Category: Consumption

Thoughts on things I’ve experienced.

A sobering thought?

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An old blog.
Coded with me own hands, that.

This website turned 14 yesterday.

Well, not quite. That’s the date I first registered this domain, many moons ago while living in London. There was a whole other weblog here for a long time – called |lukelog| – which was my first introduction to the public eye, I suppose. It didn’t always look as it does on the left, mind.

I set it up after seeing my flatmate Meg’s blog, and it pretty much consumed me. I wrote a lot, much of it terrible, and much of it presenting a pretty ropey portrait of my mental health and self-confidence levels than I ever would have thought at the time. It’s probably a hint as to why the archives for |lukelog| aren’t to be found here: it’s a little like reading diaries from your teens. It all seems a bit facile and innocent now, somehow.

It was fun, don’t get me wrong: being the kind of odd addition to the GBlogs stable, knowing some people who’ve since gone on to work in Important Web Things And Organisations. Hell, I was even nominated for the best European weblog in the inaugural Bloggies! (I didn’t win, though I should add it’s an honour just have been nominated and gee, shucks, I don’t know what to say.)

But at the same time, I was sort of beholden to the thing. I continually picked at it. And I ended up hating the sound of my own (typed) voice, as well as feeling weird about the whole concept. (Though I must admit, it was particularly great when people I’d never really met bought me replacement albums after I’d had my bag ransacked by some fuckhead at the Green Park Hotel on a trip back to Sydney.)

So I stopped. And now I’ve started again, though for slightly different reasons. It took a couple of false starts to arrive where we are, and I’m still unconvinced it’s a wholly worthwhile idea, but as long as I have reviews to add (or to save from the digital dustbin) I suspect I’ll keep going.

Anyway. 14 years. Cripes. Happy birthday, CaptainFez.

Book review: Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked

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Two book reviews for the price of one. Read before a re-watch of David Fincher’s Zodiac because these were instrumental in its creation. My advice? Stick with the film. There’s a little repetition in the reviews because REPETITION IS WHAT YOU GET FROM READING THESE BOOKS, BUCKO.

ZodiacZodiac by Robert Graysmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cartoonist-cum-chronicle Robert Graysmith has a pretty decent retelling of the Zodiac killer story here. As well he should, given he was working at one of the newspapers to receive ciphers and cheery letters from the murderous astrology fan. Continue reading “Book review: Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked” →

NO! I WILL FINISH IT!

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This pretty much describes the attitude I’m going to force myself to take. Even though I may not be producing Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People, I have a couple of projects I Don’t Want To Let Slide.

And so, a reminder. No high-fives from God. Just a bunch of not-pissing-about.

Tomorrow. 

(Hear the rest of this Patton Oswalt show here.)

Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (2002)

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Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (re:)This is an older review of mine, presented here for archival purposes. The writing is undoubtedly different to the present, and the review style may differ between publications. Enjoy, if that’s the right word.

Angel Passage is an odd disc. It’s a studio reworking of a performance Moore and Perkins presented as part of the Tygers of Wrath concert, presented at the end of Tate Britain’s William Blake exhibition. And as such, it sits in no-man’s land; it’s not a run-of-the-mill spoken-word album, nor is it a cast-recording album. It’s a weird hybrid, like reading Moore’s meditation on Blake’s life while ghostly music that’s not quite separate floats through the air. Occasionally, it’s problematic — I just want to hear what he’s saying, dammit — but for the most part, it adds a well-judged air of mystery. Continue reading “Alan Moore and Tim Perkins: Angel Passage (2002)” →

Review: Frank Bretschneider – Super.Trigger (and some gear)

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A couple of months ago, I wrote a review of Frank Bretschneider‘s Super.Trigger album for Cyclic Defrost. Here’s a sample:

Eschewing romanticism doesn’t remove character, though some tracks are more favoured in this regard. ‘Pink Thrill’ is all nerdly tetchiness, but ‘Machine.Gun’ is the clear winner. Staccato drum rolls imitate the track’s titular weapons while a frenetic background conjures the image of a gunfight held over the top of a Blaxploitation soundtrack. It crackles, and when the end comes – in an echo-chamber of steely ricochets – it’s triumphant. Worth special note too is the album’s attention to bass sounds. On some tracks – the opener ‘Big.Hopes’, and ‘Day.Dream’ in particular – there’s window-shaking kicks and tones that are so immense that it’s difficult not to fist-pump in celebration. Coupled with the appropriate atmosphere, such as the dubby, dark sound of ‘Over.Load’, it’s overwhelmingly great.

You can read the full review here. But the reason I’m linking it today is that this rather neat article details Bretschneider’s studio setup and workflow. If you’re interested in electronic music (and like the track above) then you’ll find some good info in there.

(As an aside, I like reading this and discovering that I mentioned fist-pumping. I hadn’t even seen Regular Show when I wrote this, but the power of the Fist Pump can’t be denied. See below.)

 

Synergy Percussion plays Xenakis’ Pléïades

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Timothy Constable of Synergy
Timothy Constable of Synergy.

I spent last night listening to Synergy Percussion perform Iannis Xenakis‘ fiendishly complex piece Pléïades at Carriageworks, an inner-city arts center with a fetish for polished concrete. In a fairly odd-sounding room – big, boxy and oddly free of reverb – six percussionists (and some surprise guests at the end of the piece) performed in a loose oval setting, on platforms. The audience was free to move around, and the performance was recorded for ABC radio. (Video was taken too, so who knows where it’ll be seen?)

A work of four sections, Pléïades (1978-79) notably uses instruments called sixxens, a word signifying the number of performers and the start of the composer’s name. They’re custom instruments, microtonally tuned, and Synergy had a set made for a previous performance. The piece, first played by Percussions de Strasbourg, has a title which means ‘many’, but also refers variously to mythological and astronomical matters. Each section addresses a different type of instrument – skins, metal, ‘keys’, – with one section being short for ‘all of the the above’. It involves a raft of instruments, to say the least.

Continue reading “Synergy Percussion plays Xenakis’ Pléïades” →

Book review: The Fool’s Journey

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The Fool's Journey: the History, Art, & Symbolism of the TarotThe Fool’s Journey: the History, Art, & Symbolism of the Tarot by Robert Michael Place
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Published to coincide with an exhibition of tarot art curated by the author, The Fool’s Journey sits in a weird position. It’s a little too complex to be just an exhibition catalogue, but it’s also too slender to be a fully-considered work on the tarot. (Place is a respected artist, tarot scholar and has written more lengthy works on the cards, lest it be thought I impugn his credentials as a well-researched writer.)

Part of the difficulty with the book is that I think it’s a little user-unfriendly, at least as far as the layout goes. It’s a larger-format book, which is excellent for the graphics, but the text pages are one-column and stretch the whole page, making navigation difficult and reading a little tiring. I believe it’s a self-published work – the publisher’s address appears to be the author’s – so that explains some of the errant typos that appear through the work. It’s not a deal-breaker, though it does knock the faith in the work a little.

The good, though, is the amount of graphical reproduction on hand. Continue reading “Book review: The Fool’s Journey” →