Knee Deep In Static

George, please don't break my heart.

On Wednesday, one of my students brought in his imported PSP for me to have a look at, after we'd been discussing it several weeks before. Being that the European release of the unit is still a few months away, it was cool to have a bit of a 'hands-on' preview. For the most part, my judgements were purely aesthetic; the only game he'd brought with him was this year's Fifa title, and god knows I'm not going to base my judgements of the system's technical capabilities on that.

Anyway, my initial reaction on receiving the PSP in my grubby mitts is that it's quite heavy for a handheld console, probably due to the fact that it's housing an optical drive and 4.3" screen. Still, if I'd paid upwards of £350 (like this guy did) for a piece of portable technology, I'd want it to have a little bit of weight. It's probably something you don't even notice in the long run.

Control-wise, everything is pretty standard, and feels natural like a PlayStation pad layout - everything is where you'd expect it to be. The inclusion an analogue controller is a welcome addition, and is incorporated pretty much floorlessly; try and imagine the current analogue stick, but as a flat pad. I can imagine this working especially well with cursor-controlled games and applications.

The shoulder buttons are about the only aspect of the unit's physical design that I was disappointed with; they're made from kind of cheap-looking Perspex, and extend from the corners of the plastic housing to sit more or less flush with the top. They don't feel like they've been secured enough, and rattle around a bit when you're using the other controls. Also, they haven't got much depth, so they're not particularly comfortable on the ol' digits. Again, this is just my first thoughts, it might be something you forget or don't care about over time.

Overall, it's certainly a sturdy unit, although I suspect that dropping it would inflict liberal amounts of damage, not least to the screen. I mean, if the GBA SP is the Weeble of the portable gaming market, then the PSP is truly its Faberge Egg.

The internal menus and stuff are great; really slick and responsive. Sony are definitely going for the 'grown-up gamer' approach with the PSP, so it feels like you're using some kind of media centre or PDA rather than a gaming device.

Like I mentioned before, I don't want to judge the system's technology on Fifa alone, but as far as I could tell, the graphics were pretty impressive; probably coming up just short of something you might expect to see on PS2. I've always been a bit dubious about 3D games on a smaller screen, but the screen's clarity and size makes up for this. I'd probably like to play a wider selection of titles before I try to get an idea of what the PSP's capable of.

Lastly, there's the optical media itself, the UMD. The disc itself comes over like the bastard child of a Minidisc; Sony still seems to think that the future is caddy-shaped (It's a wonder that Blu-ray doesn't come in some kind of plastic case, too). There was no discernable vibration the whole time I was holding the device, which was quite impressive. Also, I was informed that on a good day, it's possible to get 6 - 8 hours out of the battery, which isn't ideal, but probably better than most people were expecting.

On first impressions, I think PSP has got a bit more of the 'wow' factor going for it than the DS, as well as the aforementioned 'grown-up' image whereas Nintendo is still trying to shed it's kiddie-only image. To be honest, I'm not even sure that the DS and PSP are going to be direct competitors in the long-run, they seem to have significantly different overall aims (and the price factor will almost certainly play a big role in this). Still, I guess that time will tell.

There's loads of other stuff I haven't mentioned here, but on the whole, I think I'm more impressed than I was prepared to be. The techno-fetishist in me would love to pick one of these up on launch, but the £200 price-tag is definitely sending me 'wait-and-see' signals.

I guess it's no surprise that this week's hot topic of discussion (on TV, the internet, or other popular forms of broadcast communication) is Star Wars Episode III - Revenge Of The Sith. I went to see the movie on Friday, and rather than try to provide any kind of in-depth analogy or comparison to the original trilogy (because god knows that there are thousands of other sites out there that could do that more successfully than I ever could), I merely offer my opinion;

It was good.

I honestly mean that too, not just "Well, that didn't suck quite as much as the last two movies." It was actually a good movie in its own right. I think this is partially attributed to the lack of the horrible, ham-fisted pseudo Political/Economic side-plot bullshit that featured so predominantly in the first two films; George Lucas obviously realised that it made NO BLOODY SENSE. The overt focus in Sith was definitely on Obi-Wan and Anakin, which totally worked in its favour. I mean, if you're going to see a Star Wars movie called 'Revenge Of The Sith', you damn well want to see Anakin getting some revenge, which is exactly what we got. Getting to see how angry and betrayed Obi-Wan felt didn't hurt, either.

I think what impressed me most, was that even though we (as in, the public at large) knew all of the major plot points and revelations, it was still compelling to watch; the death of the Jedi, Palpatine's true identity, and Anakin's eventual fall to the Dark Side, and 'resurrection' as Darth Vader. Some of these scenes actually managed to illicit some emotion; in particular, the montage of the clone troopers executing the Jedi was heartbreaking.

Before we went to the cinema, Ian and myself watched the second Season of the Clone Wars cartoon series, which pretty much fills in the gaps between Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith. The show itself is fantastic, but in terms of watching it as a prologue to the movie, it was equally great and disappointing at the same time.

It was a blast to see events unfold in full that were only mentioned as off-screen occurrences in the movie, such as Palpatine's kidnap. There was some visual continuity that carried over from Clone Wars that wasn't even explained at all in Sith, like Anakin's scar, and why General Grievous spent the first half of the film wheezing and spluttering like he'd smoked the entire contents of a Cuban cigar factory. Some might attribute that to lazy film making, but I enjoyed the crossover aspect.

Of course, the down-side of Clone War's greatness is that it set up my expectations for events in Sith that turned out to be completely underplayed, or missing altogether. Case in point, in Clone Wars, Grievous is a major, major baddass. Like, a proper Jedi killer. He's huge, menacing, and flies all over the place like a hyperactive chimp with A.D.D. I mean, as an animator, I knew that the CG model couldn't move in the same way as his two-dimensional counterpart, but in the movie, he just seemed a bit, well, lame. He spins a few lightsabers about for a bit, has what can only be described as a 'car chase' with Obi-Wan, and then experiences a monumentally anticlimactic death; Obi-Wan even manages to fire off a one-liner after his demise. Lame.

We also noticed a complete lack of Shaak Ti in the movie, who we thought would be in at least a few scenes after kicking so much ass and being quite an important character in Clone Wars. I'm not even sure she was in it as a cameo role, and I was actively looking, too.

So, minor niggles aside, it was a good film. The movie still suffers from the same problems as all of the other Star Wars movies (yes, ALL of them, not just Episode One and Two); some occasionally horrible acting and line delivery from major characters (Hayden Christensen, I'm looking at you), some heavy-handed plot elements ("Execute PLAN 66; PROJECT SATAN DEATH KILL!"), and to be honest, Yoda still doesn't know what the hell he's meant to be saying (I mean, really. We're almost in Uwe Boll territory here in terms of incoherence).

On the off chance that you've read this far and haven't seen the movie yet, I’d recommend watching Clone Wars before hand. Sure, it sets you up for some stuff the movie can't follow through with, but it's satisfying to know what happened exactly up the very beginning of Sith. Also, if you like severed limbs (and lord knows I do), see this film.

Oh, as a side-note, we were killing time before the movie in a couple of the bookshops on Tottenham Court Road, and I managed to find a pristine copy of Clumsy in Foyles, so when I got home I promptly cancelled my order from Amazon. I also picked up books two, three and four of Battle Royale in Blackwell's three-for-two manga offer, as well as Jim Mahfood's new hip-hop album concept comic book, Felt. I haven't been this well stocked with new sequential art for quite some time.

So, in the last few weeks I have done some stuff. Stuff so depraved, intriguing and magical that I can barely bring myself to recount it. In fact, I'm not going to. Sucks for you, really. It's an amazing tale of treachery, dragon-slaying and zombie apes, the likes of which have never been heard before. Whilst I won't be regaling you with this amazing tale (which I have dubbed The Scourge Of Clone Marmot), I shall detail some of the stuff that I've recently bought and received from Amazon. Prepare yourself, gentle reader, for Adventures In Consumerism; a concept Livejournal entry in three parts. Please note, a 436 page storybook illustrated by Storm Thorgerson will accompany this entry, and will be released later this year.

Adventures In Consumerism: Part I - ...And They Bowed Beneath Its Shadow (Disrupt)

Despite the Xbox 360 having been announced just a couple of days ago, I decided last week that the time had probably come to invest in a vanilla, current generation, non-concave Xbox. As a Gamecube owner, I'm unfortunately resigned to a somewhat limited collection of 'good' games. I mean, Nintendo probably create the finest examples of first-party titles, but there are just so few of them, and their release dates are spread so far apart. I figured that getting an Xbox would let me play a lot of titles that were either console exclusive, or were never ported to the Gamecube. Who knows, I might get around to getting some emulation up and running, for the day that I can once again play Gunstar Heroes on a console, with a control pad and on a television will be sweet indeed.

Anyway, my initial rationale was to order the Xbox with San Andreas and Halo 2 from Amazon as one package. San Andreas isn't out until June 10th, so I presumed it wouldn't be sent until then. This would give me ample time to finish off all of my uni work. You can imagine my surprise when I got home on Friday, only to find the console waiting for me, sans games. Unfortunately, my scholarly dedication gave way to my gamer instinct, and so naturally, I ripped it out of its cardboard/foam padded prison and set it up the second I laid eyes on it.

Now, not that I like to propagate any popular internet myths, but IT'S PRETTY BLOODY BIG. In fact, the first thing that Dad said when I first took it out of the box was "It's quite big, isn't it?", which actually made me laugh out loud.

On Sunday morning, I went into town and bought Burnout 3: Takedown and Street Fighter Anniversary Collection, just to, y'know, 'test the technology'. I got an extension of my current MA project, so I might actually get some time to play them a bit, too.


Adventures In Consumerism: Part II - The Monochromatic Knave (Corrupt)

Jeffrey Brown - Unlikely (Graphic Novel)

I originally read an excerpt of Jeffrey Brown's work in issue #13 of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and instantly fell in love with his art style (like someone broke a couple of his fingers just minutes before he sat down at the drawing table) and subject matter (his various relationships).
It's really the kind of thing I'd like to write about and illustrate if I had any semblance of an interesting life; there's no forced or injected humor, it all plays out pretty much straight up, and is all the better for it. Much of his work tends to be tragic, humorous and sweet all at the same time.

I think the advantage of this kind of writing is that you feel like you know Brown as a person and not a character; you read the book almost as if you're one of his friends, and watch as the relationship between him and his girlfriend blossoms, develops, and ultimately falls apart. At several points, the autobiographical nature of the writing had me thinking "Oh, for god's sake, just finish with her!” Likewise, there were points where I was thinking "Why do you have to be such a fucker?" (his words) of Brown.

I got Unlikely in the post the other day, which I'd ordered at the same time as his first book, Clumsy, but Amazon seem to be having trouble finding it (eight weeks and counting), which probably means I'm not going to get it from them, at least not anytime soon. This is unfortunate really, as I managed to read the entirety of Unlikely in about an hour (and that was trying to read slowly and savor it, too). Its pure awesomeness makes me hunger for more. Luckily, Brown's done a couple of pages in the new Too Much Coffee Man, so I guess I still have those to look forwards too.

There doesn't seem to be an 'official' Jeffrey Brown website as such, but there's a page dedicated to him on the Margo Mitchell site, with loads of examples of his work.


Adventures In Consumerism: Part III - Sonic/Harmonic Tonic (Interrupt)

Jetplane Landing - Once Like A Spark
Standout Tracks - Brave Gravity, I Opt Out, There Is No Real Courage Unless There is Real Danger

This is the latest installment in my Crusade To Buy Albums That I Really Like. Plus, the existing copy that I have of this is a crappy 192CBR rip, so the upgrade to a nice VBR or APS rip will be on the cards very soon indeed.

I originally heard/saw Jetplane Landing on MTV2 many years ago, when they released a single from their first album. I don't remember what the single was, but I just remember that I liked it. They went off my radar for a while, but when they released their sophomoric album, Once Like A Spark, and subsequently I Opt Out as a single, I sat up and paid attention.

I think the reason I like this album so much is the combination of driving riffs and motivated lyrics; it's refreshing to listen to something socially and politically motivated that has come out in the last two years that's saying something other than "Fuck George Bush!".

Off the cuff, Once Like A Spark sounds like the result of sitting Cave-In's Stephen Brodsky and Adam McGrath in a studio, banning dodgy electronic asides, taking away their keyboards, and telling them to keep every track under four minutes. The result is eleven tracks of focused hard-rock with appropriate amounts of experimentation (both musically and lyrically) where necessary.

There are some strong elements of art-rock in there as well, especially in terms of the 'stream of consciousness' style lyrics that feature in songs such as Calculate The Risk; these could have easily flown from the pen of someone like Cedric Bixler in his ATD-I days. Contrary to this, there are several moments of pure balls-to-the-wall hard rock, the shout-along anthemic choruses of I Opt Out and There Is No Real Courage... springing instantly to mind.

The band is working on a third album at the moment, which I'm greatly looking forwards to. In the meantime, I reckon that I'm going to try and get hold of their first album, Zero For Conduct next, as well as the There Is No Real Courage... E.P, which has an insane 22 tracks of b-sides and rarities.

Fin.

Ugh. I put off writing this entry all weekend, because it documents what I did on Friday night, which whilst not being utterly horrible, was altogether completely unremarkable. I apologise if this post is completely humourless or excessively negative, but in the words of Gary Larson "It was late, and I was tired".

Anyway, on Friday I went into central London with Al to meet his American friends, My-An and John, with the intention of going for a drink, some food, and then to a rock club. We met them at Camden Town tube station, went to World's End for a couple of pints, and then went for some pizza. After that, John went back to his flat, and the remaining three of us went to Rock at the Mean Fiddler; expensive beer, shitty music, pretty good live band - go figure. After leaving the club pretty much completely sober, we got the bus back to My-An's flat in Kensington, and just kicked it there for an hour or so, watching TV and talking shit about the cultural differences between England and America (which we'd pretty much been doing all night anyway).

Just as we were thinking about leaving, one of My-An's flatmates (Felix?) turned up drunk, and pretty much acted like a cookie-cutter asshole frat boy from some vapid American TV show. If any American male students aged 18-22 are reading this - this guy isn't doing your reputation any favours.

At around 3am, we actually left, and froze our asses off at the bus stop, whilst the same police car kept driving slowly up and down the road past me and Al, possibly trying to ascertain whether we were dealing crack. When the bus was twenty minutes late and seemed like it wasn't coming, we considered starting a fight so the Police would give us a lift home (although this seems like a really stupid train of thought now that I'm typing it out - perhaps Lee Harvey Oswald was having trouble haling a Taxi?).

But come the bus did, and after a change at the gleaming bastion of depression that is Hammersmith bus station, we got home at around 4:45am, concluding a completely unremarkable evening. I mean, it was nice to meet new people, but I reckon it would have been better just to chill in a pub all night. Maybe next time. Actually, one good thing did happen. On the bus between TCR and Kensington, we were talking about how awesome Sin City looks, and this guy came over and started telling us that he was looking for people to go to a test screening on the April 19th. Anyway, he said he'd email us the tickets, so, like, woot. I'll let you know if he comes good with the tickets, or if he was just going to a lot of trouble to harvest our email addresses for an elaborate pyramid scheme.

The rest of the weekend can be summed up as follows: -

Saturday: I modelled a pillow in 3ds Max and failed to play World Of Warcraft.

Sunday: I made a worksheet for next Thursday and failed to play World Of Warcraft.

Also, I keep having this feeling where the room is slowly turning upside down, and if I don't shake my head and blink a few times, I'm going to fall out of my chair. This is normal, right?

I really dislike Wednesdays right now. I mean, I don't feel some kind of cosmic misalignment with the concept of 'Wednesday' now and forever more. Far from it. It's just that my current work timetable means that I don't have a class to teach until 4pm, which leaves me in a kind of weird limbo for most of the day, like I'm just waiting around to go into work.

When I first got my timetable for this semester, I thought this was a great slot; I could stay up as late as I want the previous night, and not worry about having to get up early the next day. As time's gone on, I've realised that it's much better to start at 9am, teach for a couple of hours or whatever, and then have the rest of the day off. The only day I have to get up 'early' is Thursdays, and even then, I start at 10am. I find that not having a definite time to get up propagates the habit I have of staying up as late as possible, and then getting up around mid-day/early afternoon.

Still, I guess it's only a mild annoyance, seeing as working Wednesday afternoons and Thursdays 10am - 9:30pm gives me several days where I'm not contracted to be in uni at all (although I usually go in for various reasons anyway). Anyway, I’m sure that the timetable for next semester will probably be horribly botched, and I'll be pining for the hours that I have now.

Oh, last night I finally finished reading Transmission, which, despite finding my attention waning during the middle chapters, was excellent. I admire how it managed to discuss incorporate viruses and the internet with the plot in such an effective (and completetely non-embarrassing) way. I normally find that it's hard to describe a book to someone without either ruining the plot or regurgitating the blurb. Still, try to imagine the pop-culture laden narratives of Douglas Coupland or Chuck Palahniuk with a slightly more British bent. A good approximation of Transmission would be just that.

I was just browsing Douglas Coupland's site to see if he was working anything at the moment, and noticed that he's slated to release a new fiction title called jPod in in December this year. A little bit a Google sleuthing threw up some interesting pieces of information, most notably this excerpt from a Bloomsbury Publishing press release, dated just over a week ago: -

"Douglas Coupland has written a viciously accurate novel of the moment. It is a highly original, cracklingly funny surf through the dysfunctional lives of a bunch of computer games designers. The book is a sequel of sorts to Coupland's Microserfs, one of his most successful books."

Whilst I'm sure the part about jPod being a 'sequel' to Microserfs is purely publisher hype, there's no way that this book won't rule. Whilst Microserfs is easily my joint favourite Coupland book (with Girlfriend In A Coma), the references to EPROMs, Infotainment and the tech industry of over ten years ago mean that it hasn't aged particularly well. Given that I first read it over five years after it had been published meant that I was never really able to appreciate its (forgive me using this word) zeitgeist. I think the fact that the new book is focussed on the games industry (which has experienced several revolutions over the last ten years, most of which I'm aware of) will make this appeal to me all the more, especially when combined with the type of humour and pop-culture references that I enjoy in Douglas Coupland's writing so much.

I actually wrote the bulk of this update yesterday after I got back from the convention, but I've spent the best part of today wrestling with Flash and ActionScript, so this is coming a little late; apologies.

Anyway, the convention in question was Memorabilia, a sci-fi/comic/collectible exhibition at the Birmingham NEC which I've frequented many times in the past. This was the first time I'd been in over a year, as I'd previously concluded that the stuff I was actually interested in (comics) had started to diminish in favour of stuff that I have no interest whatsoever in (crap British sci-fi). Still, I thought that I'd give it another chance, seeing as I hadn't checked it out in a while.

Of course, my main draw to this event was that three of the main stars from Dawn Of The Dead were making a guest appearance and signing stuff; Scott Reiniger, Gaylen Ross and David Emge. Okay, without Ken Foree it wouldn't be the whole DoTD gang, but it would still be damn cool to meet them nonetheless.

Sam and I set off in the car at around 10:30am, and after a stop at a garage for petrol, a drink, and an encounter with a non-working cash machine, we were in Birmingham well within the hour. When we first got inside the NEC Compound (because, let's face it, it's just like a damn military training facility in there), we wound around the various car-parks whilst constantly being waved the right direction down one-way routes by what can only be described as human traffic cones.

We paid the extortionate £7 for parking, and elected to walk to the main building rather than pack onto the courtesy busses with the rest of the human cattle. The walk from the car park to the main building was slightly convoluted though pleasant enough due to the nice weather. It was made slightly surreal by the sights of patrons from the 'Go Fishing!’ exhibition testing out their new rods by casting their lines into the middle of a patch of greenery surrounded by concrete.

We eventually got into the building, bought our tickets, and found a cash machine to draw our filthy lucre from. Naturally, there was an enormous queue of people who hadn't ever seen, let alone used a cash machine before, so it was almost 12pm by the time we got into the exhibition itself...

I didn't really take any photographs, but try and allow your mind to conjure up images of as many bad comic-book/British sci-fi nerd stereotypes as you care to imagine, and then cram them shoulder-to-shoulder in an enormous aircraft hanger; faded Judas Priest t-shirts, countless leather trench coats and cowboy hats in an effort to look 'cool', the token family dressed up like characters from Buffy/Thunderbirds/Star Wars (delete as applicable). All present and accounted for.

Welcome to Memorabilia.

We spent about forty minutes or so wandering up and down the various isles of stalls; some good, most bad; It seemed that for every stand with genuinely interesting items or decent merchandise, there were ten crappy car boot sale stands trying to peddle a combination of shitty old VHS cassettes, broken toys, and Dr. Who annuals with most of the pages missing. Some of the more reputable dealers had merchandise I was interested in, though; I toyed (pun intended) with the idea of buying the entire set of new Viewaskewniverse (Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back) inaction figures to complement my existing collection; seven figures for £55, but I concluded that sooner or later, they'd all show up in Forbidden Planet for, like, £5 each.

We soon came around to the celebrity signing area of the exhibition hall. Well, I say celebrity, but I couldn't identify who most of them were, even with help from the huge posters of them in their respective roles. This was particularly true of some of the Star Wars guests; I've seen all of the new and old movies a fair few times, but I still couldn't remember the droids that they were meant to have played. Still, if I'd been in Star Wars, I guess I'd try and pimp it on the convention circuit too, especially if it'd make me some cash.

Anyway, I eventually found the Dawn of The Dead signing table, and immediately spotted Ken Foree; it'd seem that he'd either decided to turn up at the last minute, or the organizers had failed to list him on the website. Anyway, this was great, as it meant I'd get to meet the whole crew. I mean, without sounding fan-boyish or gushy, I really look up to these people; they're the main characters in one of my favourite movies of all time.

I actually managed to have a pretty decent conversation with the four of them individually, mostly about what they were doing now; they all seemed to be doing stuff in the film industry, but behind the camera. In particular, Scott Reiniger said he was an acting coach in L.A, and Gaylen Ross makes documentaries. Actually, I asked Gaylen Ross if she spoke to George Romero still, and she mentioned that they spoke all the time, and that he's wrapped up the filming for Land Of The Dead (OMG!), and it's currently being cut up for post-production, which is obviously great news.

They were all really nice people to speak with, and they all signed a glossy photo for me, as well as the first issue of the DoTD comic that I brought with me. I'll definitely get these framed together at some point; they need to be on display rather than filed away with my comics or something.

Anyway, with the spoils in my hand, we decided that there probably wasn't much point hanging around any longer as we'd already checked out all of the stalls. After initially forgetting where we'd parked, we found the car, and made our way back home.

I think in general, the exhibition itself was a bit of a let-down; as I stated before, over the last few years the show has become more centered on collectibles rather than comic books, and this is even more evident since the last time I went. Still, I think the DoTD related coolness more than made up for it, and made the journey and admission worthwhile.

Super Lucky Fun Time Bonus Photos!

Picture 1 - Me feeling like a complete DoTD fanboy with Ken Foree.
Picture 2 - My (now signed) first issue of IDW's Dawn Of The Dead adaptation.
Picture 3 - The signed glossy print.

It's that time of year again; as a nation, we've put our clocks forward to BST, as if to appease some kind of temperal grim reaper who wants his hour back from last October. When I was younger, I used to find this something of an annoyance; I was effectively being robbed of an extra hour to play video games or watch TV before I had to go to bed. I don't mind it so much anymore, especially when the evenings start to get lighter, and the whole day becomes more drawn out. I guess with Easter out of the way too, it's full speed into summer from here on out.

This actually makes all the summer gigs that I have tickets for seem a lot closer. I usually find it hard to appreciate how good a gig will be when I order the tickets, because the event is so far away. Now that the first one is just over a month away, I think I can just about start looking forwards to them properly. In chronilogical order, the shows I've got lined up so far look something like this: -


Give It A Name '05
2nd May - Alexandra Palace

This is more of a 'mini-festival' type affair, as it starts at 1pm and goes through 'til about 11pm, with Funeral For A Friend headlining, and others such as Coheed And Cambria, Finch and Alexisonfire taking the stage during the rest of the day. I'll admit that this reads more like a who's who of popular post-hardcore, but apart from a couple of weak links on the bill (Fight Star...), I genuinely want to see most of the bands that are playing.


Coheed & Cambria
8th May - Mean Fiddler

It's going to take something short of bloody spectacular to make me not adore this gig, given that Coheed & Cambria have been my favourite band for well over a year, and this will be the first full length show of theirs that I'll have been to. Given that they're also going to be playing stuff off the new album, it's just going to rule in so many ways. I generally stay out of the pit when I go and see bands these days, but I might make an exception just this once...


Nine Inch Nails
4th July - Brixton Academy

I'm not a huge Nine Inch Nails fan by any stretch of the imagination, though neither am I overly familiar with Trent Reznor's body of work. However, it's not often that he releases a new album, let alone tours in this country, so it seems like a wasted opportunity not to see such a legitimately 'big' group. Whichever way you look at it, NIN are a significant band in the sphere of modern rock, so I think it'll be a kick to see them live. I'm looking forward to the oft-touted spectacle of the live show, if nothing else.


I'm sure I'll go to a couple of other shows in this period, but they'll probably be smaller groups in smaller venues; I'm pretty sure this by this time of the year, all of the the major summer tours, as well as festival line-ups have been anounced. I'm almost certainly not going to a festival this year; Reading just hasn't got enough good bands to warrant the ticket price, and Download seems to have merged with Ozzfest to create some bastard child of a festival, inherently neither rock nor metal. The V festival is surely turning into a joke, with the organisers seeing how terrible they can make the line-up before people stop buying tickets, and the choice of bands at Glastonbury has never really aligned with my taste in music. Maybe they'll bring the Phoenix festival back some day, though I'm sure they'd find some way to make that suck...

Woot, I finally got my laptop back from PC World yesterday, and despite my suspicions, they actually seem to have fixed it; the DVD combo drive has been replaced, and all the dust and crap has been cleaned out of the heatsink and fan - so far, so good. It seems that I can once again read CD and DVDs, as well as play games and render stuff without the fan going full-pelt, and the chasis becoming a very expensive hotplate. This is also great news, because it means that I can once again use my USB soundcard to connect my computer to my hi-fi, so I am no longer relegated to using my other laptop (the one that uni gave me for my job) and its crap-ass tinny-as-hell internal speakers.

This will be the first in a line of entries chronicling my time in Azeroth, the world in which World Of Warcraft takes place. For those of you who don't know, WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMPORPG) set in the Warcraft (a series of successful strategy games made by Blizzard Entertainment) universe. Yes, it's geeky. Yes, I'm addicted to it.

Anyway, the other night, Sam and myself spent the best part of three hours doing a mission in Hilsbrad Foothills so that we could each get a The Hooded Cowl (a piece of head armour) for our characters. I should point out a couple of things about this; the three hours took place between 1:30am and 4:30am (which certainly is not a happy place now that birds have started singing when I'm trying to sleep at 5am), and the hoods, whilst giving us a slight armour increase, made our characters look like complete dorks. For future reference, I'm the little undead guy.

The postman has just literally delivered the CDs that I ordered from Amazon a couple of days ago. Of course, when I say 'delivered', what I really mean is 'propped against the front of the house where any social miscreant could help themselves to it'. If you dislike pseudo reviews of music, you'd probably do well to skip this bit. Anyway, these discs are part of an endevour to actually buy albums which I've downloaded in the past, but warrant buying because I really like them. This isn't to satisfy some thinly veiled moral obligation; I just like buying CDs - they look good on my shelf. The quality upgrade is an obvious bonus, too. Since I've been listening to them both so much, I feel compelled to try and explain myself: -


Glassjaw - Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence
Standout Tracks - Siberian Kiss, Ry Ry's Song, Piano

It's a shame Daryl Palumbo decided to put Glassjaw on the shelf in favour of other projects (in particular, Head Automatica - a New York disco band), because I've only recently appreciated how good a band they were. Still, I guess that this attitude of experimentation and trying out new stuff was what made Glassjaw so great. The reason I like this album so much is because of the way it's so bi-polar; uncompromisingly brutal one moment, and then quietly introspective the next. There are also several songs where the chorus takes you completely by surprise; in particular, Piano is a good example of this, where it breaks from the sludgy grind of the verse into the soaring major chords of the chorus.

To contrast with this, there's a part in Pretty Lush just before one of the later choruses that I love, too; Daryl Palumbo is kind of ranting in the middle eight, and at the end, he tries to find a word to convey his frustration, but he doesn't manage to find it in time, and kind of angrily sighs defeatedly into the microphone. I don't know if it he'd planned to do this before he started recording, but it comes off brilliantly.

Although I've only recently started listening to this album a lot, I've had Glassjaw's second full-length album Worship And Tribute for a while, but I haven't really listened to it for a year or so. I get the impression it's a bit less immediate than EYWTKAS, but I'll have to reserve comparing the two until I've listened to them one after another.


A Static Lullaby - ...And Don't Forget To Breathe
Standout Tracks - Withered, A Sip Of Wine Chased With Cyanide, We Go To Eleven

Unlike the Glassjaw album, I think I have a harder time pinning down exactly what it is I like so much about this record; I think that the main reason is, vocals and musicianship aside, the band have actually written ten songs, rather than a collection of mix 'n match choruses and verses like so many other bands in the genre.

I get the feeling that when the band was writing the tracks, they had a definite idea of where they wanted each song to go, rather than thinking "right, we need a chorus, what now?". A Sip Of Wine Chased With Cyanide demonstrates this well; the first three minutes of the song peak and trough like a rollercoaster, before crashing headlong into a brutal breakdown, which then leads into a triumphant outro with an excellent, purposeful guitar solo; it's not just noodling for noodling's sake.

I can see how on the surface, some people might just dismiss them as a generic screamo band, because I think the merits of this disc are a bit more under the surface than with other albums. I also think A Static Lullaby have a slightly more mature sound than other similar bands, and I can't wait to hear what their next album Faso Latido (which I have aquired an advance of, but haven't listened to yet) is like.


I think that these CDs end my current bout of internet spendage, it seems like I've had about a hundred packages arrive in the post over the last three or so weeks. The Coheed hoody that I ordered arrived last week, but the arms were too short, so I sent it back in favour of the next size up. This reminds me why it's far better to buy t-shirts or hoodies from shows, because the damn thing took about three weeks to arrive, and the new one will probably take a similar amount of time to be redelivered. It's time like this where I think it'd be cool if there was band t-shirt site that offered free and fast delivery, like Play or something.