Band of the Week: Patricia Wake, Circus Contraption, Jill Tracy & assorted Minecraft wotsits

Oh my, Band of the Week? The joy.

Well, maybe not joy, but hey - Band of the Week is here again! It's now probably more like Band-of-the-whenever-the-hell-I-remember-to-post, but it'll do. Let's kick off with the glorious acoustic loveliness of Patricia Wake - a little dark, sometimes sad and some odd references to entropy... Inner geek is loving the entropy references.



Following that, the joyfully sinister madness of Circus Contraption. Let's call it dark carnival - very jazzy with big chunks of cabaret and an overall circus vibe as helpfully hinted in the name of the band. Check out their awesomeness HERE.

Next up, the ever wonderful Jill Tracy. She's just released a Christmas album. Yes, I know it's only October. Trust me, you need to listen to this. Christmas songs + Jill Tracy = hauntingly beautiful magic. Have a listen, you'll see.



Finally, some assorted Minecraft-related goodies. Minecraft is a game. It's awesome. Even more awesome - THIS:

 And THIS:

And finally, this:


Does that make up for the lack of posting? Probably not but check them out anyways and pass it on.

Band of the Week: Sleepbringer, Silver Loves Mercury and more!

Why hello thar, lovelies. Sorry Band of the Week's been a bit AWOL the last few weeks - blame revision and my parents' poor internet connection. To make up for it, let's have a nice big BotW feature, shall we?

Let's kick off with some doom metal in the form of Canadian band Sleepbringer. Check out the only music I've been able to find by them, Compendium:


Next up,Texas-based hard rockers Silver Loves Mercury. Wonderfully dirty, female fronted sleaze. Just a Facebook link for these guys - HERE. Well, there's some videos too, but they're not the best quality, so that'll have to do.

Then, because I finally got round to looking them up a few weeks back, let's have the delicious Alice In Chains. Grungy goodness. Streams of some tracks can be found on their site HERE. Let's also have a video. Here's Would? from the album Dirt.

Following on, Ivyrise - pop rock loveliness from the main support band on McFly's recent UK tour. Here's latest single Line Up The Stars from their self-titled debut album.

And finally, the most awesome With Knives, a new(ish) project from Josh Newton (of numerous bands, including Every Time I Die) and Joe Trohman (yes, that dude from Fall Out Boy). Stoner rock? Probably. Not an area I'm overly familiar with, but I've just seen a comparison (from a trusted dude) to QOTSA and Baroness. I'm going to take that as a good sign. Here's their just-released debut EP, Schadenfreude:


Will that do, or would we like more scrumminess? More?

One more. Not exactly a band, but this is from the guys at Hat Films who do gaming videos on YouTube. They make pretty much all of the music for their vids and this materialised out of a recent Minecraft video.

Hopefully Band of the Week should go back to being regular now I have a decent net connection again.

Randomness: My Immortal Mondays

I couldn't resist writing a little something about this. Anyone who's ever read fan-fiction has probably heard of the infamous "My Immortal" written by one Tara Gilesbie. For anyone who hasn't heard of it (lucky sods) it is widely regarded as possibly the worst fan-fiction ever written. It's (loosely) based on the Harry Potter series, but aside from using names and some places, there's basically no similarity between the two. Nothing is in canon with the original series and the spelling (or rather lack of it) is basically a massacre of the English language. Along with the regular descriptions of the main character's clothes, name dropping of "goffik" bands (including, bizarrely, Linkin Park, Good Charlotte and Simple Plan) and the author's notes which normally consist of "Stup flmaming teh srtoy, prepz", there is also that most heinous of crimes - blatant self-insertion of the author as the main character. Oh, yes, the dreaded Ebony/Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Way.

However atrocious the actual (lack of) plot, spelling and complete un-gothicness may be, My Immortal makes for a rather entertaining read. Took me a few attempts to get past the first chapter because I kept wanting to throttle the person behind such an appalling abuse of the English language. Give it a go - you'll see what I mean: http://myimmortalrehost.webs.com/. There are many lulz, including a cameo appearance by Marty McFly, swearing Dumbledore and possibly literature's worst (and most hilarious) sex scenes. Best line: "And then............ I fell asleep." You'll understand why that's so funny if you read it and find the context.

Moving on to the actual point of this post. If you don't think you can cope with reading this legendary bit of hilarity, I strongly suggest checking out the dramatic readings people have done. Or even the non-dramatic ones. This brings me to the awesomeness that is Aliento. I came across this guy by accident on youtube and dear god, I'm glad I did. Creator of My Immortal Mondays, in which he reads a few chapters of the story, complete with his own annotations, he's just amazing. Imagine how happy I was when a) I discovered there was a My Immortal drinking game and b) Aliento had played it and posted it. Awesomeness, although I wish he hadn't made himself ill doing it - silly thing. Chapter 12, the chapter used for it, is hilarious as it is. Add in Aliento and then make him drunk and it becomes awesome of epic proportions. Watch it, watch it now. And then check back every Monday for another installment. No drinking since Chapter 12, but it's hilarious nonetheless.

I think that's everything...