Year: 2011
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Pseud’s Corner
Much as I love Mogwai, this latest announcement is straight out of Pseud’s Corner: “The band are set to release their Earth Division EP, which carries 4- brand new tracks, highlighting a creative departure from the band’s trademark cinematic mantra of pulverizing, scorched guitar riffage, into a more recontextualised domain of hazy electronic distortion, accompanied by spiky wafts of violins, violas, cellos and double bass and jagged keys. Earth Division discretely demonstrates another side of Mogwai’s stratospheric level of brilliance with its ever-rotating, hypnotic soundtracks that drift dreamy into force, while adsorbing into the paranormal. The EP is a collaboration… Read more
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Step on into the light
Recently, for one reason or another, I have found myself attending AlAnon meetings. For the uneducated (of whom I’m envious), AlAnon is not Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), but is a separate, albeit closely-related support group for friends or family members who have had their lives affected by alcoholism. So AA is for the alcoholic, and AlAnon is for the people that the alcoholic has affected. Really, they should have come up with a better name for it, because whereas AA stands for something, AlAnon does not, even though it sounds like it should. Confusingly, the same word – AlAnon – is… Read more
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Yet you know there is no answer fit
Attorneys (lawyers to you ‘foreigners’ on the wrong side of the Atlantic) have always had a bad rap. They are often portrayed as amoral shysters just out to milk whoever they can for whatever they can. And having witnessed them in close range recently (thanks to my ongoing and increasingly-acrimonious divorce), the reality is even worse. Divorce in the U.S. is a strange thing. And considering that the most recent statistics claim that a full 50% of marriages end in divorce, they certainly make you jump through some hoops to get one. Firstly, you can’t really get a divorce without… Read more
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More HD than life itself
According to a news story on Wired, baseball parks are upgrading their jumbotron TV sets to broadcast in HD. Their rationale? According to the Astros’ senior director of creative services (which sounds like a made-up job title to me…): “Fans are watching games on high-definition [television], so when they come out to the ballpark we want things to be in high-definition, as well…” What? Whaaat? Surely reality is already the highest definition possible, already? Stupidest thing I’ve heard in years! Just open your eyes, peoples! Read more
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The End of Something
I’m depressed. Not for all of the obvious reasons, but because one of my favorite bands, Austin, TX based Voxtrot, have split. Actually, they split early last year, but this current bout of depression isn’t a delayed reaction, just a reaction to something I read about Voxtrot during a recent webstalk. The official Voxtrot website contains a letter from Voxtrot main man Ramesh Srivastava (a.k.a. The Voxtrot Kid) commenting on their decision to split, and stating that he was now – in addition to other things – waiting tables for a living. And it’s this last statement that depresses me… Read more