Things I Enjoyed in 2024

 

Having made and successfully kept my New Years resolution of last year (which I’ll get onto) this years is to write more and actually use the blog. Even if at this point blogging is a dead art form and nobody is reading this stuff or likely to make me even a modicum of “internet-famous”, it’ll at least alleviate the mild guilt I feel about not having written. This is essentially just for me, but I hope it’ll be something at least a couple of people might get something out of. 

This is going to take the format of a SuperEyepatchWolf season roundup video. Maybe not as good (I wish I had the work ethic that guy has tbh). This is really more about cataloguing and recording where I am with certain things. It will contain a mixture of things that are brand new in the sense that they came out this year, as well as a few things that will be noted as such that came out in previous years but I only got to experience this year for the first time.

In No Order:

Gaming:

So I’ve kind of stopped playing new computer games. I got back into gaming over the pandemic, got a PS4, played everything I’d been hearing about and wanting to play for years. It was great, but before the start of last year I kind of ran right out of steam. All I want out of games now is something diverting I can do with my hands while I listen to the sort of podcasts I actually want to listen to beginning to end and not use as a sleep aid. I’m still playing Streets of Rage 4, always the Survival Mode from the DLC where you have one life and have to fight your way through increasing hordes of enemies in an enclosed environment while levelling up your core attributes or adding buffs to types of attacks. I’m also playing a cheap Pool simulator (its just Pool in an Unreal 4 engine) and Slay The Spire. To this I have very recently added Balatro, a game with Poker and making poker hands at its core. 

I did get back briefly into playing Magic The Gathering on Arena for a couple of months but that software is a piece of janky shit that after a certain update just became crash-y and unusable on both the devices I was using it on, and is basically unplayable on a mobile phone anyway, like how small the text is makes it functionally unusable unless you already know the cards by the cover art and don’t need to read what anything does. Yeah you fucked up there Wizards, you could have had me back suckling on your milky duds for the odd fix that beating up on people from across the world at Magic can give me, but you bollocksed it.

Podcasts:

Yeah I ought to say what podcasts I’ve been into listening to while gaming since I literally just mentioned they’re my entire reason for continuing to game. Chapo Trap House, I don’t agree 100% with everything they say but we hate a lot of the same things and they are genuinely good crack. They called the US election correctly and their coverage of the proceedings has been sterling in terms of making that whole mess explicable to someone like me over here with the rest of the world looking on at the absolute mess happening over there. TrashFuture, a podcast with a similar bent and humour but by queer Brits. The Only Podcast About Movies, slightly lighter fare but good analytical takes on mostly contemporary cinema. I also like, though don’t listen to quite as much as I did, RevLeftRadio – a Marxist podcast on a variety of subjects including; History, Current Affairs, Theory, Philosphy, Esoterica and hosted by a Canadian Maoist called Brett with a blessedly ecumenical approach to intra-left factionalism.

The ones I do listen to for sleep I do so not because they are boring or anything (it actually has to be interesting or it won’t hold my conscious attention, which is part of the trick I’m playing on myself), but because they are soothing and not likely to get me angry or excitable the way listening to stuff about politics generally will. These include; The Blindboy podcast - which I’ve been on since pretty early in the day, Ghibliotheque, A Podcast About Studio Ghibli - but has actually come to encompass all sorts of animated media and this year has covered the works of Makoto Shinkai, Linklaters animated films and the work of Nick Park, and The French Whisperer ASMR. Ghost Notes, a podcast broadly about music of all sorts from the two guys that do the Polyphonic and 12tone Youtube channels is the real best of both of those projects and the guys bounce off each other nicely.

YouTube:

This seems to follow on neatly from talking about Podcasts. Feels like I’m not coming across many new channels that are really grabbing my attention but I’ve got more than enough established favourites now to eat up as much of my spare time as I can throw at it. Novarra Media continues to be a good news resource. Iconic early video-essayist Every Frame a Painting returned after an 8 year hiatus with a whopping two new videos over four months, and it being an oldschool Youtube channel, these have been ten and five minutes respectively. Better than nothing, still great quality, one can hardly complain. 

Overly Sarcastic Productions and Extra Credits / Extra History continue to be an absolute joy in terms of delivering a weekly fix of good informative history and media-analysis. Red of OSP (the team don’t use real names, just colours like in Reservoir Dogs) is an absolute super-star, like if I could get to live in a house and hang out and just have the crack all day with anyone off the internet right now it would be Red by miles, hands down. 

Super Eyepatch Wolf, my distant cousin (maybe) whom I’ve already mentioned, continues to be one of the best things on the platform. I only saw his guest appearance on the Trash Taste Podast (not to be confused with Trash Future, a different trashy thing altogether) this year for the first time and it was an absolute joy and also got me into watching their stuff again which I had done in the past but bounced off for some reason. 

Fiq The Signifier's ongoing coverage of and eventual long form video essay on the Kendrick V Drake Beef that went on last spring and summer was absolutely magnificent. 

The Leftist Cooks, only managed 4 essays this year, fair enough considering they managed to conceive and birth a child between them and their essays are all feature length these days. Still killing it, really insightful and heartfelt with a lot of intellectual heft. This is maybe best exemplified in the video essay where they announce their good news itself, that sends Neil into a deep dive on the topic of anti-natalism to the point where he writes a book length refutation of David Benatar that you can buy from their patreon. Based.

Georg Rockall-Schmidt, the man is out here doing gods work. Some media analysis, just him talking movies or about stuff on TV with a reasonable amount of anti-corporate videos where he just goes ham on some particular set of capitalist bastards, be they Shein, Temu, The Sacklers, American Healthcare in general. I’m living for how snarky my boy is.

Less on the political side, the music channel Trash Theory (again, not to be confused with either Trash Future or Trash Taste) continues to be one of the most consistently entertaining and informative things on the platform. Its kind of a 90s nostalgia channel but he does cover other eras and some contemporary music. He always sounds genuinely enthused about whatever it is he's covering,  in a way that brings you along with him even if you're not mad into whatever the topic is yourself.

Music:

(Sigh). Y’know. I’ve not been on top of music at all. I’ve barely listened to anything new. I think when I stopped DJing or their being any prospect of me DJing much ever again, even for myself or to post online, that just lost my focus on finding new stuff. What I have been listening to, Cerys Matthews and Mark Radcliffe’s Blues and Folk shows on BBC Radio 2, Sherelle’s Saturday night shows on Radio 6 and other random bits and pieces on the BBC digital radio stations which I’ll generally have on as background when I’m doing my breakfast or dinner.

I loved the ØXN debut LP that came out in 2023. ØXN are a side project by Radie and the other non-Lynch member of Lankum that is if anything even darker and more Lankum-y than Lankum itself. I missed opportunities to get to see them play live this year, I literally didn’t make any festivals this year, to my shame.

What I did enjoy also that was actually from this year was Chelsea Wolfe’s latest album She Reaches Out to She where she’s still bringing the dark doom-metal-y goodness but has gone more industrial and a little trip-hop-y. She played Belfast on the tour for this one and I did get to see her, and she was great.

I did manage to get to a fair few nights and gigs about Belfast, and over to Glasgow with my sister to see Max Cooper’s big AV show. I think the best one might well have been getting to see Caribou live in the Telegraph building, which luckily for me has now been immortalised forever as it was a Boiler Room event.

TV: 

I’ve been on quite an animation tip this year. I’ve managed to finally get around to Star Vs The Forces of Evil and Amphibia on Disney as well as the masterful OK KO, Lets Be Heros!, of which I will not say too much other that they were really good since a couple of them may or may not feature on the return of a regular segment that has long been in hiatus on this corner of the internet. Arcane came through with a second and final season which while not quite up to the standard set by season one still fucking well kills dead near enough any other western animation series. 

I watched and mostly enjoyed The Dragon Prince, like I only started it this year not knowing that the final season was dropping in December. If I’d have known it was written by the Avatar The Last Airbender (which I did rewatch and loved all over again) team I probably would have got to it sooner tbh. If has what are for me some rough edges, the world is nowhere near as interesting or unique as Avatar, its just some guys DnD campaign – which is fine just not that original, I don’t like the occasional segues into goofy naturalistic dialogue. The tone shifts are jarring, to me at least, but not enough that I bounced off. It also falls for some ball achingly obvious tropes in storytelling. Its actually decent though and worth seeing. The animation style is really class, really pleasing to see something in 3d that is that old and doesn’t look like ass.

Speaking of tone shifts and a “some guys DnD campaign” setting, The Legend of Vox Machina was a whole heap of fun once again. The tone shifts were seamless and yes, this is literally a DnD Campaign turned into a series but they nailed the transition its just great fun.

Anime; I feel like I’ve rinsed the well of classics from the OVA era that I would care about. At least until Angel’s Egg makes it back to the big screens (maybe this year?). I have actually been enjoying some new stuff. NGL, those are some really basic picks for those in the know and will probably appear on most if not all anime commentators Best Of The Year lists. I will mostly just watch a small selection of the stuff I think sounds interesting from the handful of people I follow in the space and maybe see getting recommended on my socials. I’m not out here seeking out the really obscure stuff, I don’t think they still make much of the type of anime I like anymore, but the odd thing that filters through I get a lot of joy from.

Dan De Dan is one of the big anime series of this year and its not hard to see why. On paper the plot my make it appear to be more typical shonen weeb trash but it was done by Science Saru, the studio led by the guy that did Mind Game and who also did the Devilman Cry-Baby series a few years back. It scratches that itch for the genuinely unhinged shit that Anime has been lacking for a while. 

I really liked Frieren: Beyond The Journeys End, a very meditative and mostly glacially slowly paced fantasy series about an Elf mage who is, as elves are in fantasy, extremely long  lived, going on immortal that does have some great high fantasy magical combat in it but is mostly about the idea of human connections and what its like to live long enough to see your mates live and die while you stay essentially the same person. 

Less serious but equally good (better imo), Delicious In Dungeon. Like some of the other stuff I’ve been talking about it’s a very DnD-esque setting but it dares to ask questions that DnD players rarely ask in these last 50 odd years of the game, like what does dragon taste like? Does a gelatinous cube have any vitamins and minerals or is it just empty calories? Are the giant mushroom monsters that you have to fight some times going to kill you or get you high if you try to eat them or are they just a good source of zinc to the weary dungeon-crawling murder-hobo? You wouldn’t ear a person, probably not an Orc either but would Merefolk be more like fish or people, and is it ok to eat them? Its really just a good sprawling adventure fantasy with some great characters and also some interesting dissections of the notions of taboo and the value of good nutrition.

In terms of live TV, yeah there’s been some fire stuff out there. Something I only watched for the first time this year though it’s been out for a while; Wu Tang: An American Saga with the kid from the middle section of Moonlight as RZA I found and watched earlier in the year. Yeah it takes some liberties with the truth and leaves some stuff out for dramatic purposes (like RZA and ODB both had kids by the time the main plot starts, this does not come up at all) but it does their whole story and schtick really well. There’s three seasons, the third season isn’t quite as good just because the story itself IRL is less compelling than the coming together and coming up of these outsiders from Staten Island, seeing them get rich and famous and fall out with each other is not nearly as much fun. We are spared seeing Ason’s fall into madness and self destruction though that does somewhat hang over the narrative its not handled in a way that’s prurient or anything. 

Say Nothing, is yet another somewhat controversial take on actual historical events. This is about Sinn Fein / The Provos, the Finucane murders and the life of Dolours price. It managed to recreate the old Divis tower block accurately enough, down to the vibe, that it retraumatised my Mum who lived there during the events dramatized in the series. It’s good seeing something made about here with that sort of attention to detail and period accuracy, that also treats all sides reasonably fairly. Like there’s literal Gerry Adams in there as a low-key villain in the piece and he’s not some sort of moustache twirling cartoon. Shame that they blew a lot of the good will in a completely unnecessary plot point in the last episode that only seems to be in there for the sake of a Bad TV Writing climactic reveal involving one of the few players in the narrative that’s still alive and as I write is in the process of suing Disney. Worth watching in spite of all that.

The new series of Interview With A Vampire kept up the quality of the first and was if anything even better than the first. That show does a lot right, the fifth episode about the circumstances of the actual first interview that fills in a lot of Molloy’s character and story was just edge of the seat stuff from beginning to end. Like if you know the book or the film, you know exactly what happens to Claudia and Louis in Paris and you just spend the season waiting for the other shoe to drop, but this was unique to the series (afaik) and made for really gut-wrenching emotive TV. 

Books:

I was mostly using Duolingo to learn gaeilgé in my down time this year. I got the paid version after getting my first bit of paid work of the year and have finished the Irish course (standard Irish though, not Ulster unfortunately). That and The Mists Of Avalon being a long slog, and not just because of the length of the book or the writing style (see my review), I didn't really get reading nearly as much this year as usual. I did hit my years reading goals of finishing the three series I'd stated in the previous couple by reading the final books in the series. These were Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky (a good cap to the trilogy but the first book definitely rocks the others, okay to read on its own), Ancillary Mercy, which finishes the trilogy out well but doesn’t add a whole lot to the last ones in terms of world building and Emperor of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay which is the second of his books about Sarantium, the Byzantium of his fictional universe that runs analogous to our own medieval and ancient history but isn’t and so gives him license to tinker with the world building and throw in some magic and supernatural elements. It was pretty good, probably best read straight after part one Sailing To Sarantium and not a year-ish apart like I did it. 

Other things I read and liked included Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, the latest Blindboy Boatclub collection Topographia Hibernica which only came out 2023, and the collection of shorts by Norman Spinrad from the 1960s No Direction Home.

Comics / graphic novels, wise I read Bone for the first time. Its cool, like very a typical high fantasy that just happens to have three Fleischer Bros. / Old Disney cartoon characters as the Hobbits that bungle their way into the scenario. I also started Berserk, completed the first volume of the big over-sized collected editions just before the end of the year. I am already digging the vibe and we’re only just getting to what most people agree is The Good Bit, the first part of The Golden Age is what that edition finishes on.

Best book though was Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle. A new book from this year that is not his first non-Tingler as in actual proper novel but is the first one I’ve read and its incredibly good. Easily as good an exploration of Queer people’s relationship with certain types of media and place in that media as I Saw The TV Glow (which tbf I also liked a lot, even if it didn’t make my top 10). The prose is a constant pleasure, readable while also being wry and funny, scary or disturbing where it needs to be. It has a lot of heart in it too. Its also low-key based AF, as in the subtext is almost pure Marxism. I’m not sure if that’s exactly where Chuck is coming from but I see it and even if unconscious its definitely in there.

Movies:

I already have a top ten for the year up on my Letterboxd. Just to reiterate what I said there, Kneecap was my favourite of the year closely followed by The Substance. When I get to my favourites of this decade these will definitely both be in there. I am very much the target audience of Kneecap, or course I’m going to love it. I have been semi-adjacent to that life in my own city for parts of my own, some of the stuff in the film literally happened to my mates, I’ll not say what so as not to implicate anyone living or dead but it is very close to my heart, even if I know for a fact that they aren’t the complete spides they make themselves out to be or the best rappers on the local scene (though they are definitely the best at doing it bilingually and best at promoting themselves). The Substance gave me everything my body-horror loving degenerate arse could ever wish for in a film, a very straight-forwards feminist allegory that goes bat shit in the last act and is really gross, people were leaving. People left my showing like 20 minutes before the end, that never happens but they must have just been like “yeah I’m already two hours into this thing and we are close to the end but this is already way past my comfort zone and is just going to get worse from here – I’m out”. Normally I would decry such behaviour as weakness but in this case I say fair play to those people. It did just keep getting worse.

We had a lot of other great films this year, see the list. A few of the big Awards-bait movies from last year that dropped in January here were, right enough, some of the best most interesting, medium pushing and generally great films of the year, Poor Things, Zone of Interest, All Of Us Strangers, The Holdovers really had us spoiled. It was a good year for horror - Oddity, Longlegs, In A Violent Nature, Stop Motion. Big Popcorn actioners gave us Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, Dune 2 and Deadpool Vs Wolverine (which was essentially a Zucker Brothers screwball comedy set in the current Marvel comic book movie landscape). Not such a good year imo for animated features, 2022 and 2023 really had us spoiled, but The First Slam Dunk was very enjoyable, we got a new Wallace and Gromit film which was awesome and my favourite animated film of the year Robot Dreams was an absolute joy. It was though a good year for Irish cinema. I’ve already sung Kneecap’s praises (did I mention just how viscerally funny it all is? No? Well it’s hilarious), but we also did have Small Things Like These and That They May Face The Rising Sun, which was incredible and will hopefully bring John McGahern’s legacy and work to a new generation of people across the world.

 

I think that just about covers everything I feel it’s necessary to say. As I said up top I’m trying to get back into updating this thing a bit more regularly. I have a steady enough job now I could see going for a wee while that could give me the sort of schedule I could see myself building a decent routine around that might lead to me being able to do more writing. Here’s hoping anyway so watch this space. 

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.