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Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
I'm generally really shit at getting compilations done for people, but I guess we all know that already. In a break with tradtion, though, here are the contents of a Will Oldham primer that I've just stuck together for grant:
Will Oldham - Big Balls
1- Today I Was an Evil One
2- Gezundheit
3- You Have Cum in Your Hair and Your Dick is Hanging Out
4- Lessons from What's Poor
5- Many Splendored Thing
6- Just to See My Holly Home
7- Call Me a Liar
8- Raining in Darling
9- Hard Life
10- One With the Birds
11- I See a Darkness
12- Fall Again
13- Idle Hands Are the Devil's Playthings
14- After I Made Love to You
15- Arise, Therefore
16- Stable Will
17- The Weaker Soldier
18- Rich Wife Full of Happiness
19- O Lord Are You in Need?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 18:40
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Ooo.
Matt's next record will the first in a concept series named after OUMUPO ("OUvroir de MUsiques POtentielles" - Workshop for Potential Musics), the muscial variant of OULIPO, a movement created in 1960 as an attempt to methodically explore the possibilities of literature and language.
The release is planned for April/May, and it is currently uncertain whether the record will be released as a Matt Elliott or a Third Eye Foundation record.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 14:10
Monday, March 29, 2004
Monday, March 29, 2004
I'm beginning to get the impression that nearly everyone else on Barbelith only ever read the top three threads in any forum, for all the complaining there is about those links disappearing in the redesign. And I'm sorry, but the sheer dickheadedness of comments like
I think the re-design sould be completely re-re-designed. In my opinion it sux.
is making me want to hit something. If I were responsible for the design and read shit like that, I think there's a good chance I'd give up and let the prick spouting that rubbish take over.
I've absolutely no idea why this is winding me up so much, especially considering that it's only this last month or so that Barbelith's managed to drag me back in.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 22:20
Nice slip from a Tory minister on Newsnight just now - "It's pretty hypocritical of Labour to accuse us of popularity."
If that's what they're saying, it's not just hypocritical but also deeply bonkers, chief.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:48
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Many, many thanks to Whisky Priestess at Barbelith for bringing this to everyone's attention:
Fatmouse.
FATMOUSE IS THE NEW SCIENCE OF MATHEMATICS. THE FATMOUSE THEOREM IS:
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
THE PROOF OF THIS THEOREM IS MANIFEST IN FATMOUSE. FOR ANY NUMBER N, FATMOUSE IS GREATER THAN N. YOUR MATH TEXTBOOKS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SHREDDED FOR BEDDING.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 15:45
Friday, March 26, 2004
Friday, March 26, 2004
I ended up reading the Channel 4 News forum today. Here are my selected highlights:
Russia threatens NATO
Could someone tell me with Just What are the Russians going to clobber us with? There Army is in disarray,and half there Navy fleet is falling apart.So what are they going to use? Radioactive Rust,and Swear words.Come on get real.The last thing the Russians want or need is a confrontation with the West,when they know that they just don't have the capabillity to back it up,as most of the equipment the russians have amassed since WW2 has been mostly Bluff.Yes it's looked good being paraded in the Mayday events,BUT did it acually work? 75% of the equipment that was paraded,was for show,and nothing else..It's called Propergander.Boy o Boy didn't it work well.
I've just seen one of the saddest things I've ever seen...
Basically a huge amount of that thread, but especially the two people apparently continuing a personal argument at the bottom of the second page.
Asian gang murder 15 year old
As has been said already if it had been an asian kid killed by 5 whites there would have been uproar!! Hypocritical pc t***s!!
It's nice to see British journalism stimulating minds, no?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 03:31
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Channel 5. 'Retro Day.'
Do you want to tell them, or shall I?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 15:23
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Christ on a bike. Somebody give me a job writing this bollocks!
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:14
The latest in a series of video game-themed blog entries for an apathetic audience.
Bemani, then. I've mentioned it before, but only in the context of the music contained in the best examples of the genre, not how the games actually play or what makes them so wonderful.
Bemani = video games that ask the player to interact with music in some way. Named for one of the founding titles of the genre, Konami's DJ simulator Beatmania. It's been identified by some as the last great undiscovered game type. That's rubbish, of course, because we'll never know how many other great undiscovered game types there are until we discover them all, but still... it's the most recently created game style, and - imo, naturally - possibly the most significant and enjoyable yet.
Significant, because it's effectively a step back to the days of simplicity and inventivesness, two words which most of the industry seems to have erased from its dictionary in the pursuit of critical acceptance (seriously guys, if I want to read a book I'll read a book, if I want to watch a film I'll watch a film. If I want to play a game...). There are no barriers to entry here, bar the requirement that the player has some sense of rhythm and can tell their up from their down, their right from their left.
Can you shake a pair of maracas? Then you can play Samba de Amigo. Can you bang a drum? Then you can play Taiko no Tatsujin. Think instrumental karaoke and you're largely there, although most add a slight level of complexity by asking you to play in a certain way - Samba, for example, requires you to shake the maracas in certain positions.
This simplicity opens gaming up to everyone. Why have Sony been so successful? Not because of the reasons you'll generally hear, I can assure you. Tomb Raider, GTA, Wipeout, blah blah blah - these are games that appeal to your male teenage audience. Big fucking whoop. No, it's bemani that's made Sony (in video game terms, obviously). Go into HMV and have a look on the shelves. See that there? That's a PSOne. That's hardware that's a decade out of date. See next to it? Those are new games for it. See the words in the flash graphic? 'Compatible with dance mat.' Now, what does that tell you?
For a good few years, publishers have been desparately trying to woo a new type of gamesplayer. Young female teenagers. They've consistently done this by talking down to that audience. Girls? I know what girls like. They like dolls and horses, yeah? Great! Barbie Horse School, coming up! What's that? Shops are trying to seel it for a fiver? Hmm. Wait - new idea boys! Mary Kate and Ashley go Shopping!.
And they've failed, which is both unsurprising and very, very satisfying. You try and create something specifically aimed at a certain target audience, you're asking for trouble. You try and create something for a specific target audience without making any proper, dedicated attempt to either understand that audience or allow them to have some input into the creative process themselves, or patronise the shit out of them, then you deserve trouble and more.
Bemani managed to attract female players to games. It managed it by not worrying about how certain people react to certain games, and instead was created as a genre for everybody. Well, save the deaf. Much the same thing, of course, happened with The Sims - never designed to appeal specifically to female players, now enjoys an absolutely enormous and faithful female fanbase. Naturally, since the success of Will Wright's game, publishers have started banging out clones 'aimed' specifically at female players. Never the sharpest tools in the box, games publishers.
So anyway, bemani titles have no real barriers to entry. They don't require you to have built up a set of video gaming skills beforehand, yet they never patronise you. They appeal because, at the end of the day, everybody believes they've got a decent sense of rhythm. Everybody wants to be able to play a musical instrument or dance like Tony Manero and Mike Peters. Even the miserable bastards. Go on, admit it. If you can't do those things IRL (and God knows I can't dance), you can here. The control in Guitaroo Man is so close to the feel of actually playing an instrument - you control the pitch, you control the timing - that the distinction between RL and the gameworld is made utterly redundant.
But that's still not the most important thing. The most important thing is that these games are entirely pacifist in nature. Actually, no, that's not the most important thing either, not on its own. The most important thing is that these games are utterly pacifist in nature and constantly uplifting. Indulge in a disco-styled dance-off with a friend in Bust a Groove (no leg control required - simply move your avatar simply by being able to copy a series of directional button presses and tapping one button at the end of every four-beat bar). Synchronise maraca shakes in two-player Samba. Create your own remix of a Curve track in Frequency - follow the rhythm of the vocal track, or the drums, or the keyboards, etc. Try and stop smiling.
You know what bemani is? It's the dictionary definition of joycore.
Which leads me back to Space Channel 5, or rather Space Channel 5 Part 2 (official Japanese site, well worth having a look at if you've got broadband and a set of speakers plugged in), which popped through my letterbox this morning. Simply put, the SC5 games sum up everything that is great about rhythm action titles.
Item the first: fantastic music. The music in the first game is largely based around Mexican Flyer, which should go some way to explaining part of its hypnotic charm. It is POP writ large, heavy on the beat, the bass, the funk. Few are the bemani games where the music is poor. Even in those cases where you feel it shouldn't work - Livin' La Vida Loca and the ska-pop version of Take on Me in Samba being the prime examples - something about the fact that you're interacting with it, that you're changing how it sounds, that you're dragged into the arcane mysteries of The Beat, something prevents personal likes and dislikes from entering into the equation and refusing to succumb to the game's charms. You end up loving every track you end up facing, regardless of your previous inhibitions or opinions. Every step of the way, SC5 pulls you further into that headspace. Your body moves without you noticing.
Item the second: the ridiculous, utterly joyful, pacifist storyline. You are Ulala, reporter for SC5. Your mission? To save all of the humans who have been hypnotised into dancing by invading aliens. Your method of attack? Match their moves. No attack at all. Beat them and they disappear, disappointed with their own poor performance.
Item the third: the entire aesthetic of the game. It is Barbarella in lurid, flourescent PVC, minus sex, plus disco. And when I say minus sex, I'm only talking about the sex in the plot. The game is sex on legs. The environments, especially in Part 2, are a mix of The Jetsons, The Man from UNCLE, Austin Powers - 'swinging sixties' decor, silver-age style. The character design is high gloss - camp as camp can be, without ever stepping over the line from sheer-love-for-life camp and into kitsch*. Rescue that blue-haired, pink-suspendered boy-toy! Save the cheerleaders! Help the ship's Captain (dressed in tight, nautical, navy blue duds, natch). Then once saved, they dance in formation behind you, shout along with you, some changing the style of the dancing. Tourists make everyone do the 'snapping a photograph' dance. The aforementioned Captain makes everyone march along, saluting as they go. Cheerleaders hut-hut-hut the beats, throwing pom-poms in the air. Save a musician and ze'll be added to your entourage, altering the music in subtle ways (or not so subtle, in the case of the diva in Part 2).
Then there's the way that Part 2 expands the first game's brief to become even *more* ridiculous, even *more* infective. There's the electric guitar 'duelling banjos' section, accompanied by fountains and synchronised swimmers. There's the Broadway show waltz with parasols. There's the multi-million dollar Top of the Pops section with the robot Ulala clones and Space Michael Jackson. There's the totally and utterly 60s pop bit in the square rooms, all clean two-tone colour and simple decoration.
And there's the end of the first game, which has never, ever failed to make me grin from ear to ear. Hundreds of people chanting the moves along with you as you perform them to a completely a cappella Mexican Flyer. You dance the boss into oblivion. Your spaceship flies past, leaving a trail of glitter in its wake, which you - and those hundreds of people - then step onto, before the final cry of "Now, let's march to the end of the galaxy!" splits your face in half.
Finally, they convince you that you can move. You *will* try to do hip isolations in front of the mirror and, for the period of time immediately after playing, you will actually manage them.
Christ, but I could go on like this for hours. Worth saying now, before I forget, that the SC5 games are the brainchild of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, as much an auteur as yer Miyamotos or Suzukis, even if he's rarely proclaimed as such. He's also the guy responsible for the acclaimed Rez (a game which, according to Muzuguchi, was influenced by Kandinsky and was designed to provide the player with the sensation of synaesthesia - his departure from Sega is yet another example of how that company is blindly running towards the Grim Reaper).
Like I said before: pure joycore.
*Kitsch, as any right-thinking fule no, is utterly hateful, intended as an ironic statement by shits who use ironic statements in order to patronise and belittle those they consider below their status. Kitsch, ladles and gentlespoons, is the sign of somebody who needs to be pushed down a well. Camp, on the other hand, is joyous, honest and infectious. It is the bee's knees, if for no other reason than it makes you use terms like 'the bee's knees' and mean them wholeheartedly.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 20:05
Picked up new spectacles today, stronger than previously and in smaller frames. Buggered if I can see through anything but the centre of them. Bah.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 16:36
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
I swear I'm not making these up:
best Hard Filx !!!! bikini codfish
M0M takes on ALL !!!! stellar heating
the sexiest older women! encoder sprouting.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 16:47
A big fat "Gah" to eBay. They update their site design, yet they still don't include any way of letting you jump straight to an individual's negative or neutral feedback. Dipshits.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 00:03
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
This thread has just confirmed what I'd always suspected: world peace is achievable, and all it will take is a copy of one of the Space Channel 5 games in every home.
Up, down, up, down, shoot shoot shoot.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 23:27
You know the most boring thing about being a moderator on Barbelith? Having to make up thread summaries for those people who can't be bothered to do it themselves. I decided earlier on that I was going to try and alleviate the boredom by making every summary that I have to write for somebody else into a four-line rhyme. I've got one up so far, and a second in the moderation queue.
And what I was thinking was of starting a thread where everybody could offer up their own proposals for summaries that are missing, following the same format. I just don't know how to word it. So far, I've got:
A thread with no summary can still be of use,
But the threadstarter's intentions may perhaps seem obtuse.
Suggestions?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 22:11
Monday, March 08, 2004
Monday, March 08, 2004
Nabbed from MST over at UK Resistance:
Girls need more positive role models such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, says the head of the education watchdog, Ofsted.
..he argues that television characters such as Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, had a part to play in promoting a more assertive and dynamic image of young women.
Obviously never seen season 4. Or 5. Or 6 and 7.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 16:12
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Just been forwarded this by a friend who works for Aedas:
Space Hijackers Architectural Design Ltd.
From the same site: Chase the Logo. Loses points for the now-obligatory "we're counter-culture, us" use of the word 'sheep', but picks them back up again because it's quite funny regardless. If you're still not convinced, follow my lead and view it as a parody of the Naomi Klein generation.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 15:17
Monday, March 01, 2004
Monday, March 01, 2004
Inanity.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 00:28
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