Wednesday, October 18, 2006

[In this section I talk about how long it has been since I last posted a blog entry.]

Wow, hasn't it been a long time since I last posted a blog entry. I have been existing more or less constantly in this time, but it has gone undocumented. To recap: summer, caravaning, Rome, left home, new flat.

[In this section, I discuss what I'm up to right now.]

I'm co-running the Ministry of Mirth this term. There are shows 22 October, 5 November, 12 November and 26 November, so come down to the Wheatsheaf on those Sundays at 8pm. Tickets are £3, unless you want to buy a block and sell them on, in which case you can buy 10 for £15, which are valid for any of the shows.

This Sunday at 4pm, I am on the first broadcast of OXIDE's new panel game, The Sunday Sideshow. It's a regular panel show, with current affairs rounds, improv games and some very well scripted in-jokes. Please listen. If anyone knows how to rip directly from a stream, I would love it if you did this for me: you can listen here.

And there is still the Imps. In my spare time, I like to write a thesis.

[In this section I wax lyrical about my two current favourite albums]

I recently bought two albums that while in sound are completely different, have many similarities, mainly in the region of being excellent. The first is Cult of Luna's "Somewhere Along The Highway". CoL probably closest resemble a doom band, with the slow, chugging melodies and riffs. Doom, for me, is heavy music. I never think fast is heavy. Slow is heavy. Black Sabbath sound heavier to me than Dismember. And quiet moments can be heaviest of all, like the calm before a storm. The album is completely about creating an atmosphere in which the rest of the music can exist. It comes across much more like a single piece than a 10 track album, and that this quite an achievement.

The other album is Agrophobic Nosebleed's "Altered States of America". Clocking in at under 22 minutes long, this one hundred track alnum (that is 100 track) pushes right at the frontier of grindcore and extreme music. Most tracks last under 10 seconds, there's a 1000bpm drum machine thumping out blast beats behind the insane guitar shredding. The entire thing leaves you stunned - there is no respite from the dense wall of noise and chaos that begins and ends over and over within a single breath. I figure most people would say this wasn't music - I'd probably agree. It really is something else.

[In this section is stop writing]