New house!

About three weeks ago, we moved house.

The new house is a farmhouse in Breamore, half way between Salisbury and Ringwood. 

There is a long story behind the move, which I will now tell.

About 5 years, our family was attempting to sell the house. It was owned by my grandmother, who had moved out. The plan was to sell it, and divide the profits between the various family members, however it seemed very tricky, due to the price we were looking to sell for and the downturn in the housing market. After about two years of attempted sale and price dropping, my parents decided to take it on themselves. They payed each family member that would have received money from the sale and began to plan what they would do. With the house came a lot of land, which previously wasn't being used by the owners, and was let out to a friend of the family, who raises cattle. We don't have any plans for the land either, and continue to let it out to that friend of the family, and to another that has hunts occasionally.

Here is a picture from a hill that roughly shows the house and the surrounding land.

Here are some pictures of the old house:

During the first year, we drew plans up as to what we would do to the house, consulting an architect and looking into planning permission. In the end, we decided not to ask the council for planning permission (as in this area they are notoriously strict with what changes you can make. The fact that it is a listed building did not help either!) and do what we could within the boundaries there were. In hindsight, I feel we've done pretty well considering that!

So after a year or so of planning, we began work! The first task was to demolish the entirety of the insides of the house. Sounds crazy....looked it too..but it worked out!
It was rather an old house, built in the 20s (I think?) and all the rooms were quite small. It was a fairly big house divided up into many small rooms, which was totally the opposite of what we wanted. It wasn't in the best of conditions either so we decided to scrap the insides totally.

Here are a few photos of what it looked like when we had the house mostly demolished:

As you can see we then started on rebuilding the second floor by putting massive steel girders in place. From here we started to build the foundations for the extension and build the second floor.

Before I go on to describe the inside of the new house, I will show some pictures comparing the outside of the new & old house.

The house is not entirely finished yet, there is still a fair few things we have to sort out yet, but despite that, it's very homely. The main yet to be done are as follows. The library has yet to completed. Currently, we have put new windows in and the floor is concreted, but that's as far as finished goes. Throughout the build process, we used it as a wood room, where we could cut up planks. It still remains in that state, with sawdust all over the floor (not the best for keeping the house clean!). There are two guest rooms that we have yet to do, both are pretty incomplete. The downstairs one has yet to be painted, and when it comes to that, we will need to take all the boxes out of there, as we are using it as a storage room for the moment. The upstairs one needs carpet in it. These are the main issues we have to sort inside the house. However when you look outside, another issue presents itself clearly: the garden. It looks totally different to how neat and tidy the grass looked in some of the earlier photos of the house. Here's what it looks like now from my window.

That's about all the things we need to sort, other than a few minor issues like finishing my sleeping platform off in my room and a few other things like that.

The 'library'

The 'guest room'

Despite the fact that this blog is already choc a block full of photos, I feel I should add a couple of the finished insides of the house

The hall

The entrance

The lounge

The kitchen

The kitchen/lounge

Now I come to describing my finished room. I have to say, I have a fucking huge room. I've also managed to fit all my things in, guitars, amps, computer, clothes and all! It's the first time i've ever had all my things in my own room, as before most of the above were in the lounge at the previous house (except the clothes obviously). I must say, i'm liking it so far!
To top having a spacious room, containing all my gear..I have an en suite bathroom, with a toilet and bath.
I haven't mentioned my bed yet, because this will be in the floor above my room. However floor isn't finished yet so I am sleeping on the guest bed on the ground floor of my bedroom for the moment, and most likely for quite a while.
My walls are also pretty decent. I've put all my poster up on the protruding wall where the fireplace was, and it's a nice place to put up all my posters, pictures, gig tickets and other similar collections.
One of the largest changes is that I am actually keeping my room fairly tidy, which is a surprise to me. I suppose that I like the space and feel I should retain it's neatness.

Now, for the obligatory pictures of my room!

The entrance to my room

My bathroom

My gear

Posters etc.

To finish this blog post off, I felt it'd be nice to put in one or two pictures of the house in the snow, while it was under construction.

Prog Metal!

Three weeks ago I went to Portsmouth to for another gig.
I went to see Karnivool and TesseracT, both progressive metal bands. In the world of prog metal, they are both very popular, which is totally understandable, they have very good, uncommon qualities to them.

I brought two tickets for this about five months ago, around the same time that I brought tickets for Fuck Buttons and The Haxan Cloak. This was mostly due to a combintion of two factors: the price of the tickets, and the lineup. They cost £10.50 per ticket, which in terms of gigs in general is pretty cheap. I did not know of Karnivool at this point however I had been a fan of TesseracT for quite a while by this time. The idea of seeing TesseracT for such a low price made me consider the idea, which led me to give the headliners, Karnivool a listen. I was quite impressed by them at first, and that was a deal breaker; I couldn't miss out on this opportunity.
This was the first gig of the UK tour, which is no bad thing.
Before every gig I go to, I try to prepare myself by listening to the bands' albums, so I had quite a few months to learn more of TesseracT's material and also accustom myself to Karnivool. I found that as time progressed, my admiration for bands grew and by the time the gig came around, I liked one band just as much as the other.

TesseracT are from the UK, and have only been going for 6 years, releasing two albums (one in 2011, another in 2013) and two EPs in that time. they've come quite far now and have been touring for many years. However they have experimented with various different sounds and have had four different singers in this time. At first they had a heavier sound and in their first album 'One' incorporated harsh vocals. Since then, that singer departed, they got a new singer for a year until he left, which leads us to their current lineup.
They now have Ashe O'hara, who is an amazing vocalist and in my opinion have taken the band into a great new direction. They now purely use clean vocals, which in my mind is a great move, as it adds a lot more precision to the music, which is quite key their sound.

I went there after college had finished, with a friend I made in my music class. We headed off at 4.30, and took a train for an hour. Once we arrived at portsmouth we got some food at a supermarket, and then started to walk to the venue. We got a little lost, so the journey took around half an hour, when it should have taken half that time. It was an odd walk, as it seemed troughout that space of time, there was a persistent smell of marujana in air. I for one, was not bothered as I find it a fairly pleasant smell.
We arrived at the venue around 6:30, which was very early, considering that the doors opened at 8. While we waited at the front of the queue, we obvserved people slowly arriving. One man asked us to take a picture of him in front of the poster outside the venue. He then confessed to us that he had come all the way from Greece just to go to this gig, which we were obviously astounded by! While I am on the subject of the poster, I saw it and thought 'they won't be needing that after tonight, it'll make a nice poster and souvenir of the gig' and mentioned to my friend my intentions. Unbeknown to me, nearby was the woman who was working at the box office that night who chimed in 'No you won't'. I was very disappointed by this, and a little irritated at myself for screwing up. When I came out once the gig had finished, it was nowhere to be seen. The next day, I saw a picture of it on Karnivool's facebook page, which is fair that they, the performers should claim it.

We went in, and I deposited my bag in the cloakroom, while my friend kept his on. TesseracT started playing after around half an hour of waiting around.
I was a little skeptical about them, not because they are bad players at all, but they may not be able to reproduce their studio work in a live environment too well. I needed not worry. They managed to recreate their sound very well, with one or two minor faults that would be expected, even from the best performers and gear. One was the bass was a little much at times, but this also had benefits, as their music is very bass orientated and most frequencies they play with are in the low end. The second fault was the singing, which was pretty much impossible to avoid, even with their amazing vocalist. At points he altered the pitches of some of his highest notes, which was good as it kept the quality of singing, and also is understandable, given that most likely, 9/10 people wouldn't even be able get anywhere as high as his mid-high range.
They played through quite a lot of their new album, but also played one or two songs from their EP Concealing Fate, which is a 36 minute EP which is essentially made up of one song, split up into 6 tracks. The tracks they decided to play were ones that involved harsh vocals, which Ashe managed to pull off very well, at one point swapping from harsh vocals to his perfect clean voice mid sentence. This ease with which he managed this left me momentarily gobsmacked.

Here are a few shoddy pictures I took during their set:

We waited for around 20 minutes before Karnivool's started their set. They mostly played songs from their new album, and the one before that. This was good in my mind, as I think their second album is the best they have produced to date. Their set was a little different to TesseracT's, as they had a mix of a heavier and softer songs, whereas TesseracT mostly played their heavy songs. The fact that Karnivool are closer to rock than TesseracT probably contributes to this difference.
Int their lineup they had two guitarists. In some songs, often the softer ones, the rhythm guitarist would switch roles and play a small synth off to the side of the stage. Their frontman, Ian, was also an interesting character, as during parts where he was not singing, he would dance oddly. However not in the way that you would look at him and think "well he has a bit of an ego", but instead livening the stage up without embarassing himself and looking like a tool. Their drummer was very energetic in his playing. This was not noticable by the sound as it was obviously mastered by the sound engineer, but you could visually see it in his playing.
One thing irritated me during their set; a single member of the crowd who for the entire time jumped about and generally got in the way of people. This would have been fine, had it been a moshing type gig, but the crowd was generally static, so he was pretty much being an annoying prick. The fact that he was tall did not help either..
There was this, but also inbetween songs he would also yell out things like "We love you Karnivool". Over all, he just seemed like an over the top fan of Karnivool, and could be considered a poser.

Here are a few photos I took during their set:

After the gig finished, I had a brief look at the merch stand. There were some nice shirts there, but I decided that it wasn't worth spending £15 on. This was a lucky decision as I didn't have £15; a ten pound note had fallen out of my pocket when I took my phone out.
Despite losing this money, the gig was well worth the £30 it cost me, including travel and a lost £10 note.
I got a lift back home with my dad, and as there weren't any trains running, I gave my friend a lift. We took him to Southampton, and he got a bus service that replaced the train. I arrived home at around one in the morning, which wasn't too late as I usually go to sleep around that time. It was pretty much a standard college day the next morning. Not so much for my friend who skipped the day because he was so tired.

This was a brilliant gig and i'd happily see either of them again live.
Next, (and sadly last!) on my gig list is Lamb of God and Decapitated in January.

TesseracT setlist: Of Matter - Proxy/Of Matter - Retrospect/Concealing Fate Part 2: Deception/Concealing Fate Part 3: The Impossible/Of Energy - Singularity/Of Mind - Nocturne/April/Concealing Fate Part 1: Acceptance

Karnivool setlist:
The Last Few/A.M. War/Themata/Goliath/Simple Boy/Eidolon/All I Know/Sky Machine/We Are/The Refusal/Set Fire to the Hive/Aeons

To counter the lack of planned gigs in 2014, I am planning on grabbing a bunch of friends and going to Bloodstock, a UK based 3 day metal festival in August! Which is also ridiculously cheap (£122 early bird ticket, including camping!).

Anniversary post

This is not only my 48th blog post, but also an anniversary post; it has been exactly one year since I started this blog. 

Looking back, a lot has changed since then, which has been a recurring thing for the past few years.

It will be interesting to look back on later on, to see what things are the same, what has changed and how events have changed me.

Its surprising how many different things I've documented in only 47 peices of writing, ranging from parties, gigs, college, friends, holidays, turning 18 and love.

I should say here that personally I still have a fair amount of distain for the word love, mostly because of its overuse and misuse. The only reason I feel it is acceptable to write here is because looking back on this past year, I've come to the conclusion that I've felt the feelings of romantic love for the first time.

Hence, its easily possible that I look back on myself from this time with a fair amount of disappointment or irritation, for what I put myself through concerning feelings, despite the fact things like this are natural. It has certainly taught me a lesson though, I'm much more cautious of my emotions concerning people now. That's not to say that I won't accept them, but only if I am fairly certain letting them roam free will either be harmless, or have a high chance of working out. 

I think I should make a thankful mention here of my friend Fearne, who first gave me the idea of starting a blog. I am grateful that they were around to give me the inspiration for the creation of this blog.

I say all this, about expecting my reactions I will have when reading back on these memoirs, but to be truthful, life is subject to change, life is change.

In the end all I can say I have no fucking clue what's going to happen, how I'm going to feel about the past.

Bring on the next year, let's see what happens and what gets recorded in this journal.

Steven Wilson

Recently, three weekends ago, I went to London with my parents to a gig. This gig was my 4th this year, and over all, my 7th in total.

I went to see Steven Wilson, touring with one of his solo projects. Before I describe anything else, I feel I should go into a bit of background information about Steven Wilson.
He is one of the most well known and popular progressive rock artists at the moment, and for good reason. He is not as old as other famous groups and people such as Yes, Rush, King Crimson, Camel and others, but in a short space of 20 or so short years, he has almost managed to single handedly create himself a legacy that is a strong contender with them.
To explain this, he has, and still is in many groups: Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, No-man, Bass Communion. To cap this off, not only has he also released 3 albums as a solo project, but also has written music for famous artists such as Opeth, collaborated with groups such as Pendulum, but also has set up his own record label, K-scope.
And he's not even stopping, when I saw him live, he mentioned how he had already written more music for his next album. He's nothing short of a genius.

This was another first gig for me, as I had never been to a a proper 'rock' or prog gig before this. All the gigs I had seen were metal or punk, with the exception of seeing Fuck Buttons and The Haxan Cloak last month with my dad.

The tour that I saw was his second tour of his new solo album, The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories). The group that he has got together for this solo project is something of a supergroup, with Guthrie Govan, guitar virtuoso from The Aristocrats.
Theo Travis, who has played woodwind instruments on all sorts of jazz albums.
Chad Wackerman, who played drums in Frank Zappa's band for quite a while.
Adam Holzman, who has played keyboard with many jazz musicians including Miles Davis.
Nick Beggs, who has played bass and chapman stick in various prog rock groups.
And finally, Steven wilson himself, who played rhythm guitar and sung vocals.

The concert was the final in the run of UK tour dates, held in the Royal Albert Hall in London. It is usually a venue for classical music, so as you'd expect, it was massive. We were a little far back for my liking, however the sound quality was still great, which obviously matters the most.

Here is a picture or two to show how large the concert hall was

This is a picture directly facing the stage from the back of the hall

This is the view we had of the stage

The concert started off at 7.40, rather unconventionally, with a 20 minute film showing a street in a city, and eventually showing a busker setting up to play the acoustic guitar. As the busker began to play, Steven Wilson came on stage playing the song 'Trains', which is off a Porcupine Tree Album.

I did not expect this beginning at all, as from what a friend of mine who had gone to the first tour of this album, said they started with a different song. After playing Trains, the rest of the band came on and the stage lit up as they started playing Luminol, which is the opening track of the album that was being toured.

I'm not going to go through the entire concert like this, as it'd take a fair while to go through each song played and include a link to it on youtube. Instead, i'm going to write out the setlist from beginning to end:

Trains (Porcupine Tree song)
Luminol
Postcard
The Holy Drinker
Drive Home
Wreckage
The Watchmaker
Index
Harmony Korine
Raider II
The Raven That Refused To Sing
Radioactive Toy (Porcupine Tree song)

Wreckage was a new song, that he said he had recently written. It turns out now, that it seems he played it on each tour date, but gave it a different title each time. It was roughly 15 minutes long, and quite soundscapey. I'm looking forward to seeing what it turns out to be like on record.
The song Raider II is in fact 24 minutes long, and due to this fact he played an abridged version of it, 15 minutes long, and joked, saying 'I don't do short'.
During Radioactive Toy, he requested that the audience join in with the chorus.

                                         Here is what the crowd interaction sounded like roughly:

I took a fair few videos and photos at the gig, and felt that I should post the at the end of the blog. I should also mention that some of the photos I downloaded from the Steven Wilson facebook page, as they are much better quality than mine.

Guthrie Govan playing, with Theo Travis in the background

Nick Beggs playing bass

Steven Wilson playing guitar

Steven Wilson playing Radioactive Toy, with the band in the background

Adam Holzman playing keyboards

Steven Wilson singing

Theo Travis playing the trumpet

The whole band playing

The band taking a bow

Now I will put my pictures up, you'll notice a large change in the quality of the photos..

Steven Wilson starting the gig off with Trains

The band starting off with Luminol

I would have included some videos that I took, but I can't upload them as they are too big. A bit of a shame really, as the recordings were of surprisingly alright audio quality.

The next gig I have coming up is another prog gig, however a little different. I am seeing Karnivool and TesseracT, who are giants of the prog metal (or 'djent' as it's been nicknamed) world.
I'm going with a friend that i've made at college, which should be fun, especially as the venue is fairly small.
However, i'm not going to go into detail here, instead make a post after the gig itself!

18

I've been 18 for around two weeks now. Does it feel particularly different? No not really, other than buying alcohol is easier and I can go out drinking with friends. I don't smoke, so buying cigarettes isn't an issue.

For my 18th, I went out to the pub for the first time with five of my friends. I was planning to have quite a few people come out, but at the time, many people were either busy, or they had gone off to university. This is obviously ignoring those that hadn't turned 18 yet. I think it was a good night out, but I have many nights out in the future to compare it to, so I shall see if I decide against this in the future.
One of the people that I was going out with came to my house earlier on in the night after they finished work, dropped their bike off at mine for the night, as they were sleeping round mine that night. We then ate supper with my family and then she had a shower, meanwhile I got ready to go out. I say got ready, but all I really did was have a look through my wardrobe looking for a suitable T-shirt to wear with my faux leather jacket.
I had not really planned out the evening itself, other than we would start off in Weatherspoons for predrinks, then head wherever we wanted. This was because it was student night, so therefore drinks were cheaper, which is always a good thing when it comes to drinking out; it's expensive.
After we got ready, my dad gave us a lift in town and we met one person outside the pub at around 9 o'clock. We headed in and grabbed a drink, I started with a pint of cider as it's never a good idea to start off heavy..the weekend would be clear evidence of this...
Anyway, we started drinking around 9 o'clock and then after a while, I think about half an hour later, another of my friends showed up. He was not drinking that much that night, as he had his practical driving test the next day, but we headed down to the bar and picked up a drink, another one in my case. This time, I moved on to the spirits, as I was too tempted by a whiskey and coke not to give it a shot (haha).
A little while later, the other two people I had organised to meet turned up. In addition, one of my friends bumped into a friend they met in the pub a little a while back, and he joined us at our table too.
In the end, we ended up staying in Weatherspoons for a lot of the night, more time than I expected we would. Eventually however, we left, at about 12 o'clock, and headed off to get some food at a takeaway. My friend that was taking his practical test also left at this time, and from there we went off to the clubs.
We didn't spend too much time around there, and at around 1.30, me and the friend that was sleeping round mine started walking home. I had drunk quite a lot and was not very sober, very drunk infact, but there was still a little bit of room to be worse.
Here was where the night went wrong. They were in a mood for some reason; I asked them what was wrong and they didn't answer. They were also walking quite fast, so with all this taken into account, given my drunken state, I started to get the feeling that they were trying to get away from me. Soon this was really ticking me off, and eventually I gave up on trying to keep up with them and sat down on a bench by myself for a while. Eventually I realized that it was quite late, and thought I should get back in time to have some rest before college in the morning. As I was walking down the lane that I live in, I saw a bike driving past me. I assumed this would be her heading off home, and lo and behold, when I returned home, her bike was gone.
This was a mistake on both our parts, I assumed things wrongly, and her ignoring me made me make those assumptions. I found out after that she had decided to ride home as she had no clue when or if I would return. Despite all this, the fact remains that she drove home most likely beyond the alcohol limit. I remember on the way home that she said something along the lines of "I've been sober for the last hour and a half, which to my memory was a fairly accurate statement. I know it's not entirely my fault for this, as she was the one who made the decision to ride home, knowing the fact that she had been drinking recently, but I still feel bad for it, as if something had happened, I would be partially to fault. Luckily, she got home safely, and we cleared everything up on sunday.

I managed to get up the next morning for college, which was surprising, given that I got home at around 3 A.M. and was woken up by my alarm at 6.30 in the morning! I woke up with a hangover; it wasn't my first, but generally it seems that I don't usually seem to get hangovers much, until now, which is a very fitting time to start. It wasn't so bad, when I get hangovers, it seems that I don't get headaches, so that's half the problem sorted.
That morning I was not feeling like I was going to throw up at all, despite apparently looking a tad green on the bus according to my friends. I survived the day at college just about, being just about coherent in the first two lessons, but I perked up by the time my third and last lesson began.
After hanging around at college for a while with people, I then took the early bus home to get things, such as drink and food ready for my party.
Yes, I held a party, for 10 people, the day after my first night in town. Crazy right?

All but one person that came were from my college. Him, and two of the people from college I have known for around two or so years, but the rest were new friends, that I had only met about a month before.
It was an..interesting party to say the least, in which many people got much drunker that they should have, me included, but it's fine. Despite how messy we all were, I think it's justifiable as it was an 18th birthday party.
I met everyone coming off the college bus at around 5.30, and then we hung around in town for a while. I had it in my mind that we should get to mine at around 7 or so, eat, then start drinking at around 8, so the party doesn't end too quickly. I arrived home a little early with a few people, then most people turned up at around 7. We started drinking about 15 minutes after people had arrived. I personally didn't start this, but someone started drinking, and slowly the rest of us followed suit. It would have been alright, were it not for the excessive amount of spirits that we had brought between us.

This is a picture of most of the alcohol we took with us, and there was at least 10 more cans of cider out of this picture.

The spirits were the reason that the night was so messy, most people that went, me included, remember it in chunks so the next day, we recollected all that happened as a group. We would certainly not have learned so much about it otherwise.
So much happened that night. I would write all about it here, but some of them might not want people to know, and also it would take a lot of time to write out..but I will share these stories about my actions though.

To start off with, I should say what I was drinking that night. When we started at 7, the first drink I made myself was a double shotted whiskey and coke, then another, and another. Then came the many shots...you can probably now see why I got so drunk; I went in hard, waaaaaay too early.
When I picked someone up from the train station at 10 o'clock, drunk (I barely remember leaving the house), I somehow managed to walk to the station with a roughly sober person, and on the way back, I almost got run over, by a police car. This apparently turned out fine, with them just asking if I was okay and my friends explained the situation to them. I'm pretty surprised that I managed to walk to the station, given that I was in that state.
Also, a while before this, I remember needing to use the toilet while I was in the lounge, and instead of walking to the toilet, I said "I won't make it" and pissed off my balcony. I would have regretted this were it someone else's house.
Then to cap the night off, apparently I passed out at around 11 o'clock and kept waking up and falling asleep throughout the night.

Here is a picture someone took of me passed out

In the morning, I woke up still slightly drunk, to find one of my friends wearing a towel round his waist. The explanation to this was he somehow pissed himself..this worried and confused me quite a bit, however it was still pretty funny too. People that went to the party aren't going to forget that happened, for quite a while.
Shortly, I went around clearing away some empty bottles, and in this process I found some ones with alcohol still in them, so I decided to keep drinking.
A little later on, I went up to my room and hung out with some people that had taken the initiative to sleep in my bed the previous night. I wouldn't blame them, it's a really comfortable bed as I have two mattresses. Anyway, we were in my room, and we decided to do more shots of vodka, drunkenness continued.

People slowly started leaving my house in the morning and only a few people were left by the afternoon. I sobered up around two or three o'clock and cooked up some bacon, which is the best food to eat after drinking!

As mentioned before many times, this was a very messy party, but despite that fact, nothing bad happened, just embarrassing things. I was impressed by this, because with all that happened, there was a high risk that something could have gone wrong.
It was a pretty good party, despite the embarrassment; I feel that because it was an 18th party, I am excluded from regret. Well I say that, there are one or two things I regret, only because it involved hurting others by accident.

To finish this post off, I will include a picture from the night, in which every interesting or funny event that happened that night is captioned. A lot of probably won't make sense to people that weren't there, but still I feel it gives a rough idea of what happened. Most of the captions are placed over the person they make reference to.

17

This will be my last post before I am 18 tomorrow!
For my 18^th, I am going out to the pub with a few friends, then the next morning I will have to get up at around 6.30 for college. I expect it will be quite hard to manage. Not only that, the next night I will be hosting a party at my house, so I will need to make sure I’m not too tired!

I can’t really say that I did much today, on my last day of being 18..I pretty much just had an average day of college, and planned out the next two nights a bit.
I have to say, I don’t expect there will be much difference between being 17 and 18, like it is with any birthday, other than I can legally buy alcohol and other things.
Which in turn will probably mean that some friends will sometimes want me to buy cigarettes and booze for them sometimes, which I will be happy to do so, as long as they are someone I am willing to buy for, it isn’t too much effort to do so, and finally, that they give me money to do so.

I know writing this had absolutely no point, as I don’t have much to write about, but I felt I should do one last post.

My next post will probably be moaning about feeling like shit on saturday, but then again, i'm setting myself up for it.