It seems I am eternally late in writing up these reviews. I would like to say that’s down to my overwhelming desire to read as opposed to my overwhelming draw towards lethargy, but you and I both know that’d be a lie.
My inner narrative at work.
So to make up for the time between posting – admittedly there’s been trips away and lots of work in between – I’m giving you ten reviews today. Not sure if that qualifies as a punishment for me or for you, but let’s embark on this journey together.
It’s the last day of 2024. I am tired, but I am also eleven years deep into screaming into the void about the things I liked during the year, so I’m armed with a vat of tea, a container of lollies and the burning desire to see whether the stuff I consumed throughout the year has a hidden message.
Why do I do this? Your guess is as good as mine. And his. Though he’d be having a Bat-Guess.
This one could be a bit wilder (and woollier?) than preceding iterations, so if you’re feeling like something’s missing, you can check through the previous versions (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) for some more me-review action.
Or you could log off and go look at some fireworks. I dunno, I’m not your mother.
(Edit: I got too tired before the actual turn of the year and went to bed. This is a New Year’s Day post now, so I assume you are no longer wearing a party hat as you read this, which saddens me slightly. I did a psych! move and this post still appears to have been written in the dying minutes of the year, so it’s still on time, kinda-sorta.)
I’m not entirely sure what the purpose of reviewing Moby-Dick is.
I mean, really.
It’s the sort of book that will always be part of the canon, and I imagine people will always feel guilty about having not read it, or will imagine that it’ll be a lot harder going than anything else.
I spent some time back in London over the past week or so. It’s been 20 years since I’d been in the Great Wen, but I visited its 1860s facsimile to carry out a bit of neck-stabbing along with the sightseeing.
It’s been a reasonable break since I last visited the Assassin’s Creed universe. Last time I played an AC game, I was kind of underwhelmed with the experience. This time, though? A different story.
It’s almost a fool’s errand to review Frankenstein. The book’s been so firmly ensconced in the literary canon for so long that it can’t be dislodged, and the story of its inception – spooky story competition with Byron, Percy Shelley, Polidori – is almost so doused in writerly name-dropping as to be something you couldn’t make up.
Another out-the-door read, I began this in order to get it off my shelves. I’m trying to downsize books, and I felt that this would be a good read-and-donate, so away I went.
I may have to reconsider this plan of action.
While this is the second Willocks book I’ve read, it’s the first of his to be published. Green River Rising was my first, and it’s undeniable that while that book is more polished, Bad City Blues is more viscerally interesting. There’s certainly a sense that Willocks is working out ideas here, and the writing sometimes veers close to formula, but in genre fiction, that’s hardly a cardinal sin.
Willocks’ writing here is resolutely Southern-fried gothic violence. There’s touches of Chandler and Cain, with sweaty balls; religion, robbery and the fuckery love leads you to are foremost. Continue reading “Book review: Bad City Blues”→
Last Saturday evening I spent a little over an hour watching two percussion ensembles perform at Sydney’s City Recital Hall. It was the culmination of a couple of years of joint study and development between Sydney’s Synergy Percussion and Korea’s Noreum Machi. This show was the last of the tour, with the Korean trio set to fly out the next morning, so I was interested to see how the two would come together. Continue reading “Synergy Percussion and Noreum Machi: Earth Cry 15/8/2015”→
Earlier this week I entered a competition to win tickets to Artwork, a Branch Nebula production at Carriageworks. I scored a double pass and attended last night’s performance, the second-last of the run. I’d not read much about the show (partially because Carriageworks’ site is artfully oblique) so I entered Bay 17 with few expectations.
I knew ahead of time that the piece is performed by job-seekers. Branch Nebula (who have been developing this piece in association with Carriageworks, who commissioned the work) placed ads in online classified sites, and gathered the respondents together. They meet just before the production, and are given no instruction, other than to follow instructions according to an assigned number. They perform for that evening, and a new group will take the stage the next night. Continue reading “Branch Nebula: Artwork”→
My review of a live disc of Zeitkratzer performances of Whitehouse songs has gone live (a little while ago, now) over at Cyclic Defrost. Here’s a sample.
Zeitkratzer are a great ensemble. Their acoustic mastery is undeniable, and the sounds they recreate without access to a bunch of broken boxes and fucked electronics are spot-on. But somehow the execution of the task seems almost redundant: there’s as much enjoyment to be had by the idea of a bunch of traditional instruments covering Whitehouse as there is from having the end result in your hand.
Ah, I kid. Sorta. L.A. Noire is pretty indebted to Ellroy’s canon. It’s a mostly historically-accurate presentation of downtown LA in the 1940s, with some not-so-accurate versions of famous faces attached. It’s dark, long, a bit convoluted and full of wonkiness – but it’s as compulsive and endearing as any crime novel, largely because you’re made to feel that you’re in one.
We’re talking Los Angeles at the time of the Elizabeth Short killing. Corrupt cops, the birth of the freeway system, returned soldiers and streets awash with drugs and booze. There’s detailed clothing, excellent cars and bystanders who jump out of the way of your terrible driving with a spirited “Holy Toledo!”, while the movie plays on film noir tropes like there’s no tomorrow. Continue reading “L.A. Noire (2011)”→
Yeah nah. 