SOUNDTRACK: SQUAREPUSHER-“Dark Steering” (2012).
Hot on the heels of a review of LMFAO I get to the other side of the spectrum in electronic music—Squarepusher. There’s no big choruses, heck there’s no words, but this music shares something with LMFAO. Well, actually it really doesn’t—except maybe keyboards.
Squarepusher play dark angular music. It’s very electronic and alien (and sounds like it may have been used in the background of Skinny Puppy songs back in the day). It’s abrasive and the sounds are otherworldly and yet in this song, there’s a melody to it. I have but one Squarepusher CD—that’s probably enough for me. But I am always interested to hear new music by him. It’s impressive the way he can take a song that starts out so noisy and get it to sound like real music by the end. It like the science fiction of music.
[READ: June 5, 2012] “Forward Thinking”
I have read only one book by China Miéville—Perdido Street Station. I found it to be quite challenging for a bunch of reasons and figured I wouldn’t read more by him. And yet I find that images from that book stay with me to this day (at least ten years on). So maybe it’s time to give him another shot. But where to start?
This entry in the New Yorker’s Sci-Fi issue is written as an “E-mail sent back in time to a young science-fiction fan.” And I loved it. I enjoyed how it started (with the author knowing that E-mail doesn’t exist at the time the recipient will get this—so who will it show up?) And I loved the central question: “How did you get into this stuff?” The sender knows that the kid will get asked this a lot, but the question should be turned around: “How did you get out of it?” Because all kids love sci-fi concepts. It’s just that some move away from it as they get older.
Miéville includes a few key moments in (his) sci-fi history: Page 40 of “The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher” by Beatrix Potter. What? Indeed, for this is the first time that (you) will be ware of knowing something the protagonist doesn’t—that there’s fish coming up to get him.
Next is Chapter 13 of Golem100 by Alfred Bester. I have never heard of this book. Although Miéville does warn us about it—he read it far too young and there’s some sadistic violence in it, what attracted him (and me, now) is the disrespect for text—part of the story is a musical score, another is a picture. It sounds cool. And of course it is long out of print. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: New Moon Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2010).
Back in the 90s, it seemed like every week there was a new soundtrack featuring an unreleased song from some great alt rock band. This meant huge sales for soundtracks, even if for the most part they weren’t solid start to finish. In fact, mostly you got three great new songs, three pieces of rubbish, one great song by a band you’d never heard before and two or three okay tracks.
I Just Read About That... 