Category: Blog
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The Divine Completion
Very happy to finally finish my Level 1 Dante Certification on an apropos Good Friday evening. With training provided by Aussie AV techies Audinate, this means I’m now officially authorised to hook up any number of Dante-enabled Audio-Visual devices across a basic local network. Covering the fundamentals, the course itself was four-and-a-bit hours of standard video fare, which
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Dark and Doomy
I never imagined I would meet video game legend and first-person pioneer John Romero, and especially not in Yorkshire. Last week, a packed-out WX Wakefield Exchange played host to Game Republic‘s Dark and Doomy gathering. The main draw being a Fireside Chat with the bitch-making ‘rockstar’ developer of Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, and (of course) DOOM.
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She offers me projection
This is probably the first, last, and only time I’ll ever mention the former “Bad Boy” of “Pop”. A common motif scattered around the Academy campus is the visage of Robbie Williams. Site-based stage innovators TAIT have built scenery for his prior productions, with the larger than life result donated afterwards to make an effective
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Hamburg Humbug
It’s never wise to visit Hamburg in January. My first experience was twelve years ago, where my beard froze the moment I stepped out of the S-Bahn. The gig I was travelling to then was unfortunately cut short (eternal respect to the late Jill Janus), but availing myself of the delights of the Reeperbahn and
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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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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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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