Nobbut I’m serious. Do you guys actually *cry* when you listen to these songs?

Big fan of the Jaguar Skillz Adam & Joe remix too.

Player of Games has the problem that a lot of Banks, both with M and without, has: the hero is a boring twat.

Yes, Consider Phlebas is dull AF. Horza isn’t a likeable hero – he’s barely a character at all – and the sketchier characters are barely there. It’s just a succession of increasingly inconsequential raids on […]

Oh I liked TNM a lot. Not so much the Hiddle, whose performance seemed simply to be a screen test for Bond, but Laurie, Colman and Hollander were all worth the licence fee on their own. Hollander’s great at being […]

Its problem is that the acts are too obvious for the people who think of themselves as cognoscenti, but too beard strokey for the pop audience. It falls between two stools. (Or, if Rowland Rivron is there to do a […]

I dare say it’s due a backlash in the tedious way these things have, so liking it will probably be terribly infra dig by June, but it’s great. I love it.

No.

Next.

Oddly I take far more care over my appearance now than I ever did as a teenager. We were late 80s/early 90s indie kids. It was all about huge jumpers and DMs. I did have the full Mark Gardener floppy fringe, […]

It’s not Paris. It’s in the middle of the countryside. And who says you can’t do both? (We did.)

Disneyland Paris is absolutely fine. I had a cracking time with my kids back when they were the age to enjoy it.

I realise I’m supposed to hate it and everything it stands for but actually it’s brilliant. So there.

Also reissued. Junos are GREAT.

The Aira series is properly brilliant, too. The new 808 has been sniffed at by a few idiot vintage snobs but it sounds superb, and the JDXi mini keyboard is wicked. Plus it all […]

I don’t have a problem with the occasional term time holiday at the discretion of the head. If the kid has 100% attendance the rest of the time, or near enough, so what?

The real piss takers will have kids with […]

Ha yeah, fair dos.

Ha, it does. I sold mine and funded a couple of pedals with it.

I had a MicroBrute and didn’t really love it. While I appreciate the old-school thing a lot, there’s a balance to be struck and I don’t think there’s an excuse for not being able to save patches and settings in […]

Had you twigged that they’ve reissued the Odyssey? I’m trying very hard indeed to resist.

(I’m definitely not a rockist but I’ll skip owt with George and a sitar on it. Just for balance.)

Well clearly not, but I also think that’s pretty clearly not what I was saying.

Nobody is saying this guy is actually racially abusing anyone or inciciting racial hatred, are they? And given that, who gets to […]

A giant. I dunno that I’d call him the last of the music boffins, though. The work being done in analogue synthesis right now is incredible, and I think Korg’s Tatsuya Takahashi has a claim to being a new giant of […]