[Humbert] Aesop Rock in review.

Aesop Rock - Labor Days (2001)

Ask any devoted follower of the Definitive Jux label and they will probably claim that Aesop Rock was at the forefront of the "backpacker"/indie hip-hop movement which took place at the turn of the century. Being that Labor Days is often considered his definitive album, it's not hard to believe said claim.

With production handled by Blockhead and Aes himself, this release makes a jump from the jazz-oriented cityscapes of the Appleseed EP to exotic eastern samples and overtones ranging from the urban psychedelic to the quirky and sparse. (Think Stoupe's work on Violent by Design but with a more playful, mellowed edge). Bad news first: Production-wise, there are some decidedly weaker tracks. The excessive minimalism of Coma, for instance, fails to suit Aesop's insanity.

The album's highlight, however, is Aesop Rock's wholly unique style as an emcee. Aes utilises a relentless and unconventional delivery which, most of the time, does not aid listeners in discerning any coherent "meaning" in his abstract, seemingly neither-here-nor-there rhymes upon first spin. His rhyme schemes are hardly ever straightforward, but the variation in both his lyric and its execution should be enough to at least entertain first time listeners. After listening to the first few tracks, it becomes clear that Aesop Rock is amongst the most uncompromising of emcees and his approach to making music might best be summarised when he exclaims on Flashflood:

'I'ma never give, I'm juiced off rejection/ I'm as stubborn as a thousand Born Agains avoiding questions'

Such metaphorical imagery is scattered throughout the album, but it is the rapid rate at which Aesop creates new and distinct images which is the real centerpiece here.

Of course, there has been some debate over whether Aesop's songs really do contain definite meaning, or whether they are random stream-of-consciousness musings. As an album, Labor Days is held together by a single theme: work, or perhaps more appropriately, effort. The first verse of Daylight opens with

'Put one up for shackle-me not clean logic procreation/I did not invent the wheel, I was the crooked spoke adjacent'

...and ends with:

'This origami dream is beautiful, but man those wings will never leave the ground/ Without a feather and a lottery ticket, now settle down',

the song capturing a nihilistic sense of lethargy and regret which is supposedly inherit in the hopeless and mundane.

Sitting opposite the thematic unity of this work, there are admittedly countless metaphors and analogies whose imagery maintains a sense of schizophrenia and discontinuity -- but in this context, that should sound as a compliment. On The Yes and the Ya'll Aesop makes a definite connection between his concept of labor and his own occupation. He moves from fantastical recreations of a disenfranchised America:

'I wrote the book that shook America to splinters/ In a winter wasteland Icicle-bound barren township/ Call Baron Munchausen's proud gimps to clinch this chemical war pig/Delinquent sinkin like a paper tugboat'

and then demonstrates a humourous take on tired apathy:

'Life's hard, life's easy/ Life's everyting in between me/ Life's peachy like James and the Giant/ And I keep spittin as long as these kittens buy it/',

around a hook wherein he expresses scepticism of the music industry and all that comes with it.

Aes often treads the thin line between being interestingly obscure and being prentiously obscure; this line can also be conceptualised as a balancing act between poetry and deception, and what side he ultimately falls on is, I would argue, of a subjective nature. It is my belief that, at least on this album, Aesop is as genuine an artist as they come. There is a definite, cohesive sense of nihilism about this album, one which could not be wholly maintained without the direction and honesty beneath all of the surrealism.


I've heard countless albums which others often call "great" albums. Especially in this genre, where back-in-the-day classics are far from being in shortage. Labor Days would certainly be called a great album in many alternative hip-hop circles; the issue here is that, because hip-hop is becoming increasingly varied in both sound and in values, most allegedly great albums released since the late 1990s will be up for debate regarding their long-term status. I'm hesitant to call it great, not because of any stylistic points of contention, but just because some tracks simply aren't on par with others. Either way, if it doesn't qualify for such a categorisation, Labor Days is surely a memorable album. Similarly, if Aesop Rock doesn't qualify as a great emcee, he is indeed... well... something else.

There are many moments on the album where Aes reaches out on a personal level which is, at least nowadays, a precious if not rare experience when listening to such a virtuosic display of rhyming talent. Aesop Rock is brilliant without being braggadocious; at times, he is intelligent without trying to be. The abstract nature of his lyrics might be too much for the average hip-hop head, but with enough patience for his scholarly lyrical content and relentless, inventive delivery, his is a style which should not go unheard by any fan of underground hip-hop or indeed anyone looking for something fresh, regardless of genre.


Highlights:

• Daylight
• Flashflood
• The Tugboat Complex, Part III
  
• The Yes and the Ya'll
• 9-5ers Anthem

Hum-o-meter: 8.8/10

[Frederick] MW2 Review Part II.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Multiplayer

Javellin's, Semtex Grenades, Thermal snipers, Air Strikes, Attack Helicopters, Pave Lows, Stealth Bombers, AC-130's, Chopper Gunners and Nuclear Weapons can all kill you without you so much as taking a step (claymore excepted). These highly lethal weapons combined with a first shot victory styled combat system results in... you guessed it, camping. Heart Beat sensors, UAVs, Thermal Scopes, Ghillie Suits and a multitude of weapons effective at long to extremely long range all serve to enhance your mud sucking capabilities .This combination of 'modern' technology and extremely deadly weaponary while making for an interesting and contemporary game also makes for an incredibly frustrating and ultimately boring multiplayer experience.

There is a reason the 'camper' in the gaming world has been looked on with extreme distate since the birth of the multiplayer shooter. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for a round to end or your death timer to run down, to run to the frontlines for some more fun only to be shot in the back by a player who decides enjoyment in a game is to be found sitting in one spot for extended periods of time shooting players in the back. Whilst MW2 admittedly encourages movement with a multitude of in game mechanics geared towards enemy detection, specifically the deathcam which shows you how you died, the game ultimately punishes those who do not adopt a strategy of hide, wait and kill. Whilst this alone is not necessarily a deal breaker, the 'killstreaks' that have been thrown in ruin any hope this game had of achieving any longevity. There are very few things I find in this game more frustrating than watching a map get levelled by a camper with the AC-130 gunship. To put this in context whilst the rest of the players are stuck using more conventional weapons, the man lucky or 'skilled' enough to unlock the AC-130 gets to man a Gunship packing a 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon, 40 mm L/60 Bofors cannon and a sleak 1× 105 mm M102 howitzer. Ironically the aspect of this game most responsible for its addictive nature, and believe me it is addictive, are the kill streaks. There is something grimly satisfying about killing 15 people in a row from the safety of a flying battleship and for a brief moment being the source of so much frustration and the more you play the more you'll find yourself aiming to do nothing more than get those 11 kills required to unlock this weapon.

Another aspect of this game that has earnt it alot of acclaim is its supposed realism and for a while it is pretty impressive. It is, as you might expect, the small things that begin to poke holes in this juicy bag of immersion. There is a great multitude of objects that are inexplicably unclimable, a person can run a mile without stopping and immediatly take a shot at a person 25 yards away and slip slug into some saps dome without the slightest penalty to accuracy, you can bounce throwing knives off walls or the ground into people for an insant kill, etc. Not only does the illusion of realism quickly fall away but the aspects which one can only imagine were intended to help the game retain this realism really begin to frustrate in the multiplayer. For instance switching weapons and reloading weapons takes far too long. Whilst this is probably closer to the reality of combat it does absolutely nothing to contribute to an enjoyable game as more often than i care to count, you will go to switch weapons or reload your rifle just as you need to use it.

To top all this off the map design leaves something to be desired, with some of the maps being nothing more than an open field and a tunnel. This to me, more than anything else, reeks of lazy development and a lack of attention to beta testers and perhaps the general gaming community period. Finally as stated in my review on Modern Warefare 2's single player, What this game does CoD4 does much, much better. After playing 30 to 40 hours of Modern Warfare 2 I went back and started up a game of CoD4 to get a little contrast and the difference is truly amazing. You can make it as a non-camper and even excell without having to resort to tactics such as hoping around corners like some kind of highly trained monkey ninja (though this remains an option) and you are not constantly killed by killstreak rewards, though this still remains a too frequent occurance for my liking. Ultimately, Infinity Ward have insufficiently duplicated there debut title and amazingly have made no attempt to adress issues that, at least in my wayward opinion, seriously detracted from the base enjoyment and longevity of the title and have even gone to the extent of amplifying these issues. Interestingly enough however this seems not to have effected their paycheck. It will be interesting to see how far the hype can carry this game.

P.S. No dedicated servers. lul?

3/5 Freds.

[Humbert] AVATAR in review.

The apparent hype which surrounds "blockbuster" films, whilst not unexpected, has not ceased to astound me. The $300+ million price tag on this film was probably sufficient to generate such anticipation, let alone the extensive CGI, and if impressive special effects are what the viewer is after then she is in for a treat. Let me get this out of the way by saying that the film is quite stunning in terms of its visual aesthetic.
Now for the juicy stuff...

Cameron's characters are mostly one-dimensional reflections of contemporary stereotypes. They are written without any genuine attempt at emotional or intellectual depth, each one's motives becoming evident within the first act, or without being revealed with any sense of surprise or intrigue. A minor character, Ribisi gives a standout performance as your typical amoral corporate administrator. Worthington, playing the story's protagonist, however, provides a largely flat performance lacking any real emotional range outside of the heroic prototype. In addition to his own dry line delivery, we have Michelle Rodriguez playing... well... Michelle Rodriguez again, this time in the imaginary future. Yay.

There, is of course, a supposed pretext contained in the film's plot. The (anti-) imperialist theme present from the outset tires quickly, its parallels to the contemporary ecological debate all too overt. We are constantly reminded that the indigenous people of any land have their own beliefs too! (o rly?), but Cameron seems to, for the most part, suggest that we are to consider their values not because of any philosophical-ethical points, but because their lifestyle is simply so much more engaging for our protagonist than the mundane humankind equivalent. The decision to make the belief system of the Na'vi people more plausible by devoting 30 seconds to a questionable scientific hypothesis about its naturalistic underpinnings implies to the viewer that, had the indigenous people's beliefs been founded on less plausible assumptions (such as archaic, metaphysical contemplations), their way of life would have been of less considerable value to the team of scientists we're supposed to be spurring on.

Given the formulaic nature of the plot development, absence of subtlety in the presentation of themes, and a real lack of any character-relationship development, the movie simply failed to hold my interest on anything more than a superficial level. I really wanted to enjoy this movie -- it was my first 3D movie experience for many years -- but soon became restless following the introduction of the spectacular CGI planet Pandora in the first act.

In 30 years' time, Avatar might be viewed as a landmark feat of technical film making. Right now, however, it's already clear to me that it lacks much depth in almost all of the other aspects of film that most viewers are bound consider. Avatar is as formulaic as it is visually groundbreaking; the unfortunate thing is that, as a potentially groundbreaking film, it by no means had to be this undaring.

Hum-o-meter: 4.5/10

[Frederick] - MW2 Review

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Single-player Review

The single player in this game is a mixed bag. We get the proven format of the previous modern warfare installment providing a fast paced action game with a big arsenal of both hand held and some less common weapons such as the mounted minigun. It has a smooth, enjoyable game engine with very few noticeable annoyances. As it stands, the single player is so good that I have two problems with it: that for no apparant reason objects and barriers are not climbable (a problem even more apparant in multiplayer), and that enemies tend to spawn in places that they simply shouldnt'.

All that being said this game is vastly dissapointing for the hype that it generated and whilst factoring hype into a review is probably not appropriate I'm going to do it anyway -- I'm just that badass. This game is not even 1/10th the game it could and should have been. Let's begin with duration issues. What sort of half assed developer sells a game for 110$ RRP and only implements six hours of gameplay? If you have had any experience playing anything from the FPS genre you can finish this game in under five hours unless you play on the hardest difficulty setting, which itself will not impact the gaming experience but force you to use trial and error a little more.

Making matters worse, the most common excuse given by the teeming mass of fanwhores out there supporting this horrible practice is that though it may be short it is of great substance. lul. This game is best described as Modern Warfare I minus everything that made that campaign great. They even had the gall to take out the tilt and dedicated server features (a multiplayer problem, I know) out because they could not be bothered to port the game to the PC properly. Wait. Sorry. The game was balanced for enjoyable features.

Perhaps the best aspect of this game is the voice acting which has some familiar voices and some fresh ones, all providing believable and even enjoyable performances for or ears. Yet when I consider the effort spent on the amazing voice acting performances, I wonder if they were not better off having no audio at all and spending the saved money employing someone more capable than Muhammad the local chicken shop owner to write the story. The story is like a James Bond film without James and without the story ever being adequately explained. You're on the receiving end of disjointed snippets of dialogue from random characters talking about subjects that at first seem to be completely unrelated to anything and require you to work that broken part of your brain that is imagination to sticky tape these dialogues into a coherent story. I failed.

Finally we have the graphics. Well... not much to be said here other than that this is no Crysis, but it is still good enough to compete with any new release.

This game is a perfect example of why hype is bad for the gaming industry's quality, if not economic viability. Most of the great games of the past ten to fifteen years have been from completely unexpected or at least of relatively smaller sources. We might compare the fountain of bile that is Bungee and its Halo progeny to the well established and frankly amazing studios of Bioware (with releases such as Mass Effect) and note further examples of poor quality overhyped games to well rounded genuinly entertaining games of lesser 'respected' origins.

Multiplayer review later...

Fred-o-meter: 2.5/5 Freds

[Humbert]: µ-Ziq in review

µ-Ziq - Bilious Paths

Released under his original performing alias, "µ-Ziq" in 2003, Bilious Paths sees Mike Paradines tentatively return from the lighter, quasi-orchestral, and at times acid-driven experimentation of Royal Astronomy to some vastly denser harmonic backdrops and more chaotic breaks.

Cases in point: "Meinheld" (Track #2) -- synths, distortion and breaks abound in classic IDM-DnB fashion, with brief vocal drops dispersed throughout the song to provide it with a slightly human touch. No less than 5 minutes later, in "Octelcogopod" Mike retains his string-based stylings displayed on Royal Astronomy, this time, however, graciously underlying layers of glitched out flourishes, perc. stutters and robotic vocal messages.

So, evidently the entire album does not consist of relentless break chops weaved between piles of distortion. 'Ziq, as always, is ever-willing to display his versatility on this record; "Aec Merlin" does away with conventional use of the (Amen-style) break loop as the rhythmic core, opting instead for some throwback minimalist, albeit still intricate percussive stutters whilst the remnants of a breakbeak continually flutters around, filtered pan-left to pan-right. Here, a child of juxtaposition, Ziq's regretably rare use of pads complement his heavy percssive sampling and slicing on tracks like "Siege of Antioch", and this synthesis is at its best when the consonance of the pads bely the seemingly anarchic but altogether coherent assault of the kick+snare+chipmunk vocal (yes, chipmunks!)

The Subjective input...

For enigmatic reasons, I've always had mixed reactions to µ-Ziq albums, and this one is no exception. Perhaps the best explanation regarding this album might be that whilst I do covet most of the tracks, there are some where the artistic venture fails to strike me as genuine, despite its clear innovative value (refer to "On/Off") and novel interest. Like most good IDM full-lengths however, there are moments of subdued beauty (on both "...Antioch" tracks) and moments of primordial aggression, characteristic of breakcore ("Silk Ties") and even though to some it may be a point of contention, I can't help but feel enticed by the consequent sense of disparity.

Highlights:

• Siege of Antioch
• Silk Ties
• Grape Nuts pt. 1
  
• Mouse Bums
• Fall of Antioch
  

...and the Not-as-subjective assessment:

All things said, Bilious Paths is sure to appeal to even the casual Planet-Mu listener. It is a very solid album by any IDM fan's standard, not only for its technically brilliant content, but also for Mike's keen sense of variation and adventure.

Most of the time, after listening to each song I would tell myself that I wanted more of the same. Yet, given time, the next song, often of a disparate aesthetic, would engage me equally as the last -- and I suppose this phenomenon expresses how I feel about the album in general as well. It's to say that whilst it is far from the "perfect" album, I'm constantly left wanting more from 'Ziq -- thus finding more in his music -- and feel myself erring towards the repeat button... and when that wears out, to an earlier release.

HUM-O-METER: 8/10 HUMS