Falling Sky

Walking the Walk

I've never been one for playing games on the touchy Spod, despite buying a fair few on recommendations. I'll buy them full of good intentions for playing en route to work, but then I find myself catching up on reading via Byline or Pocket and all of a sudden the commute is over.

Still, a few exceptions have managed to temporarily turn my head from blogposts and articles. Super Hexagon is a dizzying headrush of a game, each play lasting mere seconds rather than minutes - simple yet infuriating, it's maddeningly compulsive until the point where your eyes & brain stop cooperating and curl up into quivering balls. Even watching the trailer is likely to make your head squirm, and bear in mind this is in-game footage...

 

For a while I was hooked on Dark Meadow, a stunningly designed sort-of-survival-horror with the best voice acting I've heard in a game for years and a fascinating storyline unfolding as you play. Alas, the combat - of which there is plenty - got a bit repetitive after a while, and following a switch to freemium (it originally cost four quid!) it feels harder to progress without shelling out more real-world cash to buy fictional objects. That said, the good still outweighs the bad, and I enjoyed immersing myself into a strange spooky story that revealed its hand little by little. More of this sort of thing, thought I, if only with more exploring and less hack/slash/hack/slash.

 
Then I rather gave up on iOS gaming, apart from the odd brief hit of Super Hexagon. There they sat, games like GTA3, Dead Space, Puzzle Craft, Worms 2, The Incident, just waiting to be played - why buy any more until I've done so? So away from the App Store I stayed... until... this.

 
I first read about Simogo's Year Walk on TUAW a couple of weeks ago. Even though I normally wouldn't pay much attention to game reviews, my interest was grabbed first with a beautifully designed image of an old Scandinavian house in a snowy wood (right), more storybook than screenshot, then by a review which was clearly doing its best to enthuse wildly about a game while giving as little away as humanly possible:

...the whole tone of the game is serene, mysterious and vaguely creepy. Year Walk is an experiment in using the iPhone's touchscreen interface to immerse you in a feeling, in a mood [...] I'm still sort of reeling from my experience with Year Walk -- I haven't yet finished the game by a long shot, but even the little time I've spent with it so far has left me with a huge, great impression. This is a very, very artful and well-designed project [...] Definitely don't miss out, but do enter into it with an open, ready mind.

The icing on the cake was the fact they'd even produced a free companion app to the game acting as a primer to the seriously unsettling Swedish folklore that fills the story to the game (such as Mylings).

At £2.49 for both game and companion, I decided to give Year Walk a shot. Installed, I loaded it up one evening, popped some headphones on, and...

OOH.

Immediately it's clear you're getting into something special, devoid of menus, instructions or even a visible avatar for yourself (the only indication of your existence is the sound of footsteps crunching through snow as you turn and move). At first it does indeed feel more like a storybook, albeit the kind that wouldn't get read to Bagl for a fair few years yet, but through trial and error you discover the purposes behind the game as it unfolds beautifully in front of your eyes.

And Year Walk really is beautiful, in a cold, subtle, almost dreamlike way. Muted colours, sometimes almost monochromatic, create a powerful atmosphere of tense silence. There's some superb imagery in this game that wouldn't look out of place on the printed page or an animated short. Similarly, the sound design is excellent, with just the right amount and type of music to complement the story and build on the atmosphere. Aside from Dark Meadow, I've not seen anything remotely like this on the App Store before. Just look at the Games page and the onslaught of primary colours and cartoon nonsense - Year Walk stands out like a particularly fascinating sore thumb. Frankly, even if the game itself was godawful, I'd have been happy enough just to soak up the spooky visuals and sounds.

Thankfully, it is a good game. It's a game of exploration and puzzles, the kind where you'll want a notepad and pen to hand, the kind where you'll often find yourself on the verge of popping on to the internet to find the solution until, just before you do, it clicks - and, oh, the satisfaction when it does. Little details count, but aren't handed to you on a platter - this is a game that rewards attention, and gives no quarter to those expecting a quick snappy fix of fun. Don't load this up for a quick 10 minute game - make time for it and let yourself be drawn into this increasingly unsettling world. I did try playing it while commuting, but literally found myself continuing to play once off the train and walking to my destination (miraculously not walking into lampposts/falling down manholes in the process, but it felt ridiculous all the same).

To say anything more runs the risk of spoilers - and the less you know about Year Walk before going into it, the better it is. The only proviso to that is reading the companion app, which gave context to the increasingly bizarre imagery (that horse in a river, for example) which doesn't spoil things in the least. Indeed, I'd say it's actually essential to have if you want to fully experience Year Walk - in a way I'd certainly not expected when the game started.

The only downside, if there is one, is that Year Walk is a game very much suited to playing at night, preferably in the middle of winter, yet the nights are getting noticeably shorter at this time of year. That said, it's snowing out there as I type, and when I took a walk in the local countryside earlier today I couldn't hear the crunch of my own footsteps without Year Walk coming back to me. Like any good story, it lingers in the subconscious after the end, never quite letting go. Highly recommended - and beware the Church Grim.

Talk about the Blues (Brothers)

A couple of months old it may be, but I only just read this enjoyably compulsive account of the making of The Blues Brothers by Ned Zeman in Vanity Fair.  5 pages long and worth every word.

...Aykroyd spends his free time speeding through outskirts and befriending coroners. Belushi, being Chicago’s favorite son, does anything he wants. Everything about him—his lunch-bucket charm, his utter lack of pretense—makes Belushi a figure of such resounding local popularity that Aykroyd calls him “the unofficial mayor of Chicago.”

A trip to Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, boggles [John] Landis. “Like being with Mussolini in Rome,” he remembers. Belushi, having entered one of the stadium’s crowded bathrooms, smiles and shouts, “O.K., stand back!” Everyone retreats from the urinals. Belushi does his business. Then, zipping his fly and beaming, he says, “O.K., back you go!”

“John would literally hail police cars like taxis,” Mitch Glazer says. “The cops would say, ‘Hey, Belushi!’ Then we’d fall into the backseat and the cops would drive us home.”

[...] The film’s budget is $17.5 million, then an expensive proposition, particularly for a comedy. Or whatever it is. Nobody quite knows. There’s comedy and lots of it. There are car chases and crashing helicopters. But all of the above revolve around four giant song-and-dance numbers, each starring a different music giant: Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Cab Calloway. Not to mention the performances by Jake and Elwood.

“You could tell there was confusion,” Landis says. “I told some of the crew, ‘This is a musical.’ They were so confused. They didn’t know what the fuck they were making.”

 

[...] One night at three, while filming on a deserted lot in Harvey, Illinois, Belushi disappears. He does this sometimes. On a hunch, Aykroyd follows a grassy path until he spies a house with a light on.

“Uh, we’re shooting a film over here,” Aykroyd tells the homeowner. “We’re looking for one of our actors.”

“Oh, you mean Belushi?” the man replies. “He came in here an hour ago and raided my fridge. He’s asleep on my couch.”

Only Belushi could pull this off. “America’s Guest,” Aykroyd calls him.

“John,” Aykroyd says, awakening Belushi, “we have to go back to work.”

Belushi nods and rises. They walk back to the set as if nothing happened.

It has a happy ending, until you remember what happened next. Read while listening to some of the greats, then follow with Strand Of Oaks's remarkable Daniel's Blues, the saddest song you'll ever hear written from the perspective of Dan Aykroyd.

 

Playing with fire

This morning's commute to work was made infinitely more exciting by listening to The Knife's Full of Fire. It's the first track to appear from their whopping new album, Shaking The Habitual, not due for another two months. In the meantime, this will do very nicely.

 

As you can see up yonder, Full Of Fire clocks in at 9:16 and immediately strikes a harder, more aggressive tone than their earlier work (think a more discordant We Share Our Mother's Health rolling downhill in a shopping trolley). Insistent beats yank you to the dancefloor, only for increasingly distorted voices to scare you off it. Throughout, things stay tense, wide-eyed and unpredictable. Background music it ain't, but playing this while doing anything instantly makes it an edgy thrill, like you're up to something shifty and sinister. Even if it's the washing up.

 
It took a few listens before it clicked with me, in doing so demonstrating the ongoing importance of a radio station like BBC 6Music. Marc Riley, in particular, has a real Peel-like knack for championing the more... challenging tracks that can take time to win you round, making use of having a four-nights-a-week show to persist bringing new music past that first what-the-hell-was-that phase. Much the same happened with We Want War by These New Puritans, a startlingly complex, unsettling and long piece of music that sounded like nothing else out there on its release. As with Full of Fire, We Want War did absolutely nothing for me the first couple of plays but, with Riley's persistent championing of the song, it eventually clicked to such an extent that it was one of my favourite songs that year. Instant gratification through Spotify, Soundcloud, iTunes and Emusic is all very well, but there's still very much a need for DJs like Marc Riley, Tom Ravenscroft, Mary Anne Hobbs (all to be found on 6Music) who know that sometimes the very best music doesn't always grab you by the lapels and give you a great big kiss. Sometimes music that on first listen leaves you cold needs time to slide under your skin and never let go.

Life, Death and Dadness

 

Audrey with toes and wrist bent, 2011 - Nadav Kander

It's been way, way, way too long since I last did any life drawing, and by god I miss it. While I wait for the opportunity to start again, it's good to see the work of others trying to capture the human form in a way that is neither lecherous nor tedious. As such, I was impressed by the ten photographs of nudes by Nadav Kander posted by the Guardian on Friday to accompany an exhibition of Kander's latest work (and, in their infinite wisdom, enabled comments - as always, best avoided). While the accompanying copy lays it on a bit thick - "nudity never loses its power to shock"? Really? - the images themselves are fascinating. All too often you'll see paintings striving to look like photographs, rarely vice versa, yet when you first look at these it's actually a bit of a struggle to compute the knowledge that they're not paintings, that these are not figures rendered in oils or pastel, but flesh and blood (particularly that first image). Pale skin blindingly white surrounded by darkness, monochrome but for red hair. Striking, beautiful, I love how these images capture the human body in a way that is both warts-and-all real (a la the paintings of Lucien Freud) and ethereal, like white chalk on black paper, dead and alive. Could've done without the chicken drumstick, mind.

 

I've blogged before about the wonderful Maurice Sendak and, on top of his exceptional body of work, what a delight he was to listen to in interview. Right at the end of 2012, the New York Times uploaded this wonderful 5-minute video, which takes an excerpt from an interview Sendak gave in 2011 to Fresh Air on NPR where he discusses his mortality, his atheism and the sadness of seeing friends go before him, depicted with simple but charming illustrations from Christoph Niemann. It's incredibly moving, and I cannot recommend it enough - please, do find 5 minutes to play this, but not in public. Every sentence is precious, heartfelt and raw, awash with emotion and sincerity, and I swear within 4 minutes I was in tears. His voice, oh god...

 

James Kochalka's sketchbook diaries came to an end on New Year's Eve - two weeks on, I still miss those daily glimpses of life and imagination, but I completely understand why he's chosen to move on after so many years (the first strip in volume 1 of the collected diaries is from 26 October 1998). Somehow I imagine rereading them now I'm a parent will add a new dimension to his more family-centred strips - just two weeks before the diaries came to an end, his strip for 16 December resonated a hell of a lot with me, given my abject failure to be an artist (unlike Kochalka himself). I'll probably print it out, pin it up and bash myself round the head with it the next time I'm bemoaning my (lack of) professional lot. Maybe it seems a self-evident message, that being a great Dad would be achievement enough, but it still means a lot to see it captured so simply. To the Elf himself, I would say thanks for keeping up that daily discipline for so long, and all the best for the future - you've been more of an influence than you'll ever know, and not just because I'll never look at a paddling pool the same way again.

Big in Japandroids

"Remember saying things like 'We'll sleep when we're dead'/ And thinking this feeling was never going to end?"
- Younger Us, Japandroids

Japandroids @ Crowbar 11.28.12 - photo by Nicole Kibert

I always enjoy Best Of lists on music blogs at the end of the year. While it can be tempting to get bogged down in arguing about who's placed where (for my money any list that didn't have The Seer as #1 was utterly utterly wrong) they're best approached as helpful spotlights on releases that passed you by the first time round. The first monthly Emusic sub after the lists go up is always a treat, as I follow up some of those recommendations and, more often than not, find a few to be my favourite albums of the passing year.

Last month was no exception, as I nerdishly studied the best ofs at The Quietus, BBC Music, Line of Best Fit, Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound, along with Emusic's own. One album that cropped up a couple of times was Celebration Rock by Japandroids, a two-man band I'd never heard or heard of before. Still, at 8 tracks it was a cheap buy (£3.36 on Emusic, £4.72 on Amazon), with an enticing review from the former promising:

"With just a guitar and a drum kit, meanwhile, the lifelong friends generate enough heat and momentum for an entire E Street band. Songs surge forward recklessly, explode, and then plow forward again."

Besides, any band that covers Mclusky can't be bad, right?

Thankfully Celebration Rock is an album that lives up both to the reviews and its own title. A million miles away from sneering indie, wistful shoegazing or detached dreampop, this is rowdy raucous rock, blazing with passion. It's way too heartfelt, too desperate to be mistaken for frat-boy rock - this is music for roaring in basement clubs, not stadiums, fists in the air, all sweat and smiles, hollered until hoarse - "we yell like hell to the heavens! HEY!"  

Track after track of breathless rock hits hard, like The Hold Steady at their loudest or The Replacements at their wildest. It's such a thrill to hear, to feel this music quicken the pulse and gladden the heart. Every song's a treat, with the opening salvo of tracks particularly blistering. Even so, the album's highlight is the penultimate track, The House That Heaven Built, exploding with affirmation, a sonic bearhug of support and belief - "When they love you and they will/ (And they will!)/ Tell 'em all they'll love in my shadow/ And if they try to slow you down/ (Slow you down!)/ Tell 'em all to go to hell!" YES! PUNCH THE SKY AND MAKE IT SHATTER!

Little wonder I've been playing it on a daily basis for the last week - it makes the dullest of domestic duties altogether more enjoyable. At 36 minutes it's over all too quickly, though any longer could've been downright exhausting. Not only that, it's the perfect length for my morning commute, the closing fireworks spluttering just as the train pulls into Waverley, giving the first working day of the year a much-needed kick up the arse. HEY!

 

You've come a long way, Bagl

Predictably, 2012 was completely and utterly dominated by our wee little Bagl, to the extent that there's not really anything else to remember from the last 12 months apart from baby stuff and work (oh, and good music, which thankfully remains a constant). No films, no concerts, very few books (Penelope Leach aside), no trips away (an overnight stay at Kirkcaldy Hospital waiting for the boy to appear really doesn't count). Still, it's not every day you bring a new Nagl to the world.

So I'd started writing a post on New Year's Eve looking back over the last 9 months or so, but every time I read it back the words seemed useless, pompous and inadequate, all at the same time. So, taking a leaf from Wifey's book, here's a selection of pictures of Bagl from 2012, with a few brief (well, that's the plan) written memories to go with them. Should you be indifferent or repelled by baby photos, go no further. I won't be making a habit of this sort of thing, honest...

New Year's Sun

The view over the Forth, 9am, 1 January 2013

The view from our home this morning. Not a bad start to the year.

 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas card design, 2012, black Conté pencil

As the rather rushed preceding post suggests, Christmas has snuck up on me this year, ninja-style, and I'm struggling to get my head around it - by the time I have, there'll probably be new year fireworks going off and I'll have a whole new freak out about that. Bagl's been feeling a bit rough the last few days (headcold and teething are a vile combination) so the focus has been on comforting him rather than diving into the Radio Times and cheerfully watching films (oh, imagine! Watching a film in one go! To think I used to take such a thing for granted!).

Anyway, this is to wish whoever still happens to pop by this desolate corner of the internet a very merry Christmas and a happy new year (or whatever Winter-based festival you choose to celebrate). Wrap up warm, watch out for Krampus, and be assured that the unconquered sun will surely return - unless you're in Scotland, where we can just look forward to slightly warmer rain instead. Have a good one!

"...But I quite like the songs"

You loved it as a kid / And now you need it more than you ever did

- Tracey Thorn, Joy

We have a problem. My calendar, and seemingly everyone elses, is clearly broken because it's stating that today is 24th December, or Christmas Eve, and that CAN'T be so. Even in the deep midthirties I can still remember as a child finding those weeks running up to the 25th the slowest, most frustrating time of the year, but now the days seem to vanish in a bleak blur of commuting in the dark (and, this year, general poorliness across the family). Are we sure it's not the 17th?

Well, regardless, I've got my priorities in order. While the tree was conspicuously lacking in wrapped goodies underneath until an hour ago (admittedly more to avoid Bagl from crawling up to them and soaking the wrapping paper in drool) I do have a suitably festive musical playlist fully assembled and ready to go. Here's three of the best.

Tracey Thorn, she of Everything But The Girl, released Tinsel and Lights a few weeks ago and straight off the bat it's pretty much a classic for this time of year. Most of the songs are covers, though not the usual - I was particularly delighted to hear Low's Taking Down The Tree covered so well, given the excellence of Low's Christmas EP. The opening track, Joy, is an original written by Thorn and it's probably the highlight of the album for me. It's a perfect Christmas song, but not in a Slade/Roy Wood/belted out with gusto at festive discos kind of way. It's made for those quiet moments you need at this time of year, curtains pulled tight against the cold and dark, and to my mind absolutely nails what Christmas is really all about (rather than that silly story). With every listen it hits harder, the lyrics startlingly real (while playing it back to write this post I was borderline blubbing by the last line). It's real, clear-eyed and genuine, managing the stonkingly rare feat of being neither cynical nor twee. If you play only one song from this post, make it this one.

While we're at it, do have a read of Tracey Thorn's enjoyable piece for The Quietus on Christmas music, on how "Christmas songs are all either overtly sad, or contain within them covert elements of sadness which are disguised by the surface trappings of fun and merriment."  I particularly liked the anxiety of Slade and the reference to Mrs Doyle's misery.

Despite being an atheist through and through, I still find much to love from the religious music. The words may often be absolute bunkum (Seven Joys of Mary still makes me splutter with indignation - I mean, honestly, "The next good joy that Mary had / It was the joy of six / To see her own son Jesus \ Upon the Crucifix"?  Some Mum!) but that doesn't diminish the impact of the music itself. Choirs in particular have the ability to make the heart soar and I do love a good candlelit choir service. This year I got hold of a choral album of Celtic and British songs and carols, Wolcum Yule, performed by Anonymous 4 (£6.49 on Amazon MP3, should you be tempted). It's a good-sized collection of music, some well-known, others not, spanning centuries and performed (often unaccompanied) by 4 female choral singers. The above is their version of John Tavener's The Lamb and is probably the most minor-key track on the album, but I think it fits nicely.

The thing about Tim Minchin is that he seemed to appear out of nowhere for me, as though I'd missed a memo or something. One day I'd never heard of the chap, the next I see him on the back of the Guardian Guide selling out arenas across the land. I've since become a huge fan of his work, but when White Wine In The Sun went viral amongst friends (and my lady wife) three years ago I admit it didn't move me much. Cut to now and it's one of my favourite festive songs, with lines that once seemed a bit overdone now ringing true, twanging my heartstrings mercilessly. I fear I may have grown up a bit.

A Second Coming

And so now we thrum our joyous tension in opposition to all of that. Things are not OK. Music should be about things that are not OK, or else shouldn't exist at all. The best songs ever are the songs that ride that line. We just try to get close to that perfection. We drive all night just to get closer to that perfect joyous noise, just to kiss the hem of that garment. We love music, we love people, we love the noise we make.
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor in interview.

I don't think there's another band or musician, alive or dead, that have the emotional and visceral impact on me that Montreal's mighty instrumental giga-group Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It's very, very, very difficult for me to put into words just what their music has meant to me since I first heard them in 1998, courtesy of the wonderful (and sadly no more) Road Records in Dublin. That first time I saw them in concert at the Temple Bar Music Centre (with support from Sigur Ros!) remains one of the most emotional and influential moments in my life, as close to a religious experience as a godless heathen like me could ever have.

Live photo by Eva Vermandel, via cstrecords.com

Up until now, they've only had three albums and one EP to their name (no, I'm not counting that first cassette), yet each recording is a thing of wonder and power. Unlike others, I thought their last release - Yanqui U.X.O. - was excellent, with the final track, the 30 minute Motherfucker=Redeemer, one of their best, ending on a heartracing roar of hope. If it was to be their last record, I felt, at least it was on a high.

That said, I was still absolutely, almost overwhelmingly delighted at news a few years back that they had reappeared on the live scene. Twice they went on to play Glasgow, twice I bought tickets... and twice I missed them, once due to snow, another due to family commitments. Gutted, but at least I'd seen them in the past, and in a time before ubiquitous mobile cameras and obscenely yappy bastards. Still, I wondered - what next? Would they remain a live-only proposition, like the reformed (and still magnificent) Pixies? Would they call it a day after another tour? Or might there, oh please, be a new recording one day, something that could stand alongside their existing masterworks? It seemed like wishful thinking, and short of getting out to an All Tomorrow's Parties again I figured all I had was their four recordings & those glowing memories. Which was enough.

But!

Two months ago, out of absolutely flipping nowhere, news online that a new GY!BE album had appeared on their merch stand at concerts, with an actual release coming a fortnight later. In an age of leaks and Twitter rumour storms, such a genuine surprise is a shocking novelty - the only band to come close were Radiohead's sudden release of In Rainbows. The new album, with a suitably wide-eyed exultation of a title - ALLELUIA! DON'T BEND, ASCEND! - duly appeared in mid-October, and I've been letting it sink in before burbling my thoughts. Intriguingly, on vinyl it's split across two records - two long tracks (20 mins each, roughly) each have a side of a 12" while an accompanying 7" contains two shorter droning pieces.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND! by Constellation Records 

The first long 'un, Mladic, has been a stalwart at their gigs since the olden dayes, but this is the first time they've recorded it. It sounds incredibly fresh, tight and full of welly. And despite the number of Godspeed-like bands that have partially filled the void of the last decade, it is absolutely, unmistakably them - yet it's not predictable or samey. It feels like a continuation of where they left off, but one that's driving forward, not treading water. The building up of tension is exquisite, making every second count, gradually building momentum layer by layer, riff by riff, beat by beat, until you're lost in this wonderfully rich thunderous sound. As it rocks harder and harder it veers to a defiantly middle Eastern sound, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan writing for Mastodon. It's incredibly exciting and stands alongside Storm as their heaviest song so far. When they hit their stride and barrel into the music, heads down, lost in a blaze of sound and strobe, only Swans come close. It's a blistering return that picks up where they left off a decade ago and blazes ahead into new territory.

The second big 'un, We Drift Like Worried Fire, is less intense, but still incredibly thrilling. It starts gently and beautifully, almost on tiptoes, building on a melody as strings glide alongside, gradually escalating as the drums pound harder and jangling guitars shimmer and shriek. It's uplifting stuff - GY!BE's music has always been about hope and joy against a seemingly overwhelming doom - that makes your heart soar. There's still plenty more to follow, as they gradually piece together a taut, edge-of-your-seat atmosphere, a soundtrack to shadowy shenanigans, before finally exploding into fiery passion, punching the sky and making it shatter. Again, this is GY!BE doing what they do best -supremely confident, tight and as exultant as the album title suggests. It's a soundtrack that needs no film, possibly even more vital and contemporary than their work at the turn of the millennium, and increasingly rewarding with every listen.

A glorious return, then, and with reports that the band are now blasting out new material in the form of a 45 minute track (!!!) apparently called 'Behemoth' (!!!!!) I'm hopeful they're not going to drift away again just yet. We need - I need - this music that says so much without words, that stares reality in the face rather than retreat into the self, that demands of you and gives back so much.

(Tsk, I had this written over a month ago but been too flappy to actually finish it up & publish! Bad blog, no biscuit.)