Dear white male science fiction author who shall remain nameless.
I don’t know if your now-deleted “Call for Civility” on your blog actually was expressing a desire for things to be just like they were in the 1950s when women and minorities knew their place, or whether that was just how it seemed.
But did it not occur to you that phrases like “Rabid jungle cats” used to describe some of your fellow writers who were neither white nor male might seem a teensy bit racist?
Panic Room hit the road again with six live appearances, beginning at The Flowerpot in Derby on 28th June, and ending at Sound Control in Manchester on 13th July. Special guests on all dates will be the excellent Morpheus Rising, and the London show at The Garage on 6th July will be a three-band bill with Touchstone.
These will the the final dates on the SKIN tour before Panic Room head into the studio to work on their fourth album.
“My Dark Surprise” is the new solo album from Iain Jennings, keyboard player of Mostly Autumn.
Iain released his first solo album “Breathing Space” back in 2005. What started out as a side-project took on a life of its own to become a band in its own right during Iain’s two-year sabbatical with Mostly Autumn, and saw two further well-regarded albums before the band disbanded in 2010. Since then Iain has returned to taking a bigger writing role with Mostly Autumn, making significant contributions to their last album.
“My Dark Surprise” is a concept album with SF storyline exploring themes of identity and reality, featuring Mark Chatterton on lead vocals. Iain composed the music and Mark writing all the lyrics.
The rest of the cast list includes a few familiar names; Gavin Griffiths (Mostly Autumn, Panic Room, Fish) on drums, Stu Fletcher (Halo Blind, The Heather Findlay Band) on bass, and Mostly Autumn’s Liam Davison on guitar. It also features Andy Newlove and Colin Elsworth on guitars, and James Russell on sax.
The whole thing has a song-orientated contemporary feel, with touches of electronica, hard rock, and even some jazz-flavoured dance-pop. All these were found in Iain Jennings’ earlier work, but Mark Chatterton’s vocals give the whole thing a quite different feel and mood. There’s a touch of Peter Gabriel’s delivery in one or two places.
There’s a greater emphasis on songwriting rather than virtuoso keyboard playing. Iain has always had an understated less-is-more style, his playing more part of the foundations of the song, and providing atmospherics, textures and colour rather than flashy soloing. Saying that, of the delicate piano lines on this record are quintessential Iain Jennings, such as on the ballad “That’s Why I Fly”, one of several standouts of the album.
The supporting cast all make strong contributions. Gavin Griffiths and Stu Fletcher make for a very powerful and tight rhythm section, while the guitarists add plenty of crunch, with some great soloing from Liam Davison. James Russell’s sax, though sparingly used, adds another dimension.
The way the album combines some very different styles to make a coherent whole shows Iain’s skills as an arranger; “Change The Shape” is a good example; it switches seamlessly between electronica and full-band hard rock within the same song without showing the joins. “Hiding From My Fears” is stripped right back to a simple piano and vocal ballad, which leads straight into the electro dance-pop of the title track. “Stand Inside The Shadow” starts by mixing electro rhythms and rock guitars and turns into jazz-rock workout driven by a powerful bass riff. The epic “A Choice To Make A Change” and “Nowhere In My Head” with it’s keyboard soloing head more into prog territory.
It all adds up to a very strong album, containing the strengths of Iain Jennings’ earlier work without repeating his past, and Mark Chatterton is a real find as vocalist. Any fans of Iain’s work with Mostly Autumn or Breathing Space ought to buy this without hesitation. But it’s also strongly recommended for anyone with a taste for forward-looking song-orientated contemporary progressive music.
The album is only available direct from Iain Jennings via paypal at breathingspacecd@aol.com (£10 + £3 P&P).
Update: It can also be ordered from Iain’s Bandcamp page for the album.
Good blog post from Joel Montvelisky: Is friendship ruining your testing career.
Our main task as testers is to criticize the work of our peers and to provide visibility into the status of our projects.
Criticising in itself is not a bad thing!
The definition of the word is actually “to consider the merits and demerits of (something) and judge accordingly“. For example think about the movie critic who writes a positive review of a movie, or the food critic who recommends a restaurant to his readers.
I’ve previously drawn parallels between my day job as a tester and my evening and weekend activity as a music critic, and so this post counts double for me. I’ve always thought that if you have an adversarial relationship between developers and testers then you’ve doing it wrong, which is one of the points Joel Montvelisky makes.
Not that software testing and music criticism is exactly the same. Most of my testing is on software that’s yet to be released to the customer, whereas records and live performances have already happened. But there’s always the next gig and the next record to consider. I won’t forget the band who thanked me for telling them they needed to change their lineup in a hurry.
Occasional talk of “rock star developers” makes me laugh. Whoever uses the term has never dealt with real rock stars. Though I ought to say that the vast majority of them are lovely.
Announced on Maschine’s Facebook Page.
The young and hotly-tipped UK-based progressive rockers Maschine have announced the release of their debut album entitled ‘Rubidium’ on the 29th July 2013. After being in the studio for several months, the band are ecstatic for the album to finally see the light of day, and band leader Luke Machin had this to say about its release: “I am extremely happy with the way this album has come together, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. We cannot wait to bring this album to the stage and start performing this material at live shows in the near future, it’s gonna be killer! An album is a documentary of ones life at the present time and finally I can now share this experience with you all on record.”
The track-listing for the album is as follows:
1. The Fallen
2. Rubidium
3. Cubixstro
4. Invincible
5. Venga
6. Eyes Pt.1
7. Eyes Pt.2
Maschine made a very strong impression at the 2012 Cambridge Rock Festival despite being one member down and playing as a four-piece. I know a few people were disappointed that the band had no merchandise on sale, since their album was still a work in progress at the time. Their wait will be over on July 29th.
Some industrial techno-metal from Mertesacker. “Junge Blau”, is the single from their album “Backpfeifengesicht” due for release on Monday 17th July.
“There is something distinctly galling about witnessing mainstream media commentators gushing about Glastonbury signifying the beginning of the British summer festival season. For those of us who enjoy music that allows for a touch more aggression and energy than Mumford & Sons, the true start of the summer comes with Download” – Dom Lawson tells it like it is. Never thought I’d read words like that in The Guardian.
Never quite sure when it’s better not to feed the troll, and when the situation is so bad it really needs sunlight and Dettol. Even by the standard of racist, sexist trolls in the bottom half of the internet, Vox Day (or by his real name, Theodore Beale) is a despicable piece of slime. The link doesn’t go to his own site (I’m not giving him traffic), but to that of Amal El-Mohtar, who is campaigning to have him expelled from Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and contains screenshots of Beale’s offensive screeds.
I’m not even remotely a fan of hip-hop or rap. But you don’t need to be to recognise this piece as hilariously ignorant pieces of music criticism I’ve read all year. Pro tip; if you want to make a serious critique of “modern music”, you do need to listen beyond top 40 radio if you want to be taken remotely seriously.
While Chantel McGregor has made a name for herself playing guitar-shredding electric blues-rock, there’s also a gentler acoustic side to her music. Here’s her beautiful cover of Bruno Mars’ “Grenade”, a version which will be familiar to anyone who’s seen her play live recently, since it’s been a regular feature of her set.
Chantel has also launched a new blog.