A curious cat's climb

Kenickie, my kitty, had a bit of an adventure yesterday. I had a hole in my roof and a chap was around in the morning to repair it. My loft was open to provide access and there were ladders up on to the roof, the repair man making clunking noises climbing up and down and getting in to the loft. All of this had Kenickie a little perturbed, eventually deciding to hide somewhere until all the fuss had died down. I had presumed he had gone outside, through the open front door, to observe from under a parked car.

It was only after all the work was finished, and I had gone and come back from lunch with my mum, that I heard a faint meowing from somewhere, accompanied by the sounds of scratching. It didn't take long to work out that Kenickie had in fact disappeared up in to the loft, a cat's curiosity in full effect, and I had inadvertently shut him in there before I had gone out. He was quite keen to come back down now, thank you, so I opened up the hatch and went up to comfort and collect him.

The trip down the ladder looked much more difficult than going up and Kenickie was a little panicky. I couldn't even hold him securely enough for his liking, as he dug his back claws in to gouge a small hole out of my 1-up mushroom t-shirt to remain safely trapped in the loft. I knew I wouldn't be able to get him down without his co-operation so I left the loft open and let him become more relaxed about the prospect of climbing down the ladder.

It didn't take too long before Kenickie decided that staying in the loft was less appealing than coming down the ladder and he poked his head over the hatch's opening to survey the climb. He was quite tentative, but I sat at the bottom of the ladder to give encouragement. He got his nerve up and made the short journey without aid easily enough in the end.

I'm sure he was a little shaken up by the adventure in the end, so I decided not to give him a flea treatment just then. I saved that little bit of excitement for a few minutes ago, and now Kenickie doesn't want to talk to me for a while.

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Tags: kenickie, kitty

A bad time to be auctioneering

The content patch for World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion is being released early next week, with the expansion itself due in a month. With ten more character levels added there will be appropriate new equipment to be found and crafted, where crafting will require different materials than used previously to allow for coordinated progression in gathering professions. As faction reputation became important in the Burning Crusade expansion I expect that most long-standing 70th level characters will have achieved at least the revered standing with the major factions, and all serious players will be exalted with them, requiring different factions to be introduced in Wrath of the Lich King to enable similar progression. The new factions will want different relics to be unearthed to gain reputation with them than are available in the Outlands of Burning Crusade.

All of these items that once had a high value placed on them because of their rarity or effort required to collect, combined with their utility in providing access to crafted or reputation-bought equipment, will be replaced by entirely different goods. There is little point in seeking arcane tomes if anything the Scryer faction offers will be surpassed by a basic item from a new faction, and trying to find dozens of primal elements in order to craft an epic item will be a waste of effort if that crafted item is only as good as a green drop from a world mob in Northrend. With equipment drops, crafting materials, and reputation-boosting items all about to undergo a radical change many high-level players are dumping their bank stock on to the market in the hopes of getting some monetary return on items that will soon be significantly devalued.

It can seem like a time for bargains, but it is not a time for profit. Prices are plummeting for items that once had significant value, but caveat emptor. There are bargains to be had if the bought item has inherent value to yourself. Pick up the fel armaments if you want a quick reputation gain with the Aldor to get an easy equipment upgrade. Buy some primal elements cheaply if it will boost your crafting profession skill. If you are looking to buy a bargain hoping only to sell it on for a profit you could get badly burnt by the deal. The prices have dropped, and will continue to drop, not because of a lack of attention when listing the items but because they really are losing value.

The World of Warcraft auction house market will be in a state of rapid flux for the next couple of months and will not stabilise until 80th level characters are commonplace. Until that time comes one needs to be cautious with speculative bidding. Items that appear on the auction house for a thousand gold soon after the expansion's release may turn out to be relatively common drops, with the seller hoping for a finder's fee of sorts, before the market value is realised at less than a hundred gold later on. There will be money to be made, but it will require patience if it is to be made from the comfort of Stormwind.

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Tags: auctioneer, mmorpg, world of warcraft, wrath of the lich king

Emiliana Torrini at St Giles in the Fields Church

'We are here to sing psalms', says Emiliana Torrini, in her wonderful Icelandic accent, as she thanks everyone for turning up. 'I thought I'd have to bribe you all to come here.' She needn't have worried, as each and every pew in this active church is full, spilling over with people sitting on the floor, all to see and hear her perform. The choice of venue may be different but it is a perfect setting. There is an air of reverence in the room that is rarely found in other venues, perhaps because the clean and decorated church doesn't lend itself to being treated like a dump, unlike the dark and dingy auditoria found elsewhere.

It is perfect because all attention is on Emiliana and her band during the whole set. There is no conversation to interrupt the beautiful singing or guitars, and you can almost hear a pin drop between songs. At least, when Emiliana is not entertaining us with her charming banter or telling a humorous anecdote whilst one of the fifteen guitars they have on the road with them is being tuned. The first song is Fireheads, also the first song from her latest album, Armani and Me, followed up by the amazing Heartstopper, one of my favourites from the previous album. Emiliana describes Heartstopper her 'Jon Bon Jovi song' and mentions that she wanted to get wind machines to blow the long, rock-star hair of the guitarist and keyboard player, an amusing image brought alive by her vivid movements.

Introducing another song, Emiliana says that 'this is a song about love. ...duh', she catches herself, realising how many of her songs, and songs in general, are about love. 'I like to think of myself as the Icelandic Julio Iglesias. Singing my pants off.' I think no one is in any doubt of her ability to do so either. Her voice is amazing, the acoustics in the church and the respectfully quiet audience allowing every note to be savoured, whether Emiliana is 'do-do-do'ing through the gloriously happy Big Jumps or sustaining long beautiful notes in the moving Bleeder, two of my favourites from the new album.

Another favourite of mine is introduced as a song she wrote when in love. 'You know how it is when you're in love and you're in that phase where you just say things like "I think you're amazing", and you give them a CD saying "I wrote this song for you". They expect to hear "your hair is like a golden storm on my pillow" but then they hear this instead', and the band play Jungle Drum, which is as pounding and energetic as the evocative name suggests. It's hard to see how that love song could fail, as it is impossible not to be completely charmed when Emiliana Torrini emulates the jungle drum-pounding of her heart, singing 'budda-dong-a-dong-dong' and 'r-r-ron-gon-gon'.

Most of the new album is played through, with Gun being as atmospheric live as I had imagined it would be, along with a few from previous album Fisherman's Woman, including the affective Today Has Been Okay, before Emiliana announces and plays the final track and the band head off stage. They are inevitably brought back for an encore, with the applause not dying down until they return. Emiliana is 'glad you did that, because we really want to play more songs', but before they do she remembers to introduce the audience to her band. It is only the second gig they have played together as a band, and they are all happy to receive such a hearty reception. Emiliana is certainly having a wonderful time, enjoying performing for an appreciative audience, and we are all having an equally wonderful time being entertained by a delightful singer.

The evening's set is brought to a close, and every song from the new album has been played, highlighting how accomplished the album is. The final song of the night is Beggar's Prayer. About a broken heart it is a moving and emotional song, and 'moving and emotional' is an ideal description of the night. Sitting in pews listening to Emiliana Torrini sing her psalms to us is a stirring experience and the songs gain an extra dimension having them performed with such feeling. This is an evening I never want to forget.

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Tags: emiliana torrini, gig, st giles in the fields

Silence the Informant

'You want me to blow up someone's ship in a huge fireball that ensures no survivors, and pay me handsomely for doing so? Sir, do you have a newsletter, because I am intrigued by your ideas and want to subscribe to it.'

Agents don't buy people's silence through bribery, they instead pay other people to make sure that person won't be able to talk. Some of them pay really well, and I am offered a cool million ISK to take care of an information leak. It's not normally the best idea to plug leaks with heavy missiles, my plumbing never quite being the same since I overreacted a little because of a persistent drip, but in this case they are the best tool for the job.

Hitting vacuum and warping to deadspace I am beset by mercenaries on all sides, trying to protect their boss. I'm not sweating in my Drake, though, almost feeling an aura of invulnerability surround me after defeating The Blockade with few problems the second time around. You could even say I am being overconfident, somewhat cocky, particularly when my shields plummet down past 50% strength and continue to drop.

I am used to mitigating missile damage and have shield hardeners equipped and optimised for that but the mercenaries have quickly closed in range and are firing dozens of cannon rounds in my direction. My ship's computer cannot determine the type of damage the rounds are, whether explosive, thermal, EM, &c., which makes it difficult to work out how best to improve my damage reduction when facing cannons. Some research will need to be done, but perhaps not right now, as my shields are still taking a beating and are dangerously low.

A strategic overview of the battle hints to me that I won't be able to destroy all the mercenaries before they destroy my Drake, so a tactical withdrawal is necessary. However, it's worth my hanging around to take out as many of them as possible, even at the expense of taking some hits to my ship's armour. I keep my launchers firing heavy missiles until my shields are fully depleted and my armour is disintegrating around me.

Now don't get me wrong, it would normally be better to retreat with no permanent damage, but I have been flying with 97% armour strength for quite a while. So long, in fact, that I forget the fight in which I sustained that damage to the armour. I simply haven't been bothered to get it repaired. I could pay for the repairs in a station, but as I have an armour repairing module it seems like a waste of money. The module, on the other hand, requires me to fit it, swapping out a different system, head out in to space to activate the module, wait for it to repair the armour, dock with the station again and swap the modules back to my operational configuration. It is enough of a hassle not to bother with when my shields rarely fall below 40% strength.

With 3% of my armour damaged it's perhaps not worth repairing, but with 3% of my armour intact it now seems like a jolly good idea to get the whole lot repaired. The amount of damage is far too much to pay to be fixed, and is enough of a threat should my shields fail again that it is worth swapping the armour repair module in. I get the module fitted, pop out of dock for a couple of minutes and eat a sandwich whilst the armour is automatically repaired. It is not long before I am back in deadspace sending the mercenaries to an explosive doom and silencing the informant. At least until his clone is revived, I suppose.

It was a little disconcerting to have my shields fail, particularly so soon after believing them to be proven thoroughly capable in the toughest scenario I am likely face for now, but at least it got my armour back to full strength. And I got my man in the end. Another successful mission!

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Tags: deadspace, drake, eve online, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

Blitzen Trapper at 93 Feet East

When Blitzen Tapper played the Water Rats back in May they promised that a new album would be out in the autumn and they'd be back to play some gigs. Furr has been released and Blitzen Trapper turned up at 93 Feet East to promote it, as well as throwing a few songs from their previous album and a Dolly Parton cover in to the set. The album was only released 'like, 48 hours ago so don't feel bad if you don't know any of the songs', we are reassured. The band then admits that 'we barely know the songs, and we don't feel bad about it'. That's alright, then.

Not that it matters much that the songs are unfamiliar because they all sound good. Hearing the new material played live makes me look forward to playing the copy of Furr I picked up at the gig, hawked at the back of the venue by charming drummer Brian. The title track of the new album sounds particularly catchy. Intermingled with the new songs are some favourites from the previous album, Wild Mountain Nation. The heavily syncopated and somewhat discordant Devil's A-Go-Go has never sounded better, being brought to life by a vivid and energetic performance, with Wild Mountain Nation offering a counterbalance as a more mellow affair, even slightly slowed-down from the studio version.

It helps that the band clearly believe in the music they are playing, throwing themselves passionately in to the performance. To Blitzen Trapper everything is a musical instrument to be played, right down to a toy bird whistle. And every instrument is played earnestly, extracting the musical essence to create rhythms and harmonies, even if the best way to achieve this is to strum a guitar with a tambourine.

The balloons and streamers decorating the microphone stands, along with the noise-makers and party-poppers used occasionally, are explained when it is revealed it is guitarist/vocalist Marty's birthday. He says he is nineteen and another band member covers the lie by stating that this is 'his DJ age'. It seems unlikely that this is a reference to The Mighty Boosh, in which the character Bollo makes a similar joke, until the end of the gig when the band say they'll be showing off their 'crimping' at the merchandise table. Either they are fans of the show after all or they are quite proud of their wire-joining skills.

The gig is excellent and highly enjoyable, with second band Absentee providing some more entertainment. Bltizen Trapper may be coming back to the UK in February, and I'll be looking out for the announcement so that I can reserve a ticket.

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Tags: 93 feet east, blitzen trapper, gig

World of Progressioncraft

After gaining a couple of levels last week I knew I wouldn't be entering the Outlands quite as soon as the quick progression would suggest, if only because my prepaid time had run out on the account. My new time card was going to take a few days to be delivered, but that was okay because I had plenty to keep myself entertained in the meantime, including EVE Online and the MST3K all-nighter I attended. Luckily, the new time card turned up by the weekend, so that I could continue to play with my US friends, as the weekends are pretty much the only times when time zones allow us to get together in-game.

Sapphire reached 57th level before my time had expired, which meant I needed only one more level before I could go to the Outlands. I started with some quick questing in Winterspring before a later guild run in to Blackrock Depths, where most of the party got to the stage of springing Marshal Windsor out of his cell with the Jail Break! quest, having retrieved the two pieces of lost information, but without returning to help Windsor escape. With about three-quarters of a level of rested XP and a whole lot of adventuring Sapphire reached 58th level.

The next morning saw me pick up an Outlands shield from the auction house for only ten gold that was almost twice as good as my own before heading down to the Blasted Lands to jump gaily through the Dark Portal in to Hellfire Peninsula, the starting area for the Outlands. I ran around picking up the initial quests and started to work out in which order I would complete them. I have been through Hellfire Peninsula with three other characters, and the rest of the Outlands with two, so I have a good idea of where to go and what to do. In this case, I based my decision on the quest rewards, trying to optimise my equipment for easier completion of subsequent quests, and opted to kill some demons to get a sword with an extra ten DPS over my current weapon. Better DPS would have me finishing quests more quickly than improved armour.

My adventuring continued apace, with quest rewards steadily replacing around half of my equipment. The new gear was not just better than what I was wearing but it was better for DPS and tanking than anything I could equip, so I could effectively replace two items with each single quest reward. There was only one quest I completed that didn't have a reward suitable for my class, and even then the platemail trousers intended for a paladin were a good improvement to my current pair, even when ignoring the spell damage and healing boost they gave. The several quests I rushed through also boosted my XP gains significantly and I was now 59th level.

Just as I was about to take a break I got invited to a pick-up group for Hellfire Citadel Ramparts, the first Outlands instance. I had joined the looking-for-group channel earlier but it was a few seconds after I left it that the request came. I thought it would be good to run through the Ramparts so agreed to be the tank. It was a little tricky, not so much because I was still a level or two below the ideal but because only half of my equipment was from the Outlands. All the inferior Azerothian gear affected my survivability to some extent and made me realise how difficult it would be to try to get through the Ramparts without some shiny new Outlands armour. Despite a wipe here and there, a couple because of a bad pull by me, we ploughed through the instance and defeated all three bosses.

A guild member popped on and noticed that I had got up to 59th level, asking how long before I reach 60th. He suggested that perhaps by dinner time I would make it, judging by my rate of progression, but he said this moments before I handed in the two Ramparts quests. The quests gained me 20,000 XP each, which may a nice gain for an Outlands quest but it's about a quarter of a level for a 59th level character. I ran out of Honour Hold to kill a couple of unfortunate nearby pigs quickly and dinged 60th level.

I made the ride to Shattrath City, with the plan of setting my hearthstone there and gain excellent access to all the capital cities, and instead got caught up as Sapphire decides between joining the Aldor or Scryer factions. With that eventually resolved I popped through the portal to Darnassus, visited the riding trainer and sabre seller, and emptied a total 560 gold out of my dainty purse. I am now the owner of a swift frostsabre. To end the day's adventures the guild went back to Blackrock Depths to rescue Marshal Windsor, after which we accompanied him through Stormwind City to the keep where he unmasked the drake Onyxia. It was quite a day!

I have made a great deal of progress with Sapphire recently, from reaching 50th level and tanking in the Sunken Temple two weeks ago to entering the Outlands and tanking in Hellfire Citadel Ramparts, ending up at 60th level. The advancement will slow down considerably now, with no more help from the 2.4 patch, but I have both Knifey and Sapphire adventuring in the Outlands with plenty to explore again.

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Tags: azeroth, blackrock depths, hellfire citadel, knifey, mmorpg, outlands, sapphire, world of warcraft

Sci-fi London Oktoberfest

For the first time since its inception the London Sci-fi Film Festival held a second event this year, separate from its main film festival. Called Oktoberfest, it was a smaller event than the main film festival in May but with all the features expected of the festival. Although I went to the main sci-fi film festival this year to see as much of the programme as I could manage, for Oktoberfest I decided only to attend the popular MST3K all-nighter.

The sci-fi film festival all-nighters are scheduled for the screens to open at around 11.30 pm, with the films starting at midnight, playing until 8 am, and ten minute intervals between each film. It sounds pretty tiring in itself, and trying to stay awake after having already watched twelve hours of films beforehand is almost impossible, hence only booking the all-nighter ticket this time for Oktoberfest.

Before the first feature film was shown, and whilst the festival director was formally introducing the two other all-nighter events—the ever-popular anime all-nighter, as well as a zombie-themed all-nighter this time—a couple of RiffTrax shorts were shown, both informational films. The first was about a Wonder Woman-type heroic safety woman, with some preamble about how aliens gave her power to detect children setting fire to their homes, or something like that. It was quite absurd and amusing. The second concerned the dangers of drugs and was a bit silly but the overall tone of the short, despite its alarmist stance, made it difficult to mock effectively.

The first feature film in the all-nighter was Plan 9 From Outer Space, with a Mike Nelson RiffTrax commentary. I have never seen the film itself and all I know about it is from having watched Tim Burton's Ed Wood, so I was struggling between trying to watch Plan 9 and listening to the commentary. The Nelson commentary was pretty good, although I think there were a few too many cheap shots about technological limitations when there is so much more to be made fun of about the film. It was certainly good to see the film on a big screen, at least.

The rest of the films were all MST3K episodes, with the second feature on the bill being Pumaman, featuring Donald Pleasance of all people. Pumaman is a superhero, and the film is about his origin. There is something about aliens giving someone some powers and there are Aztec priests involved, but first Pumaman has to be discovered. To find out who is destined to be the Pumaman some Aztec chap runs around London throwing people out of high-rise windows to their deaths until one luckily lands on his feet, proving he is cat-like and the chosen one. It's a wonderful system for finding a superhero. Pumaman then denies he is the Pumaman but only until he is trapped on the roof of a building by thugs and has to jump to safety. Donning the belt of the Pumaman he leaps down to the... no, that's not right, he starts flying, just like a real puma.

The rest of Pumaman sees the hero battle his enemies and defeat Donald Pleasance to retrieve the gold mask of domination, before returning to South America in a spaceship. It's just a shame that the aforementioned hero is Pumaman's sidekick Aztec priest, and Pumaman himself merely bounces around in the background during fights, pretends to be dead, and wears a superhero costume that could only be less convincing if his cape had been a bath towel. It was a joy to watch with Mike Nelson and the robots.

One of my favourite MST3K episodes was next, Pod People. Some dubious pop stars, a family living in the woods, and some poachers are all brought together when an Alf-lookalike turns up from space. It sounds like a complete mess and it is, with many hilarious moments either from the MST3K commentary or accidentally included by the filmmakers. Partly because I have seen the episode a dozen times before and partly because it was 4 am I had a bit of a nap during the film, missing about half of it.

I woke up for the intermission and got some fresh air and some ice cream. I was refreshed for the final film of the all-nighter, and it was Diabolik, the final ever MST3K episode created. The film itself can only have been a product of its time, completely absurd and with little technical or theatrical merit seen through contemporary eyes. The police want to catch Diabolik, a master criminal who can steal anything, however well guarded. The police lay a succession of traps to catch the thief, and he foils each one until the end. It's all a bit odd, as we are introduced to the protagonist as being a playboy-type character, but on his second caper of the film he kills guards in cold blood just to get some crappy necklace for his girlfriend.

The film was a mess, but the MST3K episode was rather good. The MST3K segments were actually pretty good as well, and centred around the Satellite of Love returning to Earth, where Nelson and the robots made it back home. And heading home seemed like a good idea to me too, as it was early morning, the Sun was up, and the city was starting to get busy. I hopped on a tube and managed to stay awake long enough to make it to bed, where I dozed for several hours during the day.

Free coffee and tea was available during intermissions throughout the night, along with limited cans of Red Bull and Purbeck ice cream. Red Bull seems a pretty sickly drink to me, partly because of all the stimulants it contains but mostly because it tastes of liquid sherbert, which doesn't go down too well with me. On offer alongside the normal Red Bull this time was Red Bull Cola, and I gave a can a try. I have to admit that Red Bull Cola tastes pretty good, if only because it doesn't taste like normal Red Bull. I have no idea if the drink helps with staying awake, particularly as I dropped off during Pod People, but it was an interesting drink.

There was also a goody bag handed out to everyone attending the all-nighter. The bag contained a pretty good haul. There were some Anchor Bay DVDs, with a Scanners trilogy box set, Children of the Corn trilogy box set, and the first Voltron collection set, along with Command and Conquer III and the Spore creature creator for the PC. Even if the sequels to the films are probably of dubious quality the originals are worth having, and I may be able to get Command and Conquer III running on my Mac using Crossover Games, if I get the urge to try it.

I had a good time at the Sci-fi London Oktoberfest MST3K All-nighter, and am looking forward to next year's main event.

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Tags: diabolik, mst3k, oktoberfest, plan 9 from outer space, pod people, pumaman, rifftrax, sci fi london

On clones and losing skill points

All the skill training I've been doing in EVE Online has been pushing the limits of my fragile brain. Well, okay, maybe not my brain but certainly that of my clone, and I am quite fond of my clone, she's like a sister to me. It is time to upgrade my clone status again. I pop in to the local medical facility and negotiate a better grade of clone so that when—for it is more of a certainty than a possibility—my ship is destroyed, shortly followed by my pod, and I am left as a frozen corpse drifting in space my clone can be revived with all my skills up-to-date. A clone with suitable capacity retains all the skill points trained by the character up to the point of pod death.

I have previously wondered how this skill retention was programmed. Skill points tick up in real time, never stopping, and you can train in different skills at any time, swapping in and out at a whim whatever training takes your fancy. This must make tracking which skill points have been learnt a difficult problem, perhaps needing to log each and every skill point added to your character, because each skill point could feasibly, if highly unlikely, be put in to a different trained skill than the last. Not being a software programmer myself I am probably going to seem ignorant, yet am interested in working out how this might be achieved.

Looking at the problem from a different angle apparently solved the problem for me. Clones retain a defined number of skill points, and any points above that are lost. I realised that this creates neat milestones. Rather than record where each and every skill point is added all that needs to be recorded is a snapshot of the character at each clone grade. For example, once a character accumulates a total of 2,050,000 skill points, equivalent of a gamma grade clone, you take a snapshot of the character's skills. Should the gamma clone need to be revived you revert the character's skills to that snapshot. This reduces the burden of data collection to that of only needing to store one snapshot per grade of clone for each character.

I felt rather chuffed having worked this out, which is why I was somewhat deflated when I read Winged Nazgul's post mentioning that on pod death skill points get lost randomly, starting with any skills trained to level V. On reflection, I don't think the method I came up with is a poor solution, more that randomly losing high-level trained skills is more of a penalty for pod death than losing the most recently trained skills. It encourages maintaining an up-to-date clone, which requires visiting a medical facility on occasion, otherwise the frequent life-or-death engagements of New Eden become a much more risky endeavour.

It was good to think about how I would have solved the problem as well as find the solution and ponder why that one was chosen.

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Tags: clone, eve online, penny ibramovic

Getting to Jita

There have been many times where I have wanted to stay away from Jita because of the problems caused by the sheer number of ships in the system. But however much I am able to stay away from the system there is the occasional reason to visit the busiest market I know in the galaxy. Entering Jita is a good idea when wanting to buy or sell items in the market, for an obvious example.

The new autopilot navigation feature to avoid Jita automatically when calculating flight paths, a feature I was looking for recently but wasn't yet available, makes piloting around the busy system a doddle. It may affect the navigation systems in unforeseen ways, though. When wanting to buy extra cargo hold space I headed towards Jita whilst examining the market prices. Approaching the Jita stargate in Perimeter, I was surprised to see how many more jumps I needed to make to get to the adjacent system.

Luckily, it seemed that a navigation system was trying to work out how I could get to Jita whilst avoiding it, throwing itself in to a recursive loop, as jumping through the stargate took me in to Jita in a single jump. It would have been interesting, if somewhat inconvenient, if instead Jita had been entirely displaced to be two billion jumps away in an attempt dissuade capsuleers from clogging up the system. No doubt there would still be several hundred capsuleers trading, scamming, and complaining of lag at all times of the day even if that were the case.

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Tags: autopilot, eve online, jita, mmorpg, penny ibramovic

The Duke Spirit at the Astoria

I made it to a gig! The weather was even a bit grotty, but I had a ticket and ignored the devil sitting on my shoulder telling me I'd prefer another night in. I headed in to London fairly early, to have a bit of a wander and catch a bite to eat, an enticing treat to encourage my attendance. This meant I got to the venue early, before the first support act even, but it allowed me to get a good spot at the front near the stage.

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the Astoria as a venue any more. I used to think it was one of the better venues in London, and whether I was mistaken through inexperience or it has deteriorated in relation to other venues I'm not sure. It seems to be a dingy and cramped venue, one without any style. Getting to the Astoria early gave me the opportunity to see it better without a horde of people in the way and it didn't look so bad, although it certainly wasn't an exciting place to be. Even so, there is quite a big stage offering plenty of opportunity to see the bands.

It's a shame then that the sound was so poor during the sets of both support bands, with an overpowering bass that masked most of the guitars and quite a lot of vocals. I wasn't optimistic about the sound quality during The Duke Spirit's set, but it turned out to be quite good. I suppose only the main act had a sound set-up. I'm not sure it made much difference overall, as I wasn't terribly impressed by either support band from what I heard. I quietly passed the time before The Duke Spirit came on stage.

For some reason I procrastinated about getting The Duke Spirit's second album, Neptune, apparently trying to convince myself that the band's first album was a fluke. Yet whenever I listen to Cuts Across the Land, the bonus album Souvenirs of outtakes and demo tracks, or their mini-album Roll, Spirit, Roll, I not only enjoy the music but find songs that I rate highly. On top of that, the band's singer, Liela Moss, has a wonderful voice that whilst perhaps isn't like a delicate songbird has a distinctive quality that can produce some powerful vocals. After this realisation I picked up Neptune and found that there is plenty to like.

On stage, The Duke Spirit bashed out some excellent songs. Quite early on the band plays my favourite songs, Hello to the Floor and Wooden Heart, making me quite the happy kitty. And the pleasure just keeps on coming, with Stubborn Stitches also making me bounce a little and the happy pop of My Sunken Treasure cannot help but bring a smile to my face, to name two more obvious highlights.

The music is invigorating and occasionally intoxicating, with Liela charismatically stirring the audience, which is odd only because there could feasibly be only her on stage. There are six band members in total and yet the others seem almost ethereal, on stage yet indistinct from it. Perhaps it is simply the glamour and energy that Liela exudes that causes this effect, because however much the other members try to stand out they are outshone by the singer. Even so, they most certainly all combine together to create a powerful whole.

The band come back for an encore and thrill everyone with a few more songs before heading backstage for the night, and the rest of us file out of the Astoria to find that it's no longer raining. It was an excellent gig, and a splendid night out.

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Tags: astoria, gig, the duke spirit