Vorwärts!!

I don't want to bore you more to tears than you already are by these posts. I don't really have much to tell you about this past weekend, unless you want a blow by blow description of the Square Bashing game Ninjasaurus Rex and I had on Sunday, which I won by the way. I'm not going to describe the take away pizza I had on Saturday night (Spicy Pepperoni, by the way) nor the side of dipping chicken that I had. I will not talk about the way I waded through Saturday night entertainment provided by Harry Hill, Ant & Dec, Louis Theroux and Alan Yentob as I sat slumped, half cut from an afternoon drink with Ninjasaurus Rex. Neither will I give you a track by track review of the new Burzum album which I have listened to about six times every day since I got it. Well, eleven years is a long time to wait for something new from Mr Vikernes. So, as I am not going to do any of that, I am going to Navel gaze for a while. You may want to stop reading here, because it will be of no interest to anyone but me. Don't blame me for carrying on reading...

Last week, or the week before, I forget, I set up a Myspace page for my Great War Black Metal 'project' Abwehrschlacht. Basically, Abwehrschlacht was a return to where I began with music. Back to the Black, so to speak. The Black in question being Black Metal. It has been nearly twenty years since I recorded any form of Black Metal so this was coming full circle. Back in 1993 I was involved in the band Xaztur and my later solo project Immanis. During my time in both of these bands I was involved heavily in the underground Black Metal scene that was bubbling under the surface of music. This was the best time in my opinion for Black Metal: it was dark, underground, mysterious, dangerous, dynamic and very difficult to penetrate both musically and physically.


By the latter, I mean, to get hold of records one did not simply walk into your local branch of HMV or Tower Records like today and pick up the latest Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth album like the Pop Music they are. In fact this was actively discouraged. No, we had to write to the bands themselves or record labels and distributors in order to get hold of the recordings. Many were the hours I spent putting dollar bills into envelopes along with hand written letters in order to get the latest albums by Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor, Gorgoroth and the like. This was also the way the latest news about new releases was spread. I would write to a band to get a copy of their demo (on cassette tape) when it arrived they would send a handful of flyers, promoting their band and others, which I would send on in the next letters I wrote to friends or bands.


Why am I telling you this? To put you in the picture of how difficult it was to get hold of new music back in the day. There was no file sharing, no MP3s and no Myspace. With reference to my earlier bands, Immanis and Xaztur, I don't remember exactly how many demo tapes we sent out to people (Xaztur had one rehearsal tape and one full demo, Immanis put out two rehearsal tapes), but the final Immanis rehearsal tape was hand numbered and I think I sent out no more than thirty copies. The numbers would have been much higher for the previous releases as the last rehearsal tape for Immanis was when I decided to call it a day. Now, since setting up the Myspace page for Abwehrschalcht, it has had, to date, 555 profile views and the songs have been played 167 times. This is by no means a massive amount, but compared to 1993, it is astronomical. It is the equivalent to sending out over forty demo tapes within a week. But I still look back twenty years and feel we've lost something from the Black Metal scene. The sense of immediacy has destroyed the sense of achievement one felt when a new album came through the post.

Keep the fires burning...

Don't fence me in...

I had a day's work yesterday, it was through His Royal Highness Viscount McCoy. Together with his lordship I was working alongside Rear Admiral 'Action' Jackson. We were working in Stainforth, the arsehole of Doncaster which in itself is the arsehole of South Yorkshire. It's like the shit has no where else to drop except Stainforth. As an archaeologist I generally get to work in places that the rest of the world don't want to see and this site was no different. We arrived after battling the traffic to be greeted with a view not dissimilar to the latter stages of the Battle of Stalingrad:

Stainforth, a stain on the good name of South Yorkshire

At that point we had no site facilities, the boys had only been on site for the previous day and after inquiring about the welfare cabin I was directed to the site hut:

'Break time!'

Before getting down to work, Mike gave me a brief site tour or rather, a tour of what overlooked the site. It included the travelling circus storage lot, the dog track, the gypsy camp (whom we were warned about repeatedly through the day) and the two burned out houses in the distance. The site entrance was flanked by a betting shop and Bargain Booze. Who ever thought that perfect juxtaposition up has to be border line genius.

BYOB

I was on trench laying and fence erecting duty for the day but while we waited for the fence panels to arrive Richard began working the machine on the first trench. He was very mindful of missing the active sewer marked on the service map but it quickly became apparent that this would be no easy task of machining out a trench, cleaning it and recording it:

I need someone to get in to draw these sections...

As Rich contemplated the contaminated water pissing into the bottom of the trench, Mike and I set about laying out the rest of the trenches. We used the time honoured method of marking the trench ends with a house brick. This would lead to great confusion later for Rich as we were working on a site covered in house bricks. The fencing duly arrived and the guy driving the truck introduced himself to us as 'Mad Mick'. It quickly became apparent how he got his name when he demonstrated to us his patented way of getting the fence panels off the back of the truck:

'Mind your heads'

A proper site hut arrived and it was like nothing like I've ever seen on an archaeological site before. It has an electricity generator, a toilet and even heating! It was scoped at various times throughout the day by the passing gypsies, and far be it for me to cast dispersions on the Romany folk's impeccable nature, but I bet it won't be there when we return to the site... I then spent the rest of the day erecting fence panels and tightening bolts until we were finally finished an hour and a half late. Mind you, I still got to enjoy the local Flora and Fauna of Stainforth:

Rat au Van (a rat that's been run over by a van)

All in all a Cake and Arse Party of the highest degree...

I received my new Burzum Album today. Eleven years was far too long...

Double Your Money!

I went to sign on again on Wednesday. The Job Centre hasn't changed much since before Christ's Mess it's still full of the stinking scum of human effluence. This time, however, like me, they were all demanding to know where 'their fucking giro was'. I haven't been paid since before Christ's Mess, despite them having had three weeks to sort it out. I was told that the computer system they were using was from the old Civil Service and therefore had the computing capacity of a village idiot drunk on lumpy cider, moonshine and pond water. It had the digital equivalent of a straw hanging out of its mouth, hence the delay in sorting out my claim. I was told I would be paid on Monday, so I'm expecting a lump sum of the money I'm owed, plus the money I just signed for. Yes, come Monday, I'll be richer by £12.68p!! As I was signing I was also informed that I will have to attend a 'back to work session' in a week or so. I was informed it would affect my claim if I decided not to attend, I was informed of this just as I was about to open my mouth and say something like 'But I know how to get back to work, I have a degree after all, I'm not a fucking thick Rotherham Orc, who wouldn't be able to find his arse with both hands. I also keep my CV updated and I am in touch with potential employers, there is nothing they can possibly teach me, in fact I should be teaching them. So take your fucking course and shove it so far up your arse that it touches the back of your teeth.' Or words to that effect.

"Can I put 'eating man flesh' as a hobby on my CV?"

I've just returned from Sheffield where I had a lovely lunch with Lauren and in turn saw Angela, Linzi and Colin. Much archaeology gossip ensued. Which brings me to something completely unconnected. The British Archaeological Jobs Resource website sent me a message through Facefuck the other day, it read: Subject: BBC Radio want to know top 5 archaeologists songs: 'Just got onto Radio Scotland... they now want top 5 archaeologists songs for next weeks radio show.. go here to add your fave!' I looked at the lame ass list that the other archaeologists in the country were producing and it had the same old hackneyed shit that archaeologists always come out with, which they generally think are hil-fucking-arious: Christy Moore - 'Don't forget your shovel' being usually somewhere in the list as is the Mock Turtles 'Can You Dig it?'. By far the best and criminally overlooked Archaeological song, which sums up everything about archaeology and the people that practise it is Anal Cunt's 'Van Full Of Retards':



Speaking of music... the accusation keeps getting levelled at me that I 'only like music that no one's ever heard of''. This is simply not true, I do like music that is obscure and difficult to obtain, that much is true. For the early part of the nineties I was heavily involved in the underground Black Metal scene. It is not like it is now, with Myspace and Blogs offering downloadable music at a click. I had to write to bands themselves to hear their music, there was a system of exchanging and recording tapes for each other. I would write out by hand long lists of the music I had available for recording and search similar lists from others to find gems that I'd not got copies of. CDs and Records were virtually unheard of, record labels operated like cottage industries pushing out 500 copies of a split EP. This has coloured my taste in music to an extent that I still get the buzz of excitement when I finally track down that hand numbered limited edition LP of that Scottish Black Metal band released through an Italian Label. Whilst this is still true of me, I do like popular music. Just not all of it. My critics complain that if few people have heard of a band then that band must by definition be shit. By the same definition U2 must be one of the best bands on the planet. As must Coldplay. And they simply are not. But here, to prove my detractors wrong, is a list of bands/artists that are very popular and known to the mainstream and I like them: Abba, AC/DC, The Bee Gees, Black Sabbath, Boney M, Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Daft Punk, Deep Purple, Dr Dre, Elvis Presley, Ice Cube, Iron Maiden, Joy Division, Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, Manowar, Metallica, Misfits, Motorhead, Pink Floyd, Public Enemy, The Prodigy, Run DMC, DJ Shadow, Slayer, Snoop Doggy Dogg, The Stone Roses, Tom Waits... I could go on... But I won't. Instead I'll leave you with this little gem:

Laeknishendr

Not much has really occurred this week since Sunday. It's been a pretty run of the mill old week really. I spent most of it repairing the tent that was fucked in the storm the other week. This really consisted of slackening the straps and moving the poles around until they were in some semblance of an upright position, only to find the opposite one was still skewiff. Repeat the process ad nauseum. This took up all of the days until Wednesday when we finally got down to some hard-fucking-core trowel cleaning. I'm not going to continue with this incredibly tedious inspection of the minutiae of my working week, it is sending me to sleep just writing it, so Christ knows what it doing to you.

We have bee watching a few films this week, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was one of the highlights. I found it a little post modern, but the repeats of Peter Sellers' characters was enough to hold the film together.

OK, hold onto your seats for even more navel gazing. I was thinking this afternoon about music and the music I listen to. I have had my MP3 player on shuffle and a song from Avro Part's Triodion came on. If you don't know Arvo Part is an Estonian composer who works a lot with Choral music, I particularly recommend De Profundis if you like this sort of thing. I digress.

The song reminded me of the Norwegian band Ulver. Not through the music but because I remember reading a recent(ish) interview with Kristoffer Rygg from Ulver who stated that one of his favourite albums was the Arvo Part offering Fratres. It is strange because I had purchased that album scant weeks before I read that interview. A strange coincidence indeed. I had been listening to both Ulver and Part for a several years before knowing the influence one had on the other. This also happened a while ago, I was reading an article written by Varg Vikernes of Burzum, my favourite 'band' ever. Full stop. Varg wrote that after murdering Euronymous, Snorre Ruch and himself drove back to Bergen with Dead Can Dance (Probably my third favourite band ever. full stop.) playing in the car. As much as I know about Burzum (and I know a lot. Some would say an obsessive amount...) I had no idea Varg had even heard of DCD, never mind he was a fan. Another strange coincidence when two of my musical loves cross paths...

OK enough of this shit, it probably wasn't my strongest posting so far. If anybodies got any ideas what I can do this weekend, please let me know.