Sphinx and Roundabouts

Yorick was freshly disarmed and blissfully unaware as we loaded him onto a makeshift stretcher made out of a door and evacuated him to the ship, determining to rest up until we were all fighting fit to tackle the rest of the horrors. Orla flexed her now healed arm and twanged her bowstring a few times. Fnarr.

We opened a door into a sodden library with a living ink blot on the wall, having been banished from the soaked books. With a bit of effort we managed to communicate with the ink, resolving to find an ink bottle or some dry paper for it to move into. Aodhan found some useful scrolls, but another body bobbed to the surface, missing eyes and a left arm, bearing another of the mysterious amulets.

Following the corridor round, we found a large black bird interested only in meat and revenge. Orla threw her some meat and tried to engage the creature in conversation, finding out that she had been imprisoned by the duke and was called Aellope. There were more strange creatures in the menagerie, including a sphinx, spider, lizard, siren and a hawk. We let the creatures out one by one, and the spider attached herself to Bastonn, much to his displeasure. The blue lizard turned out to be a kitten-like dragon, who told us to beware of the spider who was naughty. Aodhan was convinced that the hawk-like creature was a rather snooty phoenix. We released them one by one.

A supply closet provided us with lanterns and oil, then we followed the corridor to the north-east tower, which had a large map table and two men dressed in black and a body that yielded another amulet. The map table had a hidden compartment opened by pressing a button in the miniature lighthouse, which contained a blue pearl key and a pack of scorpion cigars. Krisanna had fun playing with the little wooden ships and imagining mighty battles at sea.

A room opened by the blue pearl key revealed a trove of large sapphires that Orla greedily collected. Krisanna contented herself with a handful of pearls pried from the door that were easier to carry.

Eventually we headed up the stairs, finally finding dry floors under our feet. Orla suggested going north, which Krisanna thought was a great idea. It was at around this time that the looted sapphires came to life and turned into burrowing beetles. Oops.

We searched the rooms in order, the first one containing a dead body with a shark broach which Krisanna collected. A spider lady in the next room didn't take kindly to being interrupted and attacked, vomiting spider webbing at Orla, who immediately fought back and, with an assist from Krisanna, killed the creature. Bastonn's pet spider proved to be equally venomous and bit him, before being yeeted out of the window.

Illinois by Sufjan Stevens

I’m a sucker for a good concept album, and it doesn’t get a much higher concept than a series of albums each devoted to a detailed history of one of the American states. Sadly we only got Michigan and Illinois before the project was abandoned.

There was a lot that I enjoyed about this, particularly the ambitious scope of the music which reminded me in places of the minimalist operas of composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass, crossed with the breezy jazz of Vince Guaraldi and even a nod to the Cure’s “Close To Me” on the title track “Come on! Feel the Illinoise” (which was a lost opportunity to cover Slade).

What I didn’t like was a piece about the serial killer John Wayne Gacy dressing up as a clown to murder people. Seriously, this should have come with a content warning. This one track was enough to almost put me off listening to the rest of the album. Seriously, skip this one or don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The rest of the lyrics are a lot more interesting with what sound like autobiographical insights into Steven’s life and beliefs, and they are quite moving in an obtuse way. I think I’d like to read a commentary about what he’s alluding to on some of these.

This would have been five stars, but minus one for Killer Klowns and minus another one for giving up after two states. Lazy, lazy Sufjan Stevens.

Frost

Start of October
Twenty degrees, no frost yet
I'm sure this is fine

Haystack

Carefully climbing
Then a leap of faith into
A handy haystack

Closer by Joy Division

This album was a difficult listen back in 1980 and the passage of time hasn’t made it much easier. Knowing how desperately ill lead singer Ian Curtis was during the recording and then hearing lines like “Gotta find some therapy … gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late” hits home in a way that very few songs do. Perhaps he could have been helped, but there are too many ‘what ifs’ to answer.

The sound of this album defined the 80s for me, being the antithesis of plastic pop for yuppies. Without this album we wouldn’t have had so much of the music that exploded from the Manchester scene throughout that decade and beyond. As with Bowie’s Blackstar, this deserves to be listened to properly and not shuffled or playlisted.

Mushrooms, Evening

Fried mushrooms for tea
As the evenings draw in
And gentle rains fall

The Idiot by Iggy Pop

Iggy Pop is one of rock and roll’s greatest survivors. After the Stooges broke up in 1974, he had a moment of clarity and realised that the drug culture of LA and his heroin addiction in particular was going to kill him, so he moved to France with his pal David Bowie (who was at a similar low point in his life) and they recorded an album together.

The Idiot feels like a reset for both of them, as they kicked their respective drug habits, and experimented with new sounds, bouncing ideas off each other in the studio before handing the tapes over to producer Tony Visconti who made sense of them and pulled the album together. There’s a notable shift from the proto-punk of Raw Power, with synths, saxophones and moody lyrics, but contrary to some opinions this is very much an Iggy album and informed his subsequent work.

Idiot-tastic!