karohemd | Food, friends and gigs

After being rather useless all day yesterday (the week of feeling crappy and not having enough sleep finally took its toll and I slept til midday), I managed to miss the train I had intended to take (but it would have been delayed, anyway, so no harm done, bloody "fatalities") but still arrived at the N1 centre before everyone had gathered. Of our group I only knew

psychokatuk,

steve_a23 and

jonny_eol. As usual for me, I've forgotten all the other names, anyone care to help? EDIT: People included girls from Germany (

skorpionuk) and South Africa (

taryn_vee) and

greeba (who knew

angusabranson via a housemate). Small world indeed.
After chatting about anything and everything, a lovely seafood stirfry and even better wild berry sorbet, we headed over to Slimes a bit before 8 only to find that the doors had just been opened so we weren't really late. Wandered around a bit and bumped into

owdbetts (who seemed to be the only Camgoth there),

kneeshooter (I feel your pain) and finally

stellalive (one day we'll manage to exchange more than a few words outside a noisy club/gig).

angusabranson turned up later, too.

Things were running late which didn't bode well for me being able to see it all before I had to leave but RBN eventually took the stage and were surprisingly good. For some reason I had expected something more trad goth, not synthpoppy EBM but it worked quite well and I enjoyed them much more than I did, say Frozen Plasma at Infest or V2A at Black Celebration. Good response from the crowd already which was probably down to them playing on home ground (Steve being the main Slimelight DJ) so all was good.

Rotersand finally got on at 10 and took off immediately with Truth is Fanatic merging into Almost Violent. The setlist was similar to the one at Infest but in a different order and of course Exterminate, Annihilate, Destroy was the highlight. Cool to see Rascal playing guitar during One Level Down, too which added just a little more to the whole experience. Sadly, I had to leave after Lost (very promising indeed for any new material coming along) as I really didn't fancy the long and uncomfortable train/bus combo which would have taken me into Cambridge at 2:40.
Still, it was worth it and it only speaks for Rotersand's enthusiasm, charisma and ability to work a crowd that they managed to bring even a crap venue (hardly any light on stage and the room being narrow and long with obstacles in between) like Slimelight to boiling point.

angusabranson mentioned that it was almost sold out in advance and there were only a few tickets left at the door. Very cool indeed.

Was very lucky with tubes so made it to my train with plenty of time but it's better safe than sorry.

owdbetts just made it in time, too, having stayed a bit longer so we spent the journey home catching up a bit.

Sorry to all those of you I didn't get a chance to say good-bye to! :o(