Where Worlds Collide

This was the eleventh time I’ve seen Breathing Space live, and the seventh time this year.

It’s amazing how far this band have come since I first started following them; I first saw them live playing in a pub in York last February; that night wasn’t a terribly good gig, as they struggled with serious technical and sound problems, but I could see they had potential. Towards the end of last year they released the superb album “Coming Up For Air” which surpassed my expectations. Then at a small club in Mansfield this June they played an absolutely spellbinding gig which for me was the point where it became clear they were playing in the same league as their fellows in the ‘York/Swansea scene’.

Bilston continued this progress. Having seen some small crowds at Breathing Space gigs I wondered what sort of audience they’d attract on a Sunday night. But while the place was by no means full, they pulled a healthy sized crowd.

As at the Mansfield gig, the support was a semi-acoustic set from Mermaid Kiss, this time playing as a four-piece without Jon Edwards on keys. While they were good, I didn’t think they quite had the edge they’d had the last time I saw them; the sound was a bit muddier and I missed Jon’s keys. Still, Evelyn Downing was on fine form, even though her distinctive vocal style is not to everyone’s taste, and Wendy Marks’ assorted woodwinds gave some excellent backing.

Breathing Space’s performance was up to the standards I’ve come to expect, everyone on top form as usual.  With only two albums worth of songs, there wasn’t much in the way of real surprises in the setlist (No return of “Shades of Grey”), except for the live première of a new song, “Butterflies and White Feathers”.   Difficult to judge on one listen, but it’s an atmospheric beginning and some great Hammond organ at the end.  It’s interesting different from anything they’ve done before, while still sounding like Breathing Space.  It augers well for their next album, which they plan to record next April.

It’s September, so the annual N gauge exhibition has come round again. Last year’s was the official N-gauge Society one in Kettering, this year it’s the turn of the ‘unofficial’ one. This is held at the grandly-titled Warwickshire Exhibition Centre, actually a converted cowshed in the middle of nowhere somewhere outside Leamington Spa.

As usual, it was showcase of the best of N gauge modelling, an opportunity for manufacturers large and small to demonstrate their wares, and an opportunity to meet up with friends who descended on the place from far and wide. In that respect it’s a bit like some prog gigs; although the only overlap was Andi Dell, manning the DEMU stand, who I’d met earlier in the year when he was doing the lighting for Mostly Autumn at Gloucester.

Star layout for me was Graeme Hedges’ magnificent slice of urban south London, “Stoney Lane Depot”. I’d seen it in bare baseboard form, and seen photos in two magazines, but it’s different seeing it ‘in the flesh’ in three dimensions. This is precisely the sort of thing where N-gauge excels; superb architectural modelling where the urban landscape dominates the trains.

The big manufacturers had their latest ‘in development’ models. Bachmann’s painted 108s looked superb, and their class 42 “Warships” looked good too, even if there was something not quite right about the full yellow end ones. The 150 looked superb; I can’t wait to see a fully painted versions. Over on the yellow and purple Dapol stand we had their sprinter, the 156, along with some new “Megafret” intermodal flats, and their Mk3 DVT. The InterCity DVT suffers from some livery errors, which I trust will be corrected in the production version.

As usual at this sort of show I ended up spending far too much money; I didn’t buy any locomotives this time, but still managed to emerge with a significantly lighter wallet. And there were no impulse buys are all - Everything I bought was on my shopping list, the most significant purchase being the Dapol dummy Voyager “Dr Who”, where I managed to get my hands on one of the last ones - they’re now completely sold out from Dapol.

As if you really needed to know…

Yes, it’s another stupid list. Deal with it.

1. Marillion have made more that two good albums
2. Marillion have five creative band members, and have kept the same lineup for 19 years
3. Even ex-members of Marillion have made made great solo albums - how many classic records has Bonehead made since leaving Oasis?
4. The Guardian Music blog does not include pointless blogs about Marillion every week.
5. You cannot blame Marillion for the phenomenon of landfill indie
6. Nobody would consider calling Steve Hogarth “Monkey Boy”
7. Marillion are far more than a glorified tribute to the bands they were accused of ripping off at the start of their career.
8. Marillion have never released an album accompanied by deafening hype, which then turned out to be complete rubbish.
9. Let’s just not talk about Oasis’ contribution towards the profitability of Bolivian marching powder industry…
10. Even Richard Dawkins thinks Steve Rothery is God, only Noel Gallagher thinks Noel Gallagher is God.

I’ve got a rather contentious comment thread on a five-week old post that I need to keep a lid on lest anyone goes thermonuclear on me.  So for the time being I’ve turned on comment moderation across the site, so every comment will have to be approved by me.

One everyone concerned has had the chance to have their say I’ll close that post to further comments, and turn moderation back off.   In the meantime, thank you in advance for your co-operation.

Within the ancient stone walls of Ardryr House, the kandar overlord Zartheyn Tyr has summoned his chief of security.

“So, Valneth”, said Zartheyn, “It is six days since we last spoke. Please update me on the security situation”.

“The rebels attacked us again last night”, the knight replied.

“And?”, Zartheyn asked, “What damage this time?”.

“My militia gave a good account of themselves”, said Valneth.

“You have not answered my question”. Zartheyn tried to suppress his rising anger.

“They.. attacked the village at Gavius Hill”, the knight replied, “Set fire to the barns using flamelances. And some farm workers are missing. My men extinguished the fires, and saw the rebels off”.

“Flamelances again?”, said Zartheyn, “We’re not up against regular feral humans, are we? They sound like legion deserters to me. Or worse”.

Zartheyn let out an audible sigh. Valneth was his half-brother, after all, and ties of blood within the clan are supposed to run strong. He’d be in trouble with the elders if he dismissed him without good cause. But Valneth was so clearly not up to the job.

And the rebels did have to attack Gavuis Hill, of all places. It was almost as if they *knew*.

“It is probably fortunate that I have persuaded the legion to step up their border patrols”, Zartheyn continued, “I am expecting reinforcements to arrive tomorrow, and expect your full co-operation”.

“Will there be humans in the patrols they send”, asked the knight.

“They’re from Calbeyn, so that is to be expected”, Zartheyn responded, “And don’t look so disgusted. They tell me they’re sending veterans from the Zughru wars, so they’re men, kandar and human, who know how to fight. And I’m summoning their commanding officer her as soon as he arrives so that you and I can brief then on the situation. Understood? Good?”

“Yes, brother”, Valneth replied, as he turned to leave.

---

“So, what have we learned?”, Brogan asked his fellow across round the campfire, “Are the Academy of Life just growing bigger and better turnips, or is there something more sinister going on?”

“Perhaps the turnips are the sinister goings on?”, asked Qeelu, the solidly-built woman who acted as his second-in command. “Perhaps those rumours really are true”.

Brogan laughed. “What? Turnips that render humans infertile?”

“Don’t dismiss it out of hand”, Qeelu responded, “We don’t really understand the magic of the Academy of Life. Our reconnaissance did pick up a lot of Academy of Life comings and goings to and from the village”

“And the barns we torched were full of turnips”, added Grodd, a small wiry man who acted as the scout for the group. “We all know how the kandar fear the rate at which we breed”.

“You’re both expecting me to believe this nonsense”, snorted Brogan, “Turnips are cover; they have something nastier in the works”.

“Which we’re not going to find out about unless we raid their research complex at Guvil Bridge, Grodd replied, “Which is too well defended, and will bring the legion down on our heads if try a fool stunt like that”.

“And I’m no fool”, Brogan stated firmly, “Guvil Bridge is off-limits; but I know enough about the Academy of Life to know their black projects are never based at their publicly known facilities. There’s something going on at or near Gavuis Hill, that needs a stop putting to. And I intend to find out what it is”.

---

I could do with a few new players for Kalyr PBeM. As some regular readers will know, it’s set in my own science fantasy setting that owes a lot to the writings of Jack Vance, amongst others.At the moment it’s running on the mailing list at The Phoenyx, but may move to a web forum running on the same site in the future.Anyone interested leave a reply here, or contact me at tim (at) kalyr.com, and I’ll send you a up-to-date .pdf of the Fudge build I’m using, including the character generation rules and an overview of the setting.I’m looking for people who can write well, and are prepared to engage with the setting.

I’m still spending far too much time listening to last.fm, but I think I’ve discovered a flaw.

I’ve been listening to last.fm’s Radio ‘Spill, which initially came up with an eclectic mix of music, but subsequently degenerated into playing the same dozen or so artists over and over again. You can get very sick of Cornershop’s “Brimful of Ahsa” after a while.

I think I’ve realised what’s been happening; too many people were listening to the group radio station and were scrobbling at the same time; the result was that over time people’s last.fm libraries got homogenised. And a random selection of songs, some by quite obscure artists, that just happened to get played to a lot of different people in a short space of time went high up the group chart and thus got served up to everyone else. And so long as people kept scrobbling while listening to streaming radio, those songs got into more and more libraries and got served up more and more.

I think the solution is to scrobble only when I’m playing CDs, not when streaming.

Being from the Guardian’s Readers Recommend community, Radio ‘Spill seems to be heavily biased towards 60s r’n'b and scratchy 80s post-punk anyway, neither of which are really my kind of music. My attempts to educate the Guardian readers into the delights of Breathing Space, Panic Room and The Reasoning don’t seem to have borne much fruit.

As as for those bands that haven’t put any of their music on last.fm at all, thus missing out on a chance to get their music heard - Odin Dragonfly, I’m looking at you.

Just to annoy Steven Wells’ stoat-eyed acolytes, The Guardian Music Blog has a thread in which we are invited to nominate our favourite cult albums.

There’s some discussion in the resulting comment thread about the definition of a cult album, and one person stated that “cult” is just a synonym for “obscure”. But it isn’t. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

A lot of stuff is obscure for a very good reason; it’s rubbish. I don’t think many people are going to consider Sledgehammer’s one and only album as cult album. I may be wrong, and there’s still a dedicated band of Sledgehammer diehards in Slough, but somehow I doubt it.

Cult albums should those you love even though they’re not that well-known. Often they’re the records that push all your personal buttons; since we’re all different, they’re likely to sell in smaller quantities than the mass-market stuff aimed at the lowest common denominator.

I remember an article in Sounds years ago that commented (correctly) that the huge-selling albums are always the good ones, not the great ones.

So here’s the list I posted to the thread.  I would guess anything by any prog band that formed since punk forced the genre underground is ‘cult’ by definition, at least according to the mainstream; and all this list comes from that genre, or at least it’s penumbra.  As you would expect, the York/Swansea scene features prominently.

Twelfth Night - Fact and Fiction
IQ - Subterranea
Marillion - Brave, Afraid of Sunlight
Spock’s Beard - Beware of Darkness, Snow
Dream Theater - Metropolis II
Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun
Ordinary Psycho - The New Gothik LP
Mostly Autumn - The Last Bright Light
Karnataka - Delicate Flame of Desire
Pure Reason Revolution - The Dark Third
Odin Dragonfly - Offerings
Breathing Space - Coming Up for Air

The last two are probably too recent to qualify, since they only came out last year.

My grandmother, a keen gardener, used to describe slugs as “the Devil’s creatures”, after they’d eaten the seedlings she’d carfully planted yet again.

While I have no interest in gardening whatsoever, I’m beginning to wonder if she had a point. When I returned from holiday, the living room carpet was covered in slimy trails, when the wretched little things had been crawling all round the room in the two weeks I was away.

So I vacuumed the carpet. And the very next morning, there were a fresh set of trails.

There’s is no evidence of poltergeist activity, so I don’t believe it’s ectoplasm…

Because my CD player has been out of commission lately, I’ve been listening to music on my laptop instead - which means that I can sign up to Last.fm. You can download an application that keeps track of what CDs you play (it doesn’t upload or file-share them, so the Entertainment Cartel goons won’t be breaking down your door). It then compiles an internet radio station tailored to your tastes. I find a lot of my online and offline friends are on there too, including the likes of HippyDave, Tiggereh, DarceysDad and Graeme.

If you look at my profile, it tells you precisely what I’ve been listening to. It’s a mixture of what CDs I’ve been playing, and whatever the internet radio throws up. It’s unintentionally hilarious Portuguese Hammer Horror Metal from a band called “Moonspell” at the moment.

Just to annoy that idiotic Steven Wells, I’ve had yet another go at ye olde Seven Songs Meme.

Just list seven songs you’re really into at the moment.

Opeth - Burden
Opeth - Coil
Panic Room - Apocalypstick
Fish - Milos de Besos
Marillion - Neverland
Magenta - Blind Faith
Mostly Autumn - Second Hand

This one is really a list of the songs that have ended up being stuck in my head recently.  Yes I know there are two from the same album, Opeth’s magnificent prog-metal masterpiece “Watershed”.  The more I listen to this one, the better it gets.  May well end up as album of the year.

Anyone reading this, consider yourself tagged.