Valentine Wolfe – Guardians of the Geekery

Episode 248: Music Week with Valentine Wolfe and The Extraordinary Contraptions

December 11, 2018 by giddygeeker

Bandcamp, En Absynthia, Geek Gala, Music Review, Music Week, The Extraordinary Contraptions, The Haunting of Mary Shelley, Valentine Wolfe

Episode 248!

FULL DISCLOSURE: This episode was supposed to be posted over a month ago, but unfortunately Giddygeeker has been battling with health issues and post-Gala fatigue. So we beg forgiveness!

For this music week, we reviewed The Haunting of Mary Shelley by Valentine Wolfe and En Absynthia by The Extraordinary Contraptions.

You can click the album name above to listen to each album on Bandcamp – or click the player below to listen to it right here!

Do you agree with our reviews? Comment below! #supportlocal

About Valentine Wolfe

(stolen from Bandcamp)

Two classically trained musicians combining ambient solo bass, brutal distortion, electronica, and 18th century opera to tell a story of the macabre.

The Haunting of Mary Shelley by Valentine Wolfe

<a href="http://valentinewolfe.bandcamp.com/album/the-haunting-of-mary-shelley">The Haunting of Mary Shelley by Valentine Wolfe</a>

About The Extraordinary Contraptions

(stolen from Bandcamp)

Part lover’s caress, part pugilist’s fist, songs of THE EXTRAORDINARY CONTRAPTIONS are sonic space-time adventures. This patent-medicine man, time-traveler, gentleman explorer, and madman advance the steampunk rock movement with 2012 album The Time Traveler’s Constant, employing danceable prog rock and Victorian aesthetics in genre-bending, aggressive-waltzing stories of steam and strife.

En Absynthia by The Extraordinary Contraptions

<a href="http://theextraordinarycontraptions.bandcamp.com/album/en-absynthia">En Absynthia by The Extraordinary Contraptions</a>

Originally recorded 10/24/18

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 248

Episode 199: MUSIC WEEK – Blibbering Humdingers and Valentine Wolfe

February 15, 2018 by giddygeeker

Podcast

Blibbering Humdingers, Braxton, Chuck, Fantastic Geeks and Where to Find Them, John Hartness, Kirsten, Music Week, Sarah, Scott, The Elegiac Repose, Valentine Wolfe

Episode 199!

For our first music week, we reviewed Fantastic Geeks and Where to Find Them by the Blibbering Humdingers as well as The Elegiac Repose by Valentine Wolfe. Author and writer John Hartness joins us as well – because, well, we love John too!

Please click on the links to listen to the album’s yourselves – we love both bands and hope you support them! #supportlocal

Originally recorded 1/31/18

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 199

Episode 165: Take 2 on Geeky Chic News with Emily Kramer

Episode 165! We talked about the last 2 weeks news and views with Emily Kramer of Emily Kramer Design. Emily also gave us a sneak peek in the world of Game of Thrones costuming as well as her upcoming appearance at this year’s Muggles Market and her new opportunity to go to New York Fashion Week!

This Week’s Topics Included:

News

RIP: John Heard, Sam Shephard
Valentine Wolfe Kickstarter Update
Tom Welling (Smallville) joins CW’s Lucifer
NASA posts Planetary Protection Officer position
Tom Holland Responds to Kirsten Dunst
Community Calendar Reminder

Guardables

Carol: Game of Thrones (Hot Pie), War of the Planet of the Apes, Valerian, B-Sides, Atomic Blonde
Matt: The Stranger in the Woods, #MakeMineMilkshakes, Star Trek
Joey : ImagiCON
Tiffany: Lady MacBeth, Girls’ Night, Younger
Emily: Facebook AI shutdown

About Emily Kramer

In Emily’s own words:

At age 11, Emily was Laura Ingalls Wilder in the backyard plays of her suburban Chicago neighborhood. Except she wasn’t just an actress, she also made the costumes for everyone on the cast. They were about what you’d expect from an 11-year-old who learned to sew from her grandmother.

Since then, Emily has had many years of professional costuming & fashion design experience. She has costumed for the Royal Court at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and for historical re-enactors of many eras, a Twig the Fairy DVD, short film, and theater.

Having shown regular modern fashion collections on Chicago and Charlotte runways, Emily keeps her flair for the dramatic, leaning toward red carpet and formal gowns. Her passion for recycling and eco-friendliness got her involved with designing dresses out of recycled materials. She designed dresses from leftover flyers from Opera Carolina to help promote The Barber of Seville, Pagliacci, Rigoletto (opening Feb 2018) and their Opera Recycles program. She is headed to New York Fashion Week in September with Opera Carolina to show her recycled pieces on the runway as part of the #operarecycles program.

Her favorite thing about designing is photo shoots, and she enjoys creating photo art of her own, along with the collaborative team Alchemy in Imagery (alchemyinimagery.com)

On the Interwebz

Website: Emily Kramer Designs

Twitter: EK Fashion Design

Facebook: EK Fashion Design

GoFundMe: Going to New York Fashion Week

Originally recorded 08/02/2017

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 164

https://ia601508.us.archive.org/6/items/GuardiansOfTheGeekeryEpisode165/Guardians%20of%20the%20Geekery%20Episode%20165.mp3

Episode 163: Dunkirk, BeGuiled, The Tick and more

Episode 163! The Guardians do a hostable, and discuss the movies and more we’ve seen in the past week.

This Week’s Topics Include:

News

RIP: Martin Landau, George Romero, Trevor Baxter (Professor George Litefoot), Joan Lee, Nelsan Ellis
Vote for The Tick to save Charlotte!
Valentine Wolfe Kickstarter
Imagi-CON this weekend
Community Calendar Reminder

Guardables

Carol: Game of Thrones, The Big Sick
Matt: RL Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-man: Homecoming
Joey : ConGregate, new Doctor Who
Tiffany: Friends from College, The Beguiled

Originally recorded 07/19/2017

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 163

Away Team: Valentine Wolfe at ConGregate

July 17, 2017 by giddygeeker

Podcast

Child's Bestiary, Congregate, Elegiac Repose, Valentine Wolfe

Carol the Cat and the Giddygeeker spent the past weekend at ConGregate in High Point, NC and had a great time. While we were there, we were able to grab a quick interview with Valentine Wolfe, and talk about their new kickstarter project, Elegiac Repose.

Please check it out and consider supporting it by clicking here.

About Valentine Wolfe

Braxton Ballew and Sarah Black have been composing and performing music together as Valentine Wolfe since 2006. They call themselves “Purveyeros, Performers, and Composers of the finest Macabre Melodies for Voice, Double Bass, and Electronics. Proudly providing elegant decadence for Living, Dead, and Otherwise, since 2006.”

Their scores have been heard in productions of The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest (Warehouse Theater), The Winter’s Tale (Furman University), and Twelfth Night (The Distracted Globe). Both hold graduate degrees from the University of Georgia, where they studied electronic composition with Dr. Leonard V. Ball. In addition, Sarah completed her Masters degree in composition studying with Dr. Adrian P. Childs. She currently studies voice with Lisa Barksdale from Furman University. Braxton holds a DMA in Double Bass Performance and has studied with Milton Masciadri, Albert Laszlo, and James Barket. He is the Education Director of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra and a member of the double bass section.

To find out more about Valentine Wolfe, visit their website at www.ValentineWolfe.com.

Guardians of the Geekery with Valentine Wolfe

Episode 140: News & Views with Chickspeare’s Andrea King

Episode 140! Chickspeare’s Andrea King out with us for our weekly recap of the shows, movies and books, and general geek news we heard about this week.

Chickspeare announced their Hop, Drop & Play: Shakespeare in a Day event for Saturday, April 22nd in celebration of The Bard’s Birthday.

Tickets on sale now at www.Chickspeare.com!

This Week’s Topics Include:

TELEVISION

Dancing with the Stars
Frankie & Grace
Legion
Schitt’s Creek
The Walking Dead
Anne (of Green Gables) Netflix Trailer
Buffy/Angel leaving Netflix
Doctor Who, all seasons streaming on BritBox
First look at CW’s Black Lightening
Game of Thrones promo
New Warriors TV show gets full series order
Nickelodeon reviving Invader Zim for TV movie
Rainn Wilson to play Harry Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery
Marvel and Netflix tease Defenders premiere date

MOVIES

Ghost in the Shell
Dune screenwriter news
Joss Whedon to direct standalone Batgirl movie
Kingsman: The Golden Circle

BOOKS

Hugo Award finalists announced

LOCAL CALENDAR

Tues, 4/11: Charlotte Geeks’ Book Club
Thurs, 4/13: Rifftrax Samurai Cop
Fri, 4/21: Charlotte Geeks’ Game Night
Sat, 4/22: Hop, Drop & Play: Shakespeare in a Day
Fri, 4/28: RavenCon

OTHER NEWS

UNCC Guild raise $500 at their Game Day
Valentine Wolfe working on a new album

About Chickspeare

Chickspeare™ is an all-female Shakespeare Company that started performing shows in 1998 at (the now defunct) Johnson Beer Company in Charlotte, NC. While over the years they have become best known for their Shakespeare “abridging/fast-forwarding/rewinding” brewery shows, they have also produced numerous full-length productions including MacBeth, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Julius Ceasar, and Winter’s Tale.

For more information, check out their website at www.chickspeare.com.

About Andrea King

(abridged version – go to show notes of episode 139 for more!) Andrea King is one part actor, one part director, and two parts craft beer. She has been a part of the Charlotte theatre scene since 2001 and since then she has had the good fortune of playing with many of the local theatre companies. Most recently, Andrea donned several wigs for Women Playing Hamlet with Donna Scott Productions.

Her first Chickspeare show was Twelfth Night over at Off-Tryon Theatre. Since then, she has been in two more productions of Twelfth Night, the latest one was also with Chickspeare at Actor’s Theatre of Charlotte. Some of Andrea’s favorite Shakespeare roles include Banqo, Laertes, Hotspur, Mercutio, Orsino, Sir Andrew, Dogberry and that one time she was pursued by a bear in A Winter’s Tale. Andrea has directed Romeo & Juliet: A Quickie and Comedy of Errors for Chickspeare.

Outside of the theatre world Andrea is a cat-and-dog mom, a desk-job worker, and an adult color-er with a full set of colored pencils.

Originally recorded 04/05/2017

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 140

Episode 97: Tangential News & Views

Episode 97! Bethany, Sherman and Carl stayed out in the garage with Field (it was new sponges day!) so that they can discuss the week’s news.

Topics discussed include: Preacher, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Punisher, Iron Fists, Defenders, Mikey Mason, Stranger Things, Sesame Street, Suicide Squad, Star Trek: Beyond, Beaches, Splash, Chris Evans, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Charlotte Comicon, Voltaire, ConCarolinas, DragonCon, Valentine Wolfe, DWTS/Shark Tank Wedding, Sherman Helmsley and Jerry Doyle.

About Carl Fulmer: Carl Fulmer is co-founder of Tangents and in charge of advertising and marketing. He wrote the cover story in the current issue on Lupie Duran of Lupie’s Grill. He hates kayaking and Donald Drumf, loves Doctor Who and Netflix Marvel shows. He was born in Alabama and has lived in Charlotte since 1973 where he has attended UNCC and CPCC. In everyday life, Carl works for a major financial institution and hates it and thus is very happy that Tangents is back.

To Find out more about Charlotte Geeks’ Geek Meets, visit our Meetup Calendar by clicking here.

Website: tangentsmag.com
Facebook: Tangents Magazine

Originally recorded 08/02/2016
Guardians of the Geekery Episode 97

Episode 96: Of Trivia, Books and Tangents

Episode 96! Fellow Geeks Bethany Nuckolls and Sherman Burriss join us to talk about Trivia Night and Book Club along with Carl Fulmer of Tangents to discuss the relaunch of this clever local rag.

To Find out more about Charlotte Geeks’ Geek Meets, visit our Meetup Calendar by clicking here.

Website: tangentsmag.com
Facebook: Tangents Magazine

Originally recorded 08/02/2016
Guardians of the Geekery Episode 96

Episode 20B: Valentine Wolfe at ConCarolinas

June 4, 2015 by giddygeeker

Podcast

ConCarolinas, Geek Gala, Valentine Wolfe

For our 20th episode, Guardians of the Geekery took our show on the road! We appeared live at ConCarolinas in beautiful Concord, North Carolina. With so many great guests on-site, we took advantage of a few of them (we can’t discuss the details) and did 3 guest-focused episodes, rather than our typical 1-hour news ramble. We hope you enjoy!

We are delighted to have them as the musical guests of honor for this year’s Geek Gala as well!

To find out more about Valentine Wolfe, visit their website at www.ValentineWolfe.com.

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 20B

Episode 2: The Holly Jolly Guardians

December 17, 2014 by giddygeeker

Podcast

501st, A Christmas Story, A Lion in Winter, A Snow White Christmas, Actually, Albert Finney, All I Want for Christmas, All I Want for Christmas Is You, Anime, Another Creepy Christmas, Attack on Titan, BAFTA, Batman, Billy Boyd, Blue Christmas, Board shorts, Cards Against Humanities, Charlotte Comicon, Christmas List, Christopher Lee, Cinematic Titanic, ConCarolinas, Cosplay, Deadpool, Die Hard, DragonCon, Dylan McDermott, Elizabeth Perkins, Elvis, featured, Henry Cavell, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Home Alone, Homespun, It's A Wonderful Life, Jonah Knight, Juggernaut, Katherine Hepburn, Kristen Stewart, Lauren Bacall, Leather Jacket Guy, Legos, Love, Martin Freeman, MeTV, Michael Keaton, Micronauts, Mikey Mason, Miracle on 34th Street, Most Wonderful Time of the Year, MST3K, Mugs of Charlotte, Nat King Cole, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Nightvale, O Holy Night, Park Road Books, Pat Broderick, Peter Jackson, Peter O'Toole, Please Bring Firefly Back for Christmas, Polka Dot Bake Shop, Poop, Princess Leia, Randy Quaid, Red Dragon Inn, Rifftrax, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Scarlet Spiderman, Scrooge, Smaug, Smog, SNL, Snow White and the Huntsman, Spiderhands, Staples, Stormtroopers, The Battle of the Five Armies, The Charlotte Geeks, The Chipmunks, The Christmas Song, The Heifer Organization, The Hobbit, The Little Drummer Boy, The Martian, The Office, The Return of the King, The Unexpected Cookbook, The Unexpected Journey, Traffic Light Board Game Night, Transformers, Valentine Wolfe, Valentine's Day, White Christmas

Welcome to Episode 2!

In this episode we discuss Charlotte Comicon, Spiderhands,and Pat Broderick vs. Cosplay (including how to cosplay as us), Geek Meets (Book Club, Game Night, Star Wars at Charlotte Checkers), The new Hobbit movie, Cards Against Humanities’ Black Friday sale, Carrie Fisher vs. Gillian Anderson at DragonCon, Christmas Movies, the Cat’s obsession with Martin Freeman, Geeky & Favorite Christmas Music, and our Christmas wish list.

Things to note:

Smaug is not a very thick fog, smog is. (Thanks, Tiffany)
To see the video of our Spider hand in action, please visit our Facebook page!
Michael Keaton was never Superman that we are aware of.
Starneslord is not Randy Quaid. Honest.

Guardians of the Geekery Episode 2

Carol the Cat’s “All I Want for Christmas” favorite

valentine-wolfe

Episode 248: Music Week with Valentine Wolfe and The Extraordinary Contraptions

About Valentine Wolfe

The Haunting of Mary Shelley by Valentine Wolfe

About The Extraordinary Contraptions

En Absynthia by The Extraordinary Contraptions

Episode 199: MUSIC WEEK – Blibbering Humdingers and Valentine Wolfe

Please click on the links to listen to the album’s yourselves – we love both bands and hope you support them! #supportlocal

Episode 165: Take 2 on Geeky Chic News with Emily Kramer

This Week’s Topics Included:

News

Guardables

About Emily Kramer

On the Interwebz

Episode 163: Dunkirk, BeGuiled, The Tick and more

This Week’s Topics Include:

News

Guardables

Away Team: Valentine Wolfe at ConGregate

About Valentine Wolfe

Episode 140: News & Views with Chickspeare’s Andrea King

This Week’s Topics Include:

About Chickspeare

About Andrea King

Episode 97: Tangential News & Views

Episode 96: Of Trivia, Books and Tangents

Episode 20B: Valentine Wolfe at ConCarolinas

Episode 2: The Holly Jolly Guardians