i learn it from a book

Hmm. I seem to be getting rather slack at this blogging malarkey... now where was I?

Ah yes, the wedding of Dr Sister and Mr Dr Sister. Essentially, it was a splendidly drunken shenanigan. There was lots of free booze and sweets, no-one had to get nailed to anything, and I discovered that I have loads of ghastly second cousins who are all anonymous to me, but all seem to know my name.

Pockets bulging with liberated sherbet and hangovers slowly fading, the Pixie and I fled to the New Forest for a few days. There we stayed in a delightfully tumbledown thatched cottage full of expensive tat...

...checked out some motorised roller skates from the 50's...

...and poked around a coastal fortress full of massive guns and dank rooms that reeked of unspeakable horror. The ice creams were nice, though.

Upon our return, there was car-poking galore as Matt, Laura and I (with the kind assistance of Sam, who fetched tea and hammers) set about further devaluing our track slag by taking everything out of it that wasn't bolted down, and a great many other things that were.

The net result of our collective efforts is that we now have a big pile of crap and a slightly lighter track slag that doesn't work any more. It doesn't work because an individual (who shall remain nameless) accidentally shorted out the car's electrics, possibly in an attempt to gain superhuman abilities that would make them so powerful that they could take over the world. All the people of the world would be united in their fear of their terrifying new tyrant-deity, and skies will blacken with the dense smoke of heavy industry as Mexico is destroyed to make way for colossal rockets that will propel our very planet into the void in search of new civilisations to enslave and devour.

This all just idle speculation, of course. We might have just cut through a wire somewhere. On the plus side, we found 31p in loose change whilst we were pulling bits out; so the slag is already starting to make some money back for us.

And finally, I had the viva for my individual project this week. I'm not sure how well it went; but it has somehow led to me helping an Iranian man improve his written and spoken English.

Indeed.

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.

mouse eats cheeseball in a week that otherwise passed by without incident

OMNOMNOMNOM

Alternative title: I'm busy with schoolwork. Come back in, I dunno, like, June or something.

brain flush

Gigs 'n' that happened.

Thursday 8th April 2010; Russian Circles at The Thekla (previously known as the Old Profanity Showboat).

Only one support act, a trio of guys called Earthless; who sounded like an electric guitar with wild staring eyes and a beard soaked with cheap whiskey and crystal meth, hooked up to a wall of amplifiers powered by flaming motorcycles, being fired into the sun. They were awesome, and essentially just spent a solid half hour jamming out psychedelic stoner blues grooves, making most of it up as they went along.

Russian Circles were an altogether more sober and chin-stroking proposition, trading in the free-form space rock explosion of their tour buddies for more carefully composed post-rock soundscapes. Despite there being only three of them, Russian Circles are capable of making the most apocalyptic noise; but this is tempered by moments of calm and intricate beauty, as songs unfurl and become entwined with melody... and then the world ends.

Spellbinding.

Friday 9th April 2010; And So I Watch You From Afar at The Cooler.

Again, just a single support act; and the only band of the four seen this week to feature actual vocals. Lafaro were something of a revelation; a really nice bunch of guys that did nothing more complicated than play really good rock songs really well, prompting delirious hooting and questionable dancing from all in attendance. Well, okay; from just me, Charlie and The Boy. They're playing Bristol again in a couple of months, and it seems very likely that we shall go see them again.

The last time I saw And So I Watch You From Afar was about ten months ago, when they played their hearts out to one man and his dog at legendary Bristol toilet The Junction. They were great then, and this time around they were nothing short of life-affirming. ASIWYFA make music that is often labelled as post-rock, and that's kind of understandable as they tick a lot of the post-rock boxes; grand sweeping sounds, wall of noise guitars, complex song structures, no vocals... The thing is, ASIWYFA do it all without the pomp, pretence and tedium of most post-rock bands; and their shows are amongst the most intense, passionate and energetic that I've ever seen.

I think they may be one of the best bands in the UK right now, and almost no-one knows or cares.

Oh well.

all bets are off

We took the slag to it's first trackday at Castle Combe last week.

Most remarkably, and despite our best efforts, we brought it back in mostly one piece, too (I think we may have left a bit of rear mudflap somewhere on one of the grassy bits).

On the whole we had a good time, and learned a lot. Mostly we learned that it's really easy to spin rear-wheel drive cars on wet and greasy tracks when you have more enthusiasm than talent.

Still, the important thing is we didn't hit anyone else whilst we did immaculate pirouettes around tiny imaginary tracks of our own devising, and having returned with a still functioning slag we now intend to make it lighter and more imbalanced by taking out every single non-essential item. This does not include the stereo, which is of course essential.

I returned from our satisfying day of near-death experiences to find that Charlie Cat had taken delivery of one of her more recent eBay purchases.

We have decided to name him Mr BIMBLE; although certain less charitable South Africans have since dubbed him Mr Binnable.

We love Mr BIMBLE, with his orange fur and creeping horror and hat at a jaunty angle. But we're apparently the only ones.

And what else? Well, it was a bank holiday weekend, so we had to go to the Mendips to watch the bangers. To cut a long story short, there were limos...

...hearses...

...and Reliant Robins held together with bits of string...

...but mostly there was a lot of huddling together like penguins as we tried (and mostly failed) to shelter ourselves from the freezing bloody wind.

Schoolwork now. Get lost.