Almost Alternative

Analogue Trash Presents The Luddite Collective, Def Neon and Psydoll at Dulcimer Bar Psydoll Photo by Cute As Sin I was so excited on the run up to Friday nights gig, as has been mentioned here before I am definitely a fan of Def Neon and I know seeing them live means dancing, Psydoll were coming in from Japan for a small Uk tour and having seen them once before and absolutely loved it I was looking forward to seeing them again. Now I am biased about The Luddite Collective, I have been helping them get the special advance limited edition run of their new ep done in time for this gig and I think it's quite brilliant, so obviously I was thrilled knowing they were going to play some of the tracks live. The Luddite Collective Photo Cute As Sin  First up was The Luddite Collective an aggressive industrial punk duo combining dirty bass, harsh vocals, snyth and beats that you really can't help dancing to. The lyrics are politically charged and very relevant, the emo...

A Curious Cabaret Of Sonic Discordance At Maguire's Pizza Bar On Friday the 19th I travelled over to Liverpool for a rather interesting gig, The Battle For Tomorrow, described on the poster as noise doom spoken word clown drone punk poetry brickcore industrial grrrr.  The Battle For Tomorrow is an album of poetry by Adam Probert accompanied by the experimental noise of John E Smoke, but that's skipping ahead a little bit.  Adam Probert The gig was hosted by The Percy Vermin Experiment a master of words, with a marvellous flair for performance.  Percy Vermin The first act was poet, Ellie W Muddy reading three sensational poems. Her reading was impassioned and rousing. One of the poems was accompanied by an atmospheric noise piece making it even more engaging.  Ellie W Muddy Then there was a huge change in pace with Pandemonium, the noisiest clown I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He provided a fanfare of commotion, an ex...

My Fear of Clowns It surprises many people to hear that I am petrified of clowns. For a long time I was so scared I couldn't even be in the same room as a clown doll. I like to push myself with my fears though.  So I took on a crazy project. I agreed to do the make up for and photograph a noise artist called Pandemonium. He felt he needed a total restyle after a break from performing and asked for my assistance. I took a while to think about it and spent a long time looking at past pictures of Pandemonium trying to work out if I could take on this project. It took months for me to come up with design ideas because I was physically sick the first couple of times I tried.  Pandemonium original style Photographer unknown Then when swapping ideas it kind of clicked we came up with an idea. I thought out a couple of make up looks and photo ideas, I did a mood board which involved me looking at lots of pictures of clowns, it was the scariest and one of the most diff...