>>Nostalgia For Infinity

It’s the arse-end of May again and that means it’s time for another Nice Weather For Airstrikes Festival, once again here in Brighton, once again at the Druid’s Arms by the Level, and once again playing host to a throng of post-rock, math and shoegaze bands from around the UK. Supposedly the good weather here will hold for the next few weeks, which is good news because it gets goddamn hot in that pub and it’s always a relief to step outside between bands. It’s running between Friday 27th and Monday 30th, with events running from the early afternoon on Monday. Did I mention that it’s free?

This year’s line-up features, in no particular order, The Strange Death of Liberal England (will they have room for all those signs?), Monsters Build Mean Robots, Shapes, Evi Vine, The Continuous Battle of Order, Crowns on the Rats Orchestra, Alright the Captain, The Slow Revolt, Juffage, Last Days of Lorca, Nordic Giants, Theo, Kontakte, Orders of the British Empire, Speak Galactic, Crooked Mountain Crooked Sea, Silent Front, These Monsters, Delta Sleep, A Genuine Freakshow, Karhide, Dark Dark Horse, Laish, Sorebones (loeb), Karl-Johan Nilsson, and Lowland Runners.

NWFA are also offering up a bunch of tracks for free download on their FB page, so hit that up if you like free songs. Songs by The Continuous Battle of Order, Orders of the British Empire, Silent Front, Nordic Giants and Last Days of Lorca, for example. Yes?

See you there.

It’s a fair while since I wrote a live review – just over a year, in fact – which probably has as much to do with my newfound tendency to miss the openers as anything else. It’s not a review of a show if you’re not writing about everyone who played, right? Besides, I used to be mildly annoyed by the people who showed up late (though they weren’t as bad as the people who rocked up to see their mate’s band and left immediately after). Now that I’m one of those people I’m faintly embarrassed by the hypocrisy, but hey: these websites don’t write themselves. Also I actually eat these days.

Anyway, with my hypocritical sell-out loser oldz cred firmly established, here’s a few words about a really awesome show I saw the other week. It was a This One’s For The Crew show and promoter Jay Cross’s own Little Ease opened, but as those in the know will understand this isn’t some tedious act of nepotism. No, Little Ease are – were – an excitingly scrappy and intense melodic fastcore outfit and one which, fronted by Jay, prove highly entertaining. The band are in high spirits firstly because they’re pretty drunk, but secondly because it’s guitarist Luke’s last show with the band. He’s moving to Vietnam the very next day. What better way to see him off than a shitload of pints and an awesome show? Half the people in the room know the band and Jay plays up to it, thrusting himself into the crowd and beaming at familiar faces when he’s not gorilla-stomping about and occasionally forgetting lyrics. The band, with a few slips aside, sound as tight as they are entertaining and kick things with aplomb.

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Late last year, whilst meandering through the day’s crop of Tumblr posts, I came across the “Fuck Hardcore Shows Manifesto”. The original post and blog appear to have been taken down, possibly due to the amount of attention, number of comments (many aggressively negative) and reposts it received. Fortunately the nature of Tumblr is such that once something is out there, it tends to stay out there. Here’s a copy of the original post in full:

it’s one of those things where you avoid something you take issue with for a while, and then suddenly find yourself in the middle of it, and it catches you off guard, ill-prepared, and you start fuming.
i went to see envy at reggie’s last night (amazing, by the way!). one of the opening bands was trash talk. it was funny, because the first two bands were some instrumental band from belfast and touche amore, and although kids were going nuts and singing along, it was no big deal. then trash talk came out. immediately, a huge pit formed in front of the stage, squishing almost everyone else back against the back wall. and then the familiar scene began.
pacing back and forth, posturing aggressively, stomping, kicking, punching, violently flailing arms. two dudes accidentally knocked into each other and started posturing at each other and shit talking, needing to be separated before a fight. kids crisscrossed the room, performing one of the most extreme versions of macho masculinity ever to dilute the political bases of punk rock. because this violence isn’t even raw and reactionary; it’s planned, staged, practiced. it privileges machismo unquestioningly. it privileges the antiquated notion that dudes can’t control themselves and need to blow off steam violently because men will be men. it’s such an obvious fucking farce.
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The Freebutt today.

This news broke last Wednesday but I’ve been busy recently and so I’m only writing about it now! One of Brighton’s longest-running venues, the Freebutt, is under threat of closure as a result of a noise complaint and subsequent Environmental Health Office investigation. As I put it on Facebook:

Many of you will have seen this already, but so what, it’s important. The Freebutt is facing closure due to ONE noise complaint. They are doing everything they can to solve the noise problem, but the EHO and the neighbour are preventing them from doing so. For a venue with decades of history to be shut down for such a bullshit reason would be a travesty.

This summary is a bit unfair on the EHO – they’re helping, just somewhat slowly – and the neighbour – who presumably has a legitimate complaint, but they’re not helping get it resolved except in the sense of “if the venue closes, the problem goes away”.

The Freebutt is presently owned by a small group of local music fans and entrepreneurs. They’re put a lot of work into ensuring the venue is shipshape and this is the only noise complaint since they took ownership. Although since the redesign the giant pillar in the middle of the room is still a source of constant complaint, Brighton’s live music scene wouldn’t be the same without the ‘butt.

The Freebutt circa 1968.

You can read the full story from the Freebutt here. The Argus has an article covering Brighton Council’s statements and some tedious, reactionary reader comments. There’s a petition you can sign here and a Facebook group here. The MP for the area is Caroline Lucas (Green) and the city councillors can be contacted from here.

The venue’s owners sent out an update 24 hours after the news and campaign broke which you can read below the cut. » Read the rest of this entry «

Gama Bomb + Mutant + Crypsis + Driveby Shark @ Engine Room Brighton, 7th May 2010

I’m not much of a thrash metal fan but my friend Tommy, bless his beard and genial metalhead nature, has been making some effort to convert me. This included getting me to join him for a show headlined by Irish thrash metal legends Gama Bomb. It’s all thrash, all night… and all I’ve heard of any of the bands is Gama Bomb’s album Citizen Brain.

First up is Driveby Shark, who are fronted by a ridiculously tall screaming bloke with ginger hair… or a dark blond, I guess, maybe it’s just the light. Whatever – he reminds me of my friend Ric from black metallers Iceni, who is also a ridiculously tall screaming frontman with ginger hair. It must be a metal thing, right?

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…if you can make it down, we’d love to see you there!

(I reviewed the first day of Offset way back in September, but the other half of the review got delayed for familiar reasons. Here’s a vague round-up of who we saw on the Sunday and, er, who we didn’t. Disclaimer: my festival reviews are always kind of vague and anecdotal. I’m there to have fun, not to review, and alcohol tends to addle my poor memory yet further. Expect no setlists here.)

A lesson is learned: I am probably too old, or have developed too strong a tolerance to intoxication, to drink several crates of extremely cheap dry cider and expect to get up the next morning and run around in the freezing cold after a sleepless night in a tent. Yeah, yeah, I need a waaahmbulance to get me to the party.

I wake up about half an hour before Crocus play but it’s all I can do to inch half out of my tent and breath in some fresh air; anything more might lead to explosive vomiting (or, worse, dry retching). Bleeurgh. Some hours later our campsite is awake and there’s solidarity in suffering. We miss Holy State. We miss Brontosaurus Chorus – an extra shame since I’d previously persuaded everyone that the best way to deal with a hangover was to listen to a man playing twee pop songs on a ukelele. We miss KONG.

Eventually we drag ourselves out to see young screamo noisemakers Maths. » Read the rest of this entry «

There’s a new page on the site (replacing the somewhat pointless ‘gubbins’ page) that I’m using to list upcoming gigs here in Brighton. I got fed up of writing about shows I wanted to attend in intermittent posts that became out of date really quickly. No doubt this static page will also be out of date quite a bit, but at least it won’t keep showing up unwanted in RSS feeds. Pow!

Click here to check out the gigs I’m hoping to get to.

Once more unto the breach…

Oct 18th – This Will Destroy You, And So I Watch You From Afar – Audio, £8

Oct 19th – Dalek – Audio, £9.50

Oct 22nd – Run, WALK! – Belushi’s, £?

Oct 25th – Sloath, Decapante, Ox Scapula – Prince Albert, £5

Oct 27th – This Town Needs Guns, Tubelord – Freebutt, £6.50

Oct 27th – Burning Love (ex-Cursed), Trippin’ Violet, Blackstorm – Engine Room, £5

Oct 28th – Dananananaykroyd, Dinosaur Pile-Up – Audio, £8.50

Oct 28th – Shield Your Eyes, P For Persia, Illness – Caroline of Brunswick, £free

Oct 30th – Architects, Despised Icon, Horse the Band, As Blood runs Black, Iwrestledabear – Concorde2, £?

Nov 6th – Youves, Calories, Shoes & Socks Off, Swims – Freebutt – £6.50

Nov 9th – Oxbow, Plague Sermon – Prince Albert, £8.50

Nov 13th – The Offcuts, ?, £?

Nov 13th – GBH – Engine Room, £8.50

Nov 17th – UK Subs – Engine Room, £10.50

Nov 25th – The Germs – Engine Room, £14

Dec 9th – Bob Mould – Concorde2, £16.50

Dec 14th – Dillinger 4, Ted Leo, Hard Skin + Four Letter Word (maybe?) – Engine Room, £8.50

Dec 17th – UK Subs – Engine Room – £11

Dec 22nd – Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Freebutt, £?

Dec ?? – Drag The River, Chris Wollard & The Ship Thieves – TBC, £TBC

Feb 15th – Cannibal Corpse – Engine Room, £8.50

I moved away from Essex eight years ago and as good as swore to never return. Grr! Place of teenage upbringing! Shitty county full of yuppie values I do not share! Source of much angst and rage! Of course I’ve been back there since, albeit for the stag do and later wedding of a close friend, because these sort of geographical vows rarely mesh with pragmatic reality. But my point is that I really don’t like Essex, and it takes a lot to tempt me back there.

Offset festival is based in Hainault Forest Country Park, or at least a big field in the middle of it, and is not far outside of Romford and accessible by tube. I could convince myself that this means it’s actually Greater London, a totally distinct area from Essex, but I would be as full of shit as those impassioned vows I made. Yes, Offset is in Essex, a fact underscored by the repeated chav invasions. On the Sunday night a gang of about twenty local tracksuited youths took over the security tower, after failing to topple it, and the security company went home. Fan-fuckin’-tastic!

The lineup, though, looked awesome, and at £55 for a weekend ticket it was a snip. Five stages over two days was surely an antidote to boredom, and there was enough variety between those stages and their acts that most attendees wouldn’t have to bemoan too many clashes. So far so good. » Read the rest of this entry «