The Verge - The Classics

The Classics: Lush, 'Spooky'

2013-05-18T17:00:05Z

The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

British band Lush’s first full-length album, Spooky (4AD, January, 1992) is a relic of a past which no longer exists, but which incessantly reminds you that it once did. You hear its reverberations in predecessors like Black Tambourine and in successors like Wild Nothing. What ties them all together is a dialogue, a certain way of looking at the world, which has everything to do with the tone, the sound, the feel, and often nothing to do with actual meaning. The meaning is conveyed in the delivery.

Spooky operates on the listener like any good story. It’s got a beginning, a middle, and an end. It ebbs and flows, and you feel the time passing as you listen: it starts with a sunrise and ends at nighttime. There is a warm and comfortable blanket of desolation spread over the whole affair, a thick production (provided by the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie), heavy with effects, laden with harmonies and angelic, nearly indecipherable vocals. As you start to listen you wonder, “what are they talking about?” and as it ends you ask yourself, “does it even matter?”

you feel the time passing as you listen

The album works best as an album, though there are perfect songs sprinkled like glitter throughout -- “For Love” is maybe the best song Lush ever recorded, and “Nothing Natural,” which drones on for nearly six minutes, sums up their weird energy better than any other piece on the album. Still, it is best to take it as a whole organism, to let it soak through your bones, one song melting into another, at as loud of a volume as your delicate ears can manage. There are weird bits of noise -- random echoes and hints of laughter -- throughout the Lush back catalogue which can only be accessed in the right light, with the right ears, at the right moment. Such was their magic.

The opening song, “Stray,” which is just two minutes long, much of it spent on fading in and fading out, was my favorite track when the record crossed my path, in the summer of 1992. I assumed it was about a lost love, no longer accessible, and the longing which I imagined must come with such loss. Twenty-one years later I stumbled across an interview where the song’s writer, Miki Berenyi, wrote that it was about a stray dog that used to hang around the band’s practice space. That’s an apt way of thinking about Lush generally, actually: when you strip away the effects and the production, you are often left with breathlessly perfect pop songs about dogs or cars, but while you’re listening, it’s easy to wonder if this music was even made by humans. It’s shocking to dig through the layers and hear a structure of verse, chorus, verse, with two guitars, bass, and drums. It would be easy to allow that realization to drag you down to mundane, dry vocalled reality.

On the other hand, what more true expression of loss is there than the one that you feel for a dog?

For your enjoyment, I’ve made a Playlist of some of my favorite Lush songs, which can be found here. As always, wear headphones for maximum vibes. Enjoy.

The Classics: 'Tales of the Unknown Volume 1: The Bard's Tale'

2013-03-16T15:30:06Z

The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

The year was 1986. A much-younger version of myself went over to my friend Frank's house to play games on his dad's Apple IIe. My gaming experience had been fairly limited up to that point — highlighted by Karateka, Oregon Trail, and some frustrated fumblings around the Zork trilogy (my love for all things Infocom wouldn't blossom for another year). I was about to be introduced to a new game, however; one that would burn its way fiercely into my brain.

Frank handed me a grey cardboard gatefold. Tales of the Unknown Volume 1: The Bard's Tale.

Sorcerers, paladins, rogues and half-orcs

Originally released by Electronic Arts in 1985, The Bard's Tale is a first-person perspective role-playing game. Set in the town of Skara Brae — cut off from the rest of the world by an evil spell — you guide your party of six adventurers through an assortment of different mazes and dungeons. The goal? Taking down the evil archmage Mangar, and freeing the city in the process. It has all the RPG tropes of its time: character classes like sorcerers, paladins, and rogues, with players choosing from races like humans, elves, and half-orcs to build their party. The titular bard character class is described as a former warrior with a penchant for ale, one who can create magic simply by playing songs.

The landscape in those days was littered with dungeon crawlers. Die-based RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons were still in vogue, and the emphasis on the computer side was in recreating that experience — usually with rudimentary visuals and extraordinarily steep learning curves. In comparison, The Bard's Tale used early color 3D graphics, a straightforward gaming system, and a dry sense of wit to keep you engaged. Even when your entire party was killed, and you had to run back to a temple to revive them, you never felt like you were wrestling with an obtuse game; you felt like you were simply grappling with the world of Skara Brae itself.

You still needed graph paper

Yes, you still needed to sit down with graph paper and map out 16 dungeon levels to succeed. Yes, you would spend hours tapping out keyboard shortcuts in battle: [A]ttack, [A]ttack, [A]ttack, [D]efend, [D]efend, [D]efend. But the overall result was something that was simply more accessible and engaging than the likes of Ultima and Wizardry; a trip into an addictive and exhilarating fantasy world.

It was a massive hit as a result, and was released on virtually every computer on the market at the time. From MS-DOS machines to the Atari ST, if you had a computer, you could play The Bard's Tale. (When my family got our own computer, my first purchase was the Apple IIGS port.) The brand become so popular it even spawned a series of paperbacks in the 1990s.

While enjoyable, the sequels The Destiny Knight and Thief of Fate never lived up to the original game; in the quest to add complexity, the straightforward charm of the original slowly ebbed away. The studio that created The Bard's Tale, Interplay Productions, went on to produce a number of iconic titles, however — including the game adaptation of William Gibson's Neuromancer.

Just a download away

Fortunately, there are several ways to play the original today. Interplay founder Brian Fargo later started inXile Entertainment, whose debut release was a game titled — yes, you guessed it — The Bard's Tale. That 2004 console game was neither a sequel nor a reboot, but rather a new property with a familiar name. However, it's since trickled down to smartphones, moderns PCs, and the Mac — and now comes bundled with the original Bard's Tale trilogy in its entirety. If you want to really step back in time, however, there are disk images and emulators across the internet for almost every version of the original — giving you the complete flashback experience.

Playing it today is a reminder of the delicate balance between story, game mechanics, and sheer fun. Its graphics may seem primitive, and we've come a long way from its keyboard-heavy gameplay, but the charm of The Bard's Tale persists.

So go ahead. Grab some graph paper. [A]ttack, [A]ttack, [A]ttack. [D]efend, [D]efend, [D]efend.

The Classics: 'Everyday Shooter'

2013-03-10T16:00:06Z

The Classics are must-see, must-read, must-play works revered by The Verge staff. They offer glimpses of the future, glimpses of humanity, and a glimpse of our very souls. You should check them out.

It's rare that I go back and replay games. It's more a matter of time than anything else: there are just so many games out there, I'd rather be checking out something new than give something a second go. Everyday Shooter is the exception to that. It's like comfort food. It's a game that I can pick up, play for a few minutes or a few hours, and feel like I've gotten something out of the experience.

Destruction becomes creativity

Mechanically, Everyday Shooter isn't particularly innovative. It's a twin stick shooter in the mold of Geometry Wars, so you use one stick to control your character — nothing more than a dot, really — while the other is used to fire in all directions. Enemies swarm at you and you can collect little glowing bits after they die, which are used to unlock extra content and features. This may all sound very familiar, but Everyday Shooter shows its uniqueness when you fire your first shot and hear the strum of a guitar. Music in the game is procedurally generated, so as you fire bullets and destroy enemies, you're actually making songs. Destruction becomes creativity. This, coupled with the game's psychedelic visuals, turns what should be an ordinary arcade shooter into an entirely unique audio and visual experience, one where the sound is intimately tied to the gameplay.

Creator Jonathan Mak, who developed the game — including the music — singlehandedly, describes the experience as "an album of games exploring the expressive power of abstract shooters." And it really does feel like an album, with a series of levels that stand up on their own, but are stronger as a whole. Both the art and sound change dramatically in each stage, while the game also throws new and surprising game elements at you as you progress. Playing the game from beginning to end is difficult but immensely satisfying.

Everyday Shooter's rough edges give it more character

Everyday Shooter's follow-up, Sound Shapes, is a more polished game, and one that benefitted from a larger development team. It also includes music from known, talented artists like Beck, Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie, and I Am Robot and Proud. But while it's technically more impressive, Sound Shapes hasn't quite stuck with me the way Everyday Shooter has. Both have an album-like structure and marry game mechanics with music in a satisfying and often surprising ways. But maybe it's the singular vision of Everyday Shooter that makes it so sticky. Sound Shapes is maybe a little too perfect, while Everyday Shooter's rough edges give it more character. Whatever it is, just hearing those first few notes makes me want to play it, even if just for a little bit. Like albums from my youth, it brings me back to a very specific point in my life like few other things can.

Everyday Shooter debuted on the PlayStation 3, but has since been released on both Steam and the PSP, so it's relatively easy to get a hold of. And its abstract nature means that it doesn't feel dated today, six years after it was first released. Even as twin stick shooters have reached a saturation point on virtually all platforms, whether it's a phone or a console, Everyday Shooter still feels fresh and engaging, both in terms of how it plays and how it looks and sounds. It's a game that you can pick up for the first time and still enjoy it. And if you haven't played it in a few years, you can slip right back in with ease, like throwing on your favorite album.

The Classics: 'It's a Good Life'

2013-03-02T17:00:07Z

Have you heard the one about the omnipotent six-year-old? Even if you've never seen the episode, by now you probably know the gist — maybe from The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror takeoff, or a late-night description from an older brother. There was also the movie version, or the ‘80s sequel. Like the best Twilight Zone episodes, 1961's "It's a Good Life" has traveled far.

It goes like this: In a small town in Ohio, Anthony Fremont is born with godlike powers. He can read thoughts and manipulate the world with his mind. Almost immediately, he wishes away everything outside of the town. Anyone the boy doesn't like, he kills — usually in a method so horrible that the camera can't bear to show us. Then he wishes them into a grave in the cornfield. If you want to stay alive, you'd better stay on his good side, which is tricky when you're dealing with a mind-reader. The title comes from the mantra of the town, which the citizens repeat to keep themselves from thinking the wrong thoughts: "It's good he did that. It's real good." Of course, it's not good at all. It's bad. It's real bad.

Maybe it's about television, with the child as writer-director. Maybe it's about God?

This is bleak territory, even for a show that trafficked in tales of existential loneliness and nuclear war. "It's a Good Life" goes further, showing us a world where we've lost ownership of even our own thoughts. And it's a world that looks a lot like the small-town Americana shows that filled up the broadcast schedules of the early ‘60s. There's the precocious child, the kindly old aunt, the local clerk who acts like part of the family. It looks so wholesome. It's the dystopia of "I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream," performed on the set of The Andy Griffith Show.

Maybe it's about Communism? A lot of the early Twilight Zones are, and little Anthony is certainly doing some thought-policing. Or maybe Anthony is Joe McCarthy (another favorite Serling target), imprisoning his family with ‘50s conformity. Maybe it's about the strange panic of child-rearing, tailoring your life to this creature you can't fully understand. Maybe it's about television, with the child as writer-director. Maybe it's about God? We could play this game all night. Neither the show nor the original story tries to hang too much meaning on it. Anthony is just a new power dropped into the world, like so many others before him.

By now, sci-fi fans have plenty of totalitarian dystopias to choose from, but it feels different when the godlike monster is a child. Unlike Harlan Ellison's AM Supercomputer or Orwell's Big Brother, getting rid of Anthony should be relatively easy. As one character says to the boy, they could just "sneak up behind you and lay something heavy across your skull and end this once and for all." But such a thing is unthinkable; the citizens cannot let themselves even consider it. So they play along, self-enforcing, penned in by the limits of their own imaginations. Who wants to think about the world's problems anyway, about global warming or nuclear war? Easier just to pretend everything's good. Real good.

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The Classics: 'Transmetropolitan'

2013-02-23T17:00:04Z

It’s the future, but nobody actually knows what year it is. Humans are mass-cloned and sold as fast food (or occasionally as fresh-faced politicians), extraterrestrial life has become a fashion statement, and universal matter replicators not only exist, they can get hooked on their own manufactured drugs. Income inequality and health problems are covered over by slick public relations and short attention spans. Climate change has led to the rise of city-destroying superstorms. And telling the truth at the right time can change the world. Welcome to the silly, serious, cynical, and idealistic world of Transmetropolitan.

Telling the truth at the right time can change the world

From 1997 to 2002, Warren Ellis delivered one of the most focused and fascinating comic series of all time. Transmetropolitan has an uncanny knack for blending anvil-heavy political commentary, eerily prescient story arcs, and pure fantasy into something that feels both timeless and ripped from the headlines. Following the life of renegade journalist Spider Jerusalem — who writes like Hunter S. Thompson and looks like Michel Foucault — you’ll find missives on transhumanism, poverty, writing, religion, and social movements: its political homages are probably the only reason I know about Nixon’s Checkers speech.

Ellis’ writing is set off by artist Darick Robertson, whose detailed and outsized work perfectly captures the weird city of Transmetropolitan. I’m the sort of person who can barely remember the artists of most comics, but Robertson’s wild, expressive characters are a big part of what keeps me coming back. And every time I do, I’m struck by how soulful the series really is. Potentially throwaway ideas — like the fact that while cryonic preservation does effectively let people rise from the dead, it leaves them woefully unprepared for the new world — become full story arcs about the value of the past, and even scatological running gags ultimately get their place in Spider’s fight against social and political corruption.

The City's denizens are like you or me — if we were half-alien cannibals with two-headed pets

Given its often straightforward fight-for-justice story arcs, the series could easily have turned into a flat dystopia or an endless cavalcade of unstoppable heroes and nefarious villains. But Ellis explores chinks in his characters' armor, revealing their loneliness and doubt. Likewise, no matter how dark the world gets, it remains vibrant and alive. The City isn’t a totalitarian state or consumerist wasteland but a place full of people just like you or me — if we were half-alien cannibals with two-headed pets — and like any good journalist, Spider Jerusalem shows us their lives and struggles.

Transmetropolitan does what DC's Vertigo imprint did best in its prime: take high-minded concepts and transplant them into the two-fisted world of pulp comics. For writers, it’s a bit of a power fantasy — I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will never stop a riot with a blog post or attack a recalcitrant source with the "chair leg of truth" — but it’s also both a celebration and an indictment of a world gone beautifully, hilariously mad.