Category: Consumption

’90s musical memories: 1/7

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Over on Facebook I’ve been nominated for one of those chain things where you post a song each day for a week, with the 1990s being a theme. So I’m gonna do it, and I’ll write a bit more at length over here on what I’ve chosen and why.

The first song I’m gonna go with is one from one of the first albums I remember buying as a uni student, from the CD shop that used to be on the Wentworth side of the footbridge over City Road. It was a place I ended up spending a lot of time in, listening to releases on headphones before purchasing, and I remember buying a lot of things from there – probably at the terribly jacked prices we thought were normal in the ’90s -because it was somewhere to fuck off to when I didn’t have lectures, or didn’t have friends waiting at Manning Bar for me to, soberly, relate my latest romantic failure. Continue reading “’90s musical memories: 1/7” →

Refreshed Prince (of Persia)

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Over the past three weeks I’ve been reliving some of my gaming history. I finally made time to replay the games in the Sands of Time console reboot of Prince of Persia – games which were among the first I played on my PS2, and games I thought were great. I wondered before I began playing just how they’d stack up to my memories.

(There are more than likely to be spoilers in here, so just be warned. I don’t know about spoiling games that’re now over a decade old, but you know. The internet.)

prince_of_persia_281989_video_game29_ibm_pc_version_gameplay
Easy… easy…

The original Prince of Persia was one of the first games I remember having on my PC (at a time when what I really wanted was an Amiga) and it stood out because of how real it felt. There was a sense of weight, of physical presence to the little dude, and it was unforgiving and brutal: you fucked up and you were dead, usually impaled. Continue reading “Refreshed Prince (of Persia)” →

Book review: My Life As A Fake

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My Life As A FakeMy Life As A Fake by Peter Carey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Take a 1940s literary hoax, Frankenstein, Rilke, Ezra Pound, literary journal editorship and the memsahib culture of Malaysia in the middle of last century and whip it all up with ulcerated legs and modish, society-shocking femmes fatales and you’ve pretty much got this entry in Carey’s oeuvre. My Life as a Fake is shorter than a lot of his other work – I think it’s probably on par with something like The Tax Inspector for length – but it packs a pretty hefty punch. Continue reading “Book review: My Life As A Fake” →

Book review: Strange Weather in Tokyo

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Strange Weather in Tokyo Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hiromi Kawakami has, in Strange Weather in Tokyo, written a fairly plot-free novel that charts the deepening friendship between Tsukiko, a late-30s woman, and Sensei, her teacher from years ago. They meet in a local bar – food and drink is key to the novel, bonding agents made of sake and mushrooms – and what follows is the story of pendulums going in and out of sync. Continue reading “Book review: Strange Weather in Tokyo” →

Book review: Francis Bacon in Your Blood

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Francis Bacon in Your BloodFrancis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you picked up Michael Peppiatt’s book looking for a biography of Bacon, you’re going to be disappointed. Yes, there are plenty of facts here. But no, Bacon-biog isn’t the point. This is a book about Peppiatt, himself. Actually, it’s more of a Venn diagram about how the writer’s life intersects with Bacon, though I must admit I am picturing such a diagram being loosely sketched on canvas by Francis himself, using the bin lid he kept for such circumference-related purposes.

To be fair, this book isn’t sold as an artist biography. Peppiatt has already written one of those, Continue reading “Book review: Francis Bacon in Your Blood” →

Can I get The Witness?

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A fairly straightforward question. Not a witness. The Witness. The game, Jonathan Blow’s follow-up to Braid, and a game I’d really looked forward to playing ever since I saw the first demos of it. Here’s a trailer for the most recent version, on PS4.

Yeah, that’s my kind of jam right there. Or was it? At first glance – puzzles, a weird island, an almost-real-but-not rendering style – it seemed right up my alley. But was it really? I mean after all, the game’s designer once said he wanted to make games for people who read Gravity’s Rainbow, and I’m exactly that lit-wanker audience.  Continue reading “Can I get The Witness?” →

Book review: Drive

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DriveDrive by James Sallis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

He just drives. The guy. Here. Driver. Just drives. We know this because it’s his name – he has no other. Having one name is badass, having no name (and a gritty backstory) is superbadass and generally an indicator that you’re at the intersection of pulp and noir.

James Sallis’s slight novel is wonderful. It’s economical, but sprinkled with ten-buck words. It’s a world away from the sci-fi that began his career, and though it’s a modern work, seems to be written under the influence of the best sort of taut technique: Thompson and Cain, say. Interlocking jobs (criminal or otherwise) and lives, none of them pristine, tell a largely criminal narrative, though without any sort of opprobrium. If anything, the action taking place in the Hollywood sun say just that This Is How It Is, and nothing more. It’s nihilism with better catering. Continue reading “Book review: Drive” →

Book review: Brighton Rock

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Brighton RockBrighton Rock by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d known about Brighton Rock for ages – a combination of general awareness of Graham Greene and the Morrissey song ‘Now My Heart Is Full’ but I’d never read it. Now that I have, I can see why someone like the Smiths frontman would namecheck it: it’s a sordid, grimy window on the thirties, a look at the world of tough men and the children who wish to become them. Rough trade under the garish lights of a seaside town, immortalised in fiction and iconic film.

This is the second Greene I’d read (The Third Man being the much shorter first) and it pulled me in from the outset. I’m intrigued about the rest of his work, now. The story’s pretty simple: a murder is committed by Pinkie, a sociopathic pup with distinct lady problems. Ida, a voluminous seeker of good times, takes umbrage at the foul play she suspects has befallen a brief acquaintence, and decides to root out the truth. What follows is a sea mist-shrouded examination of the mental life of both the pursuer and the pursued, framed by the prospect of turf takeover from larger interests. Continue reading “Book review: Brighton Rock” →

Loving the alien (per album)

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A little while ago my friend Andy made a fairly lengthy Facebook thread detailing his favourite David Bowie songs from each of Bowie’s albums. It sparked a bit of conversation, and I figured I’d like to do the same, as it would give me – if nothing else – an excuse to play all the albums again. (You know, as if I needed one.)

What I learned from this endeavour is: 1) post-anaesthesia listening is weird (I did most of the thinking in the days after a brief hospital trip) and 2) that fucker makes it difficult to choose one song on an album. Let alone articulate why you like the bloody thing in the first place

Let’s go. Continue reading “Loving the alien (per album)” →

Book review: The Magic Cottage

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Magic Cottage: NTWThe Magic Cottage by James Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recently spent some time in hospital, and thought this work might make a good companion. From the blurb, it suggested a zippy, not thoroughly taxing read. Fair enough, I thought: I’ll zip through it while waiting for day surgery and that will be that. Popcorn consumed.

So somehow, it’s ten days later and I’ve only just finished it. And why? Because I kept feeling like I had to flog myself onwards toward a finish line that wasn’t really worth it when I got over it.

Ugh. Continue reading “Book review: The Magic Cottage” →