Thursday, March 28, 2024

Home, At Last - Housing In AdventureQuest 3D - Part 1.

Contractually obliged, as I am, to cover developments regarding housing in any and every MMORPG I have ever, will ever or might ever play, regardless of how much I or anyone reading this could care less about them, as soon as I read the news about AdventureQuest 3D's latest update I knew I'd be writing this post. 

I know! You don't need to tell me! It's not like I don't have better things to do with my time but here we are anyway. I knew what I was getting into when I started this thing so theres' no point complaining about it now.

I ought to make it clear before we go any further, this won't be any kind of Guide To AQ3D Housing or even a walkthrough, although lord knows someone should write one. When I logged in this morning I thought I'd be done in ten minutes. It took me two and a half hours.

It shouldn't have. It's not like I haven't claimed a free house in an MMORPG before, right? I know the form. A couple of clicks, zone in and it's over.

Oh hell, no. Not in AQ3D, where everything always takes forever. It has to be one of the nitpickiest, fidlly-faddly games I've ever played, which I don't necessarily mean as a criticism. It's actually part of the appeal but I always forget until I play again just what an old-school set-up Artix have going here. It might have a lot of time-saving devices like instant travel straight from the map but it also has a propensity to take everything extremely literally, the way these games did twenty years ago.

It's only taken eight years...
Remember when in EverQuest II, if you wanted to start a guild you had to go to a government office in town, speak to a registrar, obtain a document entitling you to solicit membership, then cart the thing around with you until you found enough people willing to sign it? Then you had to take it back and hand it in to be notarized? 

Maybe I'm imagining some of that but that's how I remember it and that's going to be how I remember getting my first house in AQ3D ten years from now. A whole lot of running around, talking to people and getting the paperwork straight. If that's your idea of a good time, jump on in. You can thank me later.

To be fair, I was almost expecting it. Before I even started, I took the trouble to watch a video on YouTube. I had a notion it would save me some grief and it did. A little. I think my first mistake was pausing the video after thirty seconds, as soon as we saw the NPC giving the quest. I figured I could take it from there.

And I was right, except I had no idea how much farther it was going to take me and how many times I'd get turned around and have to go look up how to find my way back to where I needed to be. By the time I'd finished I'd watched three more videos , read the official handout and browsed two reddit threads. And I still got half of it wrong.

You could at least give me a hard hat!

It certainly didn't help that as I was stumbling my way through the extraordinarily long list of things to do before you get your key, I kept getting sidetracked by other quests. AQ3D is an exceptionally quest-driven game with NPCs everywhere calling out or beckoning you to come do their jobs for them. 

I managed to tune most of them out but it still seemed like every second NPC I had to speak to for the quest I was actually on also had two other things they wanted me to do while I was in the neighborhood. I don't mean I had to do those before they'd help me. It wasn't one of those Little Red Hen situations we're all so very fond of in our games. No, it was worse than that.

I've always believed AQ3D has some kind of a reputation as a kids' game in the vein of Wizard 101, even though whenever I play it that never seems to be borne out by what I see or do there. For example, would you think it was appropriate for a game aimed at minors to include a parody of the infamous diner robbery scene from Pulp Fiction?

No, me neither, but when I went to the bank to get the manager to sign my Proof of Insurance so I could move into my new home, that's exactly what I found myself caught up in. And naturally I was the one who had to put a stop to it, too.

Why are you laughing, dad? I don't get it...

I guess the excuse would be that it's like the old joke about the lady who complains because a man walks past whistling a dirty song. If you don't already know...

My problem with it wasn't anything to do with morality or decorum. It was more along the lines of it being a pain, having to kill ten bank robbers before I could just get on with my business. The same sort of thing happened in the forest and in the bank vault and just about everywhere I went, mostly because the AQ3D quest interface is not the easiest to parse. I was never quite sure which quest was mine and there always seemed to be several of them so I kept starting new ones.

It's also not the least-buggy game I've played, either. Somehow, I managed to kill all ten bank robbers and still ended up with only 9/10 on my count. I was wondering if that was going to be a problem but then I zoned out and in again and all ten were back, along with Honey and Pumpken, who I'd also killed the last time. 

Pretty soon I had 11/10 on my kill-card, which another strange quirk of the game - you can get extra credit for going too far. Rather than carry on, I just talked to the Bank Manager, who happened to be an owl but we won't get into that, and suddenly all the robbers went away. 

Things like that seem to happen quite often in AQ3D. I think it has some fairly robust self-correcting processes running in the background that put you back on track when the wheels start to come off, which I guess is one way of handling it. Personally, I'd prefer they just worked properly in the first place but then I'm old and bad at adjusting to the new ways.

Just what I play fantasy role-playing games for - the paperwork!

To sum up, the brief sequence for getting a house runs something like this. Remember, it's not a walkthrough. If I was going to write a walkthrough I'd have taken notes. This is just what I remember and some screenshots I took.

  • Speak to the first questgiver who sends you to the second questgiver. 
  • Speak to all the builders, about half a dozen of them. 
  • Find the tools and the toolbox one of the idiots dropped off the roof. He's the foreman, too, so that gives you an idea how competent these people are. 
  • Go to the forest and speak to a surveyor. Do his damn job for him.
  • Go back to town and speak to the Architect.
  • Speak to the guy you spoke to earlier and find out you need Insurance. Seriously, when was the last time you needed an actual insurance certificate to buy a house in a game? What are these guys on?
  • Go to the bank and find out the Manager can't issue your Insurance because he's lost his pen. 
  • Stop a bank robbery on the way to the vaults where he thinks he might have lost it. Not sure if that part has anything to do with the housing questline or not. I doubt it, actually...
  • End up doing a completely different questline about getting access to the Main Vault because everything is all jumbled together and nothing is clear. 
  • Do that and then realize on the hand-in you didn't need to but now you have the follow-up so you're in it up to your neck.
  • Finally remember AQ3D has a quest-marker that literally points you to the next location, right down to each individual item of a collect-10 or a scavenger hunt. 
  • Kick yourself. You deserve it.
  • Using the quest-marker, go to the right vault, kill the right mob and get the owl's pen back. (Turns out it's not his pen but if that's a plot  thread I didn't follow it.)
  • Try to hand it in then realize you really do have to go to a desk and actually sign the sodding insurance form. Mutter bleakly about some people taking things far too literally.
  • Get the signed insurance form authorized and go back to where you started.
  • Speak to that guy yet again and get the key to your new place!

...and then find you have to pay real money for it.

Nah. No you don't. But I believed you did for about fifteen minutes, all because the blasted quest interface is so confusing. I clicked on the unlabelled + sign that lets you add a second home to your collection, an additional perk for which, not unreasonably, you have to pay.   

Oh, now I see it...

I spent a while fulminating about the injustice of it all and figuring out how to earn the necessary cash shop coin to buy a house without actually having to get my credit card out (You can earn a random amount of the necessary Dragon Crystals by opening the daily Login chest. It could take anything from a couple of weeks to a few months to collect enough because the daily stipend is extremely random.) 

Then I finally noticed the original announcement does specifically say the new housing system gives you a free house. And the wall of text explains you need to "locate the new housing button in the menu" and "click on the inviting door icon" to be whisked away to your "very own abode"

So I did that and found myself, at long last, in a grim cell with no door, no furniture and just two dully glowing windows you can't see out of. Holy hell! All of that for this?

As it happens, it's really a lot better than that but the first impression wasn't great. I'd explain how it gets better but this post has run on long enough already. Also, this way I get two posts out of it, which is only fair since it took me all morning to do.

Part two tomorrow, unless anything more pressing arrives before then.

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Sign-Up Season Begins


You don't see a sign-up form for weeks and then three come along all at once...

Tarisland Revs Up

For launch. Sometime. Would be nice if we had an actual date but you can't have everything.  According to MassivelyOP we can rule out 14 June, at least. Hardly surprising since that's a Friday. When did any game ever launch on a Friday? (Cue comments listing all the famous games that did indeed launch on a Friday...)

I'm not sure I'd call June "near" but I suppose its all context. Everything is context. Since I was already registered from the closed betas last year, I wasn't sure if I'd need to "Sign Up" again but I figured it would be best to check. 

Just as well I did. I used the same email address and my application was accepted as if it was the first time Level Infinite had ever seen it so I'm guessing we're starting over as though we've never met.

I'd make some observations here about whether or not I'm likely to play Tarisland and if so how seriously and for how long but June might as well be the year 3000 as far as that goes. If I'd made book at New Year on what games I'd be playing until Easter I'd have lost my Gunsmith Cats tee. Come the launch, I could be playing anything so I'm making no promises.

That said, I did like Tarisland quite a bit. It's retro enough to feel nostalgic but modern enough not to come across as old-fashioned. It does feel a bit generic in places but it zips along and it's fun to play so why not? Also, I imagine it will be the new hotness for at least five minutes and I'd like the blog to bask in that heat, so it'd take something big to stop me at least giving it a run, I think.

Throne and Liberty Goes West

Apparently a lot of people have been angsting about not being able to play this one since the it launched in South Korea last December. I can't say I've been paying much attention although I did vaguely remember the name. Yesterday there was finally news of a playable opportunity for everyone outside the current launch region as sign-ups opened for a global closed beta starting on 10 April. 

In something of an autonomic reaction I immediately went to register but balked at having to input my Amazon account details. I'd completely forgotten the game was being published by Amazon here. While I was checking it was all legit, I discovered the beta is under NDA so that was the end of that. 

If I was desperate to play I'd have sucked it up and signed but given the only reason I was even looking at the beta was in the hope of squeezing a few blog posts out of the experience, there really wouldn't have been much point. I'll wait until they drop the NDA or go into open beta or maybe even actually launch the damn thing.

The whole thing did have the effect of making me curious about Throne and Liberty in a way I wasn't before, so at least there's that. As far as I can tell the game still has no launch window more specific than "soon". I'm wondering what the heck they need to do to it to make it ready, given it's already up and running in some territories.

I watched the trailer, flipped through the screen shots and read the description on Steam. It looks like every other imported MMORPG of the last six or seven years to me, albeit marginally prettier. My PC doesn't meet even the minimum specs but then that's true of plenty of games I play with no issues at all. I got very lucky with my CPU, it seems. It always outperforms benchmarks.

I'll give T&L a go when it comes out of NDA, anyway. It's on Steam and it's free so why not? Can't imagine I'll play for more than a handful of sessions but at least it'll give me a chance to write some First Impressions posts. I do love doing those.

Palia Steams In

Whoop, and if you'll pardon me, de-do. I mean, I'm not complaining. As we've discussed before, it's very handy to have all the games under one roof. I am a Steam convert if not actually a Steam fan. 

I haven't played Palia since... hmm. Let me check... looks like last August. If you asked me I wouldn't say I'd given up on it but I never seem to find any reason to log in. Until last night.

As soon as I saw the news, I went to Steam to download the client and... it wasn't available. I was too early! I added it to my wishlist and forgot about it... for all of five minutes, after which I got an email from Steam telling me it was available. That's what I call service!

I started the download running but what I wanted to know was whether I'd have to begin again from scratch or whether I'd be able to transfer my existing character and progress to my Steam account. I spent a good while googling that without finding any useful information at all so when the big, green PLAY button lit up I thought I'd just click it and see what would happen. 

It wasn't as though I'd gotten very far last time. Or at least I didn't think I had. I couldn't actually remember how far I had got. Anyway, starting over didn't seem like it would be much of a problem.

As it turns out it wasn't any kind of a problem at all because I didn't have to do it. You can indeed carry on from where you left off. Steam pretty much does all ther admin for you, too. A window popped up asking if I wanted to link my Steam and Singularity 6 accounts. I said I did, found my old login and password, entered them in the relevant fields and that was all there was to it. Slick and quick.

If there was a problem, it didn't come from the process. It came from the game. I can't recall the last time I logged into a game I haven't played for a while and felt my mood slump so fast. Almost from the moment I was in I wanted to leave. 


So I did. My current played time for Palia on Steam is five minutes. It may well stay that way, possibly forever. There's nothing actively wrong with Palia that I can put my finger on... I just find it stiflingly dull. 

Dull to look at and dull to play. I don't even think it's an issue with the implementation; I think it's the genre. 

According to the description on the Steam store page, Palia is a "a cozy community sim MMO made for you and your friends". I don't have any friends to play Palia with and frankly I don't want to get any. I find it hard to imagine how doing the things you can do in Palia with other people would make doing those things any more interesting than doing them alone. They just aren't very interesting to me, period, and that's an end to it.

It's not that it's the kind of gameplay I find intrinsically uninteresting. Other than the lack of combat, there's little fundemental difference between the activities on offer in Palia and those in Nightingale. There is quite a difference in the visuals and the setting, though, and it's clear that Nightingale's world appeals to me aesthetically in a way Palia's does not. Palia's world is also tiny compared to Nightingale's, which makes the explorer in me sad. 

Still, I think the real difference between them lies in the word "cozy".

I love being cozy. I like to sit in my comfy chair with the fire blazing and Beryl snoozing on the rug beside me. It's the very image of coziness. Virtual coziness, though? Is that appealing? Isn't it literally emulating on screen what I'm experiencing in real life? Don't we play to experience something different? Something thrilling, even.

I know I frequently claim I don't appreciate challenge in my games but what I mean by that is challenge that makes me tense, anxious or stressed. Challenge that falls well within my capabilities feels satisfying. Palia, from what I remember of it from last summer, manages to be both unchallenging and yet still  low-key stressful by way of its annoyingly awkward gameplay, while not providing much in the way of intellectual curiosity, emotional engagement or excitement by way of compensation

It's not so much cozy as dull, that's how I remember it and five minutes there last night brought all of that dullness back. I'm not saying I won't play it any more but I can't say I have any immediate plans. Still, it's there on Steam if I want it, now, which has to increase the chances somewhat.

Now if Once Human would just... oh, wait a moment...

Monday, March 25, 2024

Want To Know How It Ends? Me Too!


This is going to be one of those posts about how you can't trust streaming services and how if you want to be sure of the things you value you need to keep them close at hand, not on some server far away. And then again it's not going to be exactly that.

Nothing's ever so simple, is it?

I've been watching Roswell, New Mexico. It's a TV show that's hard to explain. Not the basic premise, which is that the Roswell UFO landing was real and that aliens live among us. Anyone can work that much out from the title alone.

No, where it's hard is in figuring out how this show sits in context with other iterations of the same... franchise? Brand? No, neither of those, exactly. 

Shall we call it an IP? Why not? 

The Roswell IP began as a series of books written by Melinda Metz and published by Pocket Books in America back around the turn of the millennium. There were ten books in the original series, collectively known as Roswell High. They all came out in an astonishing gush between 1998 and 2000, which is some going even for a pulpy YA series. 

They must have been pretty successful because they spawned a TV series almost immediately. Simply known as Roswell, it aired from 1999 to 2002. The show must have done pretty well too because it sloughed off its own series of novelizations, eleven in total, three of which came out while the show was on air and eight more, from a different publisher, after it ended.

You might have thought that after twenty-one novels and three seasons of a TV show the whole thing would have been tapped dry but you would be wrong. In 2019 the IP returned for another run on TV, this time under the name Roswell, New Mexico. It ran for four seasons, ending in 2022. 

I came into this story late. Roswell was streaming on one or other of the services I subscribe to and I watched it maybe five years ago. I was under the impression I'd posted something about it at the time but it seems that while I've mentioned once or twice in passing, I've never actually given it a post of its own.

That was remiss of me. Although I've only watched the series once, I have it pegged in my mind as one of my favorite shows of all time. Without a re-watch, that mostly suggests it made an extremely strong first impression. I'd need at least one more go-through to calibrate and preferably a third for confirmation. Usually my first impressions run true, though, so I think it's safe to say it's pretty good.

Luckily, I certainly felt strongly enough about it at the time to buy the box set on DVD, so any time I feel like refreshing my memory, I have that option. Technically, it also exists to stream on Prime but I've just checked and it suffers from the same problem as the later version, of which more later.

Given how highly I rated Roswell, it's perhaps surprising I took as long as I did before getting around to the sequel. I had my reasons and they weren't just the obvious "too many shows, too little time". The issue I had with watching Roswell, New Mexico is that I wasn't entirely sure what it was supposed to be.

I called it a sequel just now but it's not. I thought it was, until I watched it, but it turns out I was wrong. What I knew about it, going in, was that it featured the same characters ten years older, when Liz Ortecho, one of the leads, returned to Roswell after a decade away.

Naturally, I assumed that meant the story would pick up from where it left off. It does not. I hadn't checked but I also figured it would mostly feature the same cast. It doesn't do that, either.

Roswell, New Mexico is a kind of reboot of the original although again, not really. Maybe a re-envisioning? It's not so much that it takes place ten years later, although it probably does. It's more that the characters are ten years older. 

Instead of them being in high school they all graduated long ago. Instead of being adolescents aged from sixteen to eighteen, these people are all genuine young adults, in their mid-to-late twenties, with jobs, responsibilities and pasts. 

Liz is a high-flying microbiologist, Max is a deputy sheriff, Michael is a mechanic and Maria owns and runs a bar. The whole thing takes place against the politicized backdrop of the Trump administration (I almost wrote the first Trump administration...) and the tone is quite different to the original series, much more politicized, with a great deal of play being made between the aliens' situation and that of illegal Mexican immigrants, of whom Liz's father is one.

I honestly don't even remember Liz being hispanic in the first series although Maria definitely was. The new Maria is black. Also half-alien but we won't talk about that for fear of spoilers. We also won't talk about the plot, not at the risk of spoiling anything but because it makes absolutely no sense. I'd need to watch the first series again to be certain but I'm fairly sure that, wild though it was at times, it never thrashed around like a snake in a hot tub the way this one does.

The science also makes absolutely no sense, which wouldn't be an issue if there wasn't so damn much of it. Liz is a professional scientist and so is her ex-fiancee, who turns up in Season 2. One of the new characters is a hacker for the military, another is a surgeon. Even Michael is apparently an untrained but intuitive scientific prodigy. 

The show oozes science, all of which might just as easily be magic, not least for the way it compacts years of development time into hours of frenzied lab-work, but also the plain fact that even the people doing the "science" don't always know how it works. The part where they perform an alien heart transplant in a back-room without anyone knowing about it is particularly fine but every episode seems to feature one of the cast doing two impossible things before breakfast thanks to "science".

Most of the negative comments about the show, of which there are plenty online, revolve around one or other of these flaws. My front-loading them might suggest I didn't much like the show either, especially in comparison with the original but that would be wholly wrong. I fricken' loved it! From the opening episode, when I realized about halfway in that we were starting over, not carrying on, I've been on board all the way. 

To set against the issues with the plot, which even the characters archly liken to a telenovella, we need to stack the dialog (Crackling.) the performances (Compelling.) and the characters (Convincing.) Add to that the stunning New Mexico scenery and it's a great watch. Just don't make the mistake of trying to untangle the plot.

As always, it makes a huge difference to me that I like most of the characters, even if it took me a long time to warm up to the new Maria. She was my favorite in the original and the new one is very much not a grown-up version of that character. She's someone completely different. 

I did come around, though, and anyway I took immediately to the new Michael, who seems much more likeable than the old one, so that was a trade-off. The new Max is also less annoying, while the new Liz is really similar. I can't now remember if Liz's dead sister was alive in the first Roswell or not but Rosa in Roswell, New Mexico is a standout, so I'm glad she came back to life. (Don't ask...)

All the new characters are pretty good - Michael's on-again/off-again love interest Alex, Alex's terrifying father, school bully turned empathic doctor Kyle, Max's friends-with-benefits police partner Jenna  - but my absolute favorite is the third of the alien trio, Isabel, played in an almost indescribably odd manner by Lily Cowles. At first I thought she couldn't act at all. Now I'm convinced she's the reincarnation of Elizabeth Montgomery, which is about the highest praise I can offer.

I was going to wait until I'd seen all four seasons of Roswell, New Mexico before I posted my thoughts, so why are we here, now? 

Because, despite all four seasons being clearly indicated as available in the drop-down menu on Amazon Prime, where I've been watching the show, I was extremely irritated to find, when I came to start on Season Three, only the first two are actually there. In a new wrinkle in the streaming service I've not tripped over until now, it's apparently permissible to promote shows you can't even watch!

I'm used to shows having three seasons of which only two are on a given platform. That's happened to me several times. I've never known a show to list all of the seasons and then refuse to show half of them to you. That's tantamount to taunting!

I did a little research and it seems there are "rights issues" involved, although nothing I've found wants to try to explain what those issues might be. I did also discover there were some ructions during the production of Roswell, New Mexico that led to the unexpected departure of the show-runner around the time of the third Season but whether that factors in I have no clue.

As of this post, I also know that the same situation applies to the original Roswell. I checked just now and while the first season is available to watch on Prime, the second and third, although listed, are similarly flagged "Currently unavailable to watch in your location". 

Sticking to Roswell, New Mexico, I suspect, although I don't know, that it might have something to do with the show having been bought by ITV for terrestrial broadcast in the UK. Then again, it's not available on the ITV Player either, so maybe not. 

Meanwhile, all the various "Where To Watch" sites cheerfully claim all four seasons are available in the UK on just about every service imaginable,  from Prime and Netflix to AppleTV and Google Play. I've checked them all and in every case it's only Seasons One and Two that are available.

I'd happily buy the damn thing, either digitally or preferably on DVD, but that's not an option either. There's no digital version of the full series I can find for sale in this country, nor are the individual seasons three and four for sale, at least not in the U.K. As for a hard copy, I'm pretty sure only Season One was ever issued on DVD, anywhere. 

For now, I seem to be out of viable options. I could try a VPN, of course, but I've never had much success going that route in the past. It's all very well having the right I.P. address but if it's a paid service they usually also want a valid, local payment option and sometimes even an address to go with it. 

I may give it a try anyway. VPNs are very cheap. Certainly a lot cheaper than streaming subscriptions.

There's also an outside chance the problem might just fix itself if I wait. I note from various forums and reddit threads I've lurked in that at times the missing seasons have become available briefly before slipping back behind the veil. Maybe something is happening behind the scenes although I suspect if it ever was it isn't any more. 

Once again, it's the old "everything's available forever online until it isn't". Millennials are coming into the nostalgia zone about now, with Gen-Z due to start arriving a decade or so later. It's going to be interesting to see what happens when they find they can't have their childhoods back on demand.

Until this gets sorted, I recommend a return to physical product, or at least a download on hardware you physically posess. Not that  it helps me with my Roswell, New Mexico problem but then you can't have everything. 

Sometimes you can't even have what you were told you already had.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

... And Raise You 40

Ha! I did get it done by Sunday! Mostly because I was too tired after work to play games and listening to music is easy, although in this case I wouldn't exactly call it relaxing. Remind me not to do it again next year. Yeah... right...

Anyway, here's part two of the series no-one wanted. My specialty! See the first installment for the rules. 

Hah! "Rules"!

  1. Cortisone - FHUR - ooh I like this! Skittery, fractured club beats with a scifi gloss. Keeps shifting focus, too. As they say, bangin' - A
  2. The Ball - Youth Sector - 80s funk/disco with a disturbing twist, not least in the band's fashion choices - B+
  3. That Girl - SpaceAcre - If they ever ban animal masks there's going to be a lot of indie bands flat out of ideas for the next video - solid indie-rock - B
  4. not a vibe - Chubby Cat - Got a strange feeling we've had Chubby Cat on the blog before... B
  5. British Rail Class 170 Turbostar - Static Caravan - ok, we have a winner for the best band name/song title combo... Half Man, Half Biscuit do Kraftwerk. I really want to see what these people look like - B+
  6. Holy Smokes - Shtëpi - Whoever told you the post-punk revival was over was lying. They just keep coming. What are the Glaxo Babies doing now, that's what I want to know? Their day finally came and they're nowhere to be found. - B
  7. Statue - Tilly Valentine - A blessed relief after all that clanging and banging. Sweet pop r&b. C+
  8. Nothing's Gonna Change - Rowan - What I said about post-punk before? Same for guitar bands. C+
  9. Girl God Gun - Gen and the Degenerates - Oh, this is the one we've had before. Sorry Chubby Cat, my mistake! Also, more post-punk fractured funk. Top end, though. A

  10. Letter of Resignation - Problem Patterns - FFS! Forget post punk, now it's 1978! A minute too long but otherwise great, especially that solo. B+
  11. Keeper - Natalie Lindi - Not sure what this is. Pop balladry, I guess. - C
  12. Twist - Joe T. Johnson - Link goes to David Dean Burkhart's channel and this sounds exactly like that would lead you to expect - C
  13. All in Your Head - Caleb Kunle - funky R&B - slick - not doing it for me, though - C
  14. SOLEIL - GEORGIAN - Strikingly odd video that fits the lush, quasi-goth tune. Nose rings really seem to be making a comeback. - B
  15. Rituals - Mouse Teeth - it's like whoever did the playlist programmed the last one and this so you'd go "Oh, no, you're right - that's what a strikingly odd video for a quasi-goth tune really looks like!" - C
  16. E1 - Latir - not easy to label, so, good for that. Brooding comes to mind but a little playful as well - B
  17. You're a Lot - SISTRA - Pleasant, unmemorable - C
  18. Sundays Are Always Quiet - NO PHOTOS – Had high hopes for this from the title but it's not my kind of thing at all. - D
  19. Move On - Temm - Pleasant. Nothing else to say. - C
  20. Knuckle Sandwich - Some Remain - Blimey! That woke me up. Post-punk, here we come again, only with some hardcore thrown in. Video's clever. - B

  21. Heartbreaker - Internet Cafe - I really liked this but Internet Cafe is a flat-out weird name for someone peddling smooth drum&bass infused R&B - B+
  22. Out of My Mind - Jonathan Patel - There's retro and then there's archival retro. Even the font screams 1973. Fine if you can't find your time machine. - C+
  23. Ringing- TEEG - Not going to attempt to label this. Really oughtn't to be listening to it. - C
  24. Feeling It All - Nadia Kadek - Possibly the first song I've ever seen on YouTube with a completely black screen throughout. Minimal visuals, minimal music. Certainly makes you concentrate on the singing. Makes me feel I ought to be in a church hall somewhere, drinking warm orange squash and concentrating hard. - C
  25. Solve - Izzy Withers Prod. Eddie Lopes - Is someone playing some kind of existential joke here? Now it's a plain pink screen with a female vocal and minimal musical backing. Well, minimal until the drummer wakes up around halfway in. This is gorgeous - delicate and fragile. Lovely. B+
  26. Somewhere in the Middle - Niji - Jazz-funk instrumental. Really, what else is there to say? - C
  27. DRILL VS GRIME [THE PRELUDE] - Jords, Lil Sykes - Like I could tell the difference! - C
  28. Southbound - ladylike - I thought I knew where this was going and then it went all prog on me! C (Or B+ if I was fourteen again.)
  29. Feeling Like  - JayaHadADream & Wasalu - Dreamlike and soothing in a way it really oughtn't to be. - B
  30. 24 hours - Chloe Slater - O. M. G! My absolute favorite so far. I just watched in awe. The disconnects between what she looks like, what she sounds like, what the backing track is doing and what she's saying are like a series of drug hits. I felt jangled to glory. One thing I haven't addressed at any point is how these 90 acts would actually look on stage at Glastonbury. Chloe would be mind-blowing. Apparently this is literally the only thing she's ever done, too, so her set would be hella short! - A. Thinking it might be A+

  31. You Wanted This - Jodie Nicholson - I don't think I did, you know... Another black screen, this time with a rather pleasant instrumental track playing over it. How is this a submission for a live performance at a festival? And yet... B
  32. Shade of Blue ft. Jess Edie - FineMusicUK - I'm getting confused now. I guess in the chillout zone. Do they still have those? - C. Maybe B. I'm losing the ability to tell one thing from another.
  33. I'm Fine, I'm Alright - Hongza - I think this might be an actual band. I'd almost forgotten such a thing existed. Not sure I wanted to be reminded like this. - C-
  34. ELEPHANT - Zoka The Author - Very odd video. Again with the animal masks. Pretty original, especially the violin. - C+
  35. Untied (Left You Behind) - Con - Nice groove, soulful r&b, lowest views of all the videos so far, I think (13) - C+
  36. Voiceover - Soft Top - very muso pitch in the blurb, citing Steely Dan as an influence and name-checking half a dozen bands the eight of them have been in before. Polished AOR. That's not really a compliment. - C
  37. Oxygen - Auger - Synthygoth! He has a deeper voice than that guy out of Tindersticks. Made my speakers rattle not to mention my chest. - B
  38. IF WE FALL - Affection To Rent - Grunge, apparently. Also the singer was "hand-chosen" by members of D. C. Fontaines. Very, very rocky. As in rock music. Not as in shaky. It's not at all shaky. - C
  39. Ticket To Rock - Daxx & Roxane - Fuck me! Timing is all. Did I say the last one was rocky? This would give AC/DC a run. I literally had no idea anyone under 60 still made music like this. Or wanted to. Seriously, it sounds exactly like the second support band on a Thin Lizzy tour sometime around 1975 - C
  40. Under Attack - BackRoad Gee - Something going on here I don't understand. This has 1.3m views. Reminds me oddly of Spearhead. I think it's the arc-welder. - C+

Oh, wow... and that's the end. I'm really confused by the numbers. Everything I read said there were 90 on the longlist. With three flagged on YouTube as "unavailable", there still ought to be 87 but I count only 85, which is the same as the playlist, so I didn't miss any. I guess whoever said there were 90 must have rounded up.

I can't say I'm missing the extra five. If I'm brutal, almost none of these would ever make the cut for a post here. (Lol at any of them caring!) Even the ones I like mostly don't feel exceptional and most of the others are so far out of my remit I can't pretend I even know if they're good examples of their style or not

The prime exceptions are Chloe Slater and George Houston. It was worth going through the rest just to discover those two.  24 Hours I think is both a wonderful song and a super-clever video. The first time I heard it (I've listened to it half a dozen times now.) I didn't get the irony, as you might get from the notes I made. Then the second time I read the lyrics and realized what was going on. 

I still kinda wish it was what I thought - a preppy, rich girl flaunting her privilege - just for how gloriously, nuanced that would make it as a pick for Glastonbury. I get it now and it would still be very meta. I'm not entirely sure why everything on the wall is backwards, though. Does that signify something or did Chloe literally film the whole thing in a mirror? 

As for George, as I said last time, I think he's going to be a big star. I'm pretty sure he thinks so, too. He'd go down a storm on a festival stage although maybe storm isn't exactly the metaphor I'm after.

Good luck to both of them. And to all the other eighty-three acts. Or is it eighty-five?

Still not sure about that.


Friday, March 22, 2024

Selection Bias

If there's one thing watching sixty-five hopefuls, all supposedly at the apex of their potential before breaking out, has taught me it's that standing out from the crowd is hard. I'm more than two-thirds of the way through the ninety acts on this year's Glastonbury Emerging Talent list and so far I can actually remember about three or four of them. 

There's a general level of competence, commitment and authenticity that makes almost every one seem worthwhile but memorable most of them are not. It's also extremely hard to be original these days, assuming anyone even wants to try. I've spoken before about the invidiousness of comparisons but it's all but impossible to tune out the recognition signal every time I hear a particular bass sound or vocal inflection.

That's by way of an introduction to a post that doesn't feature any of those acts. We'll get to the second half of the list when I've made it through the last twenty-five, which is probably not going to happen until next week since I'm working three days out of four from tomorrow. I dunno. I might get it done for Sunday. We'll see.

Today, though, it's the good stuff. A curated selection of the best of everything I've seen, heard and listened to with pleasure over the last couple of weeks. Honestly, it's a relief to get back to it. Sometimes when I put these posts together I wonder if I'm just imagining a level of quality that isn't really there. Having something to scale by has been helpful and instructive in convincing me otherwise.

This really is the good stuff!

Obsessed  - Olivia Rodrigo

Absolutely no apologies for leading with Olivia yet again. She just has the best pop-rock edge right now and this is everything that makes her so great, all packaged up together for instant thrills. The tamped-back, half-spoken verse, the stomping, glam-chant chorus, the vicious, lyrical bile, the mini-movie presentation...

How long she can work this rich seam is another question but it's clearly a long way from being mined out yet. My only complaint is the way these fantastic songs keep arriving, of the new album but not on it. All the big stars do it and I realize it's a sound commercial choice but it's really annoying. I mean, I waited a few months before I got the album and I still didn't get all the songs.

Then again, that's what I get for going hard copy, I guess. And it's not like I'm going to play it anyway. Even I don't listen to music that way any more.

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl - Yeule

Yeule was one of my big discoveries of last year. This is a cover of a song by another band I'm only just starting to investigate, Broken Social Scene. I've known the name for a long, long time. I used it as the title of my twelfth-ever post here, all the way back in September 2011, when I linked to the Canadian collective's magisterial cover of Joy Division's classic, Love Will Tear Us Apart. Oh, look. I've done it again.

Despite that, it's taken me the best part of a dozen years to get around to looking at any of their own work. It didn't help that I kept confusing them with Britpop also-rans, Ocean Colour Scene and no, I'm not going to link to anything by them. There are limits.

After I heard Yeule's gloriously fuzzed-up, glitched out take (Which sounds deeply reminiscent of Superorganism in parts, a similarity that lies in the song itself, not Yeule's interpretation.) I wanted to hear the original. I'm not going say which is better. They're both just wonderful. Here, decide for yourself, why don't you?

Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl  

Broken Social Scene

I dunno... there's an argument for saying Yeule actually cleaned the mix up. There are some storming live performances of this one on YouTube, many featuring guest vocalists and players, the most astonishing of which has Tracey Ullman and Meryl Streep joining in.

There's a lot of very good music comes out of Canada...

Let It Go - American Culture feat. Midwife

But not this. These guys are not Canadian. I was kinda hoping they might be for the irony but they're actually from Denver. The "singer" reminds me of Gerard Langley from The Blue Aeroplanes, not just in the spoken delivery but he actually looks quite like him. Come to think of it, the guitar churn doesn't sound that dissimilar to the Aeroplanes on their epic, set-closing cover of Tom Verlaine's Breaking In My Heart. I am a sucker for that cyclical rhythm.

 Empty And Silent

Mount Kimbie feat. King Krule

I've never really gotten on with King Krule as well as I felt I should. This is magical, though. The way his voice has been mixed makes it feel so rich and resonant and definitely less scary than usual. It blends perfectly with the slithering post-rock guitar and the stratospherically-attenuated backing vocals. 

As for the video, it's one of the kind I'm starting to favor above a lot of the rest. It looks like someone's phone footage run through a filter, which is probably what it is, and it gets out of the way of the music while also adding something to it. I like the square polaroid frame, too. Seeing more and more of those these days. I might have to start thinking about not resizing those. 

The Donkey - Couch Slut

I don't generally listen to a lot of this kind of thing but for some reason I have been lately. Like many initially unpleasant experiences, if you persist, you build up a tolerance. Whether that's a good thing or not I wouldn't like to say. 

Obviously this reminds me of Suicidal Tendencies but also of quite a few other things. The Gift, for one. This is the "abridged" version, apparently. I haven't taken the trouble to seek out the full thing, if it does in fact exist. I suspect it may not, the abridgement being part of some elaborate joke.

Oh, probably should mention it's NSFW to a degree, although I suspect if anyone is actually in the habit of playing this sort of thing at work, this particular track  is going to be completely acceptable, not to say mild.

Satan Loves You - Chloë Doucet 

I mean, you have to wonder what goes on in some peoples' heads sometimes, don't you? And she looks like such a nice girl, too...

XXL - Young Posse

Now, see, if I was half as clever as I think I am, I'd have programmed this right after American Culture. That might have broken my irony limit for a single post though.

Two million views in two days... hmm. Do I see the next retro-boom hoving into view in the form of 90s hip-hop? I bloody well hope so!

Ketamine - Playboi Carti

That was hip-hop as it was then. This is hip-hop as it is now.

Something Ether - Lil Yachty

Or maybe it's this.

Actually, I have no idea what hip-hop is supposed to sound like in 2024. Or if what we just heard even qualifies. I didn't need to warn anyone about those two, anyway, right? No-one got fired?

Probably time we all calmed down.

Cole St. - Dogs On Shady Lane

There! Doesn't that feel better? This was one of the very few interesting things I found while I was digging through the old submissions piles from last year's NPR Tiny Desk Contest. If I thought the Glasto ETC was a bit uninspiring, boy did that put things into perspective.

Mostly it's the band names or the song titles that do the heavy lifting when it comes to choosing what I will or won't click, which is why I bothered to check this. Going through long lists item by item, looking at innocuous names and unremarkable titles, it very much bears the theory out - routine names tend to produce routine tunes.

I Keep Changing - h. pruz

At this point I ought to slot in someone with a dull name doing an amzing song because naturally there are exceptions. I tried, but this is the nearest I could find and h. pruz all in lower case isn't really that dull. Nor is the title, for that matter. Not really making my case here, am I?

It's about now I usually start wishing I'd saved a banger for last. Then again, I tend to assume there's going to be no-one left by now, which is why I try to front-load the best stuff (And the popular stuff.) these days. 

Still, you gotta have an ending. I found this while I was researching the Steve Harley obituary, in which I stubbornly declined even to mention his most famous song. That was mostly because I felt it had come to overshadow the rest of his work to an uncomfortable extent, although it is objectively one of the best pop songs of all time.

There have been several high-profile covers of it, a few of which were hits, but this tops them all. And I'd never heard it until this week. Take us home, Suzi...

Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me) 

 Suzi Quatro

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Two In A Tower

It took me a while but this morning I finally got around to trying out EverQuest's 25th Anniversary Tower. It does have a more impressive, less lore-breaking name inside the game itself but "Anniversary Tower" is what the press release called it back in January and that's the name I have stuck in my mind.

I went to take a look at it just about as soon as it appeared but there was an access quest I didn't want to get involved with just then and what with Palworld, Nightingale and everything else it's taken me this long to find the right moment to do something about it. Ever the way with EverQuest. Even when we're talking about something as low-key as an anniversary event, you don't just pile in. Bad things happen when you do that.

So, anyway, after my second death this morning...

Tell you what. Why don't we begin at the beginning? 

When I went to log in right after breakfast, the first thing I had to decide was which character was going to be my guinea-pig for the day. I'd done a little reading in advance and it seemed the rewards might be worth having for a casual solo player like myself. Sure, the raiders were all complaining there was nothing in it for them but there were some "Thank-you, Darkpaw" notes from F2P players too.

The event scales to level so I could have called on any of my three dozen or so characters but it seemed like it might be best to take what passes for my "main" character these days, my level 115 Magician. I logged her in but even before I got started I ran into the usual problem I encounter every time I go to play her - her buffs.


For about the past two years she's been standing in the Guild Lobby, right in the middle of The Pile. The Pile is the spot where everyone leaves their characters so they can soak up the Mass Group Buffs generous players often cast before they log out for the day. 

As a result, Magmia, my Mage, is raid-buffed to an alarming degree and I daren't take her out of the Guild Lobby,  Plane of Knowledge or The Bazaar, zones where time stands still and buffs never run out, unless I know I'm going to do some serious leveling. Since she can't gain any more XP until I buy the most recent expansion and unlock ten more levels, that means she's pretty much grounded.

I thought about it for a while, then I said "Sod it! Cassis is already there. She can do it!" And that, I guess, is how she comes to have 116 hours played.

Knowing the event scales to level, I wasn't expecting too much trouble. I'd read that behind each tower door lay nothing more than a single room with five mobs, each of which could be fought separately. Most of the comments I'd read were complaining about how unchallenging it was and speculating about how it must have been put together an intern on their first day.

I also knew the access quest was a scavenger hunt, another reason I picked Cassis for the job. If you're going to go zone-hopping around Norrath, a Druid is your first choice. Well, unless you have a Wizard, maybe, but I'd still go Druid for the speed.

As it turns out, the scavenger hunt for each floor takes place in a single zone so there wasn't all that much porting required. Still more than you'd think, though, albeit for reasons more related to my own lack of preparedness than anything to do with quest design.


Playing EverQuest is like riding a bike... so long as you were riding a bike last Tuesday. It does all come back to you, eventually. It's just that there's a lot of it to come back and it might take a while. In my case today it took about an hour and a half and a couple of deaths.

Fortunately, death isn't what it was in Norrath. The days of corpse runs are long gone and even significant  XP loss seems to be a thing of the past. I'm not saying there is none - just that I died twice in a session and still came out half a level ahead.

In EQ you always expect to die but both Cassis' deaths were very unexpected. And entirely my fault for making several newbie mistakes, the worst of which was starting off thinking it was going to be straightforward. It's never straightforward. Nothing in EverQuest is.

I logged Cassis in, ran down the sands to the tower and took the teleport inside I spoke to the Merchant to get the quest and realized she didn't give it. There was no-one else to ask so I figured it might trigger when you click the door. I went up the ramp to the first entrance, where I spotted a blue ball of light on the floor. I clicked on that only to find I couldn't pick it up because my bags were full.

Absolutely typical first day back. Also why I picked a Druid for the job. I found something in my bags I could live without, got rid of it to make space, picked up the ball of light and watched it turn into a "Broken Key of Sands". I had two bag slots with single items blocking them so stashed one in the only other space left and put the Broken Key in the bag slot where I wouldn't lose it. 

Since I knew I was about to do a scavenger hunt, I thought I'd better make some more space for whatever I was going to have to bring back. I memmed Ring of Knowledge, ported back, turned myself into a wolf for the run-speed, loped over to the Tinkering vendor, bought two ten-slot Toolboxes and then couldn't find them. No error message saying I didn't have space, nothing on my cursor... turned out the "Key" I'd picked up was actually a three-slot box and both the new Toolboxes had gone in there because in EQ you can put a container inside a container.

With that sorted out, I went to the bank and stashed a bunch of stuff I have no idea what to do with in my vault alongside all the rest of the stuff I have no idea what to do with and then I had plenty of space. I memmed Ring of Ro and ported back down to the desert. 

The quest told me to check the orc camps in the south-east so I ran up there. Porting had wiped my wolf illusion so I cast good old Spirit of Wolf instead, plus Levitate for good measure. I could see the orc camps on the map (EQMaps add-on. Essential.) although I knew from memory where they were anyway. I figured they'd be about level 9 so I'd be able to stroll into their camp, pick up whatever it was I needed for the scavenger hunt and be on my way without a fight.

Yeah. This is EQ. Have you played before?

I trotted into the first camp and an Orc Oracle started casting some dumb orc spell at me. One Starfire and he'd be cinders. Except he wasn't. He shrugged it off and landed Malosi on me, followed by some heavy DoT. I was half health before I realized I was in trouble. 

I dotted him back and he resisted. I tried to root him and he resisted. By this time I was back-pedalling and he was chasing me. I tried to snare him and got a message saying he was immune. I tried to heal myself but Druids don't get good heals for a long time, certainly not at 48. By the time I decided I'd better run away for real it was too late.

Back at my bind in the Guild Lobby I checked to see what damage had been done. Not much, actually. All my stuff - still with me. All my spells - still memmed. All my buffs - still on, not that there were many because I hadn't bothered to buff myself. 

Okay, I know what to expect now, I thought. Let's go again.

Round two went much the same. Well, it did after I pulled an Orc Shaman thinking it was the Oracle and killed it in seconds because that one really was about Level 9. There was no sign of my real target. I wondered if I'd bugged the quest somehow but no, I just needed to go into the camp again to respawn him.

I did better in the rematch but I'd forgotten that they'd fixed DoT stacking a few years back so spells of different levels in the same line no longer add. Higher versions block lower ones so there's no point having both Drones of Doom and Drifting Death memmed. I couldn't stack enough damage to put the Orc down but he had no such issues with me.

Back in the Guild Lobby, I remembered my Merc. I also remembered I had buffs. I got the merc out, buffed him, buffed myself, went back and did it properly. Third time's the charm. With the mercenary tanking and the right spells loaded, I was able to stack fire and magic DoTs, nuke and heal from a safe distance. When I overdid it, which was pretty quickly because I'm out of practice at playing a Druid, I got the Orc rooted and we carried on from there.

The Orc went down and I got his part of the key. Drops, not ground spawns for the scavenger quest, then. Never thought of that.

The quest updated and told me to go look in the Sand Giant camp next. I was apprehensive but the giant was pure melee, which made holding him up with the Merc and Root much safer and easier. He dropped the second piece of the key and the quest moved on to Spectre Isle.

Either the Spectre was the easiest of the three or I was getting my groove back. The Merc and I disposed of the scythe-wielding psychopath with no problems. I put the final part of the key into the container, hit Combine and presto! Completed quest, completed key.

Back in the tower I clicked on the door and nothing happened. I clicked on the key instead and got another quest. Then the door opened. Inside, as promised, I found a single room with five mobs just standing there, glaring at me: two crocodiles, two skeletons and another Spectre.

I thought I'd start with the Spectre so I tried to root him, only to get a message telling me I couldn't attack him at all. Then I noticed my quest had updated. It was telling me to kill the crocs first.

Multiple comments on several forums had led me to believe the fights inside the tower would be almost insultingly easy. They are not. Not if you're an averagely-geared Druid played by an out-of-practice player, anyway.

I won't go through the whole play-by-play but it was tense. Druids tend to like large, open areas with plenty of kiting room. They don't shine in closed rooms with very little space to move around. Even less so when they have to fight mobs that can't be snared.

Still, the crocs weren't too bad. They came one at a time and the Merc had no trouble taunting them. I needed to med after each of them and the Merc needed a heal or two but it was fine.

The skeletons were harder and the whole thing almost fell apart when the second aggroed before the first was done. Luckily the one we were fighting was down to about 10% health so I nuked him hard and we got the other one under control. At the end of that fight, though, Cassis and the Merc both needed a good sit down.

That just left the Spectre, who worryingly conned yellow, meaning he was a level or two higher than us. And he was a bloody handful, let me tell you! 


The fight came down to Cassis frantically chain-healing the Merc with her only halfway-decent heal, Greater Healing, which only gave the Merc back about 5%  health a cast. I tried to keep my two good DoTs on but it was a risk dropping a heal to recast. In the end, it came down to the wire, with the Merc falling when the Specter was at about 5% itself and Cassis was not much better herself.

The scythe was swinging my way and I was casting what looked like it would be my final nuke when the Spectre just up and imploded. The combat log mysteriously reads "a withered memory hits a withered memory for 409 points of magic damage from Sweeping Scythe Slash" so maybe the spook clumsily cut his own head off.

Whatever, I won! I collected my winnings (More event currency.), looked out of the window (Sand.) checked the half-buried treasure chest (A prop.) and zoned out. I did go up a floor to collect the starter for the next access quest but I haven't done anything with it yet. All I know is it's in Lavastorm and they gave me a shovel.

I look forward to seeing what kind of trouble Cassis can dig up for herself next.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

I'll See Your 45...


Just to warn everyone, there may be several music posts this week. Actually, since it's Wednesday already, there may only be music posts this week! But hey, it's either that or more Nightingale so what you gonna do?

I was already planning on a regular "What I've Been Listening To Lately" post for Friday because it's been a fortnight since the last one and the damn songs keep piling up. 

(Can we say "fortnight" now without having to explain it, by the way? I feel like, since Fortnite became such a thing, everyone must know what it means. I used to avoid it as a confusing Britishism but like "wanker" it seems to have gone global now. That said, I never did get what Epic thought the pun was supposed to be...)

Anyway, there was that and then yesterday I got sight of this year's long list for the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition and for some hard-to-explain (Even to myself.) reason I decided I'd probably better do something on it. I do realise no-one cares but as the years go by the blog seems to be acquiring traditions like that ball in Katamari Damacy picks up objects and I'm nothing if not a traditionalist.

Having made the decision, then naturally I had to listen to them. All ninety! Luckily, there's a playlist showcasing what I assume is the specific song each of them submitted. Or maybe it's just a representative number. I dunno. I haven't read the rules.  

Whatever, it's more than four hours of music. I'm halfway through now and I thought it would be wise to stop there and split this thing into two parts. I also thought it would be fun to make notes as I went and then print them verbatim like a weird kind of time-delayed live blog.

Finally, in case that wasn't convoluted enough, I decided to give them all a grade. Everyone loves a grade, don't they? I mean, I know I do. As a reader, that is. If I was the artist I'd probably want to come round and have a quiet chat with any dick on the internet who thought they could sum up my work with a single letter. And maybe not so quiet, at that.

On that note and on the extremely unlikely chance any of them ever read this, I'd like to offer an up-front apology to anyone I've given what looks like a failing mark to, while taking a moment to explain that all I'm grading is the degree to which these songs did or did not intrigue, impress or excite me. I'm not making any judgments about objective quality. Well, not in the grades. In the comments, though...

Just to nail that down:

The grading process is based for the most part on a first impression from a single play. As we all know, songs and performers can grow on you or you can go off them, so take that under advisement.

A - There might be something special going on here and I advise you not to miss out.

B - I liked it, maybe you will, too. Worth keeping an eye on, for sure.

C - Solid choice if it's your kind of thing. Wasn't really mine.

D - Either made no impression on me or I actively disliked it. Could be either. Check the comment.

E - Really did not like this at all.

Plusses and minuses add nuance but the letter is the prime signifier.

Finally, I've embedded videos for some of the ones I like but for the sake of layout it does depend somewhat on where they fall in the list so I couldn't get all my favorites in. Plus, I pulled my #1 choice out and stuck it in the intro so as not to bury the lede. 

Finally, I did consider adding links to every entry but that would be a lot of work. Just use the playlist provided!

Let's get to it!


  1. Who Is Jack - without - 50 seconds until it actually starts! Way too long to get to a dull ballad. - C
  2. Marie Naffah - Rust&Blue -  Great video (Says it's a visualiser but it's a video), strong song, vocals sound like they were slowed down (Assume that's just her voice). - A-
  3. Saina - Listen to my Voice - nice, unremarkable - C+
  4. Slip Martin - Wallflower- dull - C-
  5. Ella Tobin - The Ghost - Very pleasant neo-folk. This sort of thing does sound old-fashioned now - B
  6. Nate Brazier - Feels - unremarkable - C
  7. J Aliya - Not The One - Good. Sonically satisfying. Trippy. - B

  8. Call Me Loop - Self Love - Bouncy! Fun. Kinda old-fashioned but not retro - B
  9. Who Ate All The Crayons - 5 Seconds - Annoying melodic indie-rock. Very not like you'd expect from the band name. D
  10. Lo Rays - Die Beside You - Sounds like a Eurovision entry - C-
  11. Mirrors - Echoes- Pleasant, ordinary. Maybe building to something different but didn't have the patience to wait - C+
  12. Talk Show - Closer - alright. Nothing special. - C
  13. lau.ra & Surya Sen - Do That - Decent club track. C
  14. Bryte - Zongo Boy - Toasting, although I imagine there's another name for it now. Not terrible. - C
  15. Daniella Dee - Stutter - Smooth jazz! Sade/Erika Badu etc. Nice! - B
  16. Re Teu - Glas - Most original song so far. Couldn't put it in a genre. Starts off kinda dance, goes all post-rock - B+
  17. Jessie Reid - Let Your Love Run Cold - More neo-folk or maybe even anti-folk. Mildly reminds me of Peggy Sue. Good. - B+
  18. retropxssy - Fading - chill lo-fi hip-hop or something - very much my thing - B+

  19. Room Service - JCVD - Tribute to Jean Claude van Damme - funny in a kind of Pop Will Eat Itself way - very late '80s - Good riff. - B
  20. Buoy Meets Krill - Sweetbreads -- quirky indie folk-jazz? - If this makes the short list I'll eat my fox hat - B+
  21. Dogsbody - Let It Die - incredibly slow to get going but quite unexpected when the jazz sax appears - Builds nicely but I fear if they were playing live you wouldn't be able to hear most of it for the sound of people chatting - B-
  22. Brian Grogan - Your Name - fine of its kind, not my thing at all - C
  23. Maddie Ashman - 6AM - more pleasant neo-folk - B
  24. Theo Bleak - It's Not Doing Me Any Good - Shoegaze. Pleasant. Unremarkable. Also, it's a band, not a person. - B
  25. Meduulla - Limbo feat. The Mouse Outfit - pleasant lo-fi hip-hop - B
  26. FINCHES - NOTHING FIXES ME LIKE YOU - Britpop revivalists! Interesting accent. Decent of its kind. - B

  27. Maya Lane - Bump Into Me - Indie, almost twee-folk. Nice video but the van's the wrong color. - B
  28. Eighty Eight Miles - Sophie - OMG! See above! So tweefest c. 2016 it's not true. Third on the bill to Camera Obscura - B+
  29. Juju - Just Okay - indie/pop-rock not very much to say about it - C
  30. George Houston - In Aeternum Vive - ffs! He looks about 12 and the video looks like it was made by 15 year olds for school assembly where they wanted to be as transgressive as they could get away with... and it's all for a really strong, classic-rock vocal performance with striking lyrics. Astonishing. He could be a star, the video already has ten times the views of anything else so far (180k+) - A

  31. Georgia May - Guessin' - lovely R&B - A
  32. Joe Winter — Laughing for the West - and more lovely r&b, very 80s except for the heavy auto-tune - B+
  33. Frances And The Majesties - All Of Time - synthpop of some stripe, also a bit 80s - C+
  34. simon a. - FERMI - slick r&b - smooth! 70s inflected - B
  35. E. M Kane - Wasted Time - old school soul/r&b extremely retro - bit of a tour de force vocal, impressive! - B
  36. Neckbreakers - Waiting On Your Call- 90s indie-pop - I was listening to it while reading a news feed and I came to write this comment after it finished I literally couldn't remember anything about it and had to go back and hear it again - C
  37. alessi rose - eat me alive - good pop music although it's getting so I feel I've heard this same song a lot of times now - B
  38. Home Counties - Bethnal Green - post punk pop, mildly frenzied. Weird to hear a band called Home Counties singing a song about Bethnal Green... B

  39. Darla Jade - Broken Armour - more slick pop - B
  40. Euan Stamper - Fast Fashion - Ivor Cutler without the jokes. Mesmerising. I really hope he makes the shortlist. - A (I would have embedded it but the video is unlisted on YouTube so you can only see it via the playlist. Or this link.)
  41. Tommy Down - Mrs Blue  - old-school(ish) soul/r&b - very nice 90s vibe - reminds me of David Gray - B
  42. The Ayoub Sisters - The Scottish Egyptian - Is it folk? Is it classical? Do I care? Way outside my abilty to assess meaningfully - No rating 
  43. Kynsy - Simple Life - Wow! One of those songs they don't make any more. Except apparently Kynsy does. Would get radio play across five decades. -
  44. KID 12- Dreams - Rich, thick sound. Satisfying. Would listen again. - B+ 
  45. Olivia Nelson - Oblivion - More solid, professional modern R&B - not much more I can say - B 
Forty-five down, forty-five to go. Geez. Wish me luck.

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