Last Friday, I ventured across the Pennines after work to catch DeathBoy and others. I found my way to the Mixing Tin, which is alarmingly close to the station, without incident. It's a small, low-ceilinged venue, with the stage being a cramped area at the back raised about 4" off the main floor. When I arrive, there seems to be a band onstage but the crowd are milling around and I soon learn that it's Novus' uber-late soundcheck. The venue is cosy, but not really conducive to combining a band up the front with people chatting at the back without crosstalk. The mixing desk has a piece of electrical tape down channel 10 which simply reads "FUCKED" in black felt-tip, which makes me giggle.

Surprisingly, there's almost nobody I know there other than the members of DeathBoy. vin_petrol is lurking, and sara_pebbles makes a later appearance though. I chat with deathboy and The Phil a bit, make jokes about the Crüxshadows trying to play in such a low-ceilinged venue with nowhere to climb, and grab a couple of JD & cokes to keep me going.

( The Bands )

[	Tags	|	films, heat, manchester, reviews	]
[	mood	|	relaxed	]
[	music	|	Fifth Amendment - "Reason for my Existence"	]

Well, this weekend has been pretty quiet. On Friday night, greyeyedeve joined me at the Pitcher & Piano where I was having a few post-work drinks with colleagues. It was good to introduce her to some of the guys I work with, and everyone seemed to get on well. Before too long, my colleagues headed off to meet up with others down Oxford Road, and Eve and I headed to an all-you-can-eat Chinese on Whitworth Street to stuff ourselves silly on oriental goodness. After that we were far too knackered to catch up with the work peeps, so we staggered over to the Village to catch a bus home, running into one of the rare 197 services which goes past the bottom of our street.

Saturday was a bit of a washout - I had a pretty sore head (not for beer-related reasons, annoyingly) and Eve had a migrane, so we spent most of the day loungeing around. We did manage to break out to Somerfield before dinner to acquire a few bits and bobs, and I was tempted by an earlier MSN conversation with kaz_pixie into buying a bottle of red wine. We came back and watched Doctor Who, which was not great. I've said it before and I'll say it again - Russell T. Davies makes a pretty good series editor, but he should be kept away from actually writing scripts at gunpoint. He's far too bloody schmaltzy. A little bit of cheese and camp is to be anticipated and welcomed in Doctor Who, but too much just gets cloying and irritating. Like Captain bloody Jack.

Eve cooked some rather tasty pork chops with leek and peppers, and we sat around reading, cuddling and watching TV. Eventually Heat came on. It's not a bad film, but not what the Pacino / De Niro showdown should have been. Far too much relationship angst, not enough action or gritty dialogue. The scene between the two leads in the diner does still manage to steal the show and make the movie worth watching, but you may question that while sitting through the slower scenes.

Today we were planning on going for a bike ride, but the heat and stillness of yesterday didn't materialise into a storm last night, but into constant light rain today, so we've basically been faffing around. I've been working on the Open Guide to Manchester, setting up bashpodder to slurp entries from CC365, and tidying the front room. The rain seems to have let off a little now, so I'm going to go poke around at the bikes.

That was a lovely weekend. greyeyedeve came up with Flo, who was in need of cheering up. We spent Friday night eating fajitas and chilling out in front of the TV. On Saturday we wandered into town for lunch at The Basement where steve_c introduced himself; it was good to meet someone in person whom I've known via LJ for such a long time. After food, shopping happened at New Aeon Books (which has gone a bit Harry Potter with large displays of wands and staffs; however, Flo announced it to be "the best shop in the world" and vowed to return when she had some money) before we popped to the Manchester Buddhist Centre for a nice cup of tea. We moseyed round Affleck's for a while, acquiring hairdye for a planned mass dyeing session and more earrings and hole-stretching stuff for Eve. Flo bounced around Vintage to Fetish getting all excited about PVC boots and rubber tops, while I found a pair of rubber jeans which were half-price (hence lamost sanely priced) but just a little too snug round the waist for me. Meanwhile, Eve had found a pair of 7" heeled, 3" platformed shoes which look absolutely gorgeous and snapped them up in a drastic impulse purchase. Photos later. This gratuitous consumerism meant that we were running late for our gig, so we popped into Primark to get clean undies for Flo who'd forgotten to bring any with her, then grabbed a bus down Oxford Road from Piccadilly Gardens.

( Therapy? )

[	Tags	|	film, reviews	]
[	mood	|	sleepy	]
[	music	|	Carter USM - "Say It With Flowers"	]

Silent Hill is the latest video game to movie conversion, and the best I've seen to date. For those who don't know, the Silent Hill series (or at least the first three, I hear that four is radically different) are survival horror games from Konami. They feature the deserted American town of Silent Hill, the scene of hundreds of years of evildoing by a fanatical cult, which has left the town scarred. Visitors to the town find that it brings out their trauma, and may even call them there.

The plot of the film is based on the first game. ( Spoilers below )

The plot seems a little bit confused towards the end, probably moreso for those not familiar with the games. I thought the final confrontation was going to go differently, and could have been handled better, but the actual ending of the film was great. The direction was on the whole good, if occasionally pedestrian. Still, there are some great nods to classic horror movies. And frankly, the film is a bit of a pervert's dream - there's a hot short-haired motorbike cop who wanders around kicking ass in leather, heavy rubber capes and gas masks for the "rescue teams", and of course the light-sensitive killer zombie nurses. While some parts of the film are mediocre, the only truly bad thing is Sean Bean's attempt at an American accent.

Update: I forgot to mention that there's a scene with prehensile barbed wire which will have jezebel_z squirming in a good way.

[	Tags	|	clubs, film, reviews	]
[	mood	|	thoughtful	]
[	music	|	Sneaker Pimps - "Splinter"	]

Just before this weekend comes rolling round, a couple of points about the last one.

Implant was pretty good. To be honest, the music wasn't hugely to my liking. It wasn't the punishing aural sadism that made RECTIVE so special, though it was mercifully largely unbleepy. The Zoo is a very nice venue, and I was free to natter to people, though mostly had the feeling that I knew a lot of people there, just not enough to strike up conversation. Mono No Aware live was awesome, a very energetic madman providing some stomping entertainment that nearly had me dancing. TriaX on the other hand was mostly quite dull, trying too hard to show off. Angle grinders are so mid-90s, circular saws are in now. I'd probably be up for going to Implant again, assuming enough friends were going along.

V for Vendetta was slightly disappointing. I listened too hard to those people who told me it was excellent, I think. It certainly wasn't bad, and as adaptations go it was certainly interesting. But it wasn't great. While I appreciate that they didn't turn V into a hero, I think they tried a little too hard to make him seem human. The thing I hated the most was that the Government had to have some Big Evil Thing It Did to make it seem more monstrous, whereas just having a power-crazed government gaining power slowly because nobody stops them is much scarier because it's more real. This approach of making the anti-hero more human, and the villains more obviously evil, is my main problem with the movie - it's Hollywoodisation. The involvement of a huge crowd of V-clone civilians at the end was pretty crappy as well. It'd've been better leaving the situation open-ended as to what happened. I feel that despite V's television speech, one of the two bits that I really enjoyed, the movie perverts the message I got from the comic. The comic challenges us to consider how we react to institutionalised wrongness by showing an inarguably morally wrong reaction thereto, while the movie tells us to sit back and wait for the revolution to arrive by courier.

[	Tags	|	employment, matrix trilogy, movies, reviews, transitive	]
[	mood	|	sleepy	]

I haven't heard back from Transitive after my interview, nor from the jobpimp agency which put me forward for the position. I also haven't heard from the other jobpimps about an interview with Trader Media, nor any other progress on the job front today. This has been a little disheartening, coupled with failing to sleep last night and only dozing a little today. Still, it means that I'm tired at a sensible time tonight and should be up at a sane time in the morning.

I didn't mention that after my interview, I went shopping. It's something I tend to do after interviews, in the hope that spending money while unemployed shows a faith in my prospects for employment. Since I haven't been turned down for a job after interview since working at Nominet immediately after graduation, it may even work. So I found the HMV sale where the "Ultimate Matrix" 10 DVD boxset was on sale for £20. I'd been hankering after this for a while, but didn't figure it was worth the £70 at which it was originaly priced. So I figured that this would count as sufficient extravagence as a token of confidence in my interview, while being something I had wanted for a long time, at a good price.

And tonight, I sat down with greyeyedeve and watched The Matrix Revolutions having seen The Matrix Reloaded last night. It's the first time I've seen Revolutions since the cinema, and it bears out pretty well. The action sequences lose something from the big screen, but on the other hand watching it in the comfort of the home means I can just dick around on the laptop during Trinity's annoying and over-elaborate death scene.

After my next interview, I may pick up the Alien Quadrilogy boxset which is also on sale for £20 at HMV...

[	Tags	|	cycling, film, reviews, steamboy	]
[	mood	|	refreshed	]
[	music	|	http://www.di.fm/drumandbass/ - Chris.SU - "Back and Forth"	]

The weekend started later than usual. greyeyedeve had a plumbing-related disaster in Stoke which kept her away from Manchester until Saturday afternoon. I took advantage of this to spend a night hacking on OpenGuides, about which more (possibly) later. Saturday saw me, Eve, flooks and rainbowskye heading off to the Cornerhouse to see Steamboy. The expedition had been organised by tregwilym who failed to make it due to a furniture-related crisis, but that didn't stop us. Nor did the prospect of the Trendyhouse which deterred many of the MancGoffs, because we are individuals of taste and discretion.

Steamboy, then. $20 million (presumably US) in budget, 8 years in the making, written by Katsuhiro Ôtomo (aka the bloke who did Akira). Set in a steampunk late 1800s England, including some lovely shots of Manchester. The film is fantastic, literally - it invokes fantasy and layers it over history with little regard for facts. It concerns a family of scientists, the Steam family, two of whom have worked together to create super-pressurised steam, generating fantastic quantities of pressure and energy from a small ball. Steams pere and grandpere have fallen out over the uses to which this technology should be put, and it's up to Steam fils to work out where his allegiances lie. This film is full of gorgeous setpieces, and like any good Feng Shui campaign basically consists of said setpieces strung together by a plot. It's not very deep, but it is hugely entertaining and there is some fantastic eyecandy. The latter part of the film does go on a bit though, and I almost dozed off at times. This may say more about my lack of sleep than the movie, however. According to IMDB, the Japanese version is an extra twenty minutes longer, which is quite scary. Some of the accents are absolutely terrible too. Still, it's worth seeing for the shinyshiny!

After the cinema, we headed up to the Dutch Pancake House, for some truly awesome foo. I polished off my meat feast pancake with little difficulty, went halves on a sweet pancake with Eve, and then we had half of Rainbow's dessert too. Fear my mighty eating prowess! After this we mooched up to The Waterhouse for a pint. Eve and I parted ways with Flook and Rainbow at The Salisbury 'cause it was too smokey, and grabbed the bus home.

Sunday started off being lazy, and various domestic chores being done. Eventually Eve and I headed off on our planned cycle ride, down the Manchester Cycleway to Chorlton. Things didn't go terribly smoothly; I've mislaid the lights I was going to fit to Eve's bike, and she acquired a not-very-slow puncture around Fallowfield which required pumping up every mile or so. I did have a puncture repair kit with me, but we figured it'd be less hassle just to stop and pump. Still, once we got into the swing of things, we had a very pleasant ride, taking in some nice scenery, and getting some exercise. We came out in Chorlton just by Kingbee Records into a beautiful sunset, and locked the bikes up to some Sheffield Hoops (Chorlton is amazing for cycle parking) and had a mooch around, stopped off at a Co-Op to pick up some dinner, and headed back. The journey home was less fun - it was dark, my front light flaked out and so I was using my maglite to see by. We were getting tired and eventually, not far from home, Eve got cramp and we wheeled the cycles the rest of the way. Still, it was an entertaining ride, a seven mile round trip so the exercise is not to be sneezed at. In future we'll try to set out earlier, maybe meet up with cavalorn and lucybond in Chorlton.

[	Tags	|	brad sucks, freedom, music, reviews	]
[	mood	|	impressed	]
[	music	|	Brad Sucks - "Fixing My Brain"	]

Having heard his music on the CC365 blog of Creative Commons-licensed music, along with a remix courtesy of Commons sample-sharing site ccMixter, I decided to check out Brad Sucks more thoroughly, by downloading his album I Don't Know What I'm Doing. I'm very impressed - it's a smooth mix of indie rock and electro, mixed with sardonic lyrics and pounding disco beats. It's what the Scissor Sisters would sound like if they weren't trying to be the Bee Gees (and hadn't massacred "Comfortably Numb", damn them). There's plenty of interesting sounds - "Bad Attraction" sounds like The Beatles meets Pigface, with a hint of Hendrix.

When I have disposable income again, I'll definitely drop a few bucks on his album, which can be purchased directly from Brad or from the Magnatunes label. Have a download, have a listen. Burn a copy and give it to your mates. If you're musically endowed, do a remix or sample his work. Have fun. Enjoy. Oh, and read this interview.

[	Tags	|	cheese, manchester, reviews	]
[	mood	|	sleepy	]
[	music	|	Godspeed You Black Emperor! - "East Hastings"	]

Today has been a good day on the whole. greyeyedeve and I were out of the house by about 2pm which for us on a weekend is pretty good going. A conversation about toxoplasmosis on the platform at Levenshulme led to discussion on keeping rats as pets, and eventually into movies and special effects, with a random stranger. You can always rely on Manchester for cool things like that, people here are so damn friendly. We mooched over to The Basement for vegan numminess and coffee, as is our wont on Saturdays. As usual it was busy and full of people and conversations ranging from anti-British National Party demonstrations to chipping Playstations. I personally found it ironic that half the Linux machines in the Internet cafe were being used to check Microsoft Hotmail. We nipped into the shop for more sundried mango slices (mmmm) and I managed to pick up some Cheshire-flavoured Scheeze. Scheeze is vegan soy-protein cheese substitute, and having eaten it a few times in dishes at The Basement, my curiosity had been piqued. I'd actually bought some last weekend, but it went missing somewhere between the shop and home.

On our way to Primark in search of towels, I had the fortune to run into cavalorn whom I haven't seen since I moved back to Manchester, in the company of roaster. Cav was on his way to Fanboy3 to be a Famous RPG Writing Mighty Rock God Book Signer, so we didn't have much chance to chat, but we've agreed that we must meet up for beer soon; perhaps I can find my way westwards before long. After spending more in Primark than intended, having found a nice and cheap kimonoesque garment to replace the Christmas gift dressing gown that Flo had stolen, we went back up to posh Tib Street sex shop Nua for some lube, along with friendly service. I got given a free lolly in Helen Berlin while Eve browsed for interesting latex, and eventually we mooched back to the station and came home for dinner.

Other amusements - seeing Cheapass Games' "Dr Lucky Ambivalence Pack" expansion for "Kill Dr Lucky" and "Save Dr Lucky" in the window of Travelling Man. Seeing a taxi emblazoned with adverts for Green Flag car insurance being repaired by an RAC van. And to take the biscuit, a Fight Club computer game for PS2 where you have to regain your humanity by getting away from your consumer life and beating computer-game characters to a bloody mess. The game features "realistic facial bruising" and "breaking bones which actually affect gameplay". Think about this for a while. Then hunt down everybody who's bought the game and encourage them to punch you in the face.

Some thoughts on the scheeze - it doesn't taste very Cheshire. More like some bizzare cross between stilton and haloumi. I also don't like the texture, missing the crumbliness you get with real cheese. It's not very nice on its own, though I had some grated onto my chicken fajitas instead of cheddar and it was pretty good there. However, in toasties it's also lacking, partly again due to not melting nicely and partly due to the strong, salty flavour. It might be OK if offset with ham though. I'm vaguely curious to try other varieties of scheeze, though I think that like most things vegan, I'll give it a miss.

Pub tomorrow.

[	Tags	|	reviews, television	]
[	mood	|	worried	]
[	music	|	Her Highness - "This Feeling"	]

As well as my beloved The Bill, there are three things I'm currently making an effort to watch on TV, that I thought I'd pimp here.

Life on Mars

Life on Mars is fantastic drama with a slight sci-fi / supernatural edge. The premise is that in 2006, Detective Chief Inspector Sam Tyler of the Greater Manchester Police is hit by a car during an investigation into a serial killer, just off the Mancunian Way elevated motorway across the south of the city centre. He loses consciousness, and wakes up in a scrapyard, wearing a leather jacket, wide-collared shirt and flares. The scrapyard has a sign advertising the "motorway in the sky" soon to be built across Manchester. Sam has an old-fashioned warrant card declaring him to be a Detective Inspector. To all appearances, the year is 1973.

With his memories of 2006 intact, Sam finds his way to the police station only to find himself a new transfer under the command of hard-nosed DCI Gene Hunt, a no-holds-barred thieftaker with no regard for procedure, or even evidence. The series details the conflicting styles of policework, and Sam's difficulty adapting to the low-tech world of 1970s policing. Only WPC Cartwright knows Sam's story, and even she thinks she's mad. But she's prepared to help him come to terms with his new reality and to discover the truth behind it - is he in a coma, and hallucinating the present? Mad, and imagining his memories of the future? Or has he travelled in time? All he knows is that he keeps having hallucinations of voices which sound like his family and the doctors in 2006, and that the test card girl from the TV is trying to kill him...

Of course, I'm going to like this series because of the Manchester connection, but the mixture of comedy and drama, and the familiar-yet-wrong 70s setting combine to make this really entertaining.

Life on Mars is shown on Mondays on BBC1 at 9pm; the next episode will be the fourth of the series.

Eleventh Hour

Eleventh Hour is a contemporary drama series following a famous Government scientific advisor, Professor Alan Hood, as he investigates cases concerning contemporary headline science. A contraversial figure, Hood has been on the receiving end of sufficient death threats to warrant a personal bodyguard, Special Branch officer Rachel Young, a feisty, competent and protective young aide. The series explores the cutting edge of contemporary science without verging into science fiction. Hood is an interesting character - the hero of the piece, yet hard to empathise with. He's logical, has no time for fools and yet is rather naive himself.

The first episode concerned a rogue geneticist known only as Jepetto attempting human cloning, and coming further than regulated science has ever managed, but at the cost of the lives of dozens of foetuses and some of the surrogate mothers involved in the experiments. Hood finds the cloning "abhorrent", but doesn't really justify his objection even by linking it with the deaths of the infants (technically not even murder; they are not sufficiently well-formed to count as living creatures). The explanation of the science is pretty well done, to keep people who don't read New Scientist in the frame, but I'm not sure that people who don't read New Scientist would be watching in the first place. I found some of the police work and office politics slightly hard to swallow, mind.

This show reminds me mostly of the first season of The X Files, before all the government conspiracy crap. It's two people investigating gritty, hard-to-believe cases, with some good creepy camerawork showing horror influences. Back then, even The X Files occasionally stepped out of the supernatural arena to cover actual science too...

Eleventh Hour is shown on Thursdays on ITV at 9pm; the next episode will be the second of the series.

Hyperdrive

Hyperdrive is a sci-fi sitcom starring Nick Frost ("Spaced", "Man/Woman", the massively underrated "Danger, Incoming Attack"). It revolves around H.M.S. Camden Lock, a ship of the second-rate British Space Force, on missions around the Galaxy. As you'd hope from a series like this, the humour isn't particularly sci-fi oriented, mostly contemporary humour framed in a different environment. So we h ave jokes about foreign customs, and specifically invented customs designed to wind up the newcomers who are trying to be polite. We have bureaucracy, we have meddling management, we have hard-to-manage computer systems with irritating default behaviour. All in all, your standard British comedy of embarrasment, sadly typified by The Office. Though fortunately, Hyperdrive applies its humour with a light and elegant touch, rather than ramming it down your throat until you choke on Ricky Gervais' oversized ego.

A lot of people have been comparing this to Red Dwarf, mostly unfavourably. I think it's mostly aiming for a different style of humour, and is doing the right thing by not trying too hard to be like Red Dwarf. I think it's slower and more subtle humour, and I think it's going to be a grower.

Hyperdrive is shown on Wednesdays on BBC2 at 10pm; the next episode will be the third of the series.

This concludes my TV roundup. It's scary to contemplate that, along with The Bill, I'm now consuming five hours of non-current-affairs television every week. I might even consider not watching The Bill now I've found other bad habits. Things will probably only get worse once The IT Crowd starts...

[	Tags	|	freedom, music, reviews	]
[	mood	|	relaxed	]
[	music	|	Krii and Aleks - "Han Ya"	]

I've previously mentioned CC:365, add cc365feed if you want to join in the fun.

( Reviews )

[	Tags	|	freedom, music, reviews	]
[	mood	|	relaxed	]
[	music	|	Trash80 - "Social Silence"	]

I meant to blog about this sooner, but this is about as late as I can leave it before it gets to be too much of a backlog for people. Via the Creative Commons blog I became aware of CC:365, a podcast blog which is offering one Creative Commons-licensed track every day for you to download (sadly in turdy mp3 format instead of the Mighty Vorbis), listen to, and share with your friends.

The page above has a pretty good rationale for Creative Commons. Fundementally it's about addressing the relationship between artists and listeners, backing away from the piracy and terrorism claims which companies like Sony BMG believe allow them to install software that cripples your computer without your knowledge. It's about a set of rules, easy to understand, which give artists choices in how they'd like people to use their art. It's a good thing, in general, and this blog should allow me to hear a lot of new music, produced by artists and labels who respect me as a listener and are hence far more worthy of my hard-earned than most things I'll hear in the chart.

( Reviews, days 1-4 )

If you want to keep up with CC:365 through LiveJournal, simply add cc365feed.

[	Tags	|	manchester, reviews	]
[	mood	|	thoughtful	]
[	music	|	Thursday's "The Bill" playing in a sticky xine window	]

Apologies for the long delay in this entry. From what I'd read about this performance, it seemed to be a combination of dance and local history, but I wasn't at all sure what to expect. I found myself hanging around in the vicinity of "the bunker" (the small grass-and-chickenwire-covered outhouse on Tib Street by the car park) ten minutes before a performance, along with a number of small groups of people all milling around aimlessly. Eventually someone came and started ticking names off; I said that I wasn't booked for the performance but would like to attend if there was a spare place. I was given a red and white striped paper bag containing a flyer for the event, some business cards for local businesses presumably sponsoring the event, and a felt-tip pen. There were a few other things but I've mislaid the bag now.

Eventually, the haunting sound of a clarinet pierced the crisp night air, and a tall, thin man dressed sharply in black walked with his instrument into the crowd, and led us a short distance to the florist's shop opposite the Army Surplus. There was a TV in the window showing a picture of a basement. It was very odd to be shuffling through a closed shop; the nervous energy encouraged small-talk among strangers in the audience. We were led to the back of the shop, down some creaky wooden stairs into the basement we'd seen on the TV. The far wall of the basement was illuminated by a video projector aimed at the brickwork, and there was a camcorder relaying the scene to the TV upstairs. The far wall had a recess set into it, setting the top two-thirds and right-hand half of the wall back by a few feet. There were a few side rooms in the basement but I didn't have a chance to explore. A bored man was sitting smoking a rollup in the back corner under the stairs, hands over the unit controlling the video projector.

Fairly soon, the piece began. The clarinetist faded into prerecorded music, jazz meeting drum 'n' bass and random noise in a way that Venetian Snares would be entirely happy with. The video projection showed us two girls dancing in front of various familiar parts of Tib Street - the saxophones opposite Afflecks' Palace, the metal shutters near the old New Aeon site, the car park entrance - and in front of a wall which looked strangely familiar, albeit blurred. It took me a while to twig that this wall was the wall of the basement we were standing in, the projector near-perfectly aligned with where the camera had recorded the footage. Mixed in with the music were random phrases, snippets of conversation and interviews cut down to a handful of contextless words, mostly revolving around the identity of Tib Street as being quirky or unusual. The only concrete fact we gleaned is that someone was shot in the back, an event acted out by the video dancers, though who, when or why was never explained. One scene took the girls inside one of the "adult" shops on Tib Street. Sadly this bit dragged a bit, as they slid inside the door in a sinuous manner reminiscent of a Shakespeare's Sister video. Perhaps the audience were supposed to be tittilated or shocked by the PVC outfits and dildos in the background, but mostly they seemed bored by the slow pace.

After a while, the dancers featured into the video came down the stairs of the shop, into the basement and through the crowd to the front. There was a very pleasing effect generated by this - the video girls had brick lines over them from where the video was being projected onto the wall, but the real girls also had brick lines, from the video image of the wall being projected over them. The girls danced in front of the video display, well-choreographed with their video counterparts, seeming to interact or mirror each other's movements. I'm not in any way an expert or even a fan of dance, but they managed to hold my interest.

Eventually the performance finished and we had a chance to share in the occasion, by writing on post-it notes with our felt-tip pens, and sticking them to the wall of the basement. We were invited to share our memories of Tib Street, or to comment on the performance. I had a look at some of them, and they mentioned bars and shops now lost to history. A few of them made the comment that they were expecting more in the way of documentary, more concrete information about the street itself, a criticism I shared. However, I used my post-it to share some memories of New Aeon Books and the afternoons I spent in there as a student.

I had a brief chat with the dancers, and told them that they'd managed to capture the vibe of Tib Street. In retrospect I think that they managed to capture a vibe - one of the things I love most about the street is that it reflects many moods, wrapping around you like a hug. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of actual history and facts, but felt that attending the performance was time well spent. I may, however, have objected to paying for it. There's also a faint feeling that I witnessed something ephemeral, which happened in one night and is now gone, part of Tib Street's ghosts. As I wandered back to the Millstone for a pint, smiling at the people gathering at the bunker for the next performance, I felt satisfied.

(in other news, why did nobody tell me about manchesterphoto?)

[	Tags	|	gigs, reviews	]
[	mood	|	sleepy	]

Unfortunately, I arrived late at this gig and hence missed Deviant UK. Unfortunately, I wasn't late enough to miss Demeter who were a raucous noise I found it impossible to get into. Maybe the sub-par sound mix was partly to blame, maybe it was just that I hadn't been there for the start of the set to get into the band, but it just left me cold. Still, it was a good chance to chat to asw909 and others. The attendance was pretty poor - I'd not seen any flyers or posters outside the Student's Union, though wibblefish claims to have seen one in the Manchester Met Union IIRC. This was galling since I'd been trying to volunteer to distribute flyers and posters around Afflecks and other alternative shopping sites as well as rock clubs and the Cathederal Square where all the spooky kids seem to gather these days. However, the small crowd were very active and involved, which offset their comparatively meagre numbers.

Rico came onstage with a couple of slow numbers, giving people a chance to finish their pints, relax and get into the right frame of mind. Especially when performing low-tempo tracks, Rico (the singer) is convulsing with manic energy, coming across as some kind of latter-day Ian Curtis with better hair as he twitches his way through the numbers. After a track or two, the energy is palpable, an electricity crackling across the audience and earthing itself back to the stage, where it powers the band into faster tracks. The blend of industrial rock and trip-hop beats is fantastic, and I almost wonder why it never achieved such respect sooner, before realising that I heard Rico's first album, "Sanctuary Medicines", courtesy of mimus back in 1999. Rico (the band) like to play with their songs and their audience, throwing in lyrics and riffs from other tracks to keep you on your toes, keep you entertained and make sure you can never get complacent. It's hard to see how you could anyway - I'm a regular listener to their albums, and have seen them live quite a few times now, and every gig is like the first time I saw them all over again.

The set loses momentum about halfway through, during a new track which asw909 informs me is called The Director's Cut. I'm not sure whether there was some problem with the performance but it seemed to lack the usual Rico depth, coming across more like Franz Ferdinand. However, it wasn't long before things were back on track. Rico's music has a fantastic way of inspiring empathy in the audience, feelings of anger and loss and frustration and above all defiance and beauty, and when they stamp offstage it's hard to believe that they've been playing for an hour. Fortunately we manage to bring them back for an encore - the haunting Dear God complete with sampled vinyl scratchiness. It brings us down gently at the end of the set, and gives us closure as we stumble out into the Manchester night.

Any Rico gig is going to be hard pressed to beat the Garage, where the band were supported by DeathBoy and joined onstage by both Gary Numan and Martin McCarrick. But in terms of sheer energy from the band and audience, and utter enjoyment, despite the small crowd and small venue, tonight came a damn close second.

[	Tags	|	movies, reviews	]
[	mood	|	depressed	]

American Psycho the movie. Biggest, most rancid turd ever. Honestly, possibly the worst film I've seen since LoTR 3: The Stupidly Overdrawn Ending.

If I didn't want to get up and do stuff tomorrow, I'd now be watching The Krays to purge my memory of such a crappy movie with that of a decent one.

[	Tags	|	music, reviews	]
[	mood	|	relaxed	]
[	music	|	Fifth Amendment - "Heave"	]

( The Band )

( The Album )

( The Analysis )

BTW, since the band have split up and it's taken me five years to find this album, I'm not going to lose much sleep over providing hot 1800-day warez if people ask me nicely. I hate to think of this music going unlistened.

[	Tags	|	movies, reviews	]
[	mood	|	happy	]
[	music	|	Fifth Amendment - "Camera Shy"	]

The Descent (warning: spoilers in link) is the latest film from the mind of Englishman Neil Marshall, writer and director of the cult horror classic Dog Soldiers, and shares his gift for warm, natural dialogue and superb cinematography. The essential plot is that six girls on a caving expedition find themselves lost in unexplored caverns, and then things go from bad to worse... I'm not going to comment any more on the plot though, because it'll spoil things.

The characters are done well - of the six girls, three are the main characters, featuring in the opening scene which establishes their relationships. Two of the remaining are strong, independent characters, and only one feels weak and serves little purpose. As mentioned before, the dialogue between the characters is realistic, which helps flesh out the characters.

The cinematography is amazing - it really evokes a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia, and also beauty and wonder. If someone wanted a documentary to encourage people into caving, then Marshall would be a great choice. The lighting is intense and varied, from scattered daylight to phosphorous-laced rock, flares, glowsticks, light-amp and infra-red. This helps increase the sense of confusion and disconnection.

But most importantly, this film is scary in a way that I haven't seen for a long time. It knows when to pile on the tension, and when to break it like a hammer hitting a nitrogen-frozen apple. There are very few missed chances to scare here - only one or two moments spring to mind where something is clearly supposed to be scary, but isn't. There are quite a few times where you'd expect a more obvious film to try and make you jump, and The Descent backs down, slips you a wink to let you know your expectation was right, and sashays on. And then scares the life out of you when you least expect it.

It's not all good; the CGI is a bit ropey in places and there are a few times where the safety ropes used for filming are too visible. But still, if you want a clever, scary, original movie to keep you up at nights and put you off caving for life, The Descent is probably the film for you.

[	Tags	|	activism, dark phase, freedom, gigs, mesaplex, reviews	]
[	mood	|	curious	]
[	music	|	DeathBoy - "Stay Away"	]

As part of my complete failure to update LJ with reviews of things I've attended and read recently, I have failed to mention the Mesaplex gig I was planning to attend a few weeks back with greyeyedeve, despite being asked for an opinion by an anonymous commenter whom I have reason to believe is associated with the band in some way. Mea culpa.

Anyway. Mesaplex live. Good. The Wheatsheaf is a fantastically crappy venue, much like the Camden Barfly, but being in a smoke-filled room packed to the gills with sweaty, lager-swilling students always has a certain appeal. Despite sundry changes in lineup and a few delays, Mesaplex came on as the first act of the evening (rather than the headliner I'd been anticipating) and did their stuff, playing some of the tracks they've made available via the Mesaplex website and a cover of a familiar theme that I just couldn't place. Musically, they were tight, but the vocals were a little unconfident. Hopefully this is something that will improve with time and more gigs.

Sadly, we didn't stay to see headliners The Rock of Travolta, but we did catch part of Smilex's set, who were catchy and energetic without being massively memorable. Still, worth catching live if only for the terrific energy put off by their demented frontman.

Which brings me to the point that Mesaplex are playing the Port Mahon this Saturday; no idea about support, but they're headlining and will be onstage at 10:20pm, which gives me time to watch Doctor Who before I head out. I'm not going to lose any sleep if I don't make it, but I will make an effort to do so.

Update: While researching for this plug over on dreamingspires, I learned via OxfordBands that support is from "excellent electronica 3 piece" Camp Actor and "dark folky electronica" Dark Phase.

Update 2: Bah, Dark Phase's audio downloads are in crappy WMA format. I have sent them the following e-mail:

Dear Dark Phase,

Having heard that you're supporting the rather tasty Mesaplex at the Port Mahon on Saturday, I wanted to listen to your downloadable tracks to see what you sound like. However, you've only made them available in the less-accessible Windows Media (WMA) format, which means I can't listen to them. Do you have plans to make your downloads available in the cross-platform, accessible MP3 or Ogg Vorbis formats? It'd be worth making sure that more people can hear your music, after all.

On a similar subject, it'd probably be worth your while releasing the tracks under a Creative Commons license - this means that your fans can redistribute your tracks to other people on demo CDs and the like, under certain terms that you specify. The band Who Is Elmo Blatch make their demo EP available in such a way that the tracks can be redistributed provided that the redistribution is non-commercial and that the band are credited always. You can check out their website at http://www.whoiselmoblatch.com/ and the Creative Commons licensing scheme at http://www.creativecommons.org/

Hope to see you Saturday,

Dave

One of these days, I'll actually get a reply to an e-mail like this. (Update: I did)