Recent gigs, briefly

Awhile go we headed up to Manchester to see Tori Amos, courtesy of tickets Paul had to unload before his departure to mooseland.
I lost track of Tori after Boys for Pele, although iTunes reveals I've got Venus and back lying around somewhere. Even if I have no idea what it sounds like.
Tori is, well, idiosyncratic. This tour had her and a string quartet, playing, from what I could tell, all new-ish stuff. Certainly post when she and I departed. I enjoyed it, the strings added quite a bit to what could have been a pretty boring concert. I'm glad I went, but won't be buying any CDs and unlikely to see her again. It got a bit 'samey' for me. Her piano playing is stunning, as you'd expect, and the use of piano/synth worked well.
I really enjoyed Manchester, lots of good food, excellent music shops, lots of vinyl, good coffee, beer. Yup ticked all the boxes for me. And it only pissed down when we headed to the gig.  recommend this pub btw.


Jim Lauderdale
Wasn't sure if I'd seen him before, discovered I hadn't, but I had heard some of his stuff before. I turned down a Fish gig in Nottingham, preferring to randomly hear some country/bluegrass dude in Leicester. I think I made the right decision. It wasn't rivetting, unlike other country stuff I've been to recently, but certainly enjoyable enough to pick up an album. Bluegrass and more pure country than I normally listen to, so something different.
The gig was just him and a guitar, so raw-er than this would suggest:


Pure Reason Revolution
Somewhat bittersweet, this being the bands final tour, as they will split after the London gig. Their debut album, the Dark Third, is a brilliant mix of choral, prog, electronic, beach boys. I love it.
Album 2 never clicked for me, but Album 3 'Hammer and Anvil' was a great mix of electro (Depeche Mode) and the prog side. Really rated that one.
The gig was good, with the feature being a full performance of the Dark Third. The support band, Long Dead Signal, were worth keeping an eye on too.
PRR were enjoyable, if odd. There's a lot of sampling, which caused a feeling of soulless-ness for some tracks. Although given it's electro, it kinda works. The Hammer & Anvil tracks were excellent live by the three piece.
The second half was the Dark Third (Euro version?) which is far more guitar based. Great to hear that live.
So yep, enjoyable gig, glad I went. Musically very good and great to hear them live, finally. Also good collection of hip young things, is prog cool?


that's from The Dark Third
and now one of my favourites from Hammer and Anvil


Dimmu Borgir
Shouldn't be a surprise that I went. Although did knock me a bit, two late nights! However this was an evening with Dimmu Borgir, so a 2 hour gig, with a complete performance of Enthrone Darkness Triumphant. Very early album from 1997, and not one of my favourites.
I prefer the newer stuff, but still good album. Nice to hear effectively old school Norwegian black metal.
There was enough of the newer stuff in the second half which was good. Excellent crowd in, as I've mentioned before, I like metal crowds - there for the music, not to be seen. And oddly, some hot babes, not many tho.
I've linked to this before, but it is everything I like about the band.


DANFest (progfest)
Hey a progfest in Leicester, I kinda had to wander along.
The Moscow Riley, not really prog. More an odd combo of Nirvana and Sabbath. Did not grab me.
Grey Lady Down, I remember these guys getting wraps many years ago on mailing lists. Then they disappeared. Apparently they've come back. Very 80s neo-prog, but the new stuff (they're working on a new album) is heavier, although as they admitted at the gig, needs polishing. I enjoyed them. May keep an ear out for the new album.
Guy Manning: I keep getting suggestions to listen to him. And I'd heard a couple of tracks on an old compilation album from a mailing list. This was an acoustic gig, and TBH was a bit dull. His music was folk-prog, and at least one of the backing singers annoyed me. At times he reminded me of Jethro Tull and Willard Grant Conspiracy. But not as good as either. I've been spinning some tracks from his website, and they aren't too bad. A bit of Fairport there too.

And that was halftime, I wandered to a cafe read the paper, and promptly smacked my hand while doing up my bag. That hurt quite a bit.

Alan Reed he of ex-Pallas. He's now recording an new album, his voice is incredibly strong. The new stuff sounds good, there's an acoustic EP available while he's working on the album. Really enjoyed the  new stuff, and his version of Who's to blame? was excellent, and his guitar playing is very good.

Paul Menel  knew I recognised the name, the ex-IQ singer. Fantastic live performer, charismatic, energetic, good material. Not very prog, outside of the IQ track, far more rock. Hugely fun live band, definitely recommend seeing them.

Sadly at this point my thumb got too much so I came home, missing IO Earth (who I saw at SummersEnd and was bored by) and The Tangent, who I really wanted to see. but with the gigs running late, i probably would only have had 30 mins of the Tangent before running off for a train.

B

Cooking with Bruce : Curries with B

Been awhile since I blogged, but that's about to change, music, injuries, trips, food. Or rather, that's the intention.
Anyway, tonights dinner:

Carrot, lentils, spinach daal
1x tin of lentils (cos I can't be arsed soaking and cooking for hours)
1x chopped carrot
1c chopped spinach (I used frozen)
1t hot chilli
3cm grated fresh ginger
2t coriander powder
3 cloves garlic
0.5t cinnamon (in retrospect, I'd leave this out)
1t cardamon powder
half a tin of tomatos
--
50ml cream

Mix all in a sauce, except cream, in a saucepan and cook gently until the carrot is soft. Add cream, simmer for 5min.

Tandoori mushrooms
Remove stems from mushrooms, grind a little salt and lemon juice. leave.

Stuffing
vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped
1cm grated ginger
1t tumeric
0.5t chilli
half tin of tomatos

Heat oil, gently cook onion until soft, then add ginger, tumeric and chilli. Mix, then add tomato. Divide filling between mushrooms.

Marinade
3T yoghurt
1 clove garlic, chopped
1cm grated ginger
0.5t paprika
1t coriander powder
1t garam masala

mix, then pour over mushrooms. bake at 180C for 8-10 minutes.

Serve on rice.

Scrotum!

Yes really, a woman has been given a suspended jail sentence for biting a hole in her boyfriends scrotum, after a bit of a session.

Judge's summary: "This relationship is over, I think both of you accept that."

me

PC9 Whisky

Bruichladdich make Port Charlotte as their big cask strength monster. It's been brilliant over the years, watching it mature - I've had the PC 6,7,8 and now 9.
Apparently they weren't going to bottle a 9, and instead wait for the 10yo expression. On the strength of the PC9, I'm glad they did bottle. It's a wee bit special. I've dug up reviews for the PC8 and PC7 and can't find one of the 6.

n: salt, medicinal, phenol, washing house soap

p: salty, raisins, warming, chocolate, 

f: long, complex, warming, salty sultanas.

add water

n: more smoky, sweeter, phenol dominating, hint of oak barrels?

p: more spiky and prickly, sweeter, but loses chic

f: more pepper than neat

this is something special. my notes may not do it justice, but this is a superb whisky. complex, interesting, weird things happening. 

for those of you after an investment, the older expressions are worth a bit now - so may be worth picking up two bottles.

All of the others I've tasted had ratings around 9, which seems about right for this baby. Oh yeah LFW link.

must be time for a cooking with bruce blog...

B

Movies for Halloween

We've decided to go for cheesy pulp comedy. Or classy bgrade coolness, depending on perspective.

Therefore the line-up will be selected from:
Army of Darkness
My Name is Bruce
which, as a double-feature, works nicely

and bonus cheese brilliant of Van Helsing (which was superb at the Embassy theatre).

BOO!

A day to myself, and technology

So, I've got the day and house to myself. What to do? Movies, coffee, music, and beer. Simple.

Movie watch (so far): My Little Eye (alright thriller); Badlands (really enjoyed this)
Music (so far): Opeth-Heritage; Dream Theater-A Dramatic Turn of Events

Both albums were loud, as they're supposed to be. And were used as a backdrop to my cooking of some piccalilli. Yes, that's the kind of radical behaviour I get up to when left alone. The house smells of white wine vinegar, mustard and ginger. Works for me. And co-incidently goes well with the Crabbies Black Ginger Beer (6%, aged, and includes other spices - very very tasty - tho not as quaffable as their standard).

I've got left-overs from last night for tea, as I can't be bothered moving.

Technology
usually it pisses me off, but in this case - win. I've got a ReadyNAS duo where I store all my music and stuff that's not in the google cloud. It has 2x1.5TG drives in there, set up for full redundancy, so if one fails, everything is backup on drive2. Mainly as I don't think it would be good for my sanity to lose my music collection...sure I could import it from CD again, but the purchased mp3s and vinyl<->mp3 conversions, not quite so easy to replace.

Anyway, I recently upgraded to the new firmware and noticed it supported MacOS Time Machine backup. I thought, that's kinda useful. And didn't do anything about it. Last week I enabled it, set aside 300GB of NAS space for it (to back up both Mac's, it's done on MAC address, so both machines can share that 300GB), and kicked things off. It's much slower than my firewire800 external drive - taking many hours to do the initial 65GB backup. I'd configured it to not backup the dropbox directory, and may yet remove the Applications directory. But once it had done the first backup, it's been very quick, and runs happily in the background every few hours.
this means at some point soon, I'll have a few external harddrives to dispose of (2x 250gb USB, a 1TB internal loose, and a 750GB firewire800) which will be nice to tidy the electronics up a bit.
Here's the info from ReadyNas.

Right, onto the next movie and some beer. Piccalilli is now bottled.

B

The Trews

Wandered to a gig last night, a Canadian band called 'The Trews'. I hadn't heard anything by them, but the ad had name-checked the Tragically Hip. I figured that was simply a desperate ploy to find a Canuck band someone had heard of.
But no, the Hip influences were quite definitely there, slightly more punky (?spikey) and heavier in places, so more the missing link between the Tragically Hip and the late Tea Party. Apparently they are quite big in Canada.
Great stuff, very small crowd which was unfortunate, but excellent show. It's great when you randomly turn up to a gig, with no expectations, and come away buying CDs. 8 quid well spent!

Here's a couple of vids, but I'd definitely recommend checking them out. UK tour schedule here





B

Whisky show 4 : the final slide into depravity

Our heroes had been left enjoying an unknown blend. The vertical compass sliding, hours ticking by, the water bottle rapidly emptying. Had we thought of it, songs would have been sung; sea shanty's, obscure prog, ditties concerning ladies from tipperary (or this from Alec), strangers hugged. Instead, we found....

Benriach Pedro Ximinez 58.3%
Apparently I liked this, it got two ticks.
Yes, that's the end of the review.

Benriach 1972 40yo
Tasting notes appear to have gone out the window by this point, but:
Very sweet, vanilla and white chocolate, pineapple.
This was whole new levels of perfection. Someone should buy me a bottle. Please.

LFW Link

Old Malt Cask Clyneish
Having graced as many stands with our presence as we felt deserved us, we went back to some of our favourites.
Vanilla, white choc, pineapple, very prickly on tongue.
Clyneish seem to consistently disappoint. Located across the road from the old Brora (*swoon*) distillery, they've singuarly managed to miss the greatness of Brora. Oh well, maybe with time...
LFW Link

Glenglassaugh 43yo
Nose: lime, parmesan, pineapple, kiwifruit
Palate: spikey, sweet, butterscotch
Finish: long, pineapple
I have a comment from Alec, which if I take the letters individually, looks like: Surhi. I don't know either.
9/10. Probably 10/10.

Glenglassaugh 45%
Nose: sweet smoke, salmon
rating: 10/10 (me); 9/10 (Alec)

Longrow - Oloroso sherry 14yo
Tomatin 15yo
Tomatin - Decades
Tomatin 1973 (not as good as I hoped)

LFW Link

We left then, before we were thrown out. There is discussion ongoing as to whether we had a coffee from Monmouth. I say we did. But no evidence to support this. Train ride home was quiet. A lesson from Alec, do not buy a large packet of crisps.

A brilliant day, and although crashing out when I got home, I felt good the next morning when I got up at 630 for rugby, and then Freshers Fair. See, I told you it was responsible drinking.

B

Whisky Show Pt III

Last time we heard from our still standing heroes, they'd run off for a spot of luncheon. With water. Coffee was looked for, but discovered to be of the instant variety. We passed on this and sauntered back to the battle zone.
Before heading to the battle proper, we stopped off at the whisky and food matching session. These were very small drams, but with food.  No reviews, but I've tried to list what they were with.

Cragganmore 12yo can't remember what this was with
Caol Ila 12yo  with cheese (either cheddar or blue, notes just say cheese)
Dalmore 15yo with olives. This worked very very well. My extensive notes say 'lots yum'
Jura Prophecy  not a huge fan of Jura, but this with dark chocolate worked well

And so, further fortified we found a new stand to lean on...

Balvenie 15yo #908 single cask
Nose:  vanilla, fruit, honey, salt
Palate: pear, fruit, honey
Finiah: medium, fruity, sweet
7.5/10 hmm, notes appear a little more legible, although some of it looks more like 'rubbed fish'

Balvenie Port Finish 21yo 40%
Nose: rich, complex, burnt sugar
Palate: port, burnt sugar, complex
Finish: medium, peated, prickly which changes to mellow
8/10

Balvenie Peated 17yo
Nose: light, salt
Palate: smokey
Finish: medium
6/10 didn't work for me

About this point we had a longer talk to a German we'd met on quite a few stands and he suggested we head to a whisky fair in Limburg, Germany. My notes were good enough to work this out. Brilliant.

Kilchoman 5yo 60%
Kilchoman promised a lot, and then bottled their 3yo at 43% and kinda ruined it. So I was interested in trying the 5yo at cask...
Nose: very peaty, salt, burn
Palate: peat, smoke, phenol
Finish: long, massive
9/10 This is what I wanted. Ok, so there's no tact or subtlety, but then again sometimes you just want a big fuck off Islay. This qualifies.

Benromach 2001 Cask 
Nose: oil, salt, Islay          +H20 - increases floral notes
Palate: peat                                 - warm, floral
Finish: medium                           - medium
No rating on this one! LFW link

Longmorn 30yo Gordon and MacPhail
Nose: apple, demerra sugar, rich
Palate: long toffee, apple, sweet, syrupy mouth feel
Finish: medium-long
9/10 I don't think I want to know how much this one cost. But I do like Longmorn.

Strathisla 1963 43% Gordon and MacPhail
Nose: apples, pears
Palate: pears, brilliant, cream
Finish: medium, sweetness, ?fudge?
9/10 Very good chance these two are in fact 10s, if we'd had them on a clean palate.

Another whisky tasting we got told about, George Hill Whisky Tasting at the Loughborough Town Hall. Damn my notes are working their cute little ass magic.

Glen Grant 25yo Gordon and MacPhail
Not sure which one it was tho (G and M have a lot of their website)
Nose: Green apples
Palate: smooth, apples, fruit, tasty
Finish: medium, very nice, spicy fruit

Caol Ila - 1997 - Private Collection G/M
Nose: sweet, smokey Ila !!
Palate: fruit, smokey
Finish: med-long
8/10

I think it's fair to say things had degenerated by this point. But notes continue...

Glengoyne 1972
Nose: fudge, apples
Palate: fruity, rhubarb (maybe?!!)
Finish: sweet, rhubarb custard
8-9/10

Glengoyne 21yo
Nose: yummy!!! fudge, sweet, complex, pears {maybe}
Palate: sherry, complex sex!, pears, sweet
Finish: long, yummy
8-9/10
LFW Link

Great Cop???? B???  [I'm pretty sure this was a blend, and I have no f'ing clue what it was called...]
Nose: very ???, grass
Palate: fruity, unbalanced
Finish:  

It's fair to say, looking at the last couple of pages of notes, things do not improve significantly. But for some of the better drams we threw back a lot of water, just so you lot can be wowed by our ability.
Vertical update: still standing.
Glass update: some acquired

And so, for another break we leave our heroes, both trying hard to focus and find somewhere they hadn't been before. And to avoid crap blends. But never fear, BenRiach beckons in Part 4 in Sphen's Glorious World of Whisky.

B

Whisky Show Pt II

In the continuing story of a cabal whose liver has gone to the dogs...

Glenlossie 1975 49.7% from BBR
Nose: green apples, perfume
Palate: tang, sherry, apples
Finish: medium, tasty
7/10
Like this a lot, but can't find it on their website, damnit.

One of our finds last year was Berry Bros. and Rudd, and their superb selection of whiskies. And so we found their table again, found the same guy we spoke to last year, and let him lead us astray. *Result*

Bunnahabhain 1979 32yo 54.7% BBR
Nose: light, delicate
Palate: massive, rich, sherry, full, utterly unlike the nose!
Finish: fantastic, meaty, full, long
9/10
Appears I liked this one, a lot. Shame I can't find it on their website. Grumble. Again.

Glenrothes 1995
Nose: coffee, chocolate
Palate: mocha, sweet, butterscotch, round   [is round a real description? meh...]
Finish: medium-long
8/10
I got hooked on Glenrothes when I picked up a bottle duty free, quite cheap (£30) and was blown away by it, as were my usual whisky partners in crime. Although the cabal missed out. Poor cabal. Since then we've had more of them, including some SMWS, all of which were uniformly great and interesting.

Glenrothes 1988
Nose: sweet, light, sherry
Palate: chewy, sherry, candied citrus
Finish: long, sherry, massive
8/10
I want some. I really really want some.

Glenrothes John Ramsey
Nose: floral, xmas cake
Palate: sherry, xmas cake, chewy, smokey
Finish: medium, sherry
9/10 a beautifully balanced whisky

You can buy Glenrothes from BBR, or LFW. I think it's fair to say, you won't regret it.

GlenGarioch Founders Reserve
Nose: toffee, old socks (and not in a good way)
Palate: very bourbon, strong
Finish: short
5/10
Did not like this. Won't offer a purchase link, because I care.

GlenGarioch 12yo
Nose: complex, bourbon, grass
Palate: light
Finish: short-medium
4-5/10
Again, avoid.

Old Pulteney 17yo
We escaped GlenGarioch to the Old Pulteney stand and asked to be saved as we were feeling unhappy from our recent tasting experience. thankfully the nice man took us under his wing...
Nose: chardonnay oak, green apples
Palate: tasty, peppery   [I think it's fair to say by this point notes are arbitrary...]
Finish: medium   [aside from arbitrary, they are also lacking in details]
7/10
I'm beginning to get over my aversion to OP, having had some quite nice ones recently.

Balblair 1987 or 1977 51.4%
There is some ambiguity as to which vintage this actually was. Apparently this was around £150.
Nose: pineapple, apple toffee, [and another word which looks like mayo...]
Palate: balanced, fruity, rich
Finish: medium, not hugely interesting
7.5/10
(Balblair was on the same stand as the OP)

Old Pulteney 23yo
Nose: Green apples
Nose: fiery, prickly pears,
Finish: short, tangy, prickly  [may have needed water, a concept that didn't occur to us]
7.5-8/10
I think I'll be hunting down more OP. Cabal...go forth and, err, acquire !
LFW OP Link
LFW Balblair Link

We headed off to find some food at this point, although in our usual style we got sidetracked by the SMWS stand.
35.39 Arabian Nights 31yo 40.9%
Nose: old socks (but good), rhubard custard sweets (I think Alec may have contributed that one...)
Palate: spiky but boring
Finish: medium-short
6/10 too rough
And an epic fail for SMWS. I'm prepared to concede it may not have been SMWS's fault, it may have been us.

We will leave our intrepid journeys (pt2) for a time, while the victims go forth and enjoy some food. And a lot of water.

B.