Record Reconstructor

This week: Songs and albums about games, the Queens of the Stone Age discography, and confusing the Spotify algorithm. Well, I was all set to have a quiet weekend when things got thrown out of kilter when a friend's teenage daughter was hit by a car while crossing at a zebra crossing (thankfully she seems to be alright, despite being knocked into the air by the vehicle), which threw into disarray Catherine's plans, which we managed to stitch back together but she was then out all Saturday evening which I spent in turn watching coverage of the increasing tensions between the citizens of Los Angeles and the agents of the Federal Government sent to harass them, and spiralling out on my own, waiting for the escalation into full blown martial law.  Needless to say, the whole affair has left me feeling weirdly unsettled, with misfortunes both foreign and domestic on my mind.  It did make me think of Refuse/Resist by Sepultura who provided this week's article title though. Becaus...

  Dashboard! So, I know I have a weekly wrapup from last week to write, but I've not been able to summon the spoons to face it.  I'm not sure how much I have to say about any of the albums I listened to really, so I'll find a way to scoop them up just for the same of covering every single album this year in text, but there's no in depth essay coming, just a collection of music I listened to in the background while other stuff happened around me. This week has been the longest period where I've not written anything for this blog, nor listened to any new albums (or in fact, any albums at all).  I had a fun time with my friends at UK Games Expo over the weekend but came back slightly drained;  its a long few days and it's a big wear on my introverted social battery to hang out with people that I like for four days straight.  Coming back into work this week has been a challenge as well - its pretty tough sledding at the moment, and high stress situations combined wi...

  This week: The Internet, Brandi Carlile, Tame Impala, Wilco, Fleetwood Max, Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Springstee n, Sneaker Pimps, INXS and Maroon 5 It's a three-day weekend here in the UK which means that Mondays are the new Sundays when it comes to posting weekly wrap ups.  There are a lot of moving parts in play in the household this week - first, Catherine is away on a holiday with her mother on the Scottish island I want to move to one day, which is making me jealous, but has also offered me an unexpected Garbage Week Redux opportunity which, I'll admit, I have not taken any advantage of, mainly eating home cooked meals and staring at my computer trying to figure out how to bring in my Pearl Jam article for some kind of crash landing. The other major concern has been my own impending trip away, this time to UK Games Expo, one of the largest Board Game conventions in Europe, at the Birmingham NEC starting on Thursday.  My first UKGE was I think 2014, when I went for a ...

  Dashboard! [[Authors Note:  This is now day four into trying to find a path through this post and so whatever comes out of my keyboard in the next couple of hours is just what I am going to publish, for fear of being stuck here forever.  Know that whatever the finished article looks like, I am probably not happy with it, but the show must go on.  Sorry Pearl Jam, you deserved better.]] Normally, when I am writing one of these articles the prose comes fairly naturally.  Either I go in knowing what it is I want to say and I kind of write towards an objective, or I have a story I know I am going to tell in the context of the music, or if its something I've not heard before or don't have wild feelings about, I just write about how the music made me feel.  I've been trying to write about Pearl Jam for nearly three days now and when I had a talk with myself just now to try and figure out what the problem is, it's that I have too much to say, too many stories, t...