John Walker's Electronic House

Remember when you were a kid, and you had those crazy bendy-flap pin clip things? I’ve got a feeling they have a proper name, but I’m also fairly sure that they slip out of existence once you’re past the age of 12, unless you become a primary school teacher when you’re allowed to see them again, so it doesn’t really matter. You’d push them through a hole in two bits of card, and then bend the two flaps of metal back against the flat surface, so the two were attached, but could rotate around. And of course you’d be doing this to make a little person with pose-able limbs. And then you could colour it in. Then it would be time for break, and you’d graze your knee. Which you never do any more. Not even primary school teachers still graze their knee. But what were primary schools doing covering their playgrounds with loose, sharp gravel? My theory: playgrounds were paid for by sticking plaster companies – an investment to ensure business stayed good. I’m on to you Elastoplast – your reign of tyranny against the patellae of the under-12s will soon come to an end.

Possibly one of the more strange reviews I’ve written.

Firstly, I’m really excited to see how well the test has gone down. 862 people have taken it at this exact moment (edit: 1313 now), of which 16 have lived. Which is just shy of a 2% survival rate, which sounds about right.

Interestingly, the highest scorers are aged 60 – 65, or gay men. Or both. Which is ideal. The two least reproductive groups in society, ensuring that the future numbers stay safely down. Also, that the least annoying people in the world are gay retirees. Which is a fascinating new Fact.

Secondly, I’m hoping for 2006 to be The Year of the Rabbit. The Chinese seem to think that as of the 29th it will be the year of the Dog. We’ll see about that.

I’m going to see if I can up Brian to three a week. It will require me to be less lazy.

I’ve had a few requests to make t-shirts or similar, but at the moment that would probably lose me money. There’s currently about 100 people reading Brian a day. That’s not very many. Realistically, to make offering t-shirts or similar affordable, this number will probably need to increase at least five-fold. I’m not looking to make huge wads of cash – even then I’d not make anything much – but it would be nice to be able to sell Brian stuff if people want it. It would certainly make me proud.

So the mission is: spread the word. If you can link to Brian, please do so. And tell your friends. And those you hate.

Also, people sometimes ask me if they can use a Brian cartoon somewhere. The answer is pretty much always: yes! Brian is copyrighted very specifically so that you can duplicate, copy, print out, paint on the side of hot air balloons – whatever you like as long as it’s not to make you money. Share him. Obviously I’d appreciate it if you kept the web address attached to things, but you’re in no way obliged to, and you definitely shouldn’t if it would spoil whatever you’re using it for.

Thirdly, I definitely had a thirdly when I started writing this.

2005 was a truly horrible year for film. 2004 was particularly poor, but as nothing compared with the dismal offerings in the last year. This isn’t helped by the fact that I never got around to seeing Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, King Kong, Sin City, Corpse Bride or The Constant Gardener, which admittedly might have affected things, although not an enormous amount. As it is, I can offer a Top 2, both of which I now realise I saw on my own, which is unusual. But then, everyone I know hates me. Kung Fu Hustle was top fun too, and could get No. 3 if I had the energy.

2) The 40-Year-Old Virgin – wr. Steve Carell, Judd Apatow, dr. Judd Apatow

By far and away one of the best written comedy films in over eighteen million years, and I’m still the only damn person I know who’s seen this. Steve Carell was the second best thing The Daily Show ever had, and he’s becoming super-huge in the States, fronting their version of The Office, and popping up in all the right places. He stole the show from Jim Carey in Bruce Almighty, got huge laughs from minimal lines in The Anchorman, and here finally gets the front-line position.

The film’s premise appears poor – Andy Stitzer, a 40 year old man, working in the back room of a chain electronics store, has his colleagues realise he’s never had sex. The script seems inevitable, and most people were put off seeing it (especially thanks to the appalling trailer). People weren’t expecting:

a) The central character to be extremely likeable, single by habit rather than character ineptitude, and socially capable

b) The focal relationship between the leads to be believable, flawed and honest

c) The ‘wacky buddy antics’ to be the subject of scorn, pushed into the background, or entirely ignored by Stitzer

d) To painfully choke from laughing, which appeared to nearly kill a girl sitting behind me

e) Stitzer’s virginity to be respected

There are so many excellent scenes to reference, with the stand-out three being the speed dating, the climactic musical number (you need to see it), and the chest waxing, which should immediately enter anyone’s top 10 comedy moments. The key to the latter is the realisation that Carell really is getting his hirsute chest agonizingly stripped, and is desperately fighting to stay in character, while unleashing the most spectacular torrents of imaginative swearing. The cinema was not busy, but everyone I could see or hear was literally crying with laughter.

It’s never schmaltzy, it’s always smart, and apart from one hiccup of a scene toward the end (but thankfully not the end), is seamless.

1) Broken Flowers – wr. dr. Jim Jarmusch

I’m a bit amused by the reaction to Broken Flowers, and extremely fortunate to not be afflicted by either side. People who follow Jim Jarmusch’s work are furious at his mainstream selling out, disgusted he should make a film palatable to an Odeon audience. And people who thought Lost In Translation was an elite art house film they’d been intellectual enough to comprehend were furious at the minimalist script and pacing.

I appear to have struck the perfect position: not so dumb as to think Sofia Coppola a secret underground discovery, but not so intelligent as to have actually heard of Jarmusch before, let alone loved his films. Win!

Bill Murray plays gloomy Don Johnston, a man in his 50s, so freshly single that we see his last lover, Julie Delpy, walking out on him in the opening scene. His response suggests that this is an expected inevitability of his life. That day a letter arrives from an anonymous source, informing him that he has a son in his 20s who may be on his way to find him. This inspires PI-wannabe neighbour, Jeffrey Wright, to near-force him onto a journey through his past, visiting four previous lovers whom he hasn’t seen in two decades.

But I don’t think that’s what the film is about at all. By the final scene, as Murray stands in the middle of a road junction, I thought that perhaps this was an allegory, a fairyless fairytale carrying warnings for the individualist.

The acting is superb, Murray playing the role he perfects, with even Sharon Stone in a subtle and sympathetic character. The pacing reminded me of Lynch’s Straight Story, comfortable with strolling very casually, and even sitting still. A remarkable scene has Murray sat on his sofa, hands clasps and rested on his knees, thinking. For a minute. He’s motionless, the camera is motionless, and throughout you so strongly believe in Murray’s stationary acting that you know he’s thinking, without his mugging a ‘quizzical’ look. And given this space and time, you start to think as well.

Brace yourself…

5) The Prayers and Tears of Arthur Digby Sellers – The Mother of Love Emulates the Shapes of Cynthia

I haven’t got around to discovering Bright Eyes yet, and am slightly daunted by his/their releasing about forty albums a year. People compare them with The Prayers and Tears… so that’ll do.

I discovered the band when learning they would be supporting The Mountain Goats in Chicago, so checked out the album in advance. And was really rather surprised. Like The Mountain Goats, The Prayers are really just a single man, Perry Wright, with whoever happens to be accompanying him at the time. These people include the likes of the Polyphonic Spree, Ester Drang, and somewhat bizarrely, Sixpence None The Richer, who all donate toward the electro-folk-rock mix, that doesn’t really sound like any genre. Splendid strings appear throughout, never better than when introducing and punctuating the jaunty-yet-dark ‘Ammunition for a Bolt-Action Heart’, which are somehow not offset by the frequent bursts of electronica. Arrangement is key, dangerously offering the suggestion that if Godspeed were to try pop, they might, might, come up with something like this. With singing.

Wright’s voice is splendid, casually delivered but empassioned, ensuring his melacholic lyrics do a far better job of hammering the minor keys than even the piano in ‘Above the Waves (Pluripotency)’. No one took any notice of him this year, not even receiving the dignity of a Metacritic entry. So I’m going to predict that whatever he offers next shall be received in 2006 with the same degree of panicked enthusiasm that Sufjan Stevens finally achieved in 2005.

4) The Books – Lost and Safe

I tried to describe The Books to someone the other day. I said, “Uh, well, uh. Uh. Well, uh. Oh, you’d hate them.”

I love them. I haven’t felt such a visceral connection to a band since I first heard Negativland in the mid 90s. It’s as if they tap deeper into my soul than any other group, touching me in unique ways, sometimes such that I should probably have to point out where to the nice lady with the teddy bear. They do something that a part of me wishes all music would do – if only I could put words to exactly what that is.

Their work is collage, found art, with broken narratives, haunting interruptions, and a constant theme of paradoxical arguments. My song of the year is by a league ‘Smells Like Content’, perhaps the simplest track on the album. Without the frequency of sampled speech that threads through every other track, this is instead one of the two members of The Books narrating a description of whereever he might be over the most gorgeous surging tune. It flows in ripples, the past-paced, smart words skipping on the surface. “Our heads were reeling with the glint of possibilities / contingencies / but with ever-increasing faith we decided to go ahead and just ignore them / despite tremendous pressure to capitulate and fade”.

‘Be Good To Them Always’ is probably the track most like their previous albums, almost entirely constructed of samples, beginning with an archive recording of a reporter failing to report what it is he can see, the bouncing of a basketball, backward masking, and thousands of unidentifiable sounds cluttering together to create a bewildering coherence. Which then fades to allow a poetic narration of the confusion of people, the vocal accompanying the obscure archive snippets.

‘It Never Changes to Stop’ implies that it will be a straight piece of original work, dark cellos and a light banjo, but then halfway through a voice appears, what appears to be a male teacher having a breakdown in front of his class. It’s macabre, and deeply sinister. There is fury in his voice as he angrily attempts to maintain control of a room of children while losing control of himself, his voice cracking as he barks commands. The cellos then draw back in, sombre and sad, until the track finishes with a female voice discussing “his” belief that he “thought he could stop when he wanted to.”

There are lighter moments in ‘Venice’, where a percussive tune is added to a recording of a reporter describing the work of a wild artist as he paints both his canvas and the crowd. ‘If Not Now, Whenever’ contains dozens of clips of people’s contradictory statements, broken thoughts and confused logics.

It refuses conventional structures, but does not push you away as it progresses. The collage changes from disturbing to hilarious, always beautiful and infectious. This is a musical scrapbook, Found Magazine sung out loud.

3) Sufjan Stevens – Come On Feel The Illinoise

The joint most-heard record of my year. This barely spent a moment off my mp3 player after I first found it. I’m not really one for hearing the same album twice in a row, let alone over and over, but I think I might have listened to Illinoise non-stop for an entire plane flight to the States.

Verbose and pretty, the dancing, melodic big-band-a-like display is enthusiastically catchy, then dipping into the simplest refrains. Beginning with a gentle flute and piano, the opening whimsy sings peculiar poetry of a UFO’s arrival in Illinois. “Mysterious shade that took its form / Or what it was, incarnation / Three stars / Delivering signs and dusting from their eyes.”

And then into the most ludicrously grand fanfare entitled, “The Black Hawk War, Or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization And Still Feel Good About Yourself In The Morning, Or, We Apologize For The Inconvenience But You’re Going To Have To Leave Now, Or I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue To Fight Them”. Er, yes.

The track names get no more sensible, perhaps threatening a potential pretension, but not one that the songs ever provide. In fact, despite the array of instrumentation, the music is remarkably modest, Stevens’ delicate voice plinking away at the peculiar lyrics. If some are meant to mean anything, it goes swiftly over my head. ‘Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother!’ contains the verse, “The sound of the engines and the smell of the grain / We go riding on the abolition grain train / Steven A. Douglas was a great debater / But Abraham Lincoln was the great emancipator.”

Sense is more forthcoming in the calmer folky numbers, where a peculiar honesty seeps through. ‘Casimir Pulaski Day’ provides a painful description of a friend’s final days with cancer, bitterly questioning a Christian faith in the face of such a horrid death. “Tuesday night at the bible study / We lift our hands and pray over your body / But nothing ever happens.” Later, after she dies, “Oh the glory when he took our place / But he took my shoulders and he shook my face / And he takes and he takes and he takes.”

It’s part travelogue, part school play, all so very hypnotic and beautiful. It is at once a large orchestra of intelligence, and a lone six year old boy stroppily banging at a tin drum. Mature and elegant, confused and frustrated, no one I know has listened to this album – I discovered it via the ever-reliable 3WK.com – and yet somehow I see it’s the most highly recommended album of the year, coming top of more Top 10 lists from major music reviewing publications than any other. So someone else bloody well listen to it.

2) Cloud Cult – Advice From the Happy Hippopotamus

The other most-listened-to, this is a masterful album that no one else anywhere in the entire universe will listen to. At first [insert ear equivalent of ‘glance’] it might seem a bit silly, a bit light-hearted. The title could put you off, the track names like ‘Washed Your Car’ or ‘Clip Clop’ might suggest an immaturity. Or most of all, only listening to a couple of tracks before forming an opinion could destroy your chances of recognising how magnificent this is.

The introductory track, ‘Intro’ oddly enough, lays the potential out in front of you. Grumbling cellos are gradually replaced by a cacophony of electronica noise, then stomped on by an angry electronic buzz, which then does impressive back-and-forth battle with a refined guitar riff, the strings sneaking back in to underscore the fight. In the end no one wins, and a simple rhythm skips across the dead bodies to bring in the first track, and the excellent strained and oddly accented vocals.

We’re immediately instructed to ‘Take your broken pieces, use them / Use them for protection / Use them for protection / Take your strong pieces, use them / For living on the outside of your skin / Living on the outsi-yi-yi-yi-oop,’ and things begin to spring into life. Samples pour in, the refrain repeats, peculiar distorted noises invade, a guitar decides it’s in charge, and the crescendo is reached. Naturally everything dissolves into hand claps and music-box tinkles. And move on.

The whole album shifts in style, genre, pace and attitude, while always maintaining a strong central thematic sound. While not quite as liberal, in terms of its willingness to leap between styles, you could loosely think of Bran Van 3000, but without the embarrassing French rap.

At its most dramatic, shifts can throw your mood against the wall. The agonizing and confusing fury of ‘Clip Clop’, which if it’s about anything is about being upset with having been stranded too many times, then dumps you without warning into the achingly pretty, slightly lonely ballad of ‘Training Wheels’. “And you can’t stop now / Although there’re walls all around / You just gotta go through it / And you can’t fall down / Cos everyone’s watching you.” And then, from nowhere, the wondrous dance-around-your-room wonder-jig, ‘Lucky Today’.

It’s big, maybe even ludicrous, but it’s passionate fury, huge roars, and pin-prick delicate melodies, and I love it an awful lot.

1) The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree

John Darnielle’s spell on me is complete. I start welling up just hearing his voice. This is my album to cry to.

His previous records, over the last fifteen or so years, have been works of fiction. Characters are invented, given histories, and then sung about over a dozen or so songs. Reviewers delight in trying to discover personal allegory within the words, making claims with each new album that this one is loosely based on his own life, only to be scoffed at by Darnielle. The Sunset Tree is his ultimate response: this one is his life.

This album is just so fucking good. It’s a knife in the wrist honesty, raw and exposed, and utter agony to believe. “I write down good reasons to freeze to death / In my spiral ring notebook / But in the long tresses of your hair / I am a babbling brook.” It’s the tale of a broken childhood, of being abused, of a self-destructive teenage life, and remarkably, of healing and optimism.

‘Dance Music’ is probably the track that haunts most. It’s a tale of escaping violent parents, running to his room, turning on his record player, and realising, “so this is what the volume knob’s for”.

His is the opposite of my ideal childhood, something I can’t even stretch to identify with. And yet his pain and fear is vivid and alive in my ears.

(The liner notes consist of:

“Made possible by my stepfather, Mike Noonan (1940-2004): may the peace which eluded you in life be yours now.

Dedicated to any young men and women anywhere who live with people who abuse them, with the following good news:

you are going to make it out of there alive
you will live to tell your story
never lose hope )

Freed by the death of his stepfather, this remarkable album seems to have only been possible as an act of release. It’s storytelling perfection, bare-flesh honesty, healing and productive. The mangled collection of emotions lash out or whimper in each direction, the fragmented memories have their moment, then disappear. And at the end, in ‘Pale Green Things’, the release is identified.

“My sister called at three am / Just last December / She told me how you’d died at last / At last.”

I think you know what to do with your ‘JCB song’.

Due to that annual ethereal memetic peer pressure that clouds the air at this time of year, I feel a need to once more collate Top 10s of the year past, in order that my rightness of opinion can be accepted as a replacement for your idiotic wrongness.

So, to start with, the most obvious: Top 11 Albums of 2005. It’s so long it will be split into two halves.

11) Bonnie “Prince Billy” & Matt Sweeney – Superwolf

I don’t really care who either of these people are, and I’m sure it’s all very interesting, and they have lovely beards, and suchforth. But what interests me is the splendid pluckity-plick guitar and sweet, fractured vocals, sometimes confusing with their declarations of desires to spank an ambiguously aged other. Or singing about his penis. It’s my Gentle Album of the Year.

10) 13 & God – 13 & God

Combining two bands I’ve never heard of, 13 & God refers to the paradoxical nature of Christ’s duality of humanity and deity, when added to twelve disciples. Which is pleasingly immodest. German band Notwist and Californian Themselves recognised a parallel between themselves in the manner that a bootlegger might smirk when realising he can combine the Sugababes with Dr Dre. Not that they sound a thing like either of those two. In fact, they sound one heck of a lot like cLOUDDEAD, what with cLOUDDEAD being a side project for half of Themselves, who are also in Subtle, and are members of Anticon…

Oh, who cares. All this hiphoppery is then tempered down by the ambient-indie of Notwist, the tracks posted back and forth between them, until it all came together into something extremely palatable. The scary-angry-clown-gone-bad scorn of MC Doesone is softened by the gentle spirits of his collaborators, and at times the whole affair even leads to softness. It’s a pleasing mix, switching between harmony and conflicts of style, possibly most exciting in ‘If’ where the crashing of genres is at its most divided and yet effective.

9) Devandra Banhart – Cripple Crow

I was lying when I said Bonnie “Prince” Billy was my Gentle Album of the Year. It’s really this one. Banhart is a peculiar man, and I imagine if I could be bothered I’d easily be able to learn of his weird philosophies and reasons for generating vast albums so very quickly. But like Billy, I don’t feel like wasting the effort. Here are over twenty tracks of fantastic, acoustic, and often deeply disturbing lyrical dollups of oddness, that deceive with their immediately engaging melodies. I’m not sure if he’s actually singing about what it sounds like he occasionally might be, and I’ve decided to never find out.

8) Art Brut – Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll

It’s fun to have been at the start of something. There was something special about the first time I saw Art Brut at Bath’s Moles club. It felt as though it was the gig they’d been waiting for – the one where the connection with the audience came to life, and the punk-pop-come-art-project slotted into place. Who knows. Certainly Kieron and I publicised the band as best we could, shouting refrains from the catchiest tracks at the tops of our voices as we walked through a sleeping Bath. For a couple of months phrases like “Hello” and “Goodbye” were replaced with “ART BRUT! / TOP OF THE POPS!” and “LOOK AT US! / WE FORMED A BAND!”.

Then from out of nowhere, the first single, ‘Formed A Band’, was noticed by a decent number of The Influencial. Zane Thingie was playing it on Radio 1, and MTV2 looped the video endlessly last Christmas, naming it as their single of the year. It looked for a moment as if their prophetic claims of appearing on Top of the Pops would soon come true. It was unexpected that the music programme should effectively die before they’d ever get their chance. The album, as anyone who’d seen them live three times in the same venue that year already knew, proved them to be no one-hit-wonder, with a collection of splendidly silly and cleverly written chats.

7) The Arcade Fire – Funeral

It’s probably wrong of me, but I want to compare The Arcade Fire to The Fiery Furnaces at their peak at the beginning of 2005. However, there’s something far more accomplished about Funeral – despite using a number of the same tricks, it holds itself together as a far more complete project.

The pacing and fluctuations in tempo create a splendid frenzy, seeming to inject a proboscis into the 1980s and extracting everything that made the era any good, but leaving behind the horrid hats and post-glam frippery.

Each track follows the same pattern – start slow, build slowly, finish jumping around with your head flapping about like a lunatic, all apart from stand-out track ‘Haiti’, and naturally the extended closing orchestral ‘In The Backseat’. These two instead offer a wind-down finish, but no less intense joy. And that’s the key – it’s a joyous album, no matter the subject, the lyrics mostly lost in the swim. And best of all, it uses xylophones without being corny.

6) Flipron – Fancy Blues & Rustique Novelties

Kieron gets full credit for this one. Needing to see the band for one of his high-fallutin’ muso magazines, he asked me to accompany him to the free gig at the Porter. Vaguely described as sounding a bit like Nick Cave, I was more than happy to trundle along and see what they might be. Well, nothing like Nick Cave.

Utterly splendid, however. Perhaps one could make a very poor argument that the narrative nature of the tracks might echo Cave’s storytelling, and just perhaps the hammond organ is reminiscent of the Seeds at the happiest. But that’s about it. Instead, Flipron are a collection of very competent musicians playing songs about the elderly, skeletons (“SKELETONS!”) and big baboons. The casual sitting-down delivery of the vocals adds to the feeling you might be hearing a musical version of the sort of bedtime story Tim Burton would tell his kids.

It’s clever, and that’s why it’s great. Musicians rather than band members, the competence of the music is well complimented by the extremely smart writing. These are the sorts of rhymes that make you grin.

And then get annoyed that your idiot friends only like the one about baboons because he says “arse”.

Oh dear. With Tony Hawk games you’re supposed to begin with one of those quick historical rundowns of the previous games in the series, in order that you can file the latest in the correct slot. But it’s all got too confusing. So many games. In order to survive this, let’s say that this is the first Tony Hawk game for the DS, acknowledge that Vicarious Visions have been porting the series over to Nintendo systems for a good long while, and recognise that there are parallels between American Sk8land and the current big-boy consoles’ American Wasteland. And we’ll also all agree that things went a bit wonky with the two Underground games, especially the horrid rubbish of THUG 2 and its Jackass-infected non-skateboarding lameness. Phew, eh?

But as with so many, it seems, the challenge of coding for the DS has given Vicarious a fresh charge of enthusiasm and imagination, and what we’ve ended up with here is a unique entry into the Hawk series, and one that’s really rather lovely.

Another good DS game! Obviously I’ll be joining in with the tiresome blogging of top 10 type lists soon, and the DS will have a far more prominent position than I could ever have imagined.

Yes it is.

I can’t remember why, but I bought it and played it anyway. Perhaps it was a desire to defy those smug insiders. And 34 hours and 36 minutes of game time later, I was one of them. You’ll understand when the next one comes out, because by then you’ll be all caught up and in on the deal.

Fantastic to review a game this good.

The DS offers some excellent opportunities for innovative reinventions of successful licences. It lends itself towards inventive slants on well-known names. With that in mind, I’d like to present a few pitches for game ideas, in the hope that fat publishers will hand me wads from their vast pockets filled with money.

Battles of Prince of Persia. Set between the events of Sands of Time and Warrior Within, this tantalising latest tale of the nation’s favourite Prince finally answers those questions you had about what he was up to all that time. In the form of a customisable card game! That’s right – at long last the full extent of the Persia licence is exploited in a turn-based strategy, where Advance Wars meets Magic: The Gathering, in the tile-based battle sim card game everyone’s been asking for… Oh, wait. Hang on. Did someone already do this one?

One day, when the world is good and pure, my reviews shall be ALL NEEDLESS INTRODUCTION.

I feel rather obliged to post pointing out that Daniel Emery says he is not in fact RAM Raider.

It’s an interesting one. Unfortunately Emery has the impression that I have been the source of this information. This is certainly not the case. As is the way of the games industry, the name flew around from all manner of sources, until everyone was convinced. Late in the day I made a reference to this on Stu’s forum which was almost immediately deleted, and then last night used the name here when linking to the site.

I want to say that I was merely going with the received opinion as much as anyone else, and in fact made the deliberate decision to not connect the two names publically until I thought it fair game after the award I received yesterday. Unfortunately, I did this anyway with the comment on World of Stuart, and played a large part in perpetuating the rumour.

EDIT: In fact, it was somewhat confirmed when ‘RAM Raider’ stated that he bloody well was Emery here.

I apologise for my part in associating Daniel Emery with the wretched ‘RAM Raider’, as it’s not a connection an apparently innocent man would really want to carry. This isn’t a fudged trying-to-get-out-of-trouble response. I don’t consider myself in any trouble to get out of. I feel bad for having perpetuated something that apparently isn’t true. Although I remain fascinated to learn quite why ‘RR’ has made the statements he has.

What’s most annoying is that ‘RR’ doesn’t merit or deserve any of this attention, and I’m faintly annoyed to now be so embroiled in the mire after only throwing in a couple of comments to the mix. If the coward would only name himself, it would make life easier for lots of people.

This is an exciting day indeed.

Finally, after seven years of freelance games journalism, I have won an award.

I have been presented with “Worst Review Of 2005” by ‘RAM Raider’.

This is in recognition of this piece of incoherent drivel posted by the lunatic hacks at Eurogamer.

It’s quite an honour to be identified as the creator of the worst piece of games reviewing in an entire year, especially in the face of increasingly tough competition.