Jandek – Ready for the house

In 1978 the first chapter of one of the most unusual – perhaps the most unusual – stories in popular music began. It was the year Jandek released ‘Ready for the house’.

Jandek’s music is, in a strange way, incredibly difficult to characterise, sounding, as it does, quite unlike anything else. The musical techniques on Ready for the House, however, can certainly be easily described; Jandek is playing an acoustic guitar, turned – not randomly, as some have suggested – but to produce an open, atonal chord. This same chord, the only chord played on eight of the albums nine tracks, is sometimes strummed, sometimes picked; played over and over again in a simple rhythm or, othertimes, played almost at random intervals. Over this is sung, whispered and wailed some of the most astonishingly weird and depressing blues lyrics ever put on record. Read the rest of this entry »

My sincerest apologies to The Herd for my comments about them below. I have just listened to their latest album Summerland and retract what I said about them never quite reaching their potential. Rest assured, a review of Summerland is be up here, expounding its awesomeness!

I have noticed, since my review of Bliss n Eso’s Flying Colours album, that alot of people seem to be reaching our page by searching for Aussie Hip Hop and that there seems to be some demand for writing about it. So, I’ve decided to follow up with another of my favorite Skip-hop albums of the last couple of years. Settle in and get ready for some smooth, sunny, reggae and dub influenced hip-hop. Welcome to Astronomy Class: Read the rest of this entry »

“And wherever you’ve gone

and wherever we might go,

it don’t seem fair… today just disappeared.

Your light’s reflected now, reflected from afar.

We were but stones: your light made us stars.”

- Pearl Jam, Light Years

No, that quote is not from Ten. It came a number of years later, after Pearl Jam had miraculously survived the pathetic and traumatic death of Grunge, which floundered and crashed to the dirt in the wake of Cobain’s suicide like a monster severed from its head. It’s a nice stanza, though; nice because it shows a thoughtfulness and appreciation outside of self effacement; because it suggests that the group never intented to drive Grunge into the ground and then give up and go home; because it stands testament to the virtuosity and integrity Pearl Jam brought to the game in the early nineties, exploding with Ten as a launch pad for whatever organic path was waiting for them beyond it. Unlike almost any other seminal album of the Grunge era (even Soundgarden’s phenomenal portrait of pain, Superunknown) Ten wasn’t a dead end. It was a beginning. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a time when television long-form narrative drama was restricted to the soap-opera or the occasional linked Agatha Christi adaptation on the abc. In the last 20 years, however, our understanding of what can be done with commercial television’s long form narratives have shifted and they have begun to borrow from their generic and technological neighbors. Northern Exposure, Six Feet Under and The Sopranos have moved familial, community based drama away from the exclusive realm of the Soap Opera and blended it with comedic, cinematic and suspenseful elements from film and serial fiction. These dramas allow their white, middle class audiences (like me) to vicariously experience an exotic life of crime, danger and wild sexual abandon from the completely safe confines of their living rooms. Many of these dramas project themselves into environments which are distinctly ‘other’ to the safe, suburban lives of their audiences. They tempt the audience by asking them “what if you were a gangster?” or “what if you worked in a funeral home?”. Now we have a series which takes the sex, drugs and violence of its predecessors and thrusts it squarely into the world of the American white middle class. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Weeds: Read the rest of this entry »

Remember Me?

I’m no authority on gaming culture, but I know enough to know that to write on the history of video games without mentioning Myst (Miller 1993) is to write on the history of cinema without mentioning The Maltese Falcon (Huston 1941). It’s not a question of taste, although I love them both – it’s that both of them fundamentally changed the mentality behind both production and consumption of their respective media. And I’m no essentialist either: The Maltese Falcon was not strictly the first film noir, nor was Myst the first ‘thinking man’s game’. But they were the first to take the distinct elements of the genres they came to embody, and base themselves around those elements with ferocious conviction. Read the rest of this entry »

Now why can’t we have all this in video games?

You may have gathered from my review of Mass Effect that I’m one of those irritating people who thinks that there may be more to Video Games than just mindless entertainment. You may also remember that I mentioned in that review that one of my favorite games was Fallout. Set for release later this year is the much anticipated Fallout 3. It has just been revealed that in Fallout 3 there will be consequences for using drugs, not all of which would be negative, and the Australian censorship board promptly banned it.

This is not the first time that this has happened and the end result is that the game was censored so that it could receive an MA15+ rating in Australia. Now, I don’t know what’s worse, a game being banned or a bastardised version being handed to me instead of the genuine product. Would you prefer them to ban Apocalypse Now or just cut out all the parts with war in them? You know, the ones that could potentially offend someone? Read the rest of this entry »

It seems to me that the Swedes have a particular musical sensibility that shines through no matter the what they do. Lately I’ve noticed alot of bands originating in Sweden, of a variety of genres, who are world class examples of their particular brand of music. Many still conjure the image of ABBA when the words “Sweden” and “music” appear together and this is unfortuneate (sorry ABBA fans) because there is alot more to the Swedish music scene that world should be paying attention to. Shining examples of every genre insidiously await your attention, from the catchy hooks of Snook to the alternatingly brutal and melodic stylings of Opeth and Meshuggah, the Swedes have it covered. Now, I can hear the naysayers saying:

“Nay! The Swedes do not have it covered, actually, Mr. Bread! What about those of us who don’t want to learn Swedish or want something more melodic than the towering behemoth of rage that is Swedish metal?”

I say unto you, meet Peter, Bjorn and John: Read the rest of this entry »

Australian Hip Hop has had a troubled existence. In its earliest inceptions it seemed little more than a bunch of white Australian tools pretending to be black gangsta rappers and there’s a good reason why it seemed that way; they were. In the last few years, however, there have been a number of evolutions in the genre that have resulted in a more interesting experience. Australian rappers had dispensed with the American accent and began rapping about what they knew about, as opposed to blunts, 40s and bitches we began hearing about commodores, springas and chicks (so basically still cars, weed and women but from a bogan perspective). There was another school of Australian Hip Hop that began to emerge, however, which focused on political issues. And so by the early 2000s Australia basically had its answers to NWA and Public Enemy. In the hedonistic West Coast corner we had the Hilltop Hoods spouting rhymes about getting drunk and laid and in the civil rights East Coast corner we had The Herd with lyrical epics about ingrained racism and the Australian political scene. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been a long time fan of Computer RPGs. I’ve played many an epic pixel-fest in my time. Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, Knights of the Old Republic and the Elder Scrolls series have all graced my various computer screens over the years. I am, in particular a fan of the old-school, isometric computer rpgs. There was a generation of computer rpgs that embraced plot and character above all else. This was their main source of praise and damnation, depending on who you were talking to. Fans loved the depth of story and detractors complained that they were ugly and boring. I fell into the fan camp. Fallout and Planescape Torment are two excellent examples of this era of gaming. You had the opportunity to create a unique character, with a realistic personality and an expansive, open-ended world in which your actions had serious consequences (and occasionally rewards). This is not to say that every game of this ilk was any good (Icewind Dale was a dull slog of combat and snow) but, for a while there, we had a run of computer roleplaying games that actually allowed you to roleplay. Read the rest of this entry »