Shimmer, Blooming

We've got the shimmer
Main pad is on the blink though
Blooming teleports!

Fear of Music by Talking Heads

Talking Heads got classified as new wave back in the day, but this album from 1979 shows they were already pushing against genre boundaries. Brian Eno returned again as producer, and his influence is clearly felt on the opening track “I Zimbra” which plays with Afrobeat rhythms.

Whether this is cultural appropriation is left as an exercise for the reader, but it was certainly a bold statement of intent, along with David Byrne declaring that they had left their roots in the famous Mudd Club and C.B.G.B scenes behind on the high energy track “Life During Wartime”. Other tracks lean into the weird and offbeat, especially with “Air” and “Heaven” that open the second side.

This was an album that I listened to a lot in the 80s and the only reason it doesn’t quite make 5 stars now is because I prefer the live versions of some of these tracks on the “Stop Making Sense” movie.

Gadji-beri-bimba-tastic!

Hearth, Nightingale

Chilly evening
Drawing close to the warm hearth
A nightingale sings

Winter In America by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson

Gil Scott-Heron is probably best known for his beat poetry, but this album shows that he also has a fine singing voice that fits these jazzy numbers nicely. The laid back style is in contrast to the lyrical content, especially on songs like The Bottle singing about the pernicious effects of alcohol on the black community.

The highlight of the album is “H2ogate Blues”, a track that harks back to Heron’s earlier poetry style and is an excoriating attack on the American political establishment during the last days of the Nixon administration. This is an extraordinarily powerful piece that is unfortunately all too relevant now with a venal system using foreign wars as a distraction from their own personal corruption.

You really can’t argue with lines like:

“Watching the price of everything soar
And hearing complaints ‘cause the rich want more?”

Carp, Green Leaves

Mill pond in autumn
Green leaves trail in still water
Cunning carp concealed

Since I left You by The Avalanches

This was a fascinating album to listen to, comprised of thousands of samples carefully stitiched together by the two principal members of the band working separately and swapping tapes as they went along. The samples range from obscure musicals to bits of Madonna and apparently the band were only making it for their own amusement and not really expecting anyone else to listen to it.

When it became clear that they had something interesting in prospect, their disorganised method came back to bite them and they had to employ a specialist to get clearance for their samples, removing any that were still problematic (including a chunk of Rogers and Hammerstein that originally formed the opening intro. Apparently this album was the first time that a Madonna sample was ever approved for anything like this, and it's a good shout because the track including it is a joyful and cheeky little number that genuinely counts as a transformative use.

I've had an interesting couple of electronica albums recently, and I saw in the wiki page that band member Robbie Chater talked about the big drums and big production of the Chemical Brothers Block Rocking Beats, with the implication that he wanted to make something a little more thoughtful and restrained in contrast. The end result is a little like a superstar dj mix that romps through multiple music genres like a magpie, producing something new that is engaging to listen to and I could imagine happily dancing to given the chance.

Holiday-tastic!

Invincible

I backed the pdf of this game in the kickstarter campaign and liked it enough to pick up the starter set and core book from someone who was selling a spare copy recently. I’ve now played the game and have ideas for a scenario that I want to run at the next Northstar (tentatively titled “Guardians of Glam” and featuring various 70s Glam Rock stars as proto superheroes).

It’s based on the Year Zero Engine rules, so instantly familiar to me as a Free League completist. The superpowered nature of the characters guarantees that you will be rolling plenty of dice with a good chance of success, compared to other settings, and of course there is a critical hit table with some potentially gruesome outcomes.

Talking of which, the Invincible setting is somewhat unusual mixing a range of characters who are very similar to familiar Marvel and DC heroes (Omni-man is pretty much Superman with a moustache and no prizes for guessing who Darkwing and War Woman are based on), but with the violence amped up so that being thrown in to a mountain or having an armoured car dropped on your head is likely to have serious and very possibly fatal consequences.

I’ve read most of the Invincible comics and they’re enjoyable enough, but I think that this system is flexible enough to run any genre of superhero adventures with generic archetypes and superpowers that can be tweaked to taste, and power levels ranging from Poor to Amazing to Invincible (natch) as descriptors. The campaign levels also run from Teen Upstart, to Street Defender, Global Guardian and maxing out at Cosmic Champion.

The physical production of the book is of typical Free League high quality and I really appreciated the clear text on a white background with lots of nice illustrations straight from the comics. The starter set is similarly good value with maps, character standees, dice, reference sheets and power cards.