fairygodmotherlicker

Between then and now.

Eduardo Monteaz - either failed to kill us all, or (more likely) didn't bother trying.  Also didn't reveal his true identity, leaving us all to endure a thoroughly pleasant evening of eating, drinking and talking bollocks.  The bastard.

Track slag - we fitted more red bits to make it go faster.

We haven't had an opportunity to see how much faster the new springs and anti-roll bars actually make it go; but the lower ride height does make it easier to access disintegrating bits of engine, so it's still some sort of progress.

Mouses - due to Megatron's increasingly more psychotic tendancies, he and Barton went through a trial seperation.  This was followed by a very brief trial reunion, followed by a permanent separation.  Stupid mouses.

Gigs 'n' that - many.  Harvey Milk, Trash Talk, Bastions, Kylesa, Eyehategod, Baroness, Karma To Burn and countless support acts.  It's been a tinitus filled couple of months.

Toy soldiers - more orkses happened.  My stormboyz were so cripplingly bad at the doubles tournament that I decided to paint a few more.

Kommandos cost almost twice as much as normal boyz without being very much better, so they're a must.

A few extra nobz give me more options when it comes to deciding what to waste my points on.

And a trukk should allow my warboss and his drinking buddies to get almost twice as far across the board before they get exploded to pieces.

Next on the list of things to do; lootaz.

And that's about it.

Oh, except for the fact that I'm living in New Zealand for the next three months.

gnome mercy

Has been while, so bullet points.

• Work

Still not been fired yet, so I guess it's going okay.  Spent much of the last month away on training in such exotic locations as Toulouse and North Wales.  Plans to spend the final quarter of the year on secondment to a maintenance, repair and overhaul outfit in Canada were scuppered when they selfishly went bankrupt.  Now I'll have to go somewhere even more sinister and foreign.

• Gigs

Many.  Helmet toured to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their seminal Meantime record; they were excellent, but I was crap and spent much of the gig standing way at the back trying not to black out.  This was just after the trip to Toulouse, so I'm going to assume the dastardly French poisoned me somehow.


Thankfully my iron constitution meant I was fully recovered in time for Meshuggah the following week.  Support was provided by We Are Knuckle Dragger, who made a delightfully shambolic clattering noise; and Animals As Leaders, who were astonishing.  Tough acts to follow; and of course Meshuggah absolutely killed it.  And almost killed me as well, when I collided hard with some other guy and cut my head open... the next day I had to get three stitches and a tetanus shot.

A powerful show indeed.  The following night we saw Pelican at the Cooler.  It's been a while since I've seen these guys, and I'd forgotten just how massive they sound live.  First support was Death Of Her Money, which was a very pleasant surprise; second support was Black Elephant, whose bluesy classic rock shtick seemed more than a little out of place between the vast swirling post-whatever majesty of the other two.  They played well, I guess - just not my thing.


And then a couple of weeks ago we managed to catch Nedry playing the Croft, in all their dubsteppy bjork-esque indie electronica glory.  Since we saw them last (supporting 65daysofstatic a couple of years ago) frontgal Ayu's vocals have got even stronger, while her dancing has stayed exactly the same - she still has all the  rhythm and grace of a toddler that's had too many fizzy drinks.  And she still dances better than me.

• Mouses

Are both still alive, but Megatron is doing his best to rectify this situation by annihilating all that stand before him (ie. Barton).  Conventional wisdom (or whatever passes for conventional wisdom on the internet) suggests that they should either be separated, or not separated.  Thanks, internets.

• Weddings

Matt (who has never traded in Nazi war memorabilia) and Laura have decided to merge for the kill.  Good for them.  Displaying an uncharacteristic lack of judgement, Matt has asked me to be his best man; now I have to work out the best way of working his failed career as a car thief into a speech that will surprise and delight his family and in-laws.

muchos rock qualitat principal

The worst thing about the doubles tournament came at the end of the event, with the creeping realisation that we all had to go back to be being grown-ups the next day.

Thankfully I didn't have to play at being a grown-up for long, as at the end of the week there were gigs. Lots of gigs.

Friday

Decapitated, supported by Aborted and some other band I can't remember the name of. All very death metal. The band with the forgettable name favoured a guitar tone that sounded like white noise; but they did have a cool bastard of drummer who gave not a single fuck. Aborted sounded less dreadful, and Decapitated were amazing; but I don't remember much as by this point me and the guys from work that I went with were sufficiently full of beer and metal that dancing seemed like a good idea. And so it was that I spent the evening throwing down alongside a Cambridge graduate and a doctor of engineering. It was a good time, and the many many bruises are still fading.

Saturday

Earth, supported by Ô Paon and Mount Eerie. Ô Paon was a delightful little Canadian one-girl band, with a million loop pedals and lots of pretty songs with French lyrics. Mount Eerie was also a one-man band, but to me he was more reminiscent of this guy. Earth were probably the weakest that I've ever seen them, but even an average Earth gig is pretty awesome. It's not that they played badly at all; I just prefer the stuff they were doing a few years back, when all the desolate country drone had more of a bitter doomy edge to it. The newer stuff just seems to slowly and repetitively build and build and stop without ever really getting anywhere...

Sunday

Mark Lanegan Band, supported by Creature With The Atom Brain. CWTAB were kinda cool. They had the kind of songs that had a verse chorus bit at the start just to tick the box and act as a precursor to spiralling psychedelic desert blues jams. Nice. Mark Lanegan and his band pretty much just stood there and played their songs; but they're great songs, so that's fine.

Monday

Bastions, supported by The Break Out, BatsAboutBats and No Omega. One of those quality gigs in a dingy little venue where the bands play to a crowd consisting mostly of the other bands, one man and his dog. And each of them went out there, played like it was their last night on earth and totally fucking killed it.

Tuesday

The Acacia Strain, supported by TRC and Brutality Will Prevail. To be honest, my main excuse for turning up to this one was to see Metal Terry, my erstwhile and often flaky gig buddy. A good few years have passed since I last saw him, and it was nice to catch up. Meanwhile, the aforementioned bands played hardcore by numbers for kids with flailing arms and conspicuously clean trainers. The stench of testosterone hung heavy in the air, and there was much posturing and chest beating and commands for the crowd to go fucking crazy... it was all kinda gay.

Still, five gigs in five days is pretty good going - although I seem to be paying for it now, as my humours are all out of whack. Time to peruse the leeches aisle in the local supermarket, methinks.

skwee bop

Thanks to my lack of ability as a stress engineer and mind-reader, the last few weeks of work have been somewhat slightly stressful. Thankfully I had the opportunity to have all conscious thoughts smashed out of my tiny skull with some powerful gigs.

Thought-smashing was achieved most ably by the mighty Napalm Death and a trio of support acts with generic death metal names. One of them played a song about working in a fast food restaurant ("this one's called Whopper Slavery"); the next band played a song about TV presenter Noel Edmunds. It looked/sounded like this.

And then old-enough-to-know-better Brummie death-grind behemoths Napalm Death took to the stage.

Everything after that is a bit of a blur, but I woke up the next morning with ringing ears, countless bruises and an overwhelming urge to buy everything they ever did ever.

Nine days later I found myself limping back to the same venue for something far less abrasive. Support came from Mojo Fury, a band I saw supporting And So I Watch You From Afar earlier in the year. They were much as I remember them; which is to say that they were jolly good, but rendered utterly forgettable by the sheer brilliance of the main act. The main act in this case being Amplifier, a band that has been continuing to release superb records for some years in spite of the fact that almost no-one seems to buy them. What they play could be described as prog, but without all the flute solos and songs about hobbits; instead they go for big riffs, cosmic guitar effects and two-disc concept records about a dark matter trading space octopus.

I realise I'm probably not selling them particularly well. Trust me, they're awesome.

Behold.

In between all this awesomeness, I did something that I am not terribly proud of.

I played Dungeons & Dragons.

In my defence, I only did so in order to fulfil a promise to my good friend The Lieutenant Commander (known formerly as The Lieutenant), who will be soon be spending much of his time in a submerged tin can firing missiles at unspecified patches of land.

D20's were rolled. Booze was consumed. Our bold party of adventurers displayed a remarkable talent for rampaging off on wild goose chases and getting beaten up by local small time gangsters. Our monumental ineptitude ensured that the baddies won and the nobility of an entire city were burned to death by religious zealots.

And then I died and got reincarnated as some kind of gittish Mr Tumnus.

Magneto is gay

So I bought a new bike on the Friday afternoon; and by Monday morning it was stolen. At two and a half days, that still only makes it my second shortest period of bicycle ownership.

Sigh.

The sense of impotent blinding rage abated somewhat on the Thursday when we went to see the very excellent Reginald D Hunter; and abated further still when a guy in my office offered me the use of his mountain bike, which he had bought a year ago and used three times since. The rage returned the next day when I found out that his bike weighs more than the moon, and is actually slightly worse than the aids bike (which was also stolen); but was then almost obliterated entirely when I went to see the Melvins that same night. And then the rage came crashing back a few days ago when the chain on the shite bike broke at the top of my road and left itself in a neat line on the road behind me; and I realised that I was going to have to buy a new chain for a bike that I don't own because EVERY BIKE I'VE OWNED IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS HAS BEEN STOLEN.

I have resolved to keep listening to the Melvins until everything feels better.

...and then we went to mauschwitz

Oh well.

Either side of getting the mice taken care of were gigs, mighty gigs. The first was YOB. Support came from Dark Castle, who were nice and doomy but somehow lacking something; and then Kongh, who sported some powerful Viking face hair and played a set that sounded like a musical timeline of the first ten years of Electric Wizard (this was, broadly speaking, a good thing).

And then of course, YOB themselves. On record, these doom metal titans sound like they are smashing their guitars together to create the sound of the universe exploding very noisily and in slow motion. Live, they were much the same; except louder, and with more tattoos and hair. Thanks to the hypnotic nature of their psychedelic rumblings (or possibly all the Red Stripe), I don't remember much of what happened; but I'm pretty sure that it was awesome.

And yet somehow still not as awesome as Enablers the following night. The gig took place at the Cube Microplex in Stokes Croft, a curious little tumbledown independent cinema run by beatniks in non-ironic cardigans who found the business of mixing drinks somewhat challenging. Support came courtesy of Beginnings and Finglebone, who were each perfectly lovely in a guitar noodling wall of delay sort of a way. They were rendered completely irrelevant the moment that Enablers took to the stage, and all conscious thought was obliterated by gravel-throated reflection and loathing, swirling tendrils of post-doom guitar, and the creeping realisation that my gin and tonic had been made with lemonade.

Not the gig we went to, but...

Just super.

Shame the mice had to die.

cumulonimbus

Went to see The Death Of Her Money at The Croft last week. I didn't get to see them straight away, of course; there were the obligatory support acts to wade through first.

First up was Pus, who were loud. Loud and to the point. Loud and to the point and thuggishly sludgy. Thudgy? Sluggish? Probably the second one. For the first thirty seconds it made some sort of terrible brutal sense, but after a minute or so it was starting to get tiresome. Then they played for another twenty minutes.

But then came Winston Egbert, who were charming. Self-proclaimed underdogs of 80s thrash, Winston Egbert are a boy/girl duo where the girl plays drums and the boy plays guitar and they both do a bit of singing. Kind of like The White Stripes. Except that they sound nothing like The White Stripes. Because they play 80s thrash.

Jesse Ventura (not to be confused with Jesse "The Body" Ventura, American wrestler and 38th governor of Minnesota) were apparently playing their first ever show, but looked like they'd been doing this kind of thing for years. It was all very reminiscent of Gay For Johnny Depp's homoerotic hardcore - they even had a song dedicated to "a man that's important and influential in all of our lives, and surely all of yours too; Patrick Fucking Swayze." Ones to watch.

And finally The Death Of Her Money, who were of course spiffing. I first/last saw them almost three and a half years ago, in what used to be The Junction, and dimly recall them sounding a bit like Isis and/or Pelican. On reflection their seismic riff dirge is more comparable to Godflesh without all the mechanical sounding frippery, but in truth they don't sound like they're trying to sound like anyone else; TDOHM have carved out their own doomgaze niche, and are bloody masters of it. Good stuff.

Meanwhile, it was my last day at the Big Gay Department Store last weekend. It is, in every sense of the word, the gayest place that I have ever worked. I think that I shall miss it slightly... but I start my new job at the end of September, and in the meantime I could use a few Saturdays off for things like sitting around in beer gardens, going on holiday and moving house.

We got keys to the new place on Tuesday, but don't have a van until tonight - so there has been very little moving of stuff. Instead we have been playing an odd version of Tetris using bits of squared paper cut out into the shapes of items of furniture.

If only we had spreadsheets and gantt charts to go with it all, Matt would be really proud of us.

And so that is, pretty much, it.

Assuming of course that I haven't utterly fucked up one, some or all of the exams/bits of coursework that have yet to have marks published. Which I probably haven't, but optimism was never one of my most defining characteristics.

In the meantime, my days are now largely filled with cups of tea, miscellaneous toy soldier tinkering and playing games of Blood Bowl against an artificial intelligence that only lives up to 50% of its job title.

And now: bullet points. You love 'em as much as I do. Don't even try to pretend otherwise.

• Gigs 'n' that: went to rather a lot of very splendid electronic music recitals whilst I should have been too busy with other more important things. Amongst others I saw Keelhaul, Knut, Zonderhoof, And So I Watch You From Afar, Shapes, earthtone9 and Humanfly. All of which were awesome, even if at the ASIWYFA gig I got kicked in the jaw so hard that I couldn't eat properly for two days.
• Moved house. The mice and I are now lurking about in the Nerd Tower with the Pixie and Dom. Which is great, except that this particular bit of Bristol (Westbury-on-Trym) is like one gigantic assisted living community. I am literally too loud for this place; so as soon as we can find somewhere else that we can all agree on, I shall be moving again. This may take some time.
• Much to the surprise of everyone - not least the mechanics who tested it - the track slag passed its MOT, needing only a replacement pump for the windscreen washers. Coolest advisory ever: "Interior stripped out, no rear seats or seat belts fitted." Like we might not have noticed... Looking forward to another full year of near-death motoring.

• We finally won the pub quiz again last night. For over a year the Luncheon Club has been dedicated to the destruction of noble gases (apart from a single week, in which we attempted to make reparations with noble gases). Now we can pick something even more inexplicable/pretentious/nerdy to destroy.
• Finished painting my Chaos Blood Bowl team in between endless/pointless finite element analysis simulations of suspension wishbones. I'd always wished that Matt liked Blood Bowl as much as I do; and now my wish has come true. I hate Blood Bowl. My Chaos team has so far proven itself to be awful at every aspect of the game, and is firmly planted at the bottom of our league table behind teams run by war criminals, sex pests and Victorian moustache wax connoisseurs. Friday games nights are now characterised by despairing sighs, the urge to drink heavily, and frequent use of the phrase BLOOD BOWL IS CUNT. Despite this, I still secretly love Blood Bowl; and I'm quite happy with how my new toys look.

• Got turned on to an epic dubstep re-working of Jeff Wayne's musical based on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. AWESOME.

we've got another clog in the torso chute

Still very much mired in coursework. But it's infinitely better than being struck by earthquakes, tidal waves and nuclear meltdowns; so I'm keeping some sort of perspective about it.

Found the time to attend a couple of electronic music recitals in the past few weeks. First up was yoav at the good ship Thekla. A curious proposition, in as far as the band consists of one guy (yoav), an acoustic guitar, and so many loop stations and effects pedals that he had at his feet more computing power than was used to send the first dog into space (probably). The resultant folktronica made for quite pleasant listening, even if every song had to be started with a bizarre sequence of slapping, tapping, strumming and occasionally murmuring into the guitar as he set up his pick 'n' mix selection of noises. The only real fault with yoav was that he wasn't Electric Wizard.

Later that week I went to see Electric Wizard. Not straight away, of course; first there was the obligatory support act to endure. I wasn't feeling especially enthused by the prospect of seeing a Norwegian band called Devil - the whole thing had more than a whiff of corpse paint and burning churches. My hopes were lifted slightly when I noticed that they were selling cassettes at the merch table; and then dashed completely when they took to the stage and revealed themselves to be little more than a Scandinavian pub metal band with a vocabulary gleaned entirely from Black Sabbath records. Ludicrous black metal would have been preferable, as it turns out.

Thankfully they were reduced to little more than a bad memory by Electric Wizard's first bowel-loosening riff. Electric Wizard play doom metal; like normal metal, only slower, thicker and heavier. Take the doomiest thing you can think of, drown it in the centre of a planet made of tar, and then hurl that planet into the centre of the sun. In slow motion. Hooked up to Orange amplifiers. They sound kind of like that, and smell a bit like weed.

I have also been out and about meeting new people. Like on Wednesday, I met some guy when he reversed his Chelsea tractor into the front of my car when we were queuing at some traffic lights.

I hardly laughed at all, actually. Still, it's infinitely better than being struck by earthquakes, tidal waves and nuclear meltdowns; so I'm keeping some sort of perspective about it.

The rage was further nullified by a housewarming shenanigan hosted by the most talkative and confident of the Pixie's chums, which left me far too hungover the following day to concentrate on schoolwork; so I indulged in some toy soldier based procrastination instead.

These guys are my new Chaos team for Blood Bowl, a spiffing boardgame based around the faintly ridiculous concept of American football in the world of Warhammer. Matt has always been firmly opposed to such rampant diversity, but Dom and I are determined to try to change his mind anyway. Our efforts will almost certainly yield results; but those results are likely to include a lot of shouting at dice, and each other, and everyone hating Blood Bowl.

catch up

Had a splendid Christmas with family 'n' that, during which we taught the Pixie how to play/cheat at such games as Sorry (ludo for bastards) and Uno (snap for bastards).

Whilst there I pilfered my sister's old bicycle, so I could harvest it for parts in an attempt to make the rusty blue aids bike functional; but in the end all it needed was some new brake pads, cables, derailleur, pedal, gear levers, mudguard, saddle and rear wheel. I suppose I could have just used my sister's old bicycle, but... well... it's a bit girly.

It also needs some new brake pads, cables, derailleur, pedal, gear levers, mudguard, saddle and rear wheel. No bother, I now have a mostly functioning rusty blue aids bike that I keep safely locked up with a £3.29 Tesco Value bicycle lock that would take even the most determined thief several minutes to gnaw through.

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Made and wore this mask for Matt and Laura's new year's eve masquerade cocktail apocalypse.

Subsequent issues with peripheral vision and depth perception ensured I spent much of the evening trying (and on many occasions failing) to dock Long Island ice teas with my face, with almost - but not quite - hilarious consequences.

------------------------------

I started the new year fretting about exams and coursework, but after a few weeks that gave way to fretting about assessment centres. The good old fashioned interview is apparently no longer deemed stressful enough by many big employers, and so I got to endure a day and a half of group exercises, drive & motivation essay writing, business scenario presentations, written exams, technical and competency interviews, attempting to undermine the confidence of other candidates by the unusual method of being very nice to all of them, and panicking about whether the cling film covering the plate of biscuits is part of the assessment.

Thankfully, it looks like I never have to do any of that crap again - I successfully blundered my way through it all, and have been offered a place on the graduate scheme starting in September. All I have to do is graduate... I figure it's probably best not to actually name the company I'll be working for; suffice to say that if you happen to be flying somewhere and the wings drop off, it will almost certainly have nothing to do with me.

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Went to see the very splendid Mogwai last weekend. Although saying that, the gig itself was mildly disappointing... It wasn't bad, by any stretch of the imagination, it just wasn't quite the all consuming and life-affirming wash of despairing euphoria that I expected. It didn't help that the venue was The o2 Academy, which somehow manages to combine the muddy sound and impersonal nature of a large venue with all the claustrophobia and poor views of a small venue. Here was our view for the majority of the gig.

The muddy sound wasn't much of a problem, partly because Mogwai are old hands at getting their levels right, but mainly because the crowd consisted of a lot of rude bastards that would chatter loudly through the quiet bits. Occasionally the crowd would shift, and our view would be improved slightly.

All this, plus they charge £3.90 for a pint of medium strength domestic lager beer. Jerks. Every time I see a band at the Academy I swear that I'll never go back again...

No, a far better venue is the far more modestly sized Croft, where we found ourselves two weeks earlier watching frenetic Brummie post-hardcore oiks Shapes. And they were bloody brilliant, as were Hymns and Idles... in fact the whole evening was great, it played out like a mini festival with six bands playing across two rooms and a wicked DJ in the front bar. The Boy turned up halfway through to show off some of her new grapple/throw techniques, and the evening was rounded off nicely standing on chairs and shouting along to Edwin Starr records.

------------------------------

And finally, some top notch tinkering with the replacement of my rear brake pads. The extent to which I got my money's worth out of the old set of pads is illustrated below.

Plenty of life left in 'em. Thanks to the Pixie for cups of tea, Rich for some quality bodging, Matt for turning up with three types of lubricant, and Laura for doing most of the actual work.

futility room

• Went to gay man's house dressed as Captain Scarlet. Everything that has happened previous to this is little more than a footnote.
• Fire, and lots of it.
• Saw Dillinger Escape Plan (awesome) supported by Rolo Tomassi (also awesome) and The Ocean (derivative German metalcore wankery).
• Churchill and Chu proposed the following correlation for laminar free convection (where Ra is less than 10 to the power of 9);

• Mouses are alright.

life-work-school-procrastination balance

So what's happening is this.

I finished my fuel-saving aerodynamics research/playing minesweeper job a couple of weeks ago. The boss was very happy with the work that I did, primarily because he doesn't know how much time I spent playing minesweeper. He's going to go over the stuff I did and present it to the university, with a view to conjuring up some kind of engineering get-rich-quick scheme. If he's successful, and if the funding is available, I'm straight back in there with some kind of part-time job; which would be cool, because his various motorsport contacts make him a very useful guy to know... but for now at least, it's done, and I no longer have fevered dreams about gleaming white DAF XFs.

Mmmm... articulated...

Pretty much as soon as that ended, school started. Now, I always knew that the final year of an MEng would be hard work; but there's knowing, and there's KNOWING. And now I fucking KNOW how much work I have to do this year, and it's more than a little overwhelming and, frankly, terrifying. Almost ninety percent of the mark this year comes from coursework, and to get it all done to a decent standard I will need more time.

So I've decided to try to drop one of the two days a week that I spend slaving away at The Big Gay Department Store; and if they don't go for that, I guess I'll be dropping both days. I don't really want to quit outright, as I need money for shiny things (and food, I suppose); but at the same time, I need to be able to find some sort of balance between attempting to master engineering, being a slightly camp sales assistant, and indulging in other social activities. Like checking out painfully contemporary jazz and drinking fancy beer on a boat, for example.

Which, by an astonishing coincidence, is exactly what happened on Friday when Sam invited us to The Grain Barge to check out his workmate's band. The band in question was Eyebrow, a thoroughly decent modern jazz two-piece consisting of drums, trumpet and a lot of reverb. They were cool.

The second band were called Busnoys, and they sounded like this.

Possibly the band that the phrase "Spiralling vibraphone wankery" was made for. But the important thing is, Eyebrow were cool and the beer was fancy.

it is indeed the loveliest of days

I let The Boy trick me into going to a bar gig at The Croft this week. A good thing too, as I actually got to see a couple of very cool local bands for less than the cost of a pint, and drink pints of imported lager for slightly more than the cost of a pint.

First of the two were the splendid Mustard Allegro. As it turns out, it was guitarist Alex's birthday; which meant that all of the handful of people in attendance had to sign a card for him. It also meant that he had down a shot at the very start of their set, and then another after every three songs played. Unfortunately for him, Mustard Allegro songs tend to be frantic blasts of surf guitar seldom lasting more than a minute, and they played a lot of them. On the plus side, the music all has a somewhat room-spinning quality to it anyway, so nothing seemed particularly out of place.

Merch was available from the Asda bag that the drummer kept with him. My only complaint about the otherwise very excellent mini album Dwarf Shortage that I purchased is the title; if they had only called it Shortage of Dwarves, there might be a possibility of 'shortage' becoming the collective noun for dwarves.

The other band were Narco Lounge Combo, a groovy/sleazy drum 'n' guitar two piece. They mostly did lounge covers of songs by dead people, along with a few original numbers. "This one's about a far off and exotic place; it's called Aztec West." Mostly it all had a very cool Tiki space-lounge vibe to it, helped in no small part by the pair of electronic gizmos that made haunted jungle noise and flashing lights happen. "These are powered by very small nuclear devices, no bigger than a cigarette packet. They're perfectly safe, of course; but please don't look directly at them during the xylophone solo."

Wizard.

Meanwhile, in toy soldier land...

This thuggish brute is Borukk Mukmasha. So right now, my army resembles that of a twelve year old kid; consisting as it does of one warboss, four dreadnoughts and no troops.

gigs and zoos and mice and deadly deadly robots

All of these things.

Went to the second worst live music venue in Bristol to see The Black Keys with the Pixie last week. Only one support band, The Features; who sounded like The Kings of Leon might if they had pursued a different kind of MOR mediocrity. Nothing against the Kings, it's just that I prefer the older stuff.

Which is also true of The Black Keys, though because I'm not exactly a lifelong fan I feel like even more of a prick for saying it. Fortunately they didn't rely too much on newer material, and topped and tailed their set with hefty chunks of thick freaky scuzzy foot-stomping drum 'n' blues rock goodness. Splendid.

The next day we went to Bristol Zoo, since I've lived here for eight years without ever seeing it and it kind of seemed like the right time to finally do it. The first animal we saw was a wild rat attempting to drag an empty Ben & Jerry's tub into the undergrowth by the lion cage. After that we saw locusts fornicating, a bunch of lizards, and monkeys doing wicked monkey stuff.

We also purchased two shiny new mice. They are small, and scared of everything. The shortlist of potential names included Scorponok, Behemoth, Miss Alissa and Jenny Truant; but I eventually settled on Tetsuo...

...and Kaneda.

Because they are fun names to shriek at tiny mice.

Meanwhile, in the world of toy soldiers...

Things have ground to a halt somewhat on the orky front, whilst I agonise over which shade of green to use for their flesh. I have not been idle, however; I have been painting toys for a different game entirely...

This is a Slayer Helljack for Warmachine. Warmachine is a game set in a universe where technology and magic and heroes and blah blah blah.

The important thing is, my army will be filled with deadly robots and exploding steam powered zombies.

BLAMMO.

space hoppers full of chip fat

It's been a while. But despite my lengthy(ish) absence from the internets, there is little to report on aside from school, gigs and Pixies.

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School

I had to finish and hand in my individual project, an undertaking ever bit as breathtakingly exhilarating as its title "The Evaluation and Optimisation of a Master Side Stay Bracket" might lead you to believe.

Once my pulse had stopped racing from the excitement of all that, it was time to revise for three exams. One of them turned out to be fairly easy, on account of the fact that the questions we had been provided with to practice on were pretty much the questions in the exam. The other two exams were altogether more horrifying affairs, in which we were not provided with answers and were instead seemingly expected to work everything out for ourselves.

They didn't go so well. I'm trying not to think about it.

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Gigs

There have been lots of these.

8/5/10 - 65daysofstatic. Euphoric post-rock electronica, splendid as always. But for me, the band of the night were the first support act Nedry, who cranked out a bizarre hybrid of dubstep, jazz guitar and Bjorkisms that was nowhere near as awful as I make it sound. There was a second support act, whose name I forget; but the more I think about it, the more it puts me in mind of this cartoon...

(from www.picturesforsadchildren.com - thanks to The Boy for flinging it my way)

11/5/10 - Mouth of the Architect sound like Neurosis playing Explosions In The Sky covers; but since nobody knows who they are either, that's probably not such a good reference point. For some sense of the sheer beautality these guys serve up, listen to Baobab (fast-forward to around the 8 minute mark if you're impatient/have little tolerance for shouting). Support came from screaming-brutal-sludgecore-types The Mire, who played in complete darkness punctuated by complex sequences of stark white flashing lights. It was all quite atmospheric and impressive, until you realised that the lights were being controlled by a guy frantically plugging and unplugging them all at the side of the stage. We also got Merrick, a local mob of fat shouty men that seemed quite good at the time; though this could be because the band that preceded them (whose name I have chosen to forget, for reasons of tact and drunkenness) were so bloody awful.

14/5/10 - Enablers. I've been desperate to see these guys for years, and they did not disappoint. Doom-laden beat poetry backed by post-rock-esque guitar and drum meanderings, one moment softly introspective, thunderously apocalyptic the next. Need to see them again. I also need to see the second support act The Wailingest Cats again. It was like being violently assaulted in a dark alley by a jazz quintet. The other support acts included a bunch of people that I didn't get there in time to see (though I'm assured that I missed precisely nothing), and an unnervingly tall/skinny/half-naked "performance artist" that was hopefully just taking the piss.

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Pixies

Sweet, sweet Pixie.

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And in other news; my sister gets married on Saturday.