Hello everyone. I've just signed up and am hoping to be active on this forum so I thought I'd be polite and quickly introduce myself!

I'm originally from England, but married my best friend from Illinois this June. In March this year we’d moved from Illinois to Sioux Falls as we were finding the Chicagoland area too expensive. Although we enjoy living here and it’s a good (relatively cheap) place to set up shop, we were slightly dismayed at the lack of anything resembling an alternative crowd, especially as we have previously lived near London and Chicago! I was delighted to stumble upon this site and find that the Twin Cities seem to have so much going on for dark culture. We're hoping to make a trip up for my birthday next weekend, and start coming down for the club nights every few weeks (as gas money and time allows).

Currently I mostly listen to goth and it’s various branches - though both of our tastes are far ranging (I’m on a big folk and medieval kick recently).
We’re looking forward to meeting the local crowd. I've read about the Elysium society which sounds just our cup of tea - so that's something else we'll be hoping to attend in the future.
Cheers for now, and hope to chin wag with “y’all”

James

Welcome to DTC!

Welcome, you sound like my type of Goth.

I'm more into the dark folk and medieval side myself these days. A really great streaming station is ancient.fm if you like "vintage" music. Really great stream.

I don't get out to clubs much at all due to my work schedule, playing in two bands and a general disdain for rubber-clothed disco parties.

Welcome to DTC!

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone.

Appreciate the tip there zom-zom, gonna give that station a belt right now!

Thinking of checking out Bondage A Go Go this Saturday... Looking around the board it seems people have mixed views on it, but I'll have to make my own mind up! Although if anyone knows of a better alternative for Friday/Saturday night - I'm all ears.

Welcome!

There are also burlesque shows going on this weekend, if you and your missus are interested: Abbie Rhode's Psychedelic Spectacle, 10pm Friday, Station 4 in St. Paul. $7 cover, or $5 if you buy ahead of time online (Our FB event has info).
Minneapolis Burlesque & Cabaret Social Club presents: Night of 1000 Madonnas on Saturday at the 400 Bar, Minneapolis. 10pm, $10 tix, presale avail. at various locations, probably (again, FB event has info).

I stage manage both these shows, by all means, come say hi to me if you decide to hit one of them up! I'll be the redhead in the bowler, running around like mad.

Thanks for the invite! It's definitely something we'd be interested in, I think this Saturday we're decided upon going to see Rasputina at First Avenue, followed by clubbing at Bondage A-Go-Go at Ground Zero.

I hope I have the venues right - if that's impractical for some reason I'd appreciate someone telling me!

welllllllcome, sir!

Not at all! GZ is right across the river from downtown. (~10 blocks?)

But note that Rasputina will be in 7th St Entry, NOT the First-Ave mainroom. That's a pretty, uhh, "intimate" venue, especially if you try to pack more than a hundred people into it. So get there early (8pm doors for this show) to stake out your turf if you want to actually SIT, in a place where you can see the stage.

You might like my band if you like dark acoustic folk. We have a Facebook page, The Quaking Bogge. Look it up if you like, nothing released yet and we've only played four shows so far.

We really like Death in June, Sol Invictus, Sonne Hagal.. etc. I'd like to know what other folk and medieval you dig.. I really like Faun and a lot of the European folk/medieval bands, plus of course Pentagle, Steeleye Span, Fotheringay, etc. etc.

Excellent, I’ll bear the information about Ground Zero in mind, I’m not actually a big Rasputina fan (at least, not yet) but it seems a good way of introducing myself to the town and possibly meeting up with some like-minded folk.

My wife is more into the Mittelalter and European stuff like Faun, Omnia etc. I’m a big traditional English folk fan, mostly this kind of thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNpODF9pquU – although really anything in the medieval ‘hey nonny-nonny’ type of vein I tend to enjoy! I checked out ancient.fm too – it’s now on my bookmarks bar.

Folk rock is also pretty great, Jethro Tull, Fairport convention etc. - I love Steeleye Span too, have seen them in my hometown of Canterbury quite a few times.
I checked out The Quaking Bogge (fantastic name btw) and so far I love what I’m hearing. Looks like you have quite a heathen lilt… I’m absolutely nuts on all that kind of stuff so I’d definitely be interested in coming to one of your shows in the future.

Thanks for the video link.. I love that sort of music too. Really great.

Cool.. I always wanted to go to Canterbury, I've only spent a lot of time in London, and a bit in Stratford upon Avon.

Thanks for the kind words regarding The Bogge.. the name comes from a local landmark, we changed the spelling to the olde version so as not to confuse in searches.
We're working on an EP and hopefully will have something finished by Winter Solstice.There is a Heathen aspect to us, and I'm somewhat involved in working with runes.

I do post here when we have a show.. hopefully we'll have a show in the Fall.

Yeah, I love all the folk-rock.. Ms. Zom is very into the Faun and Omnia style of things.. funny. I like it quite a bit too.

hippie.

Square.

Great! I'll be keeping an eye out for your upcoming shows.

Canterbury is very nice, especially if you're a history buff.

Anyone else have any fun plans this Saturday?

My "Fun Plans" for saturday is attending my 35th high school reunion. Huzzah.

Actually it should be fun, my class had around 100 in it, and many of them are cool.

I also like Steeleye Span. Yay.

Well we didn't go to see Rasputina in the end... On the drive over we realised that we didn't really like enough of their songs to warrant dropping the money, so we just went to The Front and Ground Zero instead... It was pretty cool, met some nice people (and some not so nice)... The 'S&M' show was... Interesting... I guess I'd expected something a little more salacious, but as I'm spoken for I wasn't particularly there for that anyway... Although I think the missus was disappointed by the lack of pain administered!

The ambience of Ground Zero and The Front was pretty great, and the staff were really nice and friendly. We didn't get to see as much of the city as we would have liked, though obviously we saw the North East, and we drove through the main part of the city on Sunday. Unfortunately the youth hostel we stayed at was in quite a grotty part, so I guess we have mixed feelings about the city generally. Hopefully we'll be back again soon and can get a more balanced view... Although I was pretty shocked when I saw my credit statement from the (relatively few) drinks we had, so that might be a while!

They are ace! Have you heard "Demon of the Well"? Pretty gothic!

i'll have to check out this ancient.fm as well - sounds like something i'd enjoy. bookmarked for future listening...

i'll also have to look up some of the other bands that have been mentioned. i listen to a lot of death in june and a little current 93, etc, but i know there is a hell of a lot more out there.
i've heard a little Faun and what i've heard, i've liked. and i completely forgot about Sol Invictus. i wrote them down a long time ago to check out and then misplaced my note.

I've been listening to Sonne Hagal actually, based on zom's recommendation... Not the usual kind of folk I listen too, but I'm developing a taste for it. I still can't get on with the vox of Sol Invictus :/

I can hang with Sol Invictus but it's not "easy" music.

Sonne Hagal is very sparse and of course very German. I really like their aesthetic and of course their association with runes.