Memoirs of a Roadie

Sea Of Faces

Posted on 31st January 2020

So what is this monthly blog post idea I had. Well, over the years I've happened upon some wonderful music, and some amazing musicians and songwriters. Some have gone on to great things, others have left their mark, but not necessarily found their audience. It has always frustrates me that record labels turn their back on some of these great bands and artists, until they are a "success". Social Media has really helped over the last 10 years or so, but I thought it might be nice to highlight some really interesting bands and artists that I come across. Some might have been around for a while, some are fairly new, a few are either on hiatus or have split, but all are still worthy of spreading the word, as someone else may discover and enjoy it as much as I have.

So who is first up?

I very recently came across this band while looking through bandcamp. The band are Code Ascending, who have been performing since around 2015, releasing two EPs, and more recently an album. They are 3-piece hailing from Crawley, West Sussex, where a certain other band started as a 3-piece, and went on to major world wide success.

The first EP, What I Choose To Forget, was released in April 2016, and showcases a band that are slightly rough around the edges, which personally I love, but still have at their core a very focused sound and identity. The second EP, Pre-emption, released in March 2017, takes a step forward in the production, and brings more of the band's character to life. With their first album, Dark Taxa released in December 2019, comes a much more polished production with an audible step up in song-writing, and some wonderfully brooding soundscapes.

The band remind me to a degree, of some of the indepentdent bands I picked up on during the early to mid 90s. In particular, some elements of Prolapse, Thrum, and Ride are in there, but overall Code Ascending have brought ahard driving background to their songs, thanks largely to a great bass sound and some solid drum work, with some delightful riffs and solos weaving between them. The vocals fit the music perfectly, and in many ways are a subtle accompaniment to the music, rather than necessarily being the focal point. All this belies their ambient and showgazing tags, as there is so much more to them that this. Not quiet sure what tags I would include though, as they are the kind of band that touches on the fringes of several genres, without establishing themselves in any particular one.

I'm really hoping that they get to make it to the midlands for some gigs in the not too distant future, as I have no doubt they must be formidable live. In fact, I really hope they get interest from promoters to take them up and down the country, as I have no doubt that they could easily take their sound from small clubs to major arenas, given the chance. 

Favourite songs so far have been, Blink, Black Ink Ocean, and By My Side, but the rest are no slouches either. This band will be on my playlists for a long time to come.

For more information see their bandcamp pages: codeascending.bandcamp.com

Reanimator

Posted on 30th January 2020

So it's been a while since I posted, and there are several reasons for that. Mostly the fact I have been busy with real life, including family and work, and haven't had the time, inclination and/or ideas to put thoughts down in this blog. However, I'm going to try and change that this year, and start a series of blog posts with themes, that I can pick up in parts over the course of the year. The aim being to post at least once a month.

This month you'll get this post, which is mostly an apology, but I have another that I have planned as the beginning of a regular once a month post. 

As you can probably tell if you've read my blog posts, my main interests are music, gaming, Perl and exploring. I've done precious little of that last one over the past few years, but hopefully that will change. Perl is still my focus at work, but my OpenSource projects have largely taken a notable backseat. That is something that will be definitely changing this year, with maybe even the occasional blog post, as I want to update a lot of the code that has been sitting around on my old laptop, waiting to be released. 

I'll take an aside here, briefly, as back in 2015 I bought a new Linux laptop, but sadly I dropped it, and damaged the screen. At the same time, work gave me a brand new laptop, so the impetus to get the personal laptop sorted fell by the way side. And by the time I thought to get it fixed, it had just passed it's warranty. I couldn't use the work laptop for my OpenSource projects, so they got put off, with minor fixes here and there, by using my webserver as a dev box. It kind of works, but not ideal for how I was used to editing, commiting and deploying to test environments. So they have languished a bit. Ok a lot! 

However, Gaming and Music have both had somewhat of a resurgence in my interest these last few years. 

Music never really went away, but my gig attendance had dropped off during the earlier part of the decade. That kind of changed when a lot of the bands I hadn't seen in a long time, or had never seen, all happened to start touring. This year I have several already booked throughout the year, so expect the odd review now and then too.

My gaming exposure, aside from board games and mobile gaming, has seen a lot more of me watching and enjoying the current retro gaming community. Many of the games I've never heard of, and those I have, I haven't played since the 80s, so it's been wonderful to see that era of gaming, a time that saw me get more into programming, come to life again. I'll never be a streamer, but I'll quite happily watch the fun of someone else playing those games now. The retro gaming community that I've discovered, also happens to have some of the loveliest people around. It's the kind of gaming community I wish I had been a part of back in the 80s ... even though there wasn't really one like there is now.

With the lack of writing over the last few years, I've been out of practice with blog writing, so you'll have to forgive my rambling for a while. I might get there one day!

Any road up, expect some music posts, Perl posts and maybe other rambling, notes and rantings.