Sounds Familiar

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting new results." 

- Joseph Simmonds 

Stay Safe

"Love is about danger, always. Love jumps off cliffs, love is irrational. It keeps you alive and it destroys you.

The search for love provides nourishment for the artistic soul. I'm afraid that as soon as you really find love, there won't be anything left to write songs about."

- Lady Gaga 

Won't Go Quietly

"Ignored the warnings,

Bit the fruit.

It might have tasted good....

But man, it was my kryptonite."

Elliot John Gleave aka. Example

Fragile Dreams: Farwell Ruins of the Moon

Wrote about this one a while ago, back when it was just codenamed 'Fragile'. Now the build is nearing completion, it is sounding really intriguing. Will definitely be getting this, and I like the fact that it is one of the first Wii games that has interested me without using shaking or waggling as a novel incentive.

"  Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon is as beautiful and dreamy as the title implies. Described as an adventure game, Fragile Dreams borrows elements from the survival horror genre, but what sets this game apart are the striking visuals and character designs from the team at Tri-Crescendo, the developer behind the gorgeous-looking Eternal Sonata. We had an opportunity to play a preview build of Fragile Dreams and found ourselves quickly absorbed in this lonely postapocalyptic world.

You play as a young boy named Seto, who has been abandoned and is utterly alone in the world after his elderly guardian dies. All you're left with is a flashlight and a note that tells you to head to a glowing red tower in the distance and that there may be other survivors. You won't learn too much about this boy's past initially, other than that he didn't even know the old man's name. As you set out into the vast and desolate wilderness, it seems that you could very well be the only person alive. However, early on you bump into a charming silver-haired girl who runs off at the first sight of you, and your goal is to find her and hopefully others.

We ventured into the ruins of a subway station in hopes of finding the girl, but instead heard a female robotic voice asking for help. After following the plea into an empty room, we found that it was a personal frame, a metallic boxlike device with a woman's voice designed to interact with humans based on their emotional response. We took the device with us, and it acted as our guide, feeding us with useful information as well as guiding us to our next goal. As you explore the world, you can set up a bonfire whenever you come across a fire pit, which acts as a save point and a spot for you to rest. We also came across a bizarre person who appeared to be wearing a giant mascot chicken head, and he would stop by when we were resting to sell items. We played for a few hours, wandering through the debris and empty corridors of the subway station, armed only with a flashlight in one hand and a bamboo sword in the other.

Glowing jelly-like enemies will appear and are described by the AI device as the manifestation of dead people's emotions. If you point your flashlight at them, they will slow down enough for you to beat them with your sword. Other hostile creatures that we encountered included vicious dogs, and while we made our way through a deserted train, long white outstretched arms clawed at us from windows. Seto isn't really trained to fight, so every time you push the A button, he swings wildly ahead, but as long as you keep your flashlight out and time your attack, you'll survive. Frequent bonfire checkpoints are always available for you to return to if you do need a respite. The Wii Remote's unique functionality is used quite a bit because it's your only source of light. As you wave it around to illuminate dark corridors, you can also bring it up to your ear to hear what your artificial friend has to say. Fireflies will hover around points of interest, but if you want to examine anything more closely, you point with the remote and hold the B button to zoom into a first-person view. Most of the time, it doesn't seem like there's anything to see up close. But sometimes you'll hear a noise come out of the remote's speaker, and if you point the remote in the right direction and move closer to the source, the sounds will increase until you see what you're up against or find what you're looking for. Not only are you using your eyes to scan the dark environments with a flashlight to catch enemies, but you have to rely on your audio senses too, because the sounds and even the music will hint at what's coming.

The audio as well as the game's visuals are definitely Fragile Dream's strong suit at this point. As you carefully explore the dismal surroundings, you can't help but admire the remains of a poster on the wall or the trash that has been carelessly pushed to the side. When you do make it aboveground, the view of the sky is spectacular and there are traces of life that have somehow survived to give you some hope that there might be a happy ending to this otherwise depressing story. You can choose to play with the original Japanese voices or switch the voices to English; either way, the voice acting is very well done, and you can feel the loneliness and despair in Seto's voice. The music chimes in when appropriate, generally when something dangerous is lurking nearby, to make you feel a bit tense. You will never really feel scared, even though the gameplay is set up like a survival horror game, and we haven't come across any moments that will make you jump out of your seat.  "

Review from Gamespot

Blissful Ignorance

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."

  

George Orwell

Limbo

'Please don't say we're done,
 when I'm not finished

because I could give
so much more.'

- The xx

Lonely Places

"Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen."

- John le Carre

RIP The Sugababes

They were a three-piece pop group whose platinum-selling albums put a new spin on post-millennial British pop. True, the Island group never quite managed to crack the US market, but to their UK fans, the trio's massive string of hits was quite enough to be getting on with, thank you very much. And better still, they pulled it all off without the crutch of a reality show.
Still, enough about Busted, because today's Sugababes news is far more exciting: founding member Keisha Buchanan has been unceremoniously booted out of the lineup. Her place has been taken by this year's Eurovision entrant Jade Ewen who, until recently, was looking at a solo career with Polydor (in fact, her rather good launch single My Man was only released yesterday). Buchanan, meanwhile, remains signed to Island.
This is all great news for the Statlers and Waldorfs of the pop commentary world – those self-appointed "pop experts" who snootily pass judgment on the comings and goings of mainstream pop without ever dirtying their ears by actually listening to the stuff. They've been hooting on about the band's lineup changes since Heidi Range first joined the band, replacing Siobhan Donaghy, at the start of the decade. But as long as one member of the original team remained, there was something brilliant about the Sugababes. Even when Mutya Buena left, taking her phenomenal vocals with her, the Sugababes still made sense.
Today, of course, they make no sense at all. It is one lineup change too many, and moves the band from a clever shape-shifting pop force into a total laughing stock. There are questions that need answers, and the answers will no doubt come thick and fast when Buchanan takes to promoting her solo material. What role, for example, did the band's management and record label play in these decisions? Was there any truth that Amelle Berrabah was due for the boot? And did Buchanan's own attempts to eject a member backfire catastrophically, leading to a coup? And what of the rather odd arrival of Ewen, whose former label, Polydor, paid for her to record an entire album and then paid even more to start marketing it?
That's all some way off. In the more immediate future expect some undignified scenes over the next few months, during which Range, Berrabah and Ewen (let's not call them Sugababes) traipse around the country attempting to flog a hastily re-recorded version of Sweet 7, the album due for release on 23 November.
It is a rather miserable, undignified end to a band who fell together at school, made their name with a sophisticated pop sound and achieved what they did with a rare class. Pop which is invented in order to be a brand is often unpleasant. But Sugababes made pop whose values and attitudes were strong enough to inadvertently create a brand. Theirs was smart, British, soulful pop, occasionally arty but always melodic, lush and a cut above most of the rest.
However, their last single, Get Sexy, pushed the band in a different direction: a soul-free, sex-led, moronically-lyriced attempt to chase an American electronic R&B sound which sounded brilliant, but jettisoned any semblance of what made many fall in love with the band.
Today the Sugababes don't exist as a band, and after Get Sexy they don't really exist as a sound either. If this new girl group before us today is to have any future at all, and Ewen, Berrabah and Range do actually make a great three-piece, it must find a new name. Sugababes died when Buchanan left.

- Peter Robinson for 'The Guardian'

Perfect Departure

 


Siobhan Donaghy on how the Sugababes work:

"I think when I left and especially when Mutya left, the last bit of steadfastness went. The band is so malleable. They are just three people that will be maneuvered by the people around them. That's why I can never look to their success and admire it or want that. Whatever producer they work with, they sound like. Whatever photographer they work with, they look like their work. I think that works for pop, but you can lose your soul in that. "Who are you?" "What do you write about?" How have they been on the scene for so long and people not know anything about them? That works as a product but that's never what I wanted."