Check it out!

There is a fantastic night of music and madness going on there, with more steampunkiness than you can shake your silver-topped cane at.

Once again, we’re going to be taking advance copies of SteamPunk Magazine’s issue #7 with us (don’t worry, after this weekend you’ll be able to get it online too!) and will be generally shooting the breeze with anyone who stands by our stall for long enough. That said, the party goes on until 4am (or possibly 5am, we’ve just heard that the clocks actually go forwards that night) so don’t be surprised if we have all the appearance of extras from ‘Pride and Prejudice with Zombies’ by the end of the night.

More info at the White Mischief website.

Look forwards to seeing you there!

The 'Daddy Long Legs' or Electric Sea Railway at Brighton in the late 1800's

After organising the Second Ever SteamPunk Magazine Steampunk Soiree in Oxford last year, we wanted to get our teeth into doing something else, and now we are!

Over the weekend of 19th and 20th June this year, SteamPunk Magazine will be taking over the Little Marlborough Theatre in Brighton for the SteamPunk Magazine Seaside Spectacular. The weekend promises to be a typical bawdy weekend by the seaside with a distinctly steampunk flavour, with competitions, music, variety performances, dance lessons, burlesque, stalls, juggling, comedy, and whatever else we can manage to cram into the place.

More information (and tickets) can be found on our Events page.

As we are limited by the size of the venue, we are only able to sell 150 tickets for this event so if you want to come along then you had better get in quick!

We took with us some special, pre-release copies of the new issue #7 (which is due out at the end of the month) as well as all of the back issues that we could cram into a vintage suitcase as we made our trip up to the Great North.

As could be expected, there were a whole host of made, built and hacked things on display, including numerous exhibits of electronics and digital crafts, but also including some far more steampunky affairs. There was a fire-breathing, remote-controlled horse that was seemingly cobbled together from scrap and found materials, the Newcastle Crafts Mafia decorating the whole of the city centre with guerilla knitting, a set of three very large (and very loud!) musical Tesla coils that were played the weekend through by members of the public, drunken robots, found, recycled and upcycled crafts and jewellery, and an interactive musical performance that was beautiful, breathtaking and utterly haunting.

Also in attendance were UK musical juggernauts Ghostfire, who played two sets to the enthusiastically confused people of Newcastle, and gave us the opportunity to waltz in the smallest space known to humanity.

In short: we met a whole host of wonderful people over the course of the weekend, had some wonderful discussions, and got to explain steampunk more times in the space of two days than we believed was possible.

We strongly encourage you to click through the photos in the gallery below for more information about what we got up to over this glorious weekend in a truly wonderful city.

If this weekend is anything to go by, then we will most assuredly be coming back again next year!

Yes, we’re winding up the clockwork horses and stoking up the steam-powered salesman, ready to get out into the real world this March.

On the 13th and 14th March, you can find us behind a table at the Maker Fair;

And on the 27th March we’ll be manning and womanning a stand at White Mischief.

We’ll have a full compliment of magazines for sale–including the brand new Issue #7. Come and find us, say hello and paw the merchandise. We’ll be expecting you!

The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing
From left to right: Marc Burrows (bass), Ben Dawson (drums), Andy Heintz (vocal/saw), Andrew McNeill (vocal/guitar)

Despite half of the tube system shutting down for the weekend (and despite the fact that we managed to get ourselves completely lost in the separate time-zone that is King’s Cross St Pancras station), this last weekend we (albeit eventually) managed to find our way to the Cross Kings pub for the London Steampunk Spectacular.

The Cross Kings could probably best be described as an ‘intimate’ setting for the three bands, various traders and two hundred steampunks that were crammed into it, but that certainly didn’t hurt the atmosphere or dampen anyone’s spirits.

In attendance were both Ghostfire and The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing — two bands that have been making big names for themselves in the developing British steampunk scene over the last year. But then we also had Savile Row, a band that no one seemed to know anything about, and who hadn’t played together in ten years. We were also fortunate enough to have the wonderful Robert Rankin as the master of ceremonies (and who duly entertained us with a mixture of wit, singing in the style of Dick Van Dyke, and the poetry of Aleister Crowley), not to mention Lady Raygun, whose steel drum performances are quickly becoming a staple at UK steampunk events.

Savile Row were first to take to the stage, and despite having split up ten years ago, they proved to be a genuinely pleasant surprise. Not only were they incredibly tight for a band that had only rehearsed two or three times in the last decade, but do you know what else? They were also really good. In fact, if anything they were even better than the ten-year-old recorded material on their MySpace page suggested. Hopefully the gig gave them a taste for playing together again and we shall be seeing more of them in the near future.

Next up were the highly-lauded Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. The Men are pretty much always and without fail the best steampunk band that you will ever see live, but on the night of the London Steampunk Spectacular they were on fire, and most definitely in full funny, sarcastic, angry, anti-imperialist voice. A little later on, we dragged the four of them upstairs by their grubby little collars to chat about their music, steampunk and the upcoming album, and you’ll be able to catch that interview (as well as a review of the aforementioned album) in the next issue of the magazine.

Ghostfire were our headline act, and as always turned out a consummate performance and worked their magic on the crowd. They also performed some new material including ‘The Last Steampunk Waltz’ (which will shortly be released as a single, although there was some argument amongst the band as to when exactly that will be!), and also a song that was described as Russian dance with added drinking.

The stalls were arranged by the Victorian Steampunk Society‘s Major Tinker and Lady Elsie, and while there was only (very!) limited space in the (very!) peculiar venue (which, granted, was a delightfully odd mixture of the period and the psychedelic, with some pretty awesome people working on the door and behind the bar), everyone made the best of it. As ever, it was wonderful to see such a fantastic selection of the handmade, handcrafted and handsewn on display.

All in all, a pretty damned fantastic night was had by all. As the UK’s steampunks slowly venture further away from their internet connections and start to form the beginnings of a community over here, we’re absolutely certain that we shall be having more nights like this one, too.

More information can be found at http://www.fabric-ation.co.uk/index.htm.

Having been on the move (and on the road) since the week before the soiree, it’s taken me a little while to pull together all of the video that we managed to get over the weekend of the SteamPunk Magazine Soiree (not to mention that we actually had to send the camera away to have the footage transferred onto DVD first – no one ever accuses us of living in the modern age!), but we have finally managed to cut something together.

Above is a short video of highlights from over the course of the weekend (anyone who was actually there and would like a copy of the full, unedited video, drop me a line at allegra [at] steampunkmagazine [dot] com and I’ll happily provide you with it), and below you can see a number of photos taken by our own Cal Wimsey, as well as some from those who attended the soiree and have been kind enough to let us post them.

The event itself went really rather well indeed (despite a small number of hiccups) and we are already beginning to draw up plans for another event (hopefully including steam cars and a SteamPunk play!) that will, with any luck, be taking place next June.

We all had lots of fun looking around the first exhibition of steampunk artwork at the Oxford Museum of the History of Science (not to mention admiring the truly vast collection of astrolabes and astrological equipment that they have there) before moving on to have a look around the Christmas markets in the freezing cold. The next day Lady Jillian Spagthorpe (aka SPM’s own Carolyn Dougherty) tried her best to teach us the three dances that we would need for the evening’s performance – and although we here at SPM have to admit to being a little bit left-footed, she was very patient with us!

The Monday night saw three of steampunk’s finest bands performing. Congratulations go especially to the wonderful Sunday Driver, who battled through traffic and adversity and still managed to arrive in time to open the gig – not withstanding their wonderful interpretation of the Regency set dance ‘The Dressed Ship’. As far as we are concerned, having a whole bunch of people in big boots and goggles dancing to a piece of early 19th century music being played on tabla and sitar is exactly what steampunk should be about.

The stage was then handed over to Ghostfire, who treated us to their infamous waltz and were then treated to a good laugh at the expense of the Steampunk Magazine crew as we stumbled our way through a polka to their ‘Vaudevillian’.

Finally, all hell was unleashed in the form of The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. Many headbanging-induced-headaches were had by all, and we have to say that – having heard the Men perform twice now – we are looking forward to the release of their debut album with much anticipation. So much so, in fact, that you can look forwards to a special interview with them in issue #7, and perhaps an extra special treat besides…

Many thanks to everyone who made the event possible. It warmed our hearts (and on a very cold day, too) to have so many of you offer us a hand over the two days of the soiree. Now that, my friends, is most definitely what steampunk is all about.

Our gratitude goes out to all the bands and venues, and my own personal thanks especially to Carolyn Dougherty, Dylan Fox, Cal Wimsey and Andrew O’Neill for all their help and assistance. Without them, the soiree would never have happened.

Keep upping tha punx!

Allegra

Forget flying cars; now that we’re officially in the future, I want my dirigible. Wishing you all a delightful evening of ringing in the new decade and a fantastic 2010!