Music: Interpol - Our Love to Admire

Interpol
Our Love to Admire
[Rock]

Of all the great post-millennial records to have emerged from the renewed New York indie scene (Is This It, Fever To Tell, Bows and Arrows, Blueberry Boat, Misery Is a Butterfly), Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights stands out as the most important. Released less than year after 9/11, it perfectly captured the air of doom, alienation and misery that pervaded the city back in 2002. It was also a near-perfect record, wallowing in an apocalyptic mire of cold-warm guitar textures, skeletal rhythms and gloomy atmospherics, all perfectly suited to a midnight jaunt through modern-day NYC.

2004's Antics was the ideal companion piece - ten well-crafted, finely-tuned singles squeezed together on a single disc - and justified Interpol's reputation, alongside the White Stripes and Radiohead, as one of the twenty-first century's few great bands . Cue undivided attention, heaps of pressure, rumours of a split, unusually bated breath and the inevitable major label move ahead of their third full-length, Our Love to Admire; most listeners, it would seem, expected the OK Computer of the noughties (and, almost exactly ten years down the line from that fateful release date, those expectations were perhaps understandable).

Inexorably, therefore, Our Love was always going to be a disappointment. Interpol are not (yet) the type of band to produce an OK Computer: their sound, though fresh, is predictable; their ambition, though impressive, is limited; their self-seriousness, though apparent, is not quite serious enough. However, what they have produced is a pretty good disappointment, replete with trademark Interpol depth, wonder, polish and, perhaps most importantly of all, choonz.

Despite leaning more toward Antics, Our Love attempts to incorporate the best elements from each of the band's first two records. And, like most efforts of its type (two relatively recent examples being Squarepusher's Hello Everything and Bjork's Volta), it is very calm, clean-cut and consistent. Though never quite succumbing to the spectre M.o.R. banality, there are moments when any sense of urgency seems to be lacking. For example, closing couplet 'Wrecking Ball' and 'The Lighthouse' fail to advance beyond second gear, while The Scale' plods like an Antics offshoot with main man Paul Banks sounding willfully disinterested.

Part of the problem stems from the altered power structure within the band: where Carlos D and Sam Fogarino were once the Clyde to Banks and Daniel Kessler's Bonnie, they now play a distinctly minor role in the majority of Our Love's eleven songs. In itself that isn't a problem, but what it does mean is that, when Kessler and Banks can't manage a good riff, the rhythm section is no longer on hand to bail them out. Take, for instance, the repetitive up and down melody that ambles through four-and-a-half minutes of 'Pace Is the Trick', begging for a winding bass-line or some more imaginative time-keeping.

However, in spite of all the nit-picking, Our Love is still an enjoyable listen more often than not. Among the highlights, 'Pioneer to the Falls' continues Interpol's habit of opening records with a winning number, almost equaling the disparate, unrivalled majesty of 'Untitled' or the restrained brilliance of 'Next Exit'. An excellent starter for ten, it immediately intrigues with a taut, ringing guitar line and tickles of piano, before Banks' still-eerie robot drone and deep-sea drum 'n' bass give the song a menacing edge. Further in, Kessler goes more post-rock than is normally considered decent with some dazzling guitar shimmers reminiscent of Explosions in the Sky at their Those Who Tell the Truth best.

Elsewhere, 'Who Do You Think?' recalls the stripped-down, guitar-pop sensibilities of of 'Slow Hands', 'No I in Threesome' is the cheeriest song the foursome have ever recorded, and the one-two punch of 'The Heinrich Maneuver' and 'Mammoth' - both stoked up to the eyeballs with self-righteous bitterness - are typically invigorating.

Technically, Banks' vocals have come on leaps and bounds from TOTBL's monotone drawl. Though not necessarily a required progression (a sustained, one-note baritone certainly didn't do Ian Curtis any harm), he now has the capacity to carry songs which fail to excite musically. For example, drug-fuelled paean to sobriety 'Rest My Chemistry' would be rather uninspiring without the surprisingly heartfelt delivery, while 'All Fired Up' is similarly spared from being conventional stutter-rock post-punk fare.

Owing to the occasional clanger (see, for instance, "Her stories are boring and stuff / She's always calling my bluff" on TOTBL's 'Obstacle 1', or "The stars we will navigate through the holes in your eyes" on Antics' 'Public Pervert'), baby-faced misanthrope Banks is often assumed to be a poor wordsmith. Such sentiment is not only misguided; it is deceitful and facetious, akin to inferring Bowie or Dylan's cultural significance from their unlistenable late '80s output. More often that not, Banks' musings glimmer with corporeal beauty ("Her rabid glow is like braille to the night" from 'Leif Erikson') or delight with cunning ("The underground drip was just like her scuba days" from 'Stella Was a Diver...'). Occasionally, they can even do both ("I bounce you on the lap of silence / We will free love to the beats of science" from 'Not Even Jail').

Our Love continues the trend, positively brimming with poetic intrigue ("Show me the dirt pile and I will pray / That the soul can take three stowaways" from 'Pioneer...') but periodically undermined by a lazy, forced rhyme ("You're like a daisy in my lazy eye" from 'Rest My Chemistry'). The wicked sense of humour also remains, best illustrated by Banks' deadpan delivery of the titular line from 'No I in Threesome'. Minor creases aside, he remains a significant lyricist.

So, while Interpol's third record is their weakest, it is nevertheless streets ahead of much of the competition. The inevitable self-consciousness accompanying a major label switch, coupled with the increasingly guitar-led compositional style, has taken some of the edge off their work, but, as is the case with all important bands, they are experiencing a transitional phase. We can only hope they emerge successful, changed but unscathed, on the other side. 70

Music: The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America

The Hold Steady
Boys and Girls in America
[Rock]

Unloading on The Hold Steady - America's friendliest, cheeriest, tipsiest rock 'n' rollers - feels a lot like bullying the fifteen-year-old kid at school who still thinks pissing himself is funny; it's not pleasant, but someone's got to do it because, you hope, they'll turn out better for it in the end. There comes a point when listening to certain records that you just have to ask yourself, "At what point is imitation no longer flattery? At what point is leeching of another's success just plain wrong?" For sure, Interpol are not Joy Division, Franz Ferdinand are not Gang of Four, Oasis are not The Beatles, but The Hold Steady are Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band. Absolutely, unequivocally, The Hold Steady ape the boss, down to a blue-collared, beer-soaked, everyman tee.

Well, almost. Crucially, though front man Craig Finn's tales of idealized Americana occasionally resonate alongside the 'Born to Run's of this world, he doesn't have the wit or lyrical dexterity to consistently blow the mind the way Bruce seems to do so effortlessly. For instance, on opener 'Stuck Between Stations', the impact of some great lines ("She was a real good kisser but she wasn't that strict of a Christian") are lessened by the overriding sense that he's trying a little too hard to be profound ("The devil and John Berryman took a walk together").

On other songs, such as 'Party Pit' or 'Chillout Tent', he doesn't even bother, instead opting for lazy drugs 'n' booze name drops ("His friend gave him four [mushrooms] but he said only take one / But then he got bored he ended up taking all four") without offering any variation on the constrictive boy-meets-girl template. Finn is keen to reference important literary figures (Kerouac, Tennyson), which is fine, but on much of this evidence he's read introductions and nothing more.

That said, Boys and Girls in America will not shift units by the bucket-load on the strength of the words; it will sell because of Finn's terrific, slurred delivery, crashing power chords, nostalgic piano refrains and drums that sound as if stick man Bobby Drake is tooled-up with a pair of sledge hammers and a dustbin lid. This is 'classic' rock in every sense of the word, except that it isn't: it is imitation rock - cheap and cheerful but oh so shallow. The question remains: why listen to Boys and Girls when there is Born to Run? 44

Music: The Field - From Here We Go Sublime

The Field
From Here We Go Sublime
[Techno]

Three quarters and forty-five minutes into Axel Willner's first full-length recording, I found myself faced with the rarest of questions: could this be a perfect record? Not just a solid album (where well-polished pleasantries sneak by, polite and unassuming and unspectacular: think Antics, Transformer or Revolver), but an album where each song is your favourite song of the year, where each song fills you with a kind of unbridled, childish glee, where each song just works?

And then, just as I was beginning to believe, the thing collapsed in on itself, delivering three successive sour notes, one after the other, bringing From Here We Go Sublime's almost indefatigable momentum to a stunning anti-climax. Bang, bang, bang. Nice try. Better luck next time.

Repeat listens both reassured and disappointed; Willner (a.k.a. The Field) has indeed crafted an album's worth of gorgeous, minimal techno with the first seven songs, only to have gone and spoiled the fun by cluttering the mix with a final, unnecessary three. Given the breathtaking simplicity of his technique - electronic and voice samples, sliced and diced and looped, over and over and over, set to the simplest of beats - you'd have thought overcrowding the least of his worries, but alas not. The result? Willner only has himself to blame for 2007's most frustrating listen.

However, as frustrating listens go, From Here We Go Sublime must surely rank among the most satisfying. Opener 'Over the Ice' slips and slides with remarkable grace, peaking and subsiding innumerable times during seven seemingly short minutes, as blissfully urgent as a hurried hallucination. As with much of Sublime, it sounds like something you should be able to knock up on Pro Tools in half an hour, but at the same time you know you just couldn't resist slotting in an extra hi-hat here or another bass-line there. To strip music down to its bare essentials is any genre is a risky business, but to do so in modern electronic music, post-James and -Jenkinson, is verging on suicidal. Somehow, Willner pulled it off.

'A Paw in My Face' then resumes the steady momentum for a patient minute, before soaring skywards as the beat strengthens, synth textures sweep in from acute angles and a clipped guitar sample provides the first glimpse of melody. A predictable crescendo involving all three arrives, lights flashing, after four minutes, but the sheer bliss of the moment is so overwhelming that any sense of over-familiarity is quickly forgotten.

Though the opening pair are excellent, by far the strongest track on Sublime is sixth song 'Silent'. Gradually climbing to an anthemic peak from a steady, beat-driven birth, its wispy "ooh-oohs", astral swirls and progressively hardening drums combine for a truly transcendental experience, like the fitter happier cousin of the Velvet Underground's 'Heroin'. Music this beautiful, this ethereal, this...colourful is just so hard to come by.

Elsewhere, 'Good Things End' is perhaps the most club-ready track on offer, rumbling with a muffled, skittering beat and warmly cushioned by frequent ripples of lush background noise. 'Everday' is epileptic and chilled in equal measure, surfing a sea of snappy, erratic clicks and a soothing vocal loop, while 'The Little Heart Beats So Fast' grooves under and over suggestive gasps. 'The Deal' is the record's ten minute centrefold, a brooding, atmospheric piece built around an obtuse wall of interlocked shifts, taps, groans and howls. It's Sublime's deepest and most rewarding track, and would have served as a useful end to the record had Willner opted to quit while he was ahead.

As it is, we're left with 'Sun and Ice' (a weak wave of candy floss white noise which fails to invigorate), 'Mobilia' (Willner's doomed attempt to do something a bit odd) and the pithy title track to close the album with a confused, dull whimper; a certain album of the year becomes a sure-fire top ten fixture. Oh Axel, you had us all going for a minute. 87

Music: Manic Street Preachers - Send Away the Tigers

Manic Street Preachers
Send Away the Tigers
[Rock]









As evidenced by 2004's lacklustre Lifeblood, Manic Street Preachers' sound now appears irreversibly crisp and controlled - Sean Moore's drums bob with metronomic precision, Nicky Wire's bass throbs politely out of plain view and James Dean Bradfield's guitars whisper verses and bellow choruses on demand. It is highly unlikely they will ever attempt to surpass the ice-cold gothic no-wave of The Holy Bible, the unhinged abandon of Know Your Enemy or the caustic bile of Generation Terrorists. But, in the grand scheme of things, does that really matter?

Here is a band who have railed against poverty (Slash 'N' Burn), drugs ('Methadone Pretty'), fascism ('If You Tolerate This...'), consumerism ('Motorcycle Emptiness') and gender roles ('Little Baby Nothing'), loud and proud, while others were seemingly content to gaze shoeward. They have criticized mindless liberalism ('Year of Purification') and declared support for the death penalty ('Archives of Pain'). With alarming alacrity they anticipated (and condemned) society's assault on thin women a decade before it began (4st 7lbs). And, perhaps most importantly of all, they have always encouraged kids to read books rather than get drunk - if you disagree with what they have to say, they want you to know what you're talking about.

No wonder it is often suggested that the Manics will be remembered more for their political posturing that their music. But therein lies a problem: their political posturing is their music, and vice versa, and it always has been and always will be.

Take, for example, the song 'Indian Summer' on their new record, Send Away the Tigers. "Maybe this time we'll kiss and not shake hands / And leave all this material belief / Remember the reasons / The reasons that made us be" howls Bradfield, defiant enough to avoid being submerged by a flood of text book strings and drab rock riffs. Elsewhere, on 'Rendition', Bradfield attempts to avoid death by banality as he ridicules the decline of idealism amid chugging strums and - shock of shocks - pounding 4/4 drums: "Blame it on the coalition / I never knew the sky was a prison".

Some of the songs even appear to embrace a sort of self-conscious cheesiness. For example, the impossibly bouncy pop of 'Autumnsong' and the exasperatingly conventional quiet/loud/quiet/loud/louder dynamics of 'Underdogs' underline the band's traditional disdain for needless experimentation. In fact, many of the ten tunes on offer here are so simple it almost hurts.

However, the Manics' role as a band, unreal as it seems, has always been to say rather than to sound - an idea Send Away the Tigers reinforces with aplomb. In one of those rare instances when simplicity usurps convolution, the plainness of the racket provides an effective backdrop for Wire to kick and spit with renewed vigour. Their eighth studio album and newest manifesto may not be a musical masterpiece but, in spite of that, it is a typically worthy release and certainly worth hearing. 74

Feature: View to a Review

Ever since its humble beginnings in the late 1970s, the practise of playing video games has been long sneered at, with smug contempt, by every corner of the arts world. It is seen as adolescent (even though the largest market is the 21-30 age group), anti-social (because reading a book isn’t) and anti-cultural, lacking the intellectual integrity of more traditional art forms. And, without doubt, this reputation is justly deserved. Rather than emphasising the importance of imagination and artistic vision, mainstream games journalists are instead keen to push the soulless pursuit of technical perfection, at all costs, with little room for manoeuvre. The reasoning behind this, I believe, lies in the traditional scoring system that, over the years, has become institutionalised almost to the point of decree, suffocating the misfits, the outcasts and the occasional geniuses in the manner of a school exam paper.

When a game is reviewed, it is often scored on sub-scales which denote, with almost mathematical precision, the merits of a title’s component parts. ‘Graphics’, ‘gameplay’, ‘sound’ and ‘longevity’ are the usual suspects, apparently the main criteria by which any game should be judged, the reason we buy games; they look good, play good, sound good and last good (not, you may be thinking, because they are original, thought-provoking or artistic).

The most contentious of the big four is ‘graphics’ which, in the games industry, might as well be represented by a big, fat dollar sign. The reason one game looks better than another, from a technical point of view, is simply a matter of money - studios with greater cash reserves can employ more staff to work longer, no doubt using better equipment. As technology continues to advance and more realistic techniques are developed and utilised (such as post-processing, anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, real-life physics and lighting), the smaller studios will be forced to accept that, in review terms, their games will always be starting a few points behind.

Artistic divergence in the industry is seemingly frowned upon as a dangerous form of deviancy, chained to a bygone era, nothing more than a worthless distraction when a faceless marine can shine a light on swaying grass and cast a real-time, high-resolution shadow. Cel-shading - the bright, blocky, cartoon style of thick black lines and bold colours - is now an industry in-joke, a failed experiment, forced to hide its pretty face in niche titles.

Killer 7 - arguably the best-looking game on PS2

Meanwhile, games built around the Doom 3 engine are lauded as glorious landmarks of the highest order and presented as the pinnacle of the form’s achievement, reaping countless stamps of four-star saleability because, let’s face it, no-one makes five-star games anymore. All that games like Quake 4 and Prey achieve is corridors, corridors, and more corridors, metaphorical and physical; shiny, claustrophobic, silvery boxes with just enough room to circle strafe and absolutely nothing more (it wouldn’t be economical). Ten hours after the opening credits, you’re still in a corridor, trapped inside the maddening steel asylum, praying for the last cutscene, praying for the big thing with weak points on its back, praying for a release. If Prey were a film, it would be ten seconds of footage from Alien looped over and over and over for twelve hours. And not the chest-bursting bit, either.

Speaking of another primarily visual medium, if a film review were to discuss how the latest release looked, would it mention the image resolution? Of course it wouldn’t, it would measure the authenticity, the ambition and the artistry of the images. Modelling miles of corridor is none of these; it is simple, boring and artistically redundant. So why the high score for graphics? The only explanation is that marks are being awarded for the engine’s visual capabilities, but such an approach is akin to rating a camera, a pair of headphones or, sin of all sins, judging a book by its cover.

Prey - Look at all that gorgeous metal!

Two of the other common criteria under the microscope - longevity and sound - are almost as baffling. Firstly, whoever devised the idea of measuring a work of art by its physical size must, to say the least, have peculiar taste. Very few seven-hundred page novels are a Gravity’s Rainbow, very few hour-length records match London Calling and, as films go, for every Godfather there are ten Deer Hunters. With the costs of committed gaming remaining astronomically high, concerns regarding value for money are valid, however I assure you there is far more value in four hours of Metal Gear Solid 2 than Doom 3’s never-ending slog. Don’t misunderstand me here - I am the first to immerse myself in a hundred hours of each new Final Fantasy - just know that, if I commit time to a game, I should do so through want rather than need. In other words, I want to be lost in a different world, not eyeing the clock with a solemn frown, tallying the hours as they slip away.

Sound is the viola of the bunch - the member of the quartet that often finds itself at the bottom of the pile, ironically making the least noise, more often than not to make up the numbers. After all, what is sound but a few nice effects and the odd orchestral piece here and there? Technically, I suppose, it is, but string arrangements need orchestras and footsteps need studios - both of which cost money. Even more outrageous is when a game is complimented for having a good array of licensed music or high-quality voice acting, both akin to complimenting a film on its budget or an album on the cost of the recording studio.

The inbuilt bias towards wealthier companies is only half of the problem, however, given the extent to which in-game sound is currently viewed as nothing more than elaborate, slightly pleasant but ultimately inessential window-dressing. To reviewers I say this: where would Deus Ex’s chilling atmosphere have been without its concave techno minimalism? Where would any of the Silent Hill Games have been without Akira Yamaoka’s brutal noise assault? Though the answer is not quite “nowhere”, it is certainly a case of either “elsewhere” or “anywhere”.

The fourth and final yard stick for assessing a game’s merits in traditional games journalism is the concept of gameplay. What this means in reality is not, “How enjoyable/fresh/exciting is the game?” but, rather, “Does the game have any technical faults?” If the answer to the latter question is “no”, the gameplay is considered perfect and, in the case of any errors, reviewers appear to work backwards from the top score. Dodgy camera? Minus one. Bad collision detection? Minus another. An absence of detachable limbs and breakable crates? Simply unforgivable.

Rather than rewarding creativity, ingenuity, risk-taking and originality, this negative approach punishes games according to a remarkably narrow-minded, almost Puritanical, petty set of guidelines: “I don’t care if I was forced to question my own existence,” complains the critic, “because, without a quick turn button, I had to rotate my character manually.” This, in another lifetime, might also have been my assessment of Silent Hill. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

Lacking the open-minded input of constructive criticism, films might still follow straightforward, chronological plot lines, all books would have a beginning, middle and an end and songs would have a chorus to every verse. This is an especially pertinent issue in a games industry where critics are relied upon more than in any other art medium, where games cost ten times as much as a cinema ticket and where the cost of failure is thus higher than the reward of ten great successes. Tellingly, the closest the games industry has got to a Lynch is Suda 51 who, without wishing to sound disrespectful, is more ‘Blue Monday’ than Blue Velvet.

By basing their reputation on not upsetting casual players, games journalists are being deconstructive and, ironically, restricting themselves. Scores out of ten have taken on a kind of concrete, mythological symbolism; seven out of ten has, almost without fail, come to indicate an average game, while eights are reserved for shallow, good-looking titles, six is for film tie-ins and console strategy games, five and below is for any company not likely to take offence and the hallowed perfect score, reserved for console mascots, is almost always met with murmurs of discontent: “But how can this game have got a ten? There’s some sound clipping on level eight near the east side of the waterfall.”

Gears of War - another "great" game...ugh

What I propose (and what I attempt to practise in my own reviews) is a policy of less structure, less maths, less negativity, fewer trivialities and a greater spread of scores. If a game is well-produced but worthless as a work of art, it deserves a three or four, not an easy eight. Conversely, if a game reinvents the wheel before crashing spectacularly, a six is more appropriate than a two. Games which make an important artistic and/or cultural statement should be rewarded with the maximum score (I’m thinking along the lines of Thief, Resident Evil, Grim Fandango, Final Fantasy VII, Deus Ex, Half-Life, Silent Hill 2, Operation Flashpoint, Fahrenheit or Killer 7, to name a few) rather than ones which do everything well enough so as not to be at fault (Freedom Fighters, Black, Splinter Cell, Halo). Also, it is crucial to note that not being fallible is a far cry from being infallible and, even more importantly, that developers and publishers will continue to churn out such wearyingly safe titles if they cannot help but witness such glowing approval.

The quickest way for the games industry shed its image as the boyish, pimply, confused cousin of music, movies and literature is to no longer tolerate the derivative and unmotivated menace that has plagued the industry for so long, instead embracing the weird and the wonderful rather than the type of shallow, proto-fascist bilge legitimated every time Gears of War earns a gold star. The most effective vessels for this sea change are the yellowing keyboards of games journalists around the world who, with the right motivations and the right intentions, can change the way we play games forever and, finally, put an end to that debate.

Music: Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future

Klaxons
Myths of the Near Future
[Rock]






Klaxons really shot themselves in the foot when they coined the term 'new rave' to generate pre-release hype for their relatively conventional take on dance-punk. Despite singer/bassist Jamie Reynolds' admission that the term was used as an in-joke - an idea backed up by the hilariously inappropriate use of a klaxon (geddit?) in the opening seconds of 'Atlantis to Interzone' and a cheeky cover of rave music's official anthem, 'It's Not Over Yet' - most of the criticism aimed at the group's first full-length record, Myths of the Near Future, bemoans the lack of whack.

Stylus Magazine, for example, noted that it "clearly isn't rave, or even a reinvention of rave...[it's] a half-decent gimmick", while Rolling Stone contested that the sound is "suspiciously indie-ish". And it gets worse: desperately attempting to cling to a "movement" in order to counter plummeting sales, the NME even sponsored a new-rave tour in honour of the non-existent genre.

One would have hoped that, even if the above clues as to the tongue-in-cheek nature of the phrase were overlooked, the prevalence of glowsticks at the band's shows would have pointed unbelievers toward the obvious irony. Alas it didn't and, as a result, Klaxons appear to have been judged according to their credentials as field-filling drug-pushers rather than the quite good indie rock 'n' rollers they have always proved themselves to be since the initial release of their first single, 'Gravity's Rainbow', a year ago.

When they get it right, as on four of Myths' five singles ('Atlantis to Interzone', 'Golden Skans', 'Gravity's Rainbow', 'It's Not Over Yet') and 'Two Receivers', they really get it right, concocting a delicious musical salad of schizophrenic guitars, thick bass and multi-layered falsetto sweeps ready-made for chart consumption. For instance, the "oohs" and "ahhs" providing the wordless chorus on 'Golden Skans', the unjustly funky rhythm of 'Gravity's Rainbow', the relentless locomotive clatter of opening couplet 'Atlantis to Interzone' and 'Two Receivers' and the teary-eyed chorus of 'It's Not Over Yet' are all perfect examples of pop perfection.

Elsewhere, however, shockingly poor production, a definite lack of ideas and an inescapable sense of over-familiarity combine to undermine the ferocious punch of the fantastic five. It is difficult to overstate just how terrible James Ford's studio work is on Myths, but suffice to say that at least three or four songs are completely destroyed by the Simian Mobile Disco man.

Perhaps keen to express his fondness for beats (he provided the album's drums and percussion), he has ramped up the drumming to such an unnecessary volume that the trio's glorious, interlocking harmonies and manic squeals are often completely drowned out. In addition, the guitars are sometimes stretched to ear-splitting frequencies ('Magick', 'As Above, So Below', 'Totem on the Timeline') while the bass is usually far too loud ('Isle of Her', 'Four Horsemen of 2012'). At times, Myths' forceful tone borders on unlistenable - certainly not something that strict adherents to the mathematical formulas of The Manual - as Klaxons have confessed they are - would have wished for.

Where the band occasionally bail themselves out of Ford's atrocity exhibition, though, is with some inspired literary lyrics. Naming their album and (at least) three songs after cult works by Ballard, Burroughs, Pynchon and Crowley may appear to be a Maximo Park-esque plea to be recognised as well-read, but a quick run through of the words suggests otherwise. Lines like "Krill edible oceans at their feet / A troublesome troop out on safari / A lullaby holds their drones in sleep" smack of pretension in a way that Paul Banks could only ever dream of. Not convinced? How about "All ships of sense on hyper ocean / All Kytes of chaos still in motion / My culture vulture such a dab hand / I'll steal you from the year 4000" for size? In a British music scene where reading books is commonly considered to be an unspeakable hate crime, Klaxons' fantastic blend of the surreal and the absurd is so refreshing as to be virtually cathartic.

Unfortunately, however, Myths' weaknesses are just too apparent for it to be considered an essential record. In fact, taken on its own terms, the finished product is little more than a slightly quirky but fairly weak indie album. Rather, my reserved fondness for the band is significantly (and perhaps wrongly) based on their initial intention to do something challenging and original, their instigation of the 'new rave' obsession in the media, their impressive run of artistic videos and their incredible knack for crafting excellent singles. So they failed with a whole album's worth of material - does it really matter that much? For certain, the British music scene is a far better place with Klaxons that without them. 60

Games: GSC Game World - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl

GSC Game World
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
[First-Person Shooter/RPG]






The Plot: after a second incident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine, disparate groups of stalkers have flocked to the area following rumours of valuable artefacts spread all around the area. One stalker is found, alive, among a pile of corpses, and is brought to a nearby trader who sets him up for a life in The Zone. A single objective remains on his old PDA: “Kill Strelok”.

I first saw a trailer for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl five years ago. At the time, I found the level of detail exhibited by GSC Game World’s nascent X-Ray engine to be scarily realistic, not least because back then, in 2002, real-time dynamic lighting and accurate physics were a big deal. Now, four years after Half-Life 2, wobbly chairs and breakable lights only raise an eyebrow when not included in the latest game. Even the once-formidable promise of a large, fully-interactive, living and breathing land-mass now fails to excite in the wake of games like Oblivion.

Arguably, however, Sergiy Grygorovych and his team only have themselves to blame for the problem; the game, blighted by countless delays, was released years overdue. And, like many games infamous for being delayed, it is chaotic, confused, at times disastrous and often hopelessly overambitious. Yet, in spite (of perhaps because) of all its flaws, Shadow of Chernobyl is one of the best PC games in a long while.

Given their sheer volume, attempting to list all of the game’s deficiencies would be a futile exercise. However, a few are nevertheless worth noting. Technically, it is a complete dog’s breakfast, stuttering erratically and frequently to load extra details during gameplay. Even on lower settings, it was almost possible to hear my computer groaning under the pressure of managing the 30,000+ objects active during a game. Additionally, the in-game currency system is pretty useless, not only because they player will gather more than enough money through the course of the adventure to buy out all of the businesses in The Zone twice over, but also because a powerful enough arsenal can be acquired without ever visiting any of the game’s three merchants (more than anything else it reminded me of the similarly flawed system in the Grand Theft Auto series). Thirdly, the end of the game was clearly rushed, and has suffered for it. What I thought to be the final third of the game turned out to be a manic half-hour dash through the final three maps, which were cluttered with so many enemies that the only viable option was to dump almost all of my kit, jam the sprint key and run like the wind for a couple of miles. When compared to the carefully-considered, brooding menace of the early stages, it felt shallow and unnecessary.

It is also one of the most unpolished major releases in a while, shipping with a plethora of aesthetic errors (poor translation, broken objectives) and graphic misdemeanours (bad clipping, disappearing corpses). However, if you’re anything like me, you’ll enjoy the ramshackle production and sharp edges which, as previously witnessed in Operation Flashpoint and Deus Ex, lend the game a rare humanity in a format largely characterised by dismal sterility. Dare I say it, if ever there could be a punk approach to video game development, Shadow of Chernobyl’s rough and ready, distinctly three-chord approach is as close as you’re going to get.

“So,” you may rightfully inquire, “why is it so great?” Well, it is so, so, so great because, first and foremost, it is a significant artistic achievement. As far as I can recall, no development team has ever attempted to set a 3D game in or around the Chernobyl power plant. However, GSC Game World’s creation is stunningly imaginative, engrossing and believable. From the deserted outer reaches of the Cordon and Garbage areas, to the unhinged claustrophobia of the underground ‘X’ laboratories, to the diseased swaps of the Yantar region, to the sharp undulations of the Red Forest, to the numb emptiness of the neighbouring city, Pripyat, to the oppressive gloom of the plant itself, each of the areas is a notable feat. Even more standard locations like the Army Warehouses and the Agropom Research Institute possess character, successfully managing to avoid the dreaded cut ’n’ paste fingerprint of professional editing software.

What is perhaps most impressive of all about the environments, however, is the noticeable lack of contact the player is likely to experience. At times, for example, it is possible to explore the ins and outs of a complex base without encountering a soul. As such, it would seem as though the levels were constructed without the usual confines of “an explosive barrel here” and “a sniping position there” that often plague less free-form shooters. That said, the level of detail is still incredibly high throughout, with supplies hidden away in the most unlikely (and often unreachable) of places, meaning each location is worth exploring thoroughly.

Did someone say exploring? Shadow of Chernobyl is certainly a sizeable game, with a potential lifespan of thirty hours if the entire array of secondary missions is attempted. Though I’m not a believer in the much-cited proportionality between the length of a game and its merit, this world is one which most players will be compelled to lose themselves in.

Another impressive feature of the game is the self-sustaining nature of the environment. AI stalkers will explore, jostle for territory, fight mutants, pick up and drop equipment and congregate around camp fires, all of their own accord, again helping to reinforce the authenticity of the absorbing atmosphere. Moreover, the first time I witnessed a fellow survivor strumming an incongruous thread of chords on a bruised guitar was, to say the least, a particularly memorable moment.

Shadow of Chernobyl also presents an interesting moral dilemma worthy of discussion. At the beginning of my journey as the mysterious (anti-)hero known only as “The Marked One”, I was almost too scared to move. Whether that was due to the lack of constraint, the dearth of supplies, the lack of allies, the hostility of the environment (as well as radioactivity, the player must avoid ‘anomalies’ - large, often invisible environmental entities spewing fire, lightning and so forth) or another, unseen factor, I’m not entirely sure. What was certain, though, was that I was dizzy with relief every time I managed to make a new friend or get my novice hands on bullets and bandages. Hell, even a processed sausage was treasure. By the end of the game, however, tanked up with the best weapons and equipment and all but invincible to small arms fire, I found myself executing random stalkers at will, at times even wiping out entire groups just because I could. Not only is the changing power structure of the world interesting to experience first hand, it also gives the player a real sense of satisfaction as previously challenging areas which saw The Marked One ducking for cover can later be used for a relaxed, early morning stroll.

Speaking of the dawn hours, Shadow of Chernobyl also features a fully-functional day/night cycle, with each ‘day’ lasting around two hours in real time. This leads to the occasional late night jaunt in low visibility which, at times, is almost as terrifying as the edge-of-seat madness encountered in the aforementioned ‘X’ laboratories; if you thought the tension in Oblivion’s underground caverns was unbearable, wait until you’re being stalked through a pitch-black death trap by a seven-foot, sprinting, invisible Bloodsucker while being pelted with boxes and barrels by an equally invisible (and seemingly invincible) Poltergeist.

Considering how seriously you take your guns, the best feature of Shadow of Chernobyl may in fact be the impressive ballistics system. Early pistols look and feel like pea shooters - pathetically weak and horribly inaccurate - while some of the high-tech gear encountered towards the end of the game (including a grenade launcher, an RPG, and a rail gun, no less) can rip anything to shreds at a hundred paces. None of the guns have their real-life names but, considering the confidence boost attained when wielding some of the more arcane, shrapnel-spitting beasts, that’s probably a good thing.

With such a plethora of impressive traits - some of them ground-breaking (the art direction, the chilling atmosphere, the adaptive AI) and some of them just very well done (good guns, good role-playing elements, good story) - it is a great shame that Shadow of Chernobyl is prevented from entering the realm of all-time greats on a handful of niggles. The technical and production issues are incidental, neither major nor hugely noticeable, but for me the end sequence is incredibly disappointing and, to a degree, undermines the impression left by such an accomplished and harrowing vision of the near future.

Nevertheless, Shadow of Chernobyl remains a valuable comment on the material focus of our times. By exposing the ills of a world where driven treasure hunters look for property in the wilderness, a world of rigid structures where those with the most goods rule the roost and a world where making as few enemies as possible is a major priority, GSC have provided a formidable allegory for twenty-first century culture. 88

Feature: The Art of the Anti-game

Unlike almost every other cultural medium (literature, art, music, film), displeasing the recipient in a video game is regarded as an unacceptable fault, essentially a sign of weakness on the part of those responsible. The problem lies in the perception of the role video games have to play in society. To many, the clue is in the name, with the purpose of a game to please, to entertain and to occupy, acting as a pleasant distraction from the bad-tempered adrenalin rush of modern times.

However, while respected musicians have indulged in noise and drone, celebrated authors have streamed their conscience to great acclaim and revered movie makers have delighted in not making sense, few (if any) video games have ever been successfully recognised or applauded for being deliberately bad, clichéd or difficult. There are many examples I could cite for the purposes of this essay, but the two I will discuss are a pair which I believe to be among the most important anti-games - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Silent Hill 4: The Room. The former is essential because it was heavily criticised yet still regarded as instant classic, but for all the wrong reasons, while the latter is even more impressive as an example of the type of game which knowingly makes off-putting design choices, almost purposefully inciting derision purely for thrill of being perceived a failure.

Throughout the months of trailers leading up to the release of MGS2 we were treated to more than enough shots of the Playstation 2’s unofficial mascot, Solid Snake, cavorting aboard an oil tanker in the Hudson River. However, when the game was released, Snake was only playable for the first fifth of the game (the section included on the pre-release demo), before the player was suddenly burdened with a young, blonde, androgynous, idealistic and sentimental protagonist by the name of Raiden. This was a stroke of genius for so many reasons, the most notable of which was the deliberate exclusion of the reason many people may have bought the game in the first place.

Tough, masculine and oh so heterosexual, Snake was as formulaic a hero as you might expect to find in any cheap and cheerful action game/movie/book. He was Slash, Jack Ryan and John McClane all rolled into one, definitely cool and definitely male; all the men wanted to be him, all the women wanted to be of him. Raiden, on the other hand, was more of a Ziggy Stardust or a Travis Bickle - unsure, awkward and unwanted - and rapidly became the most loathed character in videogame history.

And all this from Hideo Kojima, the industry’s bright light and the one who could not stop sounding off about why he loved Bond films, why everyone loved Snake and why games should be more like movies. And then, when everyone had their backs turned and was relieved to be approaching the end of the game and the end of Raiden, he plunged in the knife, turned it into a movie, complete with half-hour cutscenes, nonsensical plot developments and thousands of lines of radio dialogue heaped on top of one another, pushing the player’s patience to breaking point. “You made your bed”, he whispered, “now lie in it”.

The game was also infused with a unique blend of magic realism that many found off-putting, featuring a vampire, a fat guy on rollerblades who plants bombs (called Fatman), the return of a ninja character and, perhaps most significant of all in videogame terms, a physicallyunattractive female character. The hairy, crop-topped, treacherous Olga was such an affront to video game convention that, even today, she remains the only significant character of her type that I can recall.

In such a conventional setting (New York, terrorists, presidents, guns, bombs, gore), Kojima crafted a masterpiece of an anti-game heretofore unmatched which, despite being critiqued as much as it was praised, still managed to earn tremendously high review scores. Why? Simple - because it is Kojima and because it is Metal Gear Solid.

Not knowing what to make of it, critics loved it through gritted teeth and clenched fists, no doubt skipping most of the later cutscenes, longing for original’s simplicity but knowing that, because of all the features and first looks and interviews and exclusives, to slam the game would have been akin to smacking a small child. MGS2 was their baby - they had brought it up and unleashed it on the world - so the perceived faults were overlooked as minor teething problems, a man’s mind stretched too far for its own good, an honest mistake. In reality, he duped us all, critics and fans alike, by being antagonistic and successful, proving once and for all that a game could be great by not being fun.

The case of Silent Hill 4: The Room is not so clear cut as MGS2 because, by their very nature, Silent Hill titles exist as anti-games to an extent; they are short, unfair, disturbing and mature, avoiding survival horror clichés like the plague (or should that be like the T-Virus). However, where the first three games in the series were each an example of meshing playability with the unpleasant, SH4 attempted to be unpleasant aesthetically as well as structurally. By the time the third game had garnered the series more reserved praise and an even more limited market, the developers clearly realised they had room to experiment like never before.

With the dark, brooding atmosphere and intellectualism remaining firmly intact, Team Silent took it upon themselves to really screw with your mind, breaking more taboos than any carrier bag or shard of glass ever could. Instead of looking for new ways to be controversial, they scoured video game archives for the various techniques and methods which infuriate conventional gamers, often driving them to give up on a game entirely.

I’m talking about a limited inventory system (where ten bullets use up as much space as a golf club), excessive backtracking, respawning enemies, mixing first- and third-person perspectives, limited save points and, perhaps the most unforgivable offence of all, invincible enemies. Apart from some backtracking, none of these things appeared in previous Silent Hill titles, so the obvious question is, “If it ain’t broke, why try to fix it?” The answer, though, is an effortlessly simple one of the Piperian variety: “Because we want to.”

When Lou Reed made Metal Machine Music, he wanted to piss people off. He was rich, talented, famous and admired, but he chose to do that which is so often frowned upon: he went pretentious. In SH4 it was no different; Team Silent must have tired of experimenting with light, texture and sound in order to assemble as unpleasant an atmosphere as possible and, instead, indulged themselves in the forbidden fruit of video game development - the noble art of the deliberate mistake.

In addition to the aforementioned changes, the men and women at Konami opted to deconstruct that which they had created: the Silent Hill cliché. Along with the lack of save points (normally there is one around every second corner), they removed the flashlight and the radio (akin to taking herbs out of Resident Evil titles or summons out of the Final Fantasy series), removed the choking darkness and much of the legendary mist and even set the game outside Silent Hill; to all intents and purposes, it wasn’t a Silent Hill game.

As a result, it was arguably an even greater anti-game than Kojima’s glorious spectacle because, unlike MGS2, it actually angered gamers as much as, if not more than, it set out to. “Roll out the 6/10!” cried the video game world, “Its Silent Hill, folks, but know as we know it.” What they meant to say was that The Room was Silent Hill, but not as they wanted it. The nurses, the lead pipes and the stuttering hiss of radio static had become the norm to such an extent that the slightest whiff of variety was a crushing disappointment.

What most critics didn’t count on was the fact that, as well as collapsing the foundations of their own, strenuously-established reputation, Konami wanted SH4 to be known as the game where the even best in the business could prove to be fallible. In doing so, they successfully galvanized anticipation ahead of the series’ next-generation debut - the arena where the series will surely thrive - without anyone the wiser. And anyway, everyone who bought Silent Hills 1, 2 and 3 would have bought the game anyway, so the risk factor was minimal all along.

Was it cynical ploy, a cheeky shot of revenge on behalf of the anti-game, or neither? You decide.