Rapping, deconstructed: The best rhymers of all time

New Keepers of the Water Towers: Infernal Machine

The word ‘infernal’ refers to Hell. When someone is a nuisance, irritating or tiresome, they can be an infernal nuisance thus representing a hellish experience for you, and thus any hellish experience can be described with the word ‘infernal’.

So too can a particularly boring and insufferable experience. I’ve often thought of grinding through heavy games such as Diablo in this vein. Apparently Diablo III is super easy in this respect. Who knows. I’m confident I’d still find it boring.

Infernal Machine feels like a machine that spat out ideas without any focus, stuck in it’s own hell of second-hand parts. There are moments when you hear good ideas – surf rock’s lead slides and rhythm track chromatics (‘Tracks Over Carcosa’) – but these good ideas never go anywhere or become more interesting, and the productions not big enough to drive home dynamics that seem to just happen without any build up or force.

‘The Forever War’ is aptly named because it takes forever to get anywhere, and if you can allow yourself to be dragged along for the first five minutes, I’d be impressed if you make it another four at which point the guitar finally breaks out of its annoyingly picked chord figure, lasting a mere fraction of the time and making you wonder where the rest of that lead break went.

Maybe a black hole.

Neither the rhythm nor the lead work is interesting or catchy enough to sustain attention – and at least one of those needs to be to allow the listener greater pleasures. Most tracks will pass without you even noticing them, which, in one respect, could make great background music you don’t have to pay any attention to.

‘Tachyon Deep’ focusses more on a bongo rhythm which is a great enjoyable contrast without diverting from the band sound. Passing the halfway mark, bigger drumming seeps in and the guitar distorts away from the sustained notes, but the song never reaches any true climax, and the final chord stabs aren’t convincing enough.

In many ways this is my kind of music – stoner rock via prog and space rock with some sprinklings of surf rock. It all sounds like it’d be a good, if not interesting, mix. It is a good mix, it’s just that the ideas never rise above bog standard. I can honestly say that I like what the band is attempting, but if anything, the shortest ‘song’ (tracks are mostly instrumental with some dreary vocals moaning here and there) at a mere two minutes displays aptly what they can’t do with the simplest of ideas. ‘Escape Aleph Minor’ and the following tracks want to invoke Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma but without any of the crazy. There’s a sense of serenity at times, and there are moments of doom, but neither feel like they’ve been created through the shear abandonment of the soul towards musical ends. It all feels too safe at times.

This album has more of the feel of a band exploring music without solidifying or editing any ideas. It’s almost what I imagine Tool might sound like during rehearsals when they first start rehearsing riffs. The difference of course is that Tool spend time (actual time within the space/time continuum) working on and developing those ideas; Infernal Machine sounds like neither of those two events took place and New Keepers of the Water Towers just shrugged their shoulders and said “yeah, that’ll do.” It’s not like any of that’s particularly bad, I just can’t imagine someone who actually enjoys this album would come back for extended periods of listening.

Maybe you need to be stoned out of your brain to enjoy this music, or surfing on an acid trip; I don’t know and I don't do drugs anymore, and I'm not going to either just so I can get more out of this album.

Bloc Party: Hymns

A lot of thoughts crossed my mind while listening to this album, all of which I was going to write up.

...None of which I wrote down.¹

• If you wanted more songs like ‘This Modern Love’ here they are...

• There’s a specific hard rock Bloc Party riff that can be identified in songs like ‘Helicopter’, ‘Hunting for Witches’, and ‘One Month Off’...

• There's something gospel about this album...

And other stuff like that.

It will be easy for rock fans to dismiss this album. And I can already hear the dissenters yelling "the party's over!" But what they dismiss is what they fail to recognise.

        Where Four was a bit of a mess – ideas undeveloped, throwaway riffs at the forefront, noise for noise’s sake – Hymns is a calm affair, pursuing light rock that’s about as far from anything anyone expected after getting the mixture of music that comprises the dance orientated ‘Flux’ and ‘One More Chance’ singles, the Four album where it felt like they were attempting to get back to how they began, and the The Nextwave Sessions EP where who-the-fuck-knows what was happening. (Okay, to be fair, we saw The Nextwave Sessions coming after hearing the first two songs on Intimacy, and those songs being followed through with ‘Octopus’...)

‘The Love Within’, which opens the album like a relaxed version of both 'Octopus' (Four) and 'Ratchet' (The Nextwave Sessions), begins with a direct quote from A Weekend in the City’s ‘The Prayer’, the first line of both songs being “Lord give me grace and dancing feet” as though that’s your insight into this album: It’s about grace.

        And forgiveness.

        There’s a strong sense of religiosity that flows through these tracks without being overtly devotional. While it’s befitting of the album title, it’s also appropriate that the title is Hymns as the songs musically provide the backdrop for Okereke’s pleas towards a saving grace, whether that be God or a physical partner seems irrelevant. Okereke sings “For only he can heal me with his touch, help me overcome it” in the second song. Here the backing vocals repeat the title like they were a gospel rock choir and the guitars bring some chorus contrast during the break.

        The most lyrically devotional perhaps is the song ‘The Good News’: “I used to find my answers in the gospels of St John, now I find them at the bottom of this shot glass. Everyday I’d go down to the water and I’d pray since you left me that way. Oh Lord I’m trying to keep my sights on the good news that’s in my heart.” Meanwhile the music and melodies keep the vibe positive to reinforce the meaning behind all of it.

That positivity is what is overt, however. And while that will be off-putting for some, others will move with it and discover that the catchy vocal lines that are present in the best of Bloc Party’s work are also present on this album.

        It will just be unfortunate if those who dismiss this album view that positivity as emotionless. But that is simply mistaking depression, problems, or heartbreak, as the only emotions. Okereke is never dispassionate in anything he sings. The emotion is always there and regardless of whether you like this album or not, that has to be acknowledged – in no way does it lack emotion. Perhaps it lacks the raw emotion of a brand new band carving it up on the indie front – sure it lacks that – but that’s because the band isn’t brand new anymore, to expect that is idiotic. This is why Four feels like it never really works – even the second album was a much tighter affair. But here Okereke sings just as passionately to all his exes that he has left behind – “All these words will fall short, but I must try.” The sincerity is almost heartbreaking.

If you need one song from the previous albums that works as a reference point for what appears on Hymns, that song would be ‘Real Talk’ from the previous full length Four. The unfortunate part is that ‘Real Talk’, as simple and gentle as it is, still has a propulsive rhythm section that pushes the song underneath Kele Okereke’s heart-felt vocals. With the departure of super-drummer Matt Tong, who provided an abundance of energy on previous albums with erratic beats, and the quitting of Gordon Moakes, whose unobtrusive bass lines subtly knew when not to play and when to push their weight from underneath, Bloc Party no longer has those two elements that lifted up mediocre songs and propelled great songs to greatness.

        Russell Lissack’s guitars have been stripped of all their distortion – no more pounding out big riffs, though sometimes those riffs still peak their eyes out with a clean guitar tone (‘So Real’), while ‘The Good News’ chorus brings back the blues inspired riffs first heard at the beginning of ‘Coliseum’ (Four). Backing vocals consistently provide an uplifting feel despite the sometimes downer lyrics. And this is the album all over: where songs like Intimacy’s ‘Better than Heaven’ lament the loss with electronics, soaring vocals, and bitter lyrics that would build to a culmination of full band dynamics, textures on Hymns remain thin with atmospheric guitars, keys, and vocals that are questioning rather than angry and only occasionally rise to soar, but in these cases (‘A Different Drug’) they soar on their own. When the spirit lifts (‘Into the Earth’) clean indie pop takes over and the feel of acceptance pervades the lyrics – “Into the earth our bodies will go” – as the melody remains happy and the beat gently grooves.

        On this album the music never takes centre stage, as the lyrical themes of finding peace and moving on seem to be the focus. While that’s highly understandable considering the topics, it’s also a problem. Louise Bartle’s drums are there, but they are never really there; Justin Harris' bass is so far down in the mix you'll barely notice that there's a bass at all. The rhythm section sits in the background, tidy, polite – too polite. While this doesn’t necessarily detract from the musicians' abilities, it does speak more for the album being a Kele Okereke affair rather than a fully fledged band album.

        The one song that gets closest to their pre-Silent Alarm EP era is the song ‘My True Name’ with it’s clean guitar intro, but suddenly it takes on a heavy synth backing that feels ripped straight out of the 80s New Wave era. It is one of the stronger songs on the album, and there is something undoubtly powerful about how they have chosen to use this influence. With moments like this, it’s clear they will never truly “go back” to being the indie rock band that won so many people's hearts with their hybrid of dance and rock, but there will always be hints. You might hear a guitar riff here, a vocal line there, but with a new drummer and bassist, those frantic beats and rhythms are gone.

There’s a catchiness to the music that isn’t immediately noticeable, and is what those who have given up after a first listen will never discover; others will latch on to the straight forward beats and allow the music to wash over them as it is meant to do, rather than knocking them over like much of Bloc Party’s previous albums were wont to do.

         We’ll probably never hear songs as powerful as ‘Like Eating Glass’ and ‘Banquet’ again, or be bowled over by heavy riffs like ‘One Month Off’ and the desperation of ‘Talons’. But that’s okay, because those song are there to listen to whenever we want. Hymns deserves to be appreciated for being brave enough to wear both the pop influences and gospel inspirations on it’s sleeves, and to continue the progression of a band trying something new and different.

1 Except that sentence. I did write that sentence down! Well, technically I spoke it. I spoke it into my memo app on my cell phone as I drove down the highway listening to this album. Shut up. Don't judge me.

Viriconium and the Lesson Learned

Viriconium is a tough read – you might want to immerse yourself slowly in the language M. John Harrison uses to describe his vision of Earth in a far-distant future, otherwise you may find yourself drowning: Big words and long descriptive passages are his stock in trade…

“In the water-thickets, the path wound tortuously between umber iron-bogs, albescent quicksands of aluminum and magnesium oxides, and sumps of cuprous blue or permanganate mauve fed by slow, gelid streams and fringed by silver reeds and tall black grasses.”

As a writer, I found the language fascinating; as a reader I found the passages hard-going and I began to question why I was still reading this book, considering that I had struggled through only a quarter of it. Wouldn’t I get more satisfaction from riding my skateboard out in the sun? Perhaps even working on that song that I wrote the other night that doesn’t have any lyrics yet!

There had to be a reason I was wading through these verbose descriptions that culminated in dizziness and a weight-riddled head, as though my brain was trying to bust out of the skull in an attempt to escape. There had to be.

Flipping the book over, I read the quotes on the back cover: “Harrison is a blazing original …” (Clive Baker). I nodded my head – he was definitely different. “One of the best modern writers of fantasy. No, one of the best modern writers period” (Katharine Kerr). Harrison wasn’t convincing me of his brilliance. “No-one can use words like M. John Harrison. They trust him” (Michael Marshall Smith). Maybe my problem is that I don’t trust words, maybe that’s why this book is such a hard slog through tortuous word-thickets and albescent quicksands of paragraphs.

And yet I pick the book up again and push on.

It’s true, y’ know – I don’t trust words. Words cower when I demand their use, they go into hiding, they look for better writers than me to express their inner beauties.

I stumble.

Far too often,

On my own inadequacies.

So I rest for a while, have a break from reading. Midnight is closing in and I have words, many of them – mostly Harrison’s – swirling around my head like a thesaurus. But what to do with them? I pick up pen and paper and suddenly words come pouring out in short verse-like sentences that don’t make any apparent sense, but I don’t care because I am writing, and words spill forth with more enthusiasm than ever before, demanding that I write them down instead of going into hiding. Where once inspiration would peter out under the weight of criticism, here instead, I let go of all preconceptions and get more done.

I titled the piece ‘The Candle End of Time,’ but when I had the (brilliant) idea to attach it to the song without lyrics that I had written, it became ‘The Sign of the Locust’ – both are references to Viriconium, the book that taught me to trust words.

It is ironic that in preparing for this essay I read an article where Harrison states: “This is one of Viriconium’s many jigsawed messages to the reader. You can’t hope to control things. Learn to love the vertigo of experience instead.”

Reading Viriconium was nothing short of experiencing vertigo!

     13/03/08                  

Palmerston North     

Tangle of Bushes (Love has not given up)

In reply to 'Rules of the Game' by Daniel Golding

Note: In 2012 Hyper magazine published an article by Dan Golding titled 'Rules of the Game'. I'm not sure (that is can't remember) what position he was taking in the article but this was my response. Having discovered this in my files yesterday, I thought it was written well enough to be posted here.

I think we can safely say, and agree upon, that video-gaming is not a sport. Sports, in my opinion, require physical activity beyond twiddling your fingers and exercising the synapses in your brain. I believe that a game needs competition, and that competition must be an adversary of some type. This begs the question, is chess a game if you are playing against yourself? Well, I would argue, yes, because you are facing the adversary who just happens to be yourself. Fair game, I guess.

It's easy to view sport orientated videogames such as Wii Sports and Tekken or Street Fighter as games because they inherently take the forms of sport and apply them to the computerised world, thus taking out the 'sport' but retaining the game. So by that definition, game is form, not activity.

Any sports-modelled videogame still requires a competition-based form to involve yourself in the playing of: whether you are playing against your flatmate or the computer, you are still playing against an adversary that you may not win against.

When we enter the world of story-based videogaming, we are not entering a game, as there is no other competition, no one I am competing against; I am simply taking part in an exploration of a story-based entertainment. By picking up a console controller, customising my character and deciding which reply my character will answer with, I am no longer a passive viewer accepting another person's story as it is told to me, but an active part of the story who makes sincere and often involving decisions about how another person's story is going to be told to me – that is interactive entertainment. It is not a game, there are no rules, but there is a specific storyline that must be adhered to to get the full entertainment value out of.

The problem with viewing story-based videogames as a 'game' is knowing that it is a forgone conclusion that you will win, when essentially, all you are doing is concluding the story that you begun by opening your videogame box and inserting the disc – practically no different than picking up a DVD and inserting the disc, or via a different medium, picking up a book and opening the first page.

No matter what setting you play the story-based videogame on – even on the hardest setting – you can win if you put in enough time. The reality of the true game is that another player just might be better than you no matter how much time you put in. In that sense, only the videogame itself is your adversary. Can I really beat Dead Space 2 with only three saves allowed? I certainly can! (The question is, can I be bothered?)

Online is different though. Online we have competition. We have many players playing against each other, racking up high scores and at times competing for prizes. And, although I have never played online, are there not rules that accompany how you play online? Or perhaps, codes of conduct would be a better phrase.

A game of chess, or tennis, dictates how you play simply by the rules that have been created to accommodate the form of the game. Yes, it is possible to cheat, and there in lies the necessity to acquire a judge or adjudicator to impart impartiality.

Videogaming requires no referee, no adjudicator to check if I am cheating or not. That, assuming cheat codes are available, is entirely my choice, and at the end of the day I only answer to myself.

When playing a traditional game in competition with another, you cannot afford to stand around and do nothing, otherwise your adversary will take advantage of your slack and begin scoring points against you. Many videogames I have played, I have allowed my character to stand around doing nothing, or hide in a corner to generate more health.

I believe that developers need to ask themselves whether they are building a 'game', or an 'interactive entertainment'.

If developers really want their products to be viewed as games, they need to stop making every mission and quest so easy to complete by providing instructions, cues, markers and arrows that make the story and puzzles nothing more than a walkthrough.

On the other hand, if developers are only making interactive entertainments, then it is the attitude of gamers themselves that need to change. The reason Prince of Persia (2008) flopped was not because of the game, which was a beautifully rendered semi-cell shaded enjoyable romp through an imaginary fairytale land, but because of the voices that decried its 'easiness' and the resulting criticisms towards the gameplay (and rather thin plot). For once, I had an interactive entertainment that obeyed its own internal logic – if the story requires my character to win-out in the end, then it makes complete and utter sense that he doesn't die during the story. PoP (2008) I believe, is the first true example of an interactive entertainment through the videogame form without relying on the actual 'game' element whereby it is necessary for you to try not to die or be 'beaten' by the computer.

• 2012, Whangamata

TROPES VS. MOVIEBOB (The Big Picture)