Let's Play... Surgeon Simulator 2013

Surgeon Simulator
2013, Bossa Studios

originally played on PC

So I always wanted to be a surgeon. Along with astronaut it was one of the job boxes I ticked off every year in that big blue book parents in Ontario used to track their kids' progress through school in the 1980s. Another consumer memory brought to us by the fine folks at Jostens. Of course, this ambition disappeared as I grew older and came to realise that I wanted to memorise songs and books instead of physiology and stress-relief methodology. So the humanities and a long life of poverty for me, then. Both my parents worked in health care, and my brother and I spent a lot of time after school wandering around the hospital waiting for the age of ten so we could stay home alone as latchkey kids. You see a lot of things wandering around a hospital unsupervised. Patients in various states of recovery are obviously interesting to a young kid raised on horror films, but so are the small dramas traced into hospital waiting rooms and hallways along with family members, worry for loved ones made supine like a struggling dog by the rules of the institution. Parents annoyed by their loss of control to institutional processes, fighting with doctors and nurses for tiny scraps of hopeful good news and just a quick glimpse and please maybe let me hold their hand. Friends visiting the infirm and the elderly who only wish them to leave if they didn’t want them there in the first place. Spouses hiding their frustration and loneliness as their love for each other strains and sometimes breaks in front of a quiet public. Sublime horrors of bodies objectified, flesh drawn and quartered to find out what’s wrong, what needs fixing, a painful and necessary violence fundamental to understanding. Like Councillor Krespel in Hoffman’stales, medicine must often destroy its object of study in order for understanding. A poisonous cure, to be sure. Walking through the hallways and backrooms of the hospital alone or with my brother, sometimes we would see something very graphic indeed. Seeing a few fingers in plastic wrap abandoned teaches a person that medicine is an abstraction as much as it is an abjection. Distanciation and humour are the only recourse for sanity.

Of course, to deal with all of the domestic trauma, heartbreaking grief and loss, as well as the mountains of gore, many people who work in medicine adopt a form of gravedigger’s humour in order to compartmentalise the abject and the horrific in order to maintain their capabilities on the job. Ankle-deep in blood and crying loved ones, you smile and enjoy the smells as you wipe blood across your forehead. Metaphorically, of course, as hygiene must be maintained, in Canadian hospitals at least. I’ve noticed this attitude in friends who are cops as well – humour used to paint over otherwise horrible experiences. A friend of mine who drives ambulances spent the first day in his job cleaning up brain matter from the highway to Toronto before coming over for a birthday party for my brother and revolting every single one of the guests by not having changed his uniform first. I’m covered in brains. You’d think I would have had the bright idea to change, he said before forgetting his Asian alcohol allergies and passing out in a closet upstairs after drinking the neck of a Molson Canadian. Similarly, my father edited film and video for medical procedures, sometimes while we ate supper in the living room. The likeness of my mother’s lasagna to the fleshy subdermal parts of the inner leg was a constant source of amusement for him.

don't tell me you don't want to shake his head around, because you do

Surgeon Simulator 2013 (2013) brings this laisez-faire attitude to home medicine games. While most games dealing with health care are managerial simulations – SimHealth (1994) and Theme Hospital (1997) being the most obvious examples – or cheap licensing entries in film and television-based transmedia franchises, such as ER (2005), Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game (2009), and House M.D. (2010), there are some examples of games which try, realistically or otherwise, to depict actual medical procedures. Life & Death (1988) and Life & Death II: The Brain (1990) are perhaps the most well-known iterations, having been compiled on numerous shovelware releases in the early CD-ROM years. This was in fact the manner in which I came to play both games, for as a farewell present when our family moved to Southern Ontario my father’s co-workers at the hospital gave him a CD-ROM drive for our fancy new 386. A collective effort in financing, as these drives were very expensive back in the day (starting around $1,000) and quite the gift. Within computer geek circles, our machine was the envy of everyone around for almost a year. Except for libraries and universities, nobody had a CD-ROM drive in 1991. The technology was so new that in order to fully experience what it had to offer, sound routed from the drive had to be sent to a mixer along with the output from the computer's sound card. Likewise, publishers had little understanding of how to properly use the medium, either filling titles with uselessly small (75x75 or sometimes 130x100) video clips often repurposed from extant video media such as television and home video, or compiling as many non-related games as they could get their copyright licenses on. A database medium, then, and unless dictionaries and encyclopaedias are of particular interest to you, nothing interesting came out on CD-ROM until Sierra started releasing ‘talkie’ versions of games such as King’s Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder! (1990) and Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (1991), quickly followed by Interplay titles such as Star Trek 25^th Anniversary (1992) and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I (1990). More often than not, however, such exciting multimedia versions of popular games were marred by their decidedly non-professional voice acting, often invoking the indie DIY spirit of the time and using members of the programming team in character voice roles. It should be noted that this dynamic of economic necessity forcing the conscription of terrible voice acting from programmers is different than occurred when designers purposely put themselves into their games, as Chris Jones did when he took an increasingly prominent role as the character Tex Murphy in a series of adventure games from Mean Streets (1989) through The Pandora Detective (1996). Shudder-inducing as thespian delusions, these early non-professional multimedia experiments are often fantastic if appreciated in the right spirit. Of course, some of these releases were very well done indeed; the CD-ROM editions of Interplay's Star Trek adventures were in face the last collective effort from the cast of the original television series.

the most realistic four-colour surgery simulator ever released

The most popular use of the medium, however, was as a shovelware platform on which to dump a variety of unpopular titles along with a marginally-popular one. And so Life & Death came into my possession along with Beyond the Black Hole (1989), Bruce Lee Lives (1989), The Chessmaster 2000 (1986), and Cribbage King / Gin King (1989). By far the best part of Life & Death – and in likelihood actual medicine – is the screaming. Patients scream when you poke their sore spots during observations and when you perform surgery without administering an anaesthetic. Rendered in monophonic 8-bit sampled bliss and reproduced to everyone’s amazement using the famously crappy and useless pc speaker, the screaming in Life & Death is alone worth an hour of your drunken time at a party with friends. Life & Death is a fairly realistic simulation of these procedures. Players are expected to be very meticulous in performing the steps necessary to complete these operations. Ultimately, while enjoyable, the game presents players an often frustrating experience of the OCD required by modern health care practitioners as players slowly learn how to do things properly through trial and error, as well as reference to the game’s manual and in-game commentary on player performance.

surgery is definitely for the OCD set

Of course, the screaming stops should you ever choose to perform an operation properly. The game offers two surgical procedures, appendicitis and aneuritic aorta, in a small attempt at educational gameplay. Despite  the use of four-colour CGA mode for the game’s original DOS release,the presentation and simulation aspects of the game are remarkably realistic for the time and have yet to be matched in any other commercial release.

Surgeon Simulator 2013 is frustrating for quite the opposite reason. Basically a cartoon exercise in fun with physics, Surgeon Simulator tasks players with performing a variety of challenging and totally unrealistic surgical procedures. Players are in direct control of the virtual surgeon’s hands, thus providing a level of haptic complexity to the interface which guarantees that players will fuck up even the simplest of gestures, such as grabbing and maintaining a hold of an object. Don’t be turned off by the fact that the game doesn’t include a tutorial, as the fun of playing the game isn’t really about completing the challenges offered to players, but rather about enjoying the comic mayhem inherent to amateur surgery.

drunk interface. drunkterface?

The game drops players right into the matter with heart surgery as the first mission with little warning and a gleeful disregard for patient safety. Indeed, black humour runs throughout the game, evidenced not only by the playful main menu, which allows players not only to answer the phone and write on a notepad but also to play computer games (I should note here my own history with physicians who were early enthusiasts in digital gaming) and most importantly launch everything off the doctor’s desk in a flailing attempt to learn the game’s interface. Fun involves the comic mischief caused by the juxtaposition of the seriousness of surgical medicine and the autistic inability of the surgeon to control his or her own limbs, and also by the impossibility of the game to operate as a simulation of anything approaching actual medical procedures. Bones are sawed off and organs are removed and placed wherever there is room, all with no regard whatsoever for how these pieces would ever be put back together again ‘in real life’. Unlike in Life & Death, play is only concerned with opening patients up; the sawed-off bones and scooped-out organs don’t need to be reconnected after the procedure. While the game offers a variety of scenarios, such as performing heart surgery in the back of an ambulance while the doors flail open and elements of the surgery theatre continually fall out, or completing an alien autopsy / transplant in zero gravity on a space station. Of course, I have only been able to complete a few of the game’s surgeries and have not unlocked the full game.

careful... careful...

Fundamentally, Surgeon Simulator 2013 is a game of frustration, as controlling two human hands by means of the mouse and five keys on the keyboard is much more difficult than would initially appear. Simple movements are made exceedingly difficult as in a sense players relearn or recalibrate their hand-eye coordination. Of course, this leads to a variety of fun achievements on Steam, such as flashing metal horns or flipping off the patient before abusing his face like he’s in a Three Stooges routine, or successfully completing surgery after stabbing yourself in the arm with enough drugs to start hallucinating. This kind of fun only improves when playing with multiple intoxicated friends.

great, now you've hopped yourself up on goofballs

Sadly, the PC version has yet to be updated with the hilariously oppositional co-op mode from the PS4 version, in which each player operates one of the surgeon’s hands. Also sadly missing is the screaming. But the fact that as a surgeon I can inject myself with drugs and go to space while smacking the patient’s head around like Curley before telling him to fuck off and pulling out all of his organs with a hammer and replacing them with empty plastic water bottles and my watch makes me a very happy person indeed.

Robin Williams -- the unsayable: thoughts on comedy, suicide, and modern capital

I’ve never written about a celebrity before, never having been moved, except perhaps with the detached professional guise of a film and media scholar, by the relatively crass marketing of a famous person as a human image or the banal, interchangeable films they tend to inhabit. Certainly there are favourite actors and performing artists who have made particular influences on my life. Some of them I even had the luck and pleasure to meet and work with. But celebrity culture is an inward-facing mirror which doesn’t really appeal to me in or of itself. I don’t consider it evil or a waste of time for those who enjoy the soap opera lives of the tabloid famous, but on a personal level I do find most of it exceptionally boring. Not the desires which lead people to obsess over celebrities, the desires which lead to lines of fans waiting outside of film shoots or premieres, or to express their desire creatively through jpegs and fan fiction. That’s not boring at all. That stuff is legitimately interesting, mostly because as a representation of the flows of capital more generally celebrity culture is the leading edge of a particular revolutionary politics which renders (or reflects) most of civilisation as a docile and manageable collective. What I’m bored by is all the talk following talk following what is, essentially, nothing.

Everyone keeps reminding us how fame is so often ephemeral and insubstantial. How it does little to appease the demons of those who have been made famous. We watch in necrophiliac fascination as celebrities turn against themselves and increase their fame by self-destructing live over realtime media. Drug and sex scandals which disrupt or emphasize our love of the self projected onto an object-person for our consumption. Palliatives for our own troubled lives, certainly, or perhaps a dose of intrigue for the absurd tedium of the contemporary leisure society in the early twenty-first century. How could they possibly throw everything they have away just to pursue temporary vices? we ask ourselves and sit happy in our self-satisfaction.

And then the suicide of Robin Williams lit up my digital feeds with one, overwhelming network of affect. A shared emotion distributed widely over small data packets. A person often described as the funniest person on earth was so tortured by what was not public, by what could not be made public, that he took his own life. An actor who was forced into the childhood psyche of a generation of North American youth born between the mid-1970s and the 1990s by means of Hollywood’s globe-leading position at the forefront of the complex of technological and financial interests which comprise modern (and postmodern) life. A comedian known for insanely energetic physical antics and a lightning-fast wit who became the voice of a modern middle-class who wanted to watch life on television. Someone who has brought so much joy to so many people that it is incomprehensible to many that he took his own life.

And so the story continues, and that is why I felt the need to write about his death. Robin Williams was an example and a possibility for the weird and disruptive hyper kids who had to navigate life in the age before pharmaceuticals and the stranger-danger, penal-colony policies of parents picking up their children from school turned everyone grey and docile and paranoid and corporate, looking for answers in simple questions with readymade solutions. I was introduced to Williams when my mom watched Mork & Mindy on television and she let me stay up late, and then again at the age of ten or so when I discovered the scatological excesses of Williams’s HBO stand-up tapes on Beta. Live, Williams seemed to be in full control of his lack of control, and his manic, adult-onset Tourette’s was a revelation to a pre-adolescent living in Mulroney’s vision for a clean and sober Canada focused on the numbers game. Robin Williams acted exactly as we were told not to act. Manic, hyperbolic, enthusiastic, continually in search of play. These are not the virtues of the successful office bureaucrat or entrepreneur, whose pageantry makes the world go round despite the lack of resources to see the spinning continue for much longer. Robin Williams was the turning point between kids who were policed by teachers and kept acting up and kids who were policed by society with insurance-covered drugs in convenient child-proof packages.

Comedy is an interesting thing. Often springing from tragic individual lives, comedy emerges to placate the wounds of the social, often by shocking the wounded and the non-wounded alike into a new kind of self-recognition. It is among the most dangerous of our political pleasures, and we often see it among the first victims of undemocratic or totalitarian censorship. Comedy is disruptive because it takes an ontological pleasure in this tragedy, of seeing suffering through to transcendence. It is often a defence against the self-hatred which plagues many creative and intelligent people who by their natures are wracked and sometimes hobbled by self-loathing and doubt. Most importantly, it is and must be a social phenomenon. Comedy does not isolate, except perhaps those who don’t get the joke or don’t wish to try. It is a bridge for the perils of contemporary habitation within the various and often conflicting flows of desire produced by a multitude of individuals. This is not necessarily a new phenomenon, as the holy fool, the trickster, and the clown permeate much of the world tradition for myth and storytelling. These figures often serve to redeem their societies through the revolutionary subversion of pleasure. Of course, the Dostoevsky of The Brothers Karamazov only partially anticipated the dynamics of modern capital and the society it created. 

The celebrity life of Robin Williams serves witness to this capacity of contemporary life to make martyrs of us all, to celebrate the dissolution of our own revolutionary self-interests into the Q1-Q4 marketing strategies of the massive industrial conglomerates in control of so much of our technological media. Hollywood tamed Williams not simply through formulaic scripts and hackneyed characterisations, but through sheer success. The You’ve Made It! feeling which permeates the everyday among the mansions, cafes, and nightclubs of Hollywood and soothes – even if only temporarily – the unpleasured suffering of the not-famous. Money rolls in, everyone talks about you, and you’re in every big movie with your face splashed across the ad campaign. And then the act loses its edge as focus groups and mid-level executives weigh in on where everything all fits together in the contemporary marketplace. The authentic becomes the marketed, not inauthentic but differently authentic, an authenticity of massification, of mass duplication. But isn’t this what we’re all looking for as we troll our jobs and our friendships and the media we choose to play with looking for a moment of temporary relief from ourselves, from this process of looking? An incessant search, and one which always finds the same emptiness leading forward into more searching. Frankly, I do not wonder why many of those creative people who have found commercial success tend toward self-destruction. Self-improvement and self-loathing are mutually-contingent phenomena.

The conversation about Robin Williams and suicide is rapidly passing, and as expected we’re watching nostalgic clips on television instead of working to understand mental health issues with any degree of enthusiasm or sensitivity. We need to accept that some of our most interesting people are doomed to self-destruction, but this does not mean that we need to accept death. Self-destruction can manifest as a living force, and one with an austere and significant revolutionary potential. This dynamic is scattered across the history of revolutionary activities, whose gestures have so often been co-opted into the power structures which excluded them. I cannot help but view Hollywood as the benchmark for such progress in capital – the avantgarde is made safely digestible for mass consumption. This is both its terror and its revolutionary impulse, in one simultaneous gesture of productive consumption. No wonder that Hollywood film making is one of the most capital-intensive industries currently in operation. As the whole industry is fuelled by desire, the whole industry can manifest and vaporize like changes in the weather. This is why the large conglomerates play everything safe, and why comedy in particular is rendered docile, a domesticated leisure item which sits well with the livingroom furniture. And yet other potential dynamics remain in play: the Janus/Dionysian duality of Comedy centres it at the vanguard of the possibilities for the revolutionary disruption of normalcy by means of an avantgarde which breathes life into the corpses made by capital.

Robin, you’ll be missed.

Find more information about suicide and suicide prevention here.

Random Telephone Conversation # 354b-98

QZH: "Afternoon, Hamilton Artists Inc. Quintin speaking."

Female caller: "Are you a towing company?"

QZH "No, we're an artist-run centre."

Female caller: "Can i get a tow?"

QZH: "No, but I might be able to show you what that looks like."

Female caller: "What?"

QZH: "Towing. One car, preferably a truck, pulling another one to someplace it wasn't located initially."

Female caller: "Do I have to pay to have that done?"

QZH: "You have to pay to have anything done, unless it's an emergency."

Female caller: "Aren't you guys CAA?"

QZH: "No. We are an artist-run centre, which isn't currently specializing in towing."

Female caller: "So you can't tow. Can you change tires?"

QZH: "Umm, we do a different kind of work."

Female caller: "Well, this number was given to me by the phone directory."

QZH: "Well, then it looks like you need a tow. Hold on a second, let me write some of this down."

Female caller: "Thank you."

QZH: "Where are you located?"

Female caller: "Flamborough."

QZH: "That is within our jurisdiction."

Female caller: "Can you get here soon?"

QZH: "No."

Female caller: "You can't hurry up? It's raining and we're pretty cold."

QZH: "Well, I'd have to bike to Flamborough, and that might take a half-hour or so. Maybe more, because it's raining and I'll probably also get a little cold. Maybe not though, as biking warms you up quite a bit."

Female caller: "Why can't you get here sooner?"

QZH: "Because I'm on a bike. Maybe a bus goes out there, I don't know."

Female caller: "I pay good money to you people every year! Why the fuck can't you help?"

QZH: "Hamilton Artists Inc has a limited mandate, even though we do service Flamborough and much of the area surrounding Hamilton."

Female caller: "What do you mean?"

QZH: "Well, I'd like to help. But I don't think our membership accords."

Female caller: "But we just paid you guys like a month ago."

QZH: "I don't think so. Did you pay the CAA? Maybe you should call them."

Female caller: "Well somebody cashed our cheque!"

QZH: "I wish it had been us, then I could get on my bike and help you out with towing your vehicle. From Flamborough. On my bike."

Female caller: "You should be able to help."

QZH: "With a bike?"

Female caller: "Are all your trucks on other calls?"

QZH: "No, Mme. We have no trucks of any sort. Well, none that I know of anyway."

Female caller: "What kind of a fucking towing company are you???"

QZH: "None."

Female caller: "So why can't you help?"

QZH: "Maybe I'll start again. Good afternoon. Hamilton Artists Inc, Quintin speaking."

Female caller: "Yeah, you said that already."

QZH: "Really? I forgot. It was so long ago now."

Female caller: "So you plan on just leaving us out here?"

QZH: "There's only so much one person at an artist-run centre can do."

Female caller: "Nothing, right? Nothing at all."

QZH: "Apparently not, no. Have you tried calling anybody else? CAA perhaps."

Female caller: "No. You're supposed to be able to help. That's why your number came up."

QZH: "It looks like we haven't been updated in the directory."

...

QZH: "Mme, have you tried calling somebody who actually tows trucks? The CAA perhaps."

Female caller: "You already said you don't have our membership."

QZH: "We don't, no. I can send you an application package if you give me your address though. We have an opening coming up in a few weeks."

Female caller: "No thanks. I'm not paying twice."

QZH: "..."

Female caller: "You should be ashamed for not helping. I'm going to get a lawyer."

QZH: "I'm not sure if he or she can tow your vehicle either. Try the CAA."

Female caller: "Thanks for nothing."

QZH: "You aren't the first to say that about our organization, you know."

Female caller: [hangs up]

why Pat Metheny hates Kenny G

I found an interview with guitarist Pat Metheny in which he takes Kenny G to town. Now, it's not like Metheny is the height of taste himself -- most of his output on Geffen is a little weak, although I myself kind of appreciate 1994's Zero Tolerance for Silence and was probably the only person in Hamilton who actually bought the CD in its initial month of release. Kenny G on the other hand has evidenced a consistency that Metheny only wishes he could achieve: the G-man is shit on every single one of his releases.

Then there's this picture of Metheny from the Sadowsky Guitars page:



Holy. Fucking. Nightmare.

Kenny on the other hand knows what people want to see, and gives it to them every time (unless that something is pinups for failed-op trannies who are into those Vuarnet shorts that child molestors wear at the beach, right Pat?).

See this publicity pic of the Royal G?



Well, when confronted by random fans in a restaurant -- God only knows how excited they got when they learned that the restaurant had a working toilet -- like a pro Kenny knows what to do:



Graceful poise, little smile, and the hand-that-speaks-for-god resting delightfully at the chin, reminding everyone that our man Kenny is both a woodwind musician and a chronic fellator of the big industry dangler.

Now please once again look carefully at the above picture of Pat Metheny. In case you were blinded by its sacred beauty, here it is again:




Naturally, a man who is not so immediately photogenic gets pissed by the success of TeenBeat-bound Kenny G. No dorian mode harmonic triads will be able to compete with those G-tastic dimples. Kenny tells all comers: keep yo' lydian suspended licks at home, sucka! I gots me some bitches that need some sweet Kenny G-spot G.

RUMBLE!



So who would come out on top in a fight to the death? Let's test the preliminary weigh-in.

Pat Metheny: "You suck"
Kenny G: "I so fucking suck"

It seems that Kenny can't either fight or play music, as his preoccupation with all things craptacular keeps his eye off the prize.

So Metheny wins almost by default. Now, Mr. Metheny, can you please donate a copy of your CD with Jim Hall (on Telarc) to your competition? Consider it a trojan horse of sorts, as either Mr. G will get better in his own playing or, more optimistically, his head will explode with that most beautiful noise so familiar to Kenny G: pop.


Some more highlights from Metheny's hatred:

"when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril."

"if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head).


You can see the full interview here

hey, stop all the downloading!! -- this is for me, and you'll waste your time reading it

i noticed that my old university is having some storage problems or something, as some files are offline. or maybe the campus paper is going back to the cart and buggy distribution model, who knows. in case this comes in handy next time you are out and buying good good things, here's some bullshit of a cd review page.

LIGHTNING BOLT
Wonderful Rainbow

So you picked out the right jacket, found yourself some killer spiked jewelry, and got the boots to end all life. Now, finally, now you are punk! Yo, don't mess with me cuz I'm counterculture. Well, not that 25 year old trends hold any degree of legitimacy in the opinions of the truly with it, but if you're going to be punk, at least go in a non-MuchMusic direction.

Here's the album to start the revolution. A drummer / vocalist and a bass player? How the hell can two people make The Noise that puts the right people against the wall? By playing their goddamn heads off, that's how. After all, how rebellious can you be in a traditional four or five piece? No more fucking punk than the Archies.

You know what punks do? They beat up on shit like the Archies. Wonderful Rainbow pummels you right from the start and does not let go. Intense only begins the qualifying adjectives. "Dracula Mountain" will have you crying in your sleep. Don't expect nice singable vocals. If they ever grew teeth and listened to this disc, those Sum 41 kids would put on rabbit pants and meth out to crappy trance mix cd's for weeks. [Load]

BLACK DICE
Beaches & Canyons

Those who were lucky enough to grab tickets to last weekend's Godspeed [ed. note -- Jan 2003] show witnessed one of the most brilliant performances Hamilton has seen in a long time. Primitive intensities mixed with modern electronic composition and improvisation to reach orgasmic crescendos and breathtaking sublimities which the steel city does not usually experience. I wanted another hour of tantric beatitude. To be fair, Godspeed themselves were pretty good too. ;-) Black Dice originally made a name for themselves with painfully short and murderous shows that usually resulted in injuries to both band and audience. Loud and intense are apt descriptions. The Tivoli should consider itself lucky that the roof did not fall, killing everyone in a frenzy of fucking and bloodlust.

Yet with their new release, BD seem to have developed their capacity for texture and subtle melodicism, as Beaches & Canyons prooves to be the most melodic noise record in ages. Sounds are crystalized to their essence and repeated with increasing intensity over the course of 5 long tracks. Voices and high frequency passages weave in and out of the hypnotic mix, slowly pulling the listener into a space of absolute transcendance, where pain, pleasure, and consciousness unite in bliss. [DFA]

MOUSE ON MARS
Rost Pocks: The EP Collection

So I'm working at the Unyon store and in walks a man promising me the sky if only I let him record in our studios. Jeff's about 45 and looks like a poorly-dressed cross between Eric Dolphy and Mike Moore. Before I can say anything he breaks in with the American Idol and gives me everything: MJ, Temptations, Whitney Houston. "I can take any song, and BOOM! it's up a notch. See, it's about lovin' the women. They're ready for something like this. Becoming lesbians cuz they're looking for love. Low self-esteem, cuz you and me with the dicks, we're all assholes. I have a mind that can get the feelings of the people, before they have them. Reachin is preachin!! A photogenic mind: inspiration, a REVOLUTION!!! a nuclear bomb to stop other music. Movement of red mist over the land, freeing people. I'll set you free." Before I could be his Magdelena, my sweet Hobo Jesus was out of my life.

This collection of old Mouse on Mars tracks simply cannot touch the genius which is Jeff, no matter how essential they might be to 90's post-techno. [Too Pure]

BROKEBACK
Looks at the Bird

Beautifully laid back and contemplative, at the same time Looks at the Bird demonstrates the breezy sentimentalism and instrumental proficiency typical of Sea and Cake and Tortoise type TJ releases. Brokeback is actually the side project of the bassist for the latter group, and the heritage of jazzy post-rock which brought Tortoise to fame informs much of this album. Indie kids will in fact recognize many notable guests, including the late Mary Hansen *honour_her* of Stereolab fame.

Many of the compositions have an improvised feel to them, and yet they remain highly structured and narrative in style. In fact, there is perhaps an equal amount of computer processing as live instrumentation. The melodies are elaborate and touching, and yet one cannot help but smile at the kitchiness of the compositions. The lyric-free voices of many of the album’s pieces are perhaps the first indication that all is not serious with Brokeback’s aesthetic. Listen in the morning and enjoy the afternoon...
[Thrill Jockey]

TIM HECKER
Radio Amor

Maybe there is something to Montreal after all. Certainly the city has produced a good deal of Canada's most influential music in the past decade, and if you haven't made the trip for MUTEK, you just aren't into the avantguard my friend. Tim Hecker is currently one of the most commercially successful of Montreal producers, with releases appearing on many of Europe's top electronica labels. While under the alias Jetone he has produced some gorgeous post-techno, his name itself seems to be reserved for more ambient endeavours.

Ambient music should not suggest Muzak or New Age. Fundamentally it is a space for contemplation of subjectivities and identity, and consequently can engage the listener in a totalizing manner. If you're the ADHD type, I would advise smoking some good herb to induce concentration, as Radio Amor invokes a certain nostalgia and ephemerality which languidly develops over the listening session. Hecker processes his sources to an exceptional degree, with beautiful clicks pops and tones providing an almost organic soundscape. For a musical reference think Shuttle358, Oval, and a dose of Fennesz. Yet Hecker's somewhat iconoclast nature preserves a space for a truly unique voice in contemporary electronica. [Mille Plateaux]

SOGAR
Apikal.Blend

As always the case with Taylor Deupree's avant-hip 12k label, this cd is music of a certain volume. The ostensibly ambient tracks are frequently quiet and yet dynamic enough to fill a room. German expatriate Jurgen Heckel, otherwise know as Sogar, has released another very warm album of synthetic forms. Textures, minimal beats, and highly processed fragments of found sound sources within 'Isolohr' and 'Selkind' evoke a certain sentimentalism, a nostalgia for space also invoked in the cover design.

With a joyous degree of subtle suggestion, Heckel teases highly danceable rhythmic patterns from very minimal sample elements. Sub bass patterns on 'Solang' slowly force attention to the insistent beats found in the simple counterplay of melodic tropes. And yet, his musical subjects are not analysed and refracted to the point where their melody might collapse. Sogar is perhaps the closest 12k has to pop melodic sentimentality: warm melodic tones, digitally crystalized to their essence. As a friend once told me in a different context, perfect for a winter sunrise, on both sides of the clock. [12k]

MANITOBA
Start Breaking My Heart

This wonderful release is actually a reissue of the SBMY album from 2001 along with tracks from a subsequent ep. Dundas native Dan Snaith just couldn’t find support from Canadian labels for his brand of melodic beats, and moved to London. It is a tragedy that North American listeners still cannot conceive of electronic composition separate from the club scene, as some of the best producers at work today hail from our shores, and are producing work exponentially greater than the simple 4/4 of, ahem, “genre pioneers” like Moby and the Chemical Bros.

Fans of the Warp and Ninja Tune rosters will recognize Manitoba’s lazy-yet-busy grooves and fluid melodic passages, while Mille Plateaux sympathizers will appreciate Snaith’s glitchy textural aesthetics. Several of the tracks betray his jazz and classical roots, with contrapuntal harmonic and melodic phrases oscillating in the mix, while the complex rhythms owe more to Art Blakey than a 303. The best of accessible electronica. [Domino/Leaf]

JAN JELINEK AVEC THE EXPOSURES
La Nouvelle Pauvrete

Those unfamiliar with the downtempo, dub-influenced glitch-techno that has been most notably perfected by a few German producers would be advised to pick up Jan Jelinek's new ~Scape full-length. If none of those descriptors above rings a bell, try imagining stuttering, granular sounds atop hypnotic deep bass lines and mid-tempo drum patterns.

This CD very adroitly captures the degree to which this sub-genre has progressed since the early Pole releases in '98 (oh, to be young again...). Melodies are tightly focused yet remain abstract; notable are the higher synth frequencies of "Music to Interrogate By" and the oscillating tones of "My Favourite Shop". Throughout, Jelinek meticulously pulls solid rhythms and intricate sample patterns from his analog detritus. A wonderful intro to the genres of both glitch and dub-techno: great both for dancing and for thoughtful reflection. Be hip already! [~Scape]

VENETIAN SNARES
Winter In The Belly of a Snake

sometimes it's cold in winnipeg. maybe that's why the city has for a while had such a great musical tradition. releasing 3 full-lengths over the past year alone, aaron funk has proven himself an interesting and prolific musician in control of his digital tools.
quietly falling with "Stairs Song", a melodic trope repeated while suggesting its own decay, while the highs in "Gottrahmen" and the bass in "Suffocate" sigh in melancholy. many stringed instruments are filtered in the process; funk knows the eroticism in torchering his subject, as proven by his exquisitely controlled dsp abuse. and yet he remains polite beneath his exterior: melodies and beats are frequently sentimental and sometimes a bit too obvious to be truly out there experimentally speaking.

there's even a lyric or two (Danzig!?!); the opener "Dad" is beautifuly tragic pop featuring Aaron himself in song. an underlining beauty and fragility in Winter ensure the repeated listens which truly illuminate this music. certainly the evolution of drill and bass post label_host muziq's output. one gets a sense of the typography in which he locates beats, surfaces, and passages of narrative composition. dark, but not his earlier "Doll Doll Doll".

snares's abrassively succinct and complex programming throught the album truly demonstrates that there is a interesting and accessible ghost in his machine. (Planet Mu)

VARIOUS
Grammy Nominees 2003

Sometimes the unexpected can come up and really bite you on the ass and otherwise wreck what would have been a perfectly good life. Like when the Germans went into Poland for the always fun game of That Isn't Yours Anymore. When a promo for this CD entered my life I felt sublimely graced by providence. Now in one hopefully childproof package I can enjoy the aesthetic triumphs of Nelly and the Dixie Chicks, Pink and Eminem. Go back to your hole in the ground Gorecki, you can't make music as transcendent as Avril Lavigne's. NSYNC and Nickleback: Just. Fucking. Stop.

Let's get this straight right now boys and girls, just because you want to have sex with many of the "artists" in this playlist does not mean they deserve your money. And the more money they "earn", the further away from your crotch they get. That's what makes them stars, the not boning you part. Because loser wannabes like you and me will take money from people and have the sex. Can't get on the goddamn television that way, padre.
[Warner]

Various - Grammy Nominees 2003

VARIOUS
Grammy Nominees 2003
[Warner, 2003]

Sometimes the unexpected can come up and really bite you on the ass and otherwise wreck what would have been a perfectly good life. Like when the Germans went into Poland for the always fun game of That Isn't Yours Anymore. When a promo for this CD entered my life I felt sublimely graced by providence. Now in one hopefully childproof package I can enjoy the aesthetic triumphs of Nelly and the Dixie Chicks, Pink, and Eminem. Go back to your hole in the ground Gorecki, you can't make music as transcendent as Avril Lavigne's. NSYNC and Nickleback: Just. Fucking. Stop.

Let's get this straight right now boys and girls, just because you want to have sex with many of the "artists" in this playlist does not mean they deserve your money. And the more money they "earn", the further away from your crotch they get. That's what makes them stars, the not boning you part. Because loser wannabes like you and me will take money from people and have the sex. Can't get on the goddamn television that way, padre.

If you actually like this shit and find yourself nodding your head the next time it plays on the radio or finds its way to your ears, remember: these bands are shitting on your face and getting rich from people like you, Honeysucker. Please, don't let these anal abortions continue. If you absolutely have to have one of their songs, P2P it then delete yourself. If you don't believe me about why these bands needs to be punished for their crimes, check this out.