Friday 20 February 2009

Music, music, all that music

I guess i've neglected this blog for long enough now; It's been, what, several weeks since the last post? Don't expect an explicit apology, but by way of apology, expect lots of hyperlinked-goodness.

Let's start with music, music, all that music.

There seems to be a bit of a dry-spell at the moment where music is concerned...music that i like at the very least. The Brits made for painful viewing for me, i had personal favourites for every single category and not once did they win. Duffy over M.I.A., Kings Of Leon over Fleet Foxes , it's an absolute bloody disgrace. Who decides these things anyway?

I have, however, had the pleasure of listening to two rather lovely tracks recently, namely Glass by Bat For Lashes and You Are The Blood by Sufjan Stevens (the latter is a Castanets cover, the former makes me very excited for Bat For Lashes' new album).

I was introducted to Last.fm by a friend recently, and it is the worst thing they could have possibly infliced upon me. It feeds my most obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and acts as a tool allowing me to force my musical tastes upon others in a most violent fashion.

That's all for now, i have a sudden desire to unite every Canadian artist in my last.fm library under a 'Canadian' tag.

Monday 2 February 2009

Fuck Off Adrian

The new blog-counter-widgety-thing i installed has been an unending source of misery for me. I was genuinely happy in my ignorance, free to imagine people with names like Adrian reading my blog, scratching their artfully coiffeured goatees appreciatively at every wry aside. Because, of course, my posts are full of wry asides. In fact they consist almost exclusively of wry asides. Can one even have wry asides without the presence of normal discourse? I think one can.

But back to my original gripe, since the installation of the new blog-counter-widgety-thingy (which i am convinced must be broken) fifty people have pointed their browser at my most humble of blogs. Fifty people. It's not really very much, is it Adrian, you bastard? Pah.

But never mind about that, perhaps what i need is more linkage! This is what i have been enjoying on teh interwebs over the past week or so:

Spelunky! is perhaps the most enjoyable time i have ever had repeatedly plummeting to a frustrating, spiky death. Initially, Spelunky seems like a fairly derivative platformer, similar to cave story but without the large, consistent world. The quality of both the visuals and music is often striking (for a freeware game) and evokes perfectly a sense of snes-era nostalgia. The game is stage based, and we find ourselves in the shoes of an intrepid, Indian Jones-esque explorer who, despite the fact that he consists entirely of a few pixels, exudes personality. The game equips you with a number of movement based skills with which to explore the seemingly endless catacombs that serve as the game's setting. Now, the wonderful, original thing about Spelunky is that all of the levels are procedurally generated; And not simply to the extent that the enemies are jumbled around a bit, the level architecture is completely different every time. Some extremely clever coding has went into this game, as the procedurally generated environments are (although often very difficult) completely consistent with the array of movement-based skills available to you. Very rarely will you find yourself blaming anybody other than yourself for your failings. The game literally has infinite longevity.

Spelunky! is the creation of the supremely talented Derek Yu of Phonomancer favourite, tigsource, and the creator of the wonderful, beautiful indie game Aquaria. I won't go into any depth (teehee, punnage) about Aquaria, but in a nutshell it's like a cross between Super Metroid and Ecco The Dolphin with the most lovely hand-drawn graphic you have ever seen.

I had the pleasure of seeing Luke Haines (formerly of The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder) in an extremely intimate setting last week, which i shall write more on when i can be bothered.