Mute City

I was in London the weekend before last to catch a show by the awesome Dysrhythmia who were over on a European tour. My flight over was in the afternoon, so I had plenty of time to get to the airport. I checked in and got through security very quickly, the place was empty. After looking around the duty free section, it was time to board the flight. My seat was next to a friendly old lady. She was English, but had moved over to Canada a few years ago for retirement. We struck up a conversation which was going fine until she started giving out about immigrants, despite being an immigrant herself. Luckily it was a short flight. As the plane came in over London, we flew over the Olympic building site. It looked very impressive from the air. The plane hit some serious turbulence coming in to Heathrow though, I thought I was going to be sick. I managed to get though the airport and onto a train and headed out to my hotel to check in. My room was small, but clean. Unlike the last time I was in London, the door also locked properly. The gig wasn't starting for a few hours, so I had time to head into town and have a look around. Loads of shops had closed in the last year, it was very strange. I suppose it's not very surprising, though.

The gig was in a venue called the Luminaire, in Kilburn. I had never been there before, so I left in plenty of time to make sure I wouldn't miss anything. I needn't have worried, I got there half an hour before the doors even opened. Still, better safe than sorry. I ended up being the first person in the venue, feeling pretty self-conscious. The Luminaire is a really amazing venue; signs on the walls tell people to be quiet when bands are playing, and you really get the impression that everyone who works there is into the music. There were amazing tunes being played over the PA as well, stuff that I'd never heard before. The first support band were Rocketnumbernine... Kinda improv electronic stuff. Really interesting, definitely the last thing I would have expected to see at a metal gig. The second band were called Nitkowski, and they were mostly instrumental hardcore kinda stuff. Really awesome tunes. Dysrhythmia came on at around ten o'clock or so, and were absolutely mind-blowing. There are thousands of bands doing the whole weird odd-metre thing at the moment, but Dysrhythmia have a sense of melody and interaction that none of them have. My jaw was absolutely on the floor from the first note to the last. I headed back to my room absolutely exhausted. I only realised how noisy the room was when I got into bed. People were shouting and screaming outside my window, and police sirens seemed to race past every few minutes. It was Saturday night, after all. I managed to get to sleep, only to be woken suddenly by the sound of someone screaming "STOP! HANDS UP!" It must have been a novelty car horn or something. I eventually got back to sleep, only to wake up after biting my tongue. The noise from outside must have been disturbing me in my sleep. It was really painful, and I was totally disorientated. I think it's safe to say that I didn't get a good night's rest.

I left the hotel early on Sunday morning and went to get some breakfast at this organic supermarket in Soho. I wandered around for a while looking for a nice pair of shoes before meeting my friend Catriona and going for a wander around north London. It was a really nice day for a stroll. We headed up to Hampstead Heath and Highgate, before heading back down towards Camden Town.

Camden's not as nice as it used to be. Either way, we went down to the markets to see what they had - the only two things that really stood out for me were seeing a woman in a pair of shockingly revealing hot pants, and seeing an old dude with about a hundred piercings all over his head, including the back of his scalp. Talk about being impractical. After that, it was time for me to brave the Tube back to the airport. I was looking forward to getting back to my quiet bedroom.

The Electric Penguins had a gig booked in the Odessa for last Friday night, so rehearsals started on the Monday, the morning after I got back from London. We were jamming in the studio at Blackpitts, where bodies were buried after epidemics of the bubonic plague in Dublin. The weather was stunning all week, so it was a pleasure to head out early and walk through town in the sun to work on the set. By the time of the gig, things were pretty well drilled. It was my first show playing synth bass, which was a lot of fun. Soundcheck was a bit worrying on the night - with all the equipment the band have, we ran out of channels on the venue's mixing desk. This meant that I had to manually switch cables between my bass and my synth between tunes, which was a headache. I couldn't hear much of what I was playing either. Miraculously, the sound cleared up for me when the show started. It turned out to be a lot of fun, definitely the best gig we've played together so far. The only downer on the night was that a non-alcoholic beer cost six euro at the bar.