Friday Morning Devotional Music

If you are an aficionado of the work of Justin Broadrick you'll be more than aware that this year has been a good year: by my reckoning we've had 2 albums, 2 full EPs, 3 remixes that I know of and a split EP from his Jesu project and the year isn't over yet. It wouldn't suprise me if he slips another EP in on the sly before Christmas.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, keep up! I go on about this sort of stuff all the time on this blog, plus if you peruse my last.fm stats it would appear that Jesu is my second favourite band, although the fact that Justin Broadrick releases music under several different projects complicates matters - if you add up all his other stuff he probably gets bumped to the top.

Anyway this post is for people who haven't been drawn into this music yet, I have a couple of mp3s for you.

First one is from Pale Sketches, an album of tracks that for one reason or another didn't make it to a full release. I'm damned if I'll call it an out-takes compilation as the stuff on this CD is far too good to be described as such. If you want a frame of reference, if you like Boards of Canada, but also like guitars I think you would like this. This is the first track:

MP3: Don't Dream It

The piano line has a hint of Coldplay about it, sort of, and there is a wonderfully positive vocal sample tying the track together - which seems to have been lifted from a very unlikely source. Anyway lie back, look to the heavens, think positive thoughts and let the bass line wash over you that's my advice.

Second track is from the Lifeline EP, it features the legendary Jarboe from Swans fame, and as a track seems to be universally hated by other Jesu fans:

MP3: Storm Comin' On

I really don't understand why, it's a perfectly good song and I really like the idea of trying some different vocals; plus Swans are my third favourite band according to last.fm - and criticising anyone connected to them is pretty much blasphemy.

Anyway, hope you enjoy these. If you do you can buy the CDs here and here.

Illness

I don't know if it's just my age, or that I've finally destroyed my immune system through alcohol abuse, but whenever I have a heavy night out (in this case Saturday - celebrating various England victories) I end up the next day with what can best be described as man-flu.

In other news, once again I'm getting bored of this website. To be honest I'm toying with the idea of replacing it with a simple 'about phil' page as facebook, and various other web tools seem to be handling my internet presence quite nicely.

* EDIT * Actually, everyone at work is ill so it wasn't just me begin old.

Dexter

Possibly my favorite TV series at the moment...

And I'm spent...

It seems fitting that the game to push my gamerscore over the 10,000 mark was Halo 3.


Fantastic game, even though I've completed the single player campaign on heroic difficulty (I normally plump for normal difficulty on these sort of games as I'm a bit crap at first person shooters, but I got shamed into playing through on a harder level as heroic was described very firmly by the developers as the way Halo is meant to be played) I'm yet to try any of the multi player modes.

One mode I really liked was the theater mode. Every action you perform is recorded and you can go back and watch yourself play through the whole game if you like. Not only does it provide evidence about how much I suck, it also lets you take really pretty screen shots and upload them to the bungie website. Pictures like this:

Anyhoo, thats one game down - now I just have to somehow cope with the next couple of months. The videogame release schedule gets really silly during October & November, I've managed to get my wishlist down to 9 games during October & November - and by god that's making a few sacrifices (goodbye Eternal Sonata, farewell Skate I just can't see how I can fit you in). I'm such an addict aren't I?

Geek with game - a self portrait

Me, about to finish the fight.

I wasn't sad enough to attend any midnight release parties, but I am sad enough to take 3 days off work to spend some quality time with Master Chief.

My incredibly well thought out opinion of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof

One word sums it up nicely: tosh.

There is one school of thought that sees Death Proof as a load of puerile sexist nonsense and then there is another school that sees the film as a tribute to a long forgotten era of cinema history.

Personally I just thought it was incredibly dull, the dialog didn't do a damn thing for me - I kept drifting off a bit, how the hell did that happen? It's a Tarantino film, it's meant to be full of snappy quotes for annoying students to memorize. And for a two hour film about a psychotic stunt driver how the hell do you only end up with two actions scenes?

Plus am I the only one who thinks this whole idea of Grindhouse cinema was just something Tarantino made up on the spot in some interview and the 'genre' never existed...

Mystery Song

Just found this mp3 in my iTunes, I have no idea who it's by and that is really bugging me. The only info on the mp3 is it's track 2 and the filename is woodpecker.mp3 - anyone got any ideas?