I just submitted my application for the library manager's position. Oh crap. I can't take it back now.
Well well well, that was a bit of a special weekend, wasn't it? There's bound to be any number of accounts better than mine of what exactly happened, so I'll just give some of my personal high-lights:
- Spending saturday morning searching on Youtube how to put on various arcane items of clothing. Apparently when you wear a kilt you're supposed to carry a small knife with you. If I'd known I was supposed to come strapped I could have brought my own.
- The kilt. Yes. Alright. Ok. After months of nagging from Johnstitch and, in a craven and base appeal to my essential shallowness, a pretty girl telling me how good I'd look in one, I will admit that I actually enjoyed wearing it. The increased air circulation was... interesting. I look forward to some of the photos. Although not the upskirt shot that Tragique apparently manage to take of me on one of the disposable cameras left out for the guests. Sorry Sky.
- The speeches. They were funny, touching, everything they should be, even if I didn't win the sweepstake on how long they'd last. Also Johnstitch managed to get in a shot at TheQuestion during the best man's speech, which is some truly dedicated dickery.
- Our two tables laughing uproariously at a joke alluding to, cough, 'lines' while the rest of the guests in attendance remained in stony silence. Whoops.
- The cèilidh dancing (did I spell that right?). Apart from seeing everyone around me screwing it up along with me, I also got a romantic waltz with super
I was going to write something mushy about the happy couple but after a long weekend I'm a little too brain-fried, so I'll just paraphrase what I wrote in their guestbook. I've known the two of them a while now, I could never have imagined the two of them together, but once they were I could never imagine them apart. Love you guys.
- Spending saturday morning searching on Youtube how to put on various arcane items of clothing. Apparently when you wear a kilt you're supposed to carry a small knife with you. If I'd known I was supposed to come strapped I could have brought my own.
- The kilt. Yes. Alright. Ok. After months of nagging from Johnstitch and, in a craven and base appeal to my essential shallowness, a pretty girl telling me how good I'd look in one, I will admit that I actually enjoyed wearing it. The increased air circulation was... interesting. I look forward to some of the photos. Although not the upskirt shot that Tragique apparently manage to take of me on one of the disposable cameras left out for the guests. Sorry Sky.
- The speeches. They were funny, touching, everything they should be, even if I didn't win the sweepstake on how long they'd last. Also Johnstitch managed to get in a shot at TheQuestion during the best man's speech, which is some truly dedicated dickery.
- Our two tables laughing uproariously at a joke alluding to, cough, 'lines' while the rest of the guests in attendance remained in stony silence. Whoops.
- The cèilidh dancing (did I spell that right?). Apart from seeing everyone around me screwing it up along with me, I also got a romantic waltz with super
I was going to write something mushy about the happy couple but after a long weekend I'm a little too brain-fried, so I'll just paraphrase what I wrote in their guestbook. I've known the two of them a while now, I could never have imagined the two of them together, but once they were I could never imagine them apart. Love you guys.
Well considering it hasn't been my birthday for pretty much a month now I really should put something new up here.
My birthday was pretty awesome. Was a fairly low-key event really, just celebrated with about 50 or so of my closest friends. You know. As you do. Thanks to everyone who showed up, you're all awesome. And the ones who bought me drinks are double-awesome because I am essentially a shallow and mercenary individual of low moral character. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I managed to talk to everyone who showed except one person. I'll get you next time *shakes fist*
Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. I've not been doing much as I'm saving money. Although I do have a shiny new PC. Which isn't really saving money but there you go. She's lovely, I call her Gotterdammerung. I can feel her throbbing between my legs as we speak :o
EDIT: Because Ortus asked for the specs:
Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz processor (Dual Core)
6GB DDR3 RAM
1792MB dual-chip Nvidia Gefoce GTX 295 graphics card
1 Terabyte Hard drive
Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card
My birthday was pretty awesome. Was a fairly low-key event really, just celebrated with about 50 or so of my closest friends. You know. As you do. Thanks to everyone who showed up, you're all awesome. And the ones who bought me drinks are double-awesome because I am essentially a shallow and mercenary individual of low moral character. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I managed to talk to everyone who showed except one person. I'll get you next time *shakes fist*
Other than that, things have been pretty quiet. I've not been doing much as I'm saving money. Although I do have a shiny new PC. Which isn't really saving money but there you go. She's lovely, I call her Gotterdammerung. I can feel her throbbing between my legs as we speak :o
EDIT: Because Ortus asked for the specs:
Intel i7 920 2.66Ghz processor (Dual Core)
6GB DDR3 RAM
1792MB dual-chip Nvidia Gefoce GTX 295 graphics card
1 Terabyte Hard drive
Creative X-Fi Titanium sound card
Oh fuck I'm 29, when did that happen?
Also, earlier my mum told me that I was the last hope to keep the Bartlett name alive into the next generation. No pressure.
Also, earlier my mum told me that I was the last hope to keep the Bartlett name alive into the next generation. No pressure.
Right, this is something that I actually promised Squee I'd do a long time ago after a few drinks, but never got round to. Those of you who know me might know that I tend to get a bit evangelical when it comes to music. When I find something new I want to shout about it from the rooftops and make everyone listen to it so they can all see what impeccable taste I have enjoy it. I used to run something on here a while back where I'd share some of the stuff I was listening to with you lucky lot. So here it is once more:
Big Poppa Creamy's Audio Goodness
Ok, so here's what you do, go download the zip file from here. You'll probably need to click the 'Regular Download' option and wait a couple of seconds before it lets you download. Then just unzip and enjoy. Hopefully. Or you clearly have terrible taste
The Future Of The Left - Arming Eritrea
The Future Of The Left is a band that kind of has a kind of long trajectory with me, one that starts with Mclusky. For those of you who don't know them, Mclusky were a welsh indie/punk/rock/garage/what-in-God's-name-is-that-terrible-racket band that I first stumbled across when I was bit a wee, wide-eyed Internet babby who would be impressed by any old bit of online tat and ran acrossthis wee oddity. Yes, yes, silly kittens swearing and all that, but what really hit me was the song.
Mclusky are an oddity in that they have an innate gift for catchy, poppy hooks that lets a song dig right into the soft fleshy meat of your brain, but they bury them beneath instrumentation that, at it's fiercest, swings wildly between a spiky, angular mess and full-on guitar-based GBH. This combined with the strangely emotive screeching of lead singer Andy Falkous and the self-deprecating sense of humour (note the sublime album title My Pain and Sadness is more Sad and Painful than yours all meant it took me a while to get from treating them like some sort of auditory road accident you can't look away from to actually liking them.
After they broke up, I was thoroughly relieved to hear that two of them had formed a new band, The Future Of The Left, and even more pleased to hear that they'd preserved so much of what made Mclusky awesome. The humour, the horribleness, the hooks that ensnare themselves thoroughly in your frontal lobes, they're all there.
Their second album, Travels With Myself And Another, continues subtly evolving their sound. There's no revolutionary steps forwards, some people might well accuse them of not moving on, but you can see more ambition in their latest release. The first track off the album is Arming Eritrea, a blitzkrieg of an opener, full of their trademark venom, offbeat humour and spikiness, all set to a fucking barnstorming riff. Go. Listen.
I Am Robot And Proud - Uphill City
It's probably the videogame nerd in me that gives me such an affection for chiptunes. It's hard to deny the nostalgic charge of the genre, dredging up memories of those 16-bit glory days (Mega Drive 4 lyfe yo, Nintendorks step off). The problem though is it often seems that a lot of Chiptune composers use the nostalgia and gimmick as a crutch, not using the tools to develop fully fleshed-out music. You often end up with what is essentially, well, tarted-up videogame music. This was probably what led to my occasional and not quite fully-developed forays into electronica.
It was one of those forays that led me to I Am Robot And Proud. A Canadian electronica outfit with strong videogame influences, they actually use chiptunes as one more string in their bow in composing some thoroughly mellow music. Uphill City feels almost like a road trip through indie-kid fairyland, opening with tinkling synths and fuzzy piano riffs with just the right amount of feedback before opening up into a vista of gentle electric guitar, beats and samples. It's warm, laid-back, ever-so-slightly-groovy and thoroughly pleasant.
P.O.S. - Low Light, Low Life
P.O.S. are a fairly recent discovery, and a welcome addition to my growing library of Hip-Hop. I saw him, of all places, opening for The Bouncing Souls at a recent concert. Unsurprisingly, a rapper opening for a punk band got a somewhat mixed reception. Even in our own group, me and Sky loved him, rdpixie hated him. He made enough of an impression for me to seek out his stuff afterwards and I was impressed to say the least. His music is the kind of thing I look for in Hip-Hop: smart lyrics, smooth flow, driving beats and a real passion to his delivery, something to light a fire in your belly.
Low Light, Low Life is more of a collaborative track, featuring efforts from several of the members of his crew, Doomtree. It's one of the most explicitly political tracks on the album but rather than making a point, it settles for firing off broadsides at whatever it can hit, from the slave trade to the creepy commercialisation of Celebration, Florida. It'd be easy to dismiss this as middle-class, trust fund raging against the machine if it wasn't for the deft skill and passion they pull it off with. Various members of the Doomtree crew spit verses over beats that are, by turns, brassy, driving and mournful. The stand-out part, to me, is Dessa's verse:
It seems we've fallen out of favor, the era ended on us,
Now the moneys just paper, the houses all haunted.
We had a hell of a run before it caught up,
For all the corners cut we got an avalanche of sawdust
Fuck yes. Also, how many rap songs manage to reference Arthur Miller, Bertrand Russell, The Flight of the Bumblebees and Airwolf all in one go?
Knock Galley West - Undead West
I mentioned the whole videogame nerd bit, right? Well I was playing the demo for Wet a little while ago and what struck me most of all was how fucking awesome the soundtrack was. I did some Googling and it turns out it was put together by Brian LeBarton, the keyboardist for Beck. I managed to get ahold of the full soundtrack and it's great fun. It's like a Robert Rodriguez film with the sleaze and swaggering sense of cool turned up to 11 and then choked on desert dust and tumbleweeds.
One of the standout tracks for me was this one, a swinging psychobilly romp with snarling vocals telling a tale of cowboys, zombies and grisly murders. It's great 'striding down the street while imagining yourself in an intricately choreographed gunfight' music. Wait, is it just me that does that? Shit.
E.S. Posthumus - Unstoppable
To end with, something suitably epic and loud. E.S. Posthumus, quite simply, makes soundtracks for movies that don't exist yet. They combine orchestral pomp with electric wail to stirring effect. To that end they usually end up having their music used in all sorts of stuff, and this was one of those songs that I'd heard in the odd place here and there that I'd always assumed was some stock bit of sturm und drang until I heard TheQuestion blaring it from his laptop.
There's not much to say about this, you might well recognise it from something but will be unable to remember what, it's thunderous, grand, epic and builds to a climax that's like smacking you in the face with the whole brass section. Enjoy.
Big Poppa Creamy's Audio Goodness
Ok, so here's what you do, go download the zip file from here. You'll probably need to click the 'Regular Download' option and wait a couple of seconds before it lets you download. Then just unzip and enjoy. Hopefully. Or you clearly have terrible taste
The Future Of The Left - Arming Eritrea
The Future Of The Left is a band that kind of has a kind of long trajectory with me, one that starts with Mclusky. For those of you who don't know them, Mclusky were a welsh indie/punk/rock/garage/what-in-God's-name-is-that-terrible-racket band that I first stumbled across when I was bit a wee, wide-eyed Internet babby who would be impressed by any old bit of online tat and ran acrossthis wee oddity. Yes, yes, silly kittens swearing and all that, but what really hit me was the song.
Mclusky are an oddity in that they have an innate gift for catchy, poppy hooks that lets a song dig right into the soft fleshy meat of your brain, but they bury them beneath instrumentation that, at it's fiercest, swings wildly between a spiky, angular mess and full-on guitar-based GBH. This combined with the strangely emotive screeching of lead singer Andy Falkous and the self-deprecating sense of humour (note the sublime album title My Pain and Sadness is more Sad and Painful than yours all meant it took me a while to get from treating them like some sort of auditory road accident you can't look away from to actually liking them.
After they broke up, I was thoroughly relieved to hear that two of them had formed a new band, The Future Of The Left, and even more pleased to hear that they'd preserved so much of what made Mclusky awesome. The humour, the horribleness, the hooks that ensnare themselves thoroughly in your frontal lobes, they're all there.
Their second album, Travels With Myself And Another, continues subtly evolving their sound. There's no revolutionary steps forwards, some people might well accuse them of not moving on, but you can see more ambition in their latest release. The first track off the album is Arming Eritrea, a blitzkrieg of an opener, full of their trademark venom, offbeat humour and spikiness, all set to a fucking barnstorming riff. Go. Listen.
I Am Robot And Proud - Uphill City
It's probably the videogame nerd in me that gives me such an affection for chiptunes. It's hard to deny the nostalgic charge of the genre, dredging up memories of those 16-bit glory days (Mega Drive 4 lyfe yo, Nintendorks step off). The problem though is it often seems that a lot of Chiptune composers use the nostalgia and gimmick as a crutch, not using the tools to develop fully fleshed-out music. You often end up with what is essentially, well, tarted-up videogame music. This was probably what led to my occasional and not quite fully-developed forays into electronica.
It was one of those forays that led me to I Am Robot And Proud. A Canadian electronica outfit with strong videogame influences, they actually use chiptunes as one more string in their bow in composing some thoroughly mellow music. Uphill City feels almost like a road trip through indie-kid fairyland, opening with tinkling synths and fuzzy piano riffs with just the right amount of feedback before opening up into a vista of gentle electric guitar, beats and samples. It's warm, laid-back, ever-so-slightly-groovy and thoroughly pleasant.
P.O.S. - Low Light, Low Life
P.O.S. are a fairly recent discovery, and a welcome addition to my growing library of Hip-Hop. I saw him, of all places, opening for The Bouncing Souls at a recent concert. Unsurprisingly, a rapper opening for a punk band got a somewhat mixed reception. Even in our own group, me and Sky loved him, rdpixie hated him. He made enough of an impression for me to seek out his stuff afterwards and I was impressed to say the least. His music is the kind of thing I look for in Hip-Hop: smart lyrics, smooth flow, driving beats and a real passion to his delivery, something to light a fire in your belly.
Low Light, Low Life is more of a collaborative track, featuring efforts from several of the members of his crew, Doomtree. It's one of the most explicitly political tracks on the album but rather than making a point, it settles for firing off broadsides at whatever it can hit, from the slave trade to the creepy commercialisation of Celebration, Florida. It'd be easy to dismiss this as middle-class, trust fund raging against the machine if it wasn't for the deft skill and passion they pull it off with. Various members of the Doomtree crew spit verses over beats that are, by turns, brassy, driving and mournful. The stand-out part, to me, is Dessa's verse:
It seems we've fallen out of favor, the era ended on us,
Now the moneys just paper, the houses all haunted.
We had a hell of a run before it caught up,
For all the corners cut we got an avalanche of sawdust
Fuck yes. Also, how many rap songs manage to reference Arthur Miller, Bertrand Russell, The Flight of the Bumblebees and Airwolf all in one go?
Knock Galley West - Undead West
I mentioned the whole videogame nerd bit, right? Well I was playing the demo for Wet a little while ago and what struck me most of all was how fucking awesome the soundtrack was. I did some Googling and it turns out it was put together by Brian LeBarton, the keyboardist for Beck. I managed to get ahold of the full soundtrack and it's great fun. It's like a Robert Rodriguez film with the sleaze and swaggering sense of cool turned up to 11 and then choked on desert dust and tumbleweeds.
One of the standout tracks for me was this one, a swinging psychobilly romp with snarling vocals telling a tale of cowboys, zombies and grisly murders. It's great 'striding down the street while imagining yourself in an intricately choreographed gunfight' music. Wait, is it just me that does that? Shit.
E.S. Posthumus - Unstoppable
To end with, something suitably epic and loud. E.S. Posthumus, quite simply, makes soundtracks for movies that don't exist yet. They combine orchestral pomp with electric wail to stirring effect. To that end they usually end up having their music used in all sorts of stuff, and this was one of those songs that I'd heard in the odd place here and there that I'd always assumed was some stock bit of sturm und drang until I heard TheQuestion blaring it from his laptop.
There's not much to say about this, you might well recognise it from something but will be unable to remember what, it's thunderous, grand, epic and builds to a climax that's like smacking you in the face with the whole brass section. Enjoy.
So I just sung 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' under Adam's door while he and Laurenzombie got frisky. That's not weird, right?
Ok, random question. I think I might have lent my copy of Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the Xbox 360 to somebody, but I'm not sure who. Does anyone have it?
Eek. Still working my nuts off and coming home exhausted every day. I'll endeavour to be more interesting soon.
Oh my, it's been a long, stinking stresser of a day. I'm really really glad I have a whole bunch of booze and the Internet to unwind with
