Thursday, 3rd of July, 2008

Oops. I wrote this post back in July and forgot to publish it! Hello World!

Woah. As my Facebook status says, my ears are still ringing and it’s the next morning. “You Made Me Realise” ends with an outro known as the “holocaust”, which last night was 20 minutes of the most intense unadulterated noise I’ve ever heard (this includes Merzbow gigs). I had earplugs (they were giving them away free) but they seemed not to help that much for this!
So yeah, very loud ringing at one or two different pitches (or maybe pink noise), buzzing, voices sounding like I/they have a blocked nose, and the crowd talking as I left sounded like it was being put through a granular filter. All the way home I got Ange to talk to me all the time to check if it still sounded weird – and as she’s quite softly-spoken like me, there were times when I just couldn’t make out what she was saying at all.

All in the interests of good music hey? It’ll clear up after a day or so, maybe tomorrow morning! I suspect some minor permanent damage BAH. I will now be spending large moneys on some proper tailored earplugs.

It really was good though! The whole gig was loud, but mostly in a wondrous noise way. The PA was beautifully tuned (how they do that at such immense volumes I don’t know!) and you could hear everything clearly, except sometimes when Kevin would go into a hugely loud phrase on his guitar, like the howling bit in the riff in Soon, which somewhat overpowered the rest (not too badly though). And maybe the bass wasn’t as clear always.

Anyway, I now have an inside-out t-shirt with a face & “my bloody valentine” on it for 18 quid, a temporary (I hope) hearing problem, and an awesome experience. Plus I’ve been to the Barrowland in Glasgow, which is pretty cool in itself.
And now I’m off to explore! :) Already in Europe (and particularly Berlin, where I found Staalplaat’s store and other brilliant little shops) I’ve purchased more than my fair share of CDs. I’ll be doubling it in the UK easily, plus relaxing my ban on vinyl purchasing (will have to post it home)…

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