Red Sparowes

As I mentioned, I went to see Red Sparowes with Zak and The Boy earlier this week. It was a considerably calmer affair than the brutal mauling we received at the hands Johnny Truant, but an amazing gig nonetheless.

There was just one support band, and I'd never heard of them before. The Pirate Ship Quintet are not, as it turns out, pirates; there are five of them though. Their songs stick pretty closely to the standard post-rock template; that is, quiet-loud-quiet-loud-apocalyptically loud (with the option of an additional quiet/loud thrown in at either end); and so in theory there's nothing particularly remarkable about them. But they do it so very well... the songs were epic and captivating, and had that extra something that elevated them above the output so many other bandwagon-jumping post rock wannabes. They left the stage to deservedly rapturous applause.

There was a brief break as the bands swapped over, and everyone tried to get to the bar at once; and then Red Sparowes were up. As per usual, their instrumental soundscapes (documenting, among other things, the catastrophic economic disaster that was The Great Leap Forward) were accompanied by black and white film images projected onto the wall behind them, providing a focal point for the band and adding intensity to the music. It's hard for me to adequately describe just how fantastic seeing this band live actually is; so I'm not going to try. You'll just have to go and see them yourselves.

Or watch this.

Rated G

On Thursday, Matt left the relative safety of his White Supremacist Command Bunker and came round here so that we try our hand at casting miniatures.

I feel compelled at this stage to point out that this was not some sneaky attempt to save money on the cost of buying toy soldiers; nor was it a zany get-rich-quick scheme. No, as you might expect it’s far geekier than that. I decided that for a particular type of creature in my army, rather than use the standard model I would ‘convert’ my own, using parts of a current model, the majority of an older out-of-production model, and a bit of scratch-built putty sculpting goodness. The problem with this is that I need four of these beasts, and getting hold of that old out-of-production model (a Chaos Dwarf Great Taurus, if you must know) is both tricky and expensive – you have to wait until one turns up on eBay, and then be prepared to pay between £25 and £40 for it.

Whereas 1kg of mouldmaking RTV-101 silicone rubber only costs £20…

The mould itself was fairly easy to make. The complicated/exciting/hazardous bit would be the actual casting process, which is obviously why Matt was so keen to have some involvement. The initial plan was to use the uber gas barbecue that Dozer liberated from The Pub to heat our white metal in an aluminium watering can that was conveniently lying about. The watering can seemed like a sound move because it had a nice long spout, which would make the pouring of molten metal into the mould a bit easier.

We hit our first snag when the spout of our can fell off, it having been merely soldered on. Oops. Not to worry, we had a back up plan.

It is commonly understood that most problems can be solved with the careful application of a hammer; in this instance we used it to mash the edge of an old milk pan into a slightly more precise poury bit. Needless to say, by this point we were both quite intoxicated by the heady rush of barbecuing and metalwork, and were feeling quite exceptionally manly… but then it started to rain, so we had to retreat indoors before we had a chance to take our tops off and start doing weights.

The metal we used for the casting came entirely out of my bitz box – a kind of scrap yard of old toy soldiers, spare parts and offcuts. Matt insisted on checking through it all and removing the most choice bits of eBay fodder before it got melted. A tablespoon was used to skim the slag off the top of the liquid metal. I don’t expect this to be of interest to anyone; but I am a puerile engineering geek, and it pleases me to be able to use the word ‘slag’ so appropriately. I’m sure that dog breeders experience the same joy with the word ‘bitch’. The twats.

The mould was contained in an old soup tin, and the whole thing was then heated in the oven so as to prevent the metal from immediately solidifying on contact. It seemed as though all our efforts were in vain, though, when the mold started to brim over a bit sooner than we expected. We figured that a lump of metal had set in the mould and stopped the rest of it from filling, and dumped the whole thing into a sink full of cold water to let it cool off.

Because the mould had expanded slightly in the oven, we had to cut the tin away with clippers. Which is when we noticed that the channel cut into the bottom of the mould to allow air to escape had filled with metal… had it worked after all? We held our breath in collective anticipation.

With the tin cut away, all that remained was to carefully pry away half the mould, and see if our new toy had all of its fingers and toes, so to speak…

Huzzah! We had successfully played God, sinned against toy soldiers, infringed on copyright and made our own Dragon Ogre Bull Centaur Thing. Here is a poor photo of the final outcome, pictured alongside the original model (left), both in the shadow of the potently inspirational liquid that fuels all such manly DIY exploits.

All the green bits of the original were sculpted from scratch; the other colourful bits are just from where I was too lazy to strip the paint off of the various components that were used to construct this monstrosity. It still doesn’t really give a good idea of what the finished models will look like; arms, heads and additional bits of armour from more readily available sources will be added to finish them off. Perhaps I will put up photos of them when they’re done…

In other news:

• I went to see Red Sparowes with The Boy and Zak earlier this week. They were amazing. Report to follow.
• Charlie Cat came back to visit for a couple of days. We had an impromptu tea party in the front garden in her honour. She continues to rock, despite the photographic evidence of her wearing a tea cosy on her head which might suggest otherwise.

• Dozer’s motorbike got stolen, and subsequently recovered a few days later by Joe and myself from an alleyway less than 100 yards from our house.
• I caught Mouse eating a fly the other day. Urgh.

Drink first, ask questions later

This is precisely the kind of reckless attitude that leads to a chap drinking shots of absinthe with Dozer, Sam and Ultimate Fighting Rich at 1am after drunkenly stumbling home from a splendidly face-melting gig.

No, I will not ever learn.

The gig in question took place at The Croft, and first up were local nobodies The Truth About Comets. They kicked out a confused montage of all their influences, but played well, and seemed quite unperturbed by the fact that their meagre audience was insistent on standing at least 20ft from the stage at all times. Derivative metalcore can be contagious, don’tcha know.

Then came Ella, another local band – albeit a tad more established. Less derivative, more forgettable. Moving on…

Throats were splendid. Crazed death-punk-thrash-screams were interspersed with dark, groove-laden grindcore jams, which acted as a counterpoint to the… yes, I am just talking nonsense now. But I maintain that they were splendid.

Not as splendid, however, as the mighty Johnny Truant. I last saw these guys some five years ago, touring in support of Isis, Cult of Luna, and, er, DJ Speedranch (ahem). I seem to remember arriving late, and having to squint at them from the back of a sold-out LA2 in London as they completed the last half of their set… This time around, things were different. The five of them wandered through the crowd to the stage, picked up their instruments, and proceeded to annihilate all that lay in their path. My memory’s a bit hazy from all the booze ‘n’ that, but I believe that the entire planet was destroyed.

Nice.

It was all very cathartic. Punishing, but cathartic. The next gig is Red Sparowes, on Monday; until then its all painty-painty drink-drink. Anything to drown out the sound of thinking.

stupid brain

Man, I had a weird dream last night.

As is the way with these things, the precise details disappeared straight out of my head with the arrival of morning and some groggy semblance of consciousness, but I do recall that it had something to do with the assimilation/extermination of the human race at the hands of some very ordinary-looking (yet deeply sinister) beings. A bit Bodysnatchers-ish, I suppose… I was being pursued through a house, consumed by despair and regret and on the verge of giving up all hope; when suddenly I was rescued by my dad, who somehow transported me back in time with him. We ended up in a pleasant little pub next to a canal, in a city full of WW2 Nazis in odd flying machines.

And then I woke up.

That last bit may well have something to do with a Trailer I recently watched for a forthcoming film called Iron Sky.

The rest of it makes no sense at all.

Fetid dingo’s kidneys

And so time creeps slowly by.

My day-to-day existence is captured almost perfectly in this picture.

By day, I paint toy soldiers; and by night, I drink until I slip into blissful unconsciousness on the sofa. There are many reasons for this; but mainly, I just don’t have anything better to do on the five days each week that I’m not working in the Big Gay Department Store. It also serves as a useful aid to procrastination… there’s still a lot of unpacking and organising to be done (even though we’ve been moved in for over a month now), and frankly the whole place could use a damn good clean up; but I just can’t see why I should bother. My two fattest and hairiest housemates are either unfussed about the general state of the place, or else completely oblivious to it. At least if Charlie Cat was here there’d be a chance of keeping it all tidy, and the offer of some help… but she’s still away having fun, somewhere, somewhere in a field in Hampshire, bossing kids about and making them cry. I’m unwilling to stand alone against the tide of filth that follows in the wake of the other two (I’m pretty sure it would just be an exercise in futility anyway), and so I am having to grow accustomed to the ever increasing levels of squalor that surround me.

This is where the drinking comes in.

On the plus side, I got the preliminary results from my exams at the beginning of the week, and they were pretty good. Even the heinous Stress Analysis Exam Of DoomTM, which I thought that I might have to re-sit, yielded a relatively healthy 67%; and that was the worst of the results.

I also seem to have scored myself a placement, working for a company that makes turbine blades. It’s based some 75 miles away in Exeter, which is a bit of a pain; but it’s kind of relieving to know exactly what I will be doing next year.

So apart from wanting to murder most of my housemates, things aren’t going too badly for now.