March 23, 2009
You know you’re getting lazy with the blog when you’ve not posted in so long that logging in presents you with a unfamiliar WordPress interface. Yeesh. So, what’s gone on?
In the last several months I’ve done trailers for Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt expansions to Fallout 3. This was one of the first times I really got to flex my own creative muscle more fully at Bethsoft so that was a lot of fun. Got another one coming up.
New albums I’ve been enjoying include Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone, Fever Ray’s self-titled debut, and The Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love. Was disappointed with Andrew Bird’s Noble Beast and MONO’s tepid Hymn to the Immortal Wind. Am waiting on three Sigur Rós vinyl re-issues to arrive. Saw Frightened Rabbit live—they were amazing.
Girlfriend moved in with me.
Played Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney all the way through (quite enjoyable) before I realized I’d never played the third Phoenix Wright game. That’s on the way. Also got into Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise. Don’t judge me.
Might’ve impulse-purchased a pair of Swan M200MkIIs today. The deal running over at The Audio Insider is great, and they’re well spoken-of in circles that speak well of speakers. A review will follow once they arrive and I try ‘em out.
Filed by matt at March 23rd, 2009 under Gaming, Life, Music, Work
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November 29, 2008
It’s not TOO often that my loving girlfriend recommends a CD I really like. It’s not her fault, I’m just kind of hard to please. But in the last few weeks she’s knocked not one but TWO out of the park—two CDs I’d never heard of that I love.
The first is the raw-yet-polished Scottish indie rock/pop of Frightened Rabbit. Their album The Midnight Organ Fight is at once driving and relaxed, moving through a number of musical idioms even while its lyrics are brooding, desperate, tortured, and ultimately some of the most powerful (and clever) I’ve heard this year. It’s no overstatement to say that this record contains some of the best writing I’ve heard since I flipped shit about The National. Album-opener “The Modern Leper” gets things off to a rousing start as lead singer Scott Hutchinson delivers one of my favorite lyrics of this year:
Is that you in front of me
Coming back for even more of exactly the same?
Well you must be a masochist
To love a modern leper on his last leg
Lyrically, the majority of the album focuses strongly on characters frustrated with love, with life, even with God. Confronted with his love leaving for another man in the lilting “Good Arms vs. Bad Arms,” the speaker pleads “And leave the rest at arm’s length / Keep your naked flesh under your favorite dress.” First single “The Twist” finds its character opining to “I need company / I need human heat.” Yet four songs later (atop a dangerously catchy tune) Hutchinson declares that “it takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm.” It is this album-wide back-and-forth that gives The Midnight Organ Fight its emotional resonance. Hutchinson’s characters thrum with a painful and honest melancholy that is both sympathetic and affecting.
Of course, Hutchinson is only one part of Frightened Rabbit, and while I’m wont to focus on good lyrics I’d be remiss if I didn’t compliment the band’s strong song crafting skills. Scott and brother Grant on drums, along with Billy Kennedy on guitar and Andy Monaghan on keyboards, build up songs whose pop hooks and forward momentum seem to run counter to the lyrical tone of the album. It’s the same dichotomy that The National has used to good effect, and while the two bands share only passing similarities in sound, there’s no mistaking the tactic. And it’s effective—”Head Rolls Off” brings crisp drums, simple progression and a singable melody, even as Scott delivers the controversial “Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name / How come one man got so much fame?” Most songs lack an especially powerful low-end due to the band’s lack of a bassist, but that oomph is more than made up for by the pounding drums and forward guitars. Scott’s wavering delivery and heavy Scottish accent might prove divisive for some listeners, but its raw, honest sound aids the lyrics’ heft.
Winterpills’ 2007 effort The Light Divides, by contrast, is a more laid-back affair—a pretty indie pop five-piece hailing from Massachusetts. Theirs is (for the most part) the quieter, more back-room sort of melancholy that one might expect. Not a revolutionary CD, perhaps—one could easily cite a litany of indie pop bands who’ve explored similar territory—but beautiful and solidly-executed nonetheless. Songwriter Philip Price and keyboardist Flora Reed breathe beautiful harmonies into the restrained words of Price’s characters, as the band backs with pitch-perfect acoustic-focused pop arrangements.
Like Frightened Rabbit, there is a sense of desperation about this album. “You could make me feel so good / If you’d come here and cry” Price sings on “Lay Your Heartbreak.” Later: “I think I finally understand / The way a broken arm can hate the hand / The way a farmer hates his crop / The way a lawyer hates the honest cop.” Later still: “I bear witness to / How your dying choice betrayed your voice.” From start to finish these compositions’ emotional cores seem to embody the same cold barrenness so many associate with the band’s native New England. It falls to the band’s arrangements to keep us from slitting our wrists, and their cautious but tight arrangements keep the album’s outlook from being downright depressing.
The album’s standouts, of course, are also its poppiest numbers—”Lay Your Heartbreak” and “Broken Arm” both are catchy, melodic numbers that (at first) steal the show. Yet it’s the album’s quieter and more considered cuts—the hushed battle for solitude in acoustic-plucked “Hide Me,” or the country-tinged “Shameful,” or even the cadence-changing guitar-gauze of “Eclipse”—where the band displays the amplifying power of its restraint. Each element become heightened by the songs’ relative sparseness. The album unfolds at an unhurried pace, which at first gives it the feeling of being somewhat sleepy. Further listening reveals the germ of each song though, and each has something to offer.
Both The Midnight Organ Fight and The Light Divides tread the same roads, though perhaps in different shoes and at different speeds. Whatever their differences, they’re both a couple of the albums I’ve been thankful to discover this year.
Filed by matt at November 29th, 2008 under Music
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August 1, 2008
You know, it’s really easy to get jaded these days. Lots of depressing bullshit happens every day. We get sucked into routine and life becomes pretty hum-drum.
So every once in a while, it’s nice to see someone out there proving that there’s more to life.
Filed by matt at August 1st, 2008 under Uncategorized
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July 31, 2008
With all the attention being given iPhone text selection/copy & paste lately (and this being an issue I’ve thought about a fair amount), I decided to throw in my two cents.
Firstly, I’ve always considered text selection (and the subsequent copy/paste operations) to be the sorts of operations that would require two hands. For one, pretty much all the obvious single-finger gestures have been taken. For two, these operations are what I like to call “primary activities.” I can understand wanting gestures to only require one hand in most cases, but when you’re selecting, cutting/copying, pasting or deleting blocks of text, you’re probably giving the phone your full attention.
I envision it going something like this:
- You position the opening cursor by tap/holding and dragging to get the loupe, as you do now.
- Instead of letting go, you continue to hold with that finger, and begin to make the same gesture with another finger to summon another loupe/cursor. This defines the end of the selection. At this point you’re selecting text. I picture this being done with both thumbs.
- Once you have made the selection (by letting go with one or both thumbs, probably both), a contextual menu appears, perhaps attached to the second (end) loupe and represented by simple icons, with the cut/copy/paste (and potentially delete) operations. This could also be done like the “multiple operations buttons” that appear when you want to do something with a photo in a Photo Album on the phone (Use as Wallpaper, E-mail, etc.)—probably the better of the two choices in that it’s larger, draws more attention to itself, and uses words to represent possible actions instead of tiny pictograms.
There are some obvious problems with this idea though. Firstly, it’s really centered around the applications where you’re actively editing text: Notes, Mail, SMS, etc. It doesn’t work as well for “viewer” applications like Safari where you might want to copy text from a page you’re looking at. In those cases I’d almost expect you’d have to perform some odd finger operation like a double-tap-and-hold/drag to initiate “text selection mode” that gives you a cursor within the text contained on the page.
Secondly, and perhaps more of a showstopper, there’s no good way that I can see to give the user an option to paste once he’s copied something to the clipboard. Perhaps summoning the cursor-dragging loupe once something has been copied would add a “paste” icon to the loupe, which could be clicked with a second finger? It’s at this point that you either start putting UI widgets in ugly—or non-intuitive—places.
I think the real issue is that Apple seems very reluctant to give in to traditional desktop computer navigation methods—and with good reason, considering the radically different input method their device employs. While multi-touch makes navigating documents much more physically tactile and intuitive, it makes more involved editing tasks much more complicated to portray. When navigating a view is as simple as swiping a finger, suddenly all that “the cursor is your metaphorical hand” stuff seems completely out of place. It’s just a shame that so many of our current mental models for editing text rely on an intermediary device between our hands and our words.
Filed by matt at July 31st, 2008 under Technology
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July 14, 2008
Just a quick note to point out that the official trailer for Fallout 3 went live today. This is especially exciting for me as this is the first time that my work has been directly viewed by tens of thousands of people. I had final cut over the gameplay portion of the trailer, so everything there was done in-house. The live action portion was produced by the ant farm.
If you’d like to see it, pop on over to prepareforthefuture.com, GameTrailers.com, or any one of many online media outlets that have it up. Alternatively, if you’re on Xbox Live, you can download the trailer in full HD with surround sound for free.
It was a ton of fun to work on, and I look forward to working on more stuff for Bethesda.
Filed by matt at July 14th, 2008 under Gaming, Technology, Work
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June 12, 2008
Yeah, I do that a lot.
In the last month and a half I’ve:
- Driven across the country with a car full of stuff and landed at my parents’ house.
- Successfully locked down a job at Bethesda Softworks, a videogame company.
- Lost my iPhone on the Metro.
- Hunted for an apartment in DC, found one, and moved in with my friend Joey.
- Seen Death Cab for Cutie and The National live in the span of three days.
- Reunited with the greatest group of people I’ve ever known.
Not necessarily listed in order of importance, because let’s face it, that last one is by far the most important.
Filed by matt at June 12th, 2008 under Concert, Life, Music, Work
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May 3, 2008
I’m going to bed in Hollywood tonight.
With any luck I’ll be going to bed in Laramie, WY tomorrow night. My car is packed with everything I’m not leaving behind, and I should be in VA by late Wednesday night, with any luck.
I’ll be blogging and e-mailing from the road (while taking breaks from driving, obviously), so feel free to contact me at matt at killmoms (dot) com, or by texting. You can also reach me by cell whenever I have service. I make no guarantees while I’m still west of the Mississippi.
Filed by matt at May 3rd, 2008 under Life
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March 27, 2008
While nothing has hit me hard enough to justify a full review since Boxer, I have been listening to several other albums in the last few weeks that deserve mention.
- The Hush Sound – Goodbye Blues – Precious indie-pop kids grow up a bit and release a stronger, more forward album that maintains the infectious piano-driven pop/rock hooks of their previous efforts. Greta in particular has grown into a vocal force, shedding the sweet/girlish sound for one that’s richer, more mature, and all-around more appealing. Lots of great stuff here. Particular favorites: “Honey,” “Medicine Man,” “Hurricane,” and “Molasses.”
- The Long Winters – Putting the Days to Bed – I know, not a new one, I’m just very very late to the party. There’s lyrical (and musical) meat on these bones, to say the least, if you can get past John Roderick’s unique vocal stylings. Particular favorites: “Pushover,” “Teaspoon,” “The Sky is Open,” and “Clouds.”
- Panic at the Disco – Pretty. Odd. – Unexpectedly (and wildly) successful loud electric-cabaret indie rock band uses their sophomore album to reinvent their sound, to the alternating chagrin and exultation of their fans and critics everywhere. But don’t let the shameless Beatles/Kinks/Beach Boys-aping deceive you—they are, in fact, “still the same band” with the same winking, self-referential and self-aware lyrics and penchant for crafting hooks they displayed on A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Particular favorites: “Nine in the Afternoon,” “Do You Know What I’m Seeing?” and “When the Day Met the Night.”
- Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts I – IV – Trent Reznor gives the music industry the middle finger in a manner even more daring (and apparently successful) than Radiohead by releasing his 4 EP set in a number of digital and physical formats, including full lossless-quality downloads. While the material itself is uneven (ranges from forgettable to pretty kickass), the release is notable for sheer ballsiness alone. If you’re a fan of Reznor’s knob-twiddling, it’s certainly worth the $5 for a set of high quality MP3s or lossless FLAC files (and a fucking awesome accompanying PDF booklet—art direction and typography are top-notch).
Also, I’ve completed the vinyl portion of my Sigur Rós collection.
Filed by matt at March 27th, 2008 under Life, Music
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March 3, 2008
When we were born, we were blank slates. We yearned for essentials—food, sleep, care. The extent of our dreams was limited only by what we didn’t know, and in our sponge-like state we soaked up everything around us. Being an adult was a goal that, like everything else, we acquired. By the time we knew how to give it a voice, the desire to be “grown-up” had little to do with being older or larger or more capable beings. It was about freedom: the freedom to stay up late, to watch as much TV as we wanted, to eat candy all the time, to buy whatever we desired. To satiate our desires. To consume. In our first three or four years we were molded into future consumers by a consumption society, the dream of adulthood tarnished at the outset.
It is this theme—the disillusionment with modern adulthood and all its trappings—that is central to The National’s fantastic 2007 album Boxer. Where Ween was willing to laugh about it in “Your Party,” Boxer serves as the comedown that reminds us that no, it’s really like that. Frontman Matt Berninger crafts a lyrical landscape that is crushingly honest and delivers it in a resigned baritone set against a backdrop of staccato guitar, bass, piano and relentless percussion whose velocity belies the album’s morose outlook.
In fact, nearly every aspect of this album seems to evoke the schizophrenic contrast of “full-but-empty” lives. The music alternates between optimistic, positive harmony and slight dissonance while the lyrics remain brooding. This contrast is summed up in the first two tracks. The positive, piano-driven hook of “Fake Empire” suggests a fist-pumping sing-along while Berninger delivers resigned pleas: “Turn the light out, say goodnight / No thinking for a little while / Let’s not try to figure out everything at once.” Then, after a lush outro featuring a chorus of brass, the band turns menacing on the off-kilter “Mistaken for Strangers,” and the lyrics turn nigh-accusatory: “Well you wouldn’t want an angel watching over / Surprise surprise, they wouldn’t want to watch / Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.”
Even the album’s positive moments pull no punches—Berninger acknowledges that we can find happiness despite its sources’ transience. On the testament-to-modern-love “Apartment Story” he sings “So worry not / All things are well / We’ll be alright / We have our looks and perfume on.” Yet this same materialism is bemoaned two cuts later when we find two struggling lovers “Here, here in the guest room / Where we throw money at each other and cry ‘Oh my!’” Even our pursuit of happiness sometimes devolves into living vicariously through the (assumedly exaggerated) happiness of others, as on “Green Gloves:” “Get inside their clothes / With my green gloves / Watch their videos, in their chairs.”
Sonically the band falls into somewhat familiar territory, evoking bands like Interpol and Bloc Party while adding their own distinctive touches, primarily piano and brass. The aforementioned “Fake Empire,” “Apartment Story” and “Guest Room” maintain driving, positive momentum. On their darker tracks (“Mistaken for Strangers” and “Squalor Victoria” especially), the percussion comes to the forefront, pushing along bent chords and uncomfortable progressions. For most of its length, though, the music serves as a bed for the record’s potent lyrical themes rather than vice versa.
Berninger’s world—and by extension, ours—is a place that has trained us how to fuck up our lives, how to attempt self-reliance despite our own unreliability. It’s our adulthood, devoid of the meaning we assumed would be there when we arrived. Boxer is an album that documents, even in our warmest moments, our dismay at its absence.
Filed by matt at March 3rd, 2008 under Music
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February 6, 2008
So I was watching this really terrible movie, and while the credits were rolling this song came on, and I went “Boy that sounds a lot like Camera Obscura” and then they got down to the “here’s the music we used in our movie and its credits” section and sure enough, it was by Camera Obscura and I was like “I am so awesome.”
That story sounded better in my head.
Filed by matt at February 6th, 2008 under Life, Music
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