My #31daysofhalloween challenge 2024

 31 days of Halloween, 2024

Its been a good one this year. This time I had the aid of an Arrow subscription. Have been meaning to try it out for years and I really like the service. Might get one on a longer term when I can afford it again.

There are well over 31 films and other forms of spooky media on this list so I don't feel the need to number the list this time. I will say a little about each one though. All of these are first time watches unless stated otherwise.

Oddity - new Irish feature film. Great start to the month, creepy and unsettling.  (Shudder and elsewhere)
Blood of My Blood - Italian gothic, very atmospheric and creepy but not scary. (Mubi)
Imprint - Takashi Miike's spot on the Masters of Horror anthology. Was considered to extreme to broadcast and never made it to TV. A disturbing period piece in the tradition of Teruo Ishii that draws on some of the darker parts of Japanese social history that get too easily romanticised. I loved it. (Physical)

Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend - a 30 minute short from Abigail Thorne of the Youtube channel Philosophy Tube. The idea of Dracula as an abusive ex partner is fun and they do a lot with it. (Nebula Exclusive)

Bubba Ho-Tep - Re-watch, but considering that the last time I watched it was probably about 20 years ago, and all I could really remember was parts of the ending I might as well have been watching it fresh. Thoroughly enjoyed it, Campbell here is the best he's ever been outside of The Evil Dead franchise. (Amazon)

In a Violent Nature - I didn't really enjoy it. I was thoroughly impressed with it and get what it was trying to do but it left me a bit cold. Still, nice to see something fresh being done with the Slasher genre. (Physical)
Boys From The County Hell - A horror comedy from my own neck of the woods, well Northern Ireland anyway, and it's good and it does our sense of humour without being cringe. Shocking. 

Stopmotion - Recent British horror film about a woman making one of my favourite types of film, creepy stop motion! And it drives her to obsession and madness! Hell yeah! Good show (Shudder)

Images - An old one from Robert Altman. A woman may be in the grip of madness or possibly the victim of an elaborate conspiracy or some supernatural 'tings are going down. Hard to say and either way its a disconcerting experience that uses the edits and cuts to put you in the head of someone who might be loosing it. Good stuff.
El Conde - As you know I like to try and watch a film from each of the habitable continents when I'm doing this. This is from South America, Chile to be exact. Its a darkly funny political satire on the idea that Pinochet was a literal vampire. It's funny enough, the narration from Margret Thatcher is a clever touch. (Netflix)
Manborg - Canadian retro-90s comedy action horror. Same team that did Fathers Day. This was a lot of fun. (Amazon)

Childsplay - This is the 2019 one. I really like this, its a sci-fi about the horrors of AI instead of a questionable Voodoo explanation for the murder-doll. Chucky isn't evil, he just has the safeties off. (Netflix) 
The Purge - Rewatch, chosen by my Sister. I liked it before and it was fine on a rewatch. I like the setting and the premise, could do with watching the whole series but I can't mind which ones I have and haven't seen. (Netflix)

Carrie - Another rewatch, again its been ages so it was fun watching it again. Knowing the ending doesn't make it any less impactful as it all plays out. Also funny watching it now since seeing Phantom Of The Paradise, you can see all of DePalmas stylistic touches, except its not as balls to the wall mental as that film, its all there but paired down and directed. Deserved classic status. (Amazon)

House - Probably the worst horror film to be simply titled "House". Its the American one that was the start of an ongoing series. (Arrow)

Wolf Guy - Now this is more like it, the sort of thing I got the Arrow sub for. Weird Japanese stuff, nonsensical plot, some cool gore effects and tits. I'm easy pleased. (Arrow)
Juju Stories - The token African film for the list. Nigerian Urban-Folk horror anthology. Good stuff, each of the three sections was well executed and the acting and writing were all on point. It's always nice getting a window into another culture. (Amazon Prime)
Over The Garden Wall - Rewatch of this eminently re-watchable animated mini series which can be consumed in 10 minute bites or all at once as a 2-hour ish complete story. It's great. Lots of detail and depth, you get a little more on each rewatch. Every section is a joy in itself. (Amazon Prime)
Hellraiser: Bloodline - I've heard that the Hellraiser sequels from 3 onwards are hard going. This wasn't great but it does some interesting things with the mythos.
Run Rabbit Run - Our trip to the Antipodes of the season. Unoriginal Ozzy spooky-kid movie. (Netflix).
The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures - Another South American price, this time Brazil's Coffin Joe. Neither as horny or as fun as it sounds unfortunately. (Arrow)

The Last Matinee - An international co-production of Uruguay, Mexico and Argentina this time, more recent and much more enjoyable. A killer on the loose in a movie theatre that is showing a slasher film, set in the 80s. Its very meta and has some fun kills. Decent. (Arrow)
DellaMorte DellAmore - This was great. Italian giallo horror comedy-satire. It looks gorgeous and has a great turn from Rupert Everett as a town cemetery employee who has to fight the undead every night. The satire element would probably be more apparent if you know Bava's work like The Beyond but I defy anyone to watch this and not get something out of it. (Amazon Prime)
Madhouse - I don't mind admitting that it was Movie Bob's youtube channel video on this that got me to watch it. This was amazing, dark mystery / horror with Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, its about the horror movie industry which gives them an excuse to do a bit of meta commentary on the genre. Price is amazing as always, this tme playing a version of himself. If you like the old Corman Poe adaptions or Hammer / Amicus etc era British technicolour horror you need to see this. (Physical)
Tales That Witness Madness - Speaking of which, this is an old Amicus anthology film with Donald Pleasence in the framing story. It has a lot of charm. (Recorded from TV)
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane - wasn't sure whether to include this. Its not really a horror film though it does have some touches of horror. The scariest thing in it is Martin Sheen being a nonce to a very young Jodie Foster. Its really good though. Like an episode of Colombo meets We Have Always Lived At the Castle. (Amazon Prime)

Shaun Of the Dead - Rewtach. One of my favourite films ever. Just a stone cold classic of horror comedy. 10/10 no notes. (Netflix)
Queen of The Damned - I wasn't expecting much and thats what I got. Stuart Townsend was a good choice and could have been a great Lestat in a better film. Good for a cheesy Nu metal is Good Actually 00s nostalgia kick. (Physical)
The Platform 2 - loved the first one. This was okay but sort of undoes some of the interesting subversive / radical messaging that the first one had without adding much of interest. (Netflix)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Rewatch, of course. Love it. 10/10 no notes. (Disney+)
Black Rainbow - Supernatural Thriller about a dodgy medium who might actually have other worldly powers, enough to seemingly predict murder. Very well done, the seance scenes were suitably creepy. One of the good finds of this season. (Arrow)
Hocus Pocus 2 - Terrible. Not even a cameo from Omri, like FFS. (Disney+)
Grim Prairie Tales - Rewatch. Western Horror anthology, James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif telling scary campfire tales to each other. It looks like a TV movie, but its fun and the second story has a memorable ending which is worth the price of admission alone. Nice to revisit after nearly 30 years. (Its just on Youtube)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice - Was intending to see this in a cinema this month but missed out and ended up skinning in with my mum and sister for the stream on Halloween night. I am a huge fan of the original, found it genuinely creepy an unsettling when I was wee. The other people I watched it with really liked it, I wasn't that enamoured with it. Glad I watched it though. (We got it through Prime)

And thats it. I only got to read through one horror novella, Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I've not been reading as much this year. Not a bad selection over all.

Monkey Man (Dev Patel, 2024) A Review

Of all the various genres of contemporary popular culture the superhero origin story feels like the most played out, with the action-revenge thriller not far behind it. So it seems odd that last weeks release Monkey Man, which is decidedly situated in both and playing the tropes of each fairly straight, might be one of the freshest and most exciting releases of the year.

The film is a passion project from the British-South East Asian actor Dev Patel and marks his directorial debut. Some readers may remember him from his start on the TV series Skins as part of the first gen, or from later more prominent roles in Slumdog Millionaire, C.H.A.P.P.I.E. and the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel series, or my favourite, David Lowery’s Art-House fantasy adaption of The Green Knight. He has definitely done some good work over the years and worked with some of the most interesting directors working at the moment. However as a martial artist since childhood, long before he was interested in acting and fan of action cinema he’d always wanted to be in one of those films, preferably as the lead. Problem was though that the film industry doesn’t tend to see him in that sort of role, and his only way to be in that sort of film would be as “the guy who hacks the mainframe or the comedy side-kick”, unless he made the film himself, which is what Monkey Man is.

 

As much inspired by the classic Hong Kong Kung Fu films, post 2000s South Korean revenge thrillers and The Raid series moreso than anything from the various ‘x’-ywoods of the Indian sub-continent, the film nonetheless wears its status as a product of Indian culture on its sleeve. The titular Monkey is based off of Patel hearing the stories from the Ramayana from his Indian grandfather, specifically that of Hanuman, the Monkey King who assists Rama over the course of the epic, mostly by fighting various gods, mortals and demons with his magic club and martial arts abilities (and yes, if that sounds familiar, this is also widely thought by scholars to be a major inspiration for Sun Wukong, the King Monkey from the Chinese literary classic Journey to the West). 

 

As well as the references to Hindu mythology, authentic Hindi dialogue in some places, the Indian trad elements in the score and OST, and the general aesthetic which does a brilliant job of depicting the modern Indian city as a hellish neon-lit cyberpunk dystopia, it also shows its cultural specificity in the social commentary and messaging. It seems that conscious of this being his first directorial feature and possibly his only, Dev Patel threw every single thing he had at the screen and made sure he said everything he could conceivably want to say, and the top of that list was to stick two middle fingers up at the BJP.

The story of the film concerns a nameless protagonist who infiltrates an exclusive club for the ruling class of a fictional Indian city in order to enact revenge on the corrupt head of Police responsible for the destruction of his village when he was a child. Along the way he tries and initially, fails, succeeding after finding community with other among oppressed to fight not just for his own personal vengeance but for all those dispossessed by the ruling Hinduja elite. The club not-for-nothing is called Kings (the icon styled after a European coronet) in a fairly obvious nod to the Raj and India’s postcolonial status and is full of portraits of the co-opted rulers through which the British exercised control over India. It is full of not just the criminal elites and dirty cops, civil servants and politicians but religious figures, one in particular Baba Shakti who over the course of the film becomes emblematic of how the corruption of the Hindu religious traditions by capital plays into everything.

The story behind the scenes seems to have been as interesting as anything we see in the film itself. The shoot took place during the pandemic and was fraught with practical difficulties and setbacks, including Patel injuring himself several times and running out of money in the middle of production. Even after it was completed getting distribution was a whole other saga. Initially meant to be a Netflix release, they seem to have not reckoned with the political themes and shelved it fearing alienating one of their key markets for distribution. It was eventually picked up thanks to Jordan Peele, who one imagines must have seen an affinity between his own work which explores contemporary political and social issues through a populist genre while also being a solid example of that genre on the black (in both senses of the word) horror comedies Get Out, Us and Nope. Both those things work in its favour, the scrappiness of the production is appropriate for a hard as nails action thriller, that getting a cinematic release and not going straight to streaming is very much appropriate to a movie such in incredible visual sensibility. There is an absolutely gorgeous psychedelic sequence right at the heart of the film that would thoroughly satisfy any fan of Jodorowsky, Russell, Noe or Panos Cosmatos that for my money, as one myself, is worth the door tax on its own.

 

So, if you like action films, prefer them with good politics and you can handle a bit of the old ultra-violence (the 18 cert is exclusively for that, some of which to be fair borders on body-horror) this could well be among your more enjoyable cinematic experiences of the year.

October 31 days of Halloween movie challenge 2023 (+ other spooky media)

No fucking around, no Leprechaun gimicks this time. But I did also do stuff other than watch films and I'd like to talk about them too.

1. Godkiller - Edgey AF "action comic" with a shockingly good voicecast for something so trashy. My inner teenager enjoyed it immensly.
2. Baghead - Duplas brothers pseduo horror. It's fine but not great. Not a patch on Creep or any of their subsequent work.
3. Odd Noggins - I stuck this on at random after browsing Prime for stuff. Looked like it might be a fun low budget indie horror, and I was right about most of that. I guess they had a lot of fun making it but it wasn't funny and unless seeing pretty normal looking middle aged people bone is supposed to be scary, not scary.
4. Where The Dead Go To Die - one of the great works of "disturbing media", bad 90s / 00s CGI animation doing some really gross stuff. Like a lot of extreme media (eg, the novel Cows), I don't know how far the tongue is in the cheek on this one, but I feel like they are self aware to some extent. Kind of reminds me of The Shivering Truth but with a hard X rating.
5. Inseminoid - 80s "classic". Eh, it's fine.
6. Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter - Rare re-watch. I recall seeing this as a child and rather liking it. Its great, Hammer doing a rare original IP and it all (script in particular) is just better and goes far harder than they typically did back then.
7. There's Nothing Out There - self aware po-mo 90s indie horror that supposedly Wes Craven stole the ideas from for Scream, or at least thats what's implied  in the short Copycat (also on Mubi). Jury is well out on that one. It's fine.
8. Talk To Me - recent A24 darling that is doing the rounds, this years St Maud and about as devisive. I really liked it. Good premise, well executed lots of creepyness and some good scares.
9. Cobweb - Another new one, great stuff. Creepy as balls and lots of good scares and gruesome kills. Homelander is in this as the Da and he's grrrrreat!
10. Soft and Quiet - Actually more of a thriller than a horror but for that it has some of the most genuinely terrifying characters you'll ever see on screen. Nazi Karens! Karenazis! The horror, the horror....
11. Dawn Of The Dead - I watched the long version on Youtube that has everything in it from all the various cuts. Even though that's not a version any professional editor or Romero intended to put out, it still was an incredibly enjoyable experience that mostly holds up really well.
12. Moon Garden - Oh, I love a good dark fairy tale horror. Great effects for what was apparently a really tiny budget. The child actor that plays the lead was brilliant.
13. VHS 1985 - Fine. I've come not to expect a whole lot from the VHS franchise and this delivered. Nice degraded media and glitch aesthetic-y stuff, good atmosphere in some sections but a lot of the individual stories and performances weren't up to much.
14. Freaky - I genuinely enjoyed this. Absolutely delivered as anything you could want from a horror slasher comedy and wrung all you can from the premise. My only regret is not watching it the day before on the actual Friday The 13th
15. Medusa - Disappointing. Didn't go anywhere interesting, do much with the premise and no good scares or kills. The social / policical commentary was all there and was all well and good but it didn't tie the elements together in a satisfying way.

16. Bad Things - Queer horror film. Not great, felt like they were trying to do elevated / post-horror but didn't land any of the punches thrown.
17. The Lodge - Oh this was much better. Simmilar to bad things, elevated subtle vibes-y horror but this had a lot more teeth and doesn't take long getting right in your face and under your skin. I guessed the ending really early on but it delivered so brutally and brilliantly that it didn't deminish it one iota.
18. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - the one from the 70s with Donald Sutherland. Re watch, haven't seen it since I was wee. Still great, brilliant script, good performances, creepy, eerie vibes and good scares.
19. Perfect Blue (rewatch) - One of the greatest, one of my absolute all time favourites. Kon knew how to do layers with visual storytelling and here in one of the stand out animé debut features of all time deploys all that to brilliant effect.
20. Paranorman - nothing says halloween like a bit of creepy stop-motion. Brilliant, if not quite as great as some of Liaka's other work
21. The Guardian - William Friedkin died earlier this year so instead of watching The Exorcist like someone normal I watched this bonkers (in a fun way) evil nanny movie he did in the 80s. Nicely atmospheric and a great ending.
22. Husera: The Bone Woman - really interesting and well done LGBTQ+ horror from mexico. A woman settling down into a nice comp-het lifestyle with a baby and opposite-gender life partner is haunted and stalked by her own queerness, with some preggo body-horror thrown in there.
23. No One Will Save You - good creepy alien-home-invasion horror with great atmosphere and genuinely creepy SFX. The whole "no dialogue, just visual story telling" thing really worked. Should have been called Alien Vs Cottage-core.
24. The Last Broadcast (rewatch) - the original and by far the superior of the early FF Horrors of the late 90s / early 00s. I love how the scariest thing about it is how prescient it is of the modern post internet cultural landscape considering when it was made and released.
25. M3GAN - Creepy evil doll robot, using the uncanny valley intentionally for horror is a masterstroke tbf. A lot of fun.
26. The Raven (rewatch) - Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre in the intentionally funny Poe adaption. Classic tbf, the Wizards Duel at the end really gave me a hankering to play Magic The Gathering again.
27. Good Madam - I always like to try to get something in from each continent when I'm doing these. This Peele-esque satirical chiller from South Africa with dialogue mostly in Xhosa was maybe a bit more effective as a bit of social / political commentary / exploration of post-apartheid race relations than as a horror film. Good tho all the same.
28. The Sect - early 90s Giallo, produced by the don himself Dario Argento. A lot of fun bloody kills early on (and one really good one involving a rabbit at about 1hr 30 in) but its a bit too long and the plot meanders all over the 2nd act. It's fine.
29. Titane (rewatch) - One of the best films (in general, any genre) of recent times,best film of 2021 and in the top 5 of the decade so far. Uncompromising, visceral and has some extremely gnarly scenes, yet surprisingly sweet and wholesome. It's about Faahmly!
30. When Evil Lurks - New horror from Argentina that is getting a bit of a rep as one of the best of the year. I can see why, it is unrelentingly bleak like The Dark And The Wicked but amped up, and throw a bunch of creepy murderous children into the mix and you have a heady brew there. Brutal in the best way.
31. Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (rewatch) - Always nice to round these off with an old favourite. The king Bruce Campbell riffing further on the plot and lore of the original, with a lot of inspired camera work, impressive practical effects and genuinely funny physical comedic acting. Still one of the level best in the genre.

Other things:

TV-

I watched the TV series Castlevania: Nocturne and Fall Of The House of Usher on Netflix. These are both updates to long running prestige Netflix projects, Nocturne being a new adventure set a couple of centuries after the original series and Fall' being a new Mike Flanaghan project with multuple returning cast members from his previous works for the channel. Both were excellent.

Nocturne updated the stylish dark action fantasy of the previous series to a different time period - this time 1792 during the bourgeois revolution with native-Americans, Haitian characters and the egeneral theme of revolution and counter-revolution as an important constituent part of the story. Great writing, complext character dynamics, bitching animated action and aesthetic in general. Can't wait for the rest of it to drop.

Fall of the House of Usher was a somewhat silly but very well produced modern riff by Flanaghan on the Edgar Allen Poe canon of work. It also throws in a bit of contemporary anti-corporate discourse and the main family is based to a degree on the IRL horrors of the Sackler family's empire of pain. Still, its not brilliant satire and best enjoyed if one doesn't take it too seriously. Good acting and writing, some fun kills and it does a lot more with the source material than say The Haunting did with the Shirley Jackson corpus.

Books-

I also read a bunch of horror fiction. I'm more of a sci-fi and fantasy head. As much as I like my stuff dark straight up horror doesn't generally do a lot for me. But this being the season I decided to get stuck into some horror literature relevant to my interests.

Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff - A queer, feminist and Irish take on The Walking Dead post-Zombpocalypse type story. It was alright.

Your Body Is Not Your Body - an anthology of body horror / weird fiction by Trans and other LGTBQ+ writers. As you'd expect from such a tome, even the stories that weren't that great were packed with interesting ideas and perspectives. 

Revival by Stephen King - A relatively recent one and supposedly one of his best. I wasn't overly enamoured with it. A lot of the emotional core of the story is predicated on Boomer nostalgia. Where it touched on themes and ideas more relevant to my experience and interests I didn't think it hit the mark. The ending fell a bit flat, but probably because I'd already had it a bit too hyped-up.

Never Whistle At Night - An anthology of dark fiction from Native American authors. As with the previous short story collection, if you want effective horror you go to people that have some serious IRL shit to process and this one also delivers. Even the stories that are not as good as horror as some of the rest have a lot of great ideas in there.

The Shee by Joe Donnelly - Gloriously dumb, old school mass market paperback horror from the 90s with a bit of an Oirish-y twist. Archaeologists digging up a New Grange style passage tomb accidentally unleash The Morrigan, which for the purposes of this novel is a female beasty with It skillset and MO on a small Irish fishing village on the Connaght coast. It was very much of it's time, has a lot of old school misogyny, ableism and ridiculously stereotyped Irish characters but it's fun and dumb enough that it's difficult to take proper offence. It has some deliciously gnarly kills that lean quite heavily into the monstrous feminine imagery, sexual and maternal stuff being a running theme. Personally I found it incel-y enough to be laughable. It also has a little bit of 'troubles' discourse, just to really "Irish" it up, which is again borderline offensive - like one could imagine a Garth Merenghi story saying all Irelands woes from time immemorial through to an gorta mór and everything in the last century is down to a witches curse. Anyway, 'tis enjoyable for what it is but best not to take it too seriously.

So that was my October. I did also get out to a few gigs, saw Fear Factory and guests in Belfast on the 30th, which was a lot of fun. I still have other stuff on, films I "aquired" or ermarked on streaming that I didn't get to, and a showing of the silent horror Häxan from the 20s with a live orchestra to look forwads to on Thursday. Spooky season is by no means over yet, it never really ends to be fair.

Supersonic 2023

Supersonic Festival has been very much on my festival bucket list for some time. I don’t remember the first time exactly that I came across one of the line-ups and thought “damn, this is everything I’m really into, I need to make this happen some year”, I mean like literally I could have been any time between 2012 and the one they were supposed to do in 2020, the weird psycho-temporal-distortion effects of the lockdown now mean many things prior to that point are a mash. But at any rate It was on my radar for some while but being in an unfamiliar city over the water and all the hassle with flying and general interest but not to the point of being arsed doing anything about it of my general friend circle has just led to it getting pushed off on the long finger until this year.

Why now? Could just be consciousness of getting older and knowing I might well not be able to do this forever. It could also have been getting to experience the festival in the odd-parasocial way that I did when they had the lockdown live-stream which if not exactly delivering the festival experience in its fullest was still very enjoyable and was able to deliver the vibe and ethos. I would like to think I would have gone that year anyway if not for the plague. Lankum were on the line up and as already a bit of a fan I was intrigued to see what they would do in a bit less restrained setting than the seated CQAF gig I’d been to before.

So this year when I was looking at stuff to do I put the word out I was if not committed then at least tossing up the possibility of going on my own, but of the people I got in touch with, I did get a bite. My mate John who is not on socials and I see maybe once or twice a year pre pandemic, and since him and his wife Tara had a kid and moved out of Dublin during lockdown, not even as much as tha. But he’s a huge Godflesh fan, really liked the look of the rest of the proceedings and committed to the full weekend with the Mrs joining us for the Saturday.

First hurdle of actually getting there ended up being a wee bit of a melt, airport delays, rail strikes and traffic accidents had me getting into Birmingham a little later than expected, then the process of getting settled meant that I didn’t quite get off to the venue, which was a very short walk from our accommodation until the early evening and I missed a few of the first bands.

Or I should say “Venues” – as in the plural. The festival took place between two buildings, one big space for the main room in the 7SVN with all the bigger acts and The Mill, which had mutiple floors, trader room, outdoor food court (which all looked amazing, smelt unreal and were reasonably priced but I couldn’t engage with personally), second venue and a nice roof top garden with its own sound system and DJs. As with Arc Tangent the crack was one room on, one room off and set up between sets, with Merch tables being manned at the back of each room if you wanted to support the act that were just on. Having timed it to get from the main stage to the first floor of the mill where the other one was it was literally just a couple of minutes but that did involve crossing a live road (with high vis wearing festival security playing the part of lollipop man, without themed Bloody-Teardrop lollipops unfortunately, possibly due to legal reasons) and you had to finish your drink as you weren’t allowed to take alcohol between the two rooms (probably also for legal reasons tbh though it could well have just been ruse to sell more IPAs 😊).

 

That was certainly all a bit odd but the festival does host a series of talks and have referred to the struggle of running a small underground community festival with a genuine radical ethos in a rapidly gentrifying area of a city, venue insecurity and other practical effects, something I know even big commercial festivals here struggle with, so I suppose those wee things are part of the crack and give the whole proceedings a bit of character.

So before getting into the bands and days as stuff, just general impressions of the festival itself are incredibly positive. Everything I could have hoped for a small boutique underground with a range of noise adjacent music from chill meditative ambient to the most ridiculously heavy rock and metal to full on fist-pump Bangface-appropriate rave. Just enough of everything to give it a bit of variety so you really appreciate all the individual pieces in context and that whole through line of noise and general playfulness giving it a consistency too. The crowd was, as with ATG, as with Bangface these days and I’m guessing most spaces where the genuinely cool people who get the crack congregate to be fair, politically radical, alternative, queer, feminist, trans-inclusive, friendly, approachable. The vibe checker app on my smartphone was going crazy all weekend

So, first thing I managed to catch on Friday was the last bit of local post-punk outfit Total Luck. Great start to the proceedings as the heaviness and liveliness where what I needed at that point to dust off  the cobwebs and get myself moving after all that travelling. We missed whatever was on next in favour of a bit of exploring and seeing what the layout of the whole thing was. We did get to see Deerhoof, the Friday headliner and something I was particularly looking forwards to. Lively, eclectic guitar based music, constantly transitioning between styles and tying together with J-Pop vocals tying everything together. A complete blast beginning to end.

After that a bit more mooching about the venue before back to the main room for Hey Colossus, who I wasn’t mad familiar with before but knew where right up my street from the second I heard the deep, menacing, Echo(and the Bunnymen)-y gothic drone of the first tune. After that, back to the mill for live analogue face-melt industrial techno 2-piece Giant Swan. Having been suitably pumped by that we finished on the main stage for Infinity Knives and Brian Ennals brining some sick bass-heavy alt hip-­hop.

Tempted as I we were to continue the night either with the small gaggle of sound folk we’d got chatting with in the smoking area or to book up to a gig being out on by one of the extended Hard Crew fam, all the travelling and festivities was catching up with us and we had to call it quits.

Saturday, John stalled at the flat waiting for his partner, who was also experiencing some of the travel woes I’d been subject to the day before. I had a nice afternoon bate’in about on my own through Digbeth doing a bit of exploring on my way to the other-other venue, an art gallery a couple of streets over from the rest of the stuff that hosted the talks, pub quiz and film showings (which I went to) in the afternoons. Digbeth strikes me as like the local Brum version of Camden or the couple of genuinely cool bits off Royal Avenue here, CQ, Union St. etc. Lots of cool wee spots, a complex with an Arcade Bar next to a Boardgame Café, next to a cinema bar, some small independent art galleries and workshops, loads of absolutely phenomenal graff and street art all over the place. I got to see a showcase of music videos and short video art projects from Ipecac, Mike Patton’s own indie label. 

 
First music I caught was the hardcore punk group Blind Eye in The Mill. As it was early in the day the front of the stage was nice and roomy so I had a lot of space to jump about in, which I definitely made the most of. Black’s Myths was a very different energy, lots of drone-doom goodness with a bit of jazz drumming to give you something to move to, no breaks between songs just a constant roll that you can get yourself into properly. After that I saw Ashenspire, who I’d had the pleasure of seeing do their queer anarchist blackened jazz-metal at ATG a couple of weeks ago and once again enjoyed the hell out of before nipping out a little early to get a good spot for Taqbir.

Taqbir are a riot girl group from Morocco in North Africa who perform with the full face Niqāb - for personal safety moreso that religious observation as their radical feminist and queer-inclusive messaging in their songs puts them in the line of fire of conservative groups back home and in general. Punk at its rawest from a circumstance where its ethos is at its most urgent, it had an edge on it that you just don’t get in hardcore in the occident where the innate revolutionary politics are less urgent. They played a short set, as befitting of the genre, but were a definite highlight of the evening. After that I caught a little bit of writer and Oxbow frontman Eugene S Robinson being interviewed in the dealer room by an old festival friend who I’d had a lovely time catching up with for the first time IRL in near ten years. Between that and having to nip back to the gaff for food I missed the only thing I am in retrospect incredibly gutted at missing all weekend, Divide and Dissolve who apparently wrecked the place with one of the nosiest, loudest and generally memorable performances of the weekend.

By the time I got back John and Tara were on site and despite being a bit worse the wear for all the travelling and whatnot we managed to get in the headliners Godflesh on their loudest and most abrasive form I’ve ever had the pleasure of catching. 

We saw DJ Bus Replacement Service who was less weird and more straight up doof than I was expecting, deviating from the relentless techno for a bit of bassline and a censored cut of DJ Assault’s classic Ass and Titties, all while being supported from the sidelines by her partner Surgeon. That was just like a little slice of Bangface right in the middle of the fest, complete with inflatables going off all over the room and general silly fun vibe.

Then Backxwash finishing the main stage. It was actually the inclusion of Backxwash to the lineup for their UK debut that had made me get my arse in gear about committing to going this year. She’s an artist that I’d fallen in love with over the lockdown when I’d had a bit more time to explore and indulge my passion for musical exploration. Aggressively queer alternative hip hop with elements of industrial noise, black metal and samples of back radical thinkers and cultural figures, X, Davis, Nina Simone etc. and contemporary hip-hop rhythms. A very heady and unique brew, brilliantly executed and clearly loving having the opportunity to get over and do their thing in front of such and appreciative crowd.

The Art

Again, opportunities to party after were there but the excitement of the day and being middle aged AF over here had us all calling discretion the better part of valour and calling it for the night.

The Sunday again has us over at the other-other stage after seeing Tara off I the early afternoon for the Pub Quiz, which we stupidly didn’t think to register for early and had to miss. All good though as that meant more time to see around Digbeth for us, John exploring the culinary pleasures of the area and me getting to actually have a crack at the arcade bar and check out some more of the art. 

Seems like it was a good weekend for exploration in Birmingham. There was a big open air complex next door, the courtyard and stage of which could be seen from the smoking area, had a Reggae festival on that day. I jokingly suggested to one of the security staff that they could turn the speaker in that part of the terrace off to let anyone who had a mind to watch. That suggestion was laughed off politely with a little finger wagging, I was being serious tbh.

First act was Jessica Moss, playing a solo with Violin and Loop pedal / vocal looping effects. Very different, very cool, first time seeing something like that myself since Sonorities last year.

After that I got to see a but of the Supersonic Mass, a quasi-religious ceremony lead by an MC with a bannered parade from the Mill to the 7SVN, with a large one with the names of every act to play the festival in the last 20 years at the head and a ritualistic recitation thereof. That was followed by British folk artists Shovel Dance Collective, Silvermoth, Mark Wagner bringing some ritualistic doom and a quick trip back to the gaff to food-up. Me and John had no big plans for the day up to seeing Lankum later on so just hopped room to room exploring. Yeah and remember what I said earlier about the Reggae festival next door, we got lured into the terrace with some sick beats courtesy of the Tropical Wreck collective and guess what, speaker at far corner disconnected and mostly bar and security staff and one or two punters, shortly to include ourselves, vibing to the ragga dancehall across the road 😊 ‘I toul yiz, didn’ I? 

After that bit of excitement back down to see Jessica Moss, the violinist from earlier in the main room this time with Big Brave playing a very different but equally impressive set.

Moving didn’t bear thinking about because shortly it would be time for Sunday headliners, Irish trad artists Lankum. For those who don’t know, and shame on you if you are in that cohort, Lankum were previously a two piece, “Lynched” after the surname of the brothers Darragh and Ian Lynch who were well known in the underground metal scene in Ireland for being the two lads who liked to play random trad songs while partying after shows. Now after a name change considering the possibility of taking off in places where their band name has certain connotations that they’d rather not be associated with, and being joined by multi instrumentalists Cormac MacDiarmada and Radie Peat, the latter of who adds her own incredibly raw and beautiful Sean Nós vocalisation to the mix, are now Lankum. They have been tearing up the local festival and gig circuit at and near home, and now 3 masterful albums deep into the project are getting genuine international notoriety. I have seen them live before and they’re never anything short of special but in this context being both in England and yet in a place long a centre for Irish immigration, so also basically on home turf it was just mind-blowing. There’s something about what they do that touches something incredibly primal like in general but especially if you’re Irish, with noise-y droned out versions of old standards, eg, The Wild Rover – the absolute pinnacle of a cheesy over played trad tune that everyone and their granda knows like the back of their hand through sheer cultural osmosis yet still given such a squalid and real life by them as to sound brand new and fit neatly alongside their own contemporary murder-suicide ballads about the metal health crisis in modern Ireland and living on the breadline in post-crash Dublin. Myself and my mate both had actual hairs on the back of our necks fully up and tears of national pride and many more complex emotions in our eyes all through it.

Now we’d have thought that after that we’d be too emotionally drained to get another real transcendent moment of musical appreciation out of the last couple of hours of the night, and yet… being tired though not quite done yet we made a bate to the Mill for the last time, to grab my coat from the cloak room and stick our heads around the door if only to check out the last artists on the second stage. ‘Tis as well we did for that turned out to be an absolutely blinding alt hip hop crew Algiers. This was a two piece with the beats having a particularly 80s vintage retro-synthwave tip to them and and MC with a really interesting range including blues-y sing-rapping, Saul Williams-esque lyricism and politically conscious bars. Some of it really banged too, like proper rave breaks.

Re-invigorated we did get down for Avalanche Kaito, lively mathy Afro rock, Zappa-esque compositional weirdness, traditional West-African instrumentation, Griot vocals and a bit of call-response. We were lucky enough to bump into some of the incredibly cool folks we’d got chatting to on the Friday on the dancefloor too and it was a great end to the night and the event.

Overall, as I hope I’ve been able to convey here, I had the absolute time of it. For reasons I’ll not get into, this has been a tough year all round, the general shittyness of the weather over the summer since the start of July being only the least among many things to complain of. So this was a well deserved bit of release and a chance to engage with communities and spaces that are important to me and are part of what helps feed the soul. Glad I got there at last and I hope that this small offering of my efforts can help feed back into it a little. I’d love to get back maybe as a regular part of my yearly cycle of things but time will tell how able I am for that in the future.

I will also note that this weekend was also when the first part of the new Adventure Time spin off dropped and I had been looking forwards to getting into that when I got back, which I did and was all I could have hoped a continuation of one of my absolute favourite things ever with the complexity tuned up just a little and now aimed at a more self consciously adult audience who’d grew up with the series over the last decade could ever be. So I’ve had my mind-hole well fed to the point of being stuffed and satisfied and feel a bit more ready for whatever this increasingly shaky and unpredictable future we all find ourselves in may hold. You can’t ask more from a long weekend than that really, can you?

 

ArcTanGent 2023

 Ok, so to not bury the lead journo-style: main thing is ArcTanGent was great and I can indeed still hack a 3 day Camping festival. This is my first since Life 2014, I have broken both legs and swore off them since then, but when I saw the lineup for this I knew I had to make the effort to get over. So I did.

First thing I'll say that as festivals go, I thought it was fantastically well done. The production, curation, provision of site services and essentials, cleanslyness and usefulness of the bathroom facilties, the pre pitched tent I sprung for, and just the general vibe and atmosphere were all great. I was impressed with the dedication to being enviromentally conscious, it was weird buying tinned water (particularly since the design on the stuff at the bar was very Repo Man esque) but it was good that the place wasn't covered in plastic.

Also for a Metal festival, generally lefty AF, aside apparently a few boneheads who turned up for Heilung who I personally didn't see but heard about from a few people. Hielung themselves are conscsious by the nature of what they do inevitably attract a bit of that sort of thing but have distanced themselves from it publicly to the extent that they can. Other than that, I saw plenty of antifa patches on peoples stuff, lots of leftist, feminist, queer and trans artists and just people about the place in general. 

Pure family vibe too. Like there wasn't a play pen or stuff specifically for kids, but there was a good few babies and actual childer knocking about. Not many but enough that it all felt wierdly wholesome. I saw some folk with their kids (always with ear protectors) up on their shoulders at the main stage. Parenting goals tbf.

I found the way they ran the thing interesting. Everything started really early, first bands on 11ish, and everything runs up to 11pm, after which there is a "Silent Disco" where everyone who wants to can go to a stage and listen to DJ sets being played through headphones. Presumably this is to get around local sound rules and regs that dogged Boomtown the last couple of years I was there. Not the worst way to placate the NIMBYs if that's what you need to do, beats turning the sound down on the main stages after 11pm.

The stages were all pretty close together, had they all been on full time they'd have noise polluted each other out, but with this being basically all bands and stuff that required a set up they staggered the set times so at any given time one stage was on they'd be prepping for the next act on the other stage. I'm guess that's probably relatively normal for that type of festival but I'd personally not seen it before so yeah. Cool. Also made it easy to have a wee snoop about the different stages if you'd a mind to.

What I got up to: Thursday, flight got delayed getting from Belfast to Bristol and the coach into town took a bit longer than I had thought from the (admittedly somewhat rushed) research I had done into the transpot situ so I ended up getting charged dear for some of the camping equiptment I had to get from the last camp shop open in Brizzle by the time I got there (which means I need to do a few more of these things to get the use out of them, oh well....) and I didn't get to do some of the shopping I had planned which meant I had to rely on the then unknown quantity of making do with whatever I could get onsite. It also meant that by the time I got up to the site and got my shit together I had missed practically everything on the first day. No Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs for me unfortunately. If I'm back I reckon I'll need to look into arranging things a bit better with that in mind. It wasn't a complete washout, I did get to see a good bit of Converge who were headlining the mainstage and most of my first big discovery of the weekend Straight Girl who had played the wednesday and was covering for someone who had pulled out, apparently due to getting stuck on the UK border. I had literally just nipped out of Converge to have a quick snoop at the other stages to see what they were like, not intending to really be away for too long when I heard bass, breaks and beats coming from up the hill. Unreal, and short, enough that I caught the latter half of Converge. After that I was wrecked after all the running around so I booked and got my head down. 

Friday I had a pleasant morning catching up with the neighbors (a girl from here and her mate from down South, nice!). Made frieds with a bunch of sound lads from Cardiff, who I'll refer to as 'Jeff's Mates'. I got to see most or all of Joliette, Ashenspire and CLT DRP and really liked them. I saw And So I Watch You From Afar, actually for the first time live, now feel like a bit of a nob for not having done so before. I saw Pet Brick again who I'd had the absolute best time watching at Bangface and gave it absolute stacks, probably the most lively I was all weekend. I didn't get drawn into the mosh pit but I was sorely tempted. Big highlights from the friday tho, not unexpectedly as they were along with Igorrr the big draws for me of the whole thing; Swans and Hielung. Swans was just darkness,vibe and intensity. I got complete full-body frission. It was great. Hielung was just on another level. For those that don't know, they basically do a sort of reimagining of Norse/German pagan shamanic rituals using costumes, instruments etc based on the type of things they have in the historical record or found in Iron Age burial sites from Northern Europe and a good bit beyond (but that's not important and they're not going for full dilligent authenticity). The stage craft is really elaborate too. Off all the stuff I saw, they'd be the only thing that if someone put them on in the Waterfront or something I'd take my parents to see them.

That was the day of the really horrible weather (in the middle of f'ing August, this is what global warming is for the UK btw) and it blew me right into my tent past any feeling towards sociability on my part. And I was just knackered tbh. 

Saturday, having actually just had a really good rest I was intent on making the best of the last day. I caught A Burial At Sea, mathrock group Land Wars (Davitt / Parnell reference? one of the guys is from Cavan so maybe). After that I caught some nice queer, gothy-gazey act called Cultdreams and bumped into my mate Big Mike at the end. He took me to see Gggolddd, cracking dark, moody synth/trip-hop. We split and I had saw Grub Nap for a bit of a change of pace, 2 lads from Leeds doing aggy Sludge-core. Great stuff. Simmilarly the Callous Daoboys were a lot of fun and really heavy, Rolo Tomasi, Health and Loathe were all awesome in different ways and for different reasons. Deafhaven were great, aside from the technical difficulties which I didn't mind so much but I could see people who are more emotionally invested in them getting upset over, especially since they were doing their iconic Sunbather album beginning to end.

Absolute stand out of the day though, again predictably, was Igorrr. I love Igorrr, have been into them since back when he was releasing on NI's own Acroplane and Ad Noiseum. Saw him play a set at Bangface 2016. Seeing him blow up on the metal circuit and bring in more live elements to the shows since then has been an absolute pleasure. This time he had the full band, him on his hardware, his live drummer, guitarist and an opera singer providing vocals going through mostly stuff off the last two albums. he opened with a wee bit of breakcore and finished off again just by himself banging out the glitches, bass and drum breaks. 

I ended up only seeing a wee bit of Devin Townsend, actually bumped into a guy I met in his own house last week after Kneecap, ended up hanging with him, his brother and their mate who I'd been talking to earlier at the start of Igorrr, then finished the weekend hanging with Jeff's mates, and other people who came around, including two lads from Lambeg, one of who recognised me from activist stuff back in the day and grew up in the street opposite my house, and his mate who was at Lagan literally just as I left. This country is a village.

Silly crack was had. It was a good end to a good day and the festival in general. I had a great time, could see myself coming back if they pull out another lineup like this years that just has a lot of stuff on it I really like. Or that could prove to be a fluke, we'll see. Would be good to get a crowd up for it if I do go back.