What I've been up to lately

Well as you know I was ill for three weeks with what I initially thought was a mild cold, then flu before finally it morphed into the worst throat infection I've had in a good number of years, so I've pretty much spent the last three weeks indoors except to venture out to see the Dr.

Before that though there were a couple of gigs I didn't manage to get to tell you about due to being sort of incapacitated by germs.

The first was Uberbyte supported by Kommand and Kontrol and Alter Red.

I'd never seen Kommand and Kontrol before, and I really enjoyed them, they're quite heavy on the electronic drums and if like me you like that kind of thing you'll probably enjoy Kommand and Kontrol.

Alter Red ran into some traffic problems on their way to the venue and suffered for it in my opinion, I have seen them once before though and really enjoyed them that time.

I've seen Uberbyte many, many times now, but this is only the second time I have seen them at the top of a bill (the first was in Leeds a couple of years back, which was also the first time I saw Mandr01d!), they played a fantastic set.

A few days later was Aesthetic Perfection with support from Paresis and Thir13en.

Aesthetic Perfection's set list

By this point my "cold" had started to kick in, which led to various fun moments when I was hopped up to the eyeballs on painkillers and cold remedies and then doing pre-gig work like trying to find somewhere that sold fluorescent lightbulbs and electric fans and ended up sort of tripping a bit (honestly the epic journey to find a fan was probably the most fun I've had doing pre-gig "runner" work...THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON THE WAY BACK WERE SO PRETTY!).

Ahem, yes...
So Thir13en were slightly more metaley than I was expecting, but pretty enjoyable, kind of like early Nine Inch Nails, in sound.

Paresis almost stole the show! Again I was a little hopped up on painkillers at this point so I can't really remember how I'd describe his music, I just remember it was really good, which obviously means I'll have to hear it again so I can judge accordingly :)

I have seen Aesthetic Perfection once before, when they supported Combichrist in Sunderland back in 2009, back then it was just Daniel Graves and a session keyboard player (who I think may have been called Gabe), they were pretty good back then, even managing to recover quite well from a broken keyboard cable that stopped the music for a few minutes with Daniel doing a dance.

This time the line up consisted of Daniel on vocals, Elliot on keys and Tim on drums.
I like what live drums brought to the performance, I love drums, they're my favourite instrument (and not just because they're the only instrument I can actually play), but so often band that don't start out with live drums will add a live drummer and they'll bring pretty much nothing to the sound, but this year I've now seen two bands successfully add live drums to their sound and it be made of win (the other being Angelspit).
They played a set mostly made up of tracks from the new album, which is great imo.