Segue

Coming to a new band is, for me, like trying a completely new dish. If I really want to give it a fair go, each mouthful has to be savoured and contemplated carefully. Otherwise it’s like disregarding it simply because it contains something horrible like, say, liver. When it comes to a band like We Are The Ocean, merely glancing at the titles of the songs on Cutting Our Teeth, their debut album, might cause me to be hasty in categorising them as my musical equivalent of liver.
Let’s get one thing straight though. We Are The Ocean have a market, and they know how to deliver what that market craves. This Essex five piece are all clean-cut, well dressed and good looking. Teenage girls must love ‘em, and I admire them for that – I know I am probably none of those things.
It’s easy to see why album opener ‘Look Alive’ is the first single. It’s catchy; the main hook being the easy-to-remember choral lyrics, handled by rhythm guitarist Liam Cromby, and is an anthem for disaffected teenagers if ever I heard one. But it’s main vocalist Dan Brown, in my opinion the stronger of the two, who yelps out his lines with enthusiastic vigour and really holds my attention. My only real criticism is his range – most of his vocals are monotonal, which detracts somewhat from the heavier sections of We Are The Ocean’s material, which is a shame, because I feel that’s where they have missed their calling. The opening to ‘(I’ll Grab You by the) Neck of the Woods’ is perfect post-hardcore, but unfortunately these moments are few and far between.
For me though, their biggest failing is in the lyrics themselves. Maybe I’m just a little far beyond the angst of my teenage years but most, if not all of the ten tracks on offer here are woefully self-indulgent and offer little hope. Clichés run rife like kids in a candy shop (and even force all originality from my similies), and the numerous rhymes they’ve come up with are just weak, for lack of a better word. In a genre awash with this type of anthemic emo punk, I just don’t think they’re anything special.

Happy belated holidays to you all! To those who go in for it, I hope your Christmas was good. I received a couple of fantastic graphic novels from various family members, including the brilliant ‘Batman: Hush’ by favourite of mine Jeph Loeb (The Long Halloween), and a very promising start to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, about which I have heard excellent things.
Of course, ‘tis the season of resolutions and promises to one’s self. Now as a rule, I don’t usually make them, but then again I never have been one to do something just for the sake of it. This year, however, I actually have something worth sticking to.
I’ve been toying around with the idea of writing stand-up comedy ever since the end of my first year at university. I was attending one of the talks at Middlesex’s annual literary festival, being given by one of our alumni, the very funny Russell Kane. If memory serves, he was even on my course. He was relating the story of how he got into doing stand-up, which was nothing more than a dare from a friend. He just got up there and did it.
As I thought about this in the days afterwards, I started to get lofty ideas; why couldn’t I do that?

Of course, the stage is about as far from my natural home as you can get. Even now, as someone who’s fairly confident in their own skin, I get a lump in my throat whenever I get up to speak in front of my classmates - even if the prospect doesn’t scare me in the slightest beforehand.

But you know what? Screw it. I’m doing it. One of my housemates (an actress my trade) is beginning a comedy module this semester, and this is the best chance I’m ever going to get at being involved in something like this. I think I’ll regret it if I don’t at least give it a go, so it has become my official New Year’s resolution.

I’ve been making notes for a few weeks, but as of a few days ago I’ve actually started writing up a script. Watch this space: I’ll let you know when I have more details.

This is the second assignment for my genre class. We had to describe a location and how we might use it as a setting within a genre of our choice.

A bar in a small, midwest American town. It isn’t much to look at; faded wooden sign hanging above the door. The car park barely registers as that – just a patch of dirt and dust. The outer walls are a white-wash affair, mismatched with a border of faded pastel red that serves to emulate the hicksville feel of the single-room affair inside. Nothing that would be missed should a few stray shotgun shells blow off the plaster, or if a head should explode bloodily too close to it.

Going through the main door, you come to a shabby set of faux saloon doors that serve no other purpose than letting you know that the owner once had big ideas for this place, but gave them up pretty quickly when they came to the realisation that no-one would be impressed by a Wild West-themed bar in the actual Wild West. They would certainly be no defence against the living dead; a minor hinderance at best. Good thing the outer door, one of only two entrances, is heavy and set with steel hinges and thick double bolts.

The windows, too, are fairly well fortified. After several break-ins, the owner had wire mesh bars installed over the glass: great for preventing brick damage, but fantastic for the mindless undead to claw themselves to shreds on.

As it goes, your average bar is probably the best place to head for in the event of a zombie apocalypse, short of your local gun shop, and this one is no exception. The owner wisely keeps a sawn-off shotgun under the bar for sticky situations such as scaring drunks. Ammunition might be a factor for anyone caught out here, but the array of weaponry doesn’t end there. The array of spirits lining the back counter can be combined with old barcloths to make for an effective incendiary, provided you have a source of flame – but what self-respecting group of human refugees doesn’t contain a seasoned smoker or two?

For your more sociopathic survivor, a broken bar stool can easily go the distance, mulching brain matter if applied with enough force, with backups to spare should the weapon break across the skull of the local school teacher or the county sheriff.

Should all defences fail, and retreat is the only option, the designated emergency exit is the cellar. Buried underground and by rule of thumb inaccessible to zombies, it should be easy to throw off pursuit, provided the owner themselves aren’t waiting in the shadows, drooling over the kegs and staring out the mortar in the walls. Still, any quick-witted group that still retains some kind of weapon should be able to deal with this minor hinderance with minimal collateral damage. From here, it is a mere case of unlocking the cellar’s tightly locked wooden delivery hatch (or blowing it open) and escaping to whatever end.

It’s a good feeling when something you’ve been working on for a long time comes to fruition. After months of hard slog for very little gain, you might finally feel as if it has all been worth it, and you can allow yourself a pat on the back and maybe a few drinks down the pub. For Malvern-based hardcore quartet AsZerosWeAreInfinite, or AZWAI as they are more colloquially known, that drink should be at least three fingers, and the hand should belong to a big sweaty gorilla.

You see, their self-titled EP was recorded over a year ago, but only now do you, the lucky public, get to sample the fruits of their labour.

The opener, ‘A God By Any Other Name’, kicks in with the lyrics “between my broken teeth and self-prophesied lies, you will discover salvation for your ache”. This could be as much a comment from anybody who has found their way to the front of the stage during one of AZWAI’s shows as it is about the actual subject, one Wayne Bent. Bent, also known as Michael Travesser, is the charismatic leader of the Lord Our Righteousness Church in New Mexico, a religious community who were featured in the Channel 4 Documentary ‘The End of the World Cult’.

It’s a belter of an opening track, driving home with the force of something big and forceful and un-clichéd as possible. You might be surprised that there is only one guitar at work here, as the entire band works hard to create a ferocious, full-bodied sound. Vocalist and lyricist Adam Murkin is great at taking a perspective and writing intelligently from it, no matter how bizarre or convoluted the perspective of that person might be. The clout with which he delivers his lines is unrelenting across the board, too, and conveys in part his mighty stage presence (both in front of and mid-crowd).

Next up is ‘The Snakeskin Wedding Ring’, which claims the crown for the longest track on the EP – marginally. And that’s one of the great things about AZWAI’s refined style. The tracks are long enough to have enough substance to hold your attention (I’m looking at you, Ampere), but aren’t so long that the onslaught becomes wearing. I know that this will be a firm crowd favourite – enough breakdowns and catchy lines for them to really get into.

Closer ‘(Poor Syntax) I Am, and You’ stands out as my favourite. I am still in awe as to how drummer Dan Taylor can manage as many stick-clacks in the space of a single second as he does to bring in this track, but this is by no means the highlight of the track. The influence of The Dillinger Escape Plan is clear from the outset, but it’s no mere consummate rip-off: the guys know how to build on their influences, rather than rehashing existing songs.

The EP may only clock in at seven minutes and thirty-one seconds, but it’s more than enough. It is an unrelenting juggernaut, devoid of unnecessary trimmings or lyrical waffle. Hear me; salvation is coming - and its name is AZWAI.

Band website: www.myspace.com/aszerosweareinfinite

Seriously, why have Stella Dawes not been signed yet? A clutch of glowing reviews like theirs, and you might have expected someone major to have taken notice by now.

I first received my copy of ‘Contrasts’, their debut full-length in the summer of 2008. Boy was I excited. I’d been keenly following this band for a while, ever since vocalist Mike Shakespeare, ferreting his way around Myspace one day, politely messaged a bunch of like-minded people in my area asking us to check out his band. Words such as ‘Mare’, ‘Eden’ and ‘Maine’ were bandied around, and I’ve been in love ever since.

I had known the album had been in production for a while. Mike and guitarist James Barter were taking on the entire process themselves, fitting it around day jobs, so a delay was to be expected. But when it came, I was stunned. Two tracks, ‘Dichotomy’ and ‘Everything Happens to Eeyore’ had been favourites for a while, and the recently previewed ‘Happy Ever Afternoon’ and ‘The Unspeakable’ had satiated my desire for new material, but even these didn’t prepare me for the majesty of the beast.

You see, with a lot of albums, and ones of this genre in particular, the songs – the lyrics and the heartfelt meaning behind them – can come out quite same-y. Not entirely, obviously, but I quite often find myself having to check the name of the track against the listing to get a bearing of where I am in the record. This is never the case with Stella Dawes. Every song has a unique hallmark, not least in thanks to Bart’s unique guitar sound – something akin to the love-child of a chainsaw and a cheese grater. You know it’s ‘Gut’ because of the throaty staccato opening. You can differentiate between the two ‘Investment Intercourse’ tracks (Deposit and Return respectively) because the former kicks you squarely in the groin at 1:31. You know you’re listening to what is arguably the album’s centrepiece ‘When the Tiger Lost His Voice’ because, well, who else sings about tigers except Survivor? No riff or chord progression is repeated between songs, and they could have, because they’re all good.

For me though, it’s the very lyrics I mentioned earlier that make this record for me. Furious wrath and hardcore go hand-in-hand, and that’s all well and good, but I like my lyrical spice to take a more intelligent twist than your average ‘argh, I’m so misunderstood!’. Mike knows what he doesn’t like about the world, but he expresses it intelligently and, above all, poetically. Lines like ‘we polish shit, but like it or not, nobody here is perfection’ ring true, as well as being delivered with consistent gusto and conviction.

Just a little note on the packaging. If ever there was a reason to buy a physical copy, this is it. The brown cardboard case is beautifully DIY (in keeping with the ethos of the whole package), and charming to boot. The insert, chock full of handwritten lyrics, continues the theme, and a nice little bonus was the typed insert thanking me for buying the CD. It’s these little touches that might draw the ever-increasing number of pirates away from torrent sites and towards their wallets, were the majority of albums not merely templated jewel-case jobs. Anything to help in the war.

I know the band is currently not gigging due to the departure of founding bassist and drummer, Steve Butcher and Simon Kendrick, but I wish them the best of luck finding suitable replacements to fill the void. Based on a heavy amount of speculation (and the appearance of a couple of demos on their Myspace page recently), I suspect that the rest of the band will use this time to gather their creative thoughts, and I hope they will hit us with a stunning sophomore release sometime soon.

Band website: www.myspace.com/stelladawes

A recent assignment for my genre studies class required that we write about a place, fictional or real, in the style of two different genres. I chose to write about one of my favourite places, known as Golden Valley to locals. It’s a really peaceful place that I used to go to do some of my writing when I wanted to be alone, back when I lived in Malvern. I know it that well that I thought it would come easily, but thinking about it in terms of different feelings than it normally evokes was pretty difficult.

Horror

It is twilight. A grey mist sits on the surface of the lake, reflecting the drone of the lone electricity pylon that towers above me. Although I cannot see it, I know the derelict old cottage is still there on the other side of the chill waters; all broken windows and rotting door-frames. It has spooked me ever since I was a little child. I swear I saw the light of an old oil lamp in one of the windows once, even though the building had been abandoned for years. Mama told me I must have imagined it. I hope now that I did.
The last, cold light of the winter sunset glows behind the hills, making them loom ominously. I daren’t go that way; a patchwork of potholes and gorse bushes make for unsteady going at the best of times, and it’s getting darker by the minute. Bad things happen on these moors. Terrible things. Should I need to run, I would be in serious trouble.
I can’t go back; the way behind me is burning. So I head into the fields.
I feel my way through the gathering night. The long grasses and tips of barley brush my fingers and palms, giving me the sensation that I am floating. The way across the common is long, but I have no choice. I couldn’t stay here, even if I wanted to. I’d be found.

Science Fiction

The midday sun glints off the hologram that poses for the lake’s crystal-clear water. Things certainly have changed.
I step away from the door of my contraption. It hasn’t just been a long time since I have seen this place in the rise-and-fall-of-civilisations sense: I may be able to reach the farthest corners of the time-line, but it has also been close to forever in my own lifetime since I set eyes on these fields.
I used to come here as a boy. It was one of my favourite places, actually. I would sit on the mossy old logs that served as benches with my Gramma and have picnics and feed the ducks. I don’t suppose they have those any more – real food is costly to produce; far beyond the price range of the average human family. The ducks are definitely gone. It’s funny, they can afford state-of-the-art holographic equipment so it doesn’t look like they suffocated their own planet to death, but good luck enjoying it if you’re a native. This is purely for the newsvids. If they caught me here though, trespassing would be the least of my problems. They have technology, but nothing like this. There would be some serious temporal consequences if they got their hands on this baby. But they won’t; they’ll never even know I was here.
I dig my hands into my pockets and sigh. The wind that blows through my hair at least is real. The barley stalks are simulated to sway in time with the breeze, but I know that if I walk over there my hand will go right through the stalks.
It’s time to go. As I re-enter my ship, I take one last look over my shoulder and try to remember it as it was: the ducks, the water, the mossy log. Such a shame.

For those of you new to Segue, I am a creative writing student based in North London. I like to share some of my bits and bobs and give a little bit of history behind them. I’ve been doing this on another site for some time now, but I thought it was about time to expand my potential readership, and tumblr is the first stop on the campaign trail.

I’m not going to upload everything I’ve done previously - this will all be new work - but if you fancy taking a look at my previous work, you can see it right here.

If you do take a look, please please leave me a comment, some kind words, or some feedback, either there or on this post; you have no idea how useful you would be!