And what’s more it comes in poetic form!
Header image (cropped from original) showing the Rolling Stones on stage by Jim Pietryga, 2015, licensing. Continue reading
Author: N. P. Ryan
Handsome Devil
A.k.a. the vain atheist’s prayer.
With thanks to Максим Власенко for use of the header image (alt text; a man visible from the waist up, naked, painted red and wearing horns, he looks to the camera unamused). Continue reading
Hey, Teacher!
Contemplating the origin of teaching in abstract poetic form.
With thanks to Andrea Piacquadio for use of the header image (alt text; a teacher with an open book, looks to the class while pointing at a chalk board).
Girls Like Us: Bitter ‘Til The Bitter End; a review
Girls Like Us (GLU) released Bitter ‘Til The Bitter End the same weekend I caught the band live at the Chelsea Inn, Bristol.
It was a blistering set, part of another top night there (In With the Inn Crowd), during which I was about to turn to a mate and say, ‘killer bass line’ only for him to beat me to it with the exact same words.
The debut album certainly lives up to its name with lyrics plenty raw enough to suggest lived experience fuelling its theme of two-timing, dickhead boyfriends/blokes more often than not from entitled backgrounds. Continue reading
About Your Lovely Teenaged Kids
Influenced by numerous friends’ belief in angels, despite the no-longer-so-little cherubs also being their teenaged children.
With thanks to C Ottonbro Studio for use of the header image. Continue reading
MOOR: Viper Kingdom; a review
MOOR’s first full length album Viper Kingdom opens strong and solid with track one ‘Lepers Among Us’ and only goes the direction of strength to strength from there.
Track 2 ‘Viper Kingdom’ would be a massive crowd pleaser live for sure and is my pick of the album; coming in at 7.02—the longest track by almost two minutes—it puts all aspects of MOOR’s talents on display, be it a straight-up demonstration of black metal credentials or showcase the unique aspects Halfdan Svarti brings. Continue reading
Disgusting
I wrote this while celebrating 420 Day; maybe I should’ve left it there? Continue reading
Great Expectations; a modern take of little resemblance
The following is founded in truth. If it were not, there’d be no basis or reason for its potentially offensive nature. Many aspects, though, have been changed to protect the guilty. As for the guilty, well, it’s all a matter of perspective.
With thanks to Asad Photo Maldives for use of the header image. Continue reading
White Hills: Mitosis; an interpretation
Mitosis is an album that swings from completely submerging the listener within its own narrative realms to the rhythms synching the mind with any task at hand like an internal soundtrack of one’s own making so seamless it almost isn’t there because it feels like it always is.
The ability of Mitosis to detach the listener from itself while simultaneously never leaving their side is all the more incredible when knowing the meaning of the album’s name and song titles (something I didn’t on first listen).
To quote from the album’s bandcamp page:
‘MITOSIS (/mai’toUsis/) is a part of a cell cycle in white replicated chromosomes are separated into two nuclei. Cell division by mitosis gives rise to genetically identical cells in which the total number of chromosomes are maintained.’
In With The Inn Crowd
One thing I never expected to hear at a punk gig: a shout-out for ex-footballer Gary Lineker, and more so one well received. Such is the embarrassment of messes the BBC has made in dealing with Lineker’s Tweet of disgust for insidious government policy and terminology, the player I once jeered from the terraces when watching play against Chelsea—I still remember one glorious miss vividly—has become a hero of our times.
Coming from openers Volatile Idea (missing from flyer below), it was not only warning to the fascist elite that their days are numbered—for they definitely are when ex-footballers used to a lavish lifestyle (ish; there wasn’t the same money in football back in the 80s/90s) see eye-to-eye with those that same elite would consider society’s most ‘radical’—but also the first memorable moment from a night full of them.
N. P. Ryan 