A curmudgeon writes.
I’ve recently finished two games that seem very different, but I seem to have linked together because of their oddity, and the sense that they were both passion projects. Both are kind of broken, and were frustrating in places, but I keep thinking about how much I enjoyed them, despite these irritations.
So, here’s some loose thoughts about Singularity and Betrayer. We’ll go with the latter first because it’s the one I finished most recently.
It’s a nice reminder: two guitarists busily strumming away is a jam; a hundred playing for dear life is a fucking movement.
That quote is something I came across a couple of days ago. It’s Tristan Bath writing in The Quietus about A Secret Rose, a piece by Paris-based composer Rhys Chatham. The whole review is worth reading because it bears some resemblance to a piece I took part in, A Crimson Grail.
The piece, performed as part of this year’s Sydney Festival, is pretty enormous. An antiphonal piece, it generates a huge sound – though not as loud as you’d assume – with elements passing around the audience, who sit in the middle of the performance space. Players can’t really get a sense of how the whole works – not the way the audience can – because they’re so close to their particular section. But for those in the middle, it’s epic, to say the least. Continue reading “One week, one hundred guitarists”
Workshy by Dave Graney.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars.
It’s difficult for me to review Workshy really, because I kind of wrote all you need to know about it in my review of 1001 Australian Nights.
Well, that’s not exactly true.
Continue reading “Book review: Workshy”
So there’s this.
As I wrote just a couple of days ago, 2018 is the year I’m going to take the whole reading challenge thing a bit more easily.
I usually try to shoehorn 52 books into each year in some kind of book-a-week plan. Some years I’ve done more than 100 book per year. But mostly, I feel kind of hampered by there being a goal at all: I know I want to read more, and I know that how many books I read, I feel I should have read more. Continue reading “Planning the pages”
Oh, look at the time. It’s that time again: the time I write about the stuff I liked or consumed this year, briefly, for the edification of myself and nobody else, most likely.
Previous versions are here, here, here and here if you need an introduction.
Continue reading “2017 CONSUMPTION: A LOOK AT SOME STUFF I LIKED”
1001 Australian Nights: A Memoir by Dave Graney.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars.
Dave Graney is someone who I’ve never understood. But then, I suspect that’s exactly how he likes it.
See, when I first came to hear him – circa Night of the Wolverine – it was just before he blew up into an ARIA-winnin’ pink-suit effigy. I didn’t get the trip: it was a bit too arch for me, who was very meat-and-spuds rock. But over the years I’ve come ’round to what’s on offer – the range of moves and the dedication the man and his machine have towards making their particular kind of music. (I mean fuck, he’s still at it, and still good at it, which is more than can be said for some outta the same starting-blocks.)
Continue reading “Book review: 1001 Australian Nights”
A quick whip through two games, because the heat’s left me unable to write anything of length. First up, Until Dawn, which is best described as a Telltale horror flick.
I’d had this one on the to-do list for a while, and I’m glad to have had a chance to get through it. It’s a game that unashamedly mines teenage slasher flicks for material, and manages to create something providing a sense of choice even though it’s pretty much run on rails. Continue reading “Until Dawn (2015) and Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017)”
Border Districts: A Fiction by Gerald Murnane.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars.
So, this is Gerald Murnane’s final book. Depending on how well you sit with his writing style, you may well find that cause for celebration. I’m not that critical, but I must admit that Murnane is an author whose work requires reading at the appropriate time. And while I didn’t hate Border Districts, I didn’t particularly love it, either.
Continue reading “Book review: Border Districts: A Fiction”
Vathek by William Beckford.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another day, another Gothic confection.
Vathek is another one of those books I probably should’ve read during a uni literature course but never did. It’s one of those novels that was written as the Gothic style of fiction took off, but it’s not as easy to set it next to a Frankenstein, say. For starters, it’s been shelved in the Orientalism section for years, even though its author knew more of the world of Islam than other fabulists of the time.
It’s also a work that doesn’t really know what it wants to be. There’s a love story in there, some intentional riffing on Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, some big-noting about travellers’ arcana, a stab at voluptuous prose and some sheer fucking oddity, held together with minarets and eunuchs. Continue reading “Book review: Vathek”
Well, I finally spent a week or so neck-stabbing my way around Paris.
It had to happen, I suppose. I mean, I’d played every other game in the series in a year-long PS3 burst, and I’d had this one lined up since I bought my PS4. It had a lot of expectation to live up to, so how did it go?
In a word? Eh. Continue reading “Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014)”
Yeah nah. 