folk use. Playing the numbers there should be somebody who has had the same trouble.

Over and out.

J

Hey all

Hey everyone.

Exciting news: I finally got my hair cut!

I was waiting in line to get it cut and I realised that I didn't have a before shot, but I realised that running home and taking one would just be more stalling.

Still, I think I might have a recent shot somewhere of me looking scruffy. I'll look on the laptop.

Enjoy the other photos.

Otherwise: same as usual.

Over and out.

J

Hey All

Hey Everyone.

The JR Ewing show was good but not mindblowing. The singer did too much preening, Howlin' Pelle style, for my liking and the sound was pretty lousy.

Other technical problems and crap support bands sucked the vibe of the evening away as well.

Yesterday I threw a whole pile of clothes into the washer, did some pushups and returned some library books.

Yep, after about a month and a half I finally finished The Naked Lunch. The weirdest thing about it was that William Burroughs could write very coherently at times, and a others...

After returning the books I discovered a HMV at the Stratford Centre Mall place. I am so sure that I have never seen one of those there before.

I finished off my evening by seeing Doom at the Stratform Movie Theatre.

Doom was okay, but not brilliant. I agree with the criticism by the gaming media that they effectively destroyed the true nature of the intellectual property by taking out all of the Supernatural Elements. Although it did look good on screen, I couldn't help felling like I was wathcing a parallel universe version of the Resident Evil Movies.

I did like the music, however. The end credits (which looked suspiciously like opening credits that someone spent a hell of a lot of money on then didn't like enough to put at the beginning) revealed the Original Music to have been provided by Clint Mansell, AKA Clint Poppie from Pop Will Eat Itself.

Today I have done/will do some ironing of the clothes I washed and I am plucking up courage to go get a haircut.

Don't ask me why, but getting my hair cut scares me more than going to the dentist. And I hate going to the dentist.

Over and out.

J

When we last left our hero...

Hey everyone.

I'm going to go see JR Ewing, a Swedish hardcore band, and yet another Swedish band that my Swedish housemate hasn't heard of.

Funny the way that works. I mean, I'm always meeting English Metal dudes who mention Australian metal bands I'm not really familiar with, but Sweden only actually has something like four million people and not a hell of a lot of geographic area.

Nevermind.

Holding up my progress is the combination of my resurgent interest in Gabba and Breakcore mixed with my discovery that there is a ridiculous amount of information about all kinds of obscure stuff on Wikipedia.com

So I've just been looking up articles on Gabba, Breakcore, Venetian Snares and pretty much anything else that I could find by following the links.

Also, I might have mentioned this yesterday, but Alex mentioned an internet site called c8.com, which is a node/portal for all kinds of electronic music stuff. Yesterday I found some photographs of my friend Lulu performing her Angle Grinder trick (if you haven't seen it, I'm not going to explain), today I explored the forums.

In any case, I really need to hustle.

If I can't get into the show, I'll go see a movie, something which I seem to do so much less than I ever did in Australia.

Over and Out.

J

Hey Everybody

Hey everyone.

Last night I headed out to Camden to hook up with my pal Dan, who had called me with a spare ticket to see The Young Gods, a Swiss Industrial Dance trio who were playing the Barfly.

I arrived just a little late and drank a pint with Dan at the World's End. Then we headed to the the venue for the show, The Barfly.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, the Barfly is actually a pretty small space.

It was, however, only half full when the support band, Radar, played. They were studentish, slacker/hipsterish, sometimes dubbed out, sometimes gurbling digital approximations of digital synths were employed. Dan and I watched their set, unable to decide whether or not they sucked. Other folk were not so kind, leaving the upstairs section and heading for the bar downstairs.

Fortunately their set was over soon enough, and Dan and I were able to get a position up near the front. The roadie/manager whatever for Radar aided in tearing down the stage, while The Young Gods, some of whom seemed to be disguised as roadies, set up their keyboard, drum and microphone (apart from some very minimal guitar, these were the only instruments used during the set).

The Young Gods show itself: They looked older than I imagined they would, even if I had seen their faces in the most recent Terrorizer issue. But they still put on a really good show. The keyboardist triggered the sampled guitar riffs and extra percussion (though I do suspect that they were using some kind of sequencer on some of the baselines). The drummer initially looked to lack some animation, but his faultless accuracy more than made up for his minimalist approach. But the thing that pulled it all together was vocalist Franz Treichler, who was an absolute live-wire on stage and in possession of a voice the convinced all that we were in the presence of something special.

I loved it, and not ever the violent dancing of a diminuitive bleach-blond twerp could ruin the show for me.

After the show Dan and I wandered to his busstop, chatting away about stuff. Apparently his new boss/employer is a multimillionaire or something.

I felt that the evening still had some fun left to find, so I took the tube to Angel Station, which was a short walk from Electrowerks, the venue for Slimelight.

It was just after midnight when I got there. It would be about half seven when I would leave.

In that time I: chatted to my friends Callum and Denni, who I knew from Strength Through Joy; but the real highlight of the night for me was to chat at length to Alex Boniwell, whom you might remember is the ever approachable organiser for Breakcore/Gabba/IDM night Sick and Twisted, as well as being a sometime contributor to Alternative London and Terrorizer Magazine, as well a a reliable vinyl pimp for artists I should pay more attention to.

He was at Slimelight to put up posters for the transition of Sick and Twisted from a Monthly night hosted upstairs at the Garage to something a little less frequent, probably at Electrowerks.

His reasons for doing this broke down to two main memes: first of all, he has been doing Sick and Twisted as a Monthly thing for five years now. A change is a good as a holiday.

Secondly: The Garage is part of the Mean Fiddler Group, and the Mean Fiddler Group are being bought out by Clear Channel, a Right Wing Media Conglomerate from America that effectively make Rupert Murdoch's empire look like Pravda.

Alex being a man of principle, he is not going to operate under such a system.

Besides that, I got to swap notes on the Locust Shows and trade stories of brutally editing reviews to meet word limits. He also pointed out some useful Internet Resources and confirmed for me that Hardcore and Gabba were indeed two different kinds of electronic music. I had previously assumed that they were two names for the same thing

After Slimelight: it was Sunday by this point. Took a walk around Angel. Took the tube to Camden. Raided the Camden Markets for warm clothes. Bought a Hoodie and and some T-shirts. And I also found a stall selling leather trousers for £15. Considering the best price I've found before was £80 (at another market stall in Covent Garden) I picked out a pair my size and tried them on. Pretty damn tight, but I could get them on, so I bought them.

Guess I'm sworn off cheeseburgers for a while.

In any case, it is 7 PM and the net cafe is closing around me.

Judge me not too harshly for my fashion crimes.

Over and out.

J

Damn!

Damn!

I had a nice long post going about my adventures in the past 24 hrs. And then Explorer crashed.

So rather than retype the whole lot I'm going to give you the whistlestop version (which I should have in the first place):

Train to Brighton: Went nicely. Southern Service trains now have WiFi. Didn't have my laptop, but I will make a note to bring it along next time I take the train to Bognor Regis.

Finding Venue: Easy. Had plenty of time. The train station isn't too far from the Lanes.

The Venue itself: didn't really have a stage, so all the bands had to effectively perform on the floor. Hardcore!

Gig Highlights: Chatting with Bobby Bray (guitar) and Gabe Serbian (drums) from the Locust before their set. Bobby is pretty chilled. Ditto Gabe. Strange that the people who play the most aggressive music are so often like that. By extension of the pattern, Kenny G must be a right surly thug.

The Locust Set: slightly different to the Monday Night set, still with absolute craziness interspersed with spaced out Moog drones. This time I had the forsight to buy some earplugs. Because the band were set up at floor level the overexcited and surprisingly young studentish crowd frequently nearly spilled over the band's equipment. No crowd surfers though. Thank God.

Paradoxically the band seemed to run overtime, as the management turned on the house lights for the last two songs.

After the show I chatted a little with Moog-ist Joey Karam as he bundled up cables and stuff. I told him that my sister Elea, on hearing Plague Soundscapes, declared that The Locust sounded like a computer exploding.

He considered that high praise.

Security bundled everyone out.

Post show:

Stupidly, I decided to kill time till the train back to London at 0500 by taking a walk alond the Boardwalk. It was stupid because I broke my cardinal rule of walking along a beach in Britain: don't walk with the wind, because you'll have to walk against it when you walk back.

Especially when there is a brutal gale behind you and there is rain gathering, ready to start coming in horizontally when you've already reached Hove.

Walking back towards Brighton I managed to a) freeze my face and b) get my jeans wetter than I really wanted them to be. Fortunately the layers I was wearing, not the least my leather jacket, saved me from getting total hypothermia. Without these layers I would probably have Pneumonia by now.

The next three or four hours I spent cursing my stupidity for allowing myself to think it would be fun to kill time in Brighton between Midnight and Five AM When it was so clearly likely to be cold and wet. At the same time I was completely disinclined pay for space in a hostel when I was only going to be there for a few hours.

For those wondering: yes, I did nearly freeze to death. And yes, it was completely stupid.

What did I prove?

I think I proved that I have no interest in ever being homeless.

In any case, after chilling in doorways and anywhere dry and safe that I could find, plus having a look at the beach, it was time to take the train back to London.

Train to London. Tube to Leytonstone. Leytonstone to a warm bed.
.
.
.
I just told Haff the story of what I did last night, since he mentioned that I look really, really rough. He thought it was an insane thing to do. I agree.

In any case, I think tonight I will buy some food and maybe go see a movie.

Gus: you oughtta love this, since you were such a big fan of Daphne and Celeste:

http://www.badhorsey.net/whos_in.htm

Final notes: I am glad that I went to Brighton. I saw lots of cool buildings, met some cool people, saw a composer working in his home studio in his flat in the basement of one of those swanky looking buildings that line Brighton Beach and above all, I got out of London and saw a cool band. Again.

And I discovered the sheer stupidity of going somewhere without having somewhere warm to sleep before you get there.

I am such an indoor cat.

Anyone who wants to write to me to chide me for my folly, you probably already know the address.

(yes, I know I could have possibly crashed with Jacqui or Aunt Mary. The show wouldn't have finished til after midnight and I didn't want to bother them. That's me. Polite to a fault.)

Over and out.

J

Ha!

Hey Everybody,

Due to compatibility issues I haven't uploaded the better version of the HellorHighWater logo.

I did, however, have a look at Angus' new car on his Flickr site.

A green Audi.

And I'm green with Jealousy.

Oh well. At least something around here is green.

I mentioned that I saw The Locust on Monday night and I felt Dissatisfied?

Today I'm going to take an overnight trip down to Brighton to catch another set of theirs, just to make a comparison. I have a map showing me where the venue is in relation to the train station and the address of a reasonably priced hostel located nearby.

Besides, I haven't been to Brighton in Way Too Long.

Other news:

Everyone seems to like my HardOns review.

Which is good.

I'm pretty much out of food at home, which just means that I need to buy some more.

Which is neither here nor there.

More news as it comes.

J