Here are my three articles that are running in the nerve this month read them all
Ladytron with css as the commodore review
Lady tron and css
Apparently there are a few gay people who are into Ladytron, not that there's anything wrong with that. So when some dude started talking to me about the ethos of picking up 'women' with his ipod by showing them the songs in his play list so that they could judge he was obviously a catch, I was annoyed much. To my ease he immediately hit on some you girls. Girls who appeared to be too young for a guy like me to legally pay any amount of due attention. They had to be 19 because there was a bar. The perfect legal defence for any trial against the pervs who hit on these little girls. That has to be the guarantee if there's booze the girls are 19 end of story. If they're not then you can't hold it against a guy, talk to the bouncer because it is their job to make sure the illegals don't make it in. Unlike those all ages shows where you are never truly safe who knows how old those girls are better to just ignore them all together. At least those 'teen shows' start on time. All the sweaty children can get home to their suburban beds at a somewhat decent hour. Not when your downtown, here there is no law shows start 45 minutes late and not so much as a we give a fuck and then just to kick you in the nuts they have an hour long break between bands.
Remember 7 years ago when everyone would make fun of techno by going dun-sss dun-sss well that was the first 4 and a half minutes of the CSS set. Instead of leaving it at that the girl ran out and started screaming C-S-S over top of that simple beat, how goddamn epic. Is CSS worth the hype that has been rammed down our throat? Is the push actually representative? No dear sirs and madams they are not.
This band is a soft Kathleen Hanna mixed with an after school special that is 15 years old.. oh and the drummer looks like a molester, can't forget to grow that molester stash I mean fuck you are a French Canadian band. The singer's dancing is probably the most annoying I have seen since I had the misfortune of viewing that guy trying to pinch holes in his skin at 7:30 in the morning on East Hastings. She is the worst interpretive dance mixed with a spazzy toddler. It is as if six years ago she was drunk and at a party said hey everyone watch me make fun of the 80's and dance like a retard. Upon seeing this all of her friends laughed and said that she was soooooo funny and to never stop dancing like that.. AND SHE NEVER DID.
CSS sucked but, no matter, I wasn't there to see them anyway I was there for Lady Tron. After the hour long break and 2 over priced vodka tonics later I almost got exactly what I wanted. The lead singer was a little off but for the most palatable, every band deserves some margin of error in their live show. The band more than made up for it by sounding just like their album. The disgusting part was the second singer, the low voice, well she scared me. She was so flat it made my favourites songs sound gross. It entirely ruined Blue Jeans which sounded like a drag queen at karaoke.
More about the second singer; she looked like the pissed off friend of a girl your trying to bang, don't give me that you know the one. You talk about it behind closed doors with your prospect but she insists tells her friend is not a lesbian and thus hot for her. Oh and by the way you're a dick for even mentioning it. You know better, this girl is everything you imagined when your father utters the words man eater. This girl will not let you fuck her friend because you made a joke about periods a month and a half ago.
It probably would not be possible for Ladytron to take themselves more serious. All the gay boys are cutting loose why can't they. I made the effort to come to your show the least you can do is not look like your fingernails are being ripped off when you play your instruments. If music is this painful for you maybe you should just not play it anymore.
Vulcan freedom fighters article
I am shitting my pants for this band right now, they are that good. What Vulcan Freedom Fighters are doing is just so goddamn refreshing.
Hearing a band that is making good music has always been pretty rad, but when the band pushes it further by not sullying their music with personal vocals that I don't care about or relate to well that is just genius. Instead of trying to hash out some past experiences and turn those into some lyrics the Freedom Fighters just went an entirely different direction by sampling old Star Trek episodes. If you want to get you hands on some bad ass shit go to http://www.vulcansrock.com/freemusic.html and down load the album from The Vulcan Freedom Fighters they are so nice they are giving you that shit for free pretty nice of them wouldn't you say.
A smorgasbord of tense moments from Gene Roddenberry's vision are coupled with tracks that range from slow western to techno fused math rock. The best part about the whole thing is that you do not even have to be a gigantic Star Trek nerd to get it. The album is fully understandable without so much as viewing one episode.
The whole thing came about when Chris Haines and Brandon Wiggins had some time off from their Indy pop band. They had been throwing the idea about making the Freedom Fighters album for a couple years and finally figured they would just go for it. "We have both been huge fans of Star Trek and we have always been sneaking in sound bites for the tracks on our other bands records. And the whole time we thought that we would really have to find the time to do this justice." Wiggins explains the lead up to the album.
With their music at first it would seem that each song is representative of an episode. I will admit this is what I thought was going on with the album but chief Wiggins explained it to me. "We either had a specific episode we wanted to do so we would write the music and then pulled little bits from the episode or we would go through all the material and see thematically what would fit the emotional arc of either music we had or we would write the music.
All the samples are from the original series and it does not cross over to any other star trek such as The Next Generation "It's the old school original series that is what we are fans of and that is what we wanted to do." Not to worry though with event just the original series there is plenty of material left "We have decided to stick to the old series but we do feel there is more Vulcan freedom fighters left. There are two more albums left without going to the masters to." Haines re-assures us.
They did cheat though in one part of the album. On track 7 Vorta there is a sample lifted from David Lynche's and this is only because when the line "the pain" was to be taken from the episode 'Devil in the Dark' there was too much back ground noise. Since the back ground noise would interrupt the music they had to substitute it with something else. This is also why the famous "Kahn" bellow from Captain James T. Kirk is not included in the Track entitled Kahn. That will have to be left until the band can get some of the masters into their grubby little meat hooks. (My grade nine science teacher would use that phrase about our little pink puffy teenager hands when were going to handle the microscopes But he was an asshole I digress.) With the master recordings they boys could single out the vocal tracks from the series without the background noise. Hot damn that would lead to some sweet samples. I hope they get something from Sulu when he went crazy and ripped his shirt off and attacked the bridge with a rapier and had Lahura hostage. He was so sweaty and crazy it was awesome.
Some douche bags are going to call this a novelty disc because of the whole sampling thing and then try to dismiss it as something less than it is. Don't let these pretentious losers dissuade you this is some good material right here. When the band was asked what they thought about the possibility of people dismissing their music Haines replied. "I expect it but we haven't come face to face with that we haven't been slammed yet." Wiggins further tells: "I have friends in bands who would roll their eyes and describe it as being completely contrived. From our stand point it is an honest effort. It is different and it is encapsulated in star trek there is no question but from our artistic point of view this is a record that we really wanted to do. We spent a lot of time on it and we feel we did the best we could to take was going on emotionally and try to capture that musically." At the same time though the band openly admits that there are jokes in the music too so they are not being completely pretentious about the whole thing either.
Condemned: Criminal Origins Video Game review
Developer - Monolith productions, Inc.
Publisher .. Sega of America, Inc.
I hate to admit it but I screamed like a little girl when I was playing this game. I..m not going to sit here and try to tell you that I am some tough or anything. That I never freak out or get scared from stuff. Up until recently though games were not super scary. It has only been movies that have had such a strong ability to give people the willies. Well that is all over now if Doom 3 didn..t scare you the Linda Blair-childlike-zombie-looking-junkie-in-a-nighty-wielding-a-gas-pipe and flailing at you after you find her inside of a locker no doubt will.
Condemned: Criminal Origins is a psychological thriller, its dark, its dank and It..s fun as hell. People hit you with shit they ripped off of the walls like pipes and 2x4..s. You are running through a neighborhood that is worse than all those buildings they..re gentrifying on East Hastings. The funny thing about the bad guys in this game is that they would be zombies except they are not dead.. yet.. that..s left to you and your sledge hammer or what ever you grab from the assortment of weapons to smash their faces with. Instead of being straight up zombies like they look they are instead insane hobos and junkies of some new drug that makes they extra violent. Now you don..t even have to leave your house to have a Gas Town adventure.
You take on the character of Ethan Thomas, an F.B.I. agent in the ..Serial Crimes Unit.. (SCU). At the beginning of the game you are investigating your hunch that there might be some unusual connection..some shared criminal origin..between several of your recent serial killer suspects. You get separated from your team and half way kill yourself when you try to flip a breaker. Your main suspect laid this trap for you and steals your gun. After he kills two of you team with your gun he takes off leaving you to take the blame for the murders.
So of course you go rogue and try to track down the scumbag and clear your name. Guess what other predictable plot elements happen you have a friend on the inside of the F.B.I. who believes you and helps you along your quest. She processes evidence that you gather and send to her over your PDA. This is a cool part of the game there are multiple instruments that you use involving a black light, a gas reader and something else that is a really fancy camera thing. It..s pretty sweet CSI action and you don..t even have to put up with that dick head in the glasses.. one liners.
It turns out that the guy you are tracking is actually murdering serial killers, he..s a veritable serial killer killer. This makes two 360 games that have parallel plot lines to movies. Just as Dead Rising was similar to Dawn of the Dead, Criminal Origins is Very close to Suspect Zero.
The movie came out a couple years ago is actually quite good you so it is all right that the game has a similar plot..you should watch it. Its got that girl from the Matrix in it but alas not leather jump suit. The very sexy Sir Ben Kinsley is in it as well with his glorious bald head. In the movie the serial killer killer played by Kingsley was trained by a shadowy section of the government and he tracks down the killers by meditating and seeing what they see. It starts making him crazy and he is trying to recruit a replacement who will help him catch the worst killer ever, one who does not set method for his killings and thus cannot be tracked. The you F.B.I. agent is starting to have visions himself and starts to use these vision to track the serial killer killer who he thinks is just a bad guy.
This is parallel to the game in that your are tracking the bad guy who is killing other serial killers and you start to have these little visions throughout the game that allow you to see what your suspect is doing. Just like the movie except the bad guy is some hobo and not Ben Kingsley.
