things ive said

[martianarctic]

The Factory Window

Agent:  Andrew Swan

Interview record: Pinetree-443 incident. Witness #2. January 3rd, 2021. Interview #1 of /. Location: Regional office, Lance Barrow Memorial Federal Building. Investigator Remarks: None.

It happened when I was really young, still a teenager, late teens, 18, 19. I have never told anybody about it before now. It is only known by one other person, he was with me, a friend of mine. I lost track of him after high school and searching his name on the internet yields nothing, even though he has an uncommon name. No one from school that I am still in touch with has spoken with him for decades.

I remember that day really clearly, even though it was almost [REDACTED] years ago at this point. It takes [REDACTED] hours to drive to the town. There were, and are still people there, gravitating to the kind of things that remain after a factory closes: Elementary schools, grocery stores, and hospitals. But everything and everybody is falling apart. Driving mostly old cars. The streets are stuck in [REDACTED] years ago. Everybody looks dead behind the eyes. Talks to you like you’re an invader into their daydream.

The factory is on the water. It closed in the [REDACTED], so when we went there it had been closed for about [REDACTED] years or so. It was a… real weird building. Designed by some famous midwestern architect, in the years they built up this town, they didn’t spare any expense. It’s built solid, so its still standing today, and will still be standing in 20 more years.

But, my point is, the building is big. It’s four interconnected corners, each like 10 stories high, and then a center that goes up 25 stories. Blocks. Windows are cut into the stone, but they are narrow- all around, about as wide and tall as a man. You can see out from them, but no way can you see in, except, at night, you can see if somebody is standing in one because the glow of the slit is different, warped kinda, just enough to know it doesn’t look like the others.

Sneaking in isn’t hard. Nobody’s patrolling it, I mean, I guess the cops drive by every day but there’s never anybody here so it’s the kind of thing very few of the cops would actually ever do. Despite this, you park your car in the trees that are overgrowing the parking lot, so nobody can see. The parking lot itself is cracked and weeds and bushes and even a few trees are growing up from under it.

There are entrances to the building all around it, but they are boarded up so the only way to get in is to go between two of the big blocks. These were meant to be the main entry ways, so back when the factory was open, you’d walk down one of these to get to work. There were probably a ton of people here all the time. Men, women, white, black, Mexicans, Asians- all Union members too.

I should mention two points here of interest. First, its very hard to find anybody who worked here. Nobody has done too deep of a dive on it, there’s a few youtubes and that’s it. Here’s what I know about that.

This section of the interview has been redacted.

And when you do, they’re… well, they’re all the same type of person, they all just kind of stare off into the distance. They are often very intelligent, quizzical kind of people. Not the first thing that jumps to mind when you think of factory workers. But its impossible to get them to answer anything directly. They acknowledge that you said something, but then they go off on a different tangent about something really esoteric and weird, but never the factory.

Which leads us to the next point of interest, which is that nobody actually knows what this factory made. Most people theorize that they are some kind of component to something very large and complicated so naturally one thinks that they were a defense contractor. However, defense stuff is usually air stuff and this stuff is way too heavy to fly in anything normal.

So, most people theorize that its some kind of hardware for power generation, nuclear or hydro power generation. Perhaps during the [REDACTED], in seeking energy independence, they anticipated some massive swell of interest in nuclear or hydro power generation and then the oil industry fired back. But that is also a stretch, because a factory this size producing that much hardware would have to have it go somewhere and honestly, again you tubers did the work and figured out that they made enough shit for 1000 nuclear plants when there only were ever 57 in the united states. Kinda the same story for hydro. Similar numbers.

Anyway, trees and bushes and tall weeds choke down each of these entrance paths. Here and there you see a drinking fountain, garbage can, bench- poking up through the foliage. It was around 1PM when we arrived so the sun was breaking through the clouds. We were in rain gear, we knew it could rain that day.

And boy it sure did- rain started up about when we got inside. After the entrance chambers, the first thing you go through is the offices. They were built into the 10 and 20 story walls that made up the structure. Furniture is still in them. Great stuff- but heavy as hell.

Anyway, the entrance chambers have these high 40-foot vaulted ceilings and stairs that take you to the first 4 floors. We crunched through the weeds that followed us in, and the crackles of dead foliage and the clatter of a kicked stone echoed. We heard the rain start falling outside. You can imagine how this place would have sounded any day of the week- just a bunch of people coming and going, starting and ending their days. We entered the first floor offices, which start just past the stairs.

So back to the offices, with the vintage furniture- they are rusted and warped a little bit, but I think with some effort they could be refurbished into what would be considered high-end pieces today. Millions of dollars worth by my reckoning. Remember, the place closed in the [REDACTED], and by that time, most companies as large as this one, if in fact it was even a business, had already gone computer based in some form or other. But there’s no computers, they never switched to any substantially digital document or process management infrastructure. There’s not a computer more complicated than a basic calculator in there.

Oh yeah, glad you asked. Another weird thing about this place- is that there’s no record of them ever having filed articles of incorporation or partnership in any state let alone ever issuing any kind of stocks or bonds. The size of the factory alone, estimated to have costed over a billion dollars in 2020 dollars, and they never borrowed any money or sold any equity stakes, at least not to anybody in the united states and not through legal channels. So we’re not even sure this was a business. At least, again, in the opinion of youtubers, since there’s no professional investigative interest on this place, until now.

So one of the things to do in this place is take a look through some of the paperwork in these offices. I feel like I don’t need to tell you that none of it makes any sense. At first, all of it looks completely normal. Memos, letters, ledgers, blotters, and they look pretty much like what you’d find in any corporate office this old. But at least somewhere in a normal business’ records, you find at least some mention of customers. Zero zip, in this factory. Products are mentioned, but they are always by cryptic item numbers that can be endlessly cross referenced but never defined.

That was not what we were here to investigate, however. And I think that’s why you called me in, maybe, but what we were there to investigate, I don’t know if you know this or not but I am about to become your star witness. #1.

If you go through the offices enough, keep moving perpendicular to the halls, through the doorways, you eventually get to the factory floor. On all sides, the walls are filled with offices that look out onto the factory floor. Above, a bunch of industrial track lighting underneath mostly broken glass skylights.

No walkways- those are all interior. This made the only possible avenue for suicide to be to jump through your office window out onto the factory, which would have been very tough, since the windows both didn’t open and also the glass was filled with chicken wire. I obviously have no idea if anybody ever did it since at least from the standpoint of personnel this would not have been discussed and if it was documented we haven’t ever found anything.

So, depending on which of the quads you are in, there’s significant differences between the factory segments. This one is mostly flat, but some of them go really vertical with these processing machines that go both up and down in addition to left and right. Here, this one, there’s conveyors that move across work stations, if you unwrapped these, they’d probably be over 20 miles long. Whatever they assembled here was small. The other quads definitely handled much larger products.

This segment probably had the most workers, also. We don’t know much about the unions that worked here but we do know that most of the shop stewards worked in this quad. Their workstations, you can see, have a lot of extra seating, space and document capacity. Here is something a little strange, nobody except youtubers and urban explorers visits here, and they are usually pretty good about not taking a ton of shit, but the union leader’s shop areas have been absolutely gutted of anything resembling a paper record or document. Somebody came for that shit.

As you can imagine, we have theories on this. We think that the shop steward’s records are probably the best place to get a list of names and addresses and any info by which we could track these people down and somebody already got it. The other quads had union leader’s workstations as well and also those are devoid of any actual recordkeeping paperwork. In one quad, several of them were burned.

We didn’t dally long in the quads, we went right for the center building, which is only accessible through the corner of the quads. Through a layer of offices, then just doors. The rain was falling outside of this one- we put up our hoods and made sure our camera bags were covered and went outside.

The courtyard is actually in the middle of the central building. 20 story high walls up around us, with the slit-like windows looking out. We’re looking out from a corner: the corners are where you enter from the outside, and then large entranceways on the edges of the square are the entrances to the central building. The water is falling down trees that have overgrown, tall, tall weeds. Broken up here and there by obstinate patches of concrete that form paths. We travel along one of these to roughly the middle of the whole complex. Look up see this is why were here. We look up.

One of the slits, up half way about from the north wall, it’s lit up. You could see a golden glow coming out of it because of how dark the rainclouded sky was. And it ain’t a normal window-slit. Its warped because something is in the window. We don’t think it’s anything moving, because it always stays the same.

So the last group to explore that we know of, they had pointed out that this light was there. Other explorers that went before them didn’t see it, so the earliest this light could have turned on was, if you believe them, [REDACTED]. [REDACTED] months.

Anyway, we counted what floor it was as best as we could and walked for that entrance and walked in, took off our hoods. The central building entrances are more conventional with elevator banks and security desks. We walked past the elevator banks for the stairs.

The stairs are eerie because of all places here, this is the one where, if you could time travel back to [REDACTED], it would look exactly the same. Light comes in through windows at each landing and there’s very little clutter. Actually people so infrequently come up these stairs that there’s very little dirt.

We got to the 18th floor- this was where we believed the light was on. It was also facing in towards the courtyard, so that meant the office was somewhere on the south side of the hallway. We checked our compasses and saw that was to the right if we turned right, and to the left if we turned left. We also figured it was to the right of the stairs. We went in.

The hallway was dark enough that if we could have seen straight down it, we would have been able to tell which office had a light on, except that most of the office doors were closed. As we walked down the hall, we looked in those offices that were open. Furniture still there in most of them, which made the offices that were completely empty really stand out. It would be weird if these offices seemed like no one had ever worked in them but what was weirder was that it seemed like all of the stuff had been removed from them. Shadows on the wall indicating where a chair might have scuffed against, parts of the carpet that seemed less worn than others.

We got to where we had to start opening the doors on the left. We did it quickly. One of us opened while the other covered with, yeah a firearm, you don’t go urban exploring in [REDACTED] without one. I was the puller when we got to it. The door handles were all were pretty much ice cold to the touch so when we got to it, I knew. This one was warm. I looked back to make sure he was still there, he gave me a nod. I pulled on the handle and the door came open.

This section of the interview has been redacted.

[martianarctic]

Mother

She was peeling apples in the kitchen for an apple pie. I took one of the peelings and ate it. I was unimpressed with her pie crust, which I now realize was masterful. Unsweet, extremely light and flakey. She would make apple and strawberry rhubarb pies.

My parents both worked full-time, and neither of them made very much money. We would drive from there to home, home was near a big city where my parents worked.

Grandmas house stands on a hill, overlooking the bay like a sentinel. Within, is a photograph of me standing on the foundations, five years old.

More than anything, she taught me how to care, and, somehow, to be strong.

I am surrounded by machines. They engulf me not like a singular vast whale, but as a rain of devices, rising quicksand of interfaces, capabilities, applications, permissions and validations. I am in an environment more different from hers, than any others of my long line of grandmothers to grandsons, going back thousands of years. In the bronze age, few of her ancestors were a part of any empire. Her family came from Scotland. Her grandmother grew up somewhere in that freezing, unfriendly place- descendants of hill warriors who chose to throw in their lot with the Empire than continue fighting. A people of calculated peace. Now in one of those brick houses her grandmother might have raised a family in, somebody is surrounded by machines like me, her hair curly, white gold. Her eyes steel blue like hers.

She will remember her in a way different than I do. She will have awakened into a soft world lit by her voice. Her past, which will be the foundation of her future, coalesced in the gravity of love. A planetary nebula of feeling and presence. They missed each other by 13 years, but also, they did not miss each other at all.

[martianarctic]

Devin’s Playlist -2010s Part 1

This is an unfinished retrospective look at what I listened to during the 2010s. This decade was exceptional for me, as it was the first decade where, for almost all of it, I was not a musician myself. 

Being a musician forces you to listen to music like a musician, and being free of that, and able to listen as a listener alone, really made this a spectacular decade for me. I found dozens of incredible albums that were released during the decade, many of which received no significant recognition.

This was a very large project, and I did not finish it. I made it through Retrowave, Shoegaze, and Post punk. If anybody cares, I will finish the entire project, which will add Dreampop (the largest category), Vaporwave, and Dark Ambient.

Retrowave: Retrowave is electronic music that, at first listen, sounds like it may be from the 80s or 90s, mostly because the synths it uses to generate the music are either retro-inspired or literally retro equipment in some of the more extreme cases. It generally features original compositions, often, but not always, is instrumental. Rough vocals would impede the tightness and angularity of the music, so when vocals are used they are often pop produced and highly melodic. This genre gained significant exposure from Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 masterpiece, “Drive”.

Galactic Melt (2011) Com Truise

Electronic artist Com Truise rose to prominence off of this fantastic record, which rallies around the undeniable electro anthem of 2012, “Brokendate”. Starting with some found audio (chopped and screwed found audio becomes a big deal later on in Vaporwave) and then dropping in an absolutely thick beat we’re met with a song that eventually, as layers are dropped on, ends up being meditative, romantic, and melancholy. Emotions to that point, not well associated with dance music, but definitely would come to color the entire decade.

Era Extraña (2011) Neon Indian

Electronic solo bedroom pop was pretty cool at the end of the 00s being pushed hard by guys like Twin Shadow. I am not sure how I got ahold of Neon Indian but this album was, in a lot of ways, the true start of my musical decade. I had not been so excited and enthusiastic about a record since I had retired from making music. It really gives you a new perspective to not feel like you’re in competition with everything and trying to learn from everything- just as a listener, I was enthralled with this entire record.

Visitors (2012) Lazerhawk

I did not get into dark retrowave until after 2013 and thus discovered Lazerhawk and this record after the fact. Visitors is, in my opinion, the best dark retrowave album ever made, more consistent and listenable than competitors such as mega drive or carpenter brut. Also. This album absolutely sticks the landing with the street-strutting powerhouse “Arrival”.

I am the Night (2012) Perturbator

Made famous by soundtracking the indie game hit Hotline Miami (one of the best games of the decade), Perturbator carved a niche for himself with fast, brutal, high energy dark electronic music and absolutely bonkers live shows. Perturbator has a large catalog of content- I am the Night is definitely the starter kit. Starting off with a thick minor chord, a church bell, and a sample of Peter Finch’s speech from “Network” you immediately know what’s in store- dark, dystopian and undeniably French electronic dance music, complete with breathtaking beat breaks, big bass synths, and complex compositions.

Innerworld (2014) Electric Youth

I had mentioned that Drive was a major popularizer of retrowave- and one song in particular, a collaboration between another retrowave artist named College, who created the low fi, catchy bassline for the song “A Real Hero”, and the vocals and lyrics, created by an artist called Electric Youth. Their record, 2014’s “Innerworld”, is one of the best retrowave efforts, with the second track, “Runaway”, even better than the song that made them famous. The pop chorus “Maybe we could just run away for good/cuz we’re both mis understood” soaring over thick, atmospheric synth pads will have you slapping the roof of your car, as you race through the freeways of LA at 3AM.

Atlas (2016) FM-84

Speaking of roof-slapping bangers, “Running in the Night” is probably retrowave’s most popular anthem, boasting one of my absolute favorite vocal performances of the decade. A group claiming rock and roll city San Francisco as their home base (despite being both British), FM-84’s Atlas is absolutely packed with a mixture of the atmospheric instrumental Miami Vice type music suggested by the red and purple setting sun cover as well as vocal driven pop songs such as the single mentioned above.

Hardwired (2018) Mitch Murder

Mitch Murder is a retrowave institution, having made the soundtrack to the viral youtube movie Kung Fury, and also, I suspect, the original music used by twitch personality Dr. Disrespect. However, he almost entirely releases 3-5 song Eps, making it tough to pick out a standout. However that all changed in 2018 with the release of Hardwired, the most accomplished mitch murder release to date. Starting off with the Jan Hammer style “Altered State”, it stays on brand throughout but tells a very unified instrumental story of cyberpunk dystopian adventure. Vangelis-style synths bring in the closer track, “Revision Control”, one of Mitch Murder’s greatest tracks. Evolving through different moods, different scenes, we can imagine the “human” protagonist confronting his cyborg nemesis he has been tasked to execute.

Retrowave Album of the Decade:

Dark All Day (2018) Gunship

As the decade wore on, retro wave slowed down for me. I thought it might be over but- without warning, Gunship, an artist I had listened to but not been completely impressed by, released what is probably the most accomplished album in the genre. Spanning various tempos and musical themes, utilizing several guest vocalists, the scope of “Dark All Day” keeps you listening to the record again and again. This record represents an evolution in a format that was at risk of being just a fad. “Come on lost boys, lets stay alive” over a ripping saxophone lead suggests mere 80s fetishism, but there is more substance than just that. The following track, “When you Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, takes an upbeat electro jam, and really goes for emotional impact with a series of samples of characters from pop culture saying inspirational things, my favorite being “Everything worth doing is hard” which I think is just Teddy Roosevelt. My favorite track of the record, the slow ballad “Artemis & Parzival”, begins with swooning, Vangelis-style pads and then into guest vocalist Stella Le Page’s gorgeous vocals. This track definitely belongs on anybody’s make out playlist. “Were all gonna die that’s just how it is, there’s no escaping the future, nobody gets what they want in this world, even for you and me” is one of the greatest lyrics of the decade.

 Nugaze/Shoegaze-Adjacent: Shoegaze is a genre of music that features highly layered guitar effects (often run through 10 or more effects, creating a signature “vacuum cleaner” sound with a ton of distortion and white noise) and breathy vocals. Relying heavily on the depth of character of the sound, shoegaze guitar tone and production is a major creative point and almost all of these records are self-produced. Vocal themes are usually depression-inspired and lovelorn meditations, the music sounds, to most, dull and dreary, but to some, it speaks deeply to their feelings about the past and future. Shoegaze is often mixed with other guitar genres on this list, from Post Hardcore(Nothing, Title Fight), Black Metal(Deafheaven), and Thrash Metal (Astronoid).

Road Eyes (2010) Amusement Parks on Fire

Around 2010, I was promoted at my job to a new role that would require a bunch of travel. I was not a big fan of riding on airplanes. Also around that time, my brother had moved into my apartment, then out of it, and I only had a few months left on the lease. My favorite shoegaze band of the 2000s, Amusement Parks on Fire, played a gig at 330 Ritch, a club in san Francisco. I had a fantastic time at the show, and particularly loved their new material, which made it onto a record they called Road Eyes. 2 months later I moved out of my apartment in San Francisco and never would go back to living as a single dude.

Anyways, the travelling. The opening and title track to the record came to symbolize change for me. And it also was the song I would listen to every time my plane would take off. It helped me deal with the fear that something might happen- no matter how insignificant the chance – and if it did, while that song was on, it would be okay. Indeed, this was, and I will warn you I am not qualified to treat mental illness, but this actually really made flying much easier for me and it is a ritual I continue to do to this day, whenever possible.

Pipe Dreams(2013), Sway(2014), Feels like You (2019) Whirr

San Francisco nugaze/dronegaze band Whirr, large and complex, problematic, aggressive, are behind some of my favorite music of the decade. Their three album career reflects to me upon the primary feelings of youth: euphoria, anger, and sadness.

Pipe Dreams is a blissful set of jams, meditative, energetic uptempo and with almost totally co-ed vocals. Noisy production casts a hydrocarbon haze over the songs, raw vocal melodies reach out of the fuzz and suck you in. “Junebouvier” and “Toss” capture the euphoric and  youthful energy of a summer in San Francisco: starting off with breakups May thru July, and hot hookups until September or October when people settle into relationships. Two hungry eyes emerging from straight-bangs to make eye contact with you, and hold it- the exhilaration of touching somebody new.

Sway, the band’s masterwork, starts off with a heavily muff-distorted major 7th chord suspending us until the massive drums, now a hallmark of the band’s sound, kick off the beat into the opening rocker Press. The band switches up rhythms between drums, guitars, and bass to bring rock and roll-type turnarounds and breaks that really keep you on your toes and engaged. The lead guitar is classic legato shoegaze, using delay to achieve a long, sustained scream. Compositions are key on this record- not following just simple A/B patterns there’s some thought to the structure of the songs and record. “Dry”, in particular, demonstrates some of these ideas. A/B sections, underscored with “Drown me everytime… Dry”, give way to breaks, ethereal echo guitar solos, giving a hint of the powerful ending. A 4 chord progression accented by breathtaking drum fills finaly flourishes into a screaming cymbal-laden guitar finish.

Feels like You, the bands purported final album, starts off with some quiet echo piano. The melancholy major 7 chords the band has leaned on throughout their music are laid bare as we press play on the record. Add guitar. At a little after 90 seconds the band jumps in after with a thick blanket of lonesome self-reflection and chemical depression. The bands penchant for composition remains to the end, with changes keeping you engaged as the noise soothes your heart. “Younger than You” is one of the band’s greatest tracks, starting with an almost Smashing Pumpkins/Silversun Pickups esque clean unison guitar/bass into distorted and layered noise, ending with a drum-guided, rock and roll style outro.

 Guilty of Everything (2014) Nothing

One of the things I mention in my preface to this is, for me, the 2010s were the first decade of my life that ended with me not being a musician. And it opened some doors for me, creatively, to be able to hear music and think about it purely as a listener and a person. Something others have frequently described to me, that I had never really done, was just spend an entire weekend listening to an album.

I saw Nothing on KEXP 5 years ago when Guilty of Everything was out and they were on tour. I’ve seen them twice in person since them and bought every one of their records. The weekend that I got Guilty, I was attending a close friend’s sisters wedding, and pretty much was in a hotel room drunk in overcast-as-fuck santa cruz all weekend. And you know what was being played through headphones at practically all times.

Nothing is mostly the musical project of a guy named Dominic Palermo, a punk from the Philly scene that had spent more than a year in prison for a stabbing. He isn’t much of a vocalist or guitarist, but he is a fantastic artist, writer, photographer, and visionary, and the creative force behind what is now a rotating cast of other musicians.

Guilty of Everything is definitely their best record, opening with the massive meditation Hymn to the Pillory, into the definitive single Bent Nail, a perfect marriage of hardcore punk and shoegaze elements, falling apart into the 90mph crash, into a wall, final outro chorus “If you feel like/letting go…” repeated over and over over pure drone guitars, seamlessly flowing into the romantic slow jam “Endlessly” The closing title track is one of the best closers of the decade, perfectly sticking the landing on this brilliant lyric: “My hands are up, I’m on my knees I don’t have a gun, you can search me please. I’ve given up, but you shoot me anyway, I’m guilty of everything. I’m guilty of everything”.

Hyperview (2015) Title Fight

Nothing wasn’t the only Pennsylvanian post-hardcore band to bend their sound a bit shoegaze. Title Fight also sneaks onto this list with their outstanding record Hyperview from 2015. Appealing compositions and melodies combine with harmonized vocals, even some 16 beats on the hats- things we expect from post hardcore, but slowed down and smeared out a bit into the shoegaze aesthetic. My favorite track from the record, “Hypernight”, combines some screamo hype man chorus, math rock inspired guitar and bass lines, and is just all in all one of the most unique tracks to come out of the decade. “I don’t want to see things differently, its what I am taught myself to believe”.

Grandfeathered (2016) Pinkshinyultrablast

I admit that I bounced off of Russian electro-shoegazers Pinkshinyultrablast the first time I listened to them a few years ago. There was just too much going on and I didn’t really have the inclination to jump in and grab on. Operatic female vocals, noisy djenty guitar, shimmery, clean guitar, all swirl together in what is undoubtably a great record for having a tinder date IF, and I say IF, you’re willing to run a musicological acid test on them.

Whether it was listening to a bunch more music, particularly ambient music, or just changing taste now I can’t get enough of this band. They do slam from idea to idea in a song, but it’s a controlled speed- it’s not pleasant to a lot of people, but once you get yourself situated, you’ll wonder how you ever missed this band to begin with, if you’re not one of the people reading this and thinking, naw dude, I got this shit RIGHT AWAY.

The compositions on the record are, in fact, carefully considered and composed, combining noise rock with clean ambience deftly and changing up styles repeatedly throughout each song and the record. Everybody knows we can no longer control dynamics via volume in today’s world of headphone/device listening,  ultramaximizing mastering, laptop speakers, etc. So Pinkshinyultrablast controls it with style. This record is definitely the more guitar-driven of the albums from this decade, with their release 2 years later being more electronic and vocal focused.

Slowdive (2017) Slowdive/My Bloody Valentine (2013) mbv

There are two bands that are credited with creating and or popularizing the Shoegaze movement during the late 80s and early 90s. Those bands are My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. Both of whom released albums during the 2010s. And frankly, both records are damn good for two bands that have been basically on hiatus for 20 years. Neither has really stood the test of time for me, although I listened to both exhaustively upon release. 

The opening tracks of both records are absolutely mesmerizing, this slow, sexy intro is clearly the part of them that became stronger with age. The manic rock energy of their more upbeat tracks however is absent or at least forced, and I think is what keeps these from being really what I’d call strong records. Nevertheless, both albums belong on any shoegazer’s playlists both for the quality of the music as well as the nod to the progenators of the genre we love so much.

Time n Place (2018) Kero Kero Bonito

KKB was already one of the biggest indie rock groups in the world when they released this their second full-length album. Making a big move sound-wise from super squeaky clean hip hop style production to sloppy shoegaze guitars and drums, they alienated a lot of fans with Time n Place, but I don’t see how. For me, coming in for Time n Place and then going back in the catalogue to Bonito Generation, I see it as a very natural progression. As the artists become more confident and mature, it’s natural they should explore some other emotions and moods.

That said I am not the usual KKB fan. Actually at their show in San Francisco in 2018 I was probably in the top 95 percentile of being an old fart. Around me, mostly twentysomethings on the first half decade, casually doing key bumps right on the show floor, something scared old gen Xers like me, still remembering their friend’s divorced dads in cigarette boats they sold for coke in the 80s, are still too paranoid to do. The crowd definitely starting pogo jumping at the chorus to “Only Acting” a grungy, poppy metaphor between acting on stage, and being young and in love.

Right after that, “Flyaway“ is the upbeat shoegazey manic anthem that really got me sucked into the band to begin with. Combining fuzzy guitars that are more reminiscent of Japanese rock bands of the 00s than shoegaze with a crystalline clear melodic vocal line from Sarah, this is the track where I grab a handful of dirt from my dying hill, and say if you don’t like this song, you don’t like the band, the record, or my musical taste.

Miserable Miracles (2018) Pinkshinyultrablast

Reinventing themselves record by record, Pinkshinyultrablast keeps on the cutting edge and doesn’t make a habit of anything. Miserable Miracles is more electronics driven, lead and pad synthesizers bringing in the music with their trademark soaring, operatic vocals. Guitars are present as well, but heavily stretched with cathedral reverb and long delay. A smoother sound than Grandfeathered, but well-poised to issue a majestic, meditative prayer such as “Find your Saint”, my favorite track. Like walking into a Germanic church on Sunday, the vocals rise to the ceiling forcing you to look up at the light breaking in through stained glass synthesizers. At about 100 seconds, all of the pieces drop in together to lift you into wherever it is you are going. “I used to talk- about it” brings the heavenly outro to bear, one of the most powerful musical moments of the decade.

Astronoid (2019) Astronoid

I am part of a few music groups on Facebook, and one of them mentioned this band, calling them “Dream Thrash”- a combination of dreampop and thrash metal. I’d say its more thrashgaze, with heavy effects/djenty guitar and the more whispery vocals than are a hallmark of the shoegaze genre, not the clear pop produced vocals that are the hallmark of dreampop.

That out of the way, this is possibly my favorite record of 2019. The opening track, “A New Color”, brims with energy and hopeful optimism and replaced Road Eyes as my airplane take off song. Right around 3 minutes in, when the plane is airborne and gaining climbing u to cruise, when we’re often breaking through the clouds, comes in possibly my favorite guitar solo of all time. On this record, Astronoid are unquestionably uptempo metal yet somehow at the same time being slow-changing enough to carry the emotional weight of shoegaze. The second track, “Dream in Lines”, is an aggressive, more metal-informed rocker, and the third is a power ballad that absolutely sealed the deal for me in terms of loving this album.

Other high points include the uptempo thrash jam “Breathe” and “Water”. Again infusing the metal, djenty mute strum guitar with soaring vocals and heavy backing harmonics, this record continues again and again to deliver head-banging jams that touch and heal a deep sadness in the soul. “Water” is a darker exploration, starting with a heavy chunky two-guitar & bass instrumental, virtuous breaks, and expansive echo and reverb. The band sounds like they are playing in the middle of an interstellar arena, fists human and alien in the sky.

The album sticks the landing with the penultimate track “Beyond the Scope”. This incredible song starts slowly, but upon reaching a turn, goes double-time as the melody and music climbs in pitch at 100 seconds in. This transition takes us into a greater urgency, with sustained, over-flying guitar notes keeping the harmony rich and complex.

Then, the beat drops out and a single guitar chord rings- “My hands are on my ears/They won’t stop ringing” smashes into your brain and your heart. Then again, the building section- “Feeble-minded/I can not decide/in my world, now I know/there’s no such thing as dying/so leave with a goodbye” and into another build and back to the chorus-

“My hands are on my ears/they won’t stop ringing”. I don’t think any lyric can better express the decade than that. If it were somehow possible for this album to end on this song, it would be at the head of this category.

Everything Starts to Be a Reminder (2019) Echodrone

As a former musician, I have a lot of friends who are musicians. I am very brutally honest about my feelings in music and that can make it awkward to have to comment on a friend’s hard work. Echodrone’s latest record made this very easy- the record is simply amazing. Echodrone’s earlier records bounced off of me a bit, but this one has just the right mixture of drone-drenched empty space, ethereal vocals, emotional anguish and euphoria, and a strong connection to the last 10 years in my mind. The tracks are named after the four seasons, starting with Winter and ending with Autumn. Interestingly, the tracks do not really stand out as being separate in my mind, much like how you cannot easily separate a season from another season in the same year.

“Winter” explodes with an epic, cymbal-laden meditation, that continues to grow and grow and expand, then finally becomes quieter, more melodic, and less drony in the second half of the 18 ½ minute song.

“Spring” features a finger-pick echo guitar interspersed with a beautiful co-ed vocal line guiding us down a pathway of different melodic and harmonic ideas. It then enters into a several-minutes long jammy contemplation that is utterly ecstatic to me- synths layered with effects-laden bass and more echo guitar into a full stop.

The best song on the record, “Summer”, begins with a vocal sample into a more or less straight-ahead rock and roll jam. This gives way to a downtempo effects section, then at right after 4 ½ minutes, gives way to a sound I can only call Olympian in hugeness. Fuzz bass, echoing guitars, and multilayered female vocals create this trance-like atmosphere that is rarefied and deeply marked with potent and everchanging imagery at the same time, like cream on top of coffee.

The sound continues to change and becomes quiet again once again with echo guitars carrying the music through. Back to a rhythmic return at 12 ¾ minutes. A synth flute melody flies over the whispered vocals, complex drum patterns- an opine to the end of life’s summer, the bitter sweetness of being old enough to not be hurt anymore by unlikely things failing to fly.

 Shoegaze Album of the Decade:

Sunbather (2013) Deafheaven

A single distorted guitar chord progression holding several notes through the chords for changing harmonics, exploding into double kick and even more guitars, into black metal screaming- this is the unmistakable beginning of Sunbather by San Francisco black metal band Deafheaven.

Due to its downtempo sections, overall distorted and layered production, and emotional scope, this album is loved not just by black metal fans but also by shoegaze fans such as myself. It is a perfect example of a successful crossover- not anticipated or forced in any way by the creators- but it just happens to work on so many different levels.

There are really only four songs on this record, the tracks in between them are much needed interludes. Something all Deafheaven songs do very well is compositioning. These tracks play out, in a way, like classical pieces, with many different sections, transitions, themes, changes, openings, closings, callbacks- it’s so incredibly dense and accomplished that you can listen to this album for weeks on end and still be surprised.

“Dream House” is the blazing opener of the record and puts on display everything we love about every song on here. To make this song the first track is insane, simply because of how over-the-top insanely powerful it is. After a brief interlude of just picked echo guitar, a single chord strum, the entire band comes back in a beat later, and this isn’t even the most emotional part of the song. That’s going to be at 7 minutes, 20 seconds in “I watched/It die!!!” screeches the vocalist as a guitar ostinado plays over the key notes that have been presented throughout the song in brutal crystal clarity. Then at 8 minutes- the vocalist and guitar break down, screaming and double picking guitar notes. It is difficult not to cry at this ending- and this is only the first song on the record.

“Sunbather” is both the title track and the album’s dark heart. Thrumming with a complex beat from the start, the other instruments are layered over this like a tangle of vines across an iron fence. Skillful use of double kick and drum fills keeps the band on target as we get to the breaks and turnarounds. The cymbals and guitars swirl creating complex patterns. Listening to this song from far away with extremely poor speakers would sound like static- similar to how Jupiter looks like a pale gold smear- turn up the volume a little, get a little closer, and you see the rich, threatening complexity of the swirling clouds of music and emotion. The song ends with a slow section about ¾ of the way through the 10 minute piece. An unforgettable echo guitar line plays sparsely over drums- invoking a Cure-like gothic sensibility. Then the band comes back in, playing the same melody and expanding upon it, a lighting bolt magnified to a thousand forks and twists going in all directions. It is the melodies at the end of Sunbather that were stuck in my head, unforgettable, after listening to this record. Unlike Dream House, this song ends on a down note, a question- the rest of the album is to give an answer, and incredibly, you will not be disappointed.

“Vertigo” is the longest song on the record at 14 ½ minutes, a blazing, minor key rocker that is meant to emotionally drag us down as far as we can go after Sunbather. The ending of the song invokes the Beatles “She’s So Heavy” before heading into “Windows” an ambient and spoken word piece featuring a drug deal gone bad- unquestionably a node to The Tenderloin, one of the more drug-laden districts in San Francisco and likely location of the band’s rehearsal studios.

Into “The Pecan Tree”, a song that has an seemingly impossible task: To somehow stick the landing of an extremely powerful and emotional record. We are looking for something coming into this track, but we are not totally sure what it is. We need something, but we can only follow the lights. The song opens up with insane double-kick guitar madness, 2 step rhythm, and then at 1:20 we see a glimpse through the storm, a hole of blue, that we can make it to, if we keep on going. Keep on going. Keep on walking. Smashing, swirling guitars and screams return, our view obstructed. Everything seems to be going at maximum at the end of this first section of the song.

At just after 3 minutes, the sonic assault finally begins to slow down, a march tempo into double kick continuous cymbals, back to march tempo, then, at 4 minutes 19 seconds, only picked echo guitar heralds us into the second section. The star of this section is a piano ostinato combined with the echo guitar, with a second guitar playing playful melodies over it. This is the starry night we can now see that the storm has cleared- this is the most optimistic and life affirming music on the record. A found audio recording of a detuned radio signals the ending of this section.

Eventually, this music fades just before four metal beats brings us to the conclusion- an octave-fingering guitar line and screeching vocal that is in my view one of the most awesome emotional turnarounds that I have ever experienced musically. The remaining outro sums up the entire record- life is big, difficult, unknowable, chaotic. Great albums stick the landing- and this ending does so, with incredible energy, on a record that did not even need it. Sunbather. One of the greatest rock records of all time and one of the very few of those albums to come out now, just about half a century after the 60s.

Post Punk Revivalists: The king of indie rock genres in the 00s, post punk was largely set down at the end of the decade with the major acts of the decade releasing milquetoast or downright laughable fare (are we human, or are we dancer?). However, post punk exploded back onto the scene in 2012 with The Money Store by Death Grips. Some returning groups from the 00s did end up releasing fantastic records, Roma 79 and Daughters being my favorites.

Cardinal Star (2014) Roma 79

I discovered north San Francisco bay area band Roma 79 through their single from the 00s, “Gold”, a sort of heavy, post-punk rocker with a few-thousand views on Youtube. I was very surprised when they reunited and recorded this followup album, which was one of my favorite records of 2014. Featuring a good amount of synth and dreampoppy guitar lines, the main standouts are the vocals and the brilliant drumming, which is a hallmark of great post-punk records of the 00s such as Fever to Tell or Turn On the Bright Lights. The strongest single on the record, “Seventeen”, features a complex drum lines, interlaced with vocals and synths. The song slowly builds up in emotional intensity and drops in layers of vaguely Phil Collins-esque drums and backing vocals, blossoming into a powerful meditative love song. “I’ll wait for it with you.” The final song on the record, is almost an answer to this track, closing the record on a strong point.

You Won’t Get What You Want (2018) Daughters

Daughters is another post-punk band that returned to release a followup nearly 10 years later with 2018’s “You Won’t Get What You Want”. Like all great post punk records, there are a number of characters in this room, and they all can be heard, each having their moments in the spotlight and their moments in the shadows.

One such character is the drums. A crushing combination of live and multitracking effects create a rhythm that provides both the constant heartbeat required by driving rock and roll based music, but also the texture, the complexity, that we seek out in the genre. Lots of tom toms used to keep the beat as opposed to cymbals, practically no hat. Invoking Killing Joke, except when they don’t want to right away, but bring it in later.

Another character is the vocals. Spoken word/sing song type delivery, where the mood and the words and more important than the melody. Lyrics invoke isolation, depression, contraction, abandonment, decline. It would almost be enough with just that, these drums and vocals- but this will also be added by another character, the music. The music seems to be generated mostly by guitar and bass, but there are clearly some synthesizer elements as well, used sparingly and to great effect. I can’t really describe the guitar tone, I would say, it shimmers, but not in an enlightening way. It’s like flashes in the dark, disorienting more than illuminating. The sound is like wood coming off a circular saw. It’s definitely this guitar sound that draws people into this record. All elements are moody, dark, aggressive, but it’s the guitar that really lays down flashes over the blackness.

“Satan in the Wait”, one of the best single tracks on the record, features an off-balance drum beat, carried by toms, and an air-raid siren like guitar sound. A throbbing, distorted bassline in time with the kick drum. At 1:30 in we are given a guitar riff that is beautiful and invoking of a banjo, lending a sensation of urban, southern gothic emotions. Horror film soundtracks come to mind, a combination of unsettling ambience and clear, unforgettable melodies. “Their Bodies are open” the chorus goes, making me think of world-ending events, a transformational death as seen in Arthur C. Clarkes Childhood’s End.

Another of my favorite tracks, “Daughter”, begins with a “bela legosi is dead” kick and snare rim drum beat, possibly electronic, along with a shimmery, surf-rock toned guitar riff. As the song proceeds, more elements are dropped in, and the drums are of particular note here, at 1:23 or so, they drop into a complex beat involving toms, cymbals, and snare. At 2:05 they drop in a clear guitar riff on top of raw noise, building to a climax with the vocal “There’s a war!” At this point, the noise drops out, just a clear guitar riff reminiscent of “Satan in the Wait”, drums coming in at 3:15 or so are particularly impactful.

The final track, “Guest House”, opens on a nearly unbearable sonic assault, the lyrics invoking somebody trapped outside of a bomb shelter during an apocalypse. Once again the gap between unbearable noise and beautiful melody is bridged, as the final dissonant chords give way to deep, harmonic, peaceful orchestra swells.

Post Punk Album of the Decade:

The Money Store (2012) Death Grips

The first time somebody played “Get Got” for me, it was during a really chillwave phase in my music taste and I was completely lost, and didn’t really understand what people saw in Death Grips. I was intrigued enough though, and circled back on some tracks from Exmilitary, their prior record. The more laid back tone and empty space present in tracks such as “Culture Shock” kept me interested enough to give The Money Store another shot a year or so later.

As my interest in chillwave started to fade, and I sought more emotional substance to my music, I returned to the Money Store, and was hooked. Each track is a relentless blast of aggressive drum beats, synthesizer driven melodies, and of course the unmistakable rap vocals of MC Ride.

A strong comparison for me, is between this record, and Joy Division’s second and final record, “Closer”. Relentless beats, but never getting boring, always inventing new rhythms to cast a texture over the musical landscape. Short, fast songs, transitioning from one beat and tempo to the other, never giving you a chance to catch your breath.

The music is highly influenced by hip hop, appearing to be a chopped and cut style, with synthesizers combined with production on the vocals, adding vocals, filter sweeps, reverses, etc- so much energy and craft went into creating what is on its surface very simple music- drums, vocals, and production. Standout track “Hustle Bones” does a fantastic job of expressing what is so great about every song on this record. Everything barely makes sense, but then it all comes together in a singular moment that anybody can nod their head to.

MC Ride’s best is on display in the classic hit, “I’ve Seen Footage”. In his relentless, attacking rap style, he tells us the story of watching gore or wtf videos from reddit or 4chan (or Stile Project if you’re really old like me)-  describing what he’s seen, and then underscoring that with the chorus, “I stay noided”- the character Ride creates is deeply anxious and paranoid, while at the same time being insatiable in the quest for knowing more, something I believe is nearly universal to the experience of the internet-informed human, a phenomenon that would later in the decade lead to diseases thought dead brought back by anti-vax movements, and the election of conspiracy theorist and popularizer Donald Trump as president of the united states.

And that’s the formula to each track on Money Store- working around something more or less literal, Ride’s poetry brings us into the dark state the world was only beginning to enter at the start of the decade.

Closing track “Hacker” opens with a recording of Ride, yelling, presumably at a concert “No ins and outs!!! You come out, your shit is GONE”, then into a 4-on the floor dance beat to end the record on an absolute banger. The music, carried by the beat and Ride’s systematic delivery, is left to its own devices, with glitchy, cut-off synth arpeggios, everything getting out of the way of the beat. “Having conversations with your car alarm”, “you speak with us in certain circles, you will be dethroned or detained”, and “Gaga can’t handle this shit” are some of the lyrical gems that Ride has saved for last here, closing out a post punk record that stands alongside Closer or Turn on the Bright Lights as one of the best of all time.

[martianarctic]

Midsommar Review

The way our world works these days, if somebody makes something, and then that thing makes money, they are strongly incentivized to try to do it again.

I am strongly biased against second projects. With a few exceptions, since the dawn of the internet, informational efficiency, and ease of consumption of media, these second projects are usually rushed, unworthy, too risky, too safe, typically fail to leverage the prior success in any useful way and just in general, are not usually good.

So, I went into Midsommar with low expectations, creating the conditions for one of my very favorite things: this obstacle being absolutely annihilated.

Everything that usually works against second projects worked in favor of Midsommar: The director truly showed up in terms of effort, pushing extremely hard to take a standard genre and build it into something he could relate to personally and in doing so creates a really unique and entirely original second project. He takes a premise that has been done- rural horror/exploitation- but builds it around an personal emotional event. The director & producers took bigger risks (ahhaha what do you even market this thing as? horror obviously, but as I will get into, it isn’t really a horror movie in the jump scary way- more of a texas chainsaw massacre type horror), but didn’t squander our attention or lean on prior success in any way. The director created a film with what I feel is an extremely clear and resonant emotional core, makes no compromises in presenting it, asks everything of the cast in being authentic on that presentation, and them responding to that call, lead by an incredible performance from English actor Florence Pugh. 

This was a central feature to Hereditary- this emotion- and its presentation by the cast- and it is again present in Midsommar and is the thing that keeps us on the edge of our seats. The opening scene of this film, roughly 20-30 minutes prior to opening credits- is going to go down I think as one of the best openings of the 2010s. Absolutely haunting, horrifying, and flawlessly executed in terms of filmmaking, it sets the emotional tone of the film with what you expect initially to be grief, partially because that was the central theme of Hereditary.

However, the protagonist Dani, moves on past her grief...pretty god damned well, if you ask me, but is marked by it... taking us to the true emotional core of the film, which is rejection. And I mean a specific kind of rejection- not when somebody refuses to go on a date with you. Not when you date somebody for a few dates and then that fails to turn into a relationship, but the one after that- rejection from the type of relationship many of us encountered as our first serious one, where we are brought together with our partner by the strong forces of young infatuation, and then are, perhaps 1-3 years after that, torn apart by the stronger force of reality and adulthood.

That is what the opening of the movie is- it’s reality. If you are with somebody long enough, eventually something very real is going to happen in their life, or your life. For me personally, in a prior relationship, it was my partner losing a parent. And you might be thinking, wow, that is a little too real- no wonder you connected with this film. And that is one of the things that you get from building yourself into your writing, as this director has in both of his features- is you get the opportunity to connect with people on a truly visceral level.

While rural people are chopping up city folk (blunt force trauma seems to be the murder method of choice amongst the Hagra) , the film keeps returning to some of the important touchstones of this emotion, which is also a process: isolation, panicked feelings of inadequacy, infidelity, new people, deep guilt, final acceptance, and then, moving on.

The film making is outstanding, if perhaps a bit too raw and unedited towards the second and third acts. The movie is beautiful, the score is even better than Hereditary, based strongly on romantic string style harmonics, think Ralph von Williams or Gustav Mahler. The beauty of the film as well as the comic relief provided by a great cast of university students and creepy swedish commune members forms a great counter-force to the ultimately very depressing emotional core of going through a breakup as somebody with extreme mental challenges. Dueling graduate anthropology students, people’s faces falling off, bear suits, funny drug trips (I counted 3 different entheogens used), keep you chuckling a little bit through the brutality.

These jokes not only provide needed comic relief, but also help underscore the indifference of modern life- something I’ll get back to at the very end.

Star Florence Pugh absolutely nails the depressed/anxious about-to-be-ex girlfriend, lovable, complicated, scary, establishing herself as my new favorite “Smart Scream Queen” in the tradition of Mary Elizabeth Winstead or Maika Monroe. The final act of the film is the final act of the breakup- the boyfriend is gone for good, and the new boyfriend is substantially worse- but one scene in particular, I have to talk about in greater detail, because it is one of the most powerful shots I’ve ever seen. The Hagra, the rural clan/cult in the film, have a habit of the group empathizing with an individual member with ... “vocalizations” and dance-like trance movements. If, say for example, a member of the clan were to jump off a cliff and not die instantly, instead writhing on the ground in pain,the community pantomimes writhing around in pain, showing that they, as a collective, feel their pain too.

^ Just kidding, this is not a still from the movie, actual Midsommar celebration.

What draws people into cults? What do people who join cults have in common? Pain. Isolation. Fear. Loneliness. Well, the worst cults manufacture their own misery and then provide the solution to that, which is being a member of the cult and sacrificing your life for it. The Hagra definitely do this to Dani, so they are far from being virtuous, despite what comes next.

After manufacturing a climax of personal shame and fear and isolation and inadequacy in Dani, they come together to heal her pain. As Dani collapses and cries in the throes of a severe anxiety attack, rather than stand with crossed arms or disgust or calling the police or the crazy wagon, as people normally do in such a position-

They join her. The young women of the cult get on their knees, cry, gasp, sob- and put her hands on her, and as this happens, she looks up and sees that she is not alone. In their quest to imitate her, they lift her up and bring her into the community.

Ultimately, this establishes the cult as Dani’s rebound boyfriend yes, but it also connects the concept of a rural murder cult, which is pretty standard horror fare, with the emotional core of the film (rejection), and also gives us a pretty good idea of why the rural murder cults exist in the first place, which is as a reaction to the cold impersonality and rejection of modern mainstream human existence. Human beings are not a product to be rejected. Human relationships are not something you acquire, use, and then throw away.

If nothing else, cults appreciate that fact. Everybody is important. Everybody’s pain and loneliness matters.

​

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

[martianarctic]

Dev’s Feb Picks

Round up of great records i’ve discovered this month. Will try to do this monthly.

Astronoid - Astronoid

This is a phenomenal record by the American post-metal band Astronoid. I think the genre is a good match for a pretty wide scope of guitar rock fans- black metal, post rock, prog rock, dreampop, shoegaze all will connect with something going on here. The adjective that got me to check them out was “affirmative”- this is kind of like a heavy metal soundtrack to a sci fi movie about saving the human race.

effloresce - covet

covet is a really virtuoso guitar player supported by bass and drums. they are instrumental, and jazzy in the way that durutti column is jazzy- except with long, very well-composed songs, thoughtful and tasteful jams that really get you pumped up.

Antisocialite - Alvvays

Twee pop/indie pop is not a genre I really enjoy, but this famously Canadian band sucked me in with a really complex and meditative record in Antisocialite. It does not hurt that lead track “In Undertow” is one of the best rock songs I have ever heard in terms of performance, lyrics, arrangement, and a perfect mix of being really poppish but also not at all predictable.

[martianarctic]

Top Tracks of 2018 List

My top 5 of the year. 2018 was an absolute MONSTER of a year for music. I think in the 00s, we had just the beginning of a rush of artists self producing, self promoting. Then, 8 years of repeating disappointment all across the spectrum of these artists really separated the wheat from the chaff. We are now getting work from people truly, 100% all in on music- focusing everything they have into works of considerable accomplishment. Here were some of my favorites.

#5 - Art3mis & Parzival by Gunship from “Dark All Day”

I love this album, and particularly this song. Track after track on Dark All Day brings a smile to my face with how they move through different ideas, moods, sounds, melodies: and this song is the ballad of the record, romantic, weird, scary- like some of our favorite 80s sci fi and horror films.

#4 - Satan in the Wait by Daughters from “You Won’t Get What You Want”

One of my definitions of great beauty is to make something appealing, beautiful, colorful, warm rise up out of something bleak, dark, strange, or unclear. This song embodies that definition perfectly and is a great sample of what’s to come on the remainder of this years AOTY contender by Daughters.

#3 Flyway by Kero Kero Bonito from “Time N Place”

One thing about business is that if you have something that works, don’t change it. KKB didn’t listen to that, and totally deviated from their highly controlled hip hop/electro roots and picked up some guitars and drum sticks. Changing your style does risk alienating your existing fans, but it also can bring in new fans while simultaneously introducing your old fans to new ideas and new sides of yourself. I think while they were slow on the update, KKB’s fans are rallying around their new sound, which of course, I prefer to their work from “Bonito Generation”(which I also really really like).

#2 Blue Line Baby by Nothing, from “Dance on the Blacktop”

Is Dominic Palermo a great musician & flawless performer? No. Do I still love the guy and his music? Absolutely. While the record “Dance on the Blacktop” was a bit uneven and not as overall a strong piece as either of their previous LPs, this song, which Palermo wrote as a tribute to somebody in his past who had died from drug abuse, is Nothing’s most accomplished, powerful, and just musically all around appealing song they’ve made so far. I hope to see them continue to push themselves into this both more emotionally raw and also pop-centric groove on their next record.

#1 You Weren’t There Anymore by Negative Gemini, from “Bad Baby”

When I first heard Negative Gemini’s earliest works, I knew there was a great deal of potential. Her first album, 2016′s “Body Work”, unquestionably delivered on this potential. Combining smooth 90s basslines and synth tones, rave style beats, and risky, teasing vocals, this record has probably been listened to more times than anything else in my collection. I was very excited when I heard the preview tracks from her followup EP, “Bad Baby”, and the ep ended up being a massive step in the right direction with several tracks having Negative Gemini’s vocals far more prominent and confident than in the past but just as risk-taking and unique. I can’t wait to see where she goes next- a packed touring schedule has really turned her into a masterful performer and great artist that I can’t belive is still such a well-kept secret.

This track in particular really stands out. The vocal melody is an absolute stunner, unpredictable ,risky and yet absolutely stuck on the landing. very much like something I’d expect from a cocteau twins song. The overall mood is so sad and intimate, such a departure from NG’s comfort zone, but yet at the same time very natural-feeling for the song. 

[martianarctic]

Hereditary Review

Grieving is a process that is more than saying goodbye to somebody you love. It’s also a process of reconstructing your life without them. Like most humans, I have been there. After the shock of finding out somebody you know has died- comes the reckoning that they will never come back. The realization that time is ever moving forward. And that moment you last touched them is receding into the past. Then comes the day that you think about them, and- there it is. It’s part of you now. It’s part of you that they are dead.

Grieving is at the heart of Hereditary, a horror movie that uses the genre to explore the emotions of grief and loss. In this task it is successful- I have not seen a theater so stunned into silence since Under the Skin. Hereditary should certainly win an Oscar for Toni Collette’s performance, which I believe is the best performance in a horror movie since Tony Hopkins’s Hannibal Lecktor. Weaving the tiredness and exhaustion of somebody gripped by grief, paranoia, and self doubt with humor, energy, emotion, and authenticity, her performance is not just disturbing, its ...appealing, dragging you further into the movie. You can’t look away- you need to know what happens.

Family is every bit as important as a theme in Hereditary as grief is.  Heavy and saturating, permeating every scene and every room of the house. The sensation of living as a child at home, of being a parent, a net of smothering obligations, instructions, dependencies, and relationships. Each actor in this film delivered an absolutely tremendous performance, and above all else, one feels the family bond between all of them- it is within this authentic, resonating bond that ultimately makes the premise entirely believable.

The film making is outstanding, the structure of each scene dense with meaning. I could see this film several times and notice something new each time. The soundtrack is beautiful, definitely from the swelling in, swelling out Hans Zimmer school, but relentless in its tone and creativity- and the filmmakers weren’t afraid to let the music, and not sound effects, drive the emotion of the most intense scenes.

The film delivers the twists and scares the genre promises. But I think beyond the horror tropes, there is a really deep exploration of the emotions and process of family ties, childhood and death. It has been 30 years or so since I was a kid at a funeral- this movie awakened some of the most profound memories of what it felt like to be there, to try to say goodbye, and to grow up.

[martianarctic]

Solo: A Star Wars Story Review

“It was a lawless time.”- the simple first words of the latest Star Wars film set the tone of the entire film, which is in my view, the best and most enjoyable Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi. The post-80s Star Wars experience has been, pretty much without fail the following:

Excitement, at a new star wars movie. Watching, trying to enjoy the movie without being distracted by how terrible it is. Reconciliation, afterward, reflecting on how bad it was, questioning whether I am wrong or right that I think it was bad, and then, after days, months or years, realizing I am right- it was bad.

It is with some degree of relief I can say I’ve done none of those things with Solo. I went in totally unexcited, completely expecting a terrible movie. I am instead presented with what I would call a pretty good movie and left with absolutely nothing to reconcile- except that this is the least commercially successful new star wars movie and probably Disney will try to figure out how they can extract more profit out of all future ventures so, it may be the last good one.

So why was it good?

Well, what’s a Star Wars movie? 

It’s an action adventure in the Star Wars universe. Even though it is called “Star Wars”, it really isn’t about wars. Wars are boring, tragic, and depressing- the main purpose of setting an adventure during a war is to have there be a reason the good guys could just have some random enemies as obstacles and not have it be morally ambiguous that they are killing all of them. Not to get into all of the politics, logistics, and economics of mass murder that War actually is- but just to have some bad guys who can be blown up guilt-free.

So, really, it’s about a small party of heroes running into the maw of some threatening place to find something. Since it’s in space, the threatening place is usually a space ship or space station, but it could be something on the ground that interacts with something in space. It’s actually really cool because we can explore both science fiction locations and concepts, machines, cybernetics, computers, as well as fantasy ideas like magic (the force) sword fighting and heroic one on one combat (light sabers), and monsters.

Once you have that, the basic theory of making the movie good is just... how you’d make any movie good, and Solo, well... it passes and then a little bit more the bar of what I’d call good. 

The titular role of young Han Solo is played by Alden Ehrenreich- in Star Wars tradition, not a well-known actor, but also- funny, charismatic, and physical- things that .. well, actually remind us of Han Solo? He does look more like a young Jack Nicholson than Harry Ford though. Also shining in the film are Donald Glover as a young Lando Calrissian, and Woody Harrelson as, I guess, a criminal dude that was kind of a mentor to Solo. 

The story is actually fun, with some (predictable, but not stupidly so) plot twists that keep the action moving pretty well until the movie is over. It doesn’t even feel too long at 2 hrs and 30 minutes. It does NOT have the pretty cool action scenes most of the post-80s films have had- but I think that’s actually good because those cool scenes... didn’t really make the prequels and part 7 and part 8 good movies. It DOES have some pretty cool chasing and flying scenes which is a testament to the fact that unless you could firing a blaster one-handed while backing up and running away “fighting”, it’s piloting, not fighting, that is Han Solo’s strongest ability.

If you enjoyed Harrison Ford’s off the cuff humor and charisma pushing us through the action scenes of the original star wars films well... that element definitely shines through in Solo. It has its share of cringe moments but they are... actually hilarious? I think Ron Howard, who directed, is a smart enough and good enough filmmaker to know when something’s going to connect dramatically, and when its not, and I feel like he embedded some hilarious dark humor into the worst parts of the film ended up adding to my overall enjoyment.

Finally, the environments, locations and scenes felt really old school star wars to me. It’s gritty, dusty, alien, and realistic- the things I personally really associate with the universe. It’s great because it uses the star wars universe to just tell a random, fun adventure story, rather than using the star wars universe to tell an increasingly boring, heavy handed, and predictable war story.

It’s the first star wars movie, since I was a kid, that I didn’t come in to hoping it would be good, worried it would be bad, and piled with high expectations. Instead, I had a good time at the movies.

[martianarctic]

Annihilation Review

“Almost no one commits suicide, almost everybody self-destructs”. Amateur philosophy, mind blowing VFX and sound, and breakneck action propels this film into the stratosphere of the science fiction canon. As dense as the beautiful, colorful abandonia most of the film takes place in, Annihilation takes us on a journey into death and danger- much like Garland’s other sci fi masterpiece, “Sunshine”, we know already, nobody is coming back from this mission to save the world. This time, not from a fading sun, but from a slowly growing event horizon from which nobody has returned.

Told effectively through flashbacks, interviews, and even hand-held camcorder LCD screens, the narrative is clear and simple. The story is exactly what we want it to be, and we can’t wait to see where the heroes go next. Dialogue and acting is a little campy, but was clearly welcomed by the enthusiastic audience as a comic relief from what otherwise is a heavy film in terms of psychological and visual challenges.

Philosophically, the film wrestles with the idea of death, guilt, self destruction, and depression in terms of the science of senescence- why we grow old and die. Is death a bug or a feature in the game of life? The film works with this idea at its core, never bludgeons the viewer over the head with it, and gives the viewer the opportunity to reflect on it after the film.

For the sci-fi nerds out there, you’ll be delighted by the density of callbacks and inspirations. Ghostbusters, SCP, Aliens, Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan, even the alzabo from Book of the New Sun makes a horrifying and perfectly scripted appearance. This movie wasn’t totally sold out on its first real night in LA, so I imagine it won’t do great in theaters. However, anticipating this, the producers will be releasing it on Netflix in about 3 weeks, after which I expect this film to rocket to the upper echelon of 21st century science fiction.

[martianarctic]

Spring Breakers (2013) Review

I decided to revisit this film, having seen it not in the theatres, but as soon as it had been released to streaming. I vaguely remembered enjoying it, but after viewing it a second time (albeit slightly inebriated on THC), I have decided it is a great film and thus worthy of a review.

There is a part in this film that I think basically is the hub of the entire thing, which is a montage where James Franco’s character “Alien”, is playing a piano poolside a mansion overlooking Tampa Bay, and he and the surviving spring breakers are singing Everytime by Britney Spears. I mean, how can I not put a still of this in here.

This is followed by a montage of the four of them robbing people at gunpoint, including what seems to be a wedding(?) where a grills-in-teeth-grinning Franco smashes the brides face into the cake.

Due to the director (Harmony Korine) having wrote an infamous 90s film (KIDS) this film was expected to be edgy and in-your-face, it is certainly that. I also think people expected it to be good, since I guess KIDS was good. But it was kind of moreso good in the way that Blair Witch was good: it was a ride to a place you couldn’t get to anywhere else, at least at the time.

There is a plot and dialogue, but it does not get into the way of the visual expression, which is where the people who like it will enjoy this movie. Some college women are bored with being in college and want to go to Florida for spring break. They don’t have the money to do so, so they rob a restaurant to get enough funds to go. Eventually, they meet a white rapper and criminal named Alien, and then he amps up their adventures to a violent, ludicrous and visually satisfying climax.

This visual storytelling succeeds at telling us a satirical, offensive, and sincere story about the Breakers and also about our culture at large.

Who decides that something is satirical, offensive, or sincere? Or are they not mutually exclusive? Some say that satire “punches up” meaning that if it makes fun of certain kinds of people, it’s offensive, but if it makes fun of other kinds of people, it’s satire.

I partially agree, and think it’s satire when you’re talking about society as a whole and not just beating up one stereotype, particularly if that is a racial stereotype against minorities or against a sexist stereotype against women. However, everybody with any control over what they say and do is responsible, to some extent, of the state of the world, at any given time.

Somebody who was 18 in 2013 will be 105 in 2100 if they make it that far. The breakers are within the reach of seeing the world that scientists say will be an apocalyptic hellscape a finding our own government effectively disputes.

It is very tempting to compare this film to the book and film A Clockwork Orange, also a visually told reflection upon the state of society from the viewpoint of a gang of young people. Some accused Kubrick of using titillating imagery to express sexual violence- some would accuse this film of also pandering with gratuitous imagery of female bodies, sexuality, racism, and violence as well.

I think that’s the point. It’s hard to not find yourself enthralled with the imagery of sexuality and violence present here, and in a way that helps direct our discomfort with the situation inwardly. We should ask ourselves to reconcile what’s happening, with how we feel about it, versus what we know about it.

Society in the 21st century is extremely material, but at the same time it is highly spiritually awakened. There is a spirituality present in the Breaker’s musings, which forms much of the dialogue of the film, on what spring break means to them. There is almost a philosophical core to their motivations that nearly forgives them. They make a good case. I found myself reflecting on how the Breakers bemoan finishing college, for basically nothing, and I reflect upon my own choice to not finish college, because it did not suit my needs. And how I had that choice, because I am a man, and they did not, because they are women. Reflection upon privilege. Reflection upon society demanding we basically pay heavy tolls to be weighed as a good person (a college degree, or be a white man).

This materialism, and spirituality, collide head on in the film. The fanatical, radicalized need for the Breakers to have what everybody else does echoes Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: “Because I want to fit in.” What radicalized them? Who made them believe that the key to happiness is sex and drugs with a ton of new people in a beautiful place?

Wait, what’s wrong with sex and drugs with a ton of new people in a beautiful space? A friend of mine paid $1500 for Burning Man tickets this year, and they were stolen! Look! Look it happens in real life! What does that mean? Isn’t that interesting?

There are parts of the movie that feel exploitative, but I think that take is a bit on-the-nose. The constant imagery of the breakers in swimsuits could definitely be masturbation material for somebody I guess. But, may I offer that it is shown so much, and in such awkward situations that one begins to really view the Breakers not as lingerie models or exotic dancers but as human beings existing in the world, on the Planet Earth.

There is also some exploitative racism. Alien states that he grew up as the “only white kid in the neighborhood”, and of course, that’s bad because Black people are mean to white kids in their neighborhoods, because racism is universal! No no no no it’s not!!! James Franco also uses the N word and not in a friendly way either. But that’s OK because he’s basically black anyway. No no no no no! He’s not!!! The “villain”, Big Arch (played by musician Gucci Mane), is a black man whose accent is so thick its difficult to understand him, and he is having sex with two more well-endowed women because black men prefer women with big stretch mark booties! No no non no! they don’t! 

But even this offensive racism is positioned, I feel, with purpose. The booty sex scene between Big Arch and two well-endowed females of darker complexion is presented with the same tenderness and eroticism as the threesomes between Alien and the Breakers. The relationship between Alien and Big Arch is that Alien was friends with Big Arch until Alien began to compete against him, and their conflict echoes that of appropriation and gentrification. “You need to get your white ass back on a surfboard and get out of here” big Arch says.

At the end of the film, after a violent confrontation between the two, we are left with a lot of questions. Questions about ourselves, our society, and our role in it. We are left reflecting on sexism, racism, materialism, and spirituality. 

The film presents the characters as stereotypes, but ends up making us look at them as human beings.It presents their actions as being those of selfish, hedonistic people, but ends up making us reflect on our world instead. 

What companionship, drugs, violence and sex do we need to feel OK as evolved monkeys on a rock, and how is society jacking us in, wiring us up, networking us into a matrix and amplifying that need to power the meat grinder of capitalism? Spring break, forever.

[martianarctic]

三体 Review

China has been going through some significant change in the last couple of decades and one of those changes has manifested itself in one of their authors winning the Hugo in 2015.

The Hugo award is basically the pinnacle of individual achievement, since you have to both be a science fiction writer, which is a pretty libertarian field, and you also have to write a book that convinces a bunch of other individualists of how cool of an individual you are. So it is very interesting that China has produced such a person, since China is typically seen by the west as being a freedom and free-though hating juggernaut of a civilization.

The big SF awards are often given to books that are part of a larger series and this is no different, it’s a trilogy the author calls “The Remembrance of Earth’s Past” but the Chinese fans of the series just call it “Three Body” or  三体. Notice how the Chinese character for 3 has 3 lines in it. This is way cooler than writing “Three-Body Problem”.

Literature often is reflective on society and three body begins with a fairly interesting, especially for us western readers who didn’t make it all the way to 20th century Chinese history in college, exploration of the Cultural Revolution and how it provides a backdrop to the beginning of the story, which is mostly about first contact.

It’s not good first contact. This is the most interesting and central idea of the series which is, what if First Contact is not so great for mankind? For those of you who don’t know, First Contact is one of the 5-or-so science fiction story archetypes. It dramatizes humankind’s first contact with an alien civilization, usually one far beyond our comprehension, and how it changes mankind. Here are some first contact stories you might know: CHILDHOOD’S END(the best), The Day the Earth Stood Still, ET the Extra-Terrestrial, Contact, The Arrival, District 9, etc.

First contact is usually ambiguous and scary, and then nice. So the moral of the story is, don’t fear what you don’t understand, open your mind and the universe is really cool and so is everybody else in it.

A few years ago some news stories were rounding Facebook about how sciencecrats and technocrats like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk were saying, hold on a second. Maybe we should assume that novel lifeforms or civilizations, whether it be alien or of our own creation, are dangerous.

What if the reasons we haven’t heard or detected other civilizations isn’t that they don’t exist: it’s because the universe is actually teeming with life. It’s just that once life gets to be smart enough to communicate with other civilizations, they become smart enough to realize that isn’t a good idea.

Cixin Liu’s writing itself reminds me of both Isaac Asimov and Michael Crichton, being more focused on big and small ideas rather than characters or pontificating on philosophy. There’s also a good amount of historical and scientific authority in his writing. I can see why he is a hit in China also. His ideas are mind-blowing and bold, and not obviously subservient to the government. His story has some definite and real criticism of authority.

Another interesting thing about Liu is that he’s China’s most popular sci-fi author. While American popular sci fi has unquestionably retreated far from the high-ground of authors like Asimov, Clarke or Sagan, China’s number one sci fi franchise is dealing with ideas like the fermi paradox, “dark” first contact, and sub-lightspeed interstellar genocide. Just saying, but maybe we need to MASFGA : make american sci fi great again and cool it with the superhero and young-adult battle royale content.

[martianarctic]

No Man’s Sky Review

The procedural space exploration game. 4 years ago, it seemed like we would have a glut of these. From No Man’s Sky to Notch’s n^C squared or whatever it was called to Elite: Dangerous, this looked like a market that was saturated. As a fan of these types of ideas, I was really stoked.

Boy, did we count our chickens there.

Procedural generation makes it possible to create a nearly infinite number of certain kinds of data points. One of the most frequently kind of generated procedural surfaces is basically a geographical map of something.

This technology has existed basically since computers were fast enough to do it, and it would be impossible for me to review the extremely controversial PC/PS4 game No Man’s Sky without mentioning my relationship with another game called Starflight, from 1986.

A good application for procedural generation is obvious: creating limitless planets for a player to explore. Out of this, another obvious game design idea emerges: why not have people explore through this vast amount of computer generated data to find a trail of intentionally-placed clues and artifacts towards some kind of satisfying ending?

Starflight was a difficult game, tough to get off the ground, and tough to keep yourself afloat. Any kind of movement required a very rare and expensive element, so you had to make sure your exploration was profitable to continue. But, the mechanics were identical to NMS: Pilot a ship around to different planets, land on said planets, mine resources, endure storms, earthquakes and hostile life forms, and take it back to a space station to sell it.

I never could beat Starflight, and from what I hear it wasn’t very difficult once you mini/maxed your strategy, but I did rent it on several occasions, which means I really, really was into the idea of exploring through this limitless expanse of planets and stars.  The flavor of this concept is right on- it’s something that feels a lot like our favorite space exploration TV shows, movies and novels. But I guess the struggle to make a game about it, that people are satisfied with, goes on, and if NMS is an indicator, it is a task which technology and funding is making more, not less difficult.

There are a few notes NMS gets right. The most impressive thing is that there’s no skyboxes. That planet you see in the sky above- I flew to it, then took the screenshot below, looking back on the planet I had just left. You can also see space stations in orbit above the planets, although not, unfortunately, the fleets of cargo ships you regularly see in space.

Other positive notes is obviously the quality of the procedural generation of planets and ships. Both of these products look excellent in the game, producing stuff that, 40 hours in, still yields unfamiliar results. Planets are made fantastically, with plenty of interesting, different kind of terrain to move about on and in. They are packed with relics, buildings and other articles of civilization, so the game doesn’t have that endless terrain feel that other procedural games do.

The last real positive note is the soundtrack. Slow-building, guitar and synth driven post rock is almost the perfect choice for this lonely, very lazy exploration of these beautiful worlds, with these beautiful, explorable skies.

However, as you are probably aware, No Man’s Sky is controversial because probably most gamers realize that it hasn’t lived up to its expectations. There are plenty of high quality analysis of these expectations and the fact that NMS doesn’t meet up to them, so I’ll leave that to those. Let’s just make the assumption that No Man’s Sky is a product failure at launch.

I don’t write reviews of things I don’t enjoy, so it is a fact that I enjoy playing No Man’s Sky and am still doing so a week in. However, since its such a high profile product failure, I have to address its problems going forward. These problems may be something that can be fixed, but there is literally no reason a single player game should ship in such a poor state.

The first problem is the controls. Movement of the player feels a little clumsy and there is no jump, rather you immediately turn on your jet pack, which doesn’t feel great. Flight controls are extremely auto-piloty, with the player having no fine-tuned control over the ship, and very wonky. Its a challenge, and not in a good way, to land the ship anywhere you really intend to. Sometimes when I launch, physics glitches and I am instantly blasted into deep space. Space stations require you to jump to a higher level to enter the room, and I don’t understand why. A game like this should have exemplary flight and disembarked player movement feel, but its far below average.

The second problem is something I will just refer to as the game design, although that’s kind of a reductive term. The overall concept is that you will level up your ship and your player and your gun while exploring the galaxy and fighting space pirates, hostile creatures, and a mysterious robotic race called the Sentinels as you try to do it.

Ok, that all sounds good so far. But NMS commits a deadly sin in the implementation of almost every one of those points.

Leveling up is committing a deadly sin: Making people give up things they have to level. You can’t get more storage on a ship without getting a new one, and you can’t bring any of the upgrades on the old ship with you on the new one. It’s even hard to salvage the resources on the technologies on your old thing when you get a new thing, because of inventory problems, which I’ll talk about next. This makes levelling your gun or ship a bittersweet, annoying experience, rather than something that brings joy.

The game’s overall levelling mechanic is- customizable storage slots, which you can either use for upgrades OR carrying capacity of resources. Nobody has ever combined upgrade and inventory storage together before, because its a deadly design sin. Storage isn’t fun. Having to drop things because you can’t carry anymore isn’t fun.

You need to sometimes reload things with resources for them to keep working, like deflector shields, environmental protections or weapons. That’s cool. But its not cool to have to go back into your inventory during combat to recharge things. Combat is paused while you do so, which is good, but it’s still not very comfortable and makes combat even clumsier than it already is.

Combat is choppy due to the poor performance of the game, and feels very alpha-level, not very well refined. Most weapons seem to have a ton of auto aim on them, probably because the developers didn’t want to make there be different combat between control pad and PC versions. In any case, it’s good, because the combat and movement of the enemies is so choppy that combat would be incredibly frustrating if it didn’t have it. 

But overall, combat doesn’t feel very threatening, beating opponents isn’t very satisfying and it really suffers from a lack of diversity. 40 hours in, and ive only faced 4 kinds of enemies: Hovering sentinels that don’t dodge and just shoot you, walking dog-like sentinels that don’t dodge and just shoot you, pirate space craft that just circle around you, and  creatures that move at random and seem to teleport from place to place. Oh also, every enemy auto hits. Don’t even bother dodging because they never miss.

The levelling up system isn’t terrible but like everything in the game, it’s so poorly thought out and really just kind of silly. You need certain resources to craft products, but first you need the blueprints for those products. Blueprints are everywhere, but there are only 4 or 5 tiers of equipment and less than 1% of the way towards the galactic center, I’ve already seen some of the 5th tier. So basically, I always have every blueprint I find. Some encounter types are guaranteed to yield a new blueprint, but these are as rare as finding a disabled ship, which I’ll rant about more later.

Crafting was, I suppose, supposed to be atomic, like in Minecraft, but it is recipie based, and it doesn’t make any sense. There’s supposed to be classes of minerals, like silicates, neutrals, oxides- but it just doesn’t really land, and you end up just feeling like you need random resources to craft things.

The game seems to really want you to just storm through content and keep warping and not backtracking. That’s cool, most people wouldn’t want to backtrack, but there is a very important situation in which you would.

To upgrade a ship, which is probably the most exciting thing flavor wise, if you think about it, you either need to buy it off of an alien at a space station or trading post, or repair one.

Buying them is tough because, there seems to be no tiers of ship sellers. They are running the gamut between being 100,000 unit ships and 16,000,000 unit ships. So its very unlikely early in the game you’ll be able to afford to buy one.

So the alternative is to find a distress signal, then go to a wreck site and rebuild the wreck. This is a fantastic idea, but since you can’t backtrack, if you don’t know what resources to carry around or don’t have the carrying capacity to carry them, this feature is useless. Also, 40 hours in, and i’ve had a grand total of 3 wrecked ship sightings, and none of them but the first were better than my current ship.

So I will stick to my promise of not addressing the “controversy”, and simply focus on what I think about the game. Good points are, beautiful planet generation, and great flavor, of landing on and exploring a limitless scope of planets. 

But the game to do, within that exploration? Its ultimately very poorly thought out, obviously not very well tested by people who weren’t stakeholders in the game, and if anybody did, their feedback wasn’t taken seriously.

Game design isn’t fun. It’s not fun to see your very cool ideas get crushed in testing, requiring you to make your brilliant idea much less brilliant, and much more effective for the masses. I feel like a lot of these “rockstar” game developer pet projects, from Daikatana to Black and White to Spore to No Man’s Sky, get into this emperor’s new clothes situation where nobody wants to tell anybody what needs fixing and nobody wants to listen. But you have to do it. The dream moves into reality where rubber hits the road, not in the drivers seat.

[martianarctic]

Overwatch Review

You have to admit to being a contrarian to not respect Overwatch, Blizzard’s finest game since World of Warcraft. Fast, easy to learn, but deep enough to keep you coming back, Overwatch proves that old Blizz still can use their considerable powers to make good games.

Overwatch is a first person shooter, Blizzard’s first, in which teams of superheroes battle each other over various types of capture the point objectives. The fact that the game is objective based, rather than kill based, opens up greater team play possibilities than kills alone and more options as far as how players can choose to interact.

Even though it utilizes different heroes, the game doesn’t fall into the trap of requiring teams to have too acute a balance at the early to mid levels of skill, and furthermore allows players to change heroes in the middle of a match, which is a huge advantage for both teaching players the game and also keeping the game fun without too much dependence upon how good your team is.

Since its made by Blizzard, the initial balance, artwork, polish, technology, and overall quality of the game is extraordinarily high. The cost of the game is low for Blizzard as well, only $40. I think it’s a fair balance to satisfy people looking for more value in their games before paying but also people who do not like the F2P system.

The game is invariably going to be compared to TF2, sometimes derisively, but remember why Team Fortress was made: to give players more options than just which gun to go after, the RL or the Railgun in Quake. They made it so players chose classes which changed the way the game was played, and that idea was clearly revolutionary in terms of teamplay shooters.

Okay, so if TF1 is just Quake with more options, and TF2 is just TF1 with new graphics and new maps, it stands to reason that the next step in evolution is even more options: way more choices for the players, in the form of more characters and stalemate-breaking Ultimates and a rotation of maps rather than just staying on 2 Forts forever.

Overwatch is an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, game and if you know Blizzard, that’s how they roll. They don’t make up new ideas, they make great games out of existing good ideas. An idea on its own isn’t a great game- and Blizzard understands that it takes a combination of considerable artistic and technical talent, along with refinement and a whole lot of time, to turn a good idea into a great game, not just taking an existing revolutionary game, and merely re-releasing it without improving upon it.

[martianarctic]

Megalitreview Dump - Red Shirts, The Corrections, 1Q84, Old Man’s War, The Call of Cthulu

Sorry for the hiatus- I have been away with things, and here are a number of books I’ve yet to review. Enjoy!

Redshirts - John Scalzi

Spoiler Alert- but really?

Redshirts is basically Cabin in the Woods, but for Star Trek. I am pretty sure Red Shirts came first, but, who cares. If you don’t know anything about Cabin in the Woods this isn’t a spoiler, and if you do know Cabin in the Woods, you’d have realized what was up with Redshirts as soon as you read the back cover.

John Scalzi is a great, light hearted, easy to read contempo SF author who also wrote Old Man’s War which I’m also reviewing in this post. 

Here in Redshirts he goes for some pretty hilarious metafiction. Slow down reading this thing and get ready to laugh, this is a pretty funny novel about what if the “redshirts”- you know, those no-name ensigns and crewmen that hang around with Kirk and Picard and seem to get killed off every other episode- started to realize that their position is a little bit too dangerous. And, that their mortality rate seems to jump up significantly whenever one of the  bridge officers is in the room?

This novel packs a good amount of genre jokes and even unexpected twists and turns far beyond the obvious premise- and it’s a great quick read.

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

Apparently, there was a pilot of a cable adaptation of this book so I’ve got some artwork for the review! 

Published in the very early 2000s Jonathan Franzen’s satirical family drama The Corrections is rightfully considered a masterpiece of both forms, as well as contempo literature in general.

This is an epic tale of a midwestern family, the Lamberts, whose patriarch is suffering from neurological disease and three grown children cope with this as well as the problems of their own lives.

Focusing on the five characters with a generous point of view narrative for each, the book manages to construct a compelling emotional response as well as deliver an outstanding satire on what will probably be called pre-9/11 American culture in general.

The Corrections exhaustively chronicles a vital, still-living world somewhere between American Psycho and Lena Dunham, still fresh in the mind of people between the ages of 35 and 60. Not quite baby boomers but not millenials, this novel is in my view, a compelling voice for that generation.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Given as an unexpected gift from my mom, this is the first Murakami book I’ve ever read, but it won’t be the last. Immediately I was struck by the unique richness of the Japanese cultural character of Murakami’s writing.

1Q84 is a sort of noir set in a magical realism type world. By walking down a freeway emergency exit ramp, Aomame transports herself into a parallel version of our 1984, which she calls 1Q84, where a mysterious cult attempts to control powerful, paranormal forces and becomes intertwined in a mystery the POV characters attempt to unravel.

An 80s period piece weaving together threads of western literature and music, along with influences from japanese pop culture like manga and videogames, this is a really nostalgic book for me even though it was written fairly recently in the 2010s.

This is a very large book, its like 1200 pages, but it keeps pushing you on fairly well and is not overly demanding. Interesting humorous, mysterious, sexual and horror elements keep you going and the translation is really easy to read.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

In the book that distinguished him in the field, this is your classic “military science fiction” novel where the tried and true story of a kid joining the military, going through basic, and fighting in horrifying battles is, as you might expect, turned on its head.

Instead of being young men, the raw recruits in Old Man’s War are elderly women and men from Earth signing up for a tour which they know none of the details of except one: they will get fresh, new bodies to replace their old and wrinkled ones.

Our protagonist has recently lost his wife, and has nothing left to live for, so he signs up. But actually it turns out, they both planned on signing up anyway. What follows is an adventuresome and at times darkly humorous riff on society’s view of both aging, and also the neccessity of war.

I am, in my heart, a hard sci fi fan, so outrageous scenes such as the heroes having to battle 1 inch tall men, crushing them and their cities like giant Godzillas, would be a turn off for me if I wasn’t such a big Rick and Morty fan.

R&M opened me up to how fun just silly sci fi can be and how what really matters is your emotional reaction to the story, not necessarily how realistic the science is.

Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft

Wow, this picture I found looks exactly like how I had envisioned that scene in my mind when I was reading the story. Uncanny. Anyway, HP Lovecraft is an obvious and often cited influence on horror, science fiction and fantasy, particularly after he was “rediscovered” in the 80s by the rise of geek culture. But this is the first time I’ve ever read a large collection of Lovecraft stories and novellas at once time and really soaked it up.

Like a kid listening to the Beatles singles albums for the first time and realizing in a massive revelation how every song is a Beatles song, reading the actual Lovecraft texts en masse woke me up to how huge Lovecraft influence is on all of the horror movies I really enjoy.

The themes of research, found narratives, and the creepiness of what isn’t shown and what isn’t said, and the inherent evil of secrecy, all pervade these works. A lot of people who haven’t read it don’t realize that Call of Cthulhu is found narrative- it’s basically a found footage horror movie, if such things existed at the time. Its a guy researching a thing that happened to a boat.

Why is that so effective in horror? Well, this strikes at the very heart of what makes Lovecraft and “research horror” like SCP, House of Leaves,The Ninth Gate, Blair Witch, Insidious, and so on so effective.

Well- I don’t have an answer for you. And if I have one at all: I’m not telling.

[martianarctic]

Hyper Light Drifter Review

Hyper Light Drifter is an outstanding, perhaps superlative quality adventure game for every platform with control pads (that’s consoles and computers, although consoles aren’t going to be out for some time).

It is a truly adventuresome, world-exploring 2D pixel art based game. Set in a crumbling ruin of a once-advanced civilization, Drifter takes this old standby setup for an adventure game and colors it in a rich dream of purple and magenta hues, black shapes, and angular symbolism, like a living graphic novel painting. 

Real life palettes are used to show a safe place, but increasing degrees of palette limitations indicate the descent into the Drifter’s perilous work of wading deep into the bastion of nasty, murderous creatures (their grievous offenses told to us in charming comic book panel stories from their anthropomorphic animal victims), and bringing vengeance upon them.

The game is challenging but not difficult, reminding us of the games of our childhood but with the play aides to allow us to enjoy it as busy adults with other responsibilities than playing video games. It is also not very long, because the game was crowd funded and the development team kept the scope small to ensure they could complete the project with a high degree of quality, which they did.

I’m going to go kind of off the rails in this review. and go off into a really long, boring and hopefully rewarding (for you) personal reflection on this game, which is of great importance to me.

one of the things that’s really important to me is video games. in recent years that’s about as unique and cool as think-framed glasses or having a 415 area code. despite how shit those facts are, I’m too old to try to hide the fact that all of those things are simply elements of who I am.

Ive wanted to make video games as long as I have been playing them, and when I got to be patient enough to actually go through the tedious process of programming, I started trying. And after many years of trying, I’ve rarely succeeded at making anything even remotely close to good. That’s how hard the process of making games and reconciling what people can and are willing to play with what you can and are willing to make truly is.

I am not the only person that was so greatly moved by the childhood experience of playing games, and then wanting to make our own games. Not so much as a vocation, but more so as an artistic calling. There are thousands of us, we call ourselves indie developers, you may have even heard of some of them. One such indie developer is Alx Preston, the creator of Hyper Light Drifter.

Like many indies,  Alx didn’t just regard games of his childhood and young adulthood as merely fun, but as powerful, challenging formative experiences and much-needed escapes from the often difficult world of being a kid. He wanted to make a new game that expressed those qualities. 

Fortunately for him and us, Alx is a brilliant painter with a keen eye for color and unique shapes and designs, and is also a skilled animator and along with some friends, was able to create a very compelling kickstarter trailer for a campaign that managed to raise just short of a half a million dollars.

The trailer music in particular I found moving when I saw this back in September of 2013. Unfortunately, the composer, Baths, did not contribute to the soundtrack. It was incidentally, composed entirely by the composer Disasterpeace, of Fez and It Follows, and is excellent in its own right. However, I would have truly loved for that critical aspect of the original vision of the trailer to be maintained in the final product in some form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VslU2On9kkU

One of the realities Alx was probably finding an escape from in Zelda and Diablo was his long-term health problems. Making video games is already an extremely difficult task, and to set out to do this when you aren’t sure how much time you’ll have to spend managing a disease or maybe even how long you will live is courageous to anybody, but to other indie developers like me, who have seen hundreds of hours wasted on projects nobody ends up playing, it is almost unthinkable.

Music and film made for artistic and not commercial reasons can often succeed, because of the nature of those mediums. To just sit and watch or listen to something doesn’t have to “work” the way a video game does. For this reason, indie games almost always fail at being good “games”. It’s just far too much to ask for a game to both be rewarding and fulfilling creatively to the creator and also be a game experience that is rewarding and fulfilling for the player.

However, this is where Drifter is truly exceptional. It’s a great video game. It has things to explore, plenty of things to do, challenging combat and exploration- it is a fun and rewarding toy, and not just a work of art, even though it’s that too. Is it Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto? No, it doesn’t have the scope or content of those kinds of games. Its smaller, and shorter, and there’s less to play with, but there is still a game in there and the game is good.

What it has that those things don’t have is a very coherent, unique and clear artistic vision, and a world that lives on in your brain even after you turn off the game. Like a great comic book or a sci fi novel, you feel like you’ve been somewhere truly weird and special- inside the mind of just one creative person. 

Heart Machine, the company Alx created with the Kickstarter money, did an incredible job of bringing the vision that had inspired so many people to invest in this project to life. They kept the project within scope, used inexpensive and well-established tools to bring their game to life (GameMaker Studio), and kept costs under control so they could spend the time they needed to refine the game to what it needed to be.

I sincerely hope that Alx and Heart Machine can bring us more games, but even if they don’t, they have brought us something even more important than that: proof that crowdfunded, wild eyed artsy ideas can be made, through careful planning and skillful development, into truly great, playable, fun and exciting video games.

[martianarctic]

10 Cloverfield Lane Review

So first of all once again we have here something I am not going to not like. John Goodman, Mary Winstead, and Cloverfield, and also, one of my favorite plots. You place a bunch of strangers in a small, confined place which itself has a questionable purpose, and you don’t know a) what’s happening in or to the world outside b) any of the character’s backstories.

Of course, eventually you find out what has happened in the world outside, and you also find out who these people are. How good this trope comes off depends mostly on the context of the interactions(typically murders) the author uses to reveal these things, and in the case of 10 Cloverfield Lane, the filmmakers, actors and story all worked together to make this just a totally fantastic experience for me that I found myself reflecting on long afterward.

The original Cloverfield is up until now, my favorite Bad Robot film, but I will mention that this isn’t REALLY a “cloverfield universe” film. It was originally called “The Cellar” and when JJ Abram’s company picked it up they decided to brand it with the Cloverfield name. It’s got that comedy-indie-lovecraftian thing going on, so calling it cloverfield and sending me in there with that expectation worked out super well.

First, the actors totally nailed this thing, which is good, because they are almost entirely carrying the film, not because it’s not well made, it is, but that’s just how the movie is set up, kind of like the outstanding science fiction film “Moon”. They make all three characters extremely likeable, but also develop their individual nuances perfectly.

You’ve got the Mastermind, played by Goodman, benevolent, adept, but clearly mentally unstable (who builds a survival shelter?), and arrogant (looks like he was right after all). The Follower, played by The Newsroom guy John Gallagher Jr, competent but clearly not that mentally sophisticated, and therefore possibly trustworthy and reliable, and The Investigator, played by Winstead, extremely intelligent and capable, and therefore not trustworthy and possibly not reliable.

Normally, I expect these sorts of stories to have more characters to murder off, so with three, its a very concentrated scenario. Each interaction builds our understanding of the situation by just a little bit more and ratchets up the tension. There’s very little fat in the story, and the movie doesn’t feel too long at all until the very end, which delivers the payoff I think most moviegoers are expecting here, but I could personally have done without. 

Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop me from considering this one of the best sci fi/horror movies of the 2010s. Simple, stripped down, and very well made by first-time director Dan Trachtenberg, letting the story and performances carry it, this is really what great speculative fiction is- taking a scenario that could never happen to us, and watching how human beings like us deal with it.

[martianarctic]

The Witch Review

This film spans a few different genres, and I think it’s pretty likely that for most viewers, their experience will slip through the cracks between them, which is unfortunate because “The Witch” is something I thought was just totally great.

A family of puritans are banished from a settlement due to their father’s unwillingness to accept what he perceives to be an unacceptable schism between his own spirituality and that of the settlement.

What follows is for me, a fascinating tale of religion against the backgrop of survival in the wilderness. Told mostly through lingering camerawork on the beautiful scenery and costumes, and a sort of “lite” colonial english dialect which isn’t too difficult to understand, the story is slow and there are few shocking scenes of horror, which I think will not jibe with most viewers expectations, who are being told this is more or less a traditional horror film. 

I think this story is really more religious in nature, and that hasn’t flown under the radar, I believe some religious groups are labelling this film as heretical, which is kind of awesome, because that is exactly the topic the film is attempting to address. When your religion tells you that you are a slave, how do you react? Do you surrender, or do the truly spiritually strong become prophets themselves- and if so, of what? 

Through the brutality and difficulty of survival alone in the wilderness, you can really feel the need for spirituality in these people, which transforms for the protagonist Tomlinson. The social pressures placed on her as a young woman in an extremely patriarchal society combine with her own need for spiritual affirmation, which leads us to a climax of true New England Gothic-style horror  that does not disappoint.