My flat wasn’t far from the office. As a matter of fact, the main reason why I chose the location was to make the journey to work as short and convenient as possible. It certainly wasn’t because the place itself was particularly pleasant (it wasn’t) or because it was in a desirable area (likewise). As the New Austerity bit in and the physical quantities of possessions people owned began to fall accordingly, it would be reasonable to assume that issues such as littering and the tipping of discarded belongings in public places would follow suit. Apparently this neighbourhood wanted to keep the traditional image of an industrial dystopia alive, despite the best efforts of various recycling and recovery organisations; the activity of those outfits ebbed and flowed around various parts of town and right now it looked like my area hadn’t been part of their rounds for several months.

Sometimes I wished the local litter-louts could be more original. A mouldy sofa, a broken TV set, even the obligatory abandoned shopping trolley…like the dentist waiting room that seems to source its newspapers from a newsagent specialising in selling nothing but the previous day’s editions, the whole street had a tired ‘can’t be bothered to try any more’ feel. Suffice to say, I wasn’t going to miss the place. Travelling to work would be more of a hassle, but who knows what, if anything, I was going to be doing there for the next few weeks?

It didn’t take long to throw the essentials such as clothes, toiletries and work-related stuff together since I had few of the first two and anything that came under the latter category was still missing, presumed stolen.  By the standards of your typical burglar, this person or persons unknown had an uncanny eye for what was important and what wasn’t; amongst the standard strewn furniture and opened cupboards, there was some intelligence and purpose behind what appeared to be simple druggie desperation. It still didn’t seem quite right.

We lugged what was left of my worldly possessions – which depressingly fitted into three suitcases and a rucksack – to the nearest bus stop. She insisted on carrying the bag and one of my cases, with the only concession to my attempts at chivalry being that I carried the two heavier ones. Fortunately we didn’t have long to wait before a bus pulled up and, with travel cards in hand, we boarded.

The tandem flywheels beneath the floor switched out of idle, shifting from a medium-pitched hum to a more laboured and purposeful throb as it picked up speed and turned out of my street and onto the main road. Going via the city’s inner ring road, it skirted around the retail district we had used that morning as a short cut, and it gave more pleasant views as well. Small pockets of parkland and waste ground nestled between the grey buildings like weeds poking up through paving stones; flyovers arced gracefully between dual carriageways in a semi-haphazard fashion that must have been meticulously planned at first until the clumsy hands of planning committees forced compromise.

She was gazing out of the window at the passing cityscape with a look of concentration mixed with some emotion that was more deeply-buried and inscrutable. Every time we travelled by bus or train she’d insist on taking the window seat and would often zone out like this for minutes at a time; conversation from her during these journeys was sporadic and followed her own trains of thought. I knew better than to initiate a dialogue and waited for her to say something on her own accord instead.

“If this job really goes bad, are you going to move back home?”

“I doubt it,” I replied without hesitation. “If push came to shove then sure, but only if I had to. I’m kinda settled here. I don’t particularly want to go back, anyhow.”

“You don’t get on with your parents, is that it?”

“I don’t not get along with them. We never had a massive argument if that’s what you mean. We just…grew apart and I found I couldn’t go back to being the kid in his parents’ back bedroom anymore.”

She seemed to weigh up my situation but wasn’t entirely satisfied with my answer. “Don’t you, y’know, miss being with them?”

“I dunno. Really. It felt like we just ran out of things to talk about and I outgrew the place. It really isn’t anything more complicated than that. You don’t talk to your mum much these days either, do you?”

“That’s different. I don’t approve of a lot of stuff she’s said and done so we don’t see eye to eye.” She hesitated. “I’m not saying you should go, but I was, well, curious about why you stay out here.”

“I’m not sure myself half the time. I’m helping Stu out with getting the office on track – the boss is planning a second branch somewhere nearby so expanding the thing will take time. I’m not inconveniencing you by taking the spare room, am I?”

“For the zillionth time, no. Got it? Andrea’s off doing her own thing whenever she feels like it and to be quite honest, I’d have trouble with the rent if there wasn’t someone dependable around. The latest article I’m working on is doing all right but I appreciate your being here. Okay?”

I mentally counted to three to let that raw nerve momentarily settle down. “Okay. I get it. It’s fine by me as long as you let me know if I’m out of line, or if you need anything else sorting out. You’re the one who’s doing me the favour, after all.” She swayed sideways a bit on her seat, almost hitting my shoulder, and hurriedly steadied herself, as though she’d momentarily dozed off. She mumbled something about the state of the buses and their crappy suspension, at which point it reached the stop near her place. Dragging my sorry excuses for belongings from the luggage racks, getting one or two angry glares from the other passengers in the process, we spilled out onto the pavement and made our way to the nearby block of flats.

*

I was given the typical welcome from the cat, in that she gave one of those cursory glances before resuming whatever it was that she was doing. This time she was meticulously cleaning herself; it never ceased to amaze me how a creature that rarely got itself dirty in any way devoted so much time to personal hygiene.

The spare room was almost as neat and spotlessly clean as the flat’s smallest occupant, although it had that tired, bereft look that most rooms have when they’ve been relieved of their contents. Apparently, no amount of dusting and vacuuming could completely remove the perceived traces left by the previous resident in my mind, so I started unpacking as quickly as I could. After my alarm clock was perched on the bedside table, my shirts hung on the clothes rail and fresh linen fitted to the bed it began to feel more ‘lived-in’ and welcoming.

The morning’s exertions with suitcases and bus rides made lunch all the more appealing, although she’d already slipped into Lone Occupant mode since there wasn’t a great deal in the fridge. Searching through the packets and jars for something that would qualify as a sandwich filling, I was insistent on staying in to eat all the same.

“Are you going to give up on it or what?” she asked as I made the third circuit around the kitchen cupboards.

“I’m not admitting defeat just yet…” I mumbled. “Think of it as settling in properly or something.”

This was true. Eating out today would only accentuate my lingering feeling of being a guest in her flat and I wanted to feel settled and comply with her request to ‘make myself at home’. A dried-out lump of cheese, a tomato that had miraculously avoided going soft and the ubiquitous bottle of soy sauce were the best candidates on offer. There was only white bread naturally, but I still felt like I’d won a small victory. Me, 1: new kitchen, 0.

We ate in comfortable silence and the grilled sandwich soon gave my stomach a satisfying glow. The nagging headache still hadn’t gone away, but I was finally starting to feel a bit better overall. As we sat at adjacent corners of the small living/dining room table facing the window she mentioned that she still had unfinished business at Synapse and headed to the bathroom (“The toilets in that place are bloody awful. No way I’m hovering my rear end over the seat like last time.”)

As if on cue, her handheld rang as soon as she was out of the room. “That alert tone’s my mum. You don’t mind getting it, do you?” she shouted through the door. The unsaid inference was that she’d rather have me take her own mother’s call, and I got on well with the lady in any case, so I answered it without complaint.

“Hi there, Mrs K. Yeah, she’s getting ready now. We’re dropping by this afternoon but I think she said something about getting some work done there this evening too. Around then? Sure.”

I didn’t need to explain what was going on immediately after her mother had hung up; she put two and two together from listening in on my half of the conversation and was quietly uncomfortable about meeting her own mother while being, technically, at work.

“You don’t have to work on a weekend, you know.”

“I do know. It’s just that I want to catch the Saturday crowd this week. It ought to add the finishing touch and then I don’t need to go near the place again. Did my mum mention anything about eating out?”

I assured that her that she hadn’t. “She tries to treat me – and you – whenever she wants to meet me in town like this.” I assured her that I’d noticed. “Just saying.”

I, on the other hand, couldn’t think of anything in particular to look forward to in the forthcoming week, so was all for taking it easy this evening. Anticipating a sub-zero atmosphere when mother and daughter were in the same room, I decided it would be wise to tag along. There were worse places to be on a Saturday night than a live music venue with a sarcastic freelance journalist and a middle-aged genetics researcher when the drink started flowing. So I hoped, anyway.

*

Back downstairs, we got another round of coffee in while Stu powered up his portable terminal and set about e-mailing the client. Our position at this point was precarious: torn between needing the work and being genuinely worried about biting off more than he could chew, he wanted them to clarify a few things before allowing me – or any of my colleagues – to restart our respective tasks on the project.

“As far as I’m concerned, our job’s on ice until I can be sure everything’s watertight,” he explained. “Time’s money, but it’s their money as well as ours. I’ll arrange extra firewalls and bring the data in from the Cloud and onto our own server.”

The Cloud was, of course, on a server as well but the idea of having it literally under our roof offered us, and our client, some measure of psychological security at least; the server could handle it, and we would work from the office. From my point of view, a source of food and refreshments was only downstairs, and I could hardly use my own flat in any case.

Indigo Blue was a coffee shop by day and bar/restaurant by night. It made sense since we could run our business as we felt necessary and hold meetings downstairs. It was a public establishment of course, but various areas could be reserved for conferences so we could, when necessary, have face-to-face meetings without needing to make our own offices tidier and more presentable.

The owner of our company – technically mine and Stu’s boss – was some middle-aged friend of his mother who specialised in security, especially of the electronic and commercial varieties. She had the foresight to buy up the space above Indigo Blue before the drift of businesses back into city centres had gained momentum, so avoided the later rise in property prices; not only was she ahead of the curve in terms of establishing the business, she also saw the potential in this young graduate who had a way with firewalls and number-crunching. Stu didn’t look like a security guard in the physical sense, but he had a quiet and deceptive sort of way of keeping promises with various sorts of people, and shrewd business acumen into the bargain. Before she’d retreated to the background and placed him in charge on the ‘shop floor’ he had severed all ties with his father’s corporate world and didn’t rely on his mother’s connections either. She figured him to be adaptable and reliable, and turned out to be absolutely right.

“You know, if you really do want my spare room we’re going to need to help Andrea move her stuff out first.”

I was so wrapped up in worrying about what I would be working on that week I’d almost forgotten what the other task for the day was.

“I’m afraid, sis, that I’ll have to sit this one out,” Stu declared miserably. “There’s nothing to stop either of you though. You’re going to need a van too, aren’t you?” He went back to checking over his equipment.

“There isn’t enough of my stuff still in my flat for that,” I countered. “Still, I don’t expect Andrea will have a great deal either. Have either of you heard from her?”

Both shook their heads and went back to their respective screens. He on his portable, her on her handheld. “I’ll give her a shout and see where she’s at,” she said. “Especially since we were all supposed meet here this morning.”

A few seconds later a reply buzzed in to say that Andrea had moved her belongings out already and was well and truly vacated. Don’t worry guys, I got my own van. Thanks anyway, see you all later. It seemed a bit abrupt and strange that she hadn’t waited, but I was all for sorting that out later. Apparently that wasn’t good enough for some of us.

“She lived in my place for six months but shifted her stuff without a word?”

“I wouldn’t dwell on it,” I replied, again trying to keep things calm. “She doesn’t need any help, so don’t get bent out of shape about it. Makes things easier for me, right?”

She gave a resigned sigh, flicked off her handheld and dropped it into an inside pocket with one smooth movement. “Let’s get your shit on the road then, eh?”

We walked out of Indigo Blue, leaving Stu sitting in the same window seat, still working on his portable terminal and staring thoughtfully at the screen. It could’ve been a message to the client, a rethink of security procedures or simple one of those maths puzzles he was so fond of. My part in the project was pretty much on hold for now so as much as it pained me to leave my best friend agonising over all our wages for the foreseeable future, he was my supervisor so ultimately it was his responsibility now and his alone.

Fortunately the rain had stopped for a while and the walk back was a more pleasant one.

“What’s the job entail, exactly?” she asked. “Beyond the programming jargon, that is.” Her way of never mincing words was actually beneficial in her current line of work, since that branch of journalism actually rewarded acidic wit and sarcasm. Talk about landing on your feet.

“A marketing company that’s basically mass-producing music wholesale. You remember the voice synth software and the mascots that came out in the mid 2000s?”

“Yeah. The second- and third-gen stuff wasn’t so bad. We used one of them in college for a live music project.”

“Seriously?” I hadn’t heard about this one.

“It was a bubblegum electropop-stroke-industrial outfit,” she explained. “We were absolutely awful, looking back on it. Like some mixture of Nine Inch Nails and Kate Bush, without the talent. Anyway. The vocalist got laryngitis a couple of days before the gig – she was out on the piss or something – and we didn’t have any way of doing the vocals. I hit on the idea of using the sound engineer’s laptop to make up lyric samples and loop them in on the fly. He set up a screen for the drummer to watch so he could keep time and she e-mailed the lyrics to us while she sat at home ill.”

“Did you get it to work?”

“Pretty much. We only had forty-eight hours or so to get the vocal samples working and looped a lot of them to save time, but we just about pulled it off. I was doing electric violin, some of the keyboards and had to get the timing of those sodding vocal loops right while we were on stage. Actually, I’m amazed it worked at all.”

I was genuinely impressed. “So you know how this software is sold now, I assume?”

“No idea. I’ve run into some of those music marketing people in recent months, but our scene is so wrapped up in trying to be a scene, there’s no room for anything that has even a whiff of commercialism to it. They never get very far so eventually stopped trying.”

“I’m not surprised that music that’s so obviously manufactured isn’t a hit with the indie kids,” I agreed. “Mainstream stuff moves just as fast though, so the principle’s the same even if the products are different. What’s in fashion now could change in a few months and they have something falling out of the charts and failing to sell. ‘Alternative’ music fans have a bit more discretion…or a different kind of gullibility…”

“Voice synths and virtual idols are waaay more artificial than even the most pretentious bands I’ve worked with!”

“You sure about that?” I grinned. “Anyway. Our job was to help create an artificial pre-packaged product for the mainstream, but make multiple versions at the same time to cover all the bases then run scenarios to simulate how they’d do in a real-life situation. I worked on character profiles, someone else kept an eye on celebrity news; another did social network trends to keep the results in line with what’s popular, and so on. We were supposed to filter those through another program and whittle them down to what was supposed to do well commercially.”

“So, they’re doing some sort of A.I. thing? A fully fledged virtual idol? It sounds like pure science fiction to me.”

“It’s nowhere near there yet, no. What they want to create is a brand or style that’s fluid enough to mould itself to whatever the market demands at the time and ‘simulate’ potential failures before they get to the customers. Kinda like evolution sped up to save time and money. Chart wars that happen inside computers, or even virtual artists growing up and arriving in shops fully formed.”

“Automating the success or failure of music before it’s reached the fans, and tailoring it to what they want?”

“Yeah. The programme I had running was creating dozens of potential fictitious ‘artists’ simultaneously, and the client would sell the handful that made it through to the end. The programme would simulate the early life and personality of the artist too, altering the sound of their voice and their songs, and give spin-off books and whatnot.”

“Sounds kinda…dishonest to sell something so calculated and processed. I know marketing has been around since forever, but it feels like they’re cheating somehow. It’s blurring fiction with reality.”

“I know what you mean. I’m a bit worried about where it could lead…what about the uncertainty and unpredictability that makes music special?”

“What if it’s what people want? Do they care where a product comes from, or how it’s made, as long as they like it? They seem to think that if they tell people often enough that we want what they’re selling, we’ll believe it eventually. Or is marketing less of a blunt instrument now?”

I should’ve expected her to take such a dim view on the subject, and to be honest she was only echoing the doubts I myself had. “It’s what people think they want, I guess. Which isn’t the same thing, in my opinion. At best, all we’re doing is some mathematical experiment that has no hope of working properly in the real world. It might be as dumb as trying to predict earthquakes or the stock market. At worst…yeah, I’d be more worried if it DID work as the client intends it to.”

“It reminds me of an old sci-fi story about a scientist who used a computer to compose the ‘perfect’ piece of music,” she mused. “It was called ‘The Ultimate Melody’ or something. Apparently the inventor actually found what he was looking for but when he finally heard the song, it made him a blissed-out vegetable.”

“You mean we shouldn’t be playing God with artistic expression?”

She gave one of her rare smiles. “Maybe that’s why the Devil has all the best tunes?”

I’m not even sure why she kept this old photo in particular: visiting her father’s home has always been a rare event but even though that visit was so soon before the big ‘quake hit, I could never work out what sentimental value it held for her. I probably found myself just as attached to the image as she ever was – perhaps because I can imagine the circumstances under which it was taken so vividly.

I know where and when it was, at least. Pausing halfway down that narrow, well-known street, hemmed in by tourist-y stalls on both sides, something in one of them caught her attention…or more likely formed a convenient excuse for her to turn her gaze away from the camera and its owner. She pauses for a moment, deep in thought. That hardness to the lines of her eyes – the defensive glare that makes her gaze seem to retreat in to itself – wasn’t there back then I suppose. A lot can happen in a decade. Knowing the ‘her’ I know now, I can just about relate to that younger self in that photo. Appearances change but she may never admit that, deep down and out of the reach of a camera lens, she hasn’t changed all that much.

“I looked so different back then!” she’ll protest. No one can deny that. A decade has distanced her less than she would’ve liked, however… I wonder why she’s held onto this image that connects her so closely to the self she’s tried to leave behind.

I only remember taking that journey twice in my life. The first time, my brother and I were herded like a couple of sheep by our mother through airport terminals, railway stations and crowded streets, in two cities on two continents. It felt like some sort of obligation, as much she tried to convince us otherwise. The weather wasn’t different – it was an unusually cold and snowy winter worldwide that year, I later learned – but the language was different; I felt out of place, like being on some other planet. Signs and notices were printed in what looked like indecipherable runes, an almost off-limits place ‘not for us’.

When we returned home I made a promise to myself to learn how to read and speak this strange language that I was half-expected to know; I never thought it something I ‘ought to do’, although my father made some half-hearted effort to instil that point of view into us both before eventually giving up. Naturally we resisted, but I took it upon myself on my own initiative soon after. It wasn’t with the intention to blend in on subsequent visits; it was a challenge to do something, and go somewhere, without feeling restricted or reliant on anyone else. I must admit that I’m prone to doing that sometimes.

The second time was different, being as it was several years later at a different time of year: one airport on a grey, drizzly afternoon; another in clinging humidity and warm sunshine. I knew my way around this time, and it was my father’s turn to feel left behind. With his camera in hand and murmuring something about capturing a milestone for posterity, we walked the pre-Quake streets and boarded an underground train.

Of all the routes we could’ve taken, this was the line with the trains whose air conditioners didn’t seem to work too well so the carriage was sweltering. It was at least cleaner and more spacious than its London equivalent but the tense silence made me even more uncomfortable than the cramped seating did. Above ground, I still felt a sense of dissociation; one figurative foot here, one where I had come from. As I walked down the bustling shopping arcades, hearing the spoken words of the locals and understanding them clearly this time, I still felt like a visitor just passing through. This was not ‘home’, no matter how welcome he tried to make me.

In a rare show of enthusiasm, he walked amongst the crowd with his camera, offering to buy me snacks and gifts, and begged me to pose for a photo. At this point I was trying my damndest to stop being in awe or afraid of him; he was just another wealthy middle-aged man amongst a crowd of similarly dressed people, accompanying their children at one of the city’s oldest landmarks. That inborn impression still had some hold over me, but I was going through some rebellious phase, fuelled by being talked into coming here, again on his terms and was feeling really fed up with the whole charade.

I pretended to be engrossed in one of the stalls that was selling some type of cheap souvenir or other; lucky cats, t-shirts, it didn’t matter. With a toffee apple in one hand and a carrier bag full of trinkets in the other, I displayed the best show of nonchalance that I could as he clicked the shutter, gave a barely perceptible smile of approval, then suggested we move on to the next attraction. It was a sham; a public display of a devoted father and his teenage daughter on an ordinary day out although, at the time, being the stubborn adolescent I was, it still meant more to him than it did to me.

Later that day he made a respectable effort by offering the usual spiel about his only daughter coming all this way and how that meant it was only fair to get me something extra special. Getting strange looks from the other department store customers on such a hot day, I picked out a white three-quarter length overcoat with a matching beret. That afternoon I sipped iced coffee with him in a Starbucks while we watched the hurried mass of people swarming across that enormous pedestrian crossing like insects, and conversation finally dried up. Both of us were clearly tired of the pretence and were ready to go our separate ways again.

I’d always been vaguely aware of how my mother fought long and hard to keep my brother and me back in England when our father was constantly pressuring her and us, but he now seemed to be showing resignation and a grudging acknowledgement that the decision was mine and mine alone. Even before the Quake shook this entire city to its foundations and prompted so many people here to rethink their lives I was far more content keeping this hard-nosed and overbearing individual at arm’s length.

Returning to the cold, grey and relatively uninteresting place of my birth didn’t seem so bad when I felt I had everything I needed to get by on my own. Looking at the shopping bag containing the hat and coat – a rare but much-appreciated show of parental concern and generosity – I was sure I could face the cold and discomfort better than before. The task was completed; my obligation was fulfilled and now I could draw a line under another phase of my life.

The call came suddenly, but not unexpectedly. She was quietly happy that we were heading in the direction of Indigo Blue rather than Synapse, but she was still pleased simply to be walking through town in the rain either way. The congestion charges that had been implemented nationwide reduced the volume of traffic but it only served to increase the numbers of buses and pedestrians on the streets in city centres. Walking through the mute, rain-drenched early morning crowds gave me an ironic feeling of isolation.

“D’you ever feel lonelier now you’ve moved to a bigger city?” I asked. Our conversations often started in an out-of-the-blue fashion; I wasn’t always the one to initiate it and neither of us minded.

“Not really. Gives you a sense of security and anonymity, doesn’t it?”

“I s’pose. Doesn’t it feel as though you’re just…passing through or something?”

“I like that,” she answered. “When everyone’s wrapped up in the own trivial problems and doesn’t pay attention to me, it gives a sense of privacy. Does that sound weird?”

“Nope. Makes a lot of sense actually. You seem more…at ease since you moved over here, is all.”

“I guess it’s because I can stop by and catch up with Stu whenever. I can make sure he’s looking after himself and keeping out of trouble, that way.”

I wasn’t sure if she was being serious about that last point or not. Looking at the two of them side-by-side, it was easy to wrongly assume which of them was the driven, outgoing businessperson and which one was the musician who drifted between jobs and seemingly lived on their wits. With his unkempt mop of shoulder-length, dark reddish hair and casual attire, Stu looked more befitting the lifestyle of his sister than the role of the young pro who managed to salvage a small ailing company. I’d seen him in a suit on precisely two occasions: once at his university graduation and again for his Masters award a year later. I joked at the time that if his father looked like a Yakuza boss, Stu looked like one of his henchmen.

When we finally arrived at Indigo Blue, he was sitting at a table near the window with the establishment’s breakfast special on a chipped plate that looked like it had been machine-washed to within an inch of its life. He looked happy and relieved to see me in one piece, but something in his expression hinted there was more he wanted to talk to me about. I could pretty much guess what it was.

“Breakfast?” he asked. She shook her head.

“Made my own. Cooked some for the walking wounded here too.”

I figured I’d need more caffeine before the day was out so leaned over the bar to get the manager’s attention and ordered three.

“The rest of us’ll be here soon,” Stu explained when I sat back down. “I wanted to get business over and done with first. I’ll have to give a full run-down when we’re back at the office but long story short, the shit’s well and truly hit the fan and the client is hounding me for answers.”

“What was it this time?” she asked.

“A next-gen music marketing thing,” Stu replied. “It’s not an A.I. exactly, but it’s based on an evolutionary mathematical model that they wanted our Cloud capabilities for. What with the mainstream celebrity industry being as saturated as it is, some of the big businesses are staking their hopes on literally growing their own pre-packaged and outsourcing the number-crunching to third party companies…which is where we came in. I guess my background made me a first choice for being part of the next fictional electropop star de jour…”

“Hooray for cultural stereotypes,” she interjected.

“Well, yeah. I’m not saying that didn’t help. Trouble is, there’s apparently a major spanner in the works. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault and it might not amount to anything but…they’re getting really jumpy about the security implications and I don’t like that one bit.”

“Hold, on,” I countered. “Don’t forget that this is all because of a simple break-in of my flat. Someone would then have to hack into my terminal, glean something from its cloud link, and make something useful from what they found. All I was doing was nudging the programme you gave me with occasional tweaks to the component parameters.”

“Personality profile, right?” Stu asked.

“Yeah. Really innocuous things like tastes in books and movies, musical influences, even trivial details like family and favourite foods. I don’t think any of that is going to scupper the development process or make a case for industrial espionage, is it?”

Stu gave a short sigh, which was as close to being outwardly stressed as he ever got. “It’s best we get this sorted in the office, really. Mind if we take this upstairs?”

The office occupied a top floor that looked like a traditional garret flat with sloping ceilings and uneven floors. This wasn’t a problem considering how most of our equipment consisted of terminal screens; this way, they were at a comfortable angle when attached directly to the ceiling and didn’t require much space either. Occasionally, eight or nine of us occupied the office, lined along the walls with the screens lit up but today it was just us three. Stu’s other employees often worked from home for reasons of convenience, as I did.

Stu’s terminal was powered up as usual but this time his own server was also humming away under the desk. It was unusual for anyone to have a server, especially of this modest size and spec, in their home or workplace but on a number of occasions Stu found it useful. It wasn’t strictly illegal – tobacco smoking wasn’t strictly speaking illegal either, but that was virtually extinct in everyday situations – but it was rare enough. Not unlike my valve amplifier that, until recently, lived in my flat. In this case, the extra power consumption was deemed socially and financially acceptable on the grounds that it was strictly for business use.

“Long story short,” Stu began, “I’m actually bricking it. I didn’t realise how important this job was, but then I didn’t realise the wider implications either. What I thought was just another small marketing or advertising job is actually part of something really goddamn heavy.”

The other two of us sat in silence, coffee mugs in hand, and let him continue.

“I’ll be straight with you here: if I’d known the crap that this was attached to, I might have walked away at the first meeting. I’m not into that commercial nonsense at the best of times, but that’s not the problem here. The reaction I’ve had from the client just doesn’t fit what it looks like from my end. You’re dead right that taking a private terminal is stupid and pointless; they must know that but started putting the pressure on me all the same. The only way I can explain it is by saying their e-mails – which were encrypted in the same way that seriously confidential info is sent – set my bullshit detector off.”

Stu’s ‘bullshit detector’ might sound like a facetious term, but he didn’t get to where he was by using his academic credentials alone. He had a feel for this sort of thing.

“Didn’t you say that someone would need the clout of a multinational IT firm to get anything out of that?” she asked me. Stu gave a brief wave of his index finger to acknowledge her point.

“Quite. Which is why, in my increasingly-paranoid opinion, I reckon that’s exactly what they’re afraid of. This client of ours seems to have been a bit economical with the details since their reaction has been way out of proportion if I’m to take their brief at face value. Which I’m not doing, by the way. If this reaches up and out as far as I think it does, I’ll be putting myself and my employees at risk to some god-knows-how-big turf war between the big hitters. I didn’t spend all this time building myself a stable career and getting so many good people on board just for it all to be kicked over by faceless corporate arseholes. I won’t let that happen. I can promise you that. Both of you.”

Extending his concern over this to both me and his own sister suggested to me that it wasn’t just risky business: whoever was slugging it out with our client apparently wouldn’t rule out getting personal while they were at it. In our line of business this simply didn’t normally happen; considering their family background though, I could easily see why the two of them were particularly unsettled. Unless we could find out where this was going, I was now part of that, like it or not.

*

The second thing I noticed was the small tabby cat sprawled across the small of my back.

The first thing I noticed was that I was still aching and sore all over.

Trying not to pay too much attention to the mutely outraged creature that slid reluctantly off to one side, I gingerly raised myself to a sitting position and did the usual waking-up checklist that’s standard routine when I find myself somewhere other than my own bed. Rubbing my eyes I blinked stupidly around the room and slumped back on the sofa that had been my resting place for the night.

“Feeling okay?” the nonchalant voice near the window asked. “Hope you didn’t notice, but she decided to throw up onto the, uh, throw night before last. I changed it before you used it, though.” My recently-awoken brain failed to grasp the pun and I mumbled dumbly.

“I need the three S’s and a good coffee…”

“The coffee I can help you with,” she continued, trying to sound oblivious to what she believed was a show of comic genius. “As for the other three, you’re on your own.” She didn’t pause to point towards the bathroom but I knew where it was anyway. I glanced at my watch, which I hadn’t even bothered to take off before crashing out.

“What’s with the early start?” It was around half eight on a Saturday morning but generally she was whatever you call the polar opposite of a morning person. If anything she was currently showing more intent concentration than I normally saw her show, whatever the time of day. She was hammering away at her keyboard and barely glanced in my direction at all.

“You’re not the only one…on both counts that is. A lot of this crap really doesn’t add up. Get a shower; you look like shit.” She scratched her elbow and stretched lazily, cat-like, with half a dozen joints cracking audibly. “Hey Starla, leave him alone.” The cat gave up sniffing at my hand and followed its mistress in casually padding into the kitchen. I picked up my overnight bag (which, surprisingly, I remembered had been left next to the sofa) and shuffled into the bathroom.

*

There was a large steaming mug of freshly-brewed coffee waiting for me when I emerged from the bathroom, now feeling a couple of degrees more human. One mouthful of the proffered mug’s contents made me feel a couple of crucial degrees further still. Her expression was even more serious.

“Seems like a few people have been through the same mill as you in the past few days. Not that it’s any consolation for you or anything,” she added almost, but not quite, as an afterthought. She leaned on the back of her chair, demurely took a sip and scratched her shin.

“Sure. Getting jumped on by a bunch of yobs in an alleyway is one thing but a break-in a matter of a couple of days later is bloody ridiculous.”

“Well, yeah. That’s bad luck, even by your standards. What’s weird is how many round here have had the same thing happen to them.” She paused as if to go further, and then thought better of it. “First things first though. I’ll get some breakfast rustled up. The others have been wondering where you’ve been.”

She stood up out of her chair and ambled back towards the kitchen while the cat, now fuller and happier, flopped down onto the sofa next to me. The old adage of pets resembling their owners drifted into my mind and I inwardly waved it away.

Glancing around her living room it was clear how the general look of the place was a partial result of the current burglary rate, among other things. As in my (now ransacked) flat the array of electronic gadgets was less than what would’ve been usual even less than a decade ago: where a bulky, humming beige PC rig would’ve stood there was now a simple terminal: a monitor with a couple of connecting wires for power and data to the screen. An electric violin was propped lazily against the wall nearby, plugged straight into a smaller box roughly the size of a cigarette packet. Items such as clocks, the toaster and microwave were practically bolted down.

“So much for suggesting you move into my spare room and save yourself a bit of hassle,” I observed morosely. “We even get along well enough to not rip each other’s heads off after a few months. Putting up with wholemeal bread is one thing, but housebreaking’s a bit much, right?” Not that her place was any less at risk, in theory anyway.

“True enough,” she agreed. “But you wouldn’t be able to sit in your undies and crack one off in your living room whenever you felt like it if I was around, would you?” Pointing out that I bloody didn’t, and she wouldn’t know even if had, sounded like a lame retort so I settled for giving her wisecrack the contempt it deserved and gave a mere sigh of disapproval instead.

“Andrea can be a pain in the arse sometimes, mind. When she’s not barfing on the furniture she friggin’ microwaves bacon, for crying out loud. Bloody philistine.” We simultaneously looked at the grilled bacon as if in affirmation.

“She isn’t that bad, surely?” It didn’t seem like the wrong thing to say but she seemed to find issue with it all the same.

“Don’t tell me you fancy her or something, do you?”

I could take one uncalled-for jibe in the space of five minutes but decided to take the bait this time. I kept my voice even, just in case. “What the hell do you mean? We’re not high school kids, you know. It doesn’t mean I fancy the pants off her just ‘cause I don’t dislike her. I’m not the one who lives with her, I guess.” Almost enough to calm her down. Almost. “Besides, she’s not my type, if there is such a thing. I didn’t get that bad a concussion.” I pointed at the largest of several bruises. She gazed cynically back at me, as if physically weighing it all up.

“Okay. Whatever.”

She casually let the matter slide while somehow still being vaguely amiable about it. Meeting her gaze somehow nervously, I figured normal service had somehow resumed and relaxed slightly.

Although she’d managed to be up and about at such an early time of day she was still in ‘casual’ mode with an ill-fitting flannel shirt, in all probability a self-declared hand-me-down from her elder brother, and wasn’t quite ready for leaving the flat. Although most of us were in that vague respectable-yuppies-in-training region she managed to somehow carry herself as a well-off professional while only making the minimal effort to separate herself from ‘shabby chic’ undergraduates who were often seen in this part of town. Even though the headband of a clunky pair of retro-style headphones kept her hair out of her eyes the usual dragonfly hairpin was firmly in place and she’d already donned her incongruous combo of knee-high stockings, cycling shorts and faded black denim skirt.

I found it strange that she had any misconceptions over my opinion of her wayward flatmate, since I thought it was obvious as to which one of them I usually found easier to get along with. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to appreciate the supposedly obvious reasons why I was more comfortable hanging out with her instead of the one who was currently in her bad books. Eager to get out of this rare moment of tension and take in some fresh air I stood up to leave, in the hope it would prompt her to power down her terminal and tell me whatever it was she’d planned for the rest of the day.

Several minutes later, after she’d finished explaining what it was about my recent escapades that didn’t sit right with her and going to her bedroom to change into her infinitely more stylish white shirt/black cardigan get-up we were ready to go. Someday the whole world would find out that, in the comfort of her own home at least, she looked like the illegitimate daughter of a Jpop idol and a member of a 90s Seattle rock band, rather than the kind of respectable woman who kept high street department stores in business.

“They said something about meeting at Indigo Blue to, uh, congratulate you on your miraculous return to the land of the living but quite frankly I can’t be bothered with standing at the door while some bald chimp in a suit IDs anyone under the age of thirty-five…” she began, clearly indicating I was supposed to come up with a better alternative. Cheers for that.

“Head over to Synapse and sort out the next live night while we’re there?” I ventured. She wrinkled her nose in an exaggerated statement of distaste.

“I know that’s gotta be organised, but the area around the bar has this sticky floor…”

“Stops the students falling over during happy hour.”

“…and the guy who runs the place is sleazy bastard…”

“You were wearing a T-shirt that read ‘Stop staring at my tits’ last time, and he’s too dense to ‘get’ irony.”

A gust of wind tugged at the sidelocks around her fringe. In a show of what must’ve been feigned resignation she replied, “As long as you don’t keel over or whimper like a girl…” and started cursing herself for not bringing a hat. It had already started to rain quite heavily and the wind was getting up a bit too so I suggested taking a short cut through the main shopping arcade.

The weather was supposed to be pretty bad for the rest of the day, but I wanted to visit my own place first and double-check what had been taken. The combination of wind and rain had already claimed its first victim here: a broken umbrella lay crumpled and discarded in the gutter, like some multi-legged insect invader from outer space.

*

My flat had been well and truly ‘fucked over’, to quote the attending police officer when he thought he was out of earshot (thanks to a cutting edge – and somewhat experimental -medical procedure I’d undergone a few years ago, he wasn’t). Because of the local policy with the appliances, what little of value I owned was still there but even so I noticed that my terminal was missing and, less worryingly yet no less irritating, the amplifier I’d jerry-rigged with both preamp and output valve stages was also gone. Not much surprise there.

In private residences at least, that sort of electronic luxury wasn’t frowned upon but wasn’t particularly commonplace either. I was going to miss that. I almost grinned inwardly at the fact that my second guitar had been pinched though: if the past three years’ worth of modifications and DIY repairs didn’t make its ownership obvious to whoever sold it on (I was on first-name terms with one or two shopkeepers in the local area) they’d make it nigh-on worthless in terms of resale value. These days, residents made a conscious effort to ensure we had little in our homes that was worth stealing…someone clearly knew what of mine was. Arseholes.

“Kinda weird that they’d take your terminal though, right?” True enough, it didn’t have quite the same level of password encryption hers did, but owing to what I’d been using it for my terminal had ample security provided by my employer. The system we were using – basically the same setup as netbooks of the late 2000s, only with a high-resolution monitor like the deskop PCs of the old days – meant that physically taking a terminal was virtually pointless.

Most functionality, such as the ‘homework’ I’d been provided with a week before my unfortunate accident in that alleyway, was simply done through accessing the main ‘cloud’ remotely. No hard drives, no document storage; it was all done by retrieval through a web browser/desktop OS via a secure connection. What little on-board content the terminal had was this OS, some additional software for rendering graphics and sound, and of course user-side encryption (which, needless to say didn’t allow much scope for workarounds). Unless you had the hacking power of a multinational behind you, there literally wasn’t anything in it for the average housebreaker…who was usually a junkie who knew a lot less about computing than we did.

“I really don’t get it. It’s like the yobs that roughed me up and away threw my mobile a few yards away.” I found this weird as hell but she seemed even keener to point out that something was profoundly amiss here.

“The usual stuff was taken, but why your terminal? Who the hell would be able to make use of it, let alone want it in the first place?”

I sat down on my own sofa – shredded by someone with a Swiss army knife and too much time on their hands, presumably – and thought over what I’d been working on. “It was a simple additional task a client had asked for. Toss in a couple of parameters every few hours to nudge the programme…not strictly part of the contract, but no hassle to do. It was all running in the main cloud we’d set up for them, so it was just a side-job I was doing for them.”

I wasn’t a programmer by trade; I was more on the database side but in small corporations we had to be multi-skilled to some degree or other. This bit of the job was a small one and even with my terminal gone it wasn’t that big a deal in terms of honouring our contract, but a stolen (and possibly breached) terminal was going to cause issues, however remote the chances of hacking were. Monday would suck.

“Monday’s going to bloody suck, isn’t it?” She kicked at a broken CD case, which coughed up a scattering of plastic teeth from the tray, their charge now safely stolen…no, wait. I nodded mutely at our simultaneous observation of the week ahead and dug a broken disc out of the foam padding of my office chair. Anyone else would’ve asked “oh well…who collects CDs anymore anyway?” but our group shared a number of common quirks and indulgences. For all our swapping of digital downloads, packaged media was one of them. She mumbled a sympathetic “…oh, for fuck’s sake…” as I reunited broken disc and case, dropped it into a wastepaper basket, closed the door with its ruined lock and followed her down along the balcony to the stairwell.

the poor light at this time of day messes with the colour balance. My carpet’s green and the LED’s blue, honest

The gain, filter and volume were really sensitive at the lower end of the range but if I tweaked the knobs above around a third of the way I couldn’t get any changes at all. It didn’t alter the sound of the pedal, but it made finding the right settings tricky. Fortunately I tracked down a knowledgable UK-based pedal tech who mods and builds FX boxes in his spare time and after some helpful e-mail exchanges he agreed to work on it.

Changing the control pots is tricky business in these pedals because they’re soldered directly onto the PCB. Similarly, swapping the IC chip is also a fiddly job for whoever’s working on it; I eventually decided to go the whole hog and have the circuitry completely replaced but housed in the original enclosure because it fits neatly next to the other pedals on my board.

Mike also replaced the jack-style 9V power socket for a standard barrel-type as used in Boss pedals, which means I can run it off my pedal board’s main power supply without a special adapter plug. The red on/off LED was also swapped for a blue one, which doesn’t really make much difference apart from being brighter and looking cooler! The main difference was in the fact that the innards are now made up of better quality, hand-picked components, which includes the IC chip.

The original RAT pedals used an LM308N but the newer reissues, including mine, use a OP07DP. There’s nothing especially wrong with the newer versions – they’re still really versatile and sound great – but they sound slightly different from the old ones. There’s not a drastic difference in sound quality, but it’s there. My LM308N-powered RAT does actually sound slightly, yet noticeably, better now.

When the filter knob’s turned right down the pedal is at its most trebly and cutting. There used to be a harsh fizzle to the sound on this setting but now it’s a more smooth and musical grittiness; the distortion is generally warmer and more…natural is the best way to describe it without the aid of an uploaded sound clip. I used to be able to get a fuzz-like tone out of this pedal in addition to the thick, compressed and grungey sound but it now also has a more ‘open’ quality on lower gain settings that’s more like an overdriven amp.

Thanks to the chip change and the improved pots on the controls, I can now get a wider range of sounds out of this thing. I’ll have to sit down and play around with it to get used to the way it works with my guitar, but I’m finding more subtle settings in between the usual mild blues-y clip and full-on feedback mayhem.

RATs are really useful and cool-sounding pedals if you’re after a distorted guitar tone that sits well in the mix at any volume, but the only options open to those of us who are fussy enough to want the old-school RAT sound are either 1. paying over the odds for a second-hand original or 2. paying a similarly extortionate amount for a boutique clone.

Then there are people like Mike who are dedicated guitar geeks with the know-how to build a quality piece of equipment and who are honest and decent enough to do so at an affordable price. I’m dead chuffed, as they say, that a good piece of gear now sounds even better. There’s no excuse to get on with this home recording malarky now, is there? Watch this space folks.

Weak4 sounds like a chaotic, desperate battle waged by 65dos’ live drummer against the insistent samples of their electronic percussion…and he seems to be winning. It’s in keeping with their industrial vibe (well, they are from around Sheffield!) but is certainly different from their earlier material. The reaction of some fans has been so far mixed; it’s still a great song to me though…and it’s not even the best that We Were Exploding Anyway has to offer.

The likes of the opener Mountainhead and the following Crash Tactics have the familiar syncopated rhythms, electronic squeals and jagged guitar riffs but there’s a more prominent reliance on the electronic instrumentation than before. Nevertheless to me, in Crash Tactics especially, it’s 65dos at their best: simply put, it absolutely destroys.

The title of Dance Dance Dance makes their altered intentions abundantly clear but the synthesised lines are a tight-fitting, integral part of the arrangements rather than mere experimentation. The tinkling intro to Piano Fights offers a quick peek at the band’s lighter side and reminds me more of their older stuff…only with less of the punky attitude of The Fall of Math and more of the varied soundscapes of their last record. It’s about as slow and instrospective as this album gets but it exemplifies how the band use dynamic changes and odd time signatures so effectively. It’s quite beautiful actually.

If it weren’t for their support slot on the Cure’s recent tour I would never have expected 65dos to collaborate with Robert Smith. The combination isn’t one that springs immediately to mind (not as surprising perhaps as Elton John playing piano on the title track to Alice in Chains’ Black Gives Way to Blue, mind) but nevertheless, it works and works wonderfully. Come To Me is an expansive and tantalising eight minutes in length, building up gradually for the first two before Smith’s sampled vocals loop hypnotically and the full extent of the arrangement unfolds.

Go Complex also features vocals of some sort but they’re so heavily processed they sound robotic; the looped percussion and synthesisers that they usher in immediately make me think of the Prodigy. Then there’s an abrupt change of direction with the traditional guitar/bass/drums mayhem and back again to the robotic chanting. This is I think 65dos playing with us; and of course playing with the expectations because it’s a daring mix of their new approach and the old.

Debutante begins with a swooning atmospheric soundscape but the ‘live’ drumming isn’t the driving force: for the most part it punctuates a synthesised beat with jangles of guitars providing accompaniment to a haunting vocal harmony. There’s a subtle changeover in role between the live instruments and synths; one doesn’t take back seat to the other but there’s still a noticeable sense of their prominence being reversed since the band’s first album.

That changeover is the overall impression I have of We Were Exploding Anyway. Supercar raised a few eyebrows when they went more electronic and Depeche Mode caused an even bigger stir when they went in the opposite direction with Songs of Faith and Devotion. This is a divisive album in terms of what fans expect from them, but I think 65dos were right in going that way when it’s done as competently as it is here. Even the post-rock thing is getting to be a bit of a burdensome label after all and besides, such simplistic categorisation does the blend of instruments and techniques used by 65dos an injustice.

It’s sad to hear that some are disappointed at this new direction but as the joyous, loved-up throb of Tiger Girl brings the record to a close I have to say it’s a refreshing change of pace and even as someone who doesn’t normally dig dance music, I love it. I think they wanted to challenge critics and fans alike and ultimately we, the listeners, need to remember that they’re the artists. It’s 65daysofstatic’s party, but we’re all invited.

Track listing

1. Mountainhead
2. Crash Tactics
3. Dance Dance Dance
4. Piano Fights
5. Weak4
6. Come To Me
7. Go Complex
8. Debutante
9. Tiger Girl

In terms of my guitar geekiness, it’s originally this bloke’s fault. Cheers for that, Nick

Since I want to write *something* to take my mind off the obvious annoyances but can’t watch fansubs or DVDs to write about, I figured I’d do a variant on the ‘favourite albums’ thing. Lists like those are self indulgent and meaningless so I’m outlining albums that have left a big impression on me and have marked important moments in my life as a musician/music fan. Still self-indulgent I guess, but at least somewhat meaningful – I also recommend you listen to them if you get the chance.

The Verve: A Storm In Heaven

This was one of the first CDs I bought, mainly because I liked Urban Hymns and wanted more of the same. Actually, A Storm In Heaven is so different it hardly sounds like the same band at all: it’s an experimental, atmospheric and pretty odd record that, in retrospect, owes more to 60s psychedelia and the early 90s shoegaze scene. Get rid of the lyrics and it could pass itself off as a post-rock record, but that’s because music genre definitions often suck.

This isn’t a collection of Richard Ashcroft’s indie ballads: to me it is, and always will be, Nick McCabe’s (the guy in the pic at the top of the page) album. The guitar work isn’t the fast virtuoso riffery that inspires most kids who learn to play: I can’t emphasise enough that this was THE album that inspired me to learn. I couldn’t care less about the Beatles, Guns ‘n’ Roses or Van Halen; McCabe’s dreamlike reverb and delay-drenched improvisation was the sound I tried to match, and have spent a decade trying and failing but find the very attempt rewarding in itself.

Significant tracks: Star Sail, Virtual World

Depeche Mode: Violator

Which leads me to the point where I realised that good rock/pop music can actually be made with sythesizers. Hearing some friends at uni talk in reverence about them I collected their entire studio back catalogue, beginning with this one.

It’s hard to work out where the guitars end and the synths begin but for me that allows me to enjoy it as music rather than follow the arrangements and try to figure how they’re put together (an annoying habit that occurs whenever I listen to guitar music). It’s simply a perfect album and one I can listen to over and over again without getting tired of it.

Significant tracks: Enjoy The Silence, World In My Eyes

Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream

Another uni pal recommendation, this time happening around the time I was growing out of britpop and starting my policy of listening to pretty much anything I could get hold of. It was also around the time I was considering selling my guitar to pay for student expenses but after hearing the joyous fuzz-laden wall of sound of Cherub Rock, I’d found a new hero to keep my enthusiasm alive.

It’s an extremely guitarist-friendly record because of the countless overdubs and colourful, effects-laden riffs but it’s catchy enough to be a great album in a more general sense. Billy Corgan’s songwriting has become more angsty and, to my ears at least, less accessible in recent years but this is the one that I’d say was his finest hour.

Significant tracks: Cherub Rock, Mayonaise

My Bloody Valentine: Loveless

I’m not sure why I bought this in the first place, unless it was the collective influence of magazines and people I know because I’m sure I got it on reputation as opposed to hearing any of the songs themselves. Again, it’s a guitarist’s dream but is also one a non-musician can appreciate – possibly because it’s very un-guitary.

I mean this in the sense that it is, as an online friend once remarked, one long happy blur. It doesn’t just reinvent guitar rock – it reinvents how a pop record should sound and doesn’t resemble anything before or since (although countless bands have tried to imitate it). After I saw Kevin Shields play at a zillion decibels at an MBV gig two years ago, I’ve wanted a Fender Jazzmaster and stopped caring about solos. An important day.

Significant Tracks: To Here Knows When, Soon

Mogwai: Young Team

This was the moment that I realised how good non-classical music didn’t have to use lyrics. I can’t sing to save my life and often mishear lyrics anyway; I’ve always been into music because it conveys thoughts and ideas that words cannot always do. So then, Mogwai’s first record was my introduction to post-rock.

I’ve actually grown to really dislike that category which defines so much of what I listen to these days…also ironically, Mogwai themselves are keen to distance themselves from it despite their music helping to define the genre. I admired their sound from a distance for the longest time then finally bought this a couple of years ago.

Significant tracks: Yes! I Am a Long Way From Home, Mogwai Fear Satan

Mono: Hymn To The Immortal Wind

I can’t say Mono began my appreciation for instrumental stuff (see Mogwai above) but between this album and my recent experience of their live show I’d say I now owe them a lot. They’ve earned my respect on a number of levels: recreating a studio sound in a live setting while capturing the energy of a live performance on record, using their equipment in inventive ways and simply making beautiful music that stays with you.

I’ve long thought that painstaking overdubbing, trying to do blues scale solos and having a load of attitude is what’s needed in a guitar band but this album best demonstrates how to do even more on sincerity and careful musicianship instead. Inspirational indeed. Also features more epic Fender Jazzmaster win.

Significant tracks: Ashes in the Snow, Follow The Map

Doriko featuring Hatsune Miku: Unformed

An indie electro album amongst a list of guitar classics? What gives? This was actually my first experience of the Vocaloid software being used to make a proper pop record, as opposed to the covers and novelty/comedy songs we’re used to hearing the Vocaloids being used for. Yes, it’s the same saccharine electro J-pop but it’s made by one songwriter and a vocalist who doesn’t technically exist.

The whole idea of a virtual pop idol immediately brings Macross Plus to mind but what Unformed shows to me is part of the true potential of the Vocaloid software. I wouldn’t make a pop album in the same way that Doriko has; I’m sure other similar artists, such as Ryo of Supercell, do it even better…but the possibilities the technology holds is I think something none of us have really grasped yet.

Significant tracks: 夕日坂 (Yuuhi Zaka), モノクロアクト (Monokuroakuto)

Maybe the boredom is getting to me after all. I want to plug my amp into my PC, install some music software and DO SOMETHING with the tonnes of inspiration that the stuff I’ve been discussing here has given me. I don’t want to imitate my heroes; everyone has their own unique something to express, and since music I love has been such an important part of my life I have an overwhelming desire to give something back. I can’t explain it, but it’s something I want to do someday.

Fortunately I enjoyed pretty much all of them. Red Cliff was great, Shutter Island was a mindf***, Green Zone was also great, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief was kinda fun…even Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland wasn’t as bad as I expected. I got through rather a lot of beer and ice cream during all this…

Red Cliff

Talk about John Woo on form…I’m glad I didn’t read about how it’s edited down from a four hour double feature because that might’ve made me more sceptical. It’s in the style of what I see as the new Chinese martial arts epics in the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon vein; the ones that have coaxed English-speaking viewers into watching foreign language films every now and then. It has all the over-the-top battle scenes with better-than-real-life special effects and all that other stuff that makes for mindless entertainment but beyond the awe-inspiring combat and eye candy it’s a solid story, even in its abridged form.

I can’t say how historically accurate it is (I suspect there’s a lot of artistic licence employed here) but that’s hardly the point to the exercise. It’s bold, visually impressive, well-acted and has some really clever moments that employ some fantastic tactical plot devices. I also like the way that the two sides were shown as having differences of opinion as opposed to some good versus evil: it was more political – and emotional – than I expected it to be. Worth a rewatch too.

Green Zone

Talking of throwing politics and decent acting into an action thriller, I was impressed with the latest Greengrass/Damon collaboration. It takes the hand-held camera gunfights and car chases into post-Saddam Iraq and adds the thorny issues of the WMDs and regime changes to what would otherwise be another forgettable action-fest. I found it struck a good balance between thrills and intelligence.

It’s best to ignore Matt Damon’s self-parody in Team America: World Police because he’s actually a good actor in terms of bringing humanity to the heroic character archetype who normally shows as much personality as a used teabag. Here, Damon is playing an honest yet straightforward US soldier in charge of one of the teams sent out to track down those notorious weapons. What I really appreciated is that his portrayal felt convincing and provided a strong moral reference-point but at the same time the film made a brave effort to deliver its socio-political messages in between the edge-of-your-seat moments. Yeah, it felt like The Bourne Baghdad but I found that to be a good thing.

Shutter Island

I can’t say much about the plot here because it’s so reliant on the numerous twists and turns to deliver the chills and intrigue. Leonardio DiCaprio is another actor who, in my view, is pretty talented by the standards of the big-star Hollywood names who are usually cast for their looks rather than acting ability. This is certainly grittier: he’s a US marshal with a flashback-riddled past and the film takes us into some really dark territory with German death camps, tragic murders and a very creepy island jail for the criminally insane.

I must admit I’ve not seen nearly enough Scorsese films, but I really liked the way the gothic horror thing – a genre that I’m a little tired of – turned into a psycho-thriller that kept me guessing at every turn. The background music was a little overdone but otherwise it’s an extremely creepy – and therefore effective – chiller. A bit of a departure for DiCaprio, but that was half the fun.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

I’ll admit that I didn’t intend to watch this; it was my sister’s birthday and since I couldn’t think of what to buy her as a present I offered to take her to the pictures and let her choose the film. This one then isn’t what I’d usually watch but as family movies go it was a lot of fun.

The set-pieces and SFX were run-of-the-mill for this sort of story but I found the presence of beings from Classical Greek myth to be especially fun and inventive. It has all the hip youthfulness but there were some neat, more adult-orientated, jokes thrown in to keep older viewers entertained. I’m sure the sequel will be better too.

Alice in Wonderland

Did I enjoy this? Yes. Is it actually *good*? Well, yes. And no. Getting the negatives out of the way first, I don’t think Burton should have gone for a Disney script because it was devoid of Carroll’s satire and wordplay, and felt too simplistic for me. Mia Wasikowska could’ve performed the lead role better I suppose but I think she was really upstaged by the supporting cast, who read like a who’s-who of the best British actors and actresses in the industry today.

The obvious appeal is the Tim Burton aesthetic – his vision is the closest I’ve yet seen to what I imagine of Carroll’s world (I loved both of the Alice novels). But the supporting cast were stellar: there couldn’t be a better choice of voice for the Cheshire Cat than Stephen Fry, and the same goes for Alan Rickman as the most sarcastic Catterpillar ever. Helena Bonham-Carter’s Red Queen was wonderfully demented (I’m certain she was modelled on Elizabeth I in Blackadder) and Burton’s insistence on casting Johnny Depp in almost everything he directs was actually justified this time: his turn as the Mad Hatter was affecting and gloriously creepy.

The idea of a grown-up Alice was a good one – if you want the original story, there’s the old animated Disney version and two of the greatest fantasy novels – but as a memorable film it was a bit of a missed opportunity. The visual and acting side of things were fine but as great as Burton is in gorgeous set-pieces, he needed a better screenplay to work with.

As an aside, I couldn’t help but wonder if Burton is familiar with Fate/Stay Night…

This made me chuckle a bit, and highlighted to me how daft the finale was in relation to the rest of the film.

My Marshall DSL 401 does have a line out socket but that sounds a bit sterile and thin; the general sound of the amp isn’t really suited to the style of music I play anyway. A bit of shopping around helped me decide on a piece of kit that’s right for the job (see above).

Needless to say a 100 or 200 watt stack is a bit excessive for what I need so I narrowed my options down to low wattage, all-valve combos that kick out a good quality sound at a volume that won’t have my ears bleeding and neighbours running to the hills. The Fender Princeton reissue has built-in reverb, a really pleasant tremolo effect and, at 15 watts, gives plenty of undistorted headroom in a compact package with that classic bright Fender clean tone. Sadly it was a bit out of my price range and I’d have to mic it up to record. The HT-5 was my other choice and, with only a couple of minor complaints, is perfect for my needs.

It’s a two channel amp so I can switch between a clean sound and an distorted one: I’ve grown reliant on pedals for my distortion but it’s handy to have the option of valve overdrive should I need it. It’s very punchy (thanks in part to a smaller than usual 10″ speaker) and has a remarkably Marshall-esque ‘Brit grit’ sound that’s great for rock and heavier blues. The valve configuration is one ECC83 preamp and a 12BH7 , which I must admit I’ve never encountered in an amp’s power stage before. I’ve seen EL34s, EL84s, 6V6s and my personal fave of 6L6s but one 12BH7 in push-pull mode is new to me.

For only five watts it’s a very loud amp. My overdrive channel setting is the gain on two thirds and the volume at less than a quarter; plugged into an external speaker cab I reckon I could play distorted along with a band but I don’t think it could give the clean headroom. The clean channel is really warm and takes pedals well though: the Big Muff fuzz or my beloved Proco Rat 2 sound great and aren’t noisy at all. The three band eq is the same as you’d expect on larger amps, and the ISF control (a knob that acts as a second mids/bass voicing control) is really useful too.

There’s an effects loop send and return on the rear panel with a selector switch for either stompbox-type or rack mounted units, which will be useful I’m sure at some point, plus an array of external speaker connections. The recording-out socket has a selector switch for two speaker types: an emulated 1×12 or a 4×12. Although it could never sound as good as a microphone in front of a real speaker cab, it’s not bad; the 4×12 gives more warmth and bottom end so I’ll probably use that.

The only problem with the amp I’ve found so far, apart from the fact that the footswitch cable is only a metre long, is that the speaker output is automatically muted when I plug a cable into the recording-out. This is fine for using with headphones but I like to use the amp’s own speaker as a monitor. Since the guitar goes into the PC and that in turn is connected to my hi-fi I can work around this by sending the guitar amp’s signal through the PC’s soundcard and then out to my hi-fi speakers.

In other news I’m really happy with the cheap (£20 off Ebay) Danelectro Fab Tone, which gives a really thick and wild distortion; it’s allegedly based on retro distorted sounds but I’d say it’s more of a lo-fi fuzz than a tribute to mellow-sounding vintage amps. Unless the amp is being hacked in half with a chainsaw, because unless you back the volume and treble right down that’s what it sounds like! I’ll try to get some demo mp3s recorded because, for a cheap second-hand effect, it’s a lot of fun.

My favourite pedals at the moment are either my Blues Driver (for mild overdrive) or the Rat, run into the Holy Grail Plus reverb with the DD-5 adding delay. My next projects will probably be changing the Big Muff’s on/off switch for true bypass and building a tap tempo switch to make the digital delay more useful live; I’m still longing for an analogue chorus and delay (Electro Harmonix Small Clone and MXR Carbon Copy, respectively) but those will have to wait until I’ve paid off my credit card…