Brash and Strident!

And now from the opposite pole -

Siouxsie And The Banshees - Spellbound

The Damned - New Rose

Dead Kennedys - Police Truck

The Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven

ENJOY

Good Motning

Just Wondering

What’s something that people think makes them look cool, but actually has the opposite effect?

Who in your life is the worst at using technology?

What’s your best example of easy come, easy go?

Book 69 - Philip K. Dick "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?"

Philip K. Dick "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" (Gollancz)




I remember reading this book way back in the eighties and before any film adaptation. That film was Blade Runner and it is still one of my all-time favourite movies. This is a recent re-read.

Following a devastating nuclear war, the earth has begun to be emptied of life. Many died in the blasts from the bomb, while others died as the poisonous began to drift over the surface of the planet. Those left behind made the choice to either evacuate the earth, journeying to colonies on Mars and other planets with the promise of highly engineered androids to help them and keep them company, or to stay on the dying earth with the risk of being changed by the irradiated dust. People on earth, terrified of the loneliness, cluster together into cities and prize above all the ability to keep live animals as pets.

Rick Deckard feels lost and hopeless when his pet sheep dies. The artificial replacement, though nearly exact in its duplication and requiring the same amount of care, leaves him feeling empty. His one hope is to "retire" enough androids to be able to purchase a new animal. As a bounty hunter, it is his job to hunt down androids who have fled the off-planet colonies and try to gain freedom bypassing as humans on earth. The new series of Nexus 6 androids are the hardest to spot and hunting them may cost him his life.

The mystery and the threat of the androids, the noir-ish tone, and the fabulous writing launched me into the story from page one. I could have read it in one sitting if my time had allowed me.

More than the realistic array of characters and the well-plotted story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is also deeply layered, with its biggest question being, What makes a human human? If an android is indistinguishable from a living, breathing human, then what is the point of being human? And all the while your questions what is real and what is manufactured, you begin to wonder does it matter what is real?

The book provides no solid answers. The book tricks you several times, reality seeming to effectively slip, the ground unsettled -- as it should be for a world slowly fading out. I often cared as much for the androids as I did for the humans in this story and often found my loyalties lying with both humans and androids.

I closed the final page with a smile on my face and the desire to just sit and think for a while. I remember how fresh it still feels even after my initial exposure to the book all these years ago before any adaptations on film. Highly recommended to any reader, not just the SF fan.

Book 70 - Geoff Smith "American Originals"

Geoff Smith "American Originals: Interviews with 25 Contemporary Composers" (Faber & Faber)





This book interviews some of the best known modern American composers (and some of those a little less well known), including John Cage, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, LaMonte Young, John Adams, Harold Budd, Glenn Branca, Meredith Monk, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier, and Ingram Marshall.

The two themes that run throughout the book are the influence of Cage, and the minimalist tradition. Both are identified by most of the interviewees as a reaction against "European" classical music of the fifties and sixties, i.e. serialism.

Most of the interviews are interesting, although the significant problem throughout is a lack of context, as the Smiths leave their subjects to talk and add very little of their own critical voice. There probably won't be many amongst this book's readership who've actually heard the music of Young, Lucier, Marshall, and several of the others, let alone heard of them, so I wonder if people drawn in by the presence of Glass, Reich, and Adams will end up a little bewildered.

Despite the divergent types of music made by most of these composers, there's a homogeneity to their opinions which is quite noticeable, a consensus which is perhaps unsurprising given their status as the old guard of the avant-garde. It makes the American composers' community seem more insular than they really are, and the repeated complaints about European music suggest an unfortunate parochialism. Some of the interviews are also frustratingly short, with answers to questions never quite followed up in the way you'd like them to have been.

But, for all its limitations, it's both accessible and informative, particularly if you're familiar with several of the interviewees - which I am (as all my readers know) very much into avant-garde music - and would like to learn more about their motivations and ideas.

Hawkeye

Another series has just started in the MCU and I watched the first two episodes this evening. Hawkeye starring Jeremy Renner as the eponymous hero. Yep, from the first two episodes, I think this will be a good one.