Chiptune Alliance Tour 2008

Last night, my band, Spheres of Chaos played at the Sheffield date of the Chiptune Alliance Tour 2008, and it was so much fun, probably the best gig we've played thus far as a band. The other artists on the bill were Firebrand Boy, syphus, Random and Sabrepulse, all of whom were top guys.

We had loads of people turn up, and it was just great to see so many quality chiptune acts in one place. Everyone was so into the music and there was such a great vibe going on. Things are really taking off with VGM and chiptune in the UK, changing from something that was just a load of people on the internet into awesome events like this. There were a couple of people filming the whole thing too, with one guy planning to put a documentary of the tour together, so I'm gonna try and put some video footage up in the Gamewave Podcast feed at some point.

Anamanaguchi were meant to be playing on the night too, but they ended up getting deported again! I hear their new album's nearly ready for release though, which should be very cool.

Again, I've uploaded some photos of the night (mainly SoC) up onto Facebook.

Rage Against the Machine at Leeds Festival

So yesterday I went to the 2nd day of Leeds Festival 2008. I'd been looking forward to this ever since I bought my ticket 3 months ago, mainly because because I would be seeing Rage Against the Machine!

We started off the day by catching a coach from Sheffield to Leeds at around 10am, passing the Tinsley cooling towers which would be knocked down at 3am the next morning. We arrived at the bus station in Leeds about an hour later and then caught a shuttle bus to the festival site, where we showed our tickets and got our wristbands before heading towards the main festival area. We had to get rid of all our drinks before we went in though, which sucked because water was £2.20 a bottle(!) and I got abnormally thirsty later on.

As we made our way over to the main stage I was surprised by the sheer scale of this event. There were so many people everywhere, but we managed to locate some of our other friends who were there all weekend while Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly was playing. Not my kinda thing really, but he was OK actually. Next up was Taking Back Sunday who I wanted to see, so we moved nearer to the stage. They were good, playing some of my favourite songs of theirs. After that was Dizzee Rascal, and the main stage suddenly got really busy. We didn't want to watch him though, so we moved back toward the food stands and made our plans for achieving the best possible position to watch Rage. After much debating we decided to go down to the front of the main stage fairly early on, but not before we'd had a bit of a wander. As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to see Goldfinger and Tiger Army who were both playing on the punk stage, but we couldn't actually figure out where that was. So after grabbing some (very expensive) vegan fast food we headed back over towards the main stage just as Serj Tankian was finishing up. His music is even more ethnically-inspired than System of a Down, and it sounded kinda freaky to my ears, but cool nonetheless.

As Serj finished we made use of the temporary movement of the crowd, and followed a slipstream to the front of the stage. I was pretty pleased with how easy that had been, but now we had to stand through 4 bands we didn't necessarily want to see without needing to use the toilet or eat/drink.

But Biffy Clyro were good actually, even though I only knew one song. Next was The Enemy who were OK, but after that it was The Fratellis who weren't very good at all and I only knew one of their songs too - that one that goes "da, da da da, da da da, da da da da da da da". Apparently that was the last time they'll ever play that one live as well - they probably got tired of people only wanting to see them for that one song. But they didn't look very interested throughout their set, and neither did the crowd. In fact, I was surprised by the lack of crowd interaction from all the bands we saw, even Rage Against the Machine. It always makes things a bit more interesting and involving when bands say something in between songs.

Next up were Queens of the Stone Age, and up until this point it seemed like people had been moving in and out of the crowd just to see one band, but by now it was getting dark and the crowd was pretty much packed in, to the point where you couldn't really enter or leave.

There had been pits and crowd surfing up until now, but nothing too bad. But when QotSA came on they started with No One Knows and we all went crazy. But it's so weird when there are thousands of people in one area all trying to move or dance. The crowd swayed in waves, and you had no choice but to sway along, although at times it felt like you were about to fall over and get crushed by everyone. I'd been at shows in clubs where this had happened, but nothing quite on the scale of this before. Fortunately just about everyone managed to stay on their feet, although some people began to push their way out as it just got a bit too much.

To be honest, the rest of the QotSA's set bored me. I know they're meant to be stoner rock or whatever, but I didn't realise how monotonous they could be. And being crushed to the point of not being able to breath properly, as well as having endured the heat, being really thirsty and feeling kinda tired from standing up for hours on end sent me into a zoned-out state where I stopped paying attention. I think I might have concentrated and enjoyed it more if I'd been in a club and had some space and a drink in my hand.

Eventually QotSA finished and Rage were the next band up - we'd made it! As we waited for them to come on we moved back from the front a bit so that we'd have a more stable place to stand, and this proved to be a good idea.

Rage were scheduled to come on at 9:30, but they were about 20 minutes late coming out in the end. Everyone forgot that though as Tom Morello started with the opening riff to Testify, and when the drums kicked in everyone just went wild. After that was Bulls On Parade, and everyone was still going crazy. I'd personally been building up to this show for a while, and all the previous bands that day had been building up to this too - it was a really great feeling being part of this show.

After People Of The Sun things calmed down a bit, but then something weird happened. Halfway through Bombtrack the drums stopped, then someone came on stage and told the rest of the band to stop. Apparently things were looking kinda dangerous down at the front and Zach asked everyone to move back so that people weren't gonna get crushed. This was good to see and a lot of people applauded. The band then finished off Bombtrack though and played through the rest of their set - all classics. Again, it would have been nice to have a bit more crowd interaction, and every song was played at the same or slower speed than the recorded versions, which is odd for a live show, but nothing could spoil seeing this band live. It's just something I thought would never happen, but it did, and it was awesome. And that's all there is to it. They finished with Killing In The Name, applauded the crowd, linked arms and left the stage. Amazing.

The fun wasn't over yet though. Everybody started to leave the main stage, and I took out my phone to text people to find out where we were meeting (we'd lost each other in the crowd). However, halfway through writing the text message my phone ran out of battery! Now I had no way of getting in touch with everyone (although I probably should have used my head and looked for the massive flag we'd been waving all day). Anyway, I made my way back toward the shuttle buses hoping to catch the guys in that area, but after not finding them I decided to take the bus on my own rather than risk being stuck at the site overnight. After that I managed to get the last coach home to from the bus station and then get a taxi, arriving home at 2:45am.

It turns out the guys were all still waiting for me in front of the stage wondering what had happened to me. They managed to catch the last shuttle bus back, but there were no coaches from Leeds to Sheffield until about 5am. I felt pretty bad for them when I found out today, but it's good to know they were concerned over where I was!

So in the end I didn't get to see all the bands I wanted to, but seeing Rage Against the Machine was mind-blowing and something I'll always remember.

Here's the full setlist and an article about the Rage show from the NME website, and I've uploaded some photos I managed to take to Facebook.

Leeds Festival! Wooo!

I'm going to Leeds Festival on Saturday and it's gonna be awesome. I wanna see Goldfinger, Taking Back Sunday, Anti-Flag, Tiger Army and most importantly, Rage Against The Machine. I also wanna see Less Than Jake, but I think they're gonna be on at the same time as RATM. Can't wait though! I'll try and get some photos too.

My reaction to Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

I bought the DVD ages ago, but the other night I got round to watching Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. This one is different to the live-action Street Fighter film released in the same year (1994), which I haven't seen, but I'm informed the animated film is much better. I was actually hoping for the film to be viewable in Japanese for a bit of language practice, but there was no option for that, so I watched it in English.

The movie centres around the characters of Ken and Ryu, but more so Ryu, who is wandering the globe in search of worthy opponents to spar with. However, Ryu is being trailed by the Shadowlaw, a crime organisation run by Bison, who wants to capture Ryu and turn him into a Shadowlaw henchman. The storyline's pretty predictable overall, but all the other main characters from the games make an appearance, leading to some interesting fight scenes. Some characters play larger roles than others though - I was disappointed to see that my childhood character of choice, Dhalsim was hardly involved in the film at all.

The animation quality varied throughout, but the film looked fairly good for the most part. And the soundtrack was interesting, composed mainly of hard rock/grunge type stuff, some of the tracks being supplied by bands such as Korn and Alice in Chains - I guess that's what was in fashion at the time. I was also surprised to hear the DVD menu audio was all songs by The Mad Capsule Markets.

I get the impression this was a pretty big film when it was originally released, probably more so in Japan than in the West. In fact, some of the new characters and storylines from the film eventually made their way into the Street Fighter games, and I'd recommend this film for anyone who's a fan of the games. It's nothing amazing, and a lot like most other anime action films, but it's still enjoyable to see all the characters from the games duking it out and stuff.

I really wanna play some Street Fighter II now actually - hado-ken!

Neuromancer film

I just came across this piece of news about a film adaptation of William Gibson's cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. I recently read Neuromancer for the first time and it was quite unlike any other book I've ever read, largely due to its unique narrative style, which I found really hard to follow. Gibson doesn't paint a full picture of what's happening in his story, rather he prefers to give you bits and pieces, and expects the reader to fill in the blanks. And while this makes the story quite exciting and fast-paced at times, I found it frustrating for the most part, especially when I'd leave a few days in between reading, so the story and situations weren't always fresh in my mind. It'd be interesting to hear what anyone else who's read the story has to say about this.

Saying all that though, the story itself and all the technological implications of the book were intriguing, and to say it was written in 1984 the book was quite a visionary work in regard to computers and 'cyberspace'. So I found myself wishing that the story was a film, as then I wouldn't have had any difficultly understanding and visualising what was going on. I'll be on the lookout for this film.

Honey Monster Honey Waffles

More food blogging! After discovering the nicest sweets ever, within a relatively short space of time I've discovered the nicest cereal ever. It's called Honey Monster Honey Waffles and it's awesome. It reminds me a lot of a cereal called Start which used to be made Kellogg's when I was a kid. They stopped making it though, and I've been looking for something like it ever since.

And who knew the Honey Monster kept a blog?

Jelly Dinosaurs

I don't normally post about food on here, but I've recently discovered The Natural Confectionery Company, and they make the nicest sweets ever, my favourite variety being the Jelly Dinosaurs.

Also, they've just updated their website. Before it only linked through to the Cadbury site, but there's now an amusing animation to watch, and when it finishes you can order a free sample, which is pretty cool.

My reactions to The Dark Knight

So I'm going to have to agree with everyone else and say that the The Dark Knight is AMAZING. I went to see it on Friday night, and although I don't go to the cinema all that often, it has to be one of the best new films I've seen in years.

I'd been hearing very good things about it from all my friends, but I still entered the cinema with a degree of scepticism. By the end of the film though, I had no doubt in my mind that The Dark Knight is a top quality film, setting itself apart from all the other action movie and blockbuster trash that's being made these days. The other day I was trying to come up with a recent 'great' movie and couldn't really think of one, but after seeing The Dark Knight, I believe it is such a film, one that will go down as an important film of our time.

There are a few different sub-plots and themes involved, but the main storyline focuses on the battle between the Joker and Batman, the Joker committing numerous murders in an attempt to force Batman to step down as Gotham City's crime fighting vigilante. And the Joker was the best part of the film for me - a thoroughly interesting character, with methods and schemes that are always really intriguing and unpredictable, almost turning being a criminal into an art form. His plans eventually come to involve the whole population of Gotham too, creating massive, involving moral dilemmas, and really getting you thinking.

Heath Ledger's Joker is a different character to the one played by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 Batman. He's less off-the-wall crazy, and more powerfully evil, but surprisingly, you find yourself empathising with him at times. And I found it interesting that during the film the Joker basically admits he has no real reason for doing what he's doing, other than to cause general anarchy and mayhem, which I appreciated, as it made the film seem more 'real'. Instead of just presenting him as a comic book super-villain, the Joker did actually feel grounded in reality, as did the rest of the film; whereas some other comic book movies struggle to fully integrate their characters into the real world, I found The Dark Knight did this very well.

There are a couple of awesome scenes from the film which stick out in my mind, but the most memorable is one where the Joker is skipping away from a hospital which is about to blow up in a nurse's uniform. It's darkly funny and striking, and I bet it'll become one of those iconic film scenes in years to come.

And I think I'll end there. I won't talk about the rest of the story, as I'd probably give too much away for anyone who hasn't seen this yet, and you DO need to see this. I've heard there's going to be another sequel too, which I'm already looking forward to.