Uncle Ed

Last Sunday I watched the fitting finale to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics - Canada's victory against the USA in the men's ice hockey final. It was great to watch it with my uncle who's actually over from Canada at the moment. I'd been told he was coming over for a visit but had forgotten when, so it was a nice surprise when he called me up and asked me to hang out. After a rather dramatic and tense end we were both happy to see the Canadians win, and during the game my uncle was telling me all about Canada and how, although he's originally from Britain, he wants to stay over there long term 'cos it's such a great country, especially for bringing up kids. Chatting to him really got me thinking, and after doing a bit of research, I've found out that as a British citizen you can go over and work in Canada for up to a year, which could be something I could do in the future.

I've been getting into ice hockey quite a bit lately actually. Me and my mates went to see a Sheffield Steelers match for the first time the other week, and then my dad got hold of some free tickets, so I went again. It's a different atmosphere from a footy game, but it's a lot of fun, even if I don't understand all the rules yet.

Review of Madness album, The Liberty of Norton Folgate

My review of The Liberty of Norton Folgate got posted at Punknews.org.

I also had my review of Misery Signals' gig at Corporation published on the same site last year.

Review of Hysterics by Rolo Tomassi

Here's an unpublished review for Rolo Tomassi's Hysterics album released in September 2008. I wrote this about a year ago but it never got used.

"I've seen Rolo Tomassi twice in their, and my hometown of Sheffield, UK, both times supporting HORSE the band on one of their wild gallops across the world. Maybe the fact that both bands have synth players landed Rolo Tomassi the support slot in the first place, but after witnessing them the first time around HORSE will have made sure to book Rolo Tomassi again - this band have an amazing live show. When you first see cute female vocalist Eva Spence tiptoe onto the stage you're not at all ready for the explosive screams and sounds that soon burst forth. At first you'll be shocked, then you'll be drawn in, as Rolo Tomassi tear through a set of dynamically diverse and unpredictable pieces, some long, some short, but entertaining throughout.

I once heard an interviewer describe this band as "Too metal for the indie kids, but too indie for the metal kids", and that's as good an indicator as any of where this band's sound lies. Part abrasive screaming, part complex and experimental, part Nintendo-styled synth, Rolo Tomassi have their own way of playing music. Thus the band have created quite a stir, at least in the UK scene, not at all hindered by the novelty of having a female vocalist who looks like someone out of a shampoo advert.

So their debut album, Hysterics begins with "Oh, Hello Ghost", a great first track, opening the album with an ominous electronic intro, then catching you off-guard, lunging early into a fierce and precise riff section, the band suddenly jolting into life. Things segue into tracks two and three, the band really starting to hit their stride as they lead into "Abraxas", the closest thing you'll find to a single on the album.

Next we hit the middle section of Hysterics, where Rolo Tomassi continue to mash up moods and styles you wouldn't necessarily put together, showing that that first few tracks weren't just some horrible production job gone wrong. By this point you'll have learned not to try and anticipate what's coming next, just accept and enjoy.

Aside from some of the synth sections and accompanying effects, Hysterics is a fairly simple sounding recording for the most part, the band themselves creating a great dynamic between quiet and loud throughout the album. Also, each member of Rolo Tomassi has their own distinct voice here, everyone showing some musicianship without sacrificing coherence.

However, while at points the album soars with big, repeating slabs of guitar and spiralling synth lines such as those in "Abraxas" and "Scabs", at other times things become slightly slow and unmemorable. Yes, while these sections are probably needed to contrast with and emphasise the more aggressive parts of this album, it's sometimes easy to lose interest, so Hysterics definitely loses a bit of steam towards the end, with a whole track of rather mundane noise in "Everything Went Grey". But we finish up with "Fantasia", which clocks in at over 14 minutes and showcases everything the band are good at. In some ways it feels like the whole album is building up to this final showpiece, which ends with a giant trademark Rolo Tomassi progression and wraps things up nicely.

All in all, Rolo Tomassi have managed to produce a very good first album which belies their youth, although the album does fall slightly flat in some parts, where things slow down just a bit too much, or where the jazzy experimentation starts to get a bit boring. I feel the band are best when spitting out sharp bursts of noise or throwing up massive, swirling riffs which you never really want to end. But it's hard to sustain such energy over the course of a entire album. Or maybe the interviewer's quote which I mentioned earlier is true, and the band are stretching themselves too far across a massive gap in the musical spectrum. But then again, that's what makes this band interesting, and will probably propel them to greater success and recognition in the future. Hysterics is highly original and does shine very brightly at times and is worth checking out if you like music that messes with your head a little bit."

Hearing a familiar song with completely different vocals

I just heard a track called There, Now I've Said It by Further Seems Forever. It's a track from the band's greatest hits album, Hope This Finds You Well and was originally an unreleased outtake from FSF's second album, How To Start A Fire. What's interesting is that the music is identical to a track called Bleed from the band's third album, Hide Nothing, but the vocals are completely different. In fact, the singer is different as well, as Further Seems Forever had a different vocalist on each of their three albums.

Both are great tracks, and There, Now I've Said It should have been included on How To Start A Fire in my opinion, but I guess the band thought it was too good a song to waste and Jon Bunch rewrote the vocals when he recorded Hide Nothing.

I can't decide which one's better, but they're both amazing, and makes me remember how great this band were. Glad I got to see them at Corporation with Bunch on vocals before they split up.

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.

Reviews

My band, Spheres of Chaos got mentions in two Sheffield music magazines this month. The first is in COMA Magazine. They reviewed our new EP, Stratospheria, and as I don't have a scanner handy, I'll type up what they said:

"Bit annoyed that once again the only way to find out what's on this disc is to access the bands website. I refuse to do so and have no idea what these tracks are called, but it's great. Progressive rock has returned with a big bag of sugar poured over it. I feel like I'm listening to Camel for the first time with a bit of the better guitar bits from Pink Floyd etc etc etc. It's nice, it's really nice and a good selection to play when you can't be bothered with words and just want the waves to crash through you and the ground to melt between your toes."

I really like that. Especially the comparison to Pink Floyd! But maybe I should have written the track names on the disc I sent...

The second was in Sandman, and this was a review of a show we played at West Street Live a couple of months ago. It's only a few lines but it's still quite positive. If you live round here you can pick up a free copy (as you can with COMA), or there's an online PDF version. We're on page 27. I also sent a copy of our EP to Sandman, but they haven't reviewed it yet. Maybe next month?

Sport

I went to watch Sheffield Wednesday's last game of the season yesterday against Norwich City. We had to win to be sure of avoiding relegation, and we did, 4-1! That meant we actually ended up finishing 16th in the table, 6 places above the relegation zone. It was quite an exciting match, but the main thing was that we stayed up, although I hope we're finishing towards the other end of the table next season.

It's also the final of the World Snooker Championship tonight. I always enjoy watching this tournament, especially as it's held in Sheffield. I'd like to actually go to the Crucible one day and watch a match, but watching it on TV is good too. I don't fully understand the game, but the commentators always explain everything and make it interesting. Also, I like the fact that, compared to other sports, snooker doesn't tend to be overhyped or anything - it's just nice and relaxed.

I'd like to see Ronnie O'Sullivan win again, and I reckon he will as he's already winning by quite a way.

Tuesday

It was my second day back at uni today. Already I have to start writing an essay, which sucks. Also, I'm trying to get my application for Kobe University sorted at the moment. Fortunately, the deadline for that is the end of May, which is later than for all the rest of my classmates.

It's the second Steel City derby of the season tonight between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. I was reading today that Wednesday haven't beaten United twice in the same season for over 90 years now, so it'd be nice if we could pull that off, especially as the three points might help us stay up!

I haven't mentioned on here yet, but I got tickets last week to go and see Rage Against The Machine at Leeds Festival! I knew they were rumoured to be playing at Leeds/Reading, although I thought tickets always went really quickly, so I didn't plan on going. But then we discovered that they were playing for definite and that day tickets aren't too hard to get hold of, so me and my friends bought some. RATM - live! Can't wait!

Also, had the first practice for a new band I'm in last night. I'm playing drums again, and we're going for a hardcore sound, with a bit of metal thrown in there. We need some more members, and a bigger practice space though. Also, one of the neighbours came round and complained. Not a good start. Or is it?

Sheffield Carling Academy

So it seems that a new Carling Academy is opening in Sheffield, and I think this is great news. Sheffield has an abundance of smaller music venues and a few mid-sized ones like Corporation and The Leadmill, but the city sometimes misses out on some of the bigger bands who play at the Carling Academies elsewhere in the UK. It looks like the first gig is Reverend And The Makers on the 11th April, which I'm not too interested in, but hopefully there'll be some good gigs coming up in the near future.

Also, I think it's a great use of the former Roxy Nightclub building, which has been derelict for as long as I can remember, but is in a great location. I hear that bands such as The Jam and The Police used to play there, so it's cool that the venue is being resurrected in this way.

Carling Academy Sheffield

2-0

Yesterday I went to the Steel City derby at Hillsborough, the first of two football matches this season between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. I'd been to regional derbies before, but never the Steel City derby, so I was really looking forward to it. I wasn't all that confident that Wednesday would win, but it was a possibility, as neither team had been doing well recently.

The ground was pretty full with over 30,000 in attendance, and the atmosphere was great. We were sat at the end of the stand right next to the away supporters, and there were some interesting exchanges between both sets of fans. Wednesday started the game really well and scored after 25 minutes, the crowd going crazy. After half-time United had more possession but Wednesday played well and got another goal on 76 minutes. We went crazy again, and managed to hold on for the 2-0 win.

Wednesday played the best I've seen them play in a long time, and this was a really great result for us.

There was minimal trouble between the fans, a couple of scuffles as we were walking home, but nothing serious. I think it's amazing the amount of police that get used up on football matches like this.

The next derby is only under a month away too.

I always enjoy going back to Hillsborough, as I was born and grew up in that area, so it's really nostalgic. It reminds me of all the time I spent playing in the park, or at the library, or at school. It's funny how you can feel such a strong attachment to a place.

More essays

I've been writing my essay on the Japanese economy all day down at the Information Commons. The IC is Sheffield University's hi-tech new library which opened last year, and I find it easier to write essays there than sat at my PC in my bedroom. I think because I spend quite a lot of spare time in my bedroom on the internet or whatever it's kinda hard to reset my mind and focus on doing work in the same space. Also, being in a big library full of people who are working makes you want to work yourself, and I usually go down for 5 or 6 hours, so after a while you just drift into a state of unconscious work. The only problem is it's often quite hard to find a PC when everyone's writing essays.

I'll probably go down tomorrow too, but the deadline is this Tuesday, so I'll be able to relax soon.

Toys

Last night my band played at a pub in town called the Frog & Parrot. As usual we had a few problems organising everything, but in the end we played a good set and people seemed to enjoy it. In Sheffield the Frog & Parrot is quite well known, and it has quite a history for putting on bands that went on to be super famous. The pub is also pictured in the liner booklet of the Arctic Monkeys first album, so it's cool to say we've played there now.

I went to the Early Learning Centre for the first time in ages the other day. I was with some people and we needed some black poster paint, but it kinda brought back memories going inside. It's a shop I went in a lot when I was kid and I especially liked the shelves full of small plastic animals they had. I remember each one always had the animal's name printed on the bottom and for some reason I used to really enjoy that fact. Actually, I might have to invest in some of these plastic animals again; they're well cool, especially the dinosaurs.

I found something else from my childhood whilst browsing Ebay the other day - Fuzzy Felt. It's one of those things that I'd totally forgot about until seeing it again. I seem to remember having more than one set of Fuzzy Felt which would contain a plain board and lots of felt pieces in the shape of animals or cars which you'd use to make loads of different scenes. Everything was re-usable, as the pieces only stuck together because of the texture of the felt.

I love re-discovering things like this. More than most people I think I have a strong urge to stay a kid or at least feel some kind of connection with those times.

Weston Park Museum

I went to Weston Park Museum today for the first time in a long while. It's a museum near Sheffield town centre and the place was recently redeveloped for £17.3 million, updating things. I remember going as a child with my family and most of the history-based exhibits being boring, but there was a giant stuffed polar bear and a sculpture of two sumo wrestlers which I quite liked. In the museum shop there would be pictures of the main exhibits for sale; they were blank and you could colour them in at home. I always used to buy the sumo wrestler picture.

My trip today was fun, although seeing so many stuffed animals was a bit weird. I was disappointed not to find the sumos anywhere in the museum too, and either they now have a different polar bear to before or it just seemed a lot, lot bigger when I was a child - when we found the polar bear today I was actually taller than it.

I can't see where the £17.3 million went, but it's not bad for a free day out.

Arctic Monkeys

Despite my indie-bashing in a previous post, I do, in fact, like the Arctic Monkeys. Seeing their success and listening to their music somehow instils in me a proudness of my Sheffield heritage. So I recently ordered both of their albums.

I know just about all the songs from their first, as when I was in sixth form someone had a copy of their demo, which they played quite regularly in the common room for a while. I remember we'd be listening to this demo then switch to the radio to hear the DJ talking about the band, and we all felt some kind of pride about the fact that they came from our city.

I really like their first album and I don't want to just say what's been said a thousand times before, but the lyrics are great, very colloquial - you feel like you know what he's on about. The music's great too, some nice chord progressions and fast-paced drums. Also, it's well recorded; nice and simple and not over-produced.

I haven't listened to their newer album quite as much yet, but it's nice to see the band not dilute their sound too much, although there doesn't seem to be as much variation between songs as before (I do like the Hawaiian-style slide guitar sound on Only Ones Who Know though).

There's no point me recommending either of the two albums, as I doubt you'll have escaped them.

Floods

Over the last few days you might have heard about the floods in the Yorkshire area of the UK. It's been pretty bad for a lot of people around here. Fortunately, my house has been fine. It's strange that some people are wildly affected just because of where their house is located.

I think the cause of the problem has just been extremely heavy rain, which caused a lot of local rivers to burst and flood low-lying areas. Apparently, the biggest clean-up operation in peacetime Britain is currently under way. Some houses and shops very near to the town centre have been ruined, Meadowhall has had to close and lots of people are saying they can't ever remember anything like this happening before.

It's weird that something like this hasn't really happened in recent times. It's also strange that with all our capabilities we couldn't accurately predict this, and do something about it. Or maybe this was unstoppable, and that's even weirder to think about. And it's summer. I hear there's even more rain to come at the weekend too. I hope it doesn't all get any worse.

Beat 2007

I attended an event at the Crucible theatre yesterday called Beat 2007. It was a drumming exhibition, organised by local drummer Toni Canelli. It was good fun, with a drum corps, drumming competition and clinic from a guy called Pete Biggins. Some of the younger kids who entered the competition were actually better than me, and it reminded me again that I need to start taking lessons sometime soon. But the clinic was amazing. I'd never been to a live clinic before, but this guy put on the best drumming performance I've ever seen. He played a ten minute solo to start off, with some mind-blowing fills and timekeeping, then went on to talk a little about playing with a click track.

Today I'd intended to go to an automobile exhibition in Sheffield. It's not normally my kind of thing, but this one had the actual cars from Back To The Future and the 1989 Batman film, the De Lorean and the Batmobile. Would've been cool, but no-one I knew wanted to go.

Filming

We did some more filming today for the documentary I'm working on at the moment. We went to a bingo hall in the city centre to speak to some older folks. I did all the filming while my friend asked the questions. We're hoping that we'll have the bulk of the filming done in the next two weeks, then we can start editing and doing the more fun stuff like voice-over work. We're going to try and get the film finished in time for submission to the Sheffield Doc/Fest. Having the film played there would be ultimately amazing.

ブログ ポスト

The title of this post is "blog post" in Japanese. A couple of friends recently told me how to type in Japanese using Windows XP. It's quite simple to get the hang of, although it's a slightly strange system, mainly because Japanese and keyboards aren't all that compatible. It could be quite useful in my studies, especially with spellings and kanji.

Last night I was in town and missed the last tram. Here in Sheffield trams are useful most of the time, but the last tram is always before midnight, which means you can't stay out in town all that late. And living far away from the city centre means that I use the trams very often. After realising I had missed the last tram I phoned a couple of friends to see if I could stay over at their places in town, but no answer. So I decided to catch a taxi home and I quite enjoyed it actually. Taxis are like going to the hairdressers, the whole experience feels quite personal, if expensive. I'll be moving out next year to a house much nearer to the city centre, and hopefully I won't have to rely on trams any more.