Stop The Earth!

Day 2 was so much better than day 1 for a start! Today started at 12 mid-day and is finishing at 2am; I arrived at 8.30pm to get the low down on the cyber scene yet again. The first thing I wanted to check out was the dark-scene market that had set up stalls and was chilling in some of the adjacent rooms.

I didn’t manage to get pictures because of the terrible lighting, but what would you really expect at a Goth festival? A rainbow? The first stall I investigated was the Heresy stall, in which a wonderful Emma talked me through all her corset items that unlike the other stalls had more of a mainstream market rather than a strict cyber/industrial/Goth market. This wonderful woman definitely needs a special mention, she got into this line of work in order to support her family and that is truly commendable. High 5.

Another truly commendable woman was running a table selling jewellery made from recycled material and out of her own will is giving 10% of all her own profits to Marie curie cancer research, I didn’t catch her name but her business is called Ethical Gifts, a pure angel.

Another pretty cool stall I ran into was called Urban Halo, selling mainly hair pieces. The hair pieces had been made out of absolutely anything, in the name of recycling! I don’t know why the general public seem to think the Goth scene is violent, because (as a complete noob to this scene) I found everyone to be polite, giving and ecofriendly. The youngest Urban Halo customer is 10 years old whilst the oldest is a whopping 72 year old man, impressive!

Jed Phoenix is the next sexy beast of a company I’d like to mention, expensive as hell though. You definitely get what you pay for with Jed Phoenix; from what I could tell everything was crafted perfectly and would probably survive two nuclear winters.

A wonderful guy named Jamie was more than happy to let me take a full body picture to show you graphically what he is wearing and who made it, along with the incredible price tags.

Music wise the night was (pardon my slang) super sick, sick being the cool-hip way to say great! Unfortunately Parralox singer had been taken to hospital so didn’t perform today, but good news! Will be performing tomorrow! I arrived just in time to hear X-RX play, I think I was more surprised at their style more than their music, I’m sure they had blood all over their faces…hopefully it was fake blood. I can’t even describe the level of work they must have put into their act though because it was absolutely off the chain, probably the sexiest music I’ve heard in a long time. It’s the kind of music that you close your eyes to and see all kinds of amazing colours, I saw blue…and blue is my favourite colour.

Then I was exposed to Rotersand, perhaps exposed isn’t the best word since it’s usually used in sentences like “I was exposed to killer radiation” and that is not how I mean it at all, I loved them! The lead singer was doing some amazing robotic yet eerily soothing movements to the beats that were kind of hypnotising; no doubt if I were a little weaker of mind I would have been aroused. I loved it and so did the crowd of jagged dance moves and green hair.

Out in the chilling pool room (not pool as in pool, just pool) everyone was having a good time but I have to admit that I saw some amazing things, such as; A guy wearing REALLLLLY tight leather pants getting extremely touchy feely with a woman, all I could think is…1) his weiner must HURT right now and 2) she must have a fetish for seeing someone struggle, prance and squirming around a room because with those pants he sure will be doing that.

Since the fest was taking place inside a brand new venue I was sure to ask people what they thought, and shockingly the reactions were not as good as I was hoping, the general response was;

 - The new venue is small and “bloody confusing”

 - Main room is too crammed, and “NO UV LIGHTS! But everything else is amazing”

 - The courtyard was better because smoking could be social

Here are my quotes from the night, only the best are good enough:

In response to a conversation about how little some people were wearing “I wear more in the bath”

After leaving the escape bar “The music was amazing! But the atmosphere felt like fucking a dead fish”

And with absolutely no reason or rhyme “plenty of hot chicks with their arses out!”

Finally! Here is a picture; the guy in the silver body suit below (which was very tight for the eyes to behold!) is in a picture from Day 1, if you can guess who it is, you win nothing! But I guess the clue is who is he with!

Finally Finally! Since I won’t be doing Day 3 tomorrow, I want to just wrap it up by saying It was an absolute pleasure reviewing this festival, I met a lot of great people, some of whom I really hope to hear from! Especially the people in the pictures! You were the most fun! Mucho Love!

That’s right, it’s that time of year again when all the creatures of the night come to the university of bradford for infest, a cyber-electro goth 3-day festival which is run by mainly german DJ’s. I was given a press pass and was super excited to see the new university of bradford students union in action.

Just before the event began I ran into a few attendee’s and we discussed people’s prejudice to the goth sub-culture. One guy with a WW2 hat said that most of the time the mainstream community just assumes everyone is gay, but he laughed pretty hard when he mentioned the “what is it” game. The rules are simple, stand outside the toilet and when people leave the bathroom, try to guess the gender.

I met a few really sexy cyber-goths who said if they could summarise the event in 3 words it would be “oh my goth” and the same group had notified me that the transvestite count as currently at 11 and rising.

A steampunk dude I spoke to about cyber-electro music let me know about an interesting story. In 2004, lights of euphoria were playing and for some reason the fire alarm had started going off in the venue, but because the sound of the fire alarm was so similar to the sound of lights of euphoria the crowd just kept dancing.

Just before the first act went on stage I managed to push through the crowd and see probably the greatest and rarest sight on the planet…The goth macarena, it’s basically the standard macarena but with glow sticks, 10 inch heels and a kick arse attitude.

Mandro1d were the first act, they hit the stage and begun singing about the EDL and all about what they want for christmas, I come from a completely non-gothic musical background but it was absolutely grand! I found myself singing along before half the song was over.

Day 1 had skirts, bikinis, tank tops and then there were the girls (haha), no but really, everyone that attended had put so much effort into what they were wearing, there was a guy with hair at least 2 feet into the air…I pray nobody lights a match near him. So far the music has been sexy as hell, heavy and hard electro-beats with the strongest electro-static baselines I’ve ever heard.

The consensus so far seems to be that this annual festival is more about being with friends and people who share similar interests rather than the music.