New Playlist

This week's playlist is up live on spotify. I've been having a great time using Turntable to find new music, and it's made me rediscover some tracks that haven't had a lot of love from me recently. There's a weird mix of heavier stuff and dancey Creamfields-prep on there, as well as a little Darwin Deez for good measure. Check out the extended mix of Wolfgang Gartner's Illmerica as well; I really love it, and I'll definitely be checking out his set at Creamfields.

That's all for now. Time to get some much-needed writing done.

Preorder Alkaline Trio's new album

Anybody who knows me will know that my absolute favourite band are Alkaline Trio, so I'm very happy that Hassle Records have announced that they're now taking preorders for the new album Damnesia. I'm a little disappointed that the album will be rerecordings of old songs, but there will be two entirely new tracks on there. I'm also interested to hear what they've done to the songs; preordering bags you a download of the new version of 'Clavicle', one of my favourite Trio songs. It's very, very different to the original; stripped down and acoustic, with Matt's voice sounding much more mature (as it will do - the original was released thirteen years ago). I like it, so I'm excited to hear more.

You can hear the new version here;

Alkaline Trio - Clavicle by Epitaph Records

You also get a Hassle Records sampler for free when you preorder, which contains another Trio song ('Dead End Road', from Good Mourning) as well as tracks from bands like Thrice and Tubelord. It's well worth a listen.

You can preorder the album here.

Turntable.fm

There's been a bit of a buzz about Turntable.fm over the last week or so. Currently it's in private alpha - you can only get in if you're Facebook friends with somebody who is already in - but if you can get access you should definitely check it out.

I've been waiting for a site like this for years. It's very, very simple, and that's the beauty of it. You form a chat channel (or join one), and you're entered into a room where all your avatars gather around on a dancefloor. There are five DJ spaces, and people can take turns DJing on the platform. You have a playlist on the right hand side of the screen where you can arrange the tracks you want to play when you DJ, and when you're just listening you vote on whether or not you like the track that's being played. When people like it their avatars' heads start bopping along to the music, and if too many people think your song sucks then it gets skipped.

If there's a good track on people will start talking about it, and it's a really cool way to find new music. The service already has a lot of music uploaded, but if you want to play something and they don't have it you can upload it. Only you will be able to access it if you do that, so you don't need to worry about people stealing things if you're playing your own creations.

I could rave about this service all day, but I won't. Instead I highly encourage you to go check it out; hopefully you'll be able to get in, and if not I'm sure at the rate this is growing that it will only be a matter of time before you know somebody on the inside. Enjoy.

Playlists

I listen to a lot of music. A lot. And I like making playlists. I've been letting the blog slide a little bit recently, so I figured one way to make sure I'm updating pretty regularly is to start posting up playlists of the music I've been listening to over the last few days. I've added a new page here, which I'll update every Monday, along with a blog post about the playlist. The post for this week's will have to go up tomorrow now because it's late and I need to sleep, but the playlist is up and ready to go. Enjoy!

Postmortem Studios - Tough Justice

I haven't played an honest-to-god pen and paper RPG for years. I grew up on a diet of AD&D and, in my teens, d20, and I've dabbled in other systems like Palladium, GURPS and various White Wolf games. I've always been a D&D player at heart though, and I've never really played any simple, rules-light games.

Enter Tough Justice, a roleplaying game in its truest sense. Your group form two teams of Defence and Prosecution and go head-to-head trying a criminal case under the Bloody Code of Georgian England. The emphasis is on the roleplaying; less, there's lots of die-rolling, but it's fast and simple and easy to keep track on.

At it's heart, the game is one long opposed roll. All of your actions - from the initial arrest to forming your case in the pre-trial phase to the trial itself - are done against the opposing teams, and success is measured in points that aid the strength of either side's case.

Character creation is fast and easy. There are six core stats to choose, and you'll find that once you have a character concept it's easy to decide where to put your points. The Composure mechanic is an elegant touch - it's a fantastic way of representing the stresses of the case and the effect of your opponents work, and watching it tick away after failing a check adds some nice tension to the proceedings. The Good At/Very Good At system is also a nice touch, and I like how much freedom there is in deciding what you can put there, but it would have been nice to have more than two suggestions to give a sense of the kind of things that are suitable. Something akin to the list of Merits would have been nice.

This is a big book, and it's packed full of historical info. The list of slang is very useful for adding an authentic flavour to the game - have a look at the highly entertaining sample of gameplay to see how it can really add to the atmosphere at the table - but I would have preferred it if the list was tacked into an appendix. That early in the book - at a point where you haven't seen anything about character creation or how to actually play the game - it's a little overwhelming to see pages and pages of period words. That said, though, you'll get a lot of use out of the list, and it's not exactly difficult to flick forward past the list and come back to it later.

The rules are light but robust, and it doesn't take long to get used to the system. The game will rattle along at a great pace. Get some beers in and a giant pizza and you'll have a great night on your hands.

EDIT: Ian Warner (the author of the book) kindly took the time to respond to my review over at the Tough Justice website. Thanks Ian!

My Rapture Playlist

#myraptureplaylist has been trending on Twitter for some time now, even though the world has once again failed to come to an end. I thought I'd get in on the action. Have a look here (you'll need Spotify).

RAWK

I haven't written much recently, though I've still been pretty productive. I go through phases; I'm either writing, or musicing (that's definitely a word). I'm in a music phase at the moment. I've been jamming on and off with my good friend Shey over the past few months, and finally it feels like things are coming together. We've got a couple of songs written, pending vocals, and hopefully we'll at least manage to put out an EP and get some gigs under out belt.

The problem with the music phases is that they make me want to spend money; mainly on additions to my crappy little home studio, but also on bits for my drums and occasionally (very occasionally) effects pedals for my guitar. Luckily my birthday is coming up, so I'm using that the feed the urges instead of splashing out with money I'm meant to be saving. Hopefully I'll have some tunes to share here before too long.


In other news, I continue to collect rejections from many fine publications. I've had a few near-misses, but they count for exactly nothing. Still, I'll keep plugging away. I'm also hoping to start having somewhat-regular story battles with my friend Charlie; coming up with ridiculous prompts, each writing a story and then swapping and critting. It can only be a good thing, and it will definitely be fun.

That's all for now. Do something awesome this weekend.

Zeldastep

I love The Legend Of Zelda. Always have. I also love dubstep, though it took me some time to come around to that. So imagine my joy when I found this on YouTube;

I don't think I need to say anything else here, do I?

Douglas Hulick - Among Theives

I just got done reading Douglas Hulick's debut novel Among Thieves. I hadn't heard much about it before I picked it up in Waterstone's - I'd seen it mentioned on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist but it hadn't really appealed to me so I passed. For one reason or another, though, I picked it up while browsing the other day and before I knew it I'd read the first two chapters. I figured I'd best buy it and give it a whirl.

I won't give much away, because it's a very twisty you-won't-see-this-coming sort of story, but I will say this; it's good. There's a lot going on in here, and a lot of worldbuilding that needs to be done - especially as this isn't the standard almost-Europe fantasy that is so prevalent. With that being the case the book occasionally suffers from info-dumps where one character tells another something that they should already know, but it's not so often that it's distracting and by the time you get into the second half of the book that's mostly done with.

The pace rips along from the word go - I genuinely couldn't put it down in places, which isn't something I've been able to say for a fantasy debut in a long time. I could have done with it being slower, simply because I'd like to spend more time in this world, but I get the impression that Hulick has plenty more tales to tell here.

To me, this felt like the successor to Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard sequence - and for me it filled the void that is the massively long wait for The Republic Of Thieves. If you've read The Lies Of Locke Lamora and enjoyed it, I'd highly recommend Among Thieves.

8in8

Last week Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds and Damian Kulash (who must be getting sick of having from Ok Go tagged after his name every time somebody writes out that list) went into the studio as 8in8. The idea was for them to write and record 8 songs in 8 hours, using the force of Twitter to crowdsource ideas. They didn't quite succeed - they only managed to get 6 songs down - but so far the album (called Nighty Night) has raised a hell of a lot of money for Berklee City Music.

What's more, the album is actually good. Opening track Nikola Tesla is a vaudeville romp that sounds like it could have come out of the sessions from Palmer's solo album (which I'd imagine has something to do with Ben Folds having produced that album). Because The Origami is a slow, thoughtful ballad that's sort of a coming-of-age story in second person, told by the main character's parents (if a song can have a character). I always forget that Amanda Palmer can deliver soft vocals, but she does it brilliantly here.

One Tiny Thing, for me, is the stand-out track on the album. It sounds like Ok Go at their best, creeping and moody with jazzy piano thrown in at the most unexpected times. This one will stay with you.

Twelve Line Song ups the tempo again, and you'll be singing along to it before too long. The low production values (something I love but that plenty of people will hate) really stand out on this one - the vocal harmonies aren't quite spot-on, and the oooh's sound a little shrill in places, but it really doesn't matter. It's a fun song.

I'll Be My Mirror is another Amanda Palmer song, the kind of story-song that she delivers so well. The only problem is that it doesn't really go anywhere - the same piano is repeated throughout with the only change being some guitars thrown in between the verses. This one didn't really stand out for me.

Final song The Problem With Saints sees Gaiman trying his hand at vocals. It's more spoken than sung - to be expected from somebody who isn't a singer, really - though it's a decent attempt. You can hear what was being tried on this track, but for the chorus to really pop out it needed a talented vocalist. As it is there's no real vocal expression here - which pains me to say. My almost fanboy-ish-ness (is that a word?) for Neil Gaiman is well documented, so I really wanted this one to be great. Instead, what stands out here is the piano playing, which is the best on the album so far. If the vocals were better I'd put this down as my favourite track, because lyrically its also fun and interesting.

All in all, it's well worth a listen (and for a lowly $1 - which goes to a good cause as well) you might as well give it a go, which you can do here.