Author Archives: Tim Hall

Spock’s Beard – The Oblivion Particle

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Tim Hall

Spocks Beard The Oblivion ParticleSince their emergence in the mid-1990s when the genre was at its lowest ebb, Spock’s Beard have become elder statesmen of the third wave of progressive rock. With their twelfth album “The Oblivion Particle”, the second to feature Ted Leonard on lead vocals, they show no signs of running out of ideas.

The sound is what we’ve come to expect from Spock’s Beard. swirling Mellotron and Hammond organ, blasts of hard rock guitar, rich layered vocal harmonies, and a strong sense of melody. If you imagine 70s British progressive rock married to the US West Coast sound with a bit of The Beatles thrown in for good measure, that’s Spock’s Beard’s distinctive musical identity. As ever they love their vintage keyboards which have become a signature sound for the band, and Ryo Okumoto adds a few vintage synth sounds to the sonic palette.

From the opening wig-out “Tides of Time” and the soaring melodies of “Minion” to the stately finale of “Disappear” this is a record that needs multiple listens before it really starts to come to life. There are times when it strongly recalls Yes, especially those moments where the instrumentation drops out leaving gorgeous a capella harmonies, such as on “A Better Way to Fly”. But this is a record with far more energy than anything Yes have done for decades. There is an exuberance about the whole thing; it’s the sound of a band who know what they want to be and enjoy being it. Perhaps the only thing missing from this album is a stripped-down ballad to balance out the rocker workouts. Something along the lines of Octane’s “The Beauty Of It All” might have lifted the record to the next level.

But once you’ve given it enough time to get under your skin, “The Oblivion Particle” is a highly enjoyable record. Spock’s Beard succeed in having one foot in the past and one in the present; a delightfully retro sound with a modern sensibility.

Posted in Record Reviews | Tagged , | Comments Off

Noah Ward sweeps The Hugos

Posted on August 23, 2015 by Tim Hall

Mushroom Cloud

So the Hugo Award voters have decided to block-vote “No Award” for everything nominated by the Puppies campaigns, which means no Hugo was awarded in those categories where Puppy nominees swept the nomination ballot.

Many figures in the SF establishment are celebrating sending the Puppies packing. But I do think this may well prove to be a hollow victory, and risks diminishing the standing of the Hugo Awards amongst the wider SF community.

The full results (including the nomination numbers) can be found here:

Back in April, I wrote this

Every year, around February time, the Classic Rock Society holds an awards ceremony in Wath-upon-Dearne in Yorkshire. Despite the name, the emphasis is on progressive rock, and the winners are almost entirely drawn from a relatively small and incestuous scene of grassroots bands either signed to small labels or who release independently. Bands such IQ, Magenta, Mostly Autumn and a handful of others at the same level dominate the awards. Indeed the award for Best Bass Player used to be known as the “Best John Jowitt Award” because he used to win it year after year, until finally he ruled himself out of contention so that someone else could win for a change. Nobody from major-league prog bands like Dream Theater or Rush ever win, nor prog-influenced mainstream acts like Elbow or Muse.

Were a large influx of people join the CRS specifically to vote for something like Noel Gallagher’s album about points failures at Stockport as album of the year, a lot of people would be highly unimpressed. But the CRS Awards has never held itself up as representing the best of all music, progressive or otherwise. It doesn’t have a generations-long history in which “In The Court of the Crimson King” and “Close to the Edge” were illustrious past winners.

Have the Hugo voters decided they want to be the SF equivalent of the CRS awards? Because that’s the signal they’re sending out.  The most telling is the rejection of Toni Weisskopf as Best Editor (Long Form) in favour of No Award; it’s very difficult to spin this as anything other than pure partisan politics that pays no regard to Ms Weisskopf’s record as an editor.

Brad Torgersen ignited a firestorm with a comment about the SJWs wanting to load his kind into boxcars and ship them off to the icy wastes to die. It was a clumsy, insensitive metaphor, but the “icy wastes” reference ought to have been a clue that he was referring to the Soviet gulags rather than the Holocaust. But the way WorldCon made a strong statement that a subset of writers and fans are not welcome in their space because at least in part they belong to the wrong political tribe does suggest he had a point. The attitude of some people in SF’s progressive wing does have more than a whiff of Stalin about it.

If the business committee now rejects E Pluribus Hugo because block-voting No Award is seen as an acceptable method of dealing with slates, then the Hugo Awards are finished.

Don’t get me wrong, slate voting, even if it wasn’t in technical breach of the rules, was against the spirit, and I have no problem with people voting No Award for sub-standard work that didn’t deserve a place on the ballot. But what we’ve seen happen goes well beyond that.

Science fiction fandom ought to be about celebrating the best in imaginative speculative fiction. If that takes second place to turf wars between warring tribes, we all lose.

Posted in Science Fiction | Tagged , | 1 Comment

D&D is Cultural Appropriation?

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Tim Hall

A British gamer travels to America for the first time, and speaks of the way finally “gets” the tropes behind Dungeons and Dragons.

Yes, yes. I have long been aware of the ‘borderlands’ theme of American history. A history of explorers, of pioneers, of the ‘civilizing’ mission (winning the West) which was conducted peicemeal as much as imperial. And, of course, the American West provides us with some archetypal examples of murder-hobos. So, yes, a ripe historical analogue for D&D PCs, if we can get past the racism and genocide. But hey, just chuck in Orcs and we can all sleep easily, no?

But I didn’t fly over Arizona and find myself struck by the history. No. At least not directly. No, I flew over the desert and found myself struck by the quite awe-inspiring scale that pervades the USA. The USA – and the Americas in general – has a scale about it that is quite unlike that of Europe, and Britain especially. I don’t just mean its continental vastness, nor the buildings, people, or even the military-industrial-prison complex. As I flew into Phoenix I passed over canyon-laced desert that resembled, to European eyes, the landscape of an alien planet. I didn’t need to know much history to immediately wonder what the first Europeans had thought as they crossed this landscape with their pack-mules laden with equipment, accompanied by their hirelings. And the heat! The heat! It was so hot that I remarked that if it is ever that hot in Wales then your house is on fire.

In Florida there was a different kind of heat. A wet, swampy, (once) malarial heat, in a flat marshy landscape prowled by man-eating alligators. To get some breeze you get to the coast, and escape down a chain of islands a hundred miles long tipped by a wrecker ‘city’ – the richest per capita in the USA at one point – precariously clinging to an island made up of the skeletons of weird sea creatures, just waiting to be swept away by hurricanes (or pirates).

It’s not medieval Europe, even a middle ages seen through a distorted American lens. Anything European is really little more than very superficial window-dressing. Dungeons and Dragons is the Wild West with swords instead of six-shooters. The complete absence of anything resembling social class, and the whole zero-to-hero character arc thing is a dead giveaway. It really does owe far more to Ayn Rand than to J.R.R.Tolkien.

This does put the social justice arguments about the game into context. The argument that D&D characters should be overwhelmingly white because historical accuracy is racist bollocks because D&D isn’t set in anything resembling medieval Europe. And to argue that a game that is based on medieval Europe and written by Europeans must reflect the demographics of 21st century North America because diversity is also bollocks, because such a game isn’t default D&D.

Posted in Games | Tagged | 1 Comment

No Security Theatre on the Railways

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Tim Hall

SNCF "Sybic" on a Basel-Brussels international working at Luxembourg

Following the foiled terrorist attack on an interational train on the border between Belgium and France, there’s a worry that opportunistic politicians will propose airport-style security theatre for rail travellers. Anyone who actually cares about rail travel must resist and oppose such proposals by every means possible.

It’s not just that such things have the potential to make rail travel as miserable an experience as air travel has become post 9/11, but they would completely ineffective when it comes to saving actual lives. All it will achieve would be to make would-be terrorists find other softer targets. We learned that lesson fighting the IRA in the 1970s.

At worst, degrading the passenger experience of rail travel would encourage a proportion of travellers to take to their cars instead, and a proportion of them would then die in additional road accidents. Even if that doesn’t happen, how about multiplying an extra 30 minutes enforced check-in time by the many millions of rail journeys a year. Just how many lifetimes’ worth of wasted time will that add up to? All for something which will achieve precisely nothing.

It goes without saying that any politician advocating such things as policy guarantees that their party will never get my vote.

Posted in Travel & Transport | Tagged | 3 Comments

Cloud Atlas, Bilston Robin 2

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Tim Hall

Martin Ledger of Cloud Atlas at Bilston Robin 2

Cloud Atlas don’t play live that often, especially outside of York, so it’s well worth catching them when they do. On Sunday 16th August they came to one of the temples of the grassroots rock scene, Bilston Ronin 2

Howard Sinclair at Bilston Robin 2

Support was singer-songwriter Howard Sinclair. He normally performs as a solo acoustic artist, but this gig was a rare opportunity to see him with a full band, which included Morpheus Rising’s Paul “Gibbo” Gibbons on drums.  The result was a highly entertaining set, the songs fleshed out with the addition of a rhythm section and some bluesy lead guitar but still retaining a stripped-back singer-songwriter flavour.  One highlight was “Bedsheets & Bad Luck” with Howard on piano and a great guest vocal performance from Wednesday S on the song sung by Touchstone’s Kim Seviour on record.

Heidi Widdop

Cloud Atlas began with by playing live what many other bands would have run as an intro tape, a long intro of low whistle and e-bowed guitar before Martin Ledger lauuched into the riff of “Searchlight”, the rock epic that defines Cloud Atlas’ sound; a huge guitar sound, soulful vocals, a strong rhythm section and great use of atmospherics. There were many moments where Martin Ledger’s melodic and fluid effects-laden guitar recalled the playing of Marillion’s Steve Rothery.

Heidi and Martin of Cloud Atlas

The set consisted of the album “Boyond the Vale” in it’s entirety plus the Stolen Earth oldie “Soul in a Jar” and a remarkable solo acoustic cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” so radically reworked that it wasn’t instantly recognised. The material comes over powerfully live, played with fire and passion, and benefitted from the sort of clear sound we’ve come to expect from this venue.

Martin Ledger, Rock God

They finished with an impressive “Stars” with its guitar-shredding climax, after which the crowd weren’t willing to leave without hearing more. But the band had no more songs, so Martin Ledger put it to an audence vote on what song we wanted to hear again. The choice was “Soul in a Jar”.

So finished a great gig by a band who really deserve a wider audience. They’ve probably reached the stage when they need more material if they’re to play headline-length shows. At some point there will be a follow-up to “Beyond the Vale” and there will be new songs in the set. In the meantime, perhaps the band should consider rehearsing an interesting cover or two to play as encores?

Posted in Live Reviews | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Jeremy Corbyn

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Tim Hall

As a Liberal Democrat it’s tempting to grab a big bowl of popcorn over the Labour Party’s meltdown on the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn winning the leadership ballot. The latest episode is the rejection of many new members who “don’t uphold the values of the party”. While some of those are people who publicly supported other parties in the General Election, and we don’t really know the scale, in the event of a close result it’s going to undermine the legitimacy of whoever wins.

Although conventional wisdom is that a Corbyn-led Labour Party will be unelectable, we have no idea what likely to happen if he wins. The truth is that Labour is a hollowed-out shell of a party which no longer knows what it actually supposed to stand for, merely satisfied to triangulate in pursuit of power and let the Tories set the political agenda. That’s why they lost the election.

My guess is that a critical mass of Labour members have concluded that none of the other three candidates look remotely like election winners either, so they’ve put their faith in someone who, even if they can’t win, will at least widen the Overton Window in favour of things that won’t emerge from Tory-leaning think-tanks. A serious challenge to the austerity narrative would be a good start.

We can’t assume that Jeremy Corbyn intends to lead the party into the next general election. He does have far too much negative baggage, especially his links with anti-Semitic Islamists and his support for the IRA rather than the constitutional nationalists during the Northern Ireland troubles, and this will count against his party in the ballot box. But perhaps the plan is to spend two or three years revitalising the grassroots and changing the national conversation before stepping down in favour of someone else?

Liberal Democrat blogger Jonathan Calder is predicting a Corbyn victory will be bad for the Liberal Democrats. But I’m not so sure. The truth is we really don’t know what will happen. And if there’s another economic crash, all bets are off.

Posted in Religion and Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

For those who can’t get their hear around the maths behind E Pluribus Hugo, think of it like this. You have one vote, and it goes to whichever of your nominations turns out to be the most popular with other voters.

Posted on August 21, 2015 by Tim Hall | 4 Comments

Vote for E Pluribus Hugo

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Tim Hall

I’m not going to try and predict what’s going to happen in the Hugo Awards voting this weekend. I’d like to hope voters judge the nomnations on the quality of the work rather than treating the whole thing as a trial of strength between ideological factions. The only thing we can be sure of is vast numbers of electrons will be spent in discussing the eventual outcome.

But one thing I do hope to see is the E Pluribus Hugo voting system adopted for the nominations at the business meeting. Even then it will in turn need to be ratified at the next WorldCon, which means it won’t come into force until 2017.

Yes, I’ve seen lots of people arguing that the voting system shouldn’t be changed. But most of those arguments boil down to “It’s too complicated and I’m too lazy to try and understand how it works” or “It was proposed on That Site where all those awful people hang out, and therefore must be bad”. Neither of those arguments really hold water.

Whatever its real or imagined flaws, E Pluribus Hugo is better than the alternative. Leaving the voting system unchanged will mean it will devolve into battles between competing slates, meaning a handful of high profile figures with significantly sized internet bully pulpits will act as gatekeepers. Any work that doesn’t have the backing of a Scalzi or a Correia will have a hard time getting nominated.

Using some kind of social sanction to defeat slates would be even worse, and would devolve into bullying nominees into withdrawing their nomination if they had the misfortune to be publicly backed by a bad person. It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine how that would go wrong.

So Worldcon needs to adopt E Pluribus Hugo if the Hugo Awards are to remain relavant.

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The Fierce and the Dead – Magnet

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Tim Hall

TFATD - MagnetThough sometimes labelled as “post-rock” or the catch-all “alternative”, the instrumental four-piece The Fierce and the Dead are happy to describe themselves as a progressive rock band.

But unlike some bands under that banner, their mission is to make music in the spirit of 70s progressive rock rather than copying the sound. Their heroes include Voivod, Hüsker Dü and The Mahavishnu Orchestra rather the Pink Floyd, Genesis or Yes. The resulting noise could be described as “A punk version of King Crimson”, although that doesn’t really do them justice. Over the course of several EPs, one full-length album, and some pummelling live shows they’ve built a reputation as a band willing to take progressive rock into interesting new places.

The new EP “Magnet” is their first release since 2013′s “Spooky Action”. It starts with a bang with the big dirty riff of “Magnet In Your Face”, an explosion of rock’n'roll energy which packs a lot of music into less than two minutes. It’s Spooky Action on steroids. But from then on it chances tack. “Palm Trees” is slower but crushingly heavy, until the big wall of guitar gives way to a delicate middle section. “Flint” marries electronic effects and a dub-like bass riff with delicate chiming guitar. “Part 6 (The Eight Circuit)” begins with bass drones and effects-laden guitar until percussion loops appear.

The EP ends with rehearsal recordings of two numbers from “Spooky Action”, “Let’s Start a Cult” and the title track; there’s something of Alex Lifeson in the guitar playing on the latter at one point. There’s quite a contrast between these two numbers and the newer material that precedes them.

The Fierce and The Dead are not a band to stand still and repeat themselves. If Spooky Action had something of a punky, garage-rock vibe, Magnet is darker and denser, with more of a focus on the post-rock and electronica side of their music. Like all of their records, it has feet in many camps, defies simple categorisation, and makes a rewarding listen for anyone who wants to get out of their musical comfort zones.

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“Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace” is a horrifying account of the brutal way Amazon is run. One day we’ll regard management practices like this the way we now regard the slave trade or Aztec human sacrifices.

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Tim Hall | Comments Off