I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TIMBER TIMBRE-Live at Massey Hall (July 8, 2014).

I’ve known about Timber Timbre for years but I seem to always get them mixed up with someone else .  I think of them as a dark synthy pop band, which is entirely false.  Their sound has been described as having “an aesthetic rooted in swampy, ragged blues” and “beautifully restrained blues from an alternate universe.”

Their music is cinematic and kind of spooky and their’s is the first of the Massey hall videos in which the stage is very dark.  It seems barely lit at all.

Taylor Kirk seems to be the main voice of the band (he sings as well).  He says he used to take the train to Massey Hall.  And says there is something that affords a big audience and intimacy at the same time.  He wonders what the band could possibly do after this.  He thinks it’s impossible that they sold it out.

“Grand Canyon” comes alive with washes of guitars and synths (Mathieu Charbonneau) and thumping drums (Olivier Fairfield) before Kirk speaks the lyrics:

From the Phoenix liftoff
Somewhere over Blackfoot reserve
High above Drumheller
Sky hostess starts to serve

Cloud shadows on the mountain

And our shadow on the mountainside

After Salt Lake City

I have time to close my eyes

The music is a soundscape with washes of atmosphere and some noisy feedbacking guitar from Simon Trotter.

Kirk says, “Welcome to the most exciting night of my entire life.”  He asks “Are you ready for this shit?” as the woozy echoing guitar chords open “Hot Dreams,” with the peculiar lyrics

I wanna dance, I wanna dance
I wanna dance with a black woman

I wanna still, I wanna still
I wanna still my mind

And I wanna chance, I wanna chance
I want another chance

To distill
To distill that time

And I wanna write, I wanna write
I wanna write to someone so true

I wanna wake, I wanna wake
I wanna wake from hot dreams
Hot dreams of you
Oh hot dreams

There s a kind of Nick Cave vibe in his storytelling singing style the song stays pretty quiet until the guitar solo rings out.

“Bad Ritual” opens with moody guitars, a simple drum beat and noir piano and echoing guitars.  I love the way he sing/speaks the lyrics and the single piano note that echoes throughout the end of the song.

“Creep On Creepin’ On” sounds like an old 50 songs the way it starts, but with a more sinister keyboard spiking moments.  The lyrics are suitably disarming:

Oh, I buried my head in my hands
I buried my heart there in the sand
I was cocked, blocked, cured and charmed
I was ferociously put upon until it was clear
I should not keep on, I’ll just creep on creepin’ on

“Trouble Comes Knocking” ends the show with a slow, menacing riff with echoing synths sitting on top.  That jittery vibrating synth is there through all of the splashes of noise and menace that the echoing guitars provide.

It’s a pretty great set.  The band is really transportive live.

[READ: March 1, 2018] Otherworld

Segel and Miller’s first trilogy, Nightmares!, was terrific.  It was funny and exciting.  Frightening and yet safe enough for kids.  I absolutely loved the audiobook of it (and my daughter listens to it all the time).

I had forgotten that they were writing a new series and then I saw this book at the library.  I was curious if there was an audio book version, but I was so intrigued to read it that I didn’t even bother to look for one.  I also feel that I have Segel’s voice in my head pretty well at this point (and yet I still want to hear what he does with this collection–maybe I’ll listen to this book when the next book comes out).

In an interview with Segel and Miller they said that the biggest difference between writing a kids book and a YA book was that they didn’t have to censor themselves as much. That’s true here.  The language isn’t over the top, but there are a few four letter words thrown in.  The biggest difference is that since the main characters are teenagers, they talk about sex (a little) and the violence they experience is a bit more gruesome.  But otherwise it reads a lot like Nightmares did–a great combination of fast plotting and intriguing ideas mixed with some (dark) humor.

The story is about Simon.  Simon is the son of a rich family.  They live in Brockenhurst, NJ.  His parents are distant (his mom’s kind of mean).  They go to the country club and expect Simon to behave.  Simon has recently found out that his mother’s father was a legendary gangster known as the Kishka (because of his enormous nose).  Simon has inherited that nose.  And indeed, he found a picture proving that his mother had inherited the nose as well–although she has log since gotten rid of it and any connection to it.

Simon’s only friend is the girl who lives in the house behind them–through the woods.  Kat is the daughter of a poor woman.  She has as much independence as Simon has security.  She meets him in the woods and they immediately hit it off, with Kat teaching him how to protect himself from bullies, feral dogs and even his parents.

They were inseparable–although his parents didn’t really know about her.

Kat’s mother really liked him, and he did what he could to help them out financially.  Then Kat’s mom met a guy.  He was an asshole.  And he treated Kat and Simon like shit.  And worse yet, Kat’s mom was going to marry him.  He had money and power and he made Kat’s house a much nicer place to be (except for the security cameras).

And then one day, Kat told Simon that she wanted nothing to do with him.  She cut off all contact.  And her stepfather enforced it fiercely. It drove him crazy. So he did the only thing he could think of to get her back.  He bought her an expensive game.

The game was called Otherworld.  It was a fully immersive VR game. The headset and haptic gloves were in beta testing and they cost a fortune.  He bought one for himself and one for her.  He entered the game and it was amazing.  He could feel heat and texture and the graphics were better than anything he had ever seen.  He followed a path and saw a creature in an ice cave.  The creature seemed important but he was more interested in the woman who was following him.  Of course it was Kat, he knew it.  But the haptic gloves reacted to a lava explosion and he took them off before it hurt too much.  There will be more time with Kat in Otherworld.

Until his parents get home.  They know that he used their credit card to buy $6,000 word of video games.  Normally they wouldn’t even notice that much, but they’re watching him more closely.  His father brings the VR gear and smashes it in front of him.  And then he told then that they were moving.

His father has accepted a job in Dubai.  It would be a couple of years and their NJ house would become a vacation rental.  He could either go with them or go to boarding school.  He chose boarding school.

But Kat wouldn’t talk to him there either.  Then he saw that she had crashed her stepfather’s SUV into the swimming pool.  Something was wrong.  He thought this was a sign.  So he borrowed his roommate’s car and drove back home.

Her house was transformed into a mansion.  And Kat’s stepfather, Mr Gibson, told him that she didn’t want to see him.  He stuck around for a few days but got nothing for his trouble.  When he got back to school the FBI was waiting for him.   Turns out that his roommate had used his computer to hack the server of the world’s largest manufacturer of internet-connected toy robots.  He had programmed all the robots to say “the robot revolution is nigh.”  But Simon saw this as an opportunity.  He took the fall, got kicked out of school and sent back to Brockenhurst.  He got probation, his parents were forced to return to the States and his roommate owed him. Big time.

No private school will accept him, so he’s back in high school and has been trying to get in touch with Kat for four months.  And that’s when we’re caught up to the VR headphones and Otherworld.

Simon is in school with Kat but she still wants nothing to do with him.  She is hanging out with burnouts, a psycho, an anorexic drug addict, a known STD carrier and a stranger dressed in black. And she is getting a reputation as well.  Simon can’t stand it.

Finally, Simon hears that these guys are planning a party at Elmer’s, the old glue factory.  He decides to spy on them.  He knows she’s not really a burnout, but at the party, someone else has plans.  This person brought in a glowing object at which point, the whole building collapsed and some of the kids were killed.

Kat was sent to the hospital as were some of the other kids.  And Kat was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome.  Where her brain functions but her body can’t do anything she wants it to.  It’s not exactly a coma, but it’s similar.

While she is in the hospital, two men in suits come in.  They say that they are with The Company.  The Company is the name of, well, the company, who created Otherworld.  The CEO is Milo Yolkin, a young genius. He is working on a new prototype VR world where people with locked-in syndrome can move and frolick and live lives.  It’s like Otherworld but 100 times more real. Kat is a perfect candidate.

Simon is intrigued by this at first, and he’s happy that she seems to be able to do things rather than just lie there. But one time when he goes to see her, he sees she is moving–her IV is out and she seems to be physically in pain   What’ going on, here?

Well, someone was clearly watching him.  Possibly Martin, the nice guy who explained the VR stuff to him.  Because the next day in the mail he gets a disc and goggles–the very same setup that they put on Kat.  He is going to be able to enter the world with her.

And that’s where most of the story tales place (seriously, this intro part is about 1/4 of the book).

He is now in a virtual world that is violent and dangerous.  It is a place where people get to live out their every desire–with no fear of censor or rebuke.  In other words it brings out the worst in people .  And, it turns out, when the disc is attached, your body believes that whatever happens to you in the VR world is real–pain, pleasure, injuries, death–it could all happen to your body while you are in the VR world.

The VR world is terrific.  Creepy, scary, very believable.  While Simon is in there, he has one main quest–to find and recuse Kat.  But Kat also appears to have a mission while she is there and that it to find the creator of the game .

Conspiracies abound and we think we know exactly what’s going around.  But there are two people who have a bit more information than he does.  There’s Busara Ogubu who is sickly but a whiz with technology.  She is a great character and I hope we see  a lot more of her in the second book.  And then there is Kat herself who has learned a lot about what was going on from inhabitants of Otherworldly–inhabitants who have become sentient.

This story was really exiting and the last 100 pages were un-putdownable.

I’m really excited for next book (OtherEarth in Fall 2018).