Almost Alternative

An Exquisite Evening of Ethereal Entertainment  Hosted By Analogue Trash At the Castle Hotel Manchester The evening began with Beinaheleidenschaftsgegenstand an electronic, ambient, industrial trio. I have seen them previously but before they added the third member. They were just as good as I remembered and soon I was sat on the floor relaxing and getting lost in the music. They manage to be soothing, all encompassing and slightly creepy all at once.    Beinaheleidenschaftsgegenstand  The lead singers voice portrays the heartbreak and pain mentioned in the lyrics perfectly, then at other times manages to sound completely robotic. You can clearly see all the members get lost in the music as the performance goes on. The build up to the ending was intense, they gained an extra singer and a metal barrel being used as a drum. The sounds filled the room as the powerful lyrics were spoken, each crash of the barrel ringing out, the music heightening and the ...

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...