The Pineapple Thief have have announced a European tour culminating in four UK dates at the beginning of December.
The four UK dates are:
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The long-awaited Graham Farish class 25/2 is finally here. Graham Farish have had a class 25/3 in the catalogue for many years, but the model dating from the Poole years is getting very long in the tooth. Following on from the new model of the similar class 24 from a couple of years back, a new class 25 was the obvious follow-up. In contast to the older Farish 25. the new model represents the earlier body style with front-end communication doors and bodyside grilles.
Known by the spotters’ nickname of “Rats”, the prototypes were built in the early to mid 1960, and the class eventually numbered no fewer than 327, making them the second most numerous class of main-line diesel after the class 47. The majority were allocated to the Midland Region though the Western and Scottish regions also had a few. Despite their large numbers they were relatively short-lived; the reduced demand for lower-power locomotives saw them last ones withdrawn in 1987, with many of them seeing less than 20 years service.
The Farish model comes in three different bodyshell variants representing the locomotives at different stages in their lives. The one I’ve got has both the boiler vent and the nose end doors plated over, and represents the condition of the locomotives in their final years in service.
I intend to renumber it to one of those allocated t o Plymouth Laira in the mid 1970s. These locomotives were brought into the West Country at the beginning of the 1970s to replace the class 22 diesel-hydraulics on local freight and passenger work in Devon and Cornwall. They were a common sight on china clay workings and Cornish local freight up to 1980 when the more powerful class 37s replaced them.
So far I have identified 25048, 25052, 25223 and 25225 as candidates for the new number. The above photo shows 25223 at Plymouth in 1976, and comes from John Woolley’s excellent photostream.
Gamergate still seems to show little sign of dying down, and forms part of the much larger cultural wars that have been raging across the tabletop RPG and SFF worlds over the past couple of years. As is usual for the internet, the loudest and most extreme voices are getting all the attention, and all nuance is lost.
I don’t really know much about the current state of video game journalism, so I don’t know quite how accurate the accusations and counter-accusations I’ve been seeing might be. But they do suggest there are parallels with the state of music journalism and criticism.
Good criticism is an important part of any artistic ecosystem. Critics certainly have a role in publicising and promoting great art. It should go without saying that constructive criticism plays a part in making good art better. And, whatever some fanboys might say, criticism does have a role in calling out bad art that’s undeserving of anyone’s time and money. There is much in the music world that is derivative, formulaic and clichéd. There is art that is tasteless and offensive for its own sake. And there is pretentious nonsense that is nowhere near as clever as it likes to think it is.
But as every music fan ought to know, there is as much bad criticism as there is bad music. There are reviews that seem little more than regurgitated press releases. There are unfairly negative reviews that fail to engage with what the artist is trying to do. There are reviews that have an obvious and unsubtle agenda shared by neither artist nor audience. And the cardinal sin of criticism is still reviewing the audience rather than the performance, usually accompanied by a sneer.
Does any of that sound familiar?
But ultimately both bad art and bad reviews have an absolute right to exist, and only become a problem when they start drowning out everything better. This has been a recurring problem in the music world, but has slowly faded away as the internet has eroded the powers of the old gatekeepers. Is it the same in the world of video games?
The Scottish referendum has upset the applecart of British politics, and the fact we came dangerously close to the breakup of the UK has sent shockwaves through a complacent Westminster establishment. And it’s about time too.
As Fish eloquently explained in a long and heartfelt blog post, this is not really about Scottish nationalism at all. It’s a crisis of democratic legitimacy affecting the whole of the UK. We had a series of administrations, both Conservative and Labour who have become increasingly remote from the people who elected them, and care more about the financial markets than the voters. While “The Markets” are described as if they’re some impartial force of nature, they actually represent a small number of extremely rich people who do not like democracy. The failure to prosecute a single high-ranking banker for fraud in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis and instead impose a punishing austerity regime squeezing the living standards of the most vulnerable shows where Westminster’s priorities lie.
The mood in the country is that things cannot go on like this. Where we go from here is an interesting question. There is a lot of talk of constitutional reform, of increased powers not only to Scotland but to the English regions and big cities, and presumably to Wales. And if electoral reform isn’t also high on the agenda, it really ought to be.
But tinkering with administrative structures or electoral systems isn’t the only issue, since the crisis of legitimacy goes far deeper. There is a media that exists within a Westminster bubble, and gives the impression it’s on the side of the politicians rather than the people. And then there is the Labour Party which had adopted the same neo-liberal agenda and become indistinguishable from the Tories in any meaningful sense. This means we’re denied any real choice even if we’re fortunate to live in one of the small number of marginal constituencies where our votes actually matter.
With nobody to offer an alternative vision of a better, more hopeful world that isn’t ruled by unelected bankers, the only other vision on offer is UKIP’s fear-driven swivel-eyed xenophobia.
And we need something better than that.
The progressive rock family have lost one of our own.
I didn’t know Jym well, but he was a familiar sight at London gigs, and we had a great many friends in common. This post from Jym’s blog about last year’s Touchstone gig speaks of the sort of person he was.
RIP Jym, you will be missed.
Unlike many other genres of music, progressive metal is a global phenomenon. Its reach now extends well beyond the traditional strongholds in north America and northern Europe. Dubai-based Empty Yard Experiment are the sort of band that exemplify this, a multinational band with members from Serbia, Iran and India.
“Kallisti” is the band’s first full-length album, following their self-titled EP from 2011. They cite the likes of Tool, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Anathema and Mogwai as influences, and have come up with an impressive and varied record. Dark and dense guitar riffs and swirling Mellotron contrast with delicate piano arpeggios, and there’s always a strong sense of dynamics balancing light with shade. Highly melodic songwriting sits alongside lengthy instrumental compositions, and there are moments where the strength of the arrangements make it difficult to believe this is a début.
Unusually for a prog-metal record, especially one with such a strong emphasis on instrumental material, it’s marked by the complete absence of any conventional solos, but there’s so much going on that the songs don’t need them. Unlike so many lesser bands who give progressive metal a bad name with self-indulgent widdly-woo, there is absolutely no technical showboating for its own sake on display here.
There is certainly something of Judgement-era Anathema in the highly melodic “Entropy” and of Porcupine Tree in chiming guitar of “Lost In A Void That I Know Far Too Well”. There’s also more than just a hint of more recent Opeth across the whole record, notably evident in the twists and turns of the lengthy closing number “The Call” especially in that massive piledriving riffing at the end. The atmospheric “The Blue Eyes Of A Dog”, one of several instrumentals, even recalls the symphonic post-rock of Godspeed You Black Emperor.
But Empty Yard Experiment are no derivative pastiche of other, better bands. With a sound that stretches from the sparse classical piano of “Sunyata” to the claustrophobic heaviness of “Entropy”, Empty Yard Experiment are a band with a strong music identity of their own, and “Kallisti” works well as a coherent album where the whole is more than the sum of the parts. It’s a hugely ambitious and mature record that represents much of what is great about progressive metal while avoiding that genre’s obvious clichés.
Years ago, back in the late 80s, the English-speaking world was in the grip of the so-called “Satanic Panic”. Driven by American or American-influenced fundamentalist Christians, we were told that things like heavy metal and Dungeons and Dragons were tools of Satan, and there were baby-sacrificing Satanic cults whose members included powerful figures in the upper reaches of society. It all seemed ridiculously far-fetched and offered a window in what appeared to be a paranoid and warped world-view.
In Britain we saw a moral panic about Satanic ritual abuse of children which parts of the social work profession fell for. This eventually culminated in the Orkney scandal in 1991, where despite the complete lack of evidence large numbers of children were forcibly removed from parents later proved to be completey innocent. Jonathan Calder blogged about in “The devil on South Ronaldsay“. It makes disturbing reading.
Decades later we have the revelations about the activities of Jimmy Saville, Cyril Smith and others, and the realisation that there really was a paedophile ring in the corridors of power in politics and the media, and powerful figures had been covering it up.
All of which make you wonder. How much were those two things were connected?
Were the stories of Satanic ritual abuse inaccurate rumours of what was really going on, like the party game of Chinese whispers? Or was it something more sinister, a manufactured lie from those who were covering up real abuse, to divert attention?
I suspect we will never know the truth.
Touchstone have announced two Christmas shows, at The Borderline in London on Friday December 12th, and at Bilston Robin 2 on Sunday December 14th, and have put together very interesting bills for both shows.
On Friday they will be supported by the violin-driven goth-metal of Symphony of Pain, who made a very strong impression at the Cambridge Rock Festival back in August. Sunday’s gig is a co-headliner, featuring IOEarth, who have been absent from the UK’s stages for far too long.
This years’ prog Christmas season will seem a little strange, with no Mostly Autumn Grand Opera House show due to the venue being booked up with pantomimes, and no Panic Room shows because of Gavin Griffiths’ commitments with Fish. But with Mostly Autumn, Marillion, Fish and now Touchstone all touring there’s not going to be any shorage of Christmas shows this year.