Bangface 2015

This was meant to be a status update but it was so long it actually fucked up Facebook.

Good it'll fucking well tighten it the blue smarmy cunt.

Mash up de place!

........

BangFace​ 2015 - the awesomeness never stops, like literally 5-10 minutes after that last status update I'm standing in the queue to board my flight home to Belfast and I bumped into these Dutch guys I'd met knocking about on the sunday morning hanging out outside their chalet smoking and listening to Plaid on their way to get their flight.  They were all happy to see me too.  That morning we'd been chatting about music for ages and they seemed to really know their stuff. Somehow I appear to have given them the impression that I knew mine and just after I left them they had apparently been running around for ages looking for me to get my email or some other way of keeping in touch but had given up, so when they saw me in the airport on there way home from the festival they were properly buzzing to see me and actually get my email.

They have it now and no doubt they'll be in touch with me soon.  I met quite a good few sound interesting people over the course of the weeekend myself and took down details of their soundclouds, facebooks etc to check out when I got home to civilisation from the internetless black spot the Pontins resort was in and I've given myself a good bit of homework, some of which will make it to my feed over the next couple of days.

So aye, Bangface 2015, where to start?  I had such a great one and so many people were part of it.  I feel full of love for the world and greatfull towards everybody in it for just being there.  Actually nah thats a pure spoof and some hippy bullshit, like c'mon I wasn't at a Psy festival FFS.  No I actually feel full of love for Bangface, the rave and this years festival and full of love just for the very specific people that were part of it with me this year.

Well first off, big ups to the 290 Hard Crew Shane​, Kevin​ and Ram​ for being such amazing chalet mates all weekend.  Its great being around people that get the same buzz off relentless gabba that I do.  I actually had prior to this Bangface only met any of these guys a couple of times, I remember Shane from the 2011 weekender but just had never been on each others social radar that often so we'd only bumped into each other a couple of times since.  Kevin and Ram I know from knocking about the techno scene and ending up at the same house party on a few occaisions, most notably the time we all ended up together on Con Mc Allister​'s birthday after seeing Karenn in the Limelight.  It was on that occaision that I discovered that, 1. they were good mates with Con and Mel, 2. they like Breakcore and Gabber, 3. Kevin could take an almighty Cornelius - patent slegging, all 3 of which I believe speaks highly of a persons character, which leads us to 4, that they had a Bangface chalet with a space they were looking to shift and were happy to take in 2 installments, which was great for me as I was unemployed and broke as balls at the time and wasn't likely to be able to shell out for a whole one any time soon, but I was still busting to go.  As decisions go this turned out to be up there with my better ones and as inevitably happens at Bangface you form a hard bond with your chalet mates and I dare say we'll probably be all seing a lot more of each other in the future.

Next, a big we nah run dem to all my UK festival / partying family that made it to this one, Jazz, Ben Wall, Carolyn, the living legend that is Scottish Chris, Tommy Palmer, Cathal, Drew Davis and the rest of the Geordie crew from 303 (Ghettotech!) Efz whose crew played a blinder on the Saturday morning in the Queen Vic (more on which later).  Like I may only see any of you guys IRL once or twice a year but its always a good one and its just good knowing yous are out there on the off chance one should ever have occasion to visit some strange foreign city across the sea, like Bristol or manchester or somewhere wierd and foreign like that with no veda loafs or Buckie.  Neither of which affect me in anyway since I couldn't ingest them if I wanted to, but still - wierd.

Some extra-special love to the Manc-Irish ex pats and their mates, Jessica, who's been like near enough a member of the family since we were teenagers, Sarah, Samantha, Gary "Fucking" Sloan whose surprise entrance on the Saturday was one of the non musical highlights of the weekend and my boy Joe Griff - UTH ACAB. Need to get over to visit some time soon, one of them Relapse Manchester nights or something else suitably mental. (BTW, does Myles do Facebook? If so could someone please PM me his facebook and / or soundcloud or Myles if you're reading this now please add me).

Also, our lot, the Northern Irish hard crew, cause we are actually hardcore as fuck each and every one of us.  There was way too many of us to name and I didn't get around to partying with or even just catching up with everybody I'd have liked to so please don't feel left out if you don't get tagged.  Firstly, strong contender for the soundest person in the world and one of the best people you could ever go to a festival with: Chris​ Maginto and his piece of stuff the amazing  Roisin​.  Ciara​ who did me an invaluable service on the Sunday morning (which I'll get to) and Tommy O'Rourke​ who gets the crack, dissonance is truth, angry distorted electronic noise is the sound of the real, and if it has breakbeats chopped up to fuck and you can dance to it is fucking amazing.  And heavy metal is fucking sweet too.

Jane,​ absolute legend in her Bemo dress, actually one of the best things I saw all weekend, Jennifer​ who is a fucking good mate and someone I'll forever have a lot of time for.  My top bitches Toni and Helen.  My man Kyle Tek​, on his first one, Matt -​ Bangface chalet Fam '2012 represent! And as with Myles 2 paragraphs up, if anyone knows if Pete Acid or/and his mate Yanos have facebook could they link or suggest friend me them or lads, if either of you are reading this yourselves, add me.

Love to Marty and Ceri's chalet and all who sail in her.

Nate and his crew, I hardly saw ye all weekend, totes not on purpose or anything.

Serious props too to Alex Fractal Vortex​ and Kathy​ you're stars the pair of you.

I know that theres lots of other people from home I'm missing but I'm tired and I still have a good bit to go, so if you're feeling left out comment below and you'll either get a sincere apology or slegged by me or someone else depending on how amusing you are.

Lastly a huge fucking stinking Ghettotech high five to my sister Catherine, who after all brought me to my first Bangface Weekender and has just been a cont, a cont, a cont, a cont, a continuing source of inspiration ever since (sorry, new laptop seems to have devloped a stutter, hopefully that'll work itself out).  It is actually class having your sister as one of your best mates.  That was another successful adventure for the McV children, bringing the gospel of Ghettotech to all sorts of Geordies and other random people.  They fucking well know now what time it is (no, please don't start...).

Oh and one last one before I forget... bollocks I was actually about to tag Amy Flex there and try and get her to pass my contact details to Terry since I remember talking to him about exchanging email addresses and numbers so we can keep in touch since he's no longer on Facebook.  Now I've found Amy has done hers in too, unless she's just changed her handle on here, in which case if anyone knows it please pass it on to me.  But if anyone knows how to get in contact with Terry from Dundalk who used to be called Turry Jah Bless  Four Eyes on Facebook and would like to do me a we favour, either PM me his or ask me for mine and pass it onto him for me.  Same goes for Amy*.

So, adventures, "lovely" people and missions all round.  But like this is sort of meant to be a music festival so I should probably try and talk about the music.  No mean feat in this case since literally everything I saw was fucking amazing (so, no I didn't go to see Squarepusher finish in the main room :)).  Serously the only remotely negative thing that I witnessed all weekend was during The Teknoist​'s set in the Queen vic on Saturday there was some random technical issue that stopped one of his turntables working, but he handled it like a pro and there was just an akward couple of minutes while him and the sound tech sorted it out, then he dropped Lion Girl and it was all good.

So much good stuff, and I managed to spend most of my time down at the arenas so I ended up seeing loads, like I'd reckon I saw more stuff on any given day of this weekender than any of the other two combined.  Funny that.

So much great music that cutting it down to a few highlights isn't possible so this next bit is going to be fairly long.  You've been warned.

So I saw a good bit of the In The Face takeover (bassline!) in the Queen Vic while I was waiting for Shane and the lads from my chalet to show up.  I'm not entirely sure who all I saw, I remember asking Nate​ and fair play to him he actually told me who each of them where but that was like ages ago now and I've completely blanked it.  Meh, I'm not sure who I saw but I don't think I saw Hadean because I'm fairly certain Hadean is a girl and all the DJs I saw at that thing were guys**, though they did play a good few of the tunes I've enjoyed from the various Hadean sets I have on my iPod so it was all good.  Actually hearing songs I particularly enjoy on a proper rig for the first time ever would become a sort of mini theme of the weekend.  After meeting up with the rest of the 290's hitting the chalet and dropping off cases, sorting out sleeping arrangements and what not we headed back down in time to catch some of the Jungle Syndicate before hitting the Face Room for one of the most anticipated acts of the weekender.

Anklepants was absolutely fucking mental, as you'd expect.  I'm sort of sorry I didn't fight my way to the front for a better view as I'm certain I'd have probably have enjoyed it more if I'd have seen him prancing about doing wierd shit and flexing his huge pendulous penis-nose in time to the music (btw if you're reading this and you don't know what Anklepants is and that just sounds like absolute glue, just go on the internet and look him up, or if you'd you'd rather not and just take my word for it, sweet).

After Anklepants came Igorrr, Catherine caught about a minute of that, heard the first thrash metal rift and was like "fuck that shit" and left.  I stayed for all of it, and it was class and all but I like the ones where he has a live opera songer doing the vocals on certain tracks (there are a few youtube videos of these) and I would have liked to have seen some of that but like I can hardly complain.

The Hard Way was some pretty serious dark banging shit.  There was one wierd bit where Thrasher (who was on on his own, I thought it was supposed to be the three of them) stopped playing records to complain about some guy mugging him off from the floor or something.  Now I didn't see see what the guy was doing from where I was so I don't know if the guy was being a complete dick and it was all perfectly justified or whatever or if Thraser was just being a fucking huge primadonna .  So if anyone whos reading this actually saw what happend and can clear this up for me it would be much appreciated***.  And anyway, Thrasher​, never mind that random cunt, what about my fawk'n hoodie?  Yous told me on a facebook post your hoodies were 100% cotton then when I bought it from the PRSPCT online merch store, costing me about 40 fawkin quid it turns up and its a fucking cotton poly blend!  WTF?  Am I ever getting my money back, what about all the fucking emails I've written you cunts about this?  You fuckers should be glad someone like me in a country with no Industrial Hardcore scene is willing to spend £40+ to represent your brand on his person, in fact actually you should be paying me.  Wheres my fucking money???

(btw that last bit about the hoodie is actually all true, and one of my few regrets about the weekend was not taking the opportunity on the first day when I saw Thrasher to take it up with him in person).

Counterstrike​ were solid enough, they dropped the Current Value remix of Donny​'s Symptomless Coma (Jam samples ftw), but I thought whoever that was was on after Pet Duo pissed all over them (says High Rankin on the programme, but I'm sure that they're Dubstep / Drumstep-y, this guy was bouncing around loving life tearing out black hearted rinsing Industrial DnB).  Actually one of my favourite sets of the weekend, would be nice to know who he was.  Again if anyone knows and can enlighten me please do so below.

I didn't make it to Hellfish or Kanji as my legs were buckling under me in that last set.  Managed to get my head down for a good while on the friday night, got up got showered and had a few adventures with the rest of my 290 man-dem, and headed down for the music again in time to catch the beginning of the Love Love takeover in the Queen Vic.  Love Love is an indie Breakcore lable run by Efz, one of our London crowd whose house myself and some of my mates have stayed in on occaision, a very sound head, who is clearly quite smart and into some very intersting shit and whose  occaisional trolling of the IDM facebook group is a work of art.  The label itself does some class music.  He had a few of his lables best up, Scrase, Beatwife and The Abominable Mr Tinkler who banged out some sick breakcore.  The last set Efz played himself with an MC who is by far the best MC I have ever seen in my entire life and more than likely ever will see, the Prophet Zebadiah Obidiah of the Al-Zebabist Nation of OOOG.  A huge brown skinned gentleman of indeterminate race (but definitely not fucking white) in a Daishiqui who opened with "I see a lot of new faces tonight, a lot of WHITE faces in the crowd tonight, you are not welcome here, if you're white GET OUT!".  And he just kept it up chanting ironic pan-arab-african-nationalist-Islamist-Anti-Colonialist-reverse-racist slogans at the crowd.

Yeah so novelty comedy satirical MCing, there were some class ones:

"Renounce your white skin, embrace your melanin!"
"Legalise Heroin!  Legalise Dog-meat!  Fuck Broadstairs!"
"The White Man was created 8000 years ago in a laboratory"
"Fuck Farage"

and so on.  Which obviously I was absolutely loving, especially the bits when he was cussing out British Imperialism (yeo!) then he started actually going for it and spitting bars over this mad chopped ragged ragga breakcore Efz was blasting out on the decks and it was wasn't just some novelty act he was actually quite good.  In a weekend of highlights this was definitely a contender for highlight of highlights.  Not that I could ever choose just one.

The Queen Vic was where it was at the rest of the night, except that the dancefloor just got too packed at Shitwifes set so I bounced into the Face Room and caught a good bit of Distance instead.  That had been a clash that I'd been agonising over so I was actually sort of glad that it basically sorted itself out.

I caught about the first 25 minutes of Remarc bouncing around the right hand side of the Face Room with Jessica and Al from Squire of Gothos.  Thats probably one of my abiding visual memories of the festival.  If you don't know my mate Jess she's reasonably petite and has quite brightly coulored strawberry blonde hair and Al is this incredibly huge guy with long arms and legs.  Jess and Al are good friends and you could see that in the way they were moving around in relation to each other.  Between that, the physical disparity between them and the rinsing Amens flying around the room that wee moment there was something just really fun and cute and there was also something completely bad ass about that wee moment in there it was just pure Bangface.

Big Al is quite a sound fella himself. Everytime I see him at gigs or festivals he always recognises me as one of them mad Belfast ones and makes a point of saying hello.  I came down on the Sunday morning to the Queen Vic to catch a bit of Kushti McParty's set.  As the only Irish DJ still active this side of the Irish sea actually playing at Bangface he put up this thing on facebook to try and get all the Irish at the festival down for his set.  I'd bumped into a bunch of his mates in Southport on the Friday morning before the festival started and hung about with them for a bit and was looking to catch up with some of them, and a few of the Northerners had requested tracks on the page so I was expecting to see a couple of our crowd but nah, by the time I got down there at half past I was the only Irish of any type there.  Al was there though, he saw me and he come up an said hello and complimented me on my taste in films.  I was a bit taken aback by that for a second, like I do have an amazing taste in films like but like how did he know?  Then I remembered the film group on facebook run by my mate Kris, who is a promoter and has booked Squire a good few times to play in Belfast.  Then we just got chatting and stuff. He pretty much summed it all up "I've just been listening to sick beats all weekend". Right enough man.

I left about halfway through Remarcs set then went into the Queen Vic for Satan, found that the dancefloor had thinned out a bit and you could dance in certain parts of it, or if you fancied go down to the front and Mosh.  Now I'm obviously hard as fuck but I just didn't feel like like a mosh at that point so I hung back and danced about the middle in the general vicinity of Ben and Carolyn.  Satan dropped some great stuff, last tune was a really sick heavy-er remix of Bjork's Mutual Core.  I need to put some research in and find that tune, I need more of that in my life,

Then there was the Teknoist who aside from the wee technical hitch I mentioned earlier banged out some serious industrial hardcore, didn't play much off 'Hurricane (I wanted him to play Full Metal Teknoist because I still think its hilarious that its a remix of a Linkin Park track) but the stuff he was playing was all sweet.  And by sweet I mean breakbeats, gabber kicks and distortion, obviously

After that I was considering heading back to the chalets because up to this point in the day I hadn't seen Catherine at all and I just wanted to check in and say hello. I was just about to leave the main entrance when Cathal came in gave me a hug and was like "here, c'mon seee a bit of Ram Jam with us".  Now I've read up on my history of bass music and sound system culture and I know how important David Rodigan is to the cultural history of the world and everything so I have much respect for the man.  I saw him in Belfast at the CQAF in the Black Box January before last and he was dynamite, like older than old school, no beatmatching or mixing or any of that new fangled shite, got up introduced the song and banged it on.  And it was class as much because it was him and he was clearly loving life, he had more joy in his heart about this music than any smooth cool techno / house seemless beatmatching DJ ever could have and you could feel it radiating around the room.  In Belfast he dropped all the oldschool reggae classics, like pretty much any of the most famous reggae songs you could think of he played, and obviously his own one of a kind dub plates where the recording artist has re-recorded the vocals on the track to include them bigging up David Rodigan (and why not, he's a living legend, or better than that, living true cultural and social history) that was amazing.  Then he dropped a Damien Marley Dubstep remix at the end that I loved but seemed to confuse and annoy all the people over 40 in the room, which was like the majority of that gig and I suspect he might have just done it on purpose to clear the floor because the bouncers and security were giving him the death stare from across the floor at that point as he was like more than 25 minutes past their supposed closing time.

Anyway, I was sort of under the assumption that he would probably play that sort of thing again so it would be sweet if I missed a wee bit.  Like one of the original DJs and party promoters, one of the greatest in the world wouldn't know how to play to the crowd.  Yeah I can be a fucking idiot sometimes and this was one of those times, and if I hadn't bumped into Cathal things could have gone totally wrong.  He was absolutely unreal, banged out all sorts of dubstep, Jungle and D&B and guess what he had one of those one off Rodigan dubplates of?  Dub Phizix motherfucking MARKA!  When it started coming in I was like woah, nah that isn't, no actually yes it fucking well is -

Boom

Stinking-of-Isy-Miyaki-Dark-Rum-And-the-Marijuana!
Step-inna-mi-lake-and-swim-with-the-piranha!
Anytime-mi-drop-mi-go-put-down-a-marka
If-it-nuh-money-say-whe-dem-bother-talk-for?
Dem-a-try-fi-hold-up-a-bank-wid-a-banana
Yeah-we-pree-the-whole-ting-panorama
Whole-heap-a-gun-talk-they-don’t-really-want-no-drama....

Drop!

Again, a long standing personal favourite ever since the first time my mate Al played it for us at a house party shortly after its relase that I've always wanted to hear but never actually heard on a proper club sound system (because you'd be lucky if you ever got anyone playing that sort of stuff at a gig in Belfast) blasted through the huge rack of speakers in the Bang Room, the sub bass tearing through the room.  Then when I heard Strategy's vocals in the second set of bars insert a wee sneaky Rodigan reference in the place of the usual lyrics I was like, yes they did that one just for him, fair play to them and fair play to him.  True masters of the arts know their history and rever the originators of the craft.

He kept on that tip, Dubstep, contemporary bass music and played a couple of quite nice recent subtle remixes of Bob Marley at the end.  Actually I think the last one was just the original cut of Is This Love?  Which seems to be a popular choice these days, Mala did it last track in his set at Life last year, Nightmares on Wax played it early on in his set in Aether & Echo​ earlier this year.

After Rodigan I dropped into the face room for Broken Note.  I've seen Broken Note three times.  When they played the Belfast electronic festival I missed a lot of their set, they started a bit late and we left early because Catherine had a splitting headache.  I saw them again at Boomtown and again at the Bangface Rave of the Pheonix.  So I've seen them a good few times but I saw the programme and saw they didn't clash with anything important so I thought aye sure why not?  I do love them and everything about their sound (Industrial bass music!) and in all fairness that one time I did DJ last year I dropped three of thier tracks in my set so yeah, I'm fan.  There was something about this time that was just different, or a little bit special.  I've never seen Tommy move around behind the decks like that bouncing around absolutely loving it, loving being at Bangface really giving it stacks.  And he dropped the 16 Bit Remix of Machine Gun by Noisia.  Again, I love that song, have been listening to it for years, used it in my own Dubstep mix (which is up on my Youtube Channel and Mixcloud) never actually heard it in a club.  Amazing track, it just sounds like the end of the world, the music of devestation, the Robot Uprising, that drop is probably what the last human hears coming at the end.  Sick fucking tune.  They played a lot of their other rinsers too, the sort of ones that the other guy that used to be in Broken Note (and 16 bit at one point) used to take the lead on the production of - or so I've been led to believe.  Tommy was switching it up and down seamlessley between two step industrial bass into the drumstep-y stuff into the rinsers throuought the set but that was pretty much going on continuosly.  He played The Fury at the end, a personal favourite that I've only actually heard before the once on a proper rig, and that was the time I played it last halloween in the Catalyst second to last tune of the set.  The relentless raining snares on the drop again just sound powefully apocalyptic.  Absolute devestation.

After Broken Note​ I went into the main room to see Ed Rush.  I can't remember if Shane and Kevin had been with me for Broken Note (possibly at the end?) but they were with me for Ed Rush.  I remember explaining to Kevin that like a good few of the artists on the lineup this year the guy they were listeing to was considered the originator of the genre of electronic music he's known for producing.  In this case Techstep.  I've never seen Ed Rush before and I heard he was still on great form these days, and I do like a bit of Techstep, you knock about with Kris​ long enough you do tend to get the bug, its infectious :)  Actually in all seriousness thinking back on it, I remember back a good couple of years ago just when I started making the transition from knocking around the goth scene to going to the odd ravey thing hearing Kris play Techstep at his own nights and that time he opened for Black Sun Empire at the End Club like before I'd even properly met him just hearing that sound and not really being able to articulate exactly why or what it was in it that I liked but just knowing it was great.  It was something that opened me up to wider electronic music culture.  So aye I've come to embrace the techstep.

Ed Rush absolutely smashed it, just solid Techstep rinsers, flying breakbeats and basslines for a solid hour.  By this time unfortunately it was quite late and I was beginning to flag.  I reckon I might have been sitting down at the back with Kevin for at least 20 minutes of the hour set just raving the bit out from the waist up.

I was definitely up for the last bit though when he spun through a couple of modern Techstep classics, Upbeats and Messiah (I think it might have been the Noisia remix but I always get it and the original confused).

Following him Alec Empire, again an artist I've seen a couple of times, Once at a fucking terrible festival in Belgium called Tribes Gathering, once in the Black Box in Belfast (I thought he was alright that time but Cathal had seen him a good few times up to that point and he wasn't impressed) but this time was by far the best.

I think this was the set where me Shane and Tommy Palmer were knocking about just the three of us.  One of the few photos of the festival on my phone camera (yeah I never think to take photos when I'm out, like I never even got one of us four from the 290 kill squad all together) was of me and Shane taking turns wearing some random Cyber Goth Flourescent dreads on a hair band.

Shane stayed and caught the beginning of Producer but he was flagging while my tactical sit down rave at Ed Rush had given my legs back the energy to keep on it.  Again, Producer was on banging form, but then who has ever seen DJ Producer play a bad set? he's legendary for being one of the most consistent DJs in any genre of electronic music.  And apparently for being sound as fuck.  You see that Mr Funk and Mr D James, just because you are the best in the world at what you do doesn't mean you have to get on like a twat.  Can't remember who I was with but I wasn't on my own, I think Joe at one pont.

Anyway at this point I had bumped into Tommy and Ciara, none of us really felt like going to bed at this point so none of us quite felt like sleep so I asked if I could call at my chalet to grab something or other and then we'd bounce around and see who else was up.  I'd had a good saturday at Bangface and just the only thing missing was that I hadn't seen my wee sister all day, but then it was quite late, I didn't think she'd got much sleep on the friday so I'd imagined she probably would hve gone to bed by that stage and was yp for doing a mission to hers to check but wasn't holding out much hope.  So, knowing the other lads would be sleeping when I came in I asked Tommy and Ciara to wait outside while I grabbed whatever it was I was getting.  When I came out Ciara was like, here, I think I've just seen your sister head into that chalet there, number 303.  In my head I was like actually I remember sitting with her last night talking to a guy who was mates with one of the Irish ex pats going on about how chuffed him and his mate were at getting chalet 303 Aciiiiiiid!

So we bopped down, knocked the door and there she was!  Saturday was then absolutely made compete, much thanks to Ciara because without her I'd have missed Catherine crossing the courtyard into that flat.

So we then spent a couple of hours hanging out with the 303 Geordies, one of whom I'd met at the last two Boomtowns the rest of the guys I didn't know but they soon got to know us.  Through the medium of bass, beats and sexism that is - Ghettotech!

Catherine cut a sweet deal with them, she would come to thier chalet with a portable speaker and play some music for them as long as she got to pick the tunes.  They were ameanable to this, which is probably just as well as if they hadn't been the same thing would likely have happened, and that thing?  Yes, Ghettotech!

So that was how we had our fun that morning.  At one point Catherine was lamenting the lack of any Ghettotech being played at Bangface, which actually wouldn't be unheard of, Godfather had played at the 2011 weekender after all, and I was like, hang on isn't Dave Shades playing the Queen Vic tomorrow, Checked the programme and indeed he was.  (Bassline / Breakcore hybrid)-Ghettotech!

At some point I went to bed for a power nap and set my alarm to get me up in time to see Kushti McPardy​ in the Queen Vic.  I've already said how that one went.  After that I went for a wee dander and met some people, including the Plaid loving Dutch guys I talked about at the beginning of this post, which seems like a long time ago now doesn't it?

Came back in at sixish PM saw my Sister in the smoking area with the 303 Geordies ran round gave her a hug and headed back into the rave.  At the front right of Bass Clef I found Fred, one of the 303-ers that I'd spent a good bit of time speaking to in their chalet last night.  I wasn't actually for stopping but he was saying Bass Clef was playing unusualy upbeat dancy stuff, so I stuck around and raved the bit out with Fred. It was all great stuff, Bass Cleft was still knocking about throwing in bits and pieces of live intruments to the mix but all the stuff wasn't the sort of chill dubstep he's known for, it was like fast world-music-y rhythms and beats.  I'm not over familliar with Latin Freestyle, or Moombahton or some of the other national trad deriviatives coming out of South America at the minute so I can't say what it was exactly but I've a feeling it was one of those.  Again if anyone reading this was there for or has heard Bass Clef doing this type of stuff before do comment because I'd be interested in knowing.

So after that it was time for Ghettotech! (Or well near enough).

So I went to Queen Vic to hear Dave Shades just starting, took a look around no Catherine, I was concerned that she might be missing the Ghettotech so I took a tour round all the rooms and reception and there was no sign, I was just at the back of the dancefloor on the Queen Vic wondering if I should maybe take a quick run up to her chalet or stick around here and resign myself to the possibilty of her not showing up on her own when I saw a familliar Jake The Dog yellow Hoodie appear out of the corner of my field of vision.  Ghettotech!

"Dave Shades is amazing, its like Bassline and Ghettotech fucked and had a mutant baby".
~Cat McV c.2015

So we found a good spot at the top left of the dancefloor and me and her bounced around to Dave Shades, loving it.

On the way home in the bus station that takes you to the airport I was chatting to another Bangface attendee and I asked him what his favourite thing had been this weekend and he didn't talk about any of the Djs or acts but about the sunday morning when him and his mates went down to the beach to watch the sun come up over the sea.  Now I didn't do anything quite like that but it made me think about "Best" in terms of the experience and the emotional resonance of the moment rather than just the aesthetic, because the music was just un-real all weekend.  I caught the last half hour of X&Trick by accident because of the way the shedule was arranged, never heard of him before, and had no idea who he was, blew me away with a couple of his productions, like the one that I'll be trying to find when I get this post done, the one that uses the Ghost in The Shell music.  But back to my original point.  When thought about what your man said and I assessed things in terms of being meaningful us two bouncing aroung in the Dave Shades set was the first thing to come into my head.  So the best set I would say that I saw all weekend was probably Dave Shades.  As much for personal reasons, as for the tunes.  Not that you could fault the tunes like, he played Bassline Ghettotech hybrid stuff with similar production to what you'd hear in Off Me Nut tunes but Ghettotech rolling rhythm and his own very random hip-hop vocal samples, incluing one which I particularly enjoyed that used the first line from Wu Tang Clan Shame on a Nigga intercut with BBC News storys about Chris Huhne, into some Vengaboys which actually went off into some heavier stuff into the last 15-20 minutes of the set which was mostly Ghettotech-Gabber.

After the set Catherine went off for a bit, I dandered around and ended up watching Reeps One in the Bang Room with Joe Griff.  That was fucking sick and impressive watching this guy just make this music all these other people had rocked up at this festival with stacks of equiptment to make just out of his mouth.  All the complexity of beats and basslines going at the same time like just out of the interaction of his mouth and a mike dropping in and out of genres, bass music, drum and bass, techno, glitch hop hardcore even.  Definitely a contender for most impressive thing of the weekend.

After that I was like fuck Roni Size, fuck Spongepusher, I was never a fan of Mr Size and I've been reliably informed that Squarepusher​ is fucking shit these days, and arguably never was all that anyway (and he's headlinging loads of festivals, enjoy it peasents!).  So I said to my chalet mates that we'd just be better heading to the Face room for Audiotist and Wan Bushi. They were somewhat invested in the notion that Squarepusher wasn't going to be fucking terrible (ah, was I ever so young?) so they said they'd come along for a bit anyway then check out a bit of Suarepusher.  So we did, as I mentioned catch, by accident, catch the last half of X&Trick really class, Acid-y 303 driven hardcore beats, almost like happy hardcore but not quite.  Audiotist was amazing, hadn't heard of him before I saw him on the lineup and checked out some of his stuff, and it was indeed good. Some of it was a bit Novelty-Breakcore but with Squarepusher in the other room, it does ye.

About this point I managed to lose my keys.  I was sitting at the far end of the face room talking to this girl and her mate. She was telling me about having teddys when she was a kid.  I took my keys put of my pocket to show her the Gizmo from Gremlins on my key chain, which I have because when I was a kid I had a Gizmo stuffed toy that was like my main teddy for years.  That led us on to talking about films and we ended up talking for ages, we exchanged phone numbers and I took down their names on my phone to get in touch with them through Facebook.  Later on I realised that my key was gone I went back to the face room where we'd been sitting and they weren't there.  I went to security and spoke to lost and found, gave in a description.  Eventually when I got back to Belfast I finally got my phone back on charge I got loads of texts and messages through, including mixed calls and text messages including one from them telling me that they found my keys and were looking for me.  I texted them back immediately asking what had happened and they told me they'd given up looking for me and handed the keys into security.  Sweet, Wrong-tins best have my keys when I call them in the morning or shits going to fly.

Anyway after the music was over I managed to find Catherine again, ended up with her, Joe and some of Joes Chalet mates, blasting Ghettotech into the wee hours.

So that was it for another year. The check out process was all sorts of fucked up compared to the last couple of years.  Getting off site after a festival is never exactly pleasent but this was an absolute head fuck.  As I said at the time "Sort your fucking shit out".  At one point I was queuing with Shane, but he asked me if if he could just split back to the other guys and our bags since there was no point in the two of us queuing and He'd done all that melt to get the keys when we where checking in (back in the day when I was illegally entering the queen vic without a wrist band, grooving to bassline and loving life).  That seemed entirely reasonable, and in retrospect it actually was.  However I came to rue my generousity of spirit, like in all fairness I doubt that him being there would have made the situation any better I was losing my voice and too tired to be any crack anyway, but at the least I could have the pleasure or watchimg another human being suffer, as I have suffered!

But aye that fucking deposit retireval system needs sorted for next year, considering how delicate you get after a three day breakcore festival I'm surprised there weren't any freak outs, attempted suicides or just actual shite-attacks.  Or at least there hadn't been by the time I got off site, I wouldn't rule it out.

Bangface never really even ended near enought all the way home, at every stage of the public transport system all the way back to the airport and even up to the departure lounge there were other Bangfacers milling about or sitting down.  I met Fred 303 again in the train station, got talking on the train to some guys from London including a Breakbeat Punk-Jungle producer called Tom who makes music as Doctor Colossus who apparetly knows my mate Matt​.

So yeah, that was pretty much the story of the weekend, with certain details that were not meant for public consumption redacted.  Looking to the future, I have potentially two gigs playing Industrial music at home potentially happening subject to me being able to get the dates required off work and other circumstances. A new laptop with enough RAM to handle  TRAKTOR​ 2.0 with minimum fuss and a halfway decent job that will allow me to afford a decent ish USB controller of my own.  My skin is still in too delicate a state to do camping festivals so Boomtown is still fucked (which is a bit of a shit one, because Forbidden Society, Noisia​, The Bug and Flowdan, Dillinja and a load of other artists on my "I need to make this happen" list are already on the lineup) but on the upside I always said Machinefest looks like my perfect festival and I said I'd go if I could ever find one other person I knew that was going. Susan Blue​ the amazingly class woman with blue hair from Sheffield I met when I was covering Infest for Decompression Magazine​ (RIP) last year who was also a Bangface regular goes, I know her and she said it was cool if I tagged along with her this time around and was nice nice enough to fill me in on some of the festivals details like what people do for accomodation and some of the other practicalities when I got speaking to her over the weekend so thats definitely on the cards and it'll be interesting to see who else I might get to go with me.

So onwards and upwards.

Bangface!
Ghettotech!
Does Ye!
Fuck Broadstairs!

...................................................................................................

*Update 9/4/15, am now in touch with Pete, Amy and Terry

**Update 3/4/5 - Hadean is not a girl

***Update 25/03/15

The Thrasher thing explained-

Review: The Steven Nolan Show 09/10/2013

The Nolan Show is occasionally capable of some of the worst examples of local journalism.  The episode earlier this year where they covered the flag protest should live in infamy.  Inviting a crowd of sectarian bigots who had actually scared off a lot of the people who had ordered their tickets because you don't want an empty studio was ill considered at best and calculated irresponsible sensationalism at worst.  The show does from time to time throw up the odd surprise.

Tonights episode was something else.

They took on the abortion issue and the ambiguities in the law here by talking to the family of a woman who found out that the foetus she was carrying basically didn't have a head and wouldn't live long after the birth and the amount of shit that she and her family have been through. He had the Womans mother on the panel, Rosie Ward from the Christian Medical Centre on the other chair towing the fundamentalist Christian party line, Bernie Smith of anti choice group Precious Life in the audience, Goretti Horgan from Alliance For Choice and Breedagh Hughes from the royal college of midwives making an appearance by satellite. Nolan himself, who was definitely on the right side of this one, was chairing the whole thing as usual and let the facts speak for themselves without letting his ego get in the way of the debate, which made a nice change.

It made the family's dilemma quite clear and it also exposed the inhuman hateful attitudes of Precious Life to a T. Some of it was brutal, both in good and bad ways. Smith got a complete rinsing from Nolan and the mother of the woman, she was basically made to admit that she would force a woman against her will to carry a foetus that was going to die to full term and when presented with the Womans account of being harassed outside a FPA centre by her own activists she refused to condemn their behaviour. Its that sort of thing that has the potential to actually shift people on this issue.

I also noticed that That last chap to speak from the floor on tonights Nolan Show IS actually one of those creepy anti-choice people that stand outside the FPA on Shaftsbury square. I pass there going to work all the time and I recognise his face. The pictures they use of "aborted Fetus" as part of their scare tactics aren't taken from abortions at all, they are actually miscarriages.  Precious Life seem to have clocked that this one didn't go at all well for them and seem to be shitting themselves, and are actually calling for a campaign against the Nolan Show on twitter now.  Good.  Picketing people who are emotionally distressed isn't cool, even people I know who would be quite anti abortion are disgusted by their actions, something Nolan seemed happy to call Smith on.  Seeing the mother of the victim of that behaviour confronting Bernie Smith is probably going to be my TV highlight of the year.

Goretti played an absolute blinder explaining the political realities of the situation but wasn't on it for long enough.  The woman who was on representing the Royal College of midwives called the current legislative guidance from the NI assembly around abortion and the legalities of the women who travel to Britain to get it done "intimidatory and threatening".

There were a few niggles, but it was extremely well done. If you haven't seen it catch it on iPlayer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03cc1jz/The_Nolan_Show_Series_3_Episode_10/

What I did during the war

A bit late for the ten year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War but ah well, better late than never.  This seems somewhat timely giving whats going on in Syria and the Tory-Lib Dem coalitions response to it.  Last week Cameron lost a major vote on mobilising for a British component to the inevitable American intervention was stopped.  We never got that far with Iraq, lets hope that we can actually Stop The War this time.

This was an interview by correspondence I conducted with an old friend from the University of Essex student movement, Gawain Williams for his dissertation.  It details the very small part I played in the anti-war movement.

What I Did During The War

Me at the demo against the labour party conference in 2006

What class, if any would you consider yourself to be a part of?  And what do you consider to be a class?

I think that the Marxist class categories reflect the reality of class better than the traditional British way of dividing things into Upper, Middle and lower/working class.  That said the British way reflects an ’Identity’ in terms of how people define themselves, which despite a more tenuous basis in social reality has a reality of its own.  Personally I find it very complicated to pin down a class for myself.  My Parents are from working class backgrounds but made good, my Dad is a classic baby Boomer, born 1947 and was among the first generation to benefit from free education.  Him and my Mum I’d argue are intelligensia, i.e. proletarian in regards to their relationship with the means of production but with their intellectual labour power being exploited rather than physical.  Aside from being a student I’ve only really had fairly menial jobs, white collar but essentially proletarian in terms of my relationship to what I produce and the means of production.

Anyway, you could make a good case for Middle or Working class depending on your definition, and if you really want to push it, Lower middle or Upper working class etc.

Are you a member of a Party or where you during you involvement in the anti war movement?

I have been in the Irish and British SWP.

Were you involved in any Anti War / Peace movements before the 2001 War on Terror began?

No.

Were you involved in any other political activity before participating in anti war demonstrations?

I was at some of the earliest of the current crop of Anti-Capitalist demonstrations in Belfast back in 2000.  I also demonstrated over student issues when I was at the Belfast tech around the same time.

How were you involved in the Anti War Movement?

I attended and helped leaflet for protests in Ireland before I went to Colchester, George bush’s visit to Dublin in 2005, Shannon Airport protest in September the same year etc.  When I moved to Essex university campus to begin my masters degree I made it a priority to get involved with the Anti-War movement on Campus.  Along with Dominic Kevakeb I helped start the STWC branch on campus, I was involved in the stall and postering for the March 18^th 2006 demonstration, which I also attended.

What motivated you to join the movement?

The feeling that something unutterably wrong was happening.  By the time of the war in Iraq I was a fairly well-versed Anti-Capitalist Marxist and I felt that it was the sort of thing I should have been involved in if I was serious about my beliefs.

Why did you attend speeches on the War? I.e. personal learning or meeting other activists?

 I wanted to learn the arguments so I could argue in my own right to convince other people we were right.  I wanted facts and data I could quote.  I try to talk to people that aren’t engaged and there are a lot of myths and misconceptions that are perpetrated through the media.  I don’t think in terms of conspiracy so much as institutional bias, though there is some deliberate misinformation floating about I would agree with Nick Davies assessment that it accounts for only about 5-10% of the bullshit.  Anyway, there is a wide barrier of crap between the average punters idea of whats happening and what is actually going on and I like to hear from the experts so I can build a few wrecking balls for that barrier.

Did / Do you Believe your actions would/ Will help end the War?

Not in the immediate short term but eventually, yes.

Do you think the anti war movement could have been more successful?

In the abstract sense that anything can always be better because there’s no such thing in reality as perfection, yes it could have been.  I mean we haven’t ended the war yet have we?  A prolonged general strike back in 2003 could have done it but the unions were in no shape for a fight like that.  I think the objective conditions have moved on and an industrial action in the event of an attack on Iran is looking lige a possibility.  Still you have to remember that the working class movement had had the last 20 years of having the shit kicked out of it.  That we achieved what we did was fantastic.

What were the most successful, and least successful activates you took part in?

Hard to quantify that sort of thing.  Most Successful was probably the stormont demo in 2007.  We took over the stand that was set up for the press and absolutely scared the bejesus out of the Stormont security people.  Least, well there were a couple of meetings that weren’t very well attended and ended up with just the usual suspects preaching to the converted.

Do you think that Colchester having a large military presence helped or hindered your actions in anyway?

I didn’t really do a lot of activism off campus in Colchester itself, so it wasn’t really an issue for me.

Do you see you involvement in the stop the war movement as distinctly separate from other political activates you’re involved in?

Well, yes and no.  Considering that when me and Dom (Dominic Kavakeb) arrived the SWSS branch was moribund, there wasn’t a STWC Soc. on campus and that was the first year of Student Respect, we more or less had to get everything up and running ourselves.  In my recollection everything did kind of blur into everything else.  That said, we were all aware that that isn’t how it was supposed to be, I remember Dom talking about getting different people to chair the different meetings because it was him doing a lot of the work.  Also, at any given time when we were actually doing stuff it was always a particular thing we were doing it for.  EG. If there was a stall there was always a load of stuff on the stall to say what the stall was about.  There were people who were involved in the Respect and STWC stuff who were from outside the party and wouldn’t have done anything for SWSS but would leaflet and poster with us for Anti-War stuff.  Alys wasn’t in the party at this point and would have done a lot of stuff with us for STWC, bringing materials up from London, and being with us on the stall.  Erkhan was another.  Adam used to confuse me, he was in the SP, allegedly he ran the SP in Campus, but he went to all the STWC meetings and seemed to be around a lot, I was actually under the mistaken impression that the SP were in Respect.

Do you discuss your involvement in the anti war movement with your family?

Yes a lot actually.  My Dad was politically engaged when he was my age, he’s still technically a member of the Workers Party, or so he says.  My Mum’s never been very political but it’s a big part of my life so its something we’d talk about.  Each of them have been on Anti-War marches in Belfast largely thanks to myself.

Are there any newspaper headlines concerning the war that you remember?

Nah, I don’t read the papers.

Did you find that social aspects of the anti war movement made involvement easier?

It was nice and all but I was never into the whole social side of it.  I suppose the best way to put it is that even if everyone else in the movement were a bunch of anti-social dicks I’d have done it anyway, so the social aspect was pure gravy.

Did the war effect your voting?

Not  really.

Did you attend anti war events on the campus?

Attended and helped run a few.

Did you attend any events outside of Colchester?

Yes, Colchester was one full year within an involvement over the last couple of years.

Did you carry out any political actions with people from the anti war moment that did not relate directly to the war/ i.e. anti racism / elections?

Yes, election work and work around local issues in Belfast

Would you still have been involved in / attended anti war meetings, lecture, and protests if the war had been carried out by the UN or NATO?

Yes.  In fact I expected at the time that the UN would go along with the Americans, that they didn’t just compounded my take on things, not swayed it.

Do you see the 1990-91 gulf war as distinctively different from the current occupation of Iraq?

Yes and no.  It’s all a part of the great game of America extending its global hegemony, however I see the two invasions as representing different stages in the project.

Were you involved in any protests against the 1990-91 Gulf war?

I remember shouting “Up Sadam” at a couple of Brits and running away when I was a kid.  Does that count?  LOL.  I remember my P6 teacher being very Gung-Ho and explaining the war to us.  I think I said something like “Aye but what about Isreal, they’ve done all sorts and America doesn’t go after them cause they’re all mates”.  I knew absolutely nothing about it, I think I’d heard that on TV and it sounded good, but it did the trick, his face went black and he started making half-arsed excuses and just not explaining things very well.

Stop the war coalition uses the term ‘war’ to encompass a number of issue such as the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan , torture in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the occupation of Palestine , the Israeli military operation in Lebanon and government reactions to Iran.   What do you see as the main aims of the anti war movement?

To engage people.  The specific aims are to get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and prevent any future wars with Iran.  Gitmo is obviously related to this.  Palestine and the Lebanon situation involve Israel, which is the central cause of instability in the Middle East and the central prop of American imperialism, on the basis of pure tactics you can’t have a lasting peace in the Middle East while the issue of Israel-Palestine is unresolved, so its definitely in there.

Religion was depicted as being important in the war on terror with George Bush even claiming to be on a mission from god. Did this interpretation of religion differ from you own and did it effect your involvement in the anti war movement?           

The notion of religion and how much religion itself is a problem or just the way conflict is expressed is a major question in how you approach the situation we had back home in Northern Ireland.  I had it fairly straight in my head that religion doesn’t create problems on it’s own well before the war.

Do you think technology played an important role in your participation?

Nah, if anything the internet is a distraction for activists IMO.  The fight is on the streets, sitting at home arguing with idiots online is fun but you never really win.

Did you continue working in the Anti war movement once you left Colchester?

Yes.

Is there anything at all you would like to say about your involvement the campaigns?

Just that while we weren't able to Stop the War and the Respect Party, which came out of the Anti-War movement has hit some serious problems in the last year, I think it was all worth while.  If we hadn't done what we did I have no doubt that they would be in Iran now and threatening god only knows who else.

And that was the end of that.  Looking back on it there are not many answers to those questions that I would have changed, except that my cynicism of the Left and its flaws is better informed by experience, yet I do not consider my time around the movements to have been wasted, nor do I let cynicism over-rule my natural romantic/optimistic streak, and god knows I have had plenty of excuses to do so.

In retrospect the Iraq War was part of the testing process for our post-information technological revolution generation.  It was one we failed to some extent however to quote Finn The Human, failing is just the first step to getting really good at something.  I did a little for the movement, more than most but not as much as I should have.

Cartoons all Revolutionary Socialists should make their kids watch, Part V Pom Poko

Pom Poko (Studio Ghibli 1994)

What it’s about:

In my previous entry about Princess Mononoke I talked a little about heavy industrialisation of Japan, the transformation of the Japanese countryside over the post war period and the effect of this on Japanese culture.  This techno/ecological revolution is, along with the psychological trauma of the loss of the war and the nuclear attacks that ended it, one of the great meta-themes of Japanese popular culture in the late 20^th century.  Princess Mononoke dealt with this phenomenon as an allegorical fantasy.  Pom Poko deals with these themes directly.

A small community of Tanuki (Japanese Racoon-Dog  creatures) find their area under threat from the expansion of Tokyo as their rural habitat is targeted for urban development.  The film follows them over the course of the next couple of years as what normally happens to small societies / communities that get in the way of the onward march of industrial capitalism happens to them as the countryside is developed into housing around them.

Why it’s Good:

Pom Poko is one of the more underrated of the Ghibli films.  Maybe it isn’t quite as good as some of the other Ghibli films on this list, it isn’t one of Hayao Miyazaki’s, but i think it is up there with the best of them.  It’s a lucid and informative examination of complex and rather adult themes that is completely comprehensible by children.  Its also one that I have a soft spot for because it is an activists film.  At first, after the small communities of Tanuki that had fought amongst each other are united by the common threat, they form a committee and have a debate about what is to be done, the merits of direct action are discussed and assessed against more symbolic forms of struggle.  The ultimate fate of the Tanuki has parallels with the fates of other indigenous peoples who got in the way, from the Native Americans, the Tribal peoples of Africa and the Aboriginal people of the antipodes.  If you’ve studied the Ghost Dance or the Xhosa cattle slaughter the scene with the non-transforming Tanuki forming up into a ship and going out to sea to die should strike a chord as a slightly encoded representation of some of the great human tragedies of the last couple of centuries.  I always cry at that part.

The chairman tries to maintain order as everyone else gets a bit over excited

There is also a really brilliant visual conceit that actually tends to confuse adults but small children seem to take to immediately.  The drawing style for how the Tanuki are depicted changes depending on which aspect of their existence is relevant to the plot at a given time.  This sounds more complicated than it is, basically, whenever the film wants to emphasise the reality of the situation the Tanuki are depicted realistically, more or less as they are in reality, when we’re in the story for most of the film when we are looking at the Tanuki as individual personalities they are depicted in a cartoony anthropomorphic fashion, a small amount of clothing (which doesn’t cover their scrotums on the male characters, which are apparently magic) which is more or less as they are depicted in traditional Japanese culture.  In parts of the film where the Tanukis emotions are heightened to the point where they are acting or feeling events as a collective the individuality of the characters is de-emphasised and they are all depicted in broad strokes, literally, as the art style is flattened and simplified to the bare minimum.  This is a really neat conceit that conveys a lot visually in a way that you couldn’t do in any other medium.  Using the style and complexity of the art for narrative emphasis is something that is simple and intuitive, its also something typical of Japanese visual storytelling methods, you get it in a lot of Manga and Anime, but rarely in the west.

What the Young ’Uns will hopefully take from it: 

1st meeting of the local community residents association to
discus the "Human Problem"

Well, the film has an obvious environmentalist message, its a good introduction to the notion of what capitalist development does to the land and to any inconvenient inhabitants of that land that happen to be in the way.  Its also a bit of a primer in community politics.  As soon as the bulldozers move in to the area the little Tanuki stop fighting amongst each other, form a residents association, have po0litical discussions about how best to deal with the situation, some favour direct action in the form of violence and sabotage against the humans, some argue for more measured forms of resistance.  As the plot shapes up,  these different strategies are tried to different levels of success, its this that drives the story along in fact.   Most kids films and series and entertainment in general, even ones I’ve spoken about here, tend to be plotted along the capitalist / individualist model, the lone hero or band of heros against discreet groups of baddies .  Its refreshing to see something that is about communities and interest groups and how they interact because this is how the real world actually works.

Also, Japanese Racoon Dogs have magic testicles.  Thats a lesson that frankly we should all learn.  Seriously, other cultures are a lot less squeamish about depictions of certain aspects of the human physiology.  In Japan, cure little cartoon creatures with anatomically correct scrotes aren’t a big deal.  A good thing too, frankly this is better than teaching children to be ashamed of their bits, ‘cause that isn’t going to do them any harm when they get older, right?

On Novel to Film adaptations

Film and Prose fiction are very different medium, so even when you're talking about the same story, characters and content you are never comparing like with like. Films, like music, are an experience to be absorbed. Prose, words on a page, that's you hacking the source code of your own consciousness and doing so at your own pace. I think a lot of the time its unfair to compare the two.

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 Sometimes a good movie can be made out of a book, Chuck Palahniuk rated the Fight Club film over his own book because Fincher was able to improve it by picking up on things that were inherent in the novel and bring them out and do justice to the plot. Some types of plot and themes are better suited to film, action and violence are really hard to do well in a novel. Theres things you can do in a book you can't do on screen and vice versa, a lot of it is to do with perspective, Shutter island was a great book but the twist at the end of the film makes absolutely no sense if you can actually see what the main character is looking at, so to my mind the film was terrible, and Leonardo DiCaprio was horribly miscast. Sometimes the difference between the mediums is just too much for a straight adaptation and the film becomes a very different beast, I thought the movie of The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a lot better than the book because I find the authors "tell then show" style of framing the story to be really heavy handed and you can't really do that in a film without an all consuming voice over that sits heavily on the narrative or loads of "inner voice" stuff like in the David Lynch version of Dune.

I don't mind differences between films and the books or comics they are adapted from as long as the differences are appropriate to the medium and aren't just part of the process of shoehorning a thing from one medium into the other to make money even though its completely inappropriate and just not right for the medium.

The Johnny Depp version of Alan Moores From Hell was a conspicuously bad offender for that. Turning a really long and well researched peice of quasi-historical fiction into a film of appropriate length was just never going to work and what you ended up with was a stylish mess with tons of plot holes and none of the depth of the original. The original was about taking this really stupid bit of conspiracy literature and elevating it into an elaborate metaphor and exploring the nature of history, consciousness and our perception of reality, in the film it missed all that and you ended up with just the stupid conspiracy theory and the sort of trashy sensationalism that the original critiqued.

A good adaptation on the other hand would be something like Blade Runner. The book Blade Runner was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was quite a good bit of weird 70s Sci-Fi, it had a good story, well told and the ideas in it were quite interesting, but the film made a lot more out of it, streamlined the plot, added a brilliant set of visuals (the special effects absolutely rinse Dicks functional descriptive prose - difference appropriate to the medium) and add a bit of emotional complexity and Philosophical depth that was inherent in the book but wasn't quite present on the surface. Dick was firmly of the on the side of the 'people > replicants' Roy batty is less sympathetic baddie in the novel that Rutger Hauer made him and the whole "is Deckard a replicant" thing is a minor plot turn that goes on for a couple of chapters in the second act before being given the definitive answer - i.e. no, rather than an elaborate subtext, subtly and delicately woven into the film in a way that you wouldn't pick up on if you weren't paying attention. Bladerunner was a class film that did justice to its source material and more.

My favourite film is actually an adaptation of a book, but the versions are centuries apart and come from quite different contexts, I have to say as well that I haven;t read the original but I know enough about it and the author to have an appreciation of it and how it informs the adaptation. That film is Salo, or the 120 days of Sodom by the Italian director Pier Paulo Pascolini. It manages to be an adaptation of a book that ought to be unfilmable, a blinding dissection of fascism and also a really harsh look at post industrial capitalist culture at the same time. Its every bit as horrific as the source material, bordering on hardcore porn, the only real difference between it and a hard BDSM porno is that its not really meant to be sexually arousing. Honestly, if you are going to watch it I'd recommend watching it a couple of times, you need to do that to get over the horror of what's actually in front of you before you can really start engaging with it. Because of the real fucked up nature of whats happening on screen it is easy to miss the depths of what Pascolini is saying. Its all about observation and the desecration of the human body, one of the themes was what Pascolini called the death of sexuality (his pessimistic take on the sexual revolution of the 1960s) I think the way that the thing prefigures and sort of critiques reality television shows that he was absolutely spot on.

To illustrate why its so good and how it works, there is a fairly infamous scene in it called The Shit Feast, that is pretty much what it sounds like. The shit feast is consumer culture in general, as well as a comment on fast food, and its the fucking Bush Tucker Trial on I'm a celebrity get me out of here and its every way that the system perverts your natural need to ingest. Everything that happens in it is significant and multifaceted in its meanings, within the overarching structure of meaning, i.e. that the Republic of Salo is actually Society.

 Thats part of why i love it, that and the madness of the stories that surround it, the possible role of the film in Pascolinis death the year after it was released, the bannings and unbannings (James Ferman passed it uncut for viewing in the UK as a "fuck you" to the BBFC on his last day on the job). I think you could argue that its one of the most significant works of art by a Marxist working in any of the arts. Getting back to why its a good adaptation too, DeSade was an extremist, a revolutionary spirit of his age just as Pascolini was of the post modern age. Its a story with its roots in European royalist absolutism, set in a Fascist puppet state, but meant to be about contemporary society. The way it is both a critiques fascism by equating it with older versions of absolutism and then equates Fascism with Bourgeois liberal democracy. This in itself mirrors (deliberately I would say) the Marxist conception of society, political power and class struggle.

Its a brilliant film, and a reinvention of the source that brings it up to date and makes it understandable and relevant. Its the way you should so an adaptation of any book, be true to the substance of the work even if you have to rework the specifics.

 I'll finish up with a short list of the films I haven't mentioned yet that I've enjoyed in spite or because of the original:
 The Lord of the Rings (Jackson and Bashki versions)
American Psycho
Dredd
Tank Girl (inferior to the original but still quite good)
The HBO TV adaptations of the Sookie Stackhouse novels and George RR Martins Game of Thrones.
Pretty much any version of Dracula but especially Murnau's Nosferatu
 Ringu (I read an English translation of the novel and the film is so much better, the plot is just a lot better suited to the screen)
 A Clockwork Orange (both film and book are amazing and done magnificently in a way suitable to its own medium, each perfect in their own way).
Interview With a Vampire
The Princess Bride

 Can't think of too many more, and if I started listing all the adaptations that have profoundly disappointed or even annoyed me I'd be here all night.

Christmas At the Sharp End

A short story I wrote for my creative writing class a couple of years ago.  Briefly e-published, now available here for free to anyone who wants to read it...

Christmas at the Sharp End

            We started at about three in the afternoon.  We wanted to get the obligatory long-distance phone call to the folks out of the way early enough.  Well, I say phone call, Baz’s brother was technologically savvy enough to have Skype so he was able to make a free call over the internet.  Mine cost me a fortune, but it was good talking to my Ma.

            Me and Barry got up before noon because if we’d got up any earlier on Christmas day it would have been a bit too depressing.  Our flatmate was away with his girlfriend and we were happy enough to be rid of him.  If he had somebody to be with then good luck to him.  Like us, he was a stranger in a strange land, though he was born in this country he was from the other side of it and as much a blow in as myself, from a shitty wee estate in a shitty wee town at the edge of Belfast and Baz, a dirty Dub but a good lad all the same.

            We pottered about the flat with some kid’s Christmas film blaring in the background and generally gave the place a bit of a square round before the other two came.  We knew it was going to get extremely messy later but it didn’t seem cool to just leave it as it was.  We’d no tree but we had a few lights up around the walls.  They were actually there from Halloween and were shaped like pumpkins and Witches Hats but somehow they looked the part.

            I still had half a take-away box of Chicken Noodles from the Christmas-Eve carry out so I nuked them in the microwave and ate them in front of the big widescreen TV we had in the flat.  Not exactly the best Christmas breakfast I’ve ever had but it tasted good and was a bit better than the “meat” pie Barry had in the oven.  We ate our stuff and watched the Bill Murray classic Scrooged.  Great movie, must have seen it dozens of times but it was only that time when I was watching it that I realised that the title of the film was a sort of play on the word “Screwed”.

            About halfway through the film, in the middle of the scene where the guy with the big ugly face that used to be in that American punk band, you know the one Malcom McLaren managed before the ‘Pistols, anyway your man that was doing the cabbie-Ghost-of-Christmas-Past takes Bill Murray back to his childhood, and the door goes.  It’s Aleks, the guy that lives in the bedsitter upstairs.  He’s from some place in one of the nastier countries at the fringes of Europe, bit like ourselves, just the other end of the continent.  We don’t know him too well but we knew he’d be kicking around that flat on his own upstairs being all miserable and killing our buzz if we didn’t have him down here with us.  Besides at least he seems to have got the message about what we were at, he’d brought his own drink for it and his face lit up when he saw we were watching Scrooged.

            “Yes, this is good one, with the Ghost-buster.  You put on Sub-titles?  I read in English better.”

            Normally I can’t stand subtitles they distract me from what’s on screen and every little difference between what comes up and what’s said grates at me, but you know ‘Christmas’ and all that, so I was like; “Aye, why not?”.

            Around the end of the film where Bobcat Goldthwait was chasing Bill Murray around with a shotgun we had another knock at the door.  This time it was Adé.  Adé is one of the Nigerians from work.  He wouldn’t be one of our partyin’ crowd, but he would knock about with me and Barry and our mates in the warehouse, eat his lunch with us.  For some reason he doesn’t get on with the other Nigerians, different tribe or religion or something, same-shit-as-we-get-at-home sort-of-thing, but he’s a good lad and when I explained what we’d be doing he was well up for it.

            As the film died to the strains of that “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” song, I nodded at Barry to get his attention.

            “Anything else on?” I said.  He surfed a bit through the channels.  We didn’t have the best package for ourselves but we had a couple of hundred channels easy.

            “Nuthin’.  Just a laod a Christmas family shoite”.

            “Well” says I, this time to the room in general, “are we havin’ a party here or what?”.

            This pronouncement was met with general applause.  The TV went off and I put on the CD of cheesy electronic covers of Christmas classics I had randomly bought for a laugh a couple of years ago.  To be fair to it, for an impulse buy it had worked out sweet, we played the absolute fuck out of it that first year and it was always on at our Christmas parties now.  Luckily for me the first track, a Euro-Trance version of Silent Night, had a nice slow build-up, which gave me just enough time to do the wee speech I had prepared for the occasion.

            “Well, you boys all know the score.  Wee Christmas party, we all bring our own drink but we all bring a little something we can share with the rest of the group, and since this is my party I’m hoping you boys don’t mind if I go first”.

            Not waiting for a reply, I took the small mirror we had on the fire place off the stand and put it on the table.  I took the bags of white powder out of my pocket and dropped them on the table.

            “That there is three grams of Mephadrome, the very last of the good stuff.”  I opened one of the bags and poured the substance onto the mirror.  “Now you see the way it’s not exactly powder, kind of like big crystals?  That, if you care to remember before last summer, was ‘the good shit’.”  I took out an old store card from a chain of music retailers back home which had long since bit the dust in the credit crunch, the card I kept for these occasions, and began to grind the crystal shards into a fine dust.  “I got a good ounce of this in off the internet before it was banned over here, twenty eight grams, sold a load of it and took a serious load of it myself.”  The powder was now fine enough so I started to chop it up in preparation for doing lines.  “Never made that much off it but hey whatever, kept me partying for a wee while, and now that’s all that’s left.”  I chopped the entire gram into four long thin lines, which I adjusted, then re-cut, then moved a small quantity from one line to the other, then realised I’d overcompensated and mixed them all in together to start over again and repeated the process.  “Could have sold these a long time ago, or cut them and made a wee packet, but I wanted to save them for a special occasion”.

When I was satisfied I stood up and took a step back from the table. 

“Anybody got a note on them?”

Aleks nodded in assent.

“You’re up first then, big-boy.”

Aleks took a nice crisp fresh one from his wallet that he must have just got from a bank-machine and rolled it into a perfect tube.  With a goofy smile on his face he addressed himself to the table, breathed in, let a long slow breath out then went down and hoofed a whole line in one go.

He whinced a little and his eyes watered but his smile burst into a full-on beamer.  “Reminds me of the old country on a fresh day in spring.”

Impressed at his fortitude, I went next.  I somehow came at the line at a weird angle and left a bit, but I got the rest on the next pass.  It stung like a high-dive bellyflop into the most chlorinated pool in the world.  Hits you right between the eyes.  It hurt damn good but I liked it because that’s how you know it’s pure.  I got that heady Meph-rush for the first time in a long time and the ache in my knee died.  Ah its dirty stuff, but I love it and now it’s gone.

Adé went next.  I can only think he didn’t know what we were doing or saw the way we took to it and didn’t know what to expect or something.  He drew in about a third of the line and stood with a look of shock and surprise on his face.  He rubbed the nostril he’d been using in obvious pain and his eyes were bloodshot.

“Woah, easy there big lad” I said, “if you’re not use to it you just take your time with it sure.”

“In old country we say ‘The pain make you strong, is the pain that make it good!’”.  That Aleks, he can be a funny bastard some times.  I don’t believe for a minute that anyone ever actually says stuff like that where he’s from but every time he’s out with us he always finds some way to come out with some crack like that about “Old Country”, usually something completely ridiculous, and it gets me every time.

I took the bottle of clove oil I kept in the place out of the drawer and passed it to Adé.  “Sniff that, it’ll take the edge off”, I says, and it did.

Suitably chastened, Adé picked up the note and went back in for round two with the line.  Took him a few goes but he got there.  Unlike Baz who went straight for it, no note no nothing, just smacked his nose to the glass and snootered the whole thing.

We were all feeling pretty good about ourselves after those lines so we all grabbed another drink and shot the shit for a wee bit.  I did us all some shots out of my bottle of absinthe and Aleks told us all the story of losing his virginity to some wee snow-maiden in his home town back in ‘Old Country’, and near dying of exposure because the only place they could find to do it was outdoors, then nearly dying again when her Da found out and went after him.

 I knew what Barry had for the party, he had managed to get a gram of Ket and some really good green.  All good stuff, especially since Ketamine has been like gold-dust this weather, but more for the inevitable wind down and we had many hours of Christmas to get through before that would be happening.  I asked Adé, “so big lad, what all did you bring for the us?”.

“It is on its way, it will be here around ten tonight.  I’ll get a text message then I’ll go get”.

I didn’t like hearing that because there was always the half chance he was pure going to get in on whatever we’d all brought then be all like “sorry guys, it didn’t come”, but he had a look on him like he knew something we didn’t and he was lovin’ it.  I reckoned there probably was something on its way right enough. He was blatantly bustin’ to tell us but he didn’t want to ruin the surprise.  Anyway, at worst he’d have to buy us all a drink to make it up to us somewhere down the line.  Whatever it was it would have to wait so I asked Aleks for his contribution to the festivities.

This turned out to be a bag of really good ecstasy tablets.  These weren’t the usual crap pills that were going round either.  They were white with blue flecks through them, were slightly bigger than the one’s I’d been seeing recently and had an exclamation mark stamped into them.  God bless him, he didn’t know how many of us there were going to be so he bought ten of them.  We split two into half, then banged one and a half each so we would all have one left for later.  They were tremendous, they hit me like a freight train and had me tripping, which I haven’t done on pills since I was a teenager.

By this time the TV had picked up, Die Hard was on one of the foreign language channels but it was subtitled over English (thank god).  Not that that would have mattered, I must have seen that film about a hundred times or more.  It was one of my favourites when I was a kid, and I could probably act in it by now.  Actually, a badly dubbed Die Hard with us filling in the dialogue might have been good fun but alas it was not to be.

We watched away at Die Hard drank our drinks, polished off another gram of ‘drome in little coke-lines and smoked cigarette after cigarette, enjoying every minute of it.  At about quarter past ten Adés phone went.  By now I was quite curious to see what he had coming fir him.  So he makes his apologies and nips off, then comes back in about 5 minutes.  Instead of bringing a wee bag or a wrap of something, or I dunno like, a bunch of big dudes with sawn-offs to stroke all our stuff and merk the whole lot of us, he brings this girl in.  Pretty wee thing, big heart face and a button nose.  When she took her rain-drenched faux-fur coat off she was wearing black fish nets, black denim hot-pants and a tight sleeveless blouse over a petite but smoking-hot figure.  She also had a shit load of make-up on her face doing a not-very-good job of hiding how young she actually was.  It shows you how naïve I am that I initially assumed she was a stripper but I have to say, I laughed at myself a bit when I realised what was really going on.

“Jesus-hell Adé, you brought a hooker!”

“Yes my friend,” he replied absolutely shameless, “I have her booked for whole evening, we all get to share!”

Now to be fair, I was a wee bit dubious about all this, particularly since I know Adé has a Mrs and a few we-ones at home in Africa, but I thought, well fuck it, if you can’t give your mates a bit of lee-way at Christmas when can you?

I smiled at the girl and chopped her out a line of Meph from the pile and offered it to her.  “Here, love you have a hit of that.”

She gave a shy wee smile back as she went to it, but when she got the line she opened up a bit. 

“Oh, that is very nice, thank you!”, she said leaning over to stroke my knee, “you’re gorgeous, I can’t wait for later when we….”

At that point I took her hand and held it.  “Nah, you’re alright kid, I don’t do girl on girl, tried it once and it didn’t agree with me.  You’re lovely though if I was going to go lez it would definitely be with you.”

“It’s a shame, you’re so sweet and you have such lovely big boobs!”

I took a complete reddener at the compliment.  I supposed I do like, but you don’t notice these things so much, your boobs are pretty much your own boobs and if they’re bigger than the average you don’t see it.  Well not me anyway, I’m more worried that the one on the left is fractionally smaller than the other one, not that I’ve had any complaints mind.

Adé started getting stuck into the girl, Aleks and Baz were having some inane conversation about the European champions league and I was getting pretty lit up by this stage so I sat back on the chair feeling a bit smacked out and watched the window where the rain had turned to snow which was softly falling in light drifts, the flakes picked out in the amber glow of the street lights.  Then, I don’t know if it was all the drugs I had taken up to that point or what but I started feeling a bit, ‘Emotional’.  We were all strangers really and could have all been stuck with only ourselves for company today.  My work visa was coming to an end and I could feel the city lights of Belfast calling me home already.  Maybe I’ll know these guys the rest of my life but there’s a good chance that I’ll never see any of them again after I go, just a random person on Facebook, a tiny face in the corner of the computer screen until such a time as I’m having a red out of old contacts and people I don’t talk to anymore, and then not even that.  But here we all are, together and having a good time.  It might just have been me coming up on the pills but it felt like something more than that, like being happy just to be where I was with these people and full of ‘Christmas Cheer’ for the first time since I was a kid.

I wiped the little tears out of the corners of my eyes, raised my glass, said quietly but audibly to the room in general, to myself, to no-one in particular, “Merry fuckin’ Christmas everybody”.