The Lions That They Led You To, Lie Down And Take A Nap

Nick Cave – No More Shall We Part

I've learned a lesson about Nick Cave albums over the last few years. With the exception of Murder Ballads (which is a bit of an oddity in his catalogue in many ways) they've all taken a while to grow on me, and I've said many dumb things about them on this very website. “Too boring!” said the young and foolish Jon of last August about The Boatman's Call. “Kind of weird...” said ignorant and stupid Jon of May 2005 about The Good Son. “Not as good as Slipknot,” said Jon of November 2004 about Abattoir Blues. What an idiot! So I kept an open mind about No More Shall We Part, and despite not finding it all that appealing on first listen, sure enough it's turned out to be very rewarding.

At any rate the first track, 'As I Sat Sadly By Her Side', is an immediate attention grabber. With a simple piano and string arrangement, sad but laden with menace, Cave presents a bit of a philosophical dialogue. He and his wife look out the window at the world, and while his wife sees the beauty of God's creation, Cave sees only misery and hopelessness. Both points of view are myopic, but as well as contrasting them the song sets up the story of the album, Nick's wife dumping him for being a miserable bastard.

The second, titular, track is a grim, slow, gloomy piece, not at all appealing to listen to until about two thirds of the way through when the strings and drums join in with the piano and the music shifts from an unpleasant, dissonant D minor scale to the relative major, rewarding your patience with a very beautiful contrast.

The next track, 'Hallelujah', is a long tale of Cave going for a walk, an activity we'll see again a few times time before the end of the album. The track perhaps goes on for a little too long, but it's redeemed by a weird but catchy string riff and some good lyrics, ranging from the silly “And I took the small roads out of town/ And I passed a cow and the cow was brown” to the just plain awesome “The tears are welling in my eyes again/ I need twenty big buckets to catch them in/ Twenty pretty girls to carry them down/ Twenty deep holes to bury them in”.

The next set of three songs take a break from the albums signature sound of slow downbeat piano, and also a break from the overall narrative. 'Love Letter' is a slow piano song, but a sadly hopeful one rather than a depressingly hopeless one and is one of the best tracks. 'Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow' is again a piano song, but a fast aggressive one. And the very memorable 'God is in the House' is a total departure from the serious mood of the rest of the album, as Cave lightens up a little to take the piss out of everyone's favourite oppressed majority: hypocritical, puritan Christians.

Following these little interludes is 'Oh My Lord' , a track that is very similar to 'Hallelujah' in that it's about seven minutes long and is about Cave going for a walk. This track definitely overstays it's welcome, as Cave frets about everything from his marriage to his drug addiction to accusations of going soft from his former fans. Even an unexpected distorted rock out outro doesn't reclaim your attention.

It is followed by 'Sweetheart Come', a sad invitation to a potential lover with some more great lyrics. 'The Sorrowful Wife' pulls the same trick as 'Oh My Lord' with much more success. Starting as a mournful piano ballad in the same vein as the rest of the album, it abruptly changes pace to a heavy guitar backed plea to “Come on now and help me!”

Finally the last three tracks apply a redemptive coda to the gloomy tale of the preceding songs. 'We Came Along this Road' is a simple, direct piano ballad mourning a failed relationship without the angst and bitterness of the other songs. After this turning point the rest of the album becomes more and more upbeat, the sad but uplifting 'Gates to the Garden' continues the recovery process, and then in 'Darker with the Day' Cave goes for one final walk, this time with a positive attitude, despite some kind of apocalypse going on around him.

The overall arc of the album works perfectly, from the opening tracks introducing the unhappy marriage, the later ones documenting its end and the final ones gradually recovering from its aftermath. I'm not sure if the story is autobiographical or not, perhaps it works as a metaphor for Cave's recovery from serious drug addiction, which immediately preceded his recording this album. In any case it's a productive emotional journey for those of us who are not so good at just getting the fuck over things.

1001 Albums – Number 1

In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning – Frank Sinatra

So it's taken me a while but I finally got around to buying the first album on the 1001 albums list. Actually going to record stores and rooting around in the racks for something in particular is something I've not done for a while, and it was nice, but considering my disinterested reaction to this album I think I'll just download the rest unless I think there is a strong likelihood that I'm going to enjoy it.

That's not to say I think it's bad music. There's no denying that Frank sure has a great voice, but the entire album is based around it and the backing music is just a little snooze inducing. A few songs stand out, mainly the first, titular track, but after twenty minutes ago the whole act gets old. Frank doesn't really change his tone or style for the duration, and I find some of his phrasing quite annoying. The lyrics vary a lot in quality too. That's only to be expected when every song is written by different writers, but some of them are pretty cheesy.

This album is held in high regard for several reasons. Firstly because it was one of the first recordings to really be designed for the LP format. The songs have a uniform sound and subject, and it even tells a little bit of a story. This is a valuable development in popular music, but as I've already noted, I find it a little too consistent musically.

The second notable thing about it is that it was recorded in the aftermath of Sinatra's breakup with Ava Gardner and is one of his most emotional performances. Maybe I'm just a cynical product of a jaded generation, but to someone whose introduction to the love of music involved Trent Reznor ripping his guts up screaming “kill me”, Frank's gentle and almost insipid delivery of “When I get that mood indigo/ I could lay me down and die” doesn't rate very high on the intensity scale.

So the 1001 albums isn't off to the best start. Next up we have Elvis and we'll see if he fares any better.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

by Bill Watterson

So Gary Larsons' Complete Far Side came in a giant cloth bound two volume set, but The Complete Calvin and Hobbes tops that with a similarly presented three volume set. Compared to The Far Side's accompanying art the Calvin and Hobbes set is presented in a very restrained manner. Whereas Larson drew an elaborate cover containing giant stone heads and flying cows, Watterson has included very simple renditions of the title characters in endearing poses. I guess Calvin and Hobbes evokes a lot more sentiment in it's creator than The Far Side does.

For anyone who doesn't know, Calvin and Hobbes is a newspaper cartoon strip that ran for ten or so years in the eighties and nineties. Calvin is an obnoxious little kid in the Dennis the Menace mould, and Hobbes is his stuffed toy/imaginary friend, a tiger with an incongruously mature outlook. It sounds like a twee and irritating premise, like most of the rubbish you'll find on the comics page, but Watterson has a somewhat twisted mind; for every saccharine strip about friendship there are at least a couple of sarcastic pokes at human nature, and if you're lucky one or two strips involving aliens, dinosaurs and grisly dismemberment. (It would have been nice if they'd included the letters of complaint that the editors received like The Far Side collection did, Calvin and Hobbes definitely has far more capacity to offend.)

The inconsistent tone means that reading the comic's entire run in one go can be a bit disconcerting, Calvin's character changes pretty wildly from day to day, as he quickly goes from being a wide eyed paragon pointing out the flaws of the adult world to a crazy kid with serious psychological problems to a greedy manipulative sociopath whose parents openly wish they could get rid of him. The first and last personae are curiously related, in both of them Watterson rails against the greed and corruption of the adult world, either by having Calvin the innocent point out the injustice, or have Calvin the greedy display what a monster the influence of the modern world (mainly TV and superhero comics) have created. It's kind of interesting how he at different times embodies two polar extremes of human behaviour, but I doubt that it's intentional.

Calvin in his third guise, the kid with the imagination so over-active that it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that he is tormented by it, is the one that I find the most appealing. Certainly his continuous encounters with aliens, clones, possessed snowmen and of course dinosaurs, combined with his preference for his imaginary worlds over the real one remind me a hell of a lot of myself at his age. And at my current age too, come to think of it.

The character of Hobbes gives the comic its uniqueness, and most of its humour too. The comical juxtaposition of a stuffed animal who is both as scatty and irrational as a housecat, and as witty, worldly and charming as everyone secretly wishes they were is comedic gold. His grounded, pragmatic views are a good counterpoint to Calvin's philosophising in either good or evil mode, and usually involve something along the lines of “In the end we're all here to eat each other so why worry about it?”

The nonsensical contradictions of the tone make for a curious story. As enjoyable and funny as it is I couldn't help being a little put off by the implications of Calvin's personality. What kind of an adult would he actually grow up in to? At best a reclusive misanthrope, at worst a psychopath urged on by the violent commands of his only friend in the world, a demonic feline that exists solely in his imagination. And maybe I'm just fucked in the head but I kept picking up on a weird sexual vibe between the two title characters. For these reasons I can't feel as sentimentally attached to Calvin and Hobbes as its creator and most ardent fans do, but it's still damn funny, and yes still a little touching, as long as you don't think too much about it.

Brilliant

(via Ruthless Reviews) Nickelback get booed off stage in Portugal.

In Fact, I Just Like To Say The Word 'Incarceration'

Meshuggah – I

I liked Meshuggah's other albums Catch Thirty Three and Chaosphere when I wrote about them last year, but wasn't overly impressed either. However I've found that they've both really grown on me. That's not much of a surprise considering how technical their music is. As it doesn't have a big emotional impact most of its worth becomes apparent through careful listening.

I is an EP that was released between those two albums, and while short it combines the strengths of both of them. Like Catch Thirty Three the album is one continuous piece of music, although only 20 minutes long instead of 50, and like that album it contains a mix of heavy passages and weird atonal interludes. From Chaosphere it inherits the incredibly brutal riffs that manage to be catchy despite being in completely deranged time signatures.

While the bizarre rhythms of the other albums have their own strange kind of order to them, I goes in a little bit of a Dillinger Escape Plan direction using completely random time signatures. Other than that there's not much to add except that it's another excellent release from these guys but without much to differentiate it from their other albums. It's short and succinct and would probably be a good introduction to Meshuggah.

I Don't Like You Any More, You Lying Trying Waste Of Space

Placebo – Meds

You know, I had absolutely no idea that Placebo had a new album out. I guess never listening to the radio can have a downside. After I got their first album a few weeks ago and was underwhelmed, and found their last release Sleeping with Ghosts a bit of a disappointment, I was surprised to find that I was still pretty excited to hear this new album.

Musically Meds continues to develop in a similar direction as their last few albums. The more or less straight up three piece grunge of their first album has been joined by string sections on the slow songs, and a touch of electronica on most tracks. The emotional tone of their albums has continued to develop in a linear fashion as well, the teenage 'I hate myself' angst of the self titled and Without You I'm Nothing have given way to sadness, mostly directed at others rather than internally.

The lyrics of Meds spend a lot of time dwelling on a relationship that failed due to the substance abuse of the other. This is pretty good material for some intense music, but I'm sad to say that most of the album is fairly straight forward and unexciting rock. Not bad and certainly catchy but lacking anything to make it truly memorable. A few tracks stand out however, 'Space Monkey' has a cold unearthly vibe which gives its surreal imagery a unique twist. Plus it's about a monkey. The final two tracks are both excellent as well. 'The Cold Light of Morning' is about as sad as songs come and will no doubt hit a chord with anyone who's ever found themselves wasted at 10am on a Sunday and realising that the party is over and you have to sober up. 'A Song to Say Goodbye' is another classic, with a more upbeat melody contradicting the sad story told by the lyrics (basically 'I'm through with you, you fucked up junkie') and somehow making it that much more poignant.

So while these guys are still capable of some great stuff and even though the tracks that don't live up to those standards are still worth listening to, this album is no return to the quality of Without You I'm Nothing and Black Market Music, and it seems like they're treading water a little. Placebo have always lacked a certain element of intensity in their performance and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. Maybe they need to take more drugs...

Some Little Bastard Crawled All Over Him For Ten Minutes...

Shadow of the Colossus (Sony)

This game is the followup to Ico, which I finished a few weeks back. Both games are quite original in terms of both plot/theme and gameplay, and it's very heartening to see that inventive games are still being made by big developers, and (in Shadow's case but not Ico's) even doing well financially as well as critically.

I enjoyed Ico a lot, but I am pleased to say that Shadow of the Colossus is even better. The fundamentals of the gameplay and the art direction are very similar, but it has a darker, more adult story and theme. The protagonist is a young man named Wanda (a mistranslation from English to Japanese and back of 'Wander') who wants to resurrect his dead girlfriend. He is offered a chance to do so by a collection of godlike beings known as the Dormin who manifest as a beam of light. In order to satisfy the Dormin, you must hunt down and kill sixteen gigantic beasts, the colossi of the title. All of this is conveyed in a very nice but overly long introduction movie. I would have preferred the plot details to be dealt out in more concise portions throughout the game instead of being dumped on you in one big chunk at the start, but hey, your patience will be rewarded.

The gameplay itself is original and unconventional, but fortunately it works really well. It uses a similar engine to Ico, but instead of being a platformer it's more of a 3d action game. Defeating each colossus is roughly a three step process. First you must find the beast, by following a trail of light that shines out of your magic sword. This usually takes a while as the world area is quite large and very detailed. There are no enemies or challenges in this phase of the game, so you would expect it to be a bit of a bore, but as it turns out the anticipation of seeing the next colossus is more than enough to keep the interest levels up.

Once you find the monster there is usually a trick to finding a way to climb on to it. This section of the game is more of a puzzle than anything else, and is mostly about thinking of some creative way to take advantage of the environment or the enemy's behaviour (while avoiding its fists, feet, teeth, weapons or laser beams). The colossi are all mechanical, robotic versions of mundane and mythical animals. There's a lion, a minotaur and an electric eel for example. They range in size from just a bit larger than your character to so hugely massive that they blot out the horizon. This aspect of the game is the real content of the gameplay and it's refreshingly original and perfectly executed. The designers have really come through in creating interesting and varied scenarios to fight each enemy in while using only a limited set of gameplay gimmicks.

Finally once you're on the beast an action element comes in, and you have to climb to the colossus' vulnerable point and stab it until it dies, trying to stay attached all the while as the monster tries to throw you off. This part is usually not too challenging, and I think ideally should have been made a little harder. The final colossus balances the difficulty of this aspect well, but the others are all a bit too easy.

The lead designer claims that both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are meant to evoke the same emotion, and if you feel differently it means that you've grown as a person since you played Ico. Since I played them pretty much back to back and I don't think I've changed much in the last two weeks I must disagree. There are certainly similarities, both games evoke loneliness through the deserted, crumbling backdrops and silent, inhuman enemies, and contrast this with a close relationship with your companion, in Ico the vulnerable girl Yorla and in Shadow of the Colossus your faithful horse Agro (am I the only one who, instead of waxing poetic about the horse's bravery and nobility, found it intemperate and insolent?) However Shadow is a lot darker. Contrast the two games endings, Ico's twee love conquers all message and Shadow's grim warning against hubris are worlds apart, although they make a nice pair especially when you take into account that plotwise Shadow of the Colossus is a prequel to Ico.

More Important News

New Tool album artwork here.

Some very serious and important promo shots of the band are up on Toolshed. Numbers 2 and 3 are the best.

Hangover Day Random Link

(via Google Video of the Day) The old movie that the Smashing Pumpkins' video 'Tonight Tonight' was based on.

The More I Settle Down...

Breaks Co-op – The Sound Inside

I saw these guys at Southern Amp late last year and really enjoyed their gig. Then I bought their first album Roofers and very nearly died of boredom. Since eight years passed between the releases of Roofers and The Sound Inside I was hoping it would be more similar to their recent live show.

And I do like The Sound Inside a lot better. At it's core it's the same easy listening hip-hop for old people as their earlier record , but they've given the proceedings some more life with the inclusion of a new cast member who does some actual singing and acoustic guitar playing. It gives their music a more 'rootsy' feel. The first track 'The Sound Inside' is really good, and I know saying this will cost me like 1000 metal points, but I really like their big single 'The Other-side' as well.

Unfortunately after a strong start the album starts to decline fairly rapidly. It never gets as boring as Roofers but after a few songs it all starts to sound the same. While they're good at picking a nice, catchy riff or sample to base a song around, they never really develop any of them so it's just one gentle relaxing repeated refrain for five minutes, followed by another. Perfect for old people who need some inoffensive background music for a dinner party, or for a sunny afternoon outdoor concert, but not a satisfying listening experience on its own.

The Big News

Hola amigos. So I know it's been a long time since I've rapped at ya, but I've had a whole lot of crazy shit going on for the last week or so. Nevertheless I have been compelled to comment on the BIG IMPORTANT FUCKING NEWS of the week.

The new Tool album has a release date, a title, and a tracklisting. 10,000 Days will be out on May 2nd, and the tracklisting is up on their official site. It seems a little iffy to me though. There was a lot of speculation about the album title being fake, since it is a bit out of character when compared with their other titles (plus it sounds kind of similar to Disturbed's Ten Thousand Fists), but I was prepared to take their word for it. However the tracklisting seems a bit more suspicious to me. Names like 'Wings for Marie' and 'The Pot' don't sound anything at all like 'normal' Tool titles. Blair (the guy who writes news posts on the Tool website) is swearing up and down that it's true, but he did that when he claimed that Maynard had found Jesus on April Fools' Day last year too.

(A little historical context: before Lateralus was released Tool sent a different tracklisting to MTV every day for a month. Plus, April Fools is coming up again...)

So I remain skeptical. But of course regardless of whether or not this is the real tracklist, the proof will be in the listening, which is still fifty odd days away...

I Don't Speak Crazy Bitch

Ico

Cult games very rarely make it over to New Zealand. We're probably never going to see Katamari Damancy here, and there are no doubt plenty of other cool games that I've never even heard of that pass us by because they don't have a popular rapper's name in the title or have a girl in a chainmail bikini on the cover. Nevertheless occasionally something manages to defy the odds and receive an antipodean release, and after hearing about it for years I've finally had a chance to play Ico.

The new game by the team behind Ico (Shadow of the Colossus) has been selling reasonably well (on account of its more mature and violent theme no doubt, but it's still a great game, and I'll have a lot of good things to say when I've finished it) so they've given Ico a re-release.

The game is at its core a 3D platformer, but its unique twist on the genre is best explained by describing the plot. The story is fairly minimal, but I don't mean that in an Unreal Tournament or Tetris kind of way, it has a very 'fairy tale'-like mood, and as all the characters speak a gibberish language, only some of which is subtitled, exposition is kept to a minimum. In recent years I've come to really appreciate this approach to storytelling in games. Games which cram huge elaborate plots with fucking shitloads of cutscenes into themselves sometimes succeed in spite of it (see the Final Fantasy series), very rarely pull it off brilliantly (see Planescape: Torment) and usually turn into an execrable bore-fest (see Xenosaga). By keeping things simple but archetypical the designers are doing themselves a huge favour.

Anyway, our main character is a boy called Ico. Believed to be cursed by his family and their fellow villagers he is imprisoned in a spooky old uninhabited castle and left to die. Fortunately he escapes and finds that the castle is in fact inhabited by nasty shadow demon things. Before long he meets a mysterious ghostly girl named Yorla who is also imprisoned in the castle, and naturally enough it turns out that by working together they may have a chance of escaping.

Throughout the game you control the boy Ico, and you must guide the flaky and helpless Yorla through the castle and its environs, a process involving a moderate amount of bashing baddies with swords and a large amount of switch-pulling, block-pushing and general puzzle solving. Yorla herself is a somewhat frustrating companion as she and Ico lack a common language (communicating through yells and arm waving) and she has an annoying tendency to wander off in unhelpful directions. As usual with game related matters Penny Arcade sum it up pretty well. But despite this one annoyance the game is very good on every level, mostly through plain old level design.

The area that the game covers is very small. The castle isn't an endless labyrinth but instead feels like an actual building with reasonably proportioned and logically connected areas. Clever design enables the creators to extend the game length by reusing areas in different ways. You'll often find yourself in the same place a few different times, only on a higher level, or with the geography rearranged in some way. The puzzles are all well thought out and are very satisfying to complete.

The art direction is pretty nice too. It doesn't leap out at you in the way that some games can, but the old castle has a very memorable and visceral mood that stays with you and evokes a real place, both in the dark, creepy dungeons and the bright sunlit rooftops.

I do have a few more criticisms though. Firstly it was too easy; while no one wants to come across some stupid unintuitive puzzle that requires either days of thought or a walkthrough to complete, it was a bit of a disappointment when I blazed through the second half of the game. I often find that once I have a handle on the designers' mindset the puzzle solutions become universally obvious. A little more variety and sneakiness in the later part of the game would have improved things a lot. Secondly, the graphics weren't so great. Being primarily a PC gamer I am used to feeling like my eyes are being stabbed with needles whenever I turn on a console, but I found this game to have far too much brightness, I often found myself squinting at the screen to see what I was doing. At first I thought this was a deliberate design decision, as light and darkness are two motifs of the story, but Shadow of the Colossus seems to have a similar problem. Combat is a bit annoying too. It's not a combat oriented game but it would have been nice to have less cumbersome feeling to the fighting scenes and it would have been especially nice to see where your character really is in relation to those smoky shadowy beasties instead of having to guess and swing wildly.

Lastly I found the end of the game a bit stupid. The last section is very good, but lacked any save points for almost an hours worth of gameplay, and that shit pisses me off. Console developers often seem not to understand that sometimes I have to get off the computer and do things like eat and go to work. The final battle is damn cool mind you, but again way too easy. Finally, the ending of the plot was far too twee. Yes I know it's a fairy tale but when the bad guy says 'Ha! Even if you kill me, you can't really win!' and then you kill them and everything turns out fine with no explanation, that's a bit stupid.

So while it sounds like I'm bitching quite a bit the truth is that it's a great game that deserves all of its accolades. I guess the good things are just more insubstantial and harder to describe than the bad things, which stick in your mind and are usually easily articulated. If you have a PS2 and have no aversion to platformers (or a mandatory rule of only buying games with hookers and guns in them) then this is easily one of the best games you can get for that console.

A final note on the plot. Normally I'd sneer at something as twee and kiddie friendly as this, but I find that I have a much higher tolerance for such things in games when compared to other media. I think it's the visceral feeling of grabbing Yorla's hand and saving her from the claws of evil with only seconds to spare (and doing it all yourself rather than reading about someone else doing it) that makes it much easier to form an emotional attachment to the story. Perhaps the finest example of this is the ending of Planescape: Torment, when you realise what a total bastard your character was in his previous lives, and are forced to view your relationships with your companions in a completely different light. It's a pity more designers don't utilise this strength of the medium.

Maynard, Make Me a Tequila and Gatorade Please

Tool – Schism

About six months before Lateralus was released Tool released a live CD/DVD, Salival, in order to build anticipation for the new album. It was pretty fucking good. In a similar move they've released a pair of DVDs containing the videos for 'Schism' and 'Parabola' (with a new album due in a few months). They're not so good.

I was a little sceptical about paying $20 for one of these discs but I received some CD vouchers for Christmas so I thought what the hell. The disc contains a mere three tracks; the original video, the same video with commentary and an audio remix of the song by Lustmord.

To be fair the disc comes beautifully packaged, with a nice booklet of cool stills from the video. The DVD menus themselves have had a lot of attention paid to them, with some really detailed art direction. The video itself is, like almost all of Tool's videos, completely fucking brilliant. Like the videos from Undertow and Aenima it contains all of Adam Jones' standard motifs; weird mutant alien things, characters combining and reforming, and freaky gross biological stuff. Unlike the older videos it contains live actors and CGI as well as the traditional stop start animation.

The songs themes of communication and loneliness are fairly straightforwardly represented by the video, although of course there's a whole bunch of extra crazy shit that doesn't make any sense at all. What the fuck's up with the little guy who comes out of the main guy's head? But that fire effect at the end (looks like oil burning on water viewed from below or something) is pretty damn cool.

The audio commentary is sadly not by Adam or Maynard, but we get instead the abstract ramblings of David Yow, formally singer for The Jesus Lizard, who tells us about what he had for lunch, makes gross burping noises, talks on the phone and refers once or twice to the actual video (“This video, is all about ears...”). To top it off, he has actually recorded two commentaries, which play simultaneously on the left and right stereo channels. One gets the impression that it's really meant as a commentary on how Adam doesn't like the idea of doing a commentary.

The remix is a very good ambient work, which happens to be at it's best before recognisable parts of the original song start appearing.

While it's cool to own the video, I feel a bit ripped off that I paid $20 for it. If it had contained both 'Schism' and 'Parabola' it would have been worth it, but I'm a bit gypped that they expect us to shell out for two discs when they could have easily packaged them together. I am interested in hearing Jello Biafra's commentary for 'Parabola', but I think it will have to wait until I find a really cheap copy.

Nick Cave Interview

Here. Apparently he's written a screenplay for a new Australian movie they describe as an outback western. It sounds pretty cool.

The most interesting bit though is where he talks about his (rejected) script for Gladiator 2.

"I wanted to write an anti-war film and use Gladiator as a raging war machine. He died in the first one so he comes back as the eternal warrior. It ended up in Vietnam and the Pentagon."

1001 Albums You Must Listen To Before You Die

Edited by Robert Dimery

'Best of' and 'Top N' lists are disparaged by critics of all styles and creeds, whether you're talking about music, movies or masturbation fantasies. Any given list is almost guaranteed to contain at least one item that will piss off any given reader, no matter the credentials or wisdom of the compiler. That said I have a perverse fascination with them. It's kind of like how I always watch the Grammy's; I think I enjoy being outraged at how terrible everyone else's taste is.

So this book had to really prove itself in order for me to judge it worth reading, and I'm surprised to admit that it isn't too bad. Out of 1001 albums there are of course more than a few shockers that make me shake my head in disbelief, but by and large I think they've done a decent job of providing an overview of fifty years of popular music. If I was to compile such a list it would of course contain a lot of things that were left off here, as the editors barely touch on my favoured genres of metal and industrial, but at the same time I'm not too disappointed with what they have ended up selecting.

The book lists the albums chronologically, and it seems that the contributors tastes worsen as they get closer to the present day. I guess that's to be expected, with more hindsight it is obvious which albums were important and influential, while there is more of a tendency to favour the flavour of the month when dealing with the more recent times (I don't know if The White Stripes deserved to have three albums listed). On the good side they've picked quite a few albums which I approve of. It isn't too surprising to find records like Nirvana's Nevermind and Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral here, but I was very pleased to note the inclusion of a few important but under-appreciated industrial bands, namely Laibach, Einstuerzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle. On the bad side there are some truly atrocious pop acts named in the 90s and 00s sections. Mariah fucking Carey anyone? I also could go on forever about the many many good albums and bands that have been neglected, but I will refrain from listing any, except for noting their inexplicable and saddening decision to not include a single Tool album.

I think it will be a good exercise to start listening through these albums. Even if I don't like most of them there's bound to be at least a few discoveries to be made, and it would be good to familiarise myself with some of the older stuff which wouldn't normally come to my attention. Sure the thought of having to sit through Madonna and Justin Timberlake is an unpleasant one, but I just comfort myself by thinking about all the people who must have bought this book expecting it to be full of U2 and Franz Ferdinand only to find themselves listening to an hour of Einstuerzende Neubauten at their noisiest.

Eye Holes In A Paper Bag, Greatest Lay I Ever Had

Placebo – Self Titled

Yeah they're a terrible live band, and their most recent album wasn't that great, but I still have a soft spot for Placebo on the basis of the brilliance of Without You I'm Nothing and Black Market Music. I knew their first album had at least two good songs on it, 'Nancy Boy' and 'Bruise Pristine', so I decided to give it a try.

On this album they haven't yet developed the talent that they would reveal on later releases. The first four or so tracks are pretty straight forward verse-chorus-verse grunge. It may be a little more upbeat than what their contemporaries were up to at the time but it's still not anything particularly exciting. The later part of the album becomes a little more interesting, with the aforementioned 'Nancy Boy' and 'Bruise Pristine' rocking out in a very satisfying manner. Other songs like 'Hang On To Your IQ' and 'I Know' are sad, pretty songs, in the vein of some of the brilliant album closers they would go on to write on later albums. The last track 'Swallow' is quite good too, a heavy menacing song with vocals provided by a collection of ominous sounding spoken word samples.

I think what's missing is the angst and depression that afflicted their future work and gave it an extra bite. ('Without You I'm Nothing' off their second album is one of the most incredibly harrowing songs you'll ever hear. Don't listen to it when you've just broken up with someone.) This album is far from their best but still worth listening to. Far from essential though, even if you like their other stuff.

I Am The Hunter I Am The Prey

Collide - Some Kind of Strange

I got Collide's second album Chasing the Ghost some time ago and liked it a lot. They're a dark, gothic electronic band with a very good female singer, but underneath the spooky industrial exterior they're a pretty slickly produced act with some real catchy hooks and song writing ability.

The idea behind these kinds of bands is usually that the crunching grinding industrial music and the woman's vocals floating above it will form a pleasing dissonance, but Statik, the man responsible for the backing music, seems to have too much of a pop sensibility to let the music get all that menacing. Vocalist kaRIN (precocious names are par for the course with this genre of music) has a strong but dreamy voice, and the dark music accompanying her combine to create a beautifully ethereal mood. Some of the gentler tracks exhibit this well, the highlight of the album is 'Tempted', which matches a soaring string harmony in a middle eastern sounding key with otherworldly vocals. Another good track is the album closer 'So Long', where the music switches to a major key (while remaining somewhat industrial) and multiple overlapped vocal tracks sing sadly and regretfully. On the heavier side 'Complicated' has an incredibly catchy keyboard riff welded to some low, heavy, Nine Inch Nails-esque rhythm, creating a chorus that will stay in your head for days after hearing it.

The opening hooks of many of the songs are simply some of the best attention grabbing mood setters you'll ever hear, must notably the echoing synth stabs of the opening track 'Crushed' which mutate into one mean guitar riff. And also the aforementioned 'Complicated', which opens with haunting noises that sounded like they've been sampled straight off Einstuerzende Neubauten's 'Boreas'.

Still there is one major criticism I could make and that's that despite the many layered music there isn't a lot of depth to it and it doesn't really reward repeated listening, however the surface is so well put together that I can't really let that stand in the way of my recommendation.

Flowers for the Queen

Darling Violetta – Parlour

In a true fit of geekery I ordered this album from Amazon purely based on the fact that they did the theme music for Angel. Taking into account Joss Whedon's unimpressive taste in music made these guys a bit of a gamble, but fortunately they turned out to be not too bad.

More than anything else Darling Violetta remind me of the likes of 12 Rounds and Collide, making slightly heavier than average rock/electronica with a female vocalist, but these guys lean a lot closer to the rock side of the divide than the other bands (although I don't rate Darling Violetta nearly as highly as either of them).

When they put a bit of crunch on their guitars and rock out they're pretty good. The opening track 'A Smaller God' is quite easily the standout on the album. When they go poppier it tends to be much less interesting, for example the last track 'Star Shoes (Love Is Everything)' is as cheesy as the title implies. I also have to admit that their vocalist, while competent, has a voice that doesn't do much for me. She sounds a bit like Claudia Sarne of 12 Rounds but without the edge.

The best parts of the album are for me the small interludes scattered between songs. They range from being straight up instrumental segues to context free sample collages to blasts of abstract jazz noise.

While I don't regret buying it I don't think I'll be getting any more of their albums. My money would be better spent on 12 Rounds' back catalogue.

A Fire Upon The Deep

by Vernor Vinge

This novel is a bit of a modern sci-fi classic by virtue of its original concepts. Vinge has heaps of cool ideas and in true old school sci-fi style spits them all out in direct but breathless and inelegant prose. A real geek book in other words. The story takes place in two parallel threads, the first taking place on a galactic scale, as human civilisation battles a super intelligent AI determined to enslave all life in the galaxy. The other follows a pair of human children shipwrecked on a medieval world, who hold the key to defeating the AI.

Vinge's most memorable idea is that of the Zones, in his story the galaxy is divided into concentric spheroid areas, with intelligence (both living and artificial) being enhanced in the outer ones and inhibited in the inner ones. In the central one anything living becomes too stupid to run a spaceship, and invariably crashes and dies. Anyone exiting the galaxy transcends to a higher state of being.

Vinge's second trippy and original idea involves the nature of the inhabitants of the medieval world that the children are stranded on. The native life form is incapable of intelligence on its on, but when grouped in a pack of three to six become a single entity. However the individuals must communicate with each other by talking, which means that if two groups get too close they lose their minds.

Vinge explores his ideas in plenty of detail, and fortunately the plot is engaging enough to support it. The ending was more than a little sappy and a touch predictable but the rest of the story is good in an 'exploding spaceship' kind of way. Especially as his no nonsense style is well suited to writing a tense, exciting action scene. So while the prose might be a little awkward in places the book is well deserving of its reputation by virtue of its originality and clever concept, and it's still a good read on account of its fast paced plot.

Quiz Answers

Well between the three responses you answered most of the questions so I guess its not a terrible result, although I did expect better.

Easy:

1. Radiohead – Paranoid Android

2. A Perfect Circle – Three Libras

3. Dire Straits – Money for Nothing

4. Deja Voodoo – Beers

Hard

5. The Doors – People are Strange

6. Faith no More – Helpless

7. Mr. Bungle – Pink Cigarette

8. Muse – Stockholm Syndrome

9. Pink Floyd – What Shall We Do Now? (Barnes you should know this one!)

10. Tool – Undertow

Really Hard:

11. Dillinger Escape Plan – When Good Dogs Do Bad Things

12. Dr. Kevorkian and the Suicide Machine – The Factory

13. Coil – The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant.

14. Tom Waits – Another Mans Vine

Debussy – Poetic Impressions

Two dollars from cash converters! Bargain! The Best of Debussy album I bought a little while ago has been growing and growing on me. This album tends towards the gentle, pretty side and most of the tracks are solo piano pieces, along with three orchestral tracks and a violin and piano sonata.

The orchestral piece is a little boring but I like the rest of it very much, although he can tend toward the peppy side a little. I like his inventive tonalities and his light but complex and evocative style. In fact I think I'm starting to like this guy as much as Ravel.

O is for Awesome

(via Google Video of the Day) I could watch this video of a 500kV arc in a power substation all day.

Pop Quiz Motherfuckers

In the interest of generating more comments on my blog I'm stealing an idea from Uncertain Principles. I'm going to list a whole bunch of song lyrics, and you guys are going to list the artist and song that they come from. And using a search engine is cheating!

First some easy ones that everyone should know to warm up:

1. “Kicking squealing Gucci little piggy.”
2. “Difficult not to feel a little bit disappointed, and passed over.”
3. “Now look at them yoyos, that's the way you do it.”
4. “I write songs that always rhyme/ That's why I made this one rhyme.”

Now some harder ones:

1. “Women seem wicked, when you're alone.”
2. “Every leaf, every stone, every speck of dirt/ but where's my place?”
3. “Your kiss goes everywhere/ touches everything, but for me.”
4. “Look to the stars/ let hope burn in your eyes.”
5. “Shall we buy a new guitar? Or drive a more powerful car?”
6. “I've been baptised by a voice that/ speaks from deep beneath the clear blue water.”

And lastly a few that I'll be really impressed if anyone gets:

1. “In this crowded place there is room to swing a cat, and not even hit a soul.”
2. “Barbed and explicit, they are anchors/ weighing the measure of the stars.”
3. “The white magic of the moon/ Is the black magic of the Earth.”
4. “The rose is climbing over blind/ Because the sun is on the other side.”

Plus an extra for experts:

1. “You will all be dead soon!”

Peter Sculthorpe - Earth Cry

Another extremely random Christmas gift. Peter Sculthorpe is an contemporary Australian composer. Unlike the kind of thing I normally associate with modern classical music Sculthorpe isn't aggressively avant-garde, but he does use lots of unusual instrumentation and tonality. Most notably 'Earth Cry' features a lot of digiridoo, as the piece is inspired by the Australian outback.

I found the album pretty agreeable, as it's modern, accessible and far from peppy, but a few high points aside it isn't overly exciting.

Richard Wagner – Life and Work

He's been described as the greatest composer of all time, and as I'd like to be considered a well educated musician it behooves me to at least be familiar with some of his work. So I asked for and received a nice big four disc collection of his music for Christmas.

It was always going to be a bit of a challenge to get into this stuff, given my lifelong animosity toward opera and the fact that Wagner is remembered primarily for his operas. The first disc presents little problem, as it's all orchestral works, but in order to appreciate the remainder I had to first learn to appreciate women warbling at extremely high registers.

The final disc contains material from the Ring cycle, which I found the most enjoyable, partly because I'm somewhat familiar with the story and partly because it's more fantastical, numinous mood agrees with me more. Plus it contains the legendary 'Ride of the Valkyries', which of course we are all familiar with! The other operas impressed me a little less. In particular The Mastersingers of Nuremburg did nothing for me, possibly because it's a comedy and the music is very straightforward.

It still isn't obvious to me why this guy is the greatest composer of all time, (although it's easy to see his influence on twentieth century movie, television and musical soundtracks), but I'm willing to attribute this to my own ignorance. In the meantime I'll continue to listen to more instrumental classical music and come back to opera at some later date.

Fuck Yeah

(via Google Video of the Day) Who would win in a fight between a tiger and a crocodile?

Ah Fuck It

FAWM is not going so well this year so I've decided to give up while I'm not too far behind.

I'm really not competent enough with my recording equipment to put anything reasonably good together, so I'm better off working on music at my own pace rather than trying to hurry the process and producing a big load of shite.

And I'll get right on to it just after this quick game of Heroes 3...

Success (Of A Kind)

After a week of trying I finally recorded something for FAWM that doesn't totally suck. Sure, it's only half done, it has no lyrics yet and it's a total noise fest, but at least it's restored a little bit of faith in my song writing ability.

C IS FOR COOKIE!

Saw some death metal bands last night. Some of them were OK, all of them were technically very impressive. I'm not sure if it was worth staying up until 2am for but at least now we can finally say we've seen Meatyard...

Coincidentally enough Arts and Letters posted a link to this article on death metal singing yesterday.

Goddamn Motherfucker

So FAWM is not going too good so far. I spent an hour last night trying to get my recording working OK, with little success (I can record, but for some reason it's incredibly quiet). Shit like this is the main reason FAWM is so hard. If I had a direct channel from my fingers to an mp3 file, things would go a lot smoother.

It's That Time Of The Year Again

Yes it's time for FAWM, again, so don't expect much posting for the next month. I hope to improve on my performance last time, seeing as I only got 20% of the way there I should hypothetically not find it that hard...

At least I won't have to waste time on things like buying a decent sound card and learning how to use recording software this time.

Munich

I've never been a fan of Steven Spielberg. Being subjected to schmaltzy, cliched shit like E fucking T and Jurassic Park while I was a kid probably had something to do with it. I never saw Schindler's List and I thought Saving Private Ryan wasn't bad but didn't do a whole lot for me.

Still I'd heard enough good things about Munich to convince me to give it a chance, and I'm very glad I did. The movie is based on historical events; following the murder of the Israeli competitors at the 1972 Olympics in Munich the Israeli government had the organisers of the attack assassinated. The assassins are the protagonists of the movie, and Spielberg uses their story to criticise Israeli and American foreign policy both at the time the movie is set and today.

It would be easy for such weighty subjects to be ruined by a heavy handed treatment, but fortunately Spielberg shows a restrained style that I didn't know he had in him. He doesn't portray the Israeli authorities as bad people (he shows that their decisions were based on solid reasoning) but rather is saying that history has indicated that perpetuating the violence has had no benefit in the long run.

As he did with Saving Private Ryan Spielberg shows said violence in a brutally graphic manner, almost as an antidote to the slick, thrilling violence of most action movies. But having said that it still works pretty well as an action movie itself at times. He also makes a point of humanising the terrorists, showing them as intellectuals and family men, not to excuse their actions but just to emphasise that, contrary to the attitudes of some of the assassins, murder is always wrong, even though it may sometimes be necessary.

Yes it's a bit long and maybe it tries to pack a bit too much in but I found it to be a very powerful movie. The final shot of the New York skyline links his point to the international issues of today in no uncertain terms, and even though the movie offers no solutions it clearly states that the solutions currently pursued by the western governments are almost certainly the wrong ones.

Underworld Soundtrack

Another cheap score from Cash Converters. I'd idly admired the tracklist a couple of times because there are some really good bands listed there, but was turned off by the 'soundtrack for a shitty action movie' factor. However I needn't have worried, the record has been compiled by Danny Lohner, who played bass for Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle, and he seems to have pretty good taste in music as well as being a good composer himself.

I already have a few of these tracks on other albums, such as the A Perfect Circle remixes and Dillinger Escape Plan's brilliant 'Baby's First Coffin', but there are plenty of other worthwhile songs on here such as a new Skinny Puppy track 'Optimissed' and a song by The Icarus Line, who I've been meaning to check out for a while.

Danny Lohner's soundtrack compositions are good too, and the album is rounded out by a few nice ballads from female singers. I was surprised by how good this album is, I believe Danny Lohner is in charge of the sequel's soundtrack too so hopefully it's good as well, although I'm still not going to see the movie...

You Can't Talk To A Man With A Shotgun In His Hand

Carole King – Tapestry

Yeah not my normal style that's for sure, but it's one of the 1001 Albums You Must Listen to Before You Die (more on that later) and my Mum used to play it when I was a kid and I remember it quite fondly. Plus it was six bucks from Cash Converters.

Released in 1971, this is a very stripped back, mellow album, produced in a manner that shows off King's considerable songwriting talent. She sings accompanied by simple clean piano and acoustic guitar with little embellishment, in true sixties singer-songwriter style. If you don't recognize her name you're still likely to recognize the songs. 'So Far Away' and 'I Feel The Earth Move' are the most recognizable, along with '(You Make Me Feel) Like A Natural Woman', originally written for Aretha Franklin.

I really rate this album even besides the nostalgia factor. I'm not normally one for straight up pop (even in the original definition of the term), but King is a good lyricist and a great songwriter, so only the most die hard noise head could sneer at this album.

Freakonomics

by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

This is the first of a bit of a popular science reading binge I'm having at the moment (assuming you count economics as science). Steven Levitt is a smart young economist with a reputation for tackling unorthodox subjects. This book is basically a popularised collection of Levitt's essays. There's no real unifying theme to it, other than to convince people to think rationally and not to always accept conventional wisdom. Something that anyone with a scientific background should already be familiar with.

There's plenty of fascinating stuff in here. The most controversial finding is a link between the fall in the crime rate all over America in the 90s and the legalisation of abortion twenty years earlier. Without consulting all the references (and following the maths) there's no way to say for sure if that is actually the case, but it's a startling and thought-provoking idea, (and also one that makes logical sense).

That takes up one chapter, and the rest of the book deals with completely different subjects. The most memorable parts look at the management structure of crack gangs, and the factors in someone's childhood that influence whether they'll 'succeed' later in life. The last chapter is a bit silly, looking at how childrens names filter down through the socio-economic classes over time, but it's still worthwhile for some amusing stories about kids with regrettable names. Among the worst: a pair of brothers called Winner and Loser, and a kid called Shithead.

It's a fascinating and thought-provoking book. It's only flaw is that it's aimed at a scientifically uneducated audience (I often have this problem, being too educated for the popular science ones and not educated enough for the serious ones), and there's a large amount of smug promotion of the author (no doubt done well intentionally by his co-author, but annoying nonetheless).

Are You Ready To Go Now?

Coil - The Ape of Naples

After the sad death of their singer Jhon Balance in late 2004 the remaining members of Coil announced that they would release some material they'd already recorded and then call it quits. The Ape of Naples is their final album, mostly consisting of material from many years ago when they recorded at Trent Reznor's Nothing Studios. The album was to be called Backwards but it was never released and was presumed lost forever in giant record company limbo.

Since the tracks on this album come from a few different sources they don't really fit together very cohesively, but individually they're very strong. It doesn't rank in the top tier of the albums they've released, but for such a good band with such a sizeable back catalog that's no insult. More than anything it sounds like Horse Rotorvator, one of their earliest albums. The songs are more 'songy' and conventional in structure than their more recent releases, which tend to be more experimental.

Two of the Nothing Studios tracks are very reminiscent of the older albums, 'It's in my Blood' and 'I Don't Get It' are full of dirty-synth screamy goodness, almost like Throbbing Gristle. Other tracks are not such difficult listening, 'Cold Cell' and 'Amber Rain' are, freaky subject matter aside, fairly accessible. 'Triple Sun' is surprisingly melodic for these guys, and 'Heaven's Blade' is very catchy and even danceable. Together they represent Coil at their most upbeat and beautiful, and are some of the best songs on the album.

The newer tracks include 'Tattooed Man', which is in a similar vein to the others, although with a quirky circus vibe, and featuring an accordian of all things. There are also extended versions of two of their older songs 'Amethyst Deceivers' and 'Teenage Lightning' (both of which exist in several other versions already).

The album is bookended by two hymn-like songs, 'Fire of the Mind' and 'Going Up', both of which deal with death. The last is the better of the two, the lyrics are provided by the theme song to an old British sitcom, and are reinterpreted as an ascension to the afterlife. The backing music is stolen from one of my favorite Coil songs, 'Rosa Decidua' off Amethyst Deceivers, and underneath it all Jhon Balance whispers 'It just is...' from beyond the grave.

It's not their best album, but still a worthy swan song for one of the greatest bands ever, and I'm really going to miss them.

Good Omens – Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Anansi Boys reminded me a bit of this book, which I first read over ten years ago, so I thought I'd give it a reread. I was a huge Pratchett fan back in the day, but the last few times I've read his books I've been a little disappointed.

Good Omens is primarily a pisstake of the old horror movie The Omen, which chronicles the childhood of the antichrist. It's a pretty good premise and a pair of sharp guys like Gaiman and Pratchett are almost guaranteed to do a great job of it, and by and large they do. The humour is especially good, and the plot is rather clever, even though a lot of Pratchett's schtick is quite old to me now. Perhaps I overdosed a bit on him when I was younger.

What didn't work for me was the cutesiness. The main character is a young boy in the 'Just William' mould, and he's held up as the true spirit of humanity. So while I enjoyed the humourous part of the story the moralising is a little trite.

It's also interesting to try and guess which author wrote which part. Gaiman definitely puts a darker tinge on the characters. It's particularly noticable with the four horsemen of the apocalypse (sorry, motorcycle riders of the apocalypse). War is a women and Gaiman portrays her as sexy and fatal, while Pratchett makes her a joke in the 'helpless girl fucks everyone up real bad' mould.

Despite my disappointment with Anansi Boys I thought this one was a decent effort from Gaiman. I wasn't so impressed with Pratchett's contribution but I got one of his newer books for christmas, so we'll see how that goes down when I get to it.

You Might As Well Listen To The Birds

Coil – Live One

The first in a series of four live Coil albums. This one consists mostly of material from Time Machines; an album I've been repeatedly told is very good, but which I've had great difficulty tracking down, so getting this is a decent compromise. Almost all of the tracks are ambient and very long (fifteen to twenty minutes each), which must have made for an unusual concert. It's a very good album though, out of all the varied genres they've done ambient is probably the one they're best at.

The Time Machines stuff is not too different from other ambient tracks they have done on albums like How to Destroy Angels and Ten Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room, quiet but menacing tracks that build up esoterically themed samples and dirty, distorted synths to aggressive climaxes. While it might be similar to some of their other albums it's definitely nothing like any other band I've heard.

Aside from the ambient tracks there's an early version of 'Amethyst Deceivers', one of their best songs. I've always really wanted to see Coil live, both because they're great and because I'm very curious as to how they'd go about it, but now that Jhon Balance is dead I never will, so this is probably as close as I'll ever get.

Back Again

I didn't quite make it to the Andromeda galaxy, but I saw some pretty neat stuff anyway.


Content should resume in a day or two.

Merry Festivus

May you be touched by his noodly appendage this festive season.

The editors of the Wildebeest Asylum will be unavailable for the next few weeks, as they pilot the galactic mothership Wotan to the far reaches of the Andromeda galaxy in order to battle their hated enemies, the dreaded Merovingian space demons. See you in the new year!

But All The Cool Kids Are Doing It

So I'm coming home from town early one morning and I see George Bush and Karl Rove disposing of the body of a prostitute in the Avon river. "Hey George Bush!" says me, "I know you're the president of the United States and all, but you can't just go round murdering people, it's against the law!"

"Now now Jon," replies Karl Rove. "We all know that you're really just out to hate on Bush because you're a poxy liberal and you can't stand to see a conservative president do such a fantastic job. Besides, I didn't hear you complaining when Bill Clinton killed prostitutes and hid the bodies did I? He used to do it all the time!"

"Is that so?" I muse thoughtfully, "Well gee, if someone who represents a vastly simplified version of my political views did it, I guess it must be OK to murder prostitutes..."

"That's right!" says Karl Rove. "Plus Jimmy Carter, he had a grisly trophy room containing the decaying bodies of hundreds of his victims hidden under the White House. The unspeakable acts he used to commit on them... ah, it brings back such sweet memories."

"Well you've got me convinced Karl," says I "How about I give you a hand with that violated corpse there and then we'll go out for a drink?"

"George doesn't drink..." whispers Karl. I quickly recover and say, "Oh sorry, I meant for some cocaine!"

"Now that sounds like a party!" says George, and we trot off hand in hand into the sunrise.

And For The Sake Of Posterity...

Links to last year's entries.

Year End Roundup Part III

Best Albums (in no particular order):

I know it's the typical year end list wanker thing to say, but it genuinely wasn't a very good year for new music. The following albums were all decent, but none of them truly made me cream myself.

Stop press! Last minute update!
The last coil album saves this year from being a total washout. I'll write more about it next year.

Coil - The Ape of Naples
Fantomas - Suspended Animation
Nine Inch Nails – With Teeth
Einsturzende Neubauten – Grundstueck
Rammstein - Rosenrot

Best Album That Actually Came Out Last Year, But Can Pretty Much Win Every Year As Far As I'm Concerned:

Dillinger Escape Plan – Miss Machine

Best Concert:
Mark Knopfler
Runners Up:
System of a Down
Velvet Revolver

Biggest Disappointment:
System of a Down - Mezmerize

Most Obnoxious Band:
Green Day

Dishonorable Mentions:
Gwen Stefani
50 Cent
Fucking Crazy Frog

Worst Song By A Good Band That Should Have Known Better:
Rammstein – Strib Nicht Vor Mir

Runner up:
System of a Down – Old School Hollywood

Most Unbelievably Overrated Band:

U2

Runners up:
Green Day
Coldplay
Foo Fighters
The Killers

Best Career Suicide By A Totally Shit Band

Limp Bizkit

Biggest Sellouts:

Audioslave

Trent Reznor Award For The Best Album That Was Supposed To Come Out This Year But Didn't:

Tool – the new album and the new DVD.

Runner up:
Trent Reznor – the Closure DVD.

Year End Roundup II

Best Game:

God of War
Runners-up: Psychonauts, Civ IV

Webmasters Choice Award For Special Achievement In Gratuitous Sex And Violence:

God of War

Year End Roundup I

I've become a bit of a TV geek over the last few years. It's commonly believed that all TV is shit, but I find that with skillful application of a PVR you can find a lot of good stuff.

Best TV:

Doctor Who
Lost
Angel

Best Show That I Shouldn't Admit to Enjoying:

Desperate Housewives

Biggest Downturn in Quality:

Nip/Tuck

Lucifer: Inferno

by Mike Carey

Another installment in the Lucifer series. The last one was pretty good, and the story came to a bit of a mid-point climax. By contrast there's not a lot of action in this one, and it's not as good in comparison. As usual though there are some cool new characters and places, in particular the artificer demon Scoria who lives in a huge mechanical tower filled with diabolical machines.

Not bad, but not the best entry in the series.

See also:

Volume 1
Volume 2 & 3
Volume 4

Damn Right Motherfuckers

U.S. judge tells the Intelligent Design people to fuck off.

(OK he doesn't actually say fuck.)

He Was So Good At Fashion, They Had To Shoot Him

Father Ted Season 3

Probably not quite as good as Season 2, but still damn brilliant. The death of Dermot Morgan put an end to one of the best comedies ever made, and I guess there's not much more to say other than “He DID kick me up the arse!”

Astro City Catchup

Life in the Big City and Local Heroes by Kurt Busiek

A few more Astro City collections. Life in the Big City is the earliest collection, and it's relatively dull as most of it is just introducing us to the premise and characters. There are a few good stories though. The first introduces us to Samaritan, Astro City's Superman analogue and examines how a real person would deal with the pressure of saving the world several times a day (answer: it'd drive a normal person batshit). The last story goes back to him again, this time trying to go on a date with the Wonder Women analogue. Very amusing, but also rather poignant. There's also a cool story about how the newspapers work in Astro City.

Local Heroes is much stronger. The first story is nothing special, just another look at the city in general through the eyes of another ordinary person. The second is a bit better, looking at the way superhero comics are written in Astro City. Some of the later stories are real gems though. In Shining Armour a women reminisces about her affair with a superhuman, and in Old Times a retired superhero tries to save the city one last time. All these stories do a great job of humanising supposedly superhuman characters. The real highlight is the two part series about a lawyer in the 70s. Not only does it look at how putting someone in jail would work in a world where evil twins and mind control are common place (I guess this is why those supervillians are always back out of jail so fast) it also does a great job of evoking the unease and sense of betrayal of the Veitnam/Nixon era.

Neither of these collections are as good as Confessions, but Local Heroes is good enough to make me keep buying them.

See also:
Family Album
Confessions

Why am I not in Sweden?

But I'll give Newcastle a miss.

I Love You, Whore!

Rammstein – Rosenrot

Last year Rammstein released Reise Reise, which I initially found somewhat disappointing, but later ended up growing to like a lot more. Rosenrot is a kind of b-sides album for Reise Reise, but it is as least as strong as it's predecessor.

It starts out in good form with their latest single Benzin (which has a great video by the way) and Mann Gegen Mann which are both great stomping metal tracks in the best Rammstein tradition. They then turn to a more reflective and sad (but still heavy of course) style for the next three songs, which are all top class as well.

Then we hit a problem, Strib Nicht Von Mir (Don't Die Before I Do), a slow ballad in which vocalist Till sings a duet with the singer from Texas (the band Texas). Even from that description you can tell it's going to be bad, and believe me, it's even worse than what you'd expect. I don't know where the hell they got the idea to do this song from and I hope they've gotten it out of their system forever, because it sucks pretty fucking hard.

Fortunately we immediately get back on track with a few more good heavy songs, culminating in Te Quero Puta, a truly inspired track that ranks amongst the best music they've ever made. It mixes their traditional metal with Mexican music, complete with horns and hoochie backup singers. Just brilliant.

Finally there's a few more ballads, but good ones this time, the epic Feuer and Wasser and the very subdued Ein Lied.

Except for that one wrong turn, Rosenrot is absolutely classic Rammstein from beginning to end. Even the cover art is great, a lonely icescape with a frost rimed ocean liner plowing through it, overlooked by an old castle. Very Wagnerian, which is exactly what these guys do best.

Plus, it comes with a teaser DVD containing a few tracks from their upcoming live album, and it looks like it'll live up to the very high standards of Live Aus Berlin.

See also: Rammstein - Lichtspielhaus

Middle Aged Hipster Day

Breaks Co-op – Roofers

So you might recall that I was quite taken with these guys when they played at Southern Amp, so even though this isn't the kind of thing I normally go for I grabbed one of their albums. As I mentioned when talking about the live show I'd written off these guys as annoying hipster bullshit, but their performance won me over. Well, the CD has reasserted my old opinion. There's nothing I find more boring than tame middle age oriented hip-hop with by way of easy listening jazz and this album fits that bill to a T, and as such sends me to sleep every time I put it on.

Jordan Reyne (who can pretty much do no wrong) provides a definite highlight on the last track Transister with a crunchy bass line that usually wakes me up and reminds me that it's time to listen to something different. The slightly single Sound Advice (more of a rap track) isn't too bad either, but the remaining ten songs get a severe thumbs down from me.

I might still be tempted to get their new album, as there's an eight year gap between that one when Roofers was first released, and it's the one that has earned them their current success so I have tentative hopes that it might prove more appealling.

Neil Gaiman – Anansi Boys

Gaiman's American Gods was one of the best books I read last year, and probably one of my all time favorite novels full stop. I was very much looking forward to Anansi Boys, which is a sort of sequel to American Gods.

None of the characters from the earlier book appear in this one, save for a few cameos by the title character Anansi (the African trickster god, transplanted to modern day America). The protagonist is Anansi's son Charlie, who knows nothing of his father's divinity until his (Anansi's) untimely death. While the premise sounds fairly typical for a fantasy novel, the style is actually that of a broad comedy. It resembles Good Omens more than any other Gaiman novel, and indeed it has a very Pratchettesque style.

The setup is a pretty good one, and the book starts out with a lot of promise. Gaiman writes with a wry laid back tone, one that sounds a little like a updated Anansi story. I imagined it being related by some old black dude from the American south-east. Unfortunately it doesn't remain so charming all the way through. The voice of the author gradually deteriorates into what I can only describe as 'generic Terry Pratchett', complete with footnotes. The plot doesn't end up being all that interesting either, becoming more predictable as it goes on, and by the end it reminded me of nothing more than a boring Adam Sandler movie, with all the humour and plot events being telegraphed well in advance.

Having said that Gaiman is of course a pretty clever guy and there are plenty of laughs to be found right up to the end of the story. I particularly liked the way that he never explicitly states that almost all the characters are black, it's only hinted at by the way that every now and again it explicitly mentions that a minor character is white. However the actual emotional content of the story is rather flimsy. In particular the romances were eye-rollingly cliched and unconvincing. Not to mention rather creepy in some respects.

It's not as bad as I might have made it sound, I don't regret buying or taking the time to read it, but it's far below my expectations for Gaiman, as he's normally brilliant.

One for the Climbers

(via Google Video of the Day) This dude's dead now by the way.

Mow Down The Sexy People

System of a Down – Hypnotize

After an excellent live performance at the beginning of the year System of a Down managed to produce one of the most disappointing albums I've ever heard with Mezmerize. Hypnotize is the second disc in the two album set, and I must say my expectations were very low. Fortunately they have been exceeded, but not by much.

The album certainly starts out reasonably well with Attack, the angry, passionate anti-war song I've been waiting for them to release since the war in Iraq began. It continues in a reasonably competent vein for a few more tracks, Dreaming is a mellower track a little reminiscent of Aerials and is followed by the silly but enjoyable Kill Rock'n Roll and the mediocre single Hypnotize.

From there it goes through a mostly regrettable middle section, the only bright spot being another aggressive anti-war song Tentative which alternates heavy sections full of thrashy tritones and gentle sad parts where Serj sings “Where do you expect us to go when the bombs fall?”

The album ends on a few high notes however. The obligatory 'Let Serj Do Silly Voices' track Vicinity of Obscenity is a winner (a large step up from Mezmerize's execrable This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I'm On This Song). Lonely Day overcomes some eye-rollingly bad lyrics (“The most loneliest day of my life/ Such a lonely day/ Should be banned”) with a truly passionate delivery and a killer guitar solo to be one of the best tracks on the album. The last track Soldier Side isn't too hot, but I'm a sucker for the whole returning to the beginning of the album (or in this case the beginning of Mezmerize) so I'll give it a pass.

Taken together Mezmerize and Hypnotize could have easily fit on to a single album, and it's obvious to me that what they should have done is cut out the crap, released it as a single album and had another worthy addition to their discography instead of a pair of disappointments.

Let Us Sheathe Our Swords In The Beating Hearts Of Our Enemies

Civ IV

So I've had a few games of this now and I think I'm ready to make a judgment. With an indepth strategy game like this one it can often take a long time to really get to know all its ins and outs, so my opinion may change in time but for now I'm very happy with it.

Civ 2 is one of the best games ever made, no question. A completely open ended strategy game that allowed you to govern a nation from the dawn of history through to the modern era, its endlessly addictive gameplay has stolen many days, nay weeks, of my life over the years. Civ 3 was released a few years ago and while it updated the graphics very nicely, some of the new gameplay changes didn't work so well. With Civ 4 they seem to have used Civ 2 as a model and either rolled back the changes from Civ 3 or tweaked and updated them.

There are relatively few completely new features. The major one is religion, which affects the attitude of other nations towards yours. It doesn't actually come into play a lot, but it introduces a fun element by allowing you to send missionaries into neighbouring nations in order to convert them.

The 'great leader' concept from Civ 3 has been kept, but significantly changed. Rather than either being used to stack military units or finish wonders, the new ones are purely non-military and come in a range of roles, such as great merchants and great scientists.

The culture concept has been kept virtually unchanged from Civ 3, as it was easily the best innovation from that game. It's always been a hell of a lot of fun to watch an enemies cities flip over to your possession with no military effort required on your part, but it's still very hard to do on the higher difficulty settings.

Civ 4's similarity to Civ 2 has meant that the novelty has worn off quite fast for me. That doesn't mean it's a bad game at all, it is in every way an improvement on it's predecessors, and far better than the disappointing Civ 3. I'm sure I'll be playing it more in the future but for now I've moved onto my other pet obsession, overblown Japanese RPGs.

He Knows All The Chords

The Best of Dire Straits & Mark Knopfler – Private Investigations

Earlier in the year Mark Knopfler's live performance in Christchurch completely blew me away, and I said that I'd make it a priority to get some of his albums. Well eight months later I actually did, getting myself a copy of this best of.

The first disc contains almost all of Dire Straits' hits, such as Sultans of Swing and Money for Nothing. Those songs are indeed classics, but lesser known, moodier tracks included here such as Your Latest Trick, The Telegraph Road and Private Investigations show off Knopfler's true talent as a song writer. The latter two in particular have a strong emotional effect on me. Dire Straits' Love Over Gold is one of the first albums I remember listening to as a kid, and I really loved it. The songs off that album have an effect on me that nothing else can, simply because they're the songs that first awakened a love of music in me.

The second disc has some leftover Dire Straits songs but is mostly Mark Knopfler's solo stuff. I'm not familiar with much of it, but a few of the songs are as good as anything he did with Dire Straits (I particularly like Why Aye Man and Sailing to Philadelphia), and I'm tempted to look into some of his solo albums. Which I guess was the ulterior motive behind the record company releasing this double disc set.

The Tuesday Lessons

1) As God is my witness, I'll never do herbals again. And this time I mean it!

2) If you're ever lacking for female attention, try wearing big fluffy bunny ears into a feral metal bar.

Stupid Quiz Day

This one from David Farrar.

TEN FIRSTS

First Best Friend: A kid called Jordan at kindergarten. He was actually a bit of a wanker, but I guess all kids are at that age.
First Screen Name: Mad Jon Nut. Still occaisionally in use.
First Pet: My cat Mushka, who was my first birthday present.
First Piercing: None (yet...)
First Crush: Well it depends on how you define crush but we'll say my high school Japanese teacher.
First CD Bought: Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral
First Car: My current Toyota Corona. The beast that will not die!
First True Love: Patricia
First Stuffed Animal: Bunny. Full of holes but still sitting at my mum's house somewhere.
First Words: As my mum never stops telling me: “Light”, she probably thinks it's deep and meaningful now.

First Game System: I played games on the old BBC Acorn when I was very young, but my first console was a Sega Megadrive.

NINE LASTS

Last Alcoholic: A Coruba and coke at some stage last Saturday night.
Last Movie Seen: Serenity
Last CD Played: System of a Down - Hypnotize
Last Bubble Bath: A very very long time ago.
Last Time You Cried: Can't remember exactly, but probably some drunken sunday morning.
Last Time You Laughed: Can't remember, I laugh too often.
Last Time You Fell: This morning doing Aikido.

EIGHT HAVE YOU EVERS

Have You Ever Dated One Of Your Best Friends: Yes. And I don't recommend it.
Have You Ever Been Arrested: No.
Have You Ever Been Skinny Dipping: Not since I was a kid.
Have You Ever Been On TV: No
Have You Ever Regretted A Kiss: Strangely enough, no.
Have You Ever Been Drunk: That's an affirmative.
Have You Ever Slept For 24 Hours Straight: No.
Have You Ever Worn the Same Pants for 3 Weeks Straight: No.

SEVEN THINGS YOU'RE WEARING

1. Pants. Black.
2. Stripy shirt.
3. Gold satin boxers.
4. That's it!
5.
6.
7.

SIX THINGS YOU DID TODAY

1. Aikido training this morning.
2. Shopping in town – CDs, costume for a party and herbals.
3. Practised guitar.
4. Played Xenosaga.
5. Read a bit of Anansi Boys
6. Parsed the blogroll.

FIVE PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ALMOST ANYTHING TO

1 & 2. My parents.
3 & 4. My sisters
5. Barnes

THREE CHOICES

1. radio or cd: CD, I hate the fucking radio.
2. German chocolate cheese cake or vanilla bean cheese cake: I want both!
3. black or white: Black.

TWO THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE

1. Write the best fucking music I can.
2. Finish Final Fantasy X, no wait, that'll never happen. How about I take a cue from DPF and say 'have a threesome with Alyson Hannigan and Jessica Simpson'.

ONE THING YOU REGRET

1. Only one? Neglecting my musical education between the ages of 13 and 21.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke

Well this mammoth book has taken me over three months to read, but it was well worth it. Despite being a quirky fantasy novel this book has met with quite a bit of mainstream success, and deservedly so.

The premise of the novel is that of an alternate history: in ages long past magic, magicians and fairies were commonplace in England, but none now (the early 1800s) exist, although scholars take the subject very seriously. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell are the first English magicians in four hundred years. The books' clever conceit is that it is written in the style of the novels of the time (think Jane Austen), so these bizarre, fantastic situations are described in a very prim and proper manner.

Clarke is a very witty writer so the whole novel (all 900 pages) is a real breeze to read. Just one classic passage:

“The Foreign Secretary was quite a peerless orator. No matter how low the Government stood in the estimation of everyone, when the Foreign Secretary stood up and spoke – ah! how different everything seemed then! How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose). As for the present Ministry, the Foreign Secretary said that not since the days of Antiquity had the world seen gentlemen so virtuous, so misunderstood and so horribly misrepresented by their enemies.”

It struck a chord in the run up to the election when I read it a few months ago at any rate. (But not so much with our current Minister of Foreign Affairs of course.)

She has a lot of fun poking fun at the prejudices of the era, particularly the disdain for novelists:

“[T]he other Ministers considered that to employ a magician was one thing, novelists were quite another and they would not stoop to it.”,

and the quirks of the British in general. For such an upbeat book it was perhaps a little long, but that's the only criticism I could make of it.

While this book was mainly light hearted the author has a flair for unsettling descriptions of the supernatural. The magic performed by the protagonists was pretty benign, but their otherworldly antagonists were appropriately sinister.

The ending leaves rather a lot unexplained, so perhaps she's planning to write a sequel. Or maybe not, British authors are weird like that.

It Is Not The Actual Finding Of The Shoes That Is Important

Einsturzende Neubauten – Grundstueck

For the last few years Einsturzende Neubauten have been trying a new distribution model for their music. Their most dedicated fans sign up online and pay a moderately steep fee, in exchange they get to view live footage of their concerts and the recording process via webcasts as they work on their new album. Plus they also get a special supporters only album in advance of the new CD. The money raised from this is used to pay for the creation of the new record so they can produce an album without being attached to a recording label.

Grundstueck is the second supporters album released under this scheme. The first supporters album turned out to be a bit of a let down, with most of it's material being replicated on the following publicly released album, but they promised to do better this time.

Firstly they included a DVD containing live footage of a special performance at the Palast Der Republik (a Neubauten due to be Einsturzende-d) where they set up a large number of unusual percussive instruments, involving industrial machinery and even the building itself. They also invited their supporters to form a backing choir which they used in some clever and creative ways. It's a pretty cool concert, and is much more interesting than most live DVDs because of Neubauten's unique musical style.

Some of the DVD tracks are replicated on the audio CD, but that's OK as they work pretty well in that context too. The band have moved away from the more accessible style of their recent releases Silence is Sexy and Perpetuum Mobile, and back to their more experimental roots. The live tracks are mostly hypnotic percussive tracks in unusual meters, with the exception of Vox Populi, in which the band lead the choir in a haunting wordless vocal piece, interrupted by random stabs of noise.

The remaining songs are more song-like and have proper lyrics. They sound a little b-side like and don't fit together quite as well as a proper album should but are still solid efforts from a damn fine band. The highlight is the opening track Good Morning Everybody, which uses cut up vocal samples in a raucous wake up call in many different languages. The album closer Tagelang Weiss is a meditative track about addiction (as near as I can tell anyway) with Blixa murmuring his lyrics over a subdued drum and bass line. Plus you've just got to give them points for a song called Wo Sind Meine Schuhe? (Where are my shoes?)