Tag: henge

Strange Days Indeed, at The Barge on HoneyStreet

Earthlings and all other organic lifeforms with a taste for the occult, fortean and general  weirdness are heading to The Barge at HoneyStreet the first weekend of September for the return of Strange Days Festival. You risk spontaneous combustion if you don’t too….

If you felt an alien autopsy, some alpine shape-shifters or the neohermetic order of Kyballic philosophy were unfortunately missing from your usual festival haunts, this might just be for you and your spirit guide.   

A wildly Wyrd weekend specially crafted for fans of forteana and unexplained phenomena, Strange Days covers the entire weekend with weirdness, esteemed speakers, cosmic cabaret, and some mindblowing music. As of last year, the most powerful tractorbeam musically arrives from intergalactic visitors Henge, with their jazzy psychedelic space-rock rave everyone wants to be abducted by.

Star of the hidden camera prank show Trigger Happy TV, the man with the giant phone Dom Jolly also headlines, and there’s an array of speakers, and other bands, including Calne’s own masters of comedic metal, the chelonaphobic Real Cheesemakers, who might/might not play from inside the belly of a sperm whale.

Indie experimentalists Quatermass III are also playing, known for blending glam-tinged experimentalism, “folk-horror” themes, and electronic textures. And Novum Wo, an experimental electronic artist blending distorted glitch, IDM, and sample-based sounds with Medieval, Arthurian, and contemporary industrial aesthetics.

There’s the unmistakable band Dogshow, on a voyage to explore how music can be experienced differently, by traversing genre-fluid astral planes whilst dressed as poodles. The Quantum Mechanics’ paranormal podcasters go live, Bob Fischer and Stephen Brotherstone resurrect all your disturbed childhood TV memories simultaneously, while Jonathan Downes goes on the trail of Mexican Vampires, and past president of the British UFO Research Association Lionel Fanthorpe talks about close encounters.

I’d like to say I’m only dipping my little toe into the dark waters of Strange Days, as there’s so much more to discover, but the minds of the followers of the event might meander onto the argument it’s a vestigial structure, leftover from our tree-dwelling ancestors, while podiatrists interject, maintaining the little toe is still functional and significantly aids in balance and weight-bearing, and we’ll have a battle of medical curiosities on our multi-fingered, prehensile organs.

Strange Days is on the weekend of the 4th-6th September, when the nights draw in, and we get closer to the spirit world. It’s at the Barge at HoneyStreet so it’d be rude not to camp, which is included in the ticket. Tickets are a 130 of your Earth coins, with discounted rates for kids. From HERE and beyond……

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Strange Days Festival Brings Brian Blessed and Henge to The Barge on HoneyStreet in September

With your standard festivals two-to-a-penny, some consisting of not much more than a bloke with a guitar in a pub selling undercooked and overpriced hotdogs, folk are hunting for the unique and often quirky exceptions. Accept The Barge at HoneyStreet always goes the extra mile as a fact. With camping and weekly events so good it’s like a little festival there most of the time, and their homemade HoneyFest still looming on our calendar this September one caught both my eyes and ears; it’s not just unique, it’s otherworldly…..

Our legendary and beloved Barge Inn, long considered a nexus for crop circles, cosmic curiosity, and canal-side wonder, will host the inaugural Strange Days Festival, a bold new gathering of curious minds, music, and mystery; intrigued huh?!

And leading the charge into the unknown? They’re truly blessed to have none other than the inimitable Brian Blessed, Britain’s booming-voiced national treasure. As a headline speaker on the Saturday afternoon, Blessed, known for his larger-than-life presence and deep fascination with both earthly and cosmic exploration, not to mention his own real-life cryptid investigations, is surely worth the ticket stub alone. If “Gordon’s alive,” let’s hope he’s not moored at the Barge in September!

“Strange Days Festival is a celebration of the unexplained, rooted in the Fortean tradition: a space where the strange is taken seriously, but not solemnly,” organiser Matt Page of Area 51 explained, and he should know. Area 51 Design provides world-class performances, costumed characters, and cutting edge themed decor to events worldwide, from Glastonbury to the Seychelles.

I had a gander at their Facebook page and was left in awe at their quality bizarre installations, pioneers in this art movement to create feasts for the eyes of festival-goers. But back to Strange Days, indeed.

There’s talks and panels on cryptozoology, folklore, the paranormal and other such shenanigans. This includes legendary underground cartoonist Hunt Emerson, an inspiration to me in my scribbling days of yore, cryptozoologist Richard Freeman, Ian Simmons, editor of Fortean Times, and various other podcasters, artists, authors and researchers.

The festival’s ethos invites attendees to question the world around them, with curiosity, critical thinking, and a sense of cosmic humour. But we’ve only just got started, for when day turns to night, the mystery turns to music. With an electrifying line-up of live bands, DJs and performance art, our interstellar heroes Henge headline. 

If you’ve not witnessed their high-energy, intergalactic spectacle before, what planet are you on? I trekked to The Cheese and Grain to investigate them, here’s my take on it, and the bonkers support I mentioned, Paddy Steer is also playing Strange Days. With their message of peace, rave, and galactic unity, Henge are the perfect sonic ambassadors for the spirit of Strange Days.

Plus, naturally, if QTV’s Quentin Smirhes and Comfrey aroused your unnatural senses and turned your head towards social distancing worm helmets during lockdown, you’ll be concerned Sean Reynard will be there, along with Calne’s Real Cheesemakers, with or without their tortoise.

“This isn’t a conspiracy circus or a sci-fi cosplay,” Matt promises. “It’s a space for real inquiry, meaningful discussion, and a very good time. We’re bringing together the serious and the surreal, the cerebral and the celebratory.” Okay I get that, but you know those human fans of Henge will bring the plasma ball hats anyway!!

If aliens are to visit us, this is surely the best weekend to do so. Therefore I’m going above and beyond our usual local network, calling all galactic lifeforms, space cadets and fortean fans, for this, on our doorstep, looks more like a porthole to another world rather than the typical half-baked efforts at a festie!

Strange Days Festival is at The Barge on HoneyStreet from 5th to 7th September 2025. Tickets and info HERE, or at your nearest interstellar space port, located near Alpha Centauri.

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Alien Invasion in Frome; Henge at The Cheese & Grain

Two people asked me in Frome what the music scene was like in Devizes. I replied it’s great, but by comparison it’s conventional, and this was prior to witnessing the sublime close encounter which was Henge…..

Before you read further, note, I use the word “weird” as a compliment. But yes indeedy, those friendly aliens, who take the term space-rock literally, landed their interstellar craft at Frome’s glorious centrepiece The Cheese & Grain last night for an eccentric, electric showdown of universal proportion. It was, in short, out of this world.

Excited about catching Henge live after fondly reviewing their album Journey to Voltus B in January, it was every bit as enthralling as I’d have imagined. The Cheese was brimful of kindly weirdos akin to the rooftop scene in the popcorn-munching abomination that is Independence Day; other than no one punched an alien like Will Smith! From aspiring space cadets to ageing hippies and middle-aged ravers, Henge remotely charged their plasma ball hats and casted a musical tractor beam over them, compulsing them to dance.

With phasers set to fun, Henge launched their wild show much like the energetic take off sequence of their latest album, and I pondered if they plotted to play out the album and be done with it, as is a common occurrence for established earthbound bands; not a chance, us humans were bequeathed a cosmic, extraterrestrial proportioned party.  

There’s a space journey narrative to the album which includes an Orb-esque plodding ambient period of hypersleep, a convenient opportunity for them to avoid, and divert the live journey to play some past album tracks, to keep the show’s pace consistent. These aliens of superior knowledge and proficiency made a wise choice, the place was positively throbbing.

Here’s the music which should’ve been playing in the Cantina scene of Star Wars. Here’s the music which would’ve caused both Miles Davis and Eat Static to have seizures. It’s jazzy, uptempo electronic skullduggery somewhere between prog-rock and trance techno, perhaps, or rather, in a field of their own playful invention.

Yet to pigeonhole it would take a textbook of notes. Henge are toytown, rave vaudeville, a guitar circus in space; they’re alien, unique and clearly on a higher plane of existence. The beauty of them is, they want to share it with you, lovingly. As a spectator you are welcomed on their, what’s best described as, an encapsulating musical space trip.

They analysed our planet, took a murky sample of the River Frome, and advised on the best path for the future of humankind; seemingly to demilitarise and direct its funding towards either ecological revitalisation or space colonisation, and they mastered it hilariously with a peacenik singalong finale.

But they did so as they did with everything, an uplifting sonic musical experience, the likes I’ve never seen before, and I’ve raved with glow sticks at Longleat’s UFO Club, partied worldwide, done, dusted and worn the T-shirt out of many a groundbreaking festival. This was on another planet, truly fantastic; please abduct me again sometime soon!

I’ve seen some weird street theatre in my years on this planet, but I awoke this morning, trying to recollect if I’d ever seen any musical band as weird as Henge. I’d like to say I hadn’t, but an earth half-hour prior I witnessed the support act.

A rib-tickling one-man-band Mancunian hedge monkey called Paddy Steer, who, dressed in the single-most bizarre illuminated space-wizard costume ever, delighted us with a set of experimental percussion and low-fi fluctuations, the likes you’ve never heard before. If Henge owned the mothership, Paddy was his own microsatellite, orbiting a stratosphere of his own mind-bending imagination, and it was as equally mind-blowing as it was hilarious and engagingly original. 

Paddy Steer has found a new level of eccentricity. They broke the mould when they built this alien Gandalf come Frank Sidebottom, on a mushroom journey to Lala Land with S Clay Wilson, and his music is inspired by the fable of it. Making the Mad Professor seem sane, he kept a perfect instrumental harmony as his decorative kit wobbled and a billion and one leads dropped out of their ports, much to the frustration of the sound engineer, but with nonchalant precision and scratch of his wizard beard, Paddy amused the audience by continuing nonetheless, profoundly. It was something to behold and impossible to wipe the smile off your face until Paddy had packed up and returned safely back to Discworld.

Together they made for the kind of fantastically bizarre gig you’ll never find in Devizes, unless you intoxicated yourself with mushrooms and imagined the whole thing. It remains to be fact, Frome is the diverse local centre for counterculture and the eccentrically creative; Henge and Paddy fit like a glove, if The Ozric Tentacles were born here. But it was my second night in Frome, after a Dad’s taxi adventure saw me drop the kids off at the Cheese for Lucy Spraggan on Thursday, a kind of Gen Z Lily Allen.

Lucy Spraggan on Thursday, local rural skullduggery with The Wurzels on Friday, and space adventuring rave circus aliens Henge on Saturday, The Cheese & Grain is punching above Frome’s weight. To trek elsewhere in the town might not be as bustling, but certainly doesn’t disappoint. From the Merlin Theatre to The Sun and 23 Bath Street, entertainment options are vast here, but when in Frome, I did as the Fromans and found solace while waiting for the kid’s gig to end, at the Rye Bakery by Frome station.

Here’s a hidden gem wine bar, pizzeria and generally cool hangout away from the live music tourist trail, hosting music Thursday and Saturday nights, in which our own Jon Amor Trio appear on the 24th. For our entertainment on this particular Thursday some groovy modern jazz was supplied proficiently by a quartet called Fushal. They were wonderful, the whole scene is, I might relocate and call this blog Fromzine, if only those aliens of Henge would land here again!     

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Henge Journey to Voltus B, Via Frome’s Cheese & Grain; Abduct Me!

If I’m considering reviewing worldwide music again, why stop with this planet?! Though I’ve reasoned two tenacious links to mention this madcap Scottish interstellar outfit; one, their tour lands them at Frome’s Cheese and Grain on Saturday April 19th, and two, they’re called Henge, and as Wiltshire houses the most famous one of them, that’ll do!

Why am I so keen to mention them? It’s the challenge of summing up something completely unique. It requires a gaping pigeonhole, comical jazzy post-rave space-rock probably best suits; bonkers, in a word. Someone shared a video of them headlining the Shambala Festival and I was abducted, though while I’ve not listened to their previous three albums, we’ll launch off with their forthcoming album Journey to Voltus B, set for release on January 31st, exactly ten years to the day from when the band gave their first live performance on planet Earth.

This is truly out of this world fantastic, and what should’ve been playing at the Cantina in Star Wars. It’s like Scott Joplin came after Eat Static, or Miles Davis was a member of Hawkwind. If Funki Porcini met Altern 8, or Philip K Dick was a guest on Yo Gabba Gabba, it’s the sum of all these parts yet it’s none of them, because it’s alien, pinching Jeff Wayne’s stash for testing purposes and stranding him on an uninhabited Plutoid!

Over seven certifiably insane but glorious tunes you travel to Voltus B with the half-druid mutant electronic spacerockers, the planet of an advanced civilisation with a looming atomic future, and you get to decide their fate!

Side B of the vinyl version of the album has been innovatively cut in ‘parallel groove’ with two tracks, both called Power of the Atom, pressed concentrically to each other on the same side of the record. While one track tells the bleak fate of Voltus B after its inhabitants use their newfound knowledge of atomic power to make weapons, with the planet annihilated in war and entering a nuclear winter; the other tells the story of the planet’s future after the aliens decide to use their scientific discovery to create limitless clean energy through Nuclear Fusion. 

But you are supplied with the mission brief enroute. Ascending is the opening tune and first single, which is out now and available on all platforms. It blasts off without waiting for you to lock into position. Then it’s a Slingshot around Mars to get us on our way, a post-punky robotic vocal track with equal pace, which falls dramatically by the third tune as we enter Hypersleep. As it suggests, this is the dreamy ambience of the Orb, and you await for landing, in audio bliss. Descending next, and we’re off again with the crazy uptempo nut-filled jazzy explosion of synths. You’re welcomed to Voltus B like it was a nineties free party, then comes the concluding narrative, like Edward Packard’s Choose Your Own Adventure book series, on acid!

Of the new single, Henge frontman and crew captain, Zpor, explains, “with this new single Ascending we are setting the scene for our latest adventure into space. As we blast off from Earth, it becomes clear that YOU, the listener, are among our crew for this high-stakes voyage, where the fate of an entire planet is literally in your hands.”

This is, without doubt, mind-blowingly progressive, and highly entertaining, especially for stoners, Trekkies and kids of all ages alike, and I tick all those boxes. It’s child-friendly psychedelic vaudeville, the Jetsons meet the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, in Lego.

This new favourite thing made me think about the end of ET, and why Elliot couldn’t go with him, because if music is like this elsewhere in the universe and I was Elliot, I’d have packed glow sticks into my backpack and not looked back at Earth once!

 In support of their latest campaign, HENGE are embarking on an extensive run of UK shows planned for 2025. Join the band at the following locations and venues:

HENGE TOUR DATES

UK (with Tirikilatops)

14/03/25 – G2 Garage, Glasgow

15/03/25 – The Grand, Clitheroe

20/03/25 – The Parish, Huddersfield

21/03/25 – The Drill, Lincoln

22/03/25 – The Tivoli, Buckley

27/03/25 – Castle and Falcon, Birmingham

28/03/25 – Esquires, Bedford

04/04/25 – Sidney and Matilda, Sheffield

05/04/25 – Brudenell, Leeds (matinee & evening)

11/04/25 – Boileroom, Guildford

12/04/25 – Forum, Tunbridge Wells

17/04/25 – Arts Club Loft, Liverpool

18/04/25 – Marrs Bar, Worcester

19/04/25 – Cheese and Grain, Frome

20/04/25 – Cornish Bank, Falmouth

23/04/25 – South Street Arts Centre, Reading 

24/04/25 – Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis

25/04/25 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff

26/04/25 – Trinity Centre, Bristol (matinee & evening)

27/04/25 – Barrelhouse, Totnes (matinee & evening)

02/05/25 – Concorde2, Brighton

03/05/25 – Wedgewood Rooms, Portsmouth