Monday, 15 July 2019

Techfest Part Three

Hi, here we go again...

Let's see if I can finish this with Part Three then, eh?

TECHFEST 2019 Part Three

And so Sunday arrived...

I arrived at the Showground for around five o'clock, and I was just busy chatting with people that I'd made friends with over the weekend, but I could hear the band Harbinger playing in the background, on the Fireball Stage.

There is a thing with me, that I am sure that a lot of people who know me have noticed.

Even though I am a shy person in a lot of ways, I'm also a bit of an oxymoron in that I can be very chatty with people, and have an interest in people, and also don't like to be rude.

Because of that, I missed seeing the band Harbinger up on the stage.  To me though, chatting with people, and getting to know them is all a part of the experience!

Anyway, I went in to see the band From Sorrow To Serenity on the Line 6 Stage, a fabulous heavy metal band from Glasgow.

I can't name the songs that they played in their set, but they did play a blinder of a set, with footage of these and others from the weekend being on my instagram feed.

After watching From Sorrow To Serenity, I went through to the Fireball Stage to see the band Valis Ablaze, another great progressive metal band on the Long Branch Records.  This UK band played a set that was more on the melodic side of progressive metal, and some great melodies they were too!

After seeing Valis Ablaze, I suddenly noticed that the battery bar on my iPhone 6s was in red, and below 20%, so I went back to my car to charge the phone, and also had a play on the travel guitar that's always in the boot of my car!

It was irritating because I basically missed the entire set by the band Vildhjarta on the Line 6 stage while charging the phone up.  I could just about hear them from the car park, but it really did irritate me.

However, I chose to charge the phone, because I really wanted to catch the main band finishing the whole thing off, because Leprous are one of my favourite bands!

After charging the phone up, I made my way back towards the Line 6 stage, grabbing another coffee from the Beyond Coffee stall.

I decided that in the future I will purposely take my old iPhone 5s with me, because then I could use that to take photos and video footage, and then just use my present iPhone 6s to do that if the 5s runs out of power!

So many people made their way to the Line 6 stage to see Leprous, and they didn't disappoint.

I know that I took a lot of video footage, but that certainly didn't stop me from enjoying their set.  So much so, that even I got moving around and singing along with them.  Getting me to move was different, because normally I am very self-conscious about these things, and I'm not really someone that head bangs or anything like that.

I wish that I had taken note of their set list to be honest, but I was just enjoying myself too much!

I feel like I'm giving the Sunday experience a bit of short shrift, but it's now about three weeks later, and the 48 year old me had never had the greatest memory in the world, hence why I video myself playing music, so that if I want to use those ideas again, then I've got the footage to remind me!

I do know that seeing Leprous makes me really look forward to their new album being released later this year.

The band featuring Einar Solberg on vocal and keyboards, Tor Oddmund Suhrke and Robin Ognedal on guitars, Simen Borven on bass, and the great Baard Kolstad on drums, were on great form, playing an absolutely epic set, and interacting with the audience wonderfully.

I wore my Rendezvous Point t-shirt to watch them, another band that feature Baard on drums.

I wish that I could remember more, and probably would have if I had finished writing this sooner.

Security and the stalls on the site were all exceptional, with the security organised by a group named Design Events if I remember correctly, who used security staff from a variety of different security companies apparently.

Other staff on site were working for the Newark Showground directly, who were working voluntarily with free entry to the event during their off time.

Before leaving after that last night, I chatted with the workers at the entry/exit , as well as a nice guy named Josh, who liked the more metal bands on the line-up, as opposed to my more preferred progressive tendencies.

The lighting and sound staff for the whole even were amazing!

I had such a great time, and am really looking forward to going again next year!  I'm looking forward to seeing the acts who will be playing next year, and with hopefully catching up with people that I made friends with while I was there this year.

I'd like to thank everyone involved in setting up the event, the staff of the Newark Showground, the roadies and band staff, the performers themselves, the great security staff, the stall holders, and everyone else.

Thank you for reading, please take care.

July 24th 2019 (48 years, 7 months, and 26 days old - less than eighteen months before the new blog, Marv's Continuing Ramblings years 50-59, takes over from this).

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

Techfest 2019 - Part 2

Hi, I hope that you're okay.

Thank you for coming back to this blog! :-)

Techfest 2019 Part Two

On the Saturday I turned up earlier than I had for the Friday, but not for the whole thing...

As I arrived, I had made the faux pas of cutting my weekend wristband off when I went home, because I thought that it might irritate in bed.
Me, with Florian, Manuel, and Bruce from Long Branch Records.

Thankfully the staff on the entrance were understanding and let me in, giving me a new wristband, but telling me that it had to stay on for the duration of the whole festival!  Lesson learnt...  I didn't know this, as this was my first actual multi-day festival experience!  I'm guessing that I'll need to remember that for future convention attendance, when they're for more than one day?

The campers
So, I got through the entrance, and started to make my way over to the performance area, which is basically a large three sectioned unit, with a waiting/marketing area in the middle, and then two performance areas in the sections either side, known as the main Line 6 stage to the left, and the Fireball stage to the right.

I first of all took some photographs (in the daylight) of the site.  I was surprised how something so big wasn't in danger of being overcrowded with campers!  To me it's huge, because I see bands that they've had over the years as huge - Leprous this year, The Contortionist and Sikth last year, and previous years they've had Between The Buried And Me, Persefone, Animals As Leaders, Haken...

I'd love to see those last four mentioned (I saw The Contortionist and Sikth of course).  I regret that I hadn't known about the event in the years previous.

Me with Neil and Joel from Dividium
I went to see the band Time, The Valuator on the Fireball stage straight away, who were already on stage.  A progressive metal band, with an emphasis on the more death metal side of things, with the fabulous Rafael Andronic on lead vocal.

There's something about Progressive Metal that really pulls me in...  I very often describe myself as a musical sponge, whereby I am open to soaking up all the music that I can, and then if I like it, I like it, if not, then move on and find something else.

In the Progressive Metal genre, there is a mix of the classic metal elements, mixed up with varying moods in their songs, going through soft, hard, and in some cases classical aspects, and even dance in some cases, where they might use electronic percussion sounds and feels.

Time The Valuator to me are like a progressive version of the classic pub rock band, with a great bit of swagger thrown in there for good measure, but at the same time they're shifting feels that are absolutely effortless.

TTNG on stage at Techfest 2019
After they finished their set, the Line 6 stage was letting people in to get ready for the Progressive Pop band TTNG, who are from Oxford..

TTNG Guitarist Tim Collis
Most of their set seemed to be filled with songs from their 2008 album Animals, where the songs were named after animals - I remember Chinchilla, Baboon, Lemur, Badger, and Gibbon all being on the setlist, alongside songs from their recent album Disappointment Island, and others (Disappointment Island was their fourth album apparently).

TTNG Lead Singer Stuart Smith
This was another one of the acts that I was really looking forward to actually.  I really like the way that somehow they have merged the classic sound of indie pop with progressive styling, somehow transitioning through sections that are different, and with a guitarist in Tim Collis that has some great tricks up his sleeve, which belie their surprising difficulty (tapping, sweep-picking, alternate tunings, etc), and his brother Simon was providing a great backing on drums, with the bass duties by Henry Tremain, giving the whole thing a wonderful rhythmic backing, with some great slabs of syncopation thrown in to make you go "Huh, where did that come from?"

TTNG Bassist Henry Tremain
I didn't feel let down by their set at all, and am really glad that I caught them!

After this I went into the marketing area, and chatted with the guys at the stand for Long Branch Records again.  I chatted with them a little bit on Friday, but today I chatted more with them.  They have a great wealth of acts on their roster, and they really have gone out of their way to support and plug their acts on the bill at the festival.

Florian, Manuel, and Bruce from Long Branch Records had actually driven all the way over from Germany in one go basically, and were doing the same back.

They love the festival, and said that they were looking forward to a new festival starting later in the year down in the south of England, that is named the Radar Festival.

For now though, they were backing their artists who were at this festival, who included Time The Valuator, Valis Ablaze, and From Sorrow To Serenity.

Sam from local firm
Beyond Coffee
Lovely guys.  I can't wait to see them there again next year! :-)

From there I went outside and got a flat white coffee from local company Beyond Coffee, who basically make and sell fresh coffee from one of those coffee machine things that you find in a coffee shop, but in the back of a van in this case.

The owner who served me was named Sam!

The next band I saw were Psycroptic, a "death technical metal band from Australia", and boy does that description match them!  Really low tuning on the instruments, with some cracking riffage on display, and it was the first that I had actually heard anything from them if I am being honest!

I'd been told that they were a must-see band, and sure enough they weren't disappointing in any way at all.

They were on the Line 6 stage, and when they finished all of the audience left to go for refreshments and such, while the techfest crew cleared the stage of the Psycroptic set-up, to make way for the next band.

Before I forget, I chatted with the guys from the band Dividium on Friday night, and with Rafael from Time The Valuator on Saturday night.

All great guys.  It was funny in a way with the guys from Dividium, because it was like chatting with friends, and I'm happy to say that they are now "friends" on Facebook.  I spoke and got a photo with Neil (vocal) and Joel (bass) from the band, as well as chatting with guitarist Peter Delaney.

Raf from Time The Valuator is a nice guy, but still obviously overwhelmed by the whole experience.  Lost for words, and in the moment.

He had been discovered online apparently.  Their previous singer had left the band, and they were looking for a new lead singer.  Someone suggested checking out and auditioning Raf, who put videos onto youtube of his singing, and sure enough they took him on, and a couple of weeks after taking him on, he was singing with them at a festival in Europe!

Anyway, the next band (and final band of the night) were Monuments, a progressive metal band, whose album Phronesis was one of my favourite albums of last year (2018).  A perfect album from start to finish, and I was so pleased that a fair bit of their set was made up of songs from that album, along with a nice swathe of material from their other three albums.

The extremes in their music were incredible, with absolute all out loud rocking and some lovely softer bits, and all of the in between.  I could hear some influence in their music from bands like Sikth, in that there are a lot of djent elements in there.  Some lovely palm-muting on the guitar, tapping on the bass and guitar, and I'm still amazed that I saw these guys, and how incredible they were!

All in all, another incredible day at this amazing festival!  WOW!!!

Day over, next day in part three then!

Thanks for reading again.  Take care...

I'd better get on with part three soon, and close it all up!

July 15th 2019 (48 years, 7 months, and 19 days old)

Monday, 8 July 2019

Techfest 2019

TECHFEST 2019 BLOG - Part 1




Hi, I hope you're okay.

As I've said a lot recently, I'm obviously a very lazy festival goer!

From July the 4th until July 7th 2019 (this past weekend), there was the event known as Techfest taking place at the Newark Showground, which is probably about a five or so minute drive for me.

Last year I went on the Friday night, because somehow I got the Friday off that week (but not the whole weekend), and went there to check it out, particularly for the bands The Contortionist and Sikth.  Those are performances that I thoroughly loved!  I especially enjoyed Sikth, and felt a bit weird really, because I found myself transfixed by the almost effortless bass playing of James Leach.  Afterwards I upped my game on bass playing, especially with trying to get more tapping technique practice!

So, I enjoyed that experience so much, that I thought to myself "you need to have fun"!

This year then I booked time off work, which included time for the festival.  Unfortunately, I couldn't pay until on the second day of the festival, which irritated the hell out of me!  I really would have loved to have caught the sets on Thursday night by Jon Gomm and Polaris, and I like what I've heard from The Mechanist!  Next year I will make sure that I have paid up front, and I will check out the Thursday as well!

As it is though, my festival going started on the Friday, and by that I mean my first full-on festival, albeit lazily, as I mentioned earlier.

Let me be honest here...  So, where I live is only a very quick drive from the venue.  This means that I don't see the point in camping there, although it would have meant that I'd have caught more of the bands et al, but I like creature comforts.  I'm not one for camping really.  In a tent with creepy crawlies all over the place, standing in a portacabin toilet set-up with a lot of other people washing and doing their teeth in a queue, and at the beginning of a songwriting challenge, which means that I have to be writing and recording songs at home, and I can't really do that with a single instrument in a tent, with noise all around bleeding through to the recordings.

That's really an excuse I suppose, but then I don't really have the time during my 62 hour working week of night shifts to knuckle down and seriously write.  If I'm working those hours, and then take a couple of hours a day to write and record songs, then that will leave no time to spend with the love of my life, Louise.

That's also a reason why I only really saw the evening acts at the festival, because Louise spends so many nights alone at home when I'm at work, that to do the whole festival would have been worse for her.

Before you ask, loud metal based music is not her thing in any way, unless you include Europe, Heart, and other soft metal acts.

So, on the Friday I got to the festival for the deathcore band Black Tongue (I don't think that I got footage or photographs of them, I'm sorry), who were on at around 8pm.  Dark riffs, deep vocals, and a whole slew of killer metallic goodness.  I find that this type of music is incredibly rewarding and actually therapeutic.  It calms me so much - that raw heavy energy absolutely gets rid of my feelings of tension and anger, even though I'm not really one to get carried away with music too much - I don't really headbang (it hurts), but I thoroughly love the music!

Dying Fetus at Techfest, photo by me.


Actually, many years ago, I used to follow a great band named Psylence, who are no longer together.  I knew that they were going to play a gig at The Town Mill in Mansfield, where I lived at the time, and I suggested to Craig & Lee from the band that I could join them on stage to sing along to the chorus for their song Take On One And All.

As the gig approached I thought "Marv, what the hell have you got yourself into?"  When the band got on stage, I was already chatting with my friends "Stoff" & Luke (Hymas).  I said to "Stoff" and Luke, "do you fancy joining me on stage to add vocals to their song?"  "Hell yes," they both said!

The song came up, I got called up, so Stoff & Luke joined me.  The guys in Psylence were so happy about it!

We did the vocals, and I was the only one not getting carried away with the music, sweat going all over the place...  It was like a band video, but with real sweat as opposed to someone spraying water on you to make it look like you really going for it!  I know, I spoiled the magic there, but that's how it is!

Dying Fetus live at Techfest 2019, photographed by me


I was so happy when the song was over.  I love the guys still, but I didn't half feel self-conscious!

Anyway, back to the festival!




John Gallagher, vocal and guitar
for Dying Fetus. Techfest 2019
photographed by me
Blimey this is already a bloody long blog post! :-)

After the band Black Tongue finished there was obviously a little bit of time before Friday's headliners took to the stage.

Dying Fetus are a Death Metal trio from the US.  Featuring original vocalist/guitarist John Gallagher alongside vocalist/bassist Sean Beasley, and drummer Trey Williams, their set was absolutely on fire from start to finish, consisting of material right the way through their career, from their 'EP and demo beginnings in 1991, right up to material they're working on for a forthcoming project.



Sean Beasley, vocal and bass
for Dying Fetus. Techfest 2019
(rubbishly) photographed by me
This is where I think that artists with a large catalogue fit perfectly in a festival situation!  A festival is a fairly generic thing to my way of thinking, whereby you have people that have come for the experience of the whole event, obviously they usually have specific acts that they're looking forward to, but your band most likely won't be everyone's main choice.

With that in mind, a band with a longer career and larger body of work can cherry-pick from a whole wealth of material, and create an absolutely stonking set that will blow everyone's minds.

Dying Fetus at Techfest 2019, photographed by me


This is exactly what Dying Fetus did.  They had a great rapport with the audience, chatting between songs with each other and the audience, seemingly in their element, and absolutely loving the event.  Every band that I saw over the weekend seemed to be enjoying the festival so much!  The guys in Dying Fetus were constantly introducing songs from different releases (they even mentioned playing a song from an early 'EP), with all of the songs "taking no prisoners" with an absolute onslaught of cuttingly dirty riffs, deep vocals, and proving that a trio can sound so big!  The sound coming from that trio was absolutely HUGE!

A fantastic first night to the festival for me, and second night for a lot of others!

I'll leave this here for now, and carry on in part two, which is coming soon!

Thanks for reading.