Join me in exciting adventures

[fluffymark]

I am trying to attact people along to various things -

My birthday is the 16th February. You are all invited to Bruges for my birthday celebrations. I intend to book the trip by next week, so if you'd like it booked cheaply (and it will be cheap) let me know very soon. Otherwise, you'll have to arrange your own transport and/or accomodation. The plan is (as taken from snow_leopard's LJ):
We plan to go 12th-17th February 2004, flying from London Stanstead to Ostend with Ryanair. The flight on the 12th is at 4.20 pm you can can get away with taking half a day (thus only 3.5 days off work), flight back is at 6.30 pm so we can get an almost full day there. Current cost of these flights is less than £30 return, shouldn't get more than £50 per person return before we book.
Accommodation is cheap, exactly how cheap depends on whether we go for the budget hotel or the hostel, they are on the same site and the only difference between them is that for the hotel you pay an extra £2 per person per night for an on-suite shower
• £10.80 per person per night, 4 bed room with on suite shower, http://www.bauhaus.be/hotel.html
• £8.70 per person per night, 4 bed room, communal shower, http://www.bauhaus.be/youthhostel.html
Its a little bit more if you would rather your own room or would rather share with less people.
Accommodation will be booked once I have confirmation of numbers and have booked the flight. Once we have sorted out who is going you can all e-mail me to say who you would rather (or rather not) share a room with.
We intend to take a daytrip to Ghent, Antwerp or Brussels on the Monday - again which is something we can decide once we have confirmation (or even split up depending on who wants to do what).

Also, there is an expedition to the Science Museum to see the Lord of the Rings exhibition, and I already have a ticket for 16:45 on Sunday 7th December, along with mirabehn, evil_nick and spindlemere. Tickets are only available in advance and will probably sell out quickly, so if you wish to join our little group, book quickly. :)

There will be a very special performance by the militaristic neo-folk group Death in June on Saturday 22nd November. On a boat on the thames!!!! Woooooo! This should be very exciting and includes free vegetarian food apparently. Tickets advance only from flag promotions, of all unlikely people. Come along, it'll be a night to remember.

And on an anti-war theme, the very bouncey New Model Army are playing the London Astoria on Tuesday 16th December. Hopfully see a lot of you there. :)

Finally, our long delayed housewarming party looks like it'd being scheduled for Saturday 29th November. Come come come! :) Directions nearer the time.

*hoping lots of people will appear*

Comments

[mal1.livejournal.com]

How jolly!! caro7 and I will be in Florida for the next two weeks, so we'll be tramping round the Everglades dodging alligators and swanning around Key West instead of seeing Death in June (which she is very cross about) and attending your party respectively. Not only that but we'll be have just come back from celebrating my birthday in Edinburgh when you depart for Belgium... lovely to be asked though! Hope it's all splendid fun!

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Death? Is that the same Death who used to be in the National Youth Choir of Scotland? (just that there can't be many people called that.)

[fluffymark]

There is a Cambridge lecturer called Dr D'Eath, and he lectured me on General Relativity.

But no, this is a group called "Death in June", but apparently noone knows why.

[panzerpenguin.livejournal.com]

I always thought the name must refer to the Night of the Long Knives (the bloody pre-war internal purge of the Nazi party which eliminated all the real or suspected internal opposition, plus some other opponents of Hitler in the military and journalism - this was the first time Hitler betrayed his own followers, using the SS to purge the SA and NSDAP in much the same way Stalin used the NKVD to purge his party organisation and officer corps (before purging the NKVD too for good measure, being a thorough and professional mass murderer)).

This is only one theory of several though. Di6's work is poetic and tends to contain a dense network of cultural, historical, mystical, philosophical and melancholy personal/sexual allusions, rather like Eliot's The Wasteland. If you can follow at least a couple of the layers of meaning Di6 seems to be a post-apocalyptic response to WW2 analogous to the response to WW1 of authors like Eliot and Junger. The central question seems to be 'where does Europe go after the incalculable losses and the terrible stains on its soul of this period, culturally and spiritually'? Obviously Doug and the like minds of this scene are culturally conservative thinkers and wish to save and renew what of lasting value can be saved and renewed of the old Europe, rather than abandon ourselves to the soulless globalist commercial culture of the post-war American world order.

Personally I'm a severe pessimist and think the West is doomed to terminal decline and humanity doomed to expire lethargically on this mudball in due course, hence Maruta Kommand, but I would like to be proved wrong by Albin and co.

For those who still don't or won't get it, Ostara and the Di6 collaboration with Ostara's core member Richard Levi(athan) would be a good place to start. Richard is Anglo-Jewish and ponders philosophically on the devastation of the vibrant old European Jewish diaspora culture and the effects on both the Jewish and German (and more broadly, European) peoples of this loss and the enormous state-sponsored crimes that took place. The collaboration, 'Di6 Presents Kapo!', is a full-length melancholy rumination on Nazi genocide and the accompanying reversion to barbarism which follows up on earlier tracks such as 'We Drive East' and 'Til the Living Flesh is Burned'.

[gnimmel.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. What are they like? I ask because I think I've heard one of their songs, once, many moons ago when they were a featured band on Audiogalaxy or somesuch. At which point I thought they were goth and the song didn't strike me particularly. However, lots of people now seem to like them and I'm going through a bit of a folky phase at the moment.

[fluffymark]

Assuming the phrase apocalyptic neofolk means little to you, let me see. Certainly not goth. Drums. Very big on the drums - very military sounding, not like a drum machine - and certainly must be heard live, not recorded. Folky sounds on top, and then apocalyptic lyrics exclaiming how the world is going to fester and die very quickly. Usually. Not all like that, but thats the general idea.

[panzerpenguin.livejournal.com]

Have you heard the early stuff - Nada (recently re-issued in a nice CD digipack) and The Guilty Have No Pride (recently re-issued on picture vinyl in remastered form as Not Guilty and Proud)? At that point there was a drum machine and the sound was strongly influenced by Joy Division. The tracks commonly played in Goth clubs ('The Calling', 'Heaven Street', 'She Said Destroy') are from that period.

For the current live sound of Di6 try to find and listen to a copy of Heilige! (though Albin does additional vocals on that one and won't be in the line-up this year AFAIK)

[fluffymark]

Enjoy florida and the alligators! Soudns amazing! *huuugs*