Hey All

A busy week.

Preparing for Wacken. Booking flights, buying a tent, looking at sleeping bags, downloading timetables etc.

I let slip to a label publicist that I was going over, and she set up an interview with a band that are performing. (Who am I fooling? I didn't let slip, I've been skiting on about it to everyone! I'm that excited about going.)

Other news: my left knee still shows a bruise and still hurts a little seven days after some Hardcore Fat Dudes™ shoved me over then nearly broke my leg falling on me in the moshpit at Converge. If it still bothers me in a week I'll think about running it past someone who knows about knees.

I saw The Dark Knight last night. Heath Ledger was amazing as the Joker.

I finished reading Consider Phlebas which was great despite the very obvious ideological imprint that Iain M Banks stamps on so much of his stuff. To be fair, it's a viewpoint I agree with for the most part, I just think it could be applied with a little more sublety.

Not sure what to read next, but I will have plenty of time to read over then next week: to catch the plane from Stanstead I'm going to take the last train on Tuesday so that I can catch the first flight on Wednesday. That means roughly six hours kicking back at the airport. Luckily the festival doesn't start properly til Thursday, so there will be plenty of time for me to catch up on sleep after getting to Hamburg, Hamburg to Wacken then setting up my tent etc.

Anyways, enough for now.

-J

Checking In

Last week was interesting;

Saturday I was invited halfway through the Dr Who finale to go to a Barbeque somewhere in North London.

Monday I interviewed a the lead singer of a Doom Metal band. The clips I saw in the internet show the band with bullet belts etc so I half expected that he would be a cliche hessian with nothing much to saw (hessian meaning none too bright metal fan, not a German Mercenary).

But he was actually very well read and a fan of a wide variety of music. Add to which even though I had originally only asked the publicist for twenty minutes to do the interview, we wound up talking for over an hour and three quarters. That's going to be a lot of stuff to transcribe, so I might just listen to it all and work out what bits I want to use.

Tuesday I saw the Red Sparowes who do a nice line in cinematic instrumental stuff (not sure whether it counts as Post Rock, Post Metal or Post Hardcore). That was all good fun.

Thursday somebody talked me into going to see a show at the Underworld featuring a drone metal band and a side project by a Hungarian black metal singer. Weird ambient demagogery. I think that the drone metal band might have blown up some of the house speakers at the venue.

Friday a friend was celebrating his thirtieth in a pub on Holloway Rd. Oddly though we only really used one room we had the whole pub mostly to ourselves, and it didn't make sense until someone mentioned that the pub had been rammed on Fridays until two weeks ago when some semi-famous kid was stabbed out the front. I hung out with friends afterwards, letting myself out when they all fell asleep.

Saturday attended a housewarming party in Golders Green (home of some really nice neo-baroque buildings) and then went on to other club things.

Sunday headed back to the Underworld for the first of two shows by Converge. Support band Integrity surprised me (I never was a fan of them on record), and Converge killed it. Unfortunately Converge had been caught at the airport or something so that by the time the delayed show ended the tubes had shut down. Cue a journey home on the night buses.

Other random things: wrote a synopsis for a short story. Sort of Epic Space Opera vignette (it's vertically epic) with a double twist. If I can figure out how to script it into three pages I might run it past friends to see if they think it's worth sending in as a Future Shock.

Finished Heinlein's Methuselah's Children. Started reading Consider Phlebas by Iain M 'Dammit, I'll write SF if I want to' Banks. It's slow to start but it picked up quickly and I'm enjoying it 160 pages in.

This week:

The usual stuff plus I'm going to try to get a Wacken ticket.

Over and out.

-J

Cult of Luna tonight, supported by The Ocean from Berlin.

Sweet.

More news as it comes.

Over and out,

-J