Jonathan "Tempest" Phillips

      For those of you reading this who don’t know what infest is, it is a music festival held at my old university. But it’s not just any music festival. It’s an alternative electronic music festival. What that translates into is a lot of bands that the average person has never heard of but gods among the right group of people. Think of such types of music as EBM, IDM, Dark wave, Electronica and Synthpop. This years line up includes such bands as VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk, Dope Stars INC, Painbastard, Caustic, Gothsicles and a whole load more that I can’t remember.

      Let me set the scene for you. This is my second year coming to infest. So I was prepared for the large quantity of buckles, bondage and neon clothing that consisted of the crowd’s attire. Everywhere you looked was either the blackest black or the brightest neon colours. Gasmasks and goggles were mixed with dreads and Boots. This was very much a cyber fashion location. The three people I went with, my girlfriend, friend and his girlfriend dressed appropriately to the event. My baby, Claudia, had got her hair dreaded for the festival, which looked amazing. She had it bunched up in pigtails with a rivet looking pair of goggles on her head to accompany them. My friend, mark, dressed like he normally did, thin and black clothes, with the addition of a trilby hat and pair of goggles. His girlfriend, cherry, had purchased a lot of synthetic dread like hair and had pinned it to her head. My self, well I put on my cyber bitch t-shirt (I’ll throw up a pic sometime) bought a cyber monocle (aka half a goggle) and I was ready to go.

      The first band to kick off the whole thing was The Gothsicles. from listening to there stuff on myspace I wasn’t expecting much, there songs seemed flat and the lyrics were to “ott” silly. But seeing them live was a frighteningly good experience. They beefed up there songs, turning triple shot and one second ghost from simple tunes into grand anthems that were stuck in your head for hours. Half way through I realised that the singer was wearing the old Nintendo powerglove and that the laptop they were using for some of the synth and samples was an alien ware laptop. These were true gamers that were playing in front of me. I found great delight in that concept. He then asked his nemesis on the stage to sing the last song with him. A large bold man wearing a vampire like cape came onto the stage declaring himself to be…..Sega Lugosi. They were the perfect warm up band. Great performance, funny as hell and most of all put everybody in the mood for the whole weekend.

      The second band to play was greyhound……………I went to get some fresh air half way through the second song. That’s how good they were, but hey, you gotta take the good with the bad.

      Headlining for the first day (which was Friday night so it was more of a warm up day) was Portion Control… What I had heard of them was good. bouncy eighties fun. but they were not…….. in fact they were far from fun. the singer comes out looking like a guy who’d stroke your dog with sandpaper if you looked him funny. his “clothes” consisted of black T-shirt and jeans….fine…..covered in duck tape. they then started to play not the fun and boucy music we all love, but the slow and depressing stuff they had created for their last album. Infact they seemed in general to be trying to get away from their old image of fun and go with this new twisted image of pissed of old man covered in duck tape. what they played was so so….but nothing in comparrison to what they could have been.

But with VNV Nation, Apoptygma Berzerk and Dope Stars INC still to come i was not going to complain.

To be continued…..

      Tomorrow is the day. The music festival known as infest is upon me. I went to it last year and loved it. So much so it has already become and annual thing between me and Claudia. Such bands as Apoptygma Berzerk, VNV Nation, Painbastard, Dope Stars Inc, Portion Control and Rupesh Cartel will be there for all to enjoy. It all starts tomorrow night and ends on Sunday with a train journey of ringing ears planned for Monday.

Party on Wayne.

Wow….I’m in a blog….it looks big. HELLO..hello..hello it’s even got an echo.

Well this is the first installment of my life on myspace. I have for the longest time staying away from it for fear of being mobbed by emos and 12 years olds. But now I am forced to create one by the almighty John Lasseter who has said that when they are looking at applications they do a background check on the person by looking at there myspace page and seeing what kind of people they are. Don’t get me wrong I am not going to be applying to pixar, cuz I won’t get in, but the rest of the industry will soon be following in the footsteps of the almighty lasseter.

Sun just past was me and Claudia’s 5 year anniversary, that was great. Time fly’s when you’re enjoying yourself. But this coming weekend we are going on our anniversary trip. To location….unknown.