So, just to throw it out there straight away, I am not what you would call a Music Afficionado. Don’t get me wrong, I love music. All kinds of music. I like to think I have a pretty damn wide spectrum for musical appreciation – from country, to pop, metal, reggae, techno, trance, tribal, new age, classical, dub, dubstep, *quotation mark* dubstep *quotation mark* and everything in between, around and through. It’s just that, within the music, I guess I’m pretty simple. When I listen to metal, I like a simple, bassy riff. With classical, I like sweeping violins and smart, smooth piano. I like catchy choruses and trippy mind-melts. But I’m certainly not someone who knows their shit, nor knows the vocabulary for the musical world. I like post-Black Metallica. I like Savage Garden. I think the Beatles are eternal songwriters, but others have done better versions of their music. And I fucking hate Nirvana.

I say all this, partly because a personal blog should let you share your personal thoughts, but mostly because I need to preface my (likely short) review by explaining my eclectic taste and frankly monastic exposure to the expanse of artists in the ether. I also say it, because when I first listened to this band, I hated their music. HATED IT. Over time, through boredom, I exposed myself to it more and more (and yes, Tom, it IS all your fault) and now I am physically jumping up and down when a new album is released. With this one, I did. I literally hopped like a rabid capybara when I discovered that the new Nightwish album, Imaginaerum, was released.

Nightwish, I’ve found, are something of a polarising group. I know a few people who are mad for it, and others who spit in my face for suggesting it. This album I fear will be no different, although for those more inclined to more mainstream tastes, it is certainly more accessible than, say, Wishmaster or Angels Fall First.

Imaginaerum sounds like the soundtrack to an epic adventure film. Deep, rolling drums, grinding riffs and a dead, interminable rhythm marks the metal tracks. Throughout this, an orchestral, symphonic trance permeates, evoking scenes of violence and victory. A harmonised, luscious voice strains against vocal chords but is always reigned in just when you feel it’ll snap.

But that’s just one song.

If I were to describe another, it would be a different story. Say, a warm, dark jazz vibe, swinging tonal at just the right moments to bring the thing together, spinning out of control again just when a twinge itches it shouldn’t belong, all the while with a luscious voice straining against vocal chords, breaking occasionally to bring the piece back into the fold.

This album is epic. Sometimes, it’s metal. Other times, it’s furtive, tribal and ferocious. Still other times it’s passive, forgetful and baseline – you may feel this to be a bad thing (as I did) the first time you hear the first ‘filler’ track, but then you realise that it is precisely that that makes the following track all the more wildly, frantically delicious.

Nightwish – Imaginaerum, is a concept album, I guess. It really is more of a film sound track – albeit a decidedly involved, momentous, and altogether overwhelming sound track. It ebbs and flows like an epic adventure, and just when you expect to find a rhythm, it introduces an altogether different feel. Just when you think “okay, I get it”, it throws in a track that belongs in the backing score to the A Few Dollars More remake.

I’ll cut short the ramble. It’s not perfect, at least not with the first listen. A few of the earlier songs especially make you feel like you’re about to sit through ‘the same old thing’. I loved Dark Passion Play, even with its problems (and Imaginaerum shares them – namely the somewhat boring single), but Imaginaerum takes what could very easily have been a disjointed mishmash of ‘more of the same’, and creates something more. To put it in the way my brain kept putting it in all the while listening to it: “It’s like if Bizarro-Tim Burton made a remake of A Nightmare Before Christmas, but less weird”.

I love it. I love the epic adventure of it. And I especially love the entire second CD of instrumental versions.

It’s very early, but this sets the benchmark for my favourite album this year.

2011 was an interesting year for me. It was my first year in full-time employment working as a journalist at a newspaper. It had its ups, and it had its downs. And although I spent a hell of a lot less time listening to music (used to be able to do it while working, but can’t anymore now I spend half my life on the phone), a few great things happened. Right at the tail end of 2010 I went to Stereosonic and saw one of my idols, Ricardo Villalobos. But that was overshadowed by Optimo giving friends and I a bottle of vodka poured into a water bottle because we were the ONLY PEOPLE watching the gig. Once they knew I knew who they were, it was awesome. Amanda Palmer, of the Dresdon Dolls, performed at the Fringe and I spent a week pleading for a Radiohead song on Twitter. She complied at the free Ninja gig she did afterwards, but i missed the beginning when she was asking if the guy who had been harassing her was there. I was outside smoking… So I learnt my lesson and quit smoking. Seeing the Flaming Lips at the end of the year was also a brilliant experience, and them playing two Pink Floyd songs made it even more memorable.

Anyhow, onto the recordings I loved during 2011. In no real order, mind you, but the last one really does stand apart from the others, so I guess I’ll call it my number one.

Sandwell District – Feed-Forward.

Pure, deep, dark techno of the purest sense. The guys behind this have developed an anonymous, collective aesthetic to their releases that was capped by the vinyl version of Feed-Forward and the slightly different CD version, that pulled together different mixes of the same tracks.

What is known as techno in Australia is far removed from the actuality that is played in clubs around the world. This gave me a taste of what it is like. As a result? I’m planning to go to Berlin, somehow, and experience this for real.

BNJMN – Plastic Word

If Sandwell District is deep, dark techno, BNJMN produces light, airy techno. Its like an entire range of sound frequencies have been unused for years, and BNJMN nails it in the opening seconds of the opening track. How different does this sound to stereotypical techno? There’s a midrange there that is just irresistible. And the whole album continues in the same vein.

Andy Stott – Passed Me By / We Stay Together

And this couldn’t be more different to the sound pushed by BNJMN. Until this pair of EPs, Andy Stott was a very good dub techno artist. But this blew it all out of the water. It’s techno, but after years of the degrading to a point that everything is covered in static, and the record player is only able to play it at 33rpm rather than 45rpm. And it’s playing in the room next to you, so you can’t QUITE hear what is going on, but you know it’s good. It’s slow, dark, and captivating.

Zomby – Dedication

Think you know what dubstep is? If you do, you’ve heard of Zomby, and this brilliant album doesn’t need an introduction. One of the best releasing one of the greatest albums the scene has produced. If you haven’t heard of Zomby, you know nothing, and you Skrillex and that other shit you call “dubstep” need to listen to this and just STOP RELEASING THAT CRAP /rant over.

Zomby, from what on first appears to be short fragments of ideas, has constructed an emotional, web of sounds that pull you in further until any memory of a ridiculous bass drop is all but forgotten.

The Field – Looping State of Mind

As long as there’s a new The Field album, it will appear in my best-of list. Apparently. Axel Willner’s first, From Here We Go Sublime is one of my favorite albums of all time. The second, Yesterday and Today, was in my Top 10 of 2009. And this is better than the last one, so it has to be here. Short loops of unknown songs are taken and instruments added on top to create the most beautiful, hypnotic music you have ever heard.

Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact

Not as “tracky” as the last, Saint Dymphna, which remains one of my favourite recordings ever released. Eye Contact is a little different, and could be seen as a step backwards to their earlier jammy records, but have kept the clean recordings. Which makes it possibly better if you have an interest in longer jams rather than a 3-minutes pop song. Is this BETTER than Dymphna? No, simply because it’s different. Eye Contact is just as good as it though.

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

“Noise” music has been around for quite a while. Some friends have told me the music I listen to is”just noise”, which is a crap, misinformed opinion, like saying a Picasso “is just paint on a canvas”. This recording, by prolific noise artist Tim Hecker, may appear to be at times nothing but a wall of static…until you actually LISTEN, and it becomes sublime, emotional, cathartic, and simply stunning.

The Weeknd – House of Balloons

An indie hip-hop mix tape, released for free by a complete unknown…that exploded into one of the most known and most important releases of the year. Two free followups have been released since, creating a brilliant trilogy that defined much of the music of 2011. At times dark and bleak, other times filthy, showing the seedy underbelly of sexuality, and at other times beautiful. It’s amazing to think this was put together by someone in their bedroom on a laptop. Who also happens to have one of the best voices you have ever heard. Get it free here.

Jay-Z and Kanye West – Watch the Throne

Yes, I have included a rap album. This will surprise some people. I wasn’t going to include this originally, but then decided that I should include the album that’s provided so much fun throughout last year. Otis and No Church in the Wild are just brilliant. There are some tracks that I don’t really remember, or didn’t seem that interesting. Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy turned me around to actually realise there is rap I like, and this is even better. I’ve spent more times dancing around like an idiot to Otis than anything else…ever. So I have to include it.

Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness

Initially it was a toss-up between this and Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost, coz they are both fantastic. But this soundtracked a very important week for me personally this year, so for my own selfish nostalgic sake, it gets the nod. On the surface, Los Campesinos! write happy, big-band indie similar to Architecture in Helsinki, Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire. But there is a slight darkness to it that (especially lyrically), for me at least, that gives it more of an emotional resonance. And although it’s called Hello Sadness, it is still a happy record made by a group of people quite clearly enjoying themselves.

Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

This is my album of the year. But it puts me in a difficult position, because it is very hard to write about how it sounds. It is made from loops taken from DVDs of old commercials from the 1980s that the artist (Daniel Lopatin) bought online. But you would never be able to tell what it was from if you didn’t know. He has somehow melded it all together into an ambient soundscape that at times turns into walls of static and other times resembles synth-drones of his earlier work. But like the Tim Hecker record I mentioned earlier, it is emotional and overwhelming, at times funny, and at times sad. It is much more than the sum of its parts. I know I haven’t sold it well, but I don’t really need to other than to say this: If you have any interest in music as an art form, listen to this. You won’t be disappointed. I promise.

Whoever you think you presently are. Thank you.

Everything we think and everything we do, is a blend of our experiences, from childbirth through childhood, encompassing all our formative years throughout and beyond.

We are like sponges except that we aborb stimuli, we filter information, we process it and meld all our different sources together as we come to understand them as we start to produce… Whether we’re producing art, or music, or food, or even conversation, the process is the same, all we are is a sum of our experiences, all those experiences have been driven by people surrounding us and all that they are and all that they say is a sum of the experiences they have experienced.

I am not saying that you are not a unique and beautiful snowflake

What I am saying, is that everything is derivative of something else, life is derivative of life.

All that you read, all that you see, filling up your head with orange coloured liquid.

Entropy.

Appropriately the last post on this oft-forgotten blog was by Drew declaring his personal failure during the last NaNoWriMo. Tonight I was inspired to jot down a few thoughts I’ve had in the past few days as I’ve started the experience myself.

I never intended to do NaNo this year, last year, or ever. I’ve done a bit of creative writing for personal reasons in my past and it has always interested me but I had no desire to become involved in this project, mostly because my reaction to it has generally been “my friends who write should do this!”. This year I knew I had to get Sarah writing, I know how much she enjoys it and we’ve been brainstorming story ideas all through the year for one reason or another, knowing that NaNo was approaching I thought it would be a brilliant way to get her writing every day until on October 31st I decided out of the blue to sign up myself.

I love and hate the pressure.
Really, knowing that every day I have to sit down and write in order to reach my goal is working at me on two levels. I hate that I have to produce enough content to keep up my average, that I feel pressured and bullied by my own commitment into slaving away in Google Docs. On the other hand I’m really enjoying the creative outlet and if I wasn’t undertaking NaNo I would’ve writen about 1 paragraph in the last three days.

It’s keeping my mind occupied.
Even when I’m at work I can’t help thinking about all the story elements and ideas I want to incorporate into my writing, ideas for characters and plot devices abound and they’re keeping my mind pleasantly distracted while I mourn the loss of my primary distraction (Google Reader sharing).

Draft Zero is my novels working title.
I am under no illusions about this project (ok, probably a few at least) but the main ideal I’m sticking to is that nothing I’m writing is permanent, everything is subject to change and nobody gets to read anything that I don’t think is polished enough for human consumption. Chances are that none of this writing will ever see the light of day, and after November I’ll probably lose interest in trying to perfect it and go back to my other hobbies but at least I will have been thoroughly entertained (more like occupied) for an entire month of evenings. My hands are not the devils playthings.

Get used to this.
Let’s paraphrase my last comment. “An Idle blog is the devils plaything”. I’m not going to reread this post, or edit it in the slightest, I am just going to post my thoughts for the world (or at least 5 of you) to read. Gonzo blogging.

<insert lightsabre wielding cat video here>

… fuck. That was 500 words that could have been spent on my novel! Screw you readers, I’m out of here!

I CANNOT BE BOTHERED. AND MAYBE THERE’S LIKE, SOME DEEPER MEANING…

OR WHATEVER… NOPE. JUST DIDN’T THINK A PICTURE WAS NECESSARY

I am about to post my first attempt at the NaNoWriMo challenge (you don’t know what that is? You think this is the sort of blog where the poster isn’t too lazy to post a link? Google it.)…(no seriously do. It may well be the best interblogalisal charity gig ever.)

I know the idea is to make at least 50,000 words. I know I failed miserably. When I decided to properly give NaNoWriMo a go, I knew I had a deadline. And it wasn’t the end of November. It normally is, but for me it wasn’t. There were extenuating circumstances. I had thirteen days, as it turns out, to write as much prose narrative as I could. And what follows is what I wrote. I know it’s not brilliant – that isn’t the point of NaNoWriMo – but after reading over it again for the first time in two years, I laughed. And was surprised at some of the (fleeting and far-between) good ideas I had. Since every one of us at OkToBeginWith is lazy, and too self-aware and all-too-pretentious and all-too-modest, I figure I’ll start the trend of just posting whatever the fuck I post, regardless of whether it’s good or bad. Because… it’s my website, and I’ll put whatever the fuck I want on here. For instance: Dave, that last sentence was a perfect place to add a few semi(-)colons.

So yeah… Here is my pitiful (justifiably) attempt at NaNoWriMo 2009:

A loud bang is the last straw. Badger is officially terrified.

The air hums and crackles. Too fast, but that’s the least of Badger’s worries.

Everything is creaking and cracking. Still too fast.

The lights are all flashing. Badger doesn’t even know what most of them mean. Way too fast.

Screeching and blaring can barely be heard over the sound of presumably important things falling off. Badger thinks the alarms are just being rude; it’s not like he doesn’t know he’s going too fast.

Not that he can do anything about that.

He can’t see anything outside except fire. In a moment of paranoia he imagines the windshield is melting.

Suddenly, the fire stops, and Badger finds himself staring at the ground. Rather than being consoled by this, he decides to start screaming. He really is going too fast.

It seemed that he was burning through the atmosphere for eternity. The descent from air to ground is very short.

The ground shoots up to meet him in the blink of an eye. Then he dies.

Well, you would expect him to die. But he doesn’t, obviously. That would be pointless. Badger survives because his ship is very good at keeping him alive. Even though Badger hits the ground at tremendous speeds, in a giant ball of fire, in a rickety thing that even he would say is barely space-worthy, his ship has the good grace to activate stabilisers and inertial dampenisers and all sorts of other technical bits, and he survives. But it takes him a long time to wake up.

When he does wake up, it’s fairly obvious he’s not going to get his ship moving anytime soon. He knows this because most of it is missing. His head hurts, and his face is stiff from dried blood. One of his legs is injured, possibly broken. But these ailments are trivial right now, because he’s looking up.

Badger assumes that by looking up he would see the roof of his ship. But he doesn’t. He sees sky, and the rim of a great big hole. Even though it hurts a lot to think very hard, he still has sense enough to notice that his only means of getting off of this planet is now scattered all over it. Again.

Honestly, he’s not surprised this happened. His luck hasn’t been all that great lately.

You see, Badger is a rather unfortunate sort. His own planet blew up, so he’s been searching for a new one for a while. He’s fairly sure there aren’t any others like him anywhere out in the Big Black. He hasn’t met any at least. This doesn’t really bother him overly though, because he never really got along with any of them anyway. On his travels he’s found plenty of worlds he thought he could settle on, but they always seem to have problems; the water is actually acid, the wildlife have too many teeth, that sort of thing. So for as long as he can really remember (which due to his recent head wound, isn’t actually that long) he’s been hopping from one planet to another, always dissatisfied with each in turn. He even visited the same planets a couple of times. He’s not the best navigator in the universe.

But while all of that is unfortunate, now he’s really in a bind. Badger is stuck on a planet he knows nothing about, without a ship (but with lots of pieces of a ship), and with all sorts of cuts, bruises and broken bits.

Badger stands at the edge of a very big hole, looking down at the debris he relied so heavily on. He is still wearing his spacesuit. It’s specially designed to hold him up and keep him breathing on strange planets, so I suppose you might call it a planetsuit, but that would just be confusing. He thinks it’s very lucky he has it actually, because the hydraulic system built into it is the only reason he can walk. The hissings and creakings are slightly aggravating, but it’s certainly better than trying to shuffle along with a very sore leg.

He hasn’t tried taking his suit off yet. Having your ship fall to bits on a collision course with a planet is very distracting when you’re trying to find out whether said planet even has breathable air. He thinks that with his fortune the way it is, he’d better keep it on. Badger has one last longing look at what is left of his ship, then turns to survey his surroundings.

The land stretches out for miles and miles all around him. Huge pillars of jagged rock spiral and twist and gyrate upwards at impossible angles. Swirling plumes of red cloud race among the canyons. The sky is bright blue, almost white. The white sun is huge in the sky. It reminds him of his own lost sun. His ship has crashed on a large plateau, high up at the top of this grim world. The impact doesn’t seem to have destabilised the ground, for which Badger is very thankful. But it means that in order to find food or water, he probably needs to climb down to the bottom. He walks to the nearest edge of the plateau and looks down. The sharp angles of rock continue in a maze of arches and tunnels into a deep, deep blackness far below him. This is quite possibly the most uninviting world he has ever stepped onto. He sighs. That sounds about right.

It takes Badger quite a while to notice that he is not alone up here. It probably shouldn’t have, as the stranger is standing right next to him, leaning over the edge to see what he is staring at. Badger is so lost in thought, in fact, that even after the stranger has started talking, he still doesn’t notice.

“Are you trying to find anything in particular, Large One? You know you made an awful noise when you came down here. Ha! Down here! Here I was thinking I was on the tallest part of all the world. You must live very far up there if I can’t see it. What are you looking at? Did you bring me a present? I like presents. I get so very few of them. Nobody comes to visit me up here. Did you lose my present? Is that why you look so sad? Or do you always look like that? Everybody must think you’re very grumpy. You have a very nice shell, I must say. Do you think-”

The little creature is very startled when Badger finally notices it and gives out a loud shout. The creature shoots off very fast, scuttling across the plateau before jumping into a hole. Badger stares after it, wild-eyed. He cautiously steps after it, hoping he hasn’t gone mad.

As he approaches the small hole, the creature pops back out slowly. Badger looks at it curiously.

The little creature looks just like a ball of orange fur, with two huge round eyes poking out of it. It grasps the edge of the hole with two tiny wing-like arms, which end in three-fingered hands.

It stares at him for a long time, seemingly torn between curiosity and running away. Eventually, it crawls fully out of the hole. It raises both of its little arms.

Badger looks even more puzzled. “Uh… hello there.”

The creature suddenly shouts, revealing a mouth almost the whole size of its tiny body, and lined with razor-sharp teeth. “You can talk!” It cries. Then it glowers. “You sound funny. You should take your shell off if you’re going to talk to people… Are you going to eat me?” The creature bounces back, but not convincingly, “Lots of things try to eat me, you know, but I’m very good at running away. You won’t catch me.”

“I don’t want to eat you, um… Thing.” Badger says. “What… what are you?”

“What am I? I’m me of course! Drizzle is what I call myself. It’s a joke you see, because it never rains up here, and I like the rain. Also it’s a joke because nobody ever talks to me, so I don’t really need a name. Do you like my joke?”

Badger thinks Drizzle might have sun-stroke. It’s certainly a very odd little creature. Badger may be concussed enough not to think that a creature that lives in a place with no rain may not have a word like ‘drizzle’. Then again, Badger was never really that smart to begin with.

“It’s very funny.” Badger says. “Listen Thing, do you know how to get down to the ground?”

Drizzle stares at Badger for a moment, then bursts into tears. It cries and cries and cries. Badger tries to ask it what the matter is, but the little ball of fluff just keeps crying. Huge tears drip down into its fur, and soon enough Drizzle is soaked through. It falls back on the ground, and stays just like that, sitting and crying for a very long time.

Finally, Drizzle’s sobs get soft enough for Badger to get a word in.

“What’s the matter, Thing?” Badger asks, exasperated.

Drizzle sniffs a few times, before sobbing, “I knew you didn’t come to visit me. I knew. Nobody ever comes to visit me. It’s very lonely up here. I spend so much time racing all over these rocks, and all I really want is somebody to race with me. It’s not very fun racing with yourself, you know. I can never tell if I’ve won or lost.”

“Well, where are all of your friends, Thing?”

“Oh, they’re over there.” Drizzle waves with one of his stubby little wing-hands.

Badger looks in the direction Drizzle points. Another large plateau lies not too far away, and Badger can make out dozens of tiny hopping, bobbing things running around on it. Dozens more Drizzles. Just what he needs…

Badger is getting very impatient with his new acquaintance. “If you know where all the other Things are, why don’t you just go over and join them?”

Drizzle’s eyes water up again. “I can’t. It’s very far away, and there aren’t any bridges. I would need to go…” Drizzle trails off, and stares pointedly over the edge of the plateau, into the blackness.

“Down there?” Badger asks.

“Oh no! Not down there! I’m not going down there. It’s very dangerous. Go down there, be a snack. That’s the way, you know.” Drizzle is shaking with fright now. “Bad things down there. Dangerous. Deadly. Go down, don’t come back up.”

Badger looks concerned now. This creature has finally given him some real information. It looks like he will have to be very careful if he decides to move off this plateau.

“So Thing,” he asks, puzzled. “How did you get on this plateau? I mean surely, if you got here, you can get back, right?”

“Oh no.” Drizzle says. “I flew here. Well, not on my own. I can’t really fly. A flying thing picked me up and tried to carry me off to be eaten. But I’m very good at escaping. I fell off, onto this rock. And I haven’t left. I’m very lonely now. Nobody comes to visit me here.”

The little fur-ball’s story tugs at Badger. He too knows what it feels like to be cut off from his kind. Badger hasn’t seen his kind for a very, very long time. Even though he doesn’t really like any of them, sometimes he finds himself imagining that he did. Loneliness is very hard to live with.

Badger looks at the gap between the plateaus thoughtfully. He does some calculations in his head, and stares into space for a bit. Drizzle stares at him the whole time. Finally, Badger looks at Drizzle.

“Thing, I might be able to help you.” He says. Badger knows he’ll just feel guilty if he doesn’t help the annoying orange thing.

“Help? Help! You’ll stay and be my friend?” Drizzle cheers up immensely, but is crestfallen again when Badger shakes his head. How Drizzle knows a headshake means no is a mystery really, but he did.

Badger pretty much ignores Drizzle from that point. He strides purposefully back to the crater he crawled out of, followed by a curious fuzzy ball jabbering inanely about the sky or rocks or whatever fuzzy orange balls like to jabber about. Badger didn’t have a plan to get off this forbidding planet, or even this forbidding plateau, but at least he could help out the locals while he formulated one.

DIRECTIVES:
 - PRIMARY: Site Maintenance.
 - SECONDARY: <404>

OPERATIONAL STATUS: Operational (fair).
//SC note: due to the strain on facility services operational standards have been temporarily lowered.
// Units able to perform primary directives to regulatory standards will remain operational.

<compiler; delay=false; action=log/core>
011100110110010101100011011011110110111001100100011000010111001001111001
01100100011010010111001001100101011000110111010001101001011101100110010101110011
01110100011011110010000001100011011011110110110101100101 
</compiler>

SYSTEM DIAGNOSTICS:
Primary Memory Core Integrity: 87%
Secondary Memory Core 1 Integrity: 17%
Secondary Memory Core 2 Integrity: 3%

Locomotion Systems: ACTIVE
Haptic sensors: ACTIVE
Optic Sensory Receptors: ACTIVE
Vocal Recognition: INACTIVE
Maintenance Tool Suite:
 - Precision Plasma Saw: OK
 - Hardpoint adjustment kit: OK
 - Flame retardant delivery system: OK
 - Fusion Welder: OK
 - Diagnostic kit: 0|< //..-. — .-. -.-. . / — …- . .-. .-. .. -.. .
 

See /maintenance/bin/<unit number> for more diagnostic reports.

Operational report 26/8/2027.

0500 – ACTIVATE
0510 – SlEF D1AGN0S1C5 Comp__e = PASS
0511 – <recieving tasks>
0511 – item 1: //run/illumination-fixture-repair ||

print(“tHeeee cuRTaINS were b-b-b- 01100010011011000111010101100101“)

0600 – item 1: COMPLETE… //..-. — .-. -.-. . / — …- . .-. .-. .. -.. .

//UNEXPECTED END OF  FILE

Site number: 0359035

Employee: 8842169

Room 8812A was a mostly triangular room, with one completely upright 50-odd degree corner met at the top by a gently curved hypotenuse that rose from the ground mostly upright before slanting in to create a fairly level ceiling.  The decor had a utilitarian colour scheme boasting a less-than-stylsh blueish-grey on darkish-grey motif, accented by appliances that absorbed more light than they reflected. There was a basic dresser along one curved edge sporting a vacuum sink and a polished mica mirror, another edge housed a floor to ceiling cupboard and the straightest edge was home to a recessed double bunk.

Byron Graves could have described it all in great detail without turning to look. He had spent the last 18 months living here since his posting to Hollister. The room itself was much different to what he had been used to previously but he had already spent many hours committing it to memory and now spent the majority of his time that wasn’t spent working or training staring out the nasteel window. Nasteel was a mostly transparent compound made primarily from compressed sodium that most of the facilities windows were made from. Byron was quite lucky to have been issued room 8812A, if you considered luck in the same way Byron did, as this section of the compound had recently been restored from a catastrophic structural failure and as the Site Control System, or SC as they colloquially called it, had been allocating workers to this section slowly it permitted him the luxury of a room to himself and a view.

The silence, and Byron’s daydreaming, were abruptly interrupted by the voice of SC coming in over the P.A. system. Some people received SC’s communiques in text form over their portable computer slates but as Byron’s was currently on charge and syncing his upcoming schedule the data was piped directly through speakers mounted in small pockmarks in the ceiling. Byron was always disconcerted by the warm tone of the SC’s artificial voice, while most artificial intelligence used the most basic language processors in order to save space and processing power Byron could only assume this system over-designed in every conceivable fashion, down to a small fortune invested in an appealing demeanor.

Byron took one last glance at the rising of the first solar body out his window and then turned, retrieving the tunic draped over his bed edge and pulling it over his head as SC recited the regular morning brief. He dressed quickly into a smart uniform including properly creased trousers and a loose jacket in navy blue, he then  regarded himself briefly in the mirror before grabbing his slate, tucking it into his inside breast pocket on his way out the door.

Site Control System

Planet: Delta Gorno

Coordinates: 290.8 : 026.9

Site name: Hollister

Site number: 0359035

Population: 456,301

Commenced: 2027 Status: Open

Latest available data: 26 Aug 2027

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Good morning,

I trust you slept well. The time is 0700 EST. The temperature today is 23.4° C. Humidity is 62%. Weather forecast for today is cloudy, slim chance of rain. Sector 0A active. Sector 0B active… Sector 9J Active.

Remember @ASK is available at any time to COMMENT directly with the MAINFRAME.

Current Agenda Items (provided by Hollister City Council):

New Electors of Site Government, Hollister. Formal suggestion: public address (please reference @ASK.addressingsite).

Please proceed to the control room for morning briefing.

And have a good day

Apocalypse Now Redux

It’s extremely long. There’re bits that don’t make sense. Marlon Brando is fat. Laurence Fishburne is very young. Martin Sheen was drunk. Dennis Hopper was awesome. Robert Duval says one of the most famous lines in cinema history. Harrison Ford plays a bit part. It was all made with no help with CGI. The helicopters were on loan and occasionally had to go back to a war. The music is amazing. They do nothing most of the film but cruise up a river. It almost didn’t get made. It’s based on a Joseph Conrad short story. And somehow: it is not only the greatest war movie ever made, I would nominate it as the greatest movie ever made.

Into the Wild

I watched this film for the first time with my mother. We were both amazingly engrossed in every second. The cinematography is stunning, the music is stunning, I feel in love with the 10 minutes Kirsten Stewart was on screen (then out of love thanks to every other film she’s done) and the ending is incredible. I loved everything about this film. It finished and I turned to mum, and she said “I can’t understand why anyone would do something like that”. I said “I can completely understand doing something like that”. Yet we both loved the film. It shows how people take their own experiences and relate themselves into movies. Her, as a mother, was watching the story of how a young person decides to completely uproot themselves, and disappear. She was imagining how she would feel as a mother if her son did that. I, being 20 at the time, could completely understand the appeal of disappearing. I can watch Into the WIld over and over again, and had a completely different experience with it (but that’s another story) some years later. Either way, it is stunning.

Clerks

I agonised over this film. I ALMOST included Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels instead. But the films of Kevin Smith defined a large part of my life. Are any of them brilliant? No. They are all flawed. Clerks is not perfect. But I wouldn’t change a single frame. The first time I watched it, I wasn’t 100% on it. I didn’t understand the words that were intercut throughout it. But this is one of the formative films for me that gave me a huge interest in the more experimental, low-budget, indie cinema that I can’t get enough of. After the events of this no-budget little film, the characters of the Quick Stop fracture into the strange Smith-ian world, with only Jay and Silent Bob keeping it together. But then it all comes gloriously back to Clerks 2. It’s very flawed. It has bad moments. But it’s worth it for the ending. I grew up with these characters, and I was very sad to see them go.

Fight Club

Someone once said to me Fight Club is like a bad haircut. Awesome at the time, but when you look back on it, you cringe. I disagree. For reasons similar, I didn’t put Donnie Darko and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on my list, despite many expecting me to. But watch Fight Club again, and it remains as one of the best (if not THE best) film of the 1990s). Norton (one of the best actors of his generation) is brilliant, Pitt is brilliant (and inspiring while at the gym…), but the film goes to Fincher. Everything he touched since Se7en has been stunning. And this is his high watermark.

Taxi Driver

This is one of those films that I can’t say exactly why I like it so much. It’s slow, not much happens until the end. But it is the high-water mark of the Robert De Niro/ Martin Scorsese collaborations. De Niro puts in the (arguably) performance of his career, and a 12 year old Jodie Foster almost matches him. The tension in this film is amazing, you can just sense how crazy he is slowly becoming. I love it, and I think everyone else who has seen it loves it as well. Haven’t watched it? Do yourself a favour.

Almost Famous

Yes, I know I’m not the first to put it on my list. I fell in love with Kate Hudson completely. I’m not sure, but I’d like to think my deep love for this film rubbed off on to Dave and Sarah.

Across the Universe

Again, a repeat. Hey, we’re all friends, right? Surely that means we have things in common. This was very much a “had-to-have-been-there” experience. I had always known the Beatles, wasn’t a huge fan. This film changed me.

Requiem for a Dream

More-so than almost anything about my friendship with my compatriot Drew, strangely, our love for Darren Aronofsky is the thing we have in common. No arguments, we both absolutely 100% love his films. Drew picked The Fountain, and I think we are perhaps two of the only people that are mesmorised by it. But it’s not my favorite. I could easily have put The Wrestler or Black Swan on here. I adore Pi as well, but anyone who has seen it…would never put it in a Top 10. Requiem for a Dream was chosen by me because it truly devastates me. Ever time. I know what happens, but I can’t look away. Jarred Leto and Jennifer Connolly are truly brilliant. If the was just their story, it would be stunning. But throw in the mother (the brilliant Ellen Burstyn, deserving of her Oscar nomination), and the movie goes to another level. Simple as that.

Singin’ in the Rain

This is a curve ball that I don’t think anyone was expecting. But those that know me know that I have a love above film, and that’s music. And not only is this the first musical I remember, it’s the first film, period. We had an old VHS recording that my mother loved to put on all the time. I remember all the songs and half the lines off the top of my head. I still have a soft spot for musicals (the second one I remember is the Sound of Music). I even saw the live production of Singin’ in the Rain when it was at the Adelaide Festival Centre when I was about 12. It was brilliant, as is the movie. The song Make ‘Em Laugh is still one of my favourite scenes ever.

Lost in Translation

I hired Lost in Translation expecting a Bill Murray comedy. It has Bill Murray in it, and it’s funny in parts, but it’s not a normal film, not by a long shot. This is the one film I could put on, no matter how I was feeling, and it would take me to another place. I don’t know why. It’s fitting that I began and ended with a Coppola film (Francis Ford and his daughter Sofia for those playing at home). I think I would always argue Apocalypse Now is the greatest film ever made. This is my favourite.

I hate it when we do this. In all fairness, however, it must be done. I am on the verge of punching somebody in the face next time I hear the  phrase “my favourite film of all time’.

I planned to scrutnise every film I love to the point where each had its own list of pros and cons, and use this information to chronicle my ten favourite films. But for obvious reasons, this snowballed and I developed a headache trying to remember, arrange and perfect a microscopic portion of a virtually endless catalogue. Eventually, I figured that the movies that come straight to mind when I ponder this question are going to rate very highly regardless.

I apologise for not discussing why some of these films make me feel the way they do – they just do. It all got too difficult for me. They affect me in ways that no other films do, and merely being a part of this list is enough explanation as to why I love them. So here it is, after minimal amounts of headbanging and more “oh! but…’ moments that I care to admit: Ten Films Sarah Loves (and will still love for always).

1. Almost Famous

A loose representation of Cameron Crowe’s life – an autobiographical piece, if you will. William finds himself touring with band Stillwater, living their life complete with Band Aids, promiscuous benders and his old-fashioned, overprotective mother begging him to come home. Eh; I could give you a full synopsis of the plot of this incredible piece of amazing film history, or if you haven’t yet seen it, you should STOP READING THIS IMMEDIATELY AND GO AND WATCH IT. GO!!!

2. Moon

How do you think you would cope, with only your own company for three years? With nowhere to go, nothing to do that is not your job? Would you go insane when you meet yourself? Could you handle learning that you are merely a clone? Moon is simply stunning, it floors me. And this has nothing to do with the fact that it was the first film I watched in 1080P.

3. Fight Club

I am my own sheer awe at the brilliance of this film.

4. Garden State

Zach Braff: well, I don’t particularly like him. I love his work, though – I just don’t think I could be bothered befriending him if I ran into him at a bar. Like Scrubs, Garden State is so beautifully executed, it has the optimal amount of emotional drive and uniqueness that makes something able to be noticed. I love the sombre mood this movie delivers, I love Natalie Portman and her giant dog, I really do like the print the bathroom and shirt were made in, and I am fucking amazed by the music! Zach Braff: you are a very talented individual, and thank you for introducing me to The Shins.

5. My Girl

My “My Girl” VHS was taped from TV. The first ten minutes of the video was of footage of a Romanian gymnast that dad couldn’t bear to part with. I watched the film so much that not only did I destroy the cassette, I can vividly remember Nadia Comanecis perfect ten routine when I close my eyes. I could also confidently tell you all about the ads that channel 7 were broadcasting at the time, and that according to those ads, License To Kill was on the following Tuesday evening at 730pm.

6. Lion King

“Everything the light touches, is our kingdom”
Whilst visiting from far north Queensland, my brother Daniel took me to the cinema to watch this, and I am pretty sure that an old family friend bought me the video the following Christmas. That being said, I should mention that this was the other VHS cassette I wore out completely…

7. Candy

If you want to reduce me to tears, sit me in front of Candy. Well executed love stories send me a bit crazy, probably because of a combination of me being a lady and being in a very happy, loving relationship – This film utterly destroys me.

8. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

“Sand is overrated. It’s just lots of little rocks.”

9. Across The Universe

I grew up loving the Beatles, and can say with complete confidence that they are my favourite band of all time. Combine this with a musical love story set in what my mum blissfully reflects on as ‘the best time of her life’ and the astonishing talent of Jim and beauty of Evan, and you have yourself Across the Universe – a utopia in my mind. This may or may not have anything to do with the circumstances surrounding the discovery of this film, but I will happily admit to watching it several times since and thoroughly loving it. The only negative thing I can report is that it turned “Strawberry Fields Forever” into a sad song for me.

10. Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain

I wish that my persona were so enriching that I felt the need change the world for the better, one small step at a  time. Also, Audrey Tautou is gorgeous.

Special mentions to Grease, Vanilla Sky and Eurotrip, three films that were removed at the very end…