PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS

Here's the latest merch from the mill:

50 minipigs (10 beige, 40 pink) for the band PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS.

They are tiny. 2cm long and 1cm from ear to ear. They have names. Horrible pig-based puns, famous police officer names or just stupid wordplay. Here is the full list:

1. Boss Hogg
2. Lester Piggott
3. Starsky
4. Hamlet
5. Charley Boarman
6. Frank Furter
7. Abraham Lincolnshire
8. Pat Butcher
9. Loin Joint Silver
10. Magnum P.I.G.
11. Richard Bacon
12. Rodney Trotter
13. Pigasus
14. Nick Berry
15. Orson Walls
16. Leon Trotsky
17. Officer Dibble
18. Kevin Bacon
19. Benedict Cumberland
20. Crispin Crackling
21. Notorious P.I.G.
22. Colonel Mustard
23. Rumplepigskin
24. Piggles
25. Smokey Robinson
26. Richard Gammond
27. Taggart
28. Jimmy Savaloy
29. Stephen Fry-Up
30. Swiney Todd
31. Christopher Piggins
32. Gail Porker
33. Hamuel L. Backson
34. Shabba Shanks
35. Belly Furtado
36. Ham Solo
37. Penelope Pigsty
38. Spamela Hamderson
39. M.C. Hammer
40. Tom Shanks
41. Ian Pigslop
42. Justin Wiener
43. Ryan Piggs
44. Glenn Hamzig
45. Sean Pigpenn
46. David Hameron
47. Piglet Jones
48. Phil Jupigus
49. Captain Jean-Luc Pigard
50. Hogzilla

I sold a bunch at their debut gig and a few more to friends but the rest will be on sale at their next performance which is on the 15th of December 2012 at Hoults Yard in Newcastle. Details here.

Of Spire & Throne / Cromlech / Basic House

Here's a gig I've organised. It happens tomorrow as I write this. Here's a link to the Facebook event page if you're interested. Here's the info for everyone else:

Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings presents:
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Of Spire & Throne

Facebook / Bandcamp / Bigcartel

Scottish doom with a smear of sludge. Having supported Yob / Kongh / Dark Castle in Edinburgh, OS&T are a formidable force within the doomsphere. This is one of 3 dates on this particular tour, and a rare chance to see them headline an English venue. Listen to their latest release here.Top quality CDs and T-shirts will be on sale!

----With----

Cromlech

Facebook / Buy a tape

"Slow, loud music from Middlesbrough. For fans of large structures."

----And----

Basic House

Facebook / Soundcloud 

Drunk In Hell's Bish on a solo mission to blend dark crushing noise with blissful ambient techno.

----Plus----

DJ Reverend 33rpm selecting slow tunes between acts.

Facebook / Youtube 

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£3 entry, all cash goes direct to the performing artists.

I also carved this Grim-Mill rubber stamp from a cheap eraser so I can stamp people's hands on the way in.    

Bad for Business vol.1

Here's my latest scam.

A run of 12 business card CD-Rs featuring a track that is shorter than 4 minutes long. There will be 12 different artists in total, as and when they send me some nonsense.

Volume 1 was donated by the legendary Craig Measham. It looks like this:

The track is called Cheese Biscuits. As all the physical copies have been given away, you can download or stream the track for nowt.

When 12 different Bad for Business CD-Rs have been released, a compilation will be made available, somehow.

DJ

Recently I was (rather foolishly) asked to DJ at a gig by a man called Ted (formerly of Gary Marchant fame). The gig featured local doom wizards Bong and another former Gary member with his new project Neolithic. A night of slow, heavy drones.

As such, I decided to take it seriously for a change and play some real music by bands that actually exist. My playlist for the night started with a long one while we sorted out the sound, then continued like this:

1. Bossk - II (part 1 & part 2 - it's too long for a single Youtube video!)

2. Earth - Coda Maestoso in F(flat) Minor (Autechre remix)

3. Tuber - Smoked Up Notes

4. Dark Castle - Seeing Through Time

5. Manatees - VIII:XVI

6. Buzzov*en - Locked Up

7. Ramesses - Omniversal Horror

8. Pyramidion - Akkadian Undercore

9. The Wounded Kings - Gates of Oblivion

10. Om - Unitive Knowledge of the Godhead

11. Angelo Badalamenti - The Pink Room

12. White Hills - No Other Way

13. Grails - Doomsdayer's Holiday

14. Sleep - From Beyond

Links included where available so you can listen along and pretend you were there.

I had a bunch of other tunes lined up, but the thing with doom is that the tracks tend to be rather long. So I didn't get a chance to play any Black Math Horseman, VOM, Slomatics, Conan, Teeth of the Sea, Fog in the Shell, Humanfly, Espers, Pelican, Jackal-Headed Guard of the Dead, Nadja, Lazarus Blackstar, Gnod or Snowblood. I'm sure there'll be another time...

New Logo

Here is a revised version of the Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings logo. The old one was actually just a tiny sketch from a pocket notebook, and was only really used until I could find the time to do a proper logo. 

This version was drawn on A4 card using black ink via a wooden kebab skewer, my favourite medium. Initially it looked quite neat, but I added messy bits afterwards.

I will almost certainly be getting some shirts made featuring this design.

Crabsu

Crabsu was a tour van train of thought idea that reached its logical limit. A tribute to Texan black metal band Absu with crustacean worship thrown in for good measure. This stems from the word replacement game, in this case adding the word "crab" to existing band names.

They formed to play a one-off gig at The Borough in Sunderland on Friday the 5th of August 2011 alongside Burial and Gary Marchant. They had two practice sessions beforehand, and several of the members had never heard the source material before then.

The members are all active musicians in the north-east of England, playing in a wide variety of bands including Wodensthrone, Dawn of Chaos, The Axis of Perdition, That Hideous Strength, Risen Prophecy and Hesper Payne.

For this performance they came up with pseudonyms, which are listed here:

Crabathoth on vocals

Crabbadon hitting things

Crabbath on guitar

The Nameless Crustacean on bass

The Nipper on another guitar

The logo was influenced by the works of Away from Voivod, combined with the shape of a crab and the "C" and "U" looking quite pincer shaped. I sketched it out in pencil, then finished it with black ink via a wooden kebab skewer. It was screen printed onto T-shirts and patches for the gig.

The DVD of their performance was completed in December 2011 and is limited to 50 copies. The sleeves are printed and then cut, folded and glued by hand. The discs are surfaced with red sticky-back plastic and numbered underneath, near the centre hole. Here it is, alongside a patch:

DVDs, patches and shirts are currently available in the Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings shop.