Record Reconstructor

Dashboard! Sometime around 1993 was when I read Neuromancer  for the first time.  I came to it, and the works of William Gibson, in something of a roundabout way.  It started with Dungeons & Dragons, and playing tabletop RPGs long before actual plays and celebrity podcasts made it mainstream.  I'd been doing some form of tabletop gaming since I was 12 or 13 I guess, and by the time I was 17, we'd moved long past the confines of the dungeons and started looking for other games and other settings to explore.  Modern noir, and the White Wolf studios Vampire:The Masquerade games took center stage in our play time, but before that, and as an undercurrent always around it, was our groups mutual delight in cyberpunk settings. We played Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun (first edition) a whole bunch; and I owned both books, which came with extensive bibliographies of related media works the games had drawn on for inspiration.  Neuromancer  was at the top of bot...

Dashboard! People who have been reading this blog in sequence might have noticed a certain level of reluctance for me to engage with the music streaming services which ultimately are powering this entire project;  obviously, I would much rather the musical artists I love get paid well for their artistic contributions instead of what modern distribution allows them.  Gone are the days when musical acts toured in order to promote the album, sales of which was the primary revenue stream for them and their label (and in fact, many tours lost money).  Now, where getting 30,000 plays on Spotify pays less to an artist than a single sale of a £30 vinyl from their direct storefront, live music tours, and their associated merchandise have become the primary source of income for anyone trying to really make a living as a professional musician. Also, if you've been paying attention, you will be aware there were long sections of my life when I have been very financially disadvantaged;...