Author: heathenstorm
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The Defenestration Game
It’s been a time-honoured adage that the best advert for Linux is Windows. Despite that, I limped along with a Windows 10 install on my laptop for many years. It did the job reasonably well, and I could run the apps I needed to for both myself and my studies. Then the “upgrade” to Windows
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Reading ahead to the New Year
On the surface, the back end of 2025 appears a curiously quiet coda to an explosive summer, with nary any evidence nor scandal to show for it. Yet the last few months have become some of the most fulfilling of my life. Returning to the Academy for the second year of my Foundation degree, I
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Project Caligari
As the days tolled ever onward to All Hallow’s Eve, an opportunity arose to make use of a new creative space on campus – just by our CentR Stage bar and just in time for the Academy’s Halloween party. Despite only receiving full access and equipment on the morning of festivities, a hastily scribbled tribute
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Back to Skool
Kit bag eagerly shouldered, I prepare to start my second year at the Academy of Live Technology. Returning to finish off my Foundation degree in Live Event Production, I’ll be specialising in Audio and Visuals instead of doing a little bit of everything. Although it seems, despite the long summer, that I’ve barely ever left
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Another Time, Another Space
With the world breaking down over ever more partisan unpleasantness, it seemed almost frivolous to make my way towards Tilburg last weekend. But as a self-confessed (and obsessed) “Ayreonaut”, I was compelled to take amazing flight to honour thirty years of phenomenal music. AYREON is the Prog-Metal project of Dutch musician mastermind Arjen Anthony Lucassen
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Green Fields and Reckoning
After the triumphant experience of managing the main stage at Metal Magic, I lingered around Denmark for another fortnight. Working on a gruelling festival tour that took me around the country and to the limits of endurance. Celebrating its forty-third summer, Grøn Koncert is a mainstay of Danish Pop Music, raising money for Muskelsvindfonden –
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For the Magic of Metal
I never had “Backing Dancer for Arthur Brown” on my 2025 Bingo card… Metal Magic has always been one of my favourite festivals, having only missed out on a single accessible year since 2014. I’ve always found the chilled out ‘Garden Party’ atmosphere to be appealing, a reflection on the friendliness I’ve experienced in all
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Ten Years of Blood and Fire
Nearly a fortnight has passed since the Summer Solstice on Neudegg Alm, and life has barely calmed since that wondrous night of flame and belonging. With the heat of the moment propelling once-aching feet towards new possibilities, I must take pause to reflect and release before moving on. It was my tenth year on the
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Of climbing…
I’d never climbed a mountain before. At the start of this year’s House of the Holy festival in Abtenau, Austria, a group of friends from the UK and Sweden decided that’s just what they were going to do, taking on the First Pass in the nearby Tennengebirge range. Accepting their kind invite and relishing the
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“It’s Only a Game, Isn’t it?”
Forging academic connections across the Pennines, last week took me to Manchester Metropolitan University for “Rituals of Play”. An international conference deftly combining gaming (in both digital and tabletop forms) with magick and the occult. This uniquely compelling focus for Manchester Game Centre’s annual Multiplatform symposium was ratified in conjunction with MMU’s Dark Arts Research
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Magna cum Loudly
As I take pause to commemorate another year round the sun, it is the right time to reveal just what I’ve been up to these past months. A secret to most, although obvious to many, l have returned to the hallowed halls of academia with a suitably Rock and Roll twist. Last year I began
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Midsummer comes around
Two years ago while en-route to the mountain, I scheduled a weekend layover for a gig and associated debauchery in Arnhem. Sharing the delightful company of dear friend, dancer, occultist, and erotic Priestess Dayenne Neroli. As way of repaying her hospitality and sating mutual creative compulsions, we indulged in an impromptu video shoot. Taking a