Neither
kantti or I knew quite what to expect from the Laibach premiere/exhibition last Friday. but we set off with an open mind and vague incredulity that such a thing could happen in sunny Birmingham when the rest of the world was an option. It was interesting enough though the art installation is quite small - it was an intriguing hour of industrial noise. By that I mean Neubauten-style "proper" noise, not "noize" that makes your ears bleed and I didn't even need my earplugs. In matters of art I tend to trust my nose - I tend to sneeze when exposed to pretentious artw*nk. Friday I did sneeze, but not a lot and I did have a cold. So the jury is still out. After the Laibach install there was a bit of drum'n'bass and appearances by
smittumi and philoko. The first act was four drummers and 2 bassists as far as I could see. The first 5 minutes were ok, but they actually seemed to play identical repeating cycles of the same "music" for about 45 minutes by which time I was bored enough. We hung around a bit to watch photographers try and make any sense of it, then gave up and went home to sneeze. Saturday night was Kryogenix in Nottingham which was ok, but a underattended and the sound was pretty terrible.
skinfitz did an admirable job attempting to wiggle some cables into co-operating (as far as I could tell) but with only limited success. Still, berrega seemed to have his chin up.Sunday was a lazy day, Chinese food and then as I settled down with my backlog - my PC crashed. I spent much of the week trying to recover from this which wasn't helped by the fact I've lost my XP Professional CD and my XP Home CD seems to have been crushed in its box and is now in a number of pieces.
The rest of the week has been some badminton, some mixed music at the Barfly on Wednesday and a functional if unexciting curry last night for
stelmaria_clg's birthday and I seem to have been persuaded by a charity call to start a direct debit to Sustrans. The Barfly extravaganza, Gym Class Heroes + Fleeing From Finales + The Mid-L-Men was, in order, "Not bad, but seen it done better", "Like a college band with a record deal" and "Oh dear. Even if you do sing about the Lickey Hills you are not black and cannot rap".Still, exposure to new things is important right? Photos soon no doubt.
Some final work to do then off to Maelstrom which may be interesting.
Oh, if anyone is interested - my ebay purchases turned up. But being worried about fraud I noticed that the serial numbers on both cards and both CD software registration details were identical so I phoned the manufacturer's technical support. They confirmed they are counterfeit goods - so now I get to explore the delights of the PayPal and ebay dispute resolution systems. More soon no doubt...
