I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my laziness regarding my music wiki. It hasn't gotten any better. I'm making progress, but only in the sense that the Terrible Trivium's chipping a few grains of sand off a cliff with a needle is progress. Some things fall by the wayside, like my list of artists and names to check out.
The saga, briefly: I kept a WordPad file, then decided to put it online on the wiki. In doing this, I blanked the file. This was dumb. I rebuilt it, partially, on my first wiki, and then the site went under. That was also dumb. Right now it isn't rebuilt so much as sporadically scavenged. I have names, but nowhere near as many. Collecting them again is going to take time. So that's one purpose of these posts: collecting names, and remembering why I was intrigued in the first place.
~*~*~
A lot of the names, for instance, would have been lost to the Google ether, like Sophie Johnson-Hill. Apparently someone left a comment on her page, some time ago, possibly in the merry month of May. She's got one of the most amusing "About Me" blurbs I've seen in a while; fortunately, the music backs it up.
The vocal parts on "Life Has Taken Its Toll" could come straight out of a diva's anthem. They wouldn't sound at all out of place amplified and backed by a loud chorus. But they're not. They're stripped of everything but a hesitant beat, backing vocals ghosting about the place creepy chords, and what sounds uncannily like a wind-up skeleton doll. It's a pop song dragged into hell and back, then autopsied. And it's absolutely wonderful.
(How wonderful? Someone else was supposed to be discussed here until I ran across the song literally an hour ago, and that was the end of that.)
I encourage you to listen to her other songs, too. A lot of them are hip hop-influenced, which may Not Be Your Thing, but at least try. They're good. Very good.
Listen here.
~*~*~
Of course, there are some artists I don't need any assistance whatsoever remembering. They're just that good. And if anyone belongs on that list, it's Carol Keogh. She can do little wrong as far as I'm concerned. Tychonaut's Love Life is only one of my favorite albums ever.
But I was a bit afraid she'd disappeared into the ether. She has a Myspace blog, but it was silent (her right, of course.) She'd done some tracks with her new project The Natural History Museum, but there wasn't much news on that front. And then, out of the blue (song title!), she reappears with guest vocals on a Jerry Fish song and - finally! - a Myspace of her own.
"Into the Blue" starts out sounding like it's going to be pretty straightforward until it suddenly bursts into bloom a few seconds in. Put simply, it's one of the most gorgeous songs I've heard all week, likely all month, possibly all year. The piano lilts and sighs along and Carol's voice is in fine form throughout, especially when it soars at the ends of the choruses. It's not as complicated or experimental as Tychonaut, sure, but there's The Natural History Museum for that. Sometimes the most beautiful things are the simplest.
Listen here.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
2008 XYZZY Awards: day-after thoughts
And here we are! After a reschedule, many speeches and a failed call (or was it?) for NPC revolution by NamelessAdventurer, 2008's XYZZY Awards have come and gone. Congrats to all the winners! Now we can all focus on 2009!
I know some people were worried that there weren't as many unique nominees. Turns out, though, that quite a few different games picked up awards! Which was nice, even if it does render most of the awards-sweep puns I came up with unusable. (And I *liked* Nightfall Windfall.)
As for my votes, I went 5 for 10. My votes are in italics, and the winners are in bold.
---
Best Use of Medium was first. Nominees:
Afflicted, by Doug Egan
Everybody Dies, by Jim Munroe (with spectacular timing)
Gun Mute, by C. E. J. Pacian
The Moon Watch, by Paolo Maroncelli and Alessandro Peretti
Violet, by Jeremy Freese
This was a very difficult vote for me. I was between Everybody Dies and Violet. I rated Afflicted high in my comp votes, but it wasn't for use of medium. In fact, I thought it could have used the medium better. Although graphics might get a bit gory (and if that's your thing, well then, there you go!) there's a lot that could have been done with NPCs. Mainly on the reactive end. I hadn't played Gun Mute or The Moon Watch.
My vote came down to how I defined Best Use of Medium. If I was thinking "graphics, sound, and overall innovative stuff," Everybody Dies would have won hands-down. If I was thinking "default messages and use of the parser," Violet would have won hands down. I ended up going with "default messages and use of the parser" because that was written on the page, but it's a contentious category anyway.
Then it turned out The Moon Watch, written for the One Room Comp, won. Oops. Cue egg on face. My incompetence. is showing. This means it's time to go play it. So I did. And after doing, so, all I have to say is: job well done. Well, OK, I've got more to say. (By the way, I suppose SPOILERS start here.)
The most obvious innovation here, or at least the first you encounter, is the graphics. There's cover art, a few images of certain objects, items, and/or NPCs, and the screen is framed by illustrations. Not static graphics, either - put on the spaceship and they become frosted over. That was a nice touch.
Then there's the conversation system. Maga didn't quite think it worked, but I didn't mind it at all. This kind of conversation system has obvious limitations: what if the parser misinterprets your keyword? But here's where my own definition of "use of medium" comes through: use of limitations. Keywords getting misinterpreted? Put the conversation on a far-away, precarious space station on a questionable phone and make your conversation partners a kid and a dying man!
The Moon Watch also has music, presumably originally composed, and most of it quite effective. I'm pleased that something with music won Best Use of Medium. A whole lot more can be done with it. (There's a self-serving side to that remark, mind you. One of my WIPs - well, a WNIP at the moment since I have a comp deadline looming closer every day and I'm waiting on Damusix - is heavily music-based.) It helps that the music's *good*. There was just one part, in the mouse scene, where this one note was a bit too high-pitched, but that clip was short.
---
Best Individual PC was presented by Grunk from Lost Pig, which made for a quite amusing part of the ceremony. The nominees:
Graham (Everybody Dies): "First person that maybe win seem like good person for sitting and talking about thing and drinking beers with. But maybe not so good for swimming."
Mute Lawton (Gun Mute): "Some person say that doing louder than talking. If that true, then this next man very very loud. And Grunk not just mean going bang bang lots."
David (Nightfall): "Then there man that not afraid of staying when every other person go. Him not afraid of Enemy. Him only think about one thing: finding her.
Hardy Bulldog (Nightfall): "Last person not like other person in list. Him shorter and more hairy. And not have real thumb. But him still smart! Maybe even smart as pig.
Hardy the Bulldog won and I can't say I'm all that opposed to it. The thing is, though, that Ralph did this too, and A Day for Soft Food, et cetera and so forth. Also, I'm a cat person. But the game certainly got amusing mileage of the PC-as-dog conceit. I'll give it that.
My vote, however, went to Graham: the face of Everybody Dies. He's certainly not nice, but his writing never crosses the line into being obnoxious. You don't like him, but you don't hate him so much you can't play. And he isn't stereotyped or pat or lazily written. Accomplishing this with a standard PC would be good enough, but doing this with Everybody Dies' structure is even better.
---
Best Individual NPC, with comments by the Lost Pig gnome:
H.R. from 'Escapade!', by Juhana Leinonen - "This year's first nominee brings up an important question: what do you give to someone who has everything? Fortunately, he's not that picky."
Solemn Gertrude from 'Gun Mute', by C. E. J. Pacian - "The second nominee doesn't waste words. So I won't either."
Your Pet in 'Snack Time' by Renee Choba - "Our third nominee is a clever fellow who has learned several tricks. And I gather that he's even housebroken."
'Violet' from 'Violet' by Jeremy Freese - "Our final nominee for Best Individual NPC is a lady who knows how to get things done. Or to put it another way, she knows how to make *other* people get things done."
Including winning XYZZY awards. Possibly one of the least suspenseful categories this year. Disclaimer time: I was a beta tester for Violet. But honestly, what is there to say? The game is suffused with a personality so forceful that it more than makes up for the fact that Violet only physically appears in the game briefly, at the ending. Yes, she's idealized, but that's the point. The truly remarkable thing, though, is that there are almost no slips in character, no quips that don't quite fit the voice. With the amount of text she gets, that's quite an accomplishment. So. Not much else to say about this category except well done.
---
Next was Best Individual Puzzle, presented by Hugh Dunnett presenting for a mysteriously vanished Christopher Huang. The finalists:
Putting the vampire together in Afflicted. (Hugh Dunnett: "Seriously?")
Finalist: Calling for help in Escapade! by Juhana Leinonen. (Hugh: "Just use the telephone, I say.")
Finalist: The gallows in Gun Mute. (Hugh nods approvingly. Not that he's biased or anything.)
Finalist: Disconnecting the Internet in Violet.
Finalist: Getting rid of the key in Violet. (Hugh shakes his head disapprovingly.)
Another disclaimer: I am terrible at puzzles. If it weren't for hints and walkthroughs I probably wouldn't have finished a lot of the IF works I've played.
The Afflicted puzzle, essentially, was a treasure hunt (if you can call dismembered body parts treasure) (oh, the search terms that one will see) but I have a much greater tolerance/appreciation for treasure hunts than most. Very old-school, very built-in-marker-of-your-progress.
Honestly, Violet winning this one surprised me. Not because of puzzle quality, but because I was so sure having two puzzles nominated would split the votes. (Apparently they may have been combined, though...?) The win was well deserved, though. The entire rigmarole of the puzzle makes it. You have to try so many things that go wrong in so many ways - and the whole process is streamlined to boot. There's no guess the verb or "where did I put that widget?" Nothing ruins a puzzle like poor coding, so that's another big point in its favor.
Plus, the game already had a bit of an advantage, considering the sets of IF players and people who'd have to lock up an ethernet cable and throw away the key just to kill the Internet probably intersect. Not that I've ever done that.
---
Best NPCs was next, presented by the aforementioned ax-grinding Nameless Adventurer. (A nice touch to the ceremony, I thought.) Finalitss:
April in Paris by Jim Aikin.
Everybody Dies
Gun Mute
Snack Time!
Violet
The voters and I were again in agreement here, choosing the game which, in Nameless's words, "made great strides in really helping PCs and NPCs understand each other's position." The line between NPC and PC was admittedly blurred, unblurred, and blurred back again, but for my vote, I took the position that a NPC was defined as anyone who wasn't the PC at the time. I'm *sure* I let some PC aspects filter into my thinking, of course, making this more akin to "Best Characters," but what can I say? Characterization was among the strongest parts of this, and if it's going to be honored anywhere, this is the category to do it in.
---
Next was Best Puzzles.
Best Puzzles (Dan Shiovitz, for Lucian P. Smith)
Escapade! (Juhana Leinonen; Z-code).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3). Pacian exclaims, "Is Nameless here? Most of these puzzles were about bringing harm to NPCs, and I'm not sorry about that, either!"
Piracy 2.0 (Sean Huxter; Z-code).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
My reasoning for voting Violet's been explained adequately above. This was a bit unfair on my part, though; I didn't play Gun Mute either. So.
Well, now I know why this was nominated for Best Use of Medium. It's quite ingenious. The puzzles here boil down to "Shoot things. Don't get shot." There are variations, but most of them involve figuring out what to shoot, and when, and how not to get shot. And there are a few which don't quite fit the mold, but more on them later.
In that way, it's more like an action game than an IF - but consciously so, mind you. The various 'stages' are even referred to in the hints as Levels. You beat one level, advance to the next, reload, etc.
It's a good game, but I'm not entirely sure the puzzles translated perfectly to IF. The game sets them up as routines, so it's easy to miss some of the puzzles that don't involve shooting until you go back to the hints and realize that a few of the levels haven't gone away. Since the game relies so heavily on timing, furthermore, it isn't intuitive - or characteristic, really - to examine everything. It throws off your puzzle timing. As far as I can tell, the baddies just keep shooting at you in their cycles, so you can examine, hide, and get back in the game, but a lot of timed-puzzle paranoia is based on the assumption that you can't do this. And besides, the impression I got of the PC's mindset was "shoot first, ask questions later."
I'd still love to see more games like Gun Mute, though.
---
Next was Best Setting. The finalists:
Buried In Shoes (Kazuki Mishima; Z-code).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Piracy 2.0 (Sean Huxter; Z-code).
Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
Another choice for me. No other game felt as expansive or rooted in place. Out of all the comp games, its setting is the one I remember most. I freely admit there's an element of nostalgia here, so to speak - the time I spent with big, expansive games like Anchorhead and Christminster had to have rubbed off on me and on my memories - but David has a clear relationship to the city, and the prose brings this out.
On the technical side, the implementation of commands like "GO TO" takes a lot of the "where am I going now" fiddliness out of the picture. It's hard to get immersed in a setting when you're trying to fight it.
---
Best Story:
Afflicted (Doug Egan; Z-code).
Everybody Dies (Jim Munroe; Glulx).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
I voted Everybody Dies here - if it's half about characterization, the other half is story. So much, in fact, that some people thought it was too railroaded. That's another thing, though, that my tolerance is much higher for. (Is there anything my tolerance is lower for? Sure. Fiddly machinery puzzles with turning dials to 3432 or something.)
Except Nightfall, the other games stood out for things other than story. And although Nightfall wasn't my vote, I can appreciate its winning; it did have a thought-out, involved story, with obvious effort.
---
Best Writing was next. Writing, in the words of presenter Admiral Jota, "is the knack of stringing together letters, punctuation, spaces, and even the occasional number to form coherent sentences. Such as '@ least thats wut ppl say it iz l0l' or 'THAT IS NOT SO HARD BOOBY !!!' or 'South wall have big curtain hanging on it.'"
Finalist: Everybody Dies (Jim Munroe; Glulx).
Finalist: Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Finalist: Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Finalist: Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
(The commentary's petering out as I go along, I'm afraid...) This was one of the better categories, I thought. All the finalists had at least competent-to-good writing, if of very different styles. I chose my vote because Violet's writing was the most showy, if that makes any sense. (I use the word in a positive sense.) Apparently the other voters agreed.
---
Best Game. The finalists:
Everybody Dies (Jim Munroe; Glulx).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Piracy 2.0 (Sean Huxter; Z-code).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
Between Everybody Dies and Violet here. In the end, I went with Violet, mainly because I did wish Everybody Dies did more with the multiple PCs. It's a great concept, but a bit underutilized.
---
And that's that! Off to write now...
I know some people were worried that there weren't as many unique nominees. Turns out, though, that quite a few different games picked up awards! Which was nice, even if it does render most of the awards-sweep puns I came up with unusable. (And I *liked* Nightfall Windfall.)
As for my votes, I went 5 for 10. My votes are in italics, and the winners are in bold.
---
Best Use of Medium was first. Nominees:
Afflicted, by Doug Egan
Everybody Dies, by Jim Munroe (with spectacular timing)
Gun Mute, by C. E. J. Pacian
The Moon Watch, by Paolo Maroncelli and Alessandro Peretti
Violet, by Jeremy Freese
This was a very difficult vote for me. I was between Everybody Dies and Violet. I rated Afflicted high in my comp votes, but it wasn't for use of medium. In fact, I thought it could have used the medium better. Although graphics might get a bit gory (and if that's your thing, well then, there you go!) there's a lot that could have been done with NPCs. Mainly on the reactive end. I hadn't played Gun Mute or The Moon Watch.
My vote came down to how I defined Best Use of Medium. If I was thinking "graphics, sound, and overall innovative stuff," Everybody Dies would have won hands-down. If I was thinking "default messages and use of the parser," Violet would have won hands down. I ended up going with "default messages and use of the parser" because that was written on the page, but it's a contentious category anyway.
Then it turned out The Moon Watch, written for the One Room Comp, won. Oops. Cue egg on face. My incompetence. is showing. This means it's time to go play it. So I did. And after doing, so, all I have to say is: job well done. Well, OK, I've got more to say. (By the way, I suppose SPOILERS start here.)
The most obvious innovation here, or at least the first you encounter, is the graphics. There's cover art, a few images of certain objects, items, and/or NPCs, and the screen is framed by illustrations. Not static graphics, either - put on the spaceship and they become frosted over. That was a nice touch.
Then there's the conversation system. Maga didn't quite think it worked, but I didn't mind it at all. This kind of conversation system has obvious limitations: what if the parser misinterprets your keyword? But here's where my own definition of "use of medium" comes through: use of limitations. Keywords getting misinterpreted? Put the conversation on a far-away, precarious space station on a questionable phone and make your conversation partners a kid and a dying man!
The Moon Watch also has music, presumably originally composed, and most of it quite effective. I'm pleased that something with music won Best Use of Medium. A whole lot more can be done with it. (There's a self-serving side to that remark, mind you. One of my WIPs - well, a WNIP at the moment since I have a comp deadline looming closer every day and I'm waiting on Damusix - is heavily music-based.) It helps that the music's *good*. There was just one part, in the mouse scene, where this one note was a bit too high-pitched, but that clip was short.
---
Best Individual PC was presented by Grunk from Lost Pig, which made for a quite amusing part of the ceremony. The nominees:
Graham (Everybody Dies): "First person that maybe win seem like good person for sitting and talking about thing and drinking beers with. But maybe not so good for swimming."
Mute Lawton (Gun Mute): "Some person say that doing louder than talking. If that true, then this next man very very loud. And Grunk not just mean going bang bang lots."
David (Nightfall): "Then there man that not afraid of staying when every other person go. Him not afraid of Enemy. Him only think about one thing: finding her.
Hardy Bulldog (Nightfall): "Last person not like other person in list. Him shorter and more hairy. And not have real thumb. But him still smart! Maybe even smart as pig.
Hardy the Bulldog won and I can't say I'm all that opposed to it. The thing is, though, that Ralph did this too, and A Day for Soft Food, et cetera and so forth. Also, I'm a cat person. But the game certainly got amusing mileage of the PC-as-dog conceit. I'll give it that.
My vote, however, went to Graham: the face of Everybody Dies. He's certainly not nice, but his writing never crosses the line into being obnoxious. You don't like him, but you don't hate him so much you can't play. And he isn't stereotyped or pat or lazily written. Accomplishing this with a standard PC would be good enough, but doing this with Everybody Dies' structure is even better.
---
Best Individual NPC, with comments by the Lost Pig gnome:
H.R. from 'Escapade!', by Juhana Leinonen - "This year's first nominee brings up an important question: what do you give to someone who has everything? Fortunately, he's not that picky."
Solemn Gertrude from 'Gun Mute', by C. E. J. Pacian - "The second nominee doesn't waste words. So I won't either."
Your Pet in 'Snack Time' by Renee Choba - "Our third nominee is a clever fellow who has learned several tricks. And I gather that he's even housebroken."
'Violet' from 'Violet' by Jeremy Freese - "Our final nominee for Best Individual NPC is a lady who knows how to get things done. Or to put it another way, she knows how to make *other* people get things done."
Including winning XYZZY awards. Possibly one of the least suspenseful categories this year. Disclaimer time: I was a beta tester for Violet. But honestly, what is there to say? The game is suffused with a personality so forceful that it more than makes up for the fact that Violet only physically appears in the game briefly, at the ending. Yes, she's idealized, but that's the point. The truly remarkable thing, though, is that there are almost no slips in character, no quips that don't quite fit the voice. With the amount of text she gets, that's quite an accomplishment. So. Not much else to say about this category except well done.
---
Next was Best Individual Puzzle, presented by Hugh Dunnett presenting for a mysteriously vanished Christopher Huang. The finalists:
Putting the vampire together in Afflicted. (Hugh Dunnett: "Seriously?")
Finalist: Calling for help in Escapade! by Juhana Leinonen. (Hugh: "Just use the telephone, I say.")
Finalist: The gallows in Gun Mute. (Hugh nods approvingly. Not that he's biased or anything.)
Finalist: Disconnecting the Internet in Violet.
Finalist: Getting rid of the key in Violet. (Hugh shakes his head disapprovingly.)
Another disclaimer: I am terrible at puzzles. If it weren't for hints and walkthroughs I probably wouldn't have finished a lot of the IF works I've played.
The Afflicted puzzle, essentially, was a treasure hunt (if you can call dismembered body parts treasure) (oh, the search terms that one will see) but I have a much greater tolerance/appreciation for treasure hunts than most. Very old-school, very built-in-marker-of-your-progress.
Honestly, Violet winning this one surprised me. Not because of puzzle quality, but because I was so sure having two puzzles nominated would split the votes. (Apparently they may have been combined, though...?) The win was well deserved, though. The entire rigmarole of the puzzle makes it. You have to try so many things that go wrong in so many ways - and the whole process is streamlined to boot. There's no guess the verb or "where did I put that widget?" Nothing ruins a puzzle like poor coding, so that's another big point in its favor.
Plus, the game already had a bit of an advantage, considering the sets of IF players and people who'd have to lock up an ethernet cable and throw away the key just to kill the Internet probably intersect. Not that I've ever done that.
---
Best NPCs was next, presented by the aforementioned ax-grinding Nameless Adventurer. (A nice touch to the ceremony, I thought.) Finalitss:
April in Paris by Jim Aikin.
Everybody Dies
Gun Mute
Snack Time!
Violet
The voters and I were again in agreement here, choosing the game which, in Nameless's words, "made great strides in really helping PCs and NPCs understand each other's position." The line between NPC and PC was admittedly blurred, unblurred, and blurred back again, but for my vote, I took the position that a NPC was defined as anyone who wasn't the PC at the time. I'm *sure* I let some PC aspects filter into my thinking, of course, making this more akin to "Best Characters," but what can I say? Characterization was among the strongest parts of this, and if it's going to be honored anywhere, this is the category to do it in.
---
Next was Best Puzzles.
Best Puzzles (Dan Shiovitz, for Lucian P. Smith)
Escapade! (Juhana Leinonen; Z-code).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3). Pacian exclaims, "Is Nameless here? Most of these puzzles were about bringing harm to NPCs, and I'm not sorry about that, either!"
Piracy 2.0 (Sean Huxter; Z-code).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
My reasoning for voting Violet's been explained adequately above. This was a bit unfair on my part, though; I didn't play Gun Mute either. So.
Well, now I know why this was nominated for Best Use of Medium. It's quite ingenious. The puzzles here boil down to "Shoot things. Don't get shot." There are variations, but most of them involve figuring out what to shoot, and when, and how not to get shot. And there are a few which don't quite fit the mold, but more on them later.
In that way, it's more like an action game than an IF - but consciously so, mind you. The various 'stages' are even referred to in the hints as Levels. You beat one level, advance to the next, reload, etc.
It's a good game, but I'm not entirely sure the puzzles translated perfectly to IF. The game sets them up as routines, so it's easy to miss some of the puzzles that don't involve shooting until you go back to the hints and realize that a few of the levels haven't gone away. Since the game relies so heavily on timing, furthermore, it isn't intuitive - or characteristic, really - to examine everything. It throws off your puzzle timing. As far as I can tell, the baddies just keep shooting at you in their cycles, so you can examine, hide, and get back in the game, but a lot of timed-puzzle paranoia is based on the assumption that you can't do this. And besides, the impression I got of the PC's mindset was "shoot first, ask questions later."
I'd still love to see more games like Gun Mute, though.
---
Next was Best Setting. The finalists:
Buried In Shoes (Kazuki Mishima; Z-code).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Piracy 2.0 (Sean Huxter; Z-code).
Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
Another choice for me. No other game felt as expansive or rooted in place. Out of all the comp games, its setting is the one I remember most. I freely admit there's an element of nostalgia here, so to speak - the time I spent with big, expansive games like Anchorhead and Christminster had to have rubbed off on me and on my memories - but David has a clear relationship to the city, and the prose brings this out.
On the technical side, the implementation of commands like "GO TO" takes a lot of the "where am I going now" fiddliness out of the picture. It's hard to get immersed in a setting when you're trying to fight it.
---
Best Story:
Afflicted (Doug Egan; Z-code).
Everybody Dies (Jim Munroe; Glulx).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
I voted Everybody Dies here - if it's half about characterization, the other half is story. So much, in fact, that some people thought it was too railroaded. That's another thing, though, that my tolerance is much higher for. (Is there anything my tolerance is lower for? Sure. Fiddly machinery puzzles with turning dials to 3432 or something.)
Except Nightfall, the other games stood out for things other than story. And although Nightfall wasn't my vote, I can appreciate its winning; it did have a thought-out, involved story, with obvious effort.
---
Best Writing was next. Writing, in the words of presenter Admiral Jota, "is the knack of stringing together letters, punctuation, spaces, and even the occasional number to form coherent sentences. Such as '@ least thats wut ppl say it iz l0l' or 'THAT IS NOT SO HARD BOOBY !!!' or 'South wall have big curtain hanging on it.'"
Finalist: Everybody Dies (Jim Munroe; Glulx).
Finalist: Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Finalist: Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Finalist: Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
(The commentary's petering out as I go along, I'm afraid...) This was one of the better categories, I thought. All the finalists had at least competent-to-good writing, if of very different styles. I chose my vote because Violet's writing was the most showy, if that makes any sense. (I use the word in a positive sense.) Apparently the other voters agreed.
---
Best Game. The finalists:
Everybody Dies (Jim Munroe; Glulx).
Gun Mute (C.E.J. Pacian; TADS 3).
Nightfall (Eric Eve; Glulx).
Piracy 2.0 (Sean Huxter; Z-code).
Violet (Jeremy Freese; Z-code).
Between Everybody Dies and Violet here. In the end, I went with Violet, mainly because I did wish Everybody Dies did more with the multiple PCs. It's a great concept, but a bit underutilized.
---
And that's that! Off to write now...
Read more...
Monday, March 23, 2009
March 23, 2009: Assorted notes
I cannot hear about how the Kindle is going to "Revolutionize the Literary World!" without feeling horror. See, I like books. I collect books like floors collect dust. I frequent bookstores even when I'm running out of space and my Amazon wish list is near-overflowing at this point. When I move into an apartment, it's going to involve lots of heavy boxes.
I used to have more books, though. Shelves and shelves of children's books. Most of them are gone, donated or sold. I kept a few, though, the ones I refused to sell. One of these was an old copy of "Stories from the Peterkin Papers," by Lucretia Hale. It probably wouldn't register as "old" by any hobbyist's standards, but on aesthetic grounds, it more than qualifies. The cover was torn in places and the pages were yellowed. It had to be a couple decades old, at least. I bought it at a church book sale with about four books. Even as a child I had a fascination with yellowed and somewhat torn books, so I picked it up. And reading it reminds me of my grandmother's old house and nostalgic things.
Somehow, in my memory, the "Stories From" got erased. So at the bookstore (see what I mean about self-control?) when I found a copy of The Peterkin Papers, I was shocked to find out that the stories were different. There were a lot more of them, mainly. I'd never read them! But at least one of the stories from my copy was missing. We have a mystery to solve, I thought, and went ahead and bought the book.
Turns out the copy I had was a 'selected stories' edition - as the "Stories From" should have made clear. The missing story - or stories, I can't remember - was from The Last of the Peterkins. So now I have another book to track down and several more stories to read. Which is fine by me. They're charming stories. And now I can reacquaint myself with them.
~*~*~
Things I've been listening to lately that I didn't discuss earlier:
- Kristin Hersh's "Coals". What else is there to say at this point except that everything she's released lately is great?
- The new Cathy Davey demos, up at The Torture Garden. Her third album is going to be phenomenal. I can already tell.
- My friends have developed an obsession with the German musical Elisabeth. I have no idea what's going on, but the music is good enough.
I used to have more books, though. Shelves and shelves of children's books. Most of them are gone, donated or sold. I kept a few, though, the ones I refused to sell. One of these was an old copy of "Stories from the Peterkin Papers," by Lucretia Hale. It probably wouldn't register as "old" by any hobbyist's standards, but on aesthetic grounds, it more than qualifies. The cover was torn in places and the pages were yellowed. It had to be a couple decades old, at least. I bought it at a church book sale with about four books. Even as a child I had a fascination with yellowed and somewhat torn books, so I picked it up. And reading it reminds me of my grandmother's old house and nostalgic things.
Somehow, in my memory, the "Stories From" got erased. So at the bookstore (see what I mean about self-control?) when I found a copy of The Peterkin Papers, I was shocked to find out that the stories were different. There were a lot more of them, mainly. I'd never read them! But at least one of the stories from my copy was missing. We have a mystery to solve, I thought, and went ahead and bought the book.
Turns out the copy I had was a 'selected stories' edition - as the "Stories From" should have made clear. The missing story - or stories, I can't remember - was from The Last of the Peterkins. So now I have another book to track down and several more stories to read. Which is fine by me. They're charming stories. And now I can reacquaint myself with them.
~*~*~
Things I've been listening to lately that I didn't discuss earlier:
- Kristin Hersh's "Coals". What else is there to say at this point except that everything she's released lately is great?
- The new Cathy Davey demos, up at The Torture Garden. Her third album is going to be phenomenal. I can already tell.
- My friends have developed an obsession with the German musical Elisabeth. I have no idea what's going on, but the music is good enough.
Read more...
Monday Music #12 (Lucie Thorne, Kate Fagan)
In my music database, which unfortunately is still languishing, neglected, one of the first categories I set up was nationality. Sorting your collection makes you realize certain things - namely, how lopsided the categories are. A lot of the United States, a good deal from the United Kingdom, some across Europe, but after that? Limited, to say the least.
Now, flying things in has a few drawbacks. It throws higher shipping costs and fruitless brick-and-mortar searches in my way. You pull information in rather than having it pushed at you. I've always been averse to push models, though, and I've always liked researching things I like.
But the fact is that most of what I discover is, more or less, by chance - what people write, what I hear. This is probably nothing but rationalization, but it's what I've got. So there's really no deliberate reason why it happens that both the artists today are from Australia, except that someone found their music worth writing about. As did I.
~*~*~
I discovered Lucie Thorne, for instance, her being compared to Kate Bush. I have a Google alert for that because Google owns my soul.
Not all of those Google alerts, of course, make it into writing. A lot of them don't. Sturgeon's Law: A lot of people are just forgettable. Lucie Thorne isn't, though. Earlier this month, she released Black Across The Field, and from what I've heard of it, it's excellent. This isn't an album of gimmickry or quirkiness-for-its-own sake. It stands on songwriting, and what it has is excellent. "The Basic Rules" has a delightful jauntiness and "Over in Threes" is just great, crunchy and breezy at the same time.
And take "Alice." Here's a perfectly crafted song. The beginning's aggressive enough to grab your attention, never quite settling into one mode. Underneath, the song is building, but it's just subtle enough to go unheeded. And then, at "sway," the song does: floating all of a sudden, becoming wistful. It's a mood that's sustained through the entire song - and it's fairly long - through key changes and sighs, refrains and backing swirls.
Listen here.
~*~*~
If Lucie Thorne is gimmick-free, Kate Fagan, who she's performed with, is even more so. She performs acoustic folk music, influenced, she says, by "the old world." Cormac McCarthy is in her top friends. It's almost jarring to listen to this from a Myspace page, on a laptop, indoors. I should be walking outdoors, or at least in view of a field.
But just the music is more than all right with me. Every spring, I seek this sort of music out. It must be something about the sun reappearing, and the sticks bursting into trees. Some of it fades once summer sets in, but I suspect her music won't.
Reviewers have described it as country-folk, which is about right, if a bit generic: in one fell swoop, it removes everything grating about some country music and placid (there's that word again) about some folk music. What's left is dynamic, assertive, and well sung. Kate has two voices - a more traditional folk voice, and one that's fluttery, a bit like Beth Orton's.
There are three of them up. "One More Drive," by far, stands out. It's along the same lines as What Bird's "Highway Song" (but more acoustic) or even some of the later songs on Speedbath. The chorus, in particular, sounds like Kate heard it, by chance, by a traveler, who heard it from another traveler centuries ago. It makes me forget all about lopsided categories or quotas or, for that matter, what's trending this year. Good music is timeless.
Listen here.
Now, flying things in has a few drawbacks. It throws higher shipping costs and fruitless brick-and-mortar searches in my way. You pull information in rather than having it pushed at you. I've always been averse to push models, though, and I've always liked researching things I like.
But the fact is that most of what I discover is, more or less, by chance - what people write, what I hear. This is probably nothing but rationalization, but it's what I've got. So there's really no deliberate reason why it happens that both the artists today are from Australia, except that someone found their music worth writing about. As did I.
~*~*~
I discovered Lucie Thorne, for instance, her being compared to Kate Bush. I have a Google alert for that because Google owns my soul.
Not all of those Google alerts, of course, make it into writing. A lot of them don't. Sturgeon's Law: A lot of people are just forgettable. Lucie Thorne isn't, though. Earlier this month, she released Black Across The Field, and from what I've heard of it, it's excellent. This isn't an album of gimmickry or quirkiness-for-its-own sake. It stands on songwriting, and what it has is excellent. "The Basic Rules" has a delightful jauntiness and "Over in Threes" is just great, crunchy and breezy at the same time.
And take "Alice." Here's a perfectly crafted song. The beginning's aggressive enough to grab your attention, never quite settling into one mode. Underneath, the song is building, but it's just subtle enough to go unheeded. And then, at "sway," the song does: floating all of a sudden, becoming wistful. It's a mood that's sustained through the entire song - and it's fairly long - through key changes and sighs, refrains and backing swirls.
Listen here.
~*~*~
If Lucie Thorne is gimmick-free, Kate Fagan, who she's performed with, is even more so. She performs acoustic folk music, influenced, she says, by "the old world." Cormac McCarthy is in her top friends. It's almost jarring to listen to this from a Myspace page, on a laptop, indoors. I should be walking outdoors, or at least in view of a field.
But just the music is more than all right with me. Every spring, I seek this sort of music out. It must be something about the sun reappearing, and the sticks bursting into trees. Some of it fades once summer sets in, but I suspect her music won't.
Reviewers have described it as country-folk, which is about right, if a bit generic: in one fell swoop, it removes everything grating about some country music and placid (there's that word again) about some folk music. What's left is dynamic, assertive, and well sung. Kate has two voices - a more traditional folk voice, and one that's fluttery, a bit like Beth Orton's.
There are three of them up. "One More Drive," by far, stands out. It's along the same lines as What Bird's "Highway Song" (but more acoustic) or even some of the later songs on Speedbath. The chorus, in particular, sounds like Kate heard it, by chance, by a traveler, who heard it from another traveler centuries ago. It makes me forget all about lopsided categories or quotas or, for that matter, what's trending this year. Good music is timeless.
Listen here.
Read more...
Friday, March 20, 2009
March 20, 2009: A penny for your Google Suggest
On ifMUD today someone pointed out the Google Suggest results for typing "I am extremely" into Google. Most definitely censored on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
The genius thing about Google Suggest, after you get over the fact that there's a pop-up drop-down (all-around) menu showing up on your clean Google page, is that it's this wonderful snapshot of just what people are thinking and what they care about. Turns out people care about the darndest things:
~*~*~
- "I am quite" - I don't know which is funnier: "I am quite the thong wearer" or "I am quite satisfied with the condition of the item and price." The former is funny because it's so erudite about skimpy underwear, but the latter is funny because you get the impression this is just the new, long-winded version of something like "Thank you!" And there are MORE results for this.
- "I'm not very" - Only one result: "I'm not very sociable." If you're typing unfinished sentences into Google - or, for that matter, blogging about it - that is not all that surprising.
- "How do I remove antivirus 2009" returns more results than "How do I know if I'm pregnant."
- "I love myself" returns far more results than "I love my wife," "I love my husband," "I love my mom," "I love my sister," etc. We're talking 131,000,000 to 40,000,000.
The genius thing about Google Suggest, after you get over the fact that there's a pop-up drop-down (all-around) menu showing up on your clean Google page, is that it's this wonderful snapshot of just what people are thinking and what they care about. Turns out people care about the darndest things:
~*~*~
- "I am quite" - I don't know which is funnier: "I am quite the thong wearer" or "I am quite satisfied with the condition of the item and price." The former is funny because it's so erudite about skimpy underwear, but the latter is funny because you get the impression this is just the new, long-winded version of something like "Thank you!" And there are MORE results for this.
- "I'm not very" - Only one result: "I'm not very sociable." If you're typing unfinished sentences into Google - or, for that matter, blogging about it - that is not all that surprising.
- "How do I remove antivirus 2009" returns more results than "How do I know if I'm pregnant."
- "I love myself" returns far more results than "I love my wife," "I love my husband," "I love my mom," "I love my sister," etc. We're talking 131,000,000 to 40,000,000.
Read more...
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday Music #11 (Mia Vigar, Sarah Rabdau, and Cathy Davey)
I'm not a background-music kind of person. If I'm listening to something, I spin stories out of it and into it. And I know something isn't to my taste if I'm unable to do that. It'll slip right through my ears without my mind noticing. In other words, it's placid.
I very rarely use that word as a compliment. Merriam-Webster defines it as "serenely free of interruption or disturbance." This is a great schema for relaxation, but not so much for music. I like interruption and disturbance. I like songs that, if placed into the background even for a second, kick and claw their way back into the forefront.
~*~*~
You cannot say Mia Vigar is placid. You just can't. Maybe if you haven't listened to her music and just parse your first impressions by singer-songwriter stereotypes and the current SSA baby-names list, but the former has been discredited about a thousand times if you look, and the latter is the very definition of "don't judge a book by its cover."
"Soothsayer" is explosive. It's not hyperbole in this case - this is about twenty kinds of crashing, shouting, and careening. There aren't lyrics, just the aforementioned shouts. That isn't hyperbole either. The vocals are screamed, yelped, sometimes sounding like guitars, sometimes like a crime scene.
This might seem a bit surprising at first, if you go by titles. "Soothsayer" suggests spoken truth, and truth that is, well, soothing. Just the sound of it - those soothing 'oo's - suggests closed eyes, arms held out, and Truth gliding over the listener like a salve. Truth doesn't always work that way, though. Oracles are sometimes loud. And a person who knows the future would be just as likely to sound like this.
I like it, any rate. But if that isn't to your taste, you'd probably like "I Dare You" better. It's one of those retro-pop songs which almost everyone seems to be doing - but not quite. It's as if someone like Kristeen Young was told to sing one of them and decided to mess with it any way she could: prickly, almost spoken-word vocals which, at times, seem to run out of their lines, a grumbly guitar part that wanders in and out periodically, various little touches in the background. And they all work. They make it not-quite-finished, a little off, but compelling. Not placid.
Listen here.
~*~*~
If you'll allow me to be inconsistent for a second, I'm going to start judging books by their covers and say that someone whose band is called the Self-Employed Assassins isn't likely to be very placid. And indeed, Sarah Rabdau isn't.
She's got plenty of songs up on her Myspace. My favorite - and this shouldn't be surprising, considering the theme - is "Riots and Revolutions." Everything about it is completely on. The vocals and piano surge wonderfully, as do the drums, from first appearance to when they bunch up at the end. It's perfectly constructed and in no way placid.
Listen here.
~*~*~
Cathy Davey wouldn't have made it onto my list of all-time favorite musicians if she was placid. So naturally I was overjoyed when I read she was working on a new album. On her Myspace, she writes: "I have a feeling it will be a far more rounded child who is good at interacting with others and has better manners, but not so confident as to be petulant or talk back. No. This will be a Victorian child who makes hand crafted presents for you and who enjoys sharing sweets with others."
This still doesn't mean placid. There are two demos out, and they're already wonderful. Her singing's better and more confident than ever, and - personal bias, but still - I love fairy tale themes, so songs like "Little Red" are already aimed squarely at me, it seems.
The child she mentions might not be petulant or talk back, but maybe she'll go off exploring the rooms of the house when the grownups aren't looking. Or maybe not. There are more demos and an interview coming in the next few days. I can't wait to find out.
Listen and download here.
I very rarely use that word as a compliment. Merriam-Webster defines it as "serenely free of interruption or disturbance." This is a great schema for relaxation, but not so much for music. I like interruption and disturbance. I like songs that, if placed into the background even for a second, kick and claw their way back into the forefront.
~*~*~
You cannot say Mia Vigar is placid. You just can't. Maybe if you haven't listened to her music and just parse your first impressions by singer-songwriter stereotypes and the current SSA baby-names list, but the former has been discredited about a thousand times if you look, and the latter is the very definition of "don't judge a book by its cover."
"Soothsayer" is explosive. It's not hyperbole in this case - this is about twenty kinds of crashing, shouting, and careening. There aren't lyrics, just the aforementioned shouts. That isn't hyperbole either. The vocals are screamed, yelped, sometimes sounding like guitars, sometimes like a crime scene.
This might seem a bit surprising at first, if you go by titles. "Soothsayer" suggests spoken truth, and truth that is, well, soothing. Just the sound of it - those soothing 'oo's - suggests closed eyes, arms held out, and Truth gliding over the listener like a salve. Truth doesn't always work that way, though. Oracles are sometimes loud. And a person who knows the future would be just as likely to sound like this.
I like it, any rate. But if that isn't to your taste, you'd probably like "I Dare You" better. It's one of those retro-pop songs which almost everyone seems to be doing - but not quite. It's as if someone like Kristeen Young was told to sing one of them and decided to mess with it any way she could: prickly, almost spoken-word vocals which, at times, seem to run out of their lines, a grumbly guitar part that wanders in and out periodically, various little touches in the background. And they all work. They make it not-quite-finished, a little off, but compelling. Not placid.
Listen here.
~*~*~
If you'll allow me to be inconsistent for a second, I'm going to start judging books by their covers and say that someone whose band is called the Self-Employed Assassins isn't likely to be very placid. And indeed, Sarah Rabdau isn't.
She's got plenty of songs up on her Myspace. My favorite - and this shouldn't be surprising, considering the theme - is "Riots and Revolutions." Everything about it is completely on. The vocals and piano surge wonderfully, as do the drums, from first appearance to when they bunch up at the end. It's perfectly constructed and in no way placid.
Listen here.
~*~*~
Cathy Davey wouldn't have made it onto my list of all-time favorite musicians if she was placid. So naturally I was overjoyed when I read she was working on a new album. On her Myspace, she writes: "I have a feeling it will be a far more rounded child who is good at interacting with others and has better manners, but not so confident as to be petulant or talk back. No. This will be a Victorian child who makes hand crafted presents for you and who enjoys sharing sweets with others."
This still doesn't mean placid. There are two demos out, and they're already wonderful. Her singing's better and more confident than ever, and - personal bias, but still - I love fairy tale themes, so songs like "Little Red" are already aimed squarely at me, it seems.
The child she mentions might not be petulant or talk back, but maybe she'll go off exploring the rooms of the house when the grownups aren't looking. Or maybe not. There are more demos and an interview coming in the next few days. I can't wait to find out.
Listen and download here.
Read more...
Monday, March 9, 2009
Monday Music #10 (Bat For Lashes, Dot Allison)
March is probably far, far too early to even be thinking about the best of 2009 - the best anything. It's only about a fourth of the way through the year, if that. But I've never been averse to stressing out about deadlines, then procrastinating on them. I've refined that skill for years. Speaking of which, I really should go out and buy New Year's presents...
In all seriousness, though, 2009's been a bit empty for me as far as purchases go. A lot of this is budgeting. I went to Chicago in December and decided to swell my wish list with books, like a plague of locusts. Literary locusts. Because that metaphor totally makes sense. It's starting to change, though.
~*~*~
I can already tell, for instance, that Bat for Lashes' new album Two Suns is going to be on there. I liked Fur and Gold well enough, but didn't love it. Some of this is undoubtedly my not giving it enough attention, but nevertheless, a lot of the songs seem to have blended together in my memory. Not all of them, though. "Trophy" is still a wonderfully sinister, pulsing vengeance song. All its energy comes from danger. I just wish more of them were like that.
So I was a bit surprised to find out that Two Suns is, in fact, more like that. Everything's so much bolder and brighter, which makes sense considering that Natasha Khan described the 'character' on the album, Pearl, as "a destructive, self-absorbed, blonde, femme fatale of a persona who acts as a direct foil to Khan’s more mystical, desert-born spiritual self." (And, for the record, I love this kind of thing. It worked for American Doll Posse - a Pip song, say, isn't half as hard-hitting if you don't know it's Pip - and I see no reason why it won't work here.)
"Sleep Alone" may as well be "Trophy," but bigger. Before the end of the first chorus, all the elements present themselves: the beat, the maracas, the same basic key. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the bass part of that song as a phantom. But already there's more - distant backing vocals and piano flourishes making it a bit spooky. Then it opens up into more of a traditional dance song, but sweeping where others can be cold and mysterious where others can be discrete. It's lyrical dissonance, of course; the song's about loneliness, but it soars, instead of sinking. It's for mountaintops, not empty rooms.
In that respect, it's got a lot in common - and I never thought I'd make this comparison - with Kristy Thirsk's new songs. You've got the soprano vocals, if a bit less pronounced, and the gauziness of it all - especially at the end, where the song dissolves into a wisp. I happen to love Kristy's music, and I love "Sleep Alone" too. It's ridiculously haunting and I've been murmuring it all day. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still murmuring it come December.
(EDIT: Apparently this is the second track, just like "Trophy" was. Probably just a coincidence, but a nice one.)
Listen here.
~*~*~
Nina Ramsby's music also looks promising. She's not as much of a newcomer than Khan is. With her old group, Salt, she had a song on the Mission: Impossible soundtrack, for instance, and she's been involved in several other projects along the way. But the songs on her Myspace, from what I can tell, are new.
There's "I Can't Fucking Believe," which is decent musically but rather similar lyrically to Massive Attack / Sinead O'Connor's "A Prayer for England." (The other two parts of the Trinity replace the Holy Spirit.) (And yes, a song called "I Can't Fucking Believe" is invoking God and Jesus.) I like that song, though, so anything that's similar won't raise too many objections on my part.
If I had to choose, though, I prefer "I Keep Reminding Myself." Half the vocal lines processed into machinery, and the other half are plaintive. It's stark, plodding, and in its own way, lovely.
Listen to it here.
In all seriousness, though, 2009's been a bit empty for me as far as purchases go. A lot of this is budgeting. I went to Chicago in December and decided to swell my wish list with books, like a plague of locusts. Literary locusts. Because that metaphor totally makes sense. It's starting to change, though.
~*~*~
I can already tell, for instance, that Bat for Lashes' new album Two Suns is going to be on there. I liked Fur and Gold well enough, but didn't love it. Some of this is undoubtedly my not giving it enough attention, but nevertheless, a lot of the songs seem to have blended together in my memory. Not all of them, though. "Trophy" is still a wonderfully sinister, pulsing vengeance song. All its energy comes from danger. I just wish more of them were like that.
So I was a bit surprised to find out that Two Suns is, in fact, more like that. Everything's so much bolder and brighter, which makes sense considering that Natasha Khan described the 'character' on the album, Pearl, as "a destructive, self-absorbed, blonde, femme fatale of a persona who acts as a direct foil to Khan’s more mystical, desert-born spiritual self." (And, for the record, I love this kind of thing. It worked for American Doll Posse - a Pip song, say, isn't half as hard-hitting if you don't know it's Pip - and I see no reason why it won't work here.)
"Sleep Alone" may as well be "Trophy," but bigger. Before the end of the first chorus, all the elements present themselves: the beat, the maracas, the same basic key. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the bass part of that song as a phantom. But already there's more - distant backing vocals and piano flourishes making it a bit spooky. Then it opens up into more of a traditional dance song, but sweeping where others can be cold and mysterious where others can be discrete. It's lyrical dissonance, of course; the song's about loneliness, but it soars, instead of sinking. It's for mountaintops, not empty rooms.
In that respect, it's got a lot in common - and I never thought I'd make this comparison - with Kristy Thirsk's new songs. You've got the soprano vocals, if a bit less pronounced, and the gauziness of it all - especially at the end, where the song dissolves into a wisp. I happen to love Kristy's music, and I love "Sleep Alone" too. It's ridiculously haunting and I've been murmuring it all day. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still murmuring it come December.
(EDIT: Apparently this is the second track, just like "Trophy" was. Probably just a coincidence, but a nice one.)
Listen here.
~*~*~
Nina Ramsby's music also looks promising. She's not as much of a newcomer than Khan is. With her old group, Salt, she had a song on the Mission: Impossible soundtrack, for instance, and she's been involved in several other projects along the way. But the songs on her Myspace, from what I can tell, are new.
There's "I Can't Fucking Believe," which is decent musically but rather similar lyrically to Massive Attack / Sinead O'Connor's "A Prayer for England." (The other two parts of the Trinity replace the Holy Spirit.) (And yes, a song called "I Can't Fucking Believe" is invoking God and Jesus.) I like that song, though, so anything that's similar won't raise too many objections on my part.
If I had to choose, though, I prefer "I Keep Reminding Myself." Half the vocal lines processed into machinery, and the other half are plaintive. It's stark, plodding, and in its own way, lovely.
Listen to it here.
Read more...
Thursday, March 5, 2009
March 5, 2009: Assorted weeknotes
Since everyone else keeps talking about it - funny how that works - I rescinded my statement that I wasn't watching Dollhouse anymore. This happened on a Saturday, naturally. Up to episode 2 now (which means, also, spoilers.)
On the one hand, it's good how they're aiming for "the premise of the Dollhouse is morally questionable at best but, more likely, is morally repugnant." On the other hand, there are hundreds of ways to do this that don't involve ripping off "The Most Dangerous Game." Sure, it's a nice little "oh no!" moment, but it isn't "oh no, Richard, you monster!" so much as "oh no, I've seen this before!" I had the same reaction to the Joker invoking the prisoner's dilemma in The Dark Knight. I can get the moral implications, but it just doesn't have as much of an impact if I recognize that it's a plot device I've seen before.
(Key words there: plot device. This doesn't apply to real life. If someone pulled a stunt like that in real life it'd still be horrifying.)
That said, I must be the only one who thinks Eliza Dushku's acting is perfectly serviceable. If it's overly silly moments you want, the "say it!" scene is much more jarring, and putting it in the recap doesn't help.
~*~*~
Got around to seeing Slumdog Millionaire, after an Oscar season where I'd seen pretty much nothing. I'd seen Doubt, and was very impressed with the acting but not the film itself. It seemed too much like a filmed play. An excellently acted play, but not one that gained much by switching mediums (at least that I can assume. I haven't seen the play.)
The movie was good, but the soundtrack is even better. I may actually purchase it. This almost never happens. Apart from musicals, the only other film I bought the soundtrack for was Once, and even that was technically a musical. And I went to see it for the music. I expected it to be good. I didn't know a thing about this soundtrack going in, but from the very first notes, I knew I was going to love it.
But then, that's probably because I think "O... Saya" is by far the best song. It's propulsive, there's plenty of stuff going on, and everything fits together perfectly. The song's so good, actually, that I haven't really given the rest of the soundtrack the attention it deserves.
At first I was a bit skeptical about the inclusion of "Paper Planes," just because it's such a recognizable song that it pulled me out of the narrative for a second - see above. But here that's the point. That whole scene is a fakeout. At least how I understood it, you're supposed to get kind of caught up in the song. You're supposed to get this caper sense, and then reality kicks in and the whole thing gets pulled out from under you. (Holy colloquialisms.)
Minor notes on the film:
- The scene where young Jamal gets Amitabh Bachchan's autograph is neat because you think "Oh, great, another gross-out" and then it turns out to be one of the most joyful scenes in the film.
- Apparently D'Artagnan is not the third Musketeer. Being wrong about this adds a lot more suspense to the ending.
- The "real America" scene did irritate me. It came off as pure jingoism, which is weird considering that Danny Boyle isn't American.
~*~*~
Everyone likes to talk about the future of music. But sometimes the future is retroactive.
50 Foot Wave has made all their past albums available for free online. Listen to them. Download them. Share the shit out of them (in Kristin's words). And then, if you can, donate to the tip jar so things like this can keep happening.
Think of the children!
On the one hand, it's good how they're aiming for "the premise of the Dollhouse is morally questionable at best but, more likely, is morally repugnant." On the other hand, there are hundreds of ways to do this that don't involve ripping off "The Most Dangerous Game." Sure, it's a nice little "oh no!" moment, but it isn't "oh no, Richard, you monster!" so much as "oh no, I've seen this before!" I had the same reaction to the Joker invoking the prisoner's dilemma in The Dark Knight. I can get the moral implications, but it just doesn't have as much of an impact if I recognize that it's a plot device I've seen before.
(Key words there: plot device. This doesn't apply to real life. If someone pulled a stunt like that in real life it'd still be horrifying.)
That said, I must be the only one who thinks Eliza Dushku's acting is perfectly serviceable. If it's overly silly moments you want, the "say it!" scene is much more jarring, and putting it in the recap doesn't help.
~*~*~
Got around to seeing Slumdog Millionaire, after an Oscar season where I'd seen pretty much nothing. I'd seen Doubt, and was very impressed with the acting but not the film itself. It seemed too much like a filmed play. An excellently acted play, but not one that gained much by switching mediums (at least that I can assume. I haven't seen the play.)
The movie was good, but the soundtrack is even better. I may actually purchase it. This almost never happens. Apart from musicals, the only other film I bought the soundtrack for was Once, and even that was technically a musical. And I went to see it for the music. I expected it to be good. I didn't know a thing about this soundtrack going in, but from the very first notes, I knew I was going to love it.
But then, that's probably because I think "O... Saya" is by far the best song. It's propulsive, there's plenty of stuff going on, and everything fits together perfectly. The song's so good, actually, that I haven't really given the rest of the soundtrack the attention it deserves.
At first I was a bit skeptical about the inclusion of "Paper Planes," just because it's such a recognizable song that it pulled me out of the narrative for a second - see above. But here that's the point. That whole scene is a fakeout. At least how I understood it, you're supposed to get kind of caught up in the song. You're supposed to get this caper sense, and then reality kicks in and the whole thing gets pulled out from under you. (Holy colloquialisms.)
Minor notes on the film:
- The scene where young Jamal gets Amitabh Bachchan's autograph is neat because you think "Oh, great, another gross-out" and then it turns out to be one of the most joyful scenes in the film.
- Apparently D'Artagnan is not the third Musketeer. Being wrong about this adds a lot more suspense to the ending.
- The "real America" scene did irritate me. It came off as pure jingoism, which is weird considering that Danny Boyle isn't American.
~*~*~
Everyone likes to talk about the future of music. But sometimes the future is retroactive.
50 Foot Wave has made all their past albums available for free online. Listen to them. Download them. Share the shit out of them (in Kristin's words). And then, if you can, donate to the tip jar so things like this can keep happening.
Think of the children!
Read more...
Monday, March 2, 2009
Monday Music #9 (Ivan Birthistle, Ella Blame)
Generally, on Mondays, I write about what stood out the most during the week (or, more often, the weekend.) A few days ago I was raring to feature a few folk-ish acoustic artists I'd heard, but I have this bad habit of losing interest in them within weeks. Not always, mind you, but it's a risk I don't like taking.
Fortunately, they weren't the only ones I heard. So here's a last-minute change. Today's artists both make electronic music, of the great variety.
(Also, yes, that first one is a guy. It took me nine weeks to feature a male artist, but reverse the genders and few people would bat an eye.)
Ivan Birthistle is the keyboardist for Nina Hynes, part of The Husbands. Turns out he also makes music himself, of the completely electronic variety. They're soundtracks looking for activities or days. That could be a laughable description - after all, there are as many genres here as there are songs, and depending on the hour of the day, more - but it works for me and for my activities and days.
Which ones would I choose? "Ledden," first, to pick out the lovely notes from the antsy, beset-upon-by-creeping-pixel-monsters ones, which are pretty good in their own right. And then "Whingdung," with its tumbling-through-the-scales background part that's ten times more hypnotic than it has any right to be, and all sorts of crazy stuff going on in the foreground.
Maybe you prefer soundtracks to vocals. Nina Hynes does sing on "Blob." Ignore the first few seconds - I mean, I do - and it could be a Madonna song yanked into the future and tossed into the blender until the beats stutter and bits of a few other songs get into the mix somehow. (That's a compliment, by the way. The Immaculate Collection is one of my favorite compilations ever - well, by "ever" I mean "of what I've heard - but still!")
Listen here.
~*~*~
Ella Blame comes from a different place entirely. She's one of the most original musicians I've ever heard. Honestly, listening to her CD Baby clips will give you a better impression than I can explain in words, but I'll try: weird and wonderful, usually electronic music with depth. That's a terrible description, but seriously, go listen.
Her performance on "Bitter Tears" (from her 2008 album of the same name) sounds like Sarah Brightman on two different kinds of acid, and when Sarah announced that her next record was going to piss off her record label, I hoped it'd sound a lot more like this. You've got drama already from the title and strings, and then those vocals come in, processed into the uncanny valley, operatic and brassy and commanding. The music has plenty of twists, of course, but this song's all about the singing.
For those of you who prefer things a bit more accessible at first, "Last Emotion" (not on either album, I checked) is more of a traditional dance song, although not without its quirks - the various vocals, whispered and otherwise, are like Enigma stripped of everything annoying.
These don't even begin to sum her music up, though, so again, just go to CD Baby and listen. I sound like a shill and I guess, in this case, I am. This is worth it though.
Listen here. Or go to CD Baby already.
Fortunately, they weren't the only ones I heard. So here's a last-minute change. Today's artists both make electronic music, of the great variety.
(Also, yes, that first one is a guy. It took me nine weeks to feature a male artist, but reverse the genders and few people would bat an eye.)
Ivan Birthistle is the keyboardist for Nina Hynes, part of The Husbands. Turns out he also makes music himself, of the completely electronic variety. They're soundtracks looking for activities or days. That could be a laughable description - after all, there are as many genres here as there are songs, and depending on the hour of the day, more - but it works for me and for my activities and days.
Which ones would I choose? "Ledden," first, to pick out the lovely notes from the antsy, beset-upon-by-creeping-pixel-monsters ones, which are pretty good in their own right. And then "Whingdung," with its tumbling-through-the-scales background part that's ten times more hypnotic than it has any right to be, and all sorts of crazy stuff going on in the foreground.
Maybe you prefer soundtracks to vocals. Nina Hynes does sing on "Blob." Ignore the first few seconds - I mean, I do - and it could be a Madonna song yanked into the future and tossed into the blender until the beats stutter and bits of a few other songs get into the mix somehow. (That's a compliment, by the way. The Immaculate Collection is one of my favorite compilations ever - well, by "ever" I mean "of what I've heard - but still!")
Listen here.
~*~*~
Ella Blame comes from a different place entirely. She's one of the most original musicians I've ever heard. Honestly, listening to her CD Baby clips will give you a better impression than I can explain in words, but I'll try: weird and wonderful, usually electronic music with depth. That's a terrible description, but seriously, go listen.
Her performance on "Bitter Tears" (from her 2008 album of the same name) sounds like Sarah Brightman on two different kinds of acid, and when Sarah announced that her next record was going to piss off her record label, I hoped it'd sound a lot more like this. You've got drama already from the title and strings, and then those vocals come in, processed into the uncanny valley, operatic and brassy and commanding. The music has plenty of twists, of course, but this song's all about the singing.
For those of you who prefer things a bit more accessible at first, "Last Emotion" (not on either album, I checked) is more of a traditional dance song, although not without its quirks - the various vocals, whispered and otherwise, are like Enigma stripped of everything annoying.
These don't even begin to sum her music up, though, so again, just go to CD Baby and listen. I sound like a shill and I guess, in this case, I am. This is worth it though.
Listen here. Or go to CD Baby already.
Read more...
Sunday, March 1, 2009
March 1, 2009: What's in a (spam) name?
When I'm bored, which is often, I go through my spam folder - 1000+ messages, all untouched - and look at the fake names these people take. I have no idea where they come from. Clearly they're not their real names; that would be stupid. Randomly generated, probably. Which makes it like one of those name generators, but so much better. So I chose a few of the better names.
(Note: I Googled all of these to make sure they weren't actually people, but who knows? I could've missed a few. So the following is fiction and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is completely coincidental. Darn that Google.)
~*~*~
Eldora Matilde: They don't make names like this anymore. I'm not entirely sure how playground teasing works - growing up as a Sarah during my time period makes you a bit immune, and kids generally stop that when adults are around - but it'd probably involve the elderly, Dora the Explorer, and/or Roald Dahl. Darned kids. I like the name.
Oglesby Zechiel: Oh man. This guy would definitely be a highwayman during the '30s, because, as TV Tropes would say, he has a Name To Run Away From Really Fast. And he'd probably hang out with Balthazar Murder Stonefield Accalum.
Lemuel L. Funk: This guy goes by Lemmy and whenever he walks into a room, announces "I'm bringing the FUNK!" complete with ta-da hand gestures. People just to put up with it. Well, everyone but Oglesby Zechiel.
Babara Aurora: Goes by Barbara all the time. The birth certificate is hidden from view. Don't mention a certain elephant around her.
Reyolds Carbal: Brother of Babara Aurora. Also, there is no carbal.
(Note: I Googled all of these to make sure they weren't actually people, but who knows? I could've missed a few. So the following is fiction and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is completely coincidental. Darn that Google.)
~*~*~
Eldora Matilde: They don't make names like this anymore. I'm not entirely sure how playground teasing works - growing up as a Sarah during my time period makes you a bit immune, and kids generally stop that when adults are around - but it'd probably involve the elderly, Dora the Explorer, and/or Roald Dahl. Darned kids. I like the name.
Oglesby Zechiel: Oh man. This guy would definitely be a highwayman during the '30s, because, as TV Tropes would say, he has a Name To Run Away From Really Fast. And he'd probably hang out with Balthazar Murder Stonefield Accalum.
Lemuel L. Funk: This guy goes by Lemmy and whenever he walks into a room, announces "I'm bringing the FUNK!" complete with ta-da hand gestures. People just to put up with it. Well, everyone but Oglesby Zechiel.
Babara Aurora: Goes by Barbara all the time. The birth certificate is hidden from view. Don't mention a certain elephant around her.
Reyolds Carbal: Brother of Babara Aurora. Also, there is no carbal.
Read more...
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