The Fractal Hall Journal

I meant to write about this a while ago- after all, as the title suggests this gig was in January- but it’s actually a difficult one to describe.

First band up were a bit rubbish, but the second support, Fightstar, were alright. In fact, I enjoyed them a lot more than I thought I’d enjoy anything fronted by Charlie from Busted, but they’re probably a bit too Emo for most tastes. Medina Lake started off a little odd, what with looking about 12 years old and everything, but turned out to be really entertaining. Energetic show, and the front man was great. I’m not convinced that I could sit down and listen to a whole album, their sound being a mix of Bruce Dickinson-style vocals and a melodic pop kind of thing, but they had so much enthusiasm it was easy to warm to them. All-round pros, in short.

Coheed & Cambria are the only new band since Britpop that I’ve really got into. One day I may bore you all with a hee-youge post on why, and honestly the only thing holding me back is that you start getting that much into an Emo band and the next thing you know you’re writing vampire poetry on MySpace.

Kidding, kidding.

The problem with writing about this band is the complexity of their work, as it’s the world that they create that makes them so fascinating. This stuff is seriously nerdy, and it’s no surprise I like this stuff, and that frontman Claudio Sanchez has been writing a comic book adaptation of the albums (currently the Amory Wars miniseries, although there have been other stops and starts over the last few years). The music is great, going from the more emoish sound of Second Stage Turbine Blade through to the stomptastic classic rockin’ of the most recent album, the story’s grand finale and a mix of Queen, At The Drive-In, Thin Lizzy and holy crap is this stuff is made for me. Take the title of their third album: Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness. Come on, that level of epic pomposity is the signature call of the Geek.

The mythology Sanchez creates is a crazy mix of SF, space opera and Grant Morrison-style metatextualitiousness, the main character having the same name as him and the third album based around the idea that the returning God of the universe is the Writer of the tale writing himself into it, and the question of whether or not the Writer’s madness is causing the story to go off the rails, or that the story itself is driving him mad, or maybe both.

And all this this has nothing to do with the gig, so maybe I should write a full post on all of this and get it out of my system at some point.

As for the band themselves, considering the somewhat ropey PA system of the Student’s Union, the sound was incredibly impressive, high quality and clear. And loud, dear Lord it was loud. The thing is, sound quality is rarely any good in any live venue, and it’s usually the performance and atmosphere that has to carry the show, but they really outdid themselves in obtaining justice for the songs. Epic justice. A hundred-strong army of Orcs pillaging their way through Middle Earth kind of Epic.

I knew that in a Spinal Tapesque way both Sanchez and Travis Stever are the group’s twin lead guitarists, but holy shit did I not realise how good Sanchez is. Like, playing his double-necked Gibson behind his head and tapping good. Literally. While also rocking a serious hair-do.

Highlight: A whole lotta teenagers singing along to Silent Earth as if they were actually Sanchez’s personal army.

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A few bits and pieces that aren’t big enough to survive on their own. Here they huddle together for warmth, fighting against the cold, unforgiving winter nights.

The Brown M&Ms

Here’s a more detailed explanation of the Van Halen post from a few weeks ago.

Fractal Films: Ratatoille (2007)

Pixar films have kind of got a bit stale for me. I liked the first two Toy Storys (Toy Stories?), thought A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. were alright, found The Incredibles to be a bit pedestrian, and really disliked Finding Nemo. Didn’t bother with Cars. So I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Very funny and very well animated (pixels have never been so expressive), the film works mainly through a surprisingly strong plot.

In terms of atmosphere, it’s the most Disneylike of all of John Lasseter’s stuff, and while not as good as director Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant it has some exceptionally good design work going on. Paris looks like Paris, and there are some very effective visual interpretations of how flavour works, conceived (I think) by Canadian cartoonist, comic creator and animator Michel Gagné. I dare you to watch this film and not get hungry. The end credits, while not the usual fake outtakes, are still worth watching for what looks like exceptionally pretty traditional animation.

But the best bit isn’t the actual feature, but the animated short that precedes it: a dialogue-free sequence where a trainee alien abductor tries to get a sleeping man out of his house. Easily the funniest thing I’ve seen this year.

Fractal Furlough: Bill Bailey – Tinselworm, Cardiff International Arena, 21.11.07.

I lied, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen this year. What impresses isn’t just how good a comedian he is, but the breadth of his musical talent. In terms of pure entertainment, you can’t do any better. Worth the ticket price just for his Emo track about a self-harmer in Starbucks:

The only way/The only way that you will see me/Is if I cut myself/And bleed on your panini.

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There’s always a danger, in Sting gigs, that he’ll take his shirt off. He didn’t in this one, which is lucky because considering the Stadium’s usual climate he could’ve caught his death. This date was almost cancelled due to a throat infection that cut short an earlier part of the tour. You wouldn’t have guessed it from the way he was belting them out all night, and the vocal range isn’t short on some of those songs.

The sound quality was excellent as always, which can’t be easy considering the huge size and structure of the place. The only things that really suffered were the between-song bits (almost completely inaudible) and some of Andy Summers guitar work: his reverb-heavy sound blurred easily, and wasn’t particularly suited to the physical structure of the venue.

It’s easy to forget how good each one of The Police is musically. Playing bass along with singing is a tricky thing, and a lot of the basslines aren’t particularly simple. Summers is a great guitarist, and shows a jazz influence that, while not really my kind of thing, is certainly impressive. And there’s no dismissing the level of ability needed to really fill out the sound of a three-piece band while not relying on pumping power chords. Stewart Copeland (looking for all the world like a biff-haired Eddie Campbell) really impressed; as a drummer he didn’t miss a beat despite a number of time changes, and he got a chance to run around various percussion instuments during a few songs.

Song wise, they kicked off with Message in a Bottle. We were seated at the arse-end of the stadium, and although we could hear everything, for all we knew they could have been the local tribute act. The video screens didn’t switch on until the second song, Synchronicity II, from a musical standpoint probably the strongest track of the night. In fact, the other two songs from the same album King of Pain and Wrapped Around Your Finger also fared exceptionally well, the latter benefitting from an off-beat arrangement and Copeland running around his previously mentioned instruments. Interestingly (well, almost exclusively to me), the album tracks they played included Driven to Tears and When the World is Running Down… , both from Zenyatta Mondatta, the only non-best-of album of theirs I’ve really listened to, which was handy.

There was an unsurprisingly big reaction to Roxanne, So Lonely, Every Breath You Take, and Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. Well, a big reaction from everyone but one of the pals I went to the gig with, who wanted to know (i) who the three grandpas on stage were, and (ii) when the real band was arriving.

Final Number Of Times Sting Sang “Yee-Ore-Oh”, Or A Derivation Thereof: 2,418.

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