Terminates Here v3

This DJ set was something of a curveball. I might have DJed for Die Kur several times before, but the other bands weren’t only new to me, but quite some distance stylistically from my ‘usual style’. But this was just an opportunity to dig out some tunes that I don’t normally get to play.

BTW, for those of you not familiar with rock history, London SS is just a provocative name in the spirit of old-school punk, there’s no political connection at all.

Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil
Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath
Led Zeppelin – Black Dog
The Beatles – Helter Skelter
Lou Reed – Vicious
Iggy Pop – Lust For Life
Ian Dury – Spasticus Autisticus
Davie Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
The Damned – New Rose
The Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant
Buzzcocks – Orgasm Addict
Killing Joke – Wardance

<London SS>

3 Colours Red – Pure
Metallica – Fuel
The Cult – Rain
Sisters Of Mercy – Vision Thing
Star Industry – Lost Generation
Fields Of The Nephilim – Preacher Man

<Drilling Spree>

Soulfly – Back To The Primitive
Fear Factory – Demanufacture
Samael – Jupiterian Vibe
Dimmu Borgir – Dreamside Dominion

<Themira>

Faith No More – Epic
Tool -Stinkfist
NIN – We’re In This Together
Rammstein – Mein Herz Brennt

<Die Kur>

The Smashing Pumpkins – Tonight, Tonight
The Pixies – Monkey Gone To Heaven
The Clash – I Fought The Law
New Model Army – Vengeance
Magazine – Shot By Both Sides

My first ever set in the Elektrowerkz venue, DJing between 4 different bands, including the first headline show for Dreams Divide and a return to stage after many years of Global Noise Attack.  Add some unexpected requests from the bands and it ended up as quite a varied setlist.

Silber – Flieg
Staubkind – Dein Engel Schweight
Sulpher – One Of Us
Die Kur – New Era
Fear Factory – Powershifter

<Ghost In The Static>

Machine Rox – Deliver Me
Tactical Sekt – Xfixiation ([:SITD:] Remix)
Soman – Eye To Eye
Panzer AG – Filth God

<Null White>

Excessive Force – Conquer Your House II
Razed In Black – Master
Depeche Mode – Wrong (B)
Bauhaus – Lagartija Nick (B)
NIN – Dead Souls

<Global Noise Attack>

Mortiis – Parasite God (B)
Solitary Experiments – Still Alive (B)
Bruderschaft – Forever

<Dreams Divide>

2010 was an eventful year, for sure. But nothing stops when a calendar gets chucked. And sure enough, 2011 was almost as busy. Gig-wise, the key feature of this year was the increased merging of my DJing with my gigging. Four times I played the role of support DJ at live music events, and hence some of these memories reflect as much my own role in the event as my ‘man in the crowd’ observed role.

One other fact – it was the third consecutive year where I attended no overseas festivals or gigs. This isn’t something I’ve given up on, it’s just I’ve had other demands on the money of late. InFest, the low-budget indoor festival in Bradford, was still an option, however.

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2009 might have offered a single memorable concert, but it was somewhat indicative of my life that year.  Not bad, constructive in parts, but just lacking a certain ‘magic’.  2010 wasn’t like that.  I’d put it on record as the most eventful year of my life.  On a personal front, it saw the start of a new job, a house move, two relationships started and ended and a real growth in my DJing exploits.

Still plenty of time for live music though…..

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In case you’re wondering what happened to all those CD reviews I used to write, I’m still writing them.  However, realising that there’s no way I can cover everything myself, I’ve now joined the team over at Brutal Resonance.  I’ll be covering electro-industrial, EBM, synthpop, darkwave and related styles – so mainly all the things I used to write about anyway.  Here’s some of my early submissions:

• Mindless Faith – Just Defy
• Fleisch & Waffeln – Meat EP
• Conzoom Records Discover Compilation
• L’ame Immortelle – Momente

You can keep track of my reviewing efforts on my profile.  This doesn’t mean the end for Terminates Here, of course.  All my setlists will be here, as will all my other articles, Top xx Lists, reminisces and other free-form scribblings, plus of course the EOL-Audio Archive, which has the bulk of my reviewing output from times past.

Time to return to the Camden Underworld for the latest Sychrotrax all-dayer, Dark 7, headlined by Deviant UK.  Opening band K-Nitrate had to pull out, with Paresis arriving at short notice to open up.  Today’s sets featured a number of bands that had played at previous Sychrotrax events, as well as a few requests later in the day.

Mentallo + The Fixer – Sacrilege (Angel Of Death Mix)
Placebo Effect – Slashed Open
yelworC – Soulhunter
Dance Or Die – 432
The Klinik – Moving Hands
Vomito Negro – No Hope No Fear
Klutæ – Circus Of Death

<Paresis>

Leech Woman – Tool
God Lives Underwater – No More Love
Hanzel Und Gretyl – Fukken Uber Death Party
The Galan Pixs – Pearl Necklace

<Ghost In The Static>

Aesthetic Perfection – Inhuman
Shiv-R – Pharmaceutical Grade
SAM – Hallucinogen

<Cease2Xist>

And One – Wasted (B)
Tenek – Blinded By You
Method Cell – Push
Assemblage 23 – Let Me Be Your Armour (B)
Ashbury Heights – Anti-Ordinary

<Analog Angel>

Heimatærde – Deus Lo Vult (R)
V2A – Electro-Whore

<Machine Rox>

Fixmer-McCarthy – Free Fall
Pow[d]er Pussy – Yourmove
Straftanz – Die Neue F-Klasse (Ein Panzerleid)

<Kommand + Kontrol>

Dreams Divide – Faces
Project Pitchfork – Drone State (B)
John Foxx – Underpass (R)
Gary Numan – I Die:You Die (B)
Skinny Puppy – Assimilate (R)
:Wumpscut: – Black Death (French Texture)

<Deviant UK>

Laibach – WAT

My first chance to play at Neo-Noir with DJs Miss Bleep and Wozza.  I think I’d refer to this as the nearest I get to an ‘everything set’.  In the spirit of the club, there were quite a few requests .  (R) indicates a song request, (B) indicates a band request.

Set 1 – 11pm-Midnight

The last two songs in this set reflected the date, 24/2.  It’s EBM day!

Suicide Commando – See You In Hell (R)
:Wumpscut: – Soylent Green (R)
Hocico – Poltergeist (B)
Frontline Assembly – Plasticity
Project Pitchfork – Timekiller (R)
Calva Y Nada – Rascheln
Cephalgy – Engel Sterben Nie
Diary Of Dreams – The Plague
Star Industry – The Look (Roxette Cover)
Duran Duran – Save A Prayer
Fischerspooner – Emerge (R)
Depeche Mode – Photographic (Some Bizzare Version) (B)
DAF – Der Mussolini (R)
Front 242 – Tragedy >For You<
Auto Da Feh – Divided We Fall

Set 2 – 1am-2am

Chemlab – Exile On Mainline
Birmingham 6 – Birmingham 6
Nine Inch Nails – Sin (Short)
Sheep On Drugs – 15 Minutes Of Fame
System:FX – Overdrive (Rmx) (R)
Prodigy – Omen
Apollo 440 – Krupa
Bomb The Bass – Megablast
Nitzer Ebb – Let Your Body Learn
Militant Cheerleaders On The Move – Freaks
Spahn Ranch – Heretics Fork (Belief mix) (R)
Editors – Papillon (Tiësto Remix Edit) (R)
IAMX – Think Of England
VNV Nation – Nova (B)

2008 had ended not with a massive gig, but with my return to the DJ booth (successful) and an attempt at forming a band of my own (not successful).  I didn’t know it at the time, but 2009 would see me attend no festivals whatsoever.  Plans for WGT were abandoned in March due to having other uses for the money (the £-€ rate was really bad back then), M’era Luna was never really on and InFest (the most likely candidate at one point) had a year off.

And hence it was not a good year for discovering new bands on stage – though plenty were discovered on CD and online.  Virtually all the gigs I went to this year were for long-established bands, and very few of the sets I saw comprised of much new material – I’d say only Diary Of Dreams, Prodigy and VNV Nation were actively pushing new albums when I saw them (all good ones, to be fair).  Other live acts, as varied as Jean Michel Jarre, Ultravox, DAF, Yes and Orbital, were all content with dishing up crowd-pleasing ‘greatest hits’ sets.  Even the best support acts of the year turned out to be bands like Deviant UK and System:FX, who’d already won me over in previous years.

So while I could spin a tale about dancing in the aisle of the Wembley Arena with a middle-aged raver, or suddenly being reminded that Midge Ure is in fact Scottish, or a two-hour long DoD set, there is really only one vignette, one gig from 2009 that remains imprinted on my memory.  Just One.

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2007 was over, having provided few gigs of note in it’s latter half.  2008 soon made up for it – on the first weekend, I saw ELR for the last time, and System:FX for the first time.  The ELR story is already told in previous parts, whilst the definitive S:FX story comes in a later chapter.

Die Krupps came and went in style a month later, and the live show following my favourite album of 2007 (Star Industry – Last Crusades) arrived over the Easter weekend.   But looking back, these two events were just very good shows without any real significance outside of the quality of the music.

No, the three tales I have for you now all reflect different aspects of my live music experiences.  They are not all positive, but they all have to be told.

Read The Rest… »

2006 was over and I was glad to see the back of it.  Despite much effort and  many enjoyable occurrences on the way, my life had gone nowhere and by the end of the year began to feel very stagnant, finding myself unable to change any aspect of my life, for better or for worse.

But what of 2007, the year which either delivered everything I wanted or led me to give up even trying, at least for a year or so.  No more EOL-Audio.  No more big house at the end of the Picadilly line.  And no more being single.  Everything changed this year.  I didn’t exactly take a break from the scene that year, but I was never any less involved that I was in 2007.  Naturally, things all changed again in 2008 such that I’d pick things up again and also restart much-missed activities such as DJing again, but that’s a story for a later part.  I did still go to SOME gigs this year, and here’s the story of the best ones.

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