It strikes me that this might be a very sensible way forward for smaller bands in the modern music industry. There are a number of bands with solid fanbases who might either struggle to be signed in the traditional label model, or not enjoy working within that framework. This kind of website allows bands to allow fans to purchase something which they’ll really appreciate and in the process fund the release of new material.

Since I started composing this post Grammatics not only announced that they were splitting up, but that they were funding the release of their final EP via Pledge Music due in part to the success of the I Like Trains project. For my part I snagged their new EP and also a rarities CD. In addition to the release of the EP they’re going to tour for a final time, I’ll aim to catch them when they’re in Scotland. Pledge Music has enabled this release, something which might not have happened otherwise. It seems like a lot of bands are repaing the benefits of this business model already.

Issue number one with the PC version. I’m an avid 360 gamer and love the implementation of LIVE on the 360. The PC implementation is truly horrible. It does nothing but detract from the experience and given that I bought the game on Steam, I have all of Valve’s community options already running in the background. It is still nice to see my Live friends online, but the implementation is so crusty as to make it dis-interesting. Issue number two is that despite having a pretty good gaming rig all round, my ageing graphics card is really letting the side down. It seems an 8600GT just doesn’t cut it for the game and I’m not about to buy a new graphics card any time soon.

Despite these issues – and a few others – I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played of the game so far. The car handling is as cumbersome and floaty as usual in a GTA game and it definitely seems to have that classic GTA weird lock-on combat. However the issues have been smoothed to the point where they impact on the game to a much lesser extent than in previous GTA games. Tellingly though it’s the characters which have drawn me in so far. Without having a chance to learn too much about the character of Niko Bellic, I’ve already grown to like him. He hasn’t been particularly likable as yet, but I really feel for him having to put up with his cousin Roman. Rockstar have pulled off a brilliant trick by placing your vaguely reprehensible main character / avatar next to a truly disgusting character, you feel sorry for him. Previously I’ve never had empathy for the main character in these games, making it difficult to become engrossed in the story and action. I’ve heard that characterisation is a particular strength in GTA IV and I look forward to this greatly.

I’m going to be posting more on GTA IV as I play more of it. Partly as an assessment of one of the biggest games of the past few years – and how it holds up today – and partly as an exploration of my enjoyment (or lack thereof) of this style of game.

It seems they’ve decided to make 65daysofstatic’s new album We Were Exploding Anyway available for streaming on their myspace for the week before its release. It sounds pretty good even through the muddy filter of internet streaming. Of particular note are Come To Me featuring Robert Smith of The Cure on vocals and Tiger Girl (which I mentioned in my previous post.

So if you fancy it, give the album a spin. I’d expect a review of this album once I’ve had the CD for a week or so.

Personally I’d probably have preferred had Matt Bigland’s old band Mother Vulpine stayed together instead. Their brilliantly named song Keep Your Wits Sharp (Her Words Are Quick) was something of a favourite of mine a few years back.

Rolo Tomassi – Party Wounds
Rolo Tomassi’s debut album was a fantastically noisy thing. They have this real ear for creating monstrous sounding songs, with moments of beautiful fragility. This is more of the same. It’s much more amusing when you imagine the growling coming out of the diminutive female singer’s mouth. That blindsided a few people when I saw them live. You can grab the track here.

65daysofstatic – Crash Tactics
This has been a real grower. When I first heard it I was slightly disoriented by it. Is this 65daysofstatic dumbing down? Are they targeting a more mainstream audience? Probably not, it’s a completely different sound, but it’s probably no more accessible. Once I got my head around it, it really whetted my appetite for the new album. Grab it here.

65daysofstatic – Tiger Girl
Tiger Girl really got me going. The new album sounds like it could be a cracker. This is a plus ten minute dance epic. It builds layer upon layer, in wave upon wave. By the time the drums are being piled on and the guitar kicks in the song turns into something really beautiful. It’s clearly the euphoric outro to the album. Here’s hoping everything else is as good. Check it out on The Hype Machine, then grab it here.

I Like Trains – When We Were Kings
Another band with an album due out this year, I Like Trains are coming on strong. With guitars that sound like they’ll crystalise your ear drums, Dave’s trademark deep vocals and ever dynamic drums, it’s a great taster of the new direction. The track features some delicate vocal harmonies and a stunning middle eight, before segueing into the brilliant refrain “We rise. We fall. We pitch. We Yaw. No sleep, no sleep, no sleep. Repeat”, the song certainly knows how to capture the attention of the listener. Check it out here.

The Loudness War is a result of artists wanting to make their music stand out by artificially increasing the volume of their recordings. This makes the music stand out on the radio and sound better on the more standard – rubbish quality – laptop speakers most people will listen to music on these days. It’s achieved by increasing the average volume of the recording, which itself is often achieved by compressing the dynamic range. The image below shows the effect of successive increases in the volume on the waveform of Something by The Beatles. You’ll note that by 2000 the waveform has been pushed to the point where it is nearly hitting the limits of what is possible in the recording format. Probably the most famous example of where this has been pushed too far is the Metallica album Death Magnetic. This image shows two versions of the song My Apocalypse. The top is that from the CD release, the lower is from the Guitar Hero version. Note that the CD waveform has actually been pushed to the point where it is clipping on the edges of what can be stored in the digital format. This kind of waveform results in audible artifacts, or distortion. Laughably the version from Guitar Hero (which was mastered separately) has been shown much more care and as such is actually the superior recording. It brings me much joy to imagine Lars Ulrich in a recording studio repeatedly saying “No, we need more volume. Louder…louder!”.

Back on point, the beautiful thing about the production of The Destruction of Small Ideas is that they took all of this into account. This means that the album has a fantastic sound. The quiet moments are really delicate and the difference between these moments and the loud moments is astounding. It offered what should have been the perfect rebuttal to the continual pushing of the Loudness War. Instead people were left disoriented by something which was produced in a slightly different way. If we take a quick look at the waveform for one of the songs from the album we can clearly see that a greater range of volume levels are being utilised.

Yes it still has loud sections, but these are contrasted with just about everything in between. This is in sharp contrast to the Metallica track in which the dynamic range of had been throttled out of existence, similarly the multiple increases in volume of releases of Something by The Beatles would have a similar effect. It’s something which I would really like to see less of, but I’m not entirely sure the music industry is willing to go that way. Hopefully artists will continually make a deliberate retreat from the front lines of the Loudness War. It’s a battle that has already resulted in at least one major casualty, the production quality of which was criticised far beyond the realms of the hardcore music fan.

The New Teams
I find it hard not to feel incredibly sorry for Karun Chandok. While his pre-qualifying interview on the BBC portrayed a relaxed man, the shot of him in his car just before he went out saw him eyes wide terrified. Who wouldn’t be? Thrust -on a very public stage – into a qualifying session having never driven your car at all is not exactly on of life’s easier tasks. Chandok performed admirably in the circumstances. It’s just a shame that he – and the undoubtedly talented Bruno Senna – drives for the woefully under-prepared Hispania Racing Team. Furthermore, it’s a shame he binned it inauspiciously come Sunday afternoon. Both Hispania and Virgin had less than successful races. While Virgin’s Timo Glock had an impressive battle with the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen, his car eventually broke down as did his teammate’s and the Hispania of Bruno Senna.

By way of contrast the Lotus team were very impressive. Not only did both cars reach the finish, but one of these even placed ahead of a Torro Rosso. That must be a kick in the teeth for the Torro Rosso team, who must have been hoping for better.

Rosberg, Schumacher and the Other Silver Arrows
Mercedes must have been hoping for better. Similarly Schumacher must have hoped he could have run closer to the pace of Rosberg over the course of the weekend. The seven time world champion looked all at sea compared to an assured, quick Rosberg. He won’t want to see that happening to many other times this season. Rosberg is in a lose, lose situation though. He has to beat Schumacher and even if he does it will only be because Schumacher is old and out of practice. Similarly Schumacher has to beat his younger teammate as it’s expected, neither Mercedes driver can truly improve their public image this year. Rosberg made a good start in the race, jumping Hamilton after Hamilton went too deep at turn 3/4.

I can’t help but feel that McLaren pulled a fast one come the pitstops. The commentary noted that there was a flurry of activity and discussion in the McLaren pit not long before the stops. This was accompanied by a hurry up to Jenson Button. When Hamilton and Schumacher both pitted, Rosberg had to respond, or lose the place. When Rosberg pitted the following lap, he was held in his pit box -losing his place to Hamilton in the process – as none other than Jenson Button was within the 55 metre no release zone. The conspiracy theorist in me doesn’t believe that was by accident. First blood goes to McLaren in the McLaren / Mercedes war.

Vettel Scuppered By a Spark as Alonso Reigns Supreme
Vettel was the surprise package of the weekend for me. I had been fooled by Red Bull’s cagey pre-season into thinking that Red Bull were lacking in pace. Vettel disproved this spectacularly with his stunning pole lap. He looked incredibly strong in the first stint as well. Eventually a malfunctioning spark plug caused a loss of power that sent Vettel down to fourth though. This is unfortunate for Vettel, especially as it seems to be a sign that those Renauly gremlins are here to stay.

For my money though Alonso would still have secured victory in the Grand Prix. After the pit stops – even taking into account potential overheating issues – Alonso looked to have the strongest package by far. His startling pace once in clean air sent a real message not only to his teammate Felipe Massa, but also to the rest of the grid. Massa did well to qualify in front of his teammate, but Alonso showed he had the pace and consistency when it mattered. I think Massa took a real psychological blow this weekend in the battle of the teammates.

For the rest of the grid the message is clear. This is Alonso showing the world that he is back in a strong car and he means to win his 3rd World Championship.

With that note out of the way, on with the important stuff; the music. Minnaars immediately broke out into the excellent Busy Hands. Given that this is what I would consider a genuine dancefloor filler, that’s some statement of intent. Between the pulsating synth, delay-laden, staccato, dueling guitars and dynamic drums and baseline it would be difficult not to dance. The breakdown in the middle with the refrain “I’ve been falling into bits, been like this since the blitz” has always been something I’ve found hypnotically good. This was even more true live. The song has been reworked since it was last put on record and now has an extra bit at the end where a recording of the vocal line has been cut up and placed over new synth lines, before breaking out into an outro. It was a fantastic re-imagining of an already great song. Below is the original version of Busy Hands.

From there the band went on to play a mix of old songs and songs which have been written for their debut LP. This was their first gig since recording some of that album, but you wouldn’t know it from the performance. The band are nearly all extremely dynamic and charismatic performers. Special mention here has to go to the frontman and the two guitarists who were almost always doing something else, different, new, or unexpected. The new material all sounded very interesting, exploring a similar shouty, danceable guitar based area in a number of different ways.

The gig finished with an interesting new song (possibly just an intro for Are Lovers) which had 3 members of the band doing almost nothing but singing at the same time, all over the top of the drums, bass and synth. This led into the fantastic Are Lovers, before the band left having pleased at least a significant subsection of the crowd and it looked like they had fun along the way.

Hopefully their album will come out later this year. In the meantime I’ll make do with the compilation of their work to date “Of Our Delirious Former Loving Hours”.

Check out the quick look below:

In GIRD whenever you look in the mirrors – which is often given this is a racing game – you see a version of the game world which has been stripped of any beauty. I can’t be sure exactly what is rendered differently, but I suspect it’s a combination of lower resolution polygon models and also lower resolution textures. Maybe the lighting is different for the images seen in the mirrors as well. It’s really jarring to see the low quality of the scenes seen through the mirrors as opposed to the relatively high quality of what you see out of the cockpit.

I suspect I’ll have more to say on GRID in the next few weeks. It shares a lot of the issues that concerned me about Colin McRae: DIRT. That makes me worry about F1 2010, which is bound to use the same engine as both of these games. The mirrors in GRID are symptomatic of the occasionally odd decisions made in the development of these otherwise very good games.

That it is compelling is even more remarkable as the game is given only the barest of story frameworks from which to hang itself. It casts the player as a new arrival on the planet Pandora. A treasure hunter, of sorts, searching for a mythical vault. Fortunately they chose not to labour the point, or even overtly draw attention to the fact that the player is trying to open something which has remained unopened for quite some time, on a planet called Pandora. The rest of the game follows the trials and tribulations of your vault hunter as they search for the vault. Missions are largely handed out as quests by NPCs leading to some questionable MMO comparisons. Rather than it being based on an MMO I see it more in the vein of something like Diablo, minus the random level generation.

While not deep, the story is compelling; largely due to the charismatic band of characters – both friends and enemies – that the player meets along the way. There’s a whimsical style to the portrayal of the character which is really likable. Claptrap in particular is a standout character. The Claptrap robots are found all over and as their name suggests they tend to do all of the talking. They really remind me of Wall-E in a strange way and are always likable. An aspect of their charm probably relates to the fact that you often find them injured and in need of repair by you. In addition to the characters and the natural curiosity felt due to the desire to discover what is contained in the vault, the main driver for the player’s desire to continue through the game is the loot which can be found in crates and on fallen enemies. Loot comes mainly in the form of new guns, but also in the form of grenade mods and also new shields. All of these types of artifact can have various modifiers applied. Some guns reload really quickly, some cause elemental damage, some cause more damage and reload more slowly, some have massively powerful scopes, and for the most part the generation of these weapons and also the equipment is random. This means there’s almost always a shiny new toy hidden on the next enemy or in the next crate. This is really compelling.

The last compeeling aspect is the constant feeling of character progression. The game has an RPG-lite levelling system, with experience points and a skill tree. At level five the player unlocks the skill associated with their class and also starts earning points which can be ploughed into the skill tree. Each class has three distinct branches in its skill tree, though points can be ploughed into any branch at any time. In addition the game allows for the player to re-distribute these points for a cost whenever they desire. Even within one class there are enough different ways to customise your character to make it really interesting. There’s a level cap at 50, so there’s a limited number of skill points and it’s worth really thinking about the way points are spent.

The four classes are really very well differentiated from each other, both visually and in the way they play. The obvious choice for the person playing through it in single player is the Soldier, whose special skill is a deploy-able turret. The other classes are the Hunter; a sniper focused support class whose special skill is a bird of prey (called a Bloodwing) which will kill enemies for the player, the Siren; a weaker class with the ability to phase walk (turn invisible and invulnerable for a period of time, causing damage in an area of effect around the player whenever they go into or come out of the the phase walk state) and the Berserker; a tank like heavy weapons specialist whose special skill is an overdrive mode where they put down their weapons and cause huge amount of damage with their fists. With wildly different appearances, audio cues and play styles, each class feels really well rounded and also rewarding to play as. The Hunter in particular feels quite sadistic with the way he chuckles to himself whenever he kills enemies. Similarly satisfying are the screams of the Berserker in his overdrive more and also the sounds of his swinging punches.

Each class’s skill tree contains some really fantastically though out skills which add further to the entertainment. The soldier in particular has some really interesting abilites such as being able to heal team-mates by shooting at them. This really comes into its own in the multiplayer co-op mode. Indeed the class interaction is fantastic in the co-op setting, with each class feeling essential and really adding to the dynamics of a team.

Once the game has been completed a Second Playthrough opens up where the enemies in each area have increased in level (starting at around the level the player should be by the time they’ve finished their first playthrough), the loot drops also increase in their impressiveness in this second playthrough. This adds yet more longevity to a game which took over 20 hours to playthrough in single player, in addition to the various co-op games I also enjoyed.

While Borderlands is not without its issues such as occasionally nutty / dumb seeming artificial intelligence and a story which could really have been fleshed out a little more, it is easily a top notch game. Its weapons feel weight and accurate, the art style is colourful and unique, visual effects pop and fizz – particularly during intense battles- and the sound design is fantastic. I can’t recommend the game highly enough and look forward to the rumoured and well deserved sequel.