Left 4 Deads volumes 1 and 2.

I'm going to take a break from our usual programming (i.e. the continuation of my previous post) to talk about something else.

Left 4 Dead.

Oh, and Left 4 Dead 2.

Something which a lot of television pundits will never truly understand unless they do it themselves is the joy of playing a computer game with a bunch of your mates.

It doesn't have to be challenging, it can just be fun. And possibly the most fun I've ever had playing a computer game is playing Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

For the uninitiated, here's some explanation of the games.

The only horror movie to ever genuinely frighten me - and I don't mean stupid jump scares that a fluffy kitten could do if timed correctly - was 28 Days Later, and as such it is one of my favourite films.

Based around a rabies-like pandemic that makes people act like monstrous animals, attacking and pummeling each other to death (of course, a bite makes you become one of them), it's probably the greatest zombie movie that George A. Romero didn't make.

Left 4 Dead is basically like playing that film, and it's magnificent.

As described by Zero Punctuation, there's not much storyline; basically that pandemic has infected a lot of people and the last four - the '4' in the title - have to fight their way through thousands of infected in order to escape.

That's it. No fannying around, no nonsense. Just shoot zombies, lots of zombies, until the zombies run out and/or you get away.

And it is a quite preposterous amount of fun.

It's not all ordinary zombies of course. There's the smoker, who grabs you and pulls you close; there's the boomer, who attracts other zombies to you and blinds you; there's the hunter, you pounces on you and rips you to shreds; the tank, who is tough as hell; and the witch, who just sits crying to herself unless you startle her and then all hell breaks loose.

Played with three mates in a darkened room, Left 4 Dead is an often terrifying and overall brilliant game and I honestly couldn't have thought of a way to improve it.

But they only went and bloomin' well did it with Left 4 Dead 2.

Released only something stupid like six months after the original, it's taken everything great about Left 4 Dead and poured chocolate on it.

Possibly the greatest addition is that of melee weapons. With ridiculous comic props like guitars and saucepans to hand, you'd be stupid to not choose the chainsaw, which you just set running and then watch the zombies run into it and fall to bits. It's glorious.

There are also new special zombies; the spitter which has corrosive bile; the charger, which is like a budget version of the Tank; and the jockey, which takes control of you and makes you run around like a loon.

The graphics are better, the weapons are better, the environments are more varied and interesting, and the level on which you wander around a corn farm swarming with witches in a torrential downpour is possibly the scariest thing I've ever seen in a game.

They may not be original, or clever; but the Left 4 Dead games are just outright fun the way a game is supposed to be.

Buy them.

BUY THEM NOW.

Video skills test

Here is the video interview I shot for my Digital Newsroom Video Skills Test.

The pitfalls of artist compilations

Artist compilations are one of the notorious pitfalls of the music business.

There's a never-ending list of questions that come up before the album is listened to or even released. What's the motivation, commercial or artistic?

Should an artist release a greatest hits or best of when they're still together?

And most of all - what should you include, and what shouldn't you?

To try and figure this out, let's take a look at some of the good and bad best ofs, and some of the ones in between.

Let's start off with a band I've touched upon in a previous blog - Nirvana, fronted by everyone's favourite shotgun enthusiast.

Nirvana are a band who'd suit a compilation. So many of their essential songs are b-sides, offcuts or one-off singles on Sub Pop, but 2002's Nirvana compilation was pretty pathetic.

At less than an hour long, the compilation doesn't even make the best use of its space - but the little space it does use is filled with inessential songs.

It also has unreleased song 'You Know You're Right,' which makes it essential for hardcore fans (sigh). It's a very good song but not really worth the asking price alone.

A much better Nirvana compilation could be stitched together by anyone with a passing knowledge of their catalogue - namely me. And even I wouldn't be stupid enought to omit 'Aneurysm' but still put 'Rape Me' on it.

Who else has managed to epically fail at the compilation?

What's that, another band I've already mentioned?

Yes, the Panic Fleet Teachers.

I really must stop making jokes that only I will find remotely funny.

Yes, Manic Street Preachers, after running out of creative juices in 2001 decided to put out a compilation in 2002 called Forever Delayed. (The creative juices must have reeeeally run dry considering the debacle of an album that followed).

Now on song-strength alone, Forever Delayed is predominantly brilliant. What's more, it mops up a couple of single-only releases, 'Motown Junk' and 'The Masses Against The Classes' which were well worth including on an album somewhere.

But it's also an example of what can go terribly wrong with such releases.

It has two new songs tacked onto it. I've noticed a pattern when it comes to having two new songs on your compilation; if you have one song, it might be alright.

If you have two, then one will be great, the other will suck. REM's 2003 compilation In Time had that problem ('Bad Day' was great, 'Animal' was not) and so does this one.

'There By The Grace Of God' is an elegaic, wistful number with a beautiful guitar figure. 'Door To The River' is so forgettable that I might just forget that I'm writing this sen-...

The rest of the album is apparently the bizarre result of committee thinking. Four cuts are taken from 1996's magnificent masterpice Everything Must Go. But only one song is taken from the brilliant, if disturbing, Holy Bible.

How does that work?

There is no fathomable reason for the tracklisting. It doesn't play like a live gig. It's not chronological, and it doesn't have only the big hits (just look at where they charted in the liner notes). And it doesn't seem to consist of band favourites or fan favourites, otherwise as already stated there'd be more Holy Bible.

We end up with room for 'Tsunami,' but no room for 'Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart?'

Join us next week (or whenever else I bother to write another blog) to find out some of the better artist compilations that've been released.

Vox pop horror horror, vox pop horror

As a journalism student, one of the things I dread the most is the vox pop.

Vox pop, or vox populi, translates from Latin as the 'voice of the people.'

I am not known for my passion for the opinions of John Everyman and I take great amusement from the comedy blog spEak You're bRanes, a delightful satirical commentary on the comments left on online news.

What's more, the title is (I presume) a reference to the even funnier (and even more satirical) Speak Your Brains segment from The Day Today.

Ordinarily I would link directly to a video above, but seeing as I know Chris Mayer will love to see it again I'm going to embed an example instead so you can't help but see it.


So as someone who generally couldn't care less about public opinion - after all, S Club got to number one, didn't they? - I'm not exactly suited to requesting it.

But that's the least of one's troubles when vox-popping.

First of all you have a lot of legal issues. You can't usually do it indoors, for example, because even places like shopping centres are usually private property and you tend to get moved along.

Secondly, being outside is hell for audio quality. You get wind, you get cars going past to overlap people, it's a nightmare.

Thirdly, if people don't want to talk to you, they can be anything from friendly to perfunctory to flat-out rude.

But the worst part of it for me - other than, as a friend of mine helpfully pointed out, having to do it - is that I feel their pain.

If I see someone on the street with that hopeful look on their face like they're going to try and talk to me, the majority of the time I ignore them. I try to be as polite as I can about it, but the majority of the time I just don't care or it's some annoying sales pitch. Usually I just keep walking.

That's right. If I was trying to vox-pop myself, I wouldn't talk to me, so how can I expect others to?

Nevertheless, vox-pops are the bane of a young journalist, so I can expect to be doing a lot more of them.

Oh well. At least no-one's punched me in the face yet.

Photo from flickr courtesy of Will-Joel-Taylor

Film classifications are stupid

When I was a kid, film classifications made sense, and they didn't give you the kid-glove treatment.

You were just expected to know what a rating meant. A U was for kids, a PG might be a bit iffy for some younger kids, and 12s, 15s and 18s were just obvious.

But these days, you get three paragraphs of blurb with every film certification. The first memory I have of this was for the first Lord Of The Rings film, which was 'Rated PG: May not be suitable for under 8s.'

That's just about acceptable because it makes sense to warn about how old a child should be before seeing something rated PG unaccompanied.

But lately, it's getting ridiculous. Take Finding Nemo.

The box for Finding Nemo, a U-rated film, states that the film contains 'mild peril.'

Mild peril.

How impossibly nervous a child must you have to require warning over mild peril? The film is a U for goodness' sake, how bad can it be?

Even stupider was the introduction of the 12A rating around the time The Bourne Identity came out. A 12A was a film in which, if accompanied by an adult, a child under 12 can go see it.

Isn't that basically a more-officially legislated PG? So what's the point?

Despite the thesis-length explanations on the back of our DVDs, however, our film certification will never be as stupid as America's, which is in part hampered by its relentlessly conservative outlook on things.

First, a little bit of background. In America, censorship makes no sense. If you're on at the right time of night, on the right network, with the right censors, you can swear up a storm and probably shoot your own baby in the face without any problems.

But show a bit of boob for less than a second, a boob on which the nipple was covered anyway, and you will experience a world of pain.

This means that while you can say the c-word and show totally naked men and women on British TV on virtually any channel after 9pm, in America even in films you hardly see any of that.

So to the certifications of American films. You have G-rated movies, which anyone can watch. PG is the same as ours, basically.

Then there's PG-13 which means anyone can see it as long as those under 13 are accompanied by an adult.

But then, there's R-rated, which means people 17 and over can see it... and anyone under that age can see it if they're with a guardian. How impossibly stupid is that?

And God help you if you have a film rated higher than an R, because if it is, no one will see it.

Seriously. Thousands of cinemas across America simply won't show your film if it's rated NC-17.

Simply preposterous.

So yeah. A random, shapeless, gibbering rant for your delectation.

(Photos from flickr courtesy of j-fin and phil d)

When did rap lose its bass?

I am possibly the whitest man you'll ever meet.

Well, except one.

And being a white, suburban-bred male that means I'm obviously into rap music.

As ridiculous and stereotypical as that is, I have a genuine appreciation for the poetry of rap and genius of its sampling.

So let me ask you; when did rap lose its bass frequencies?

The hip-hop I love is predominantly late eighties, early nineties kind of stuff.


I'm talking NWA.

I'm talking The Notorious B.I.G.

And most of all, I am talking about André Young, known to me as, your friend and mine, Dr. Dre.

Actually I'm much more of a fan of Biggie. But as far as bass frequencies go, Dr. Dre is what you're after.

Hip-hop was all about the bassline and the beat. Something that'll pound your chest in the clubs and make you want to dance.

Possibly the greatest rap beat I've ever heard is from Dre's first solo album, The Chronic, which has a drumbeat so heavy that it's actually sampled from Led Zeppelin.

If you have the ability, crank the bass up on your speakers a bit and feel how hard that beat hits.

Now let's take a look at some modern hip-hop, shall we? Even Dizzee Rascal has managed a bit of big beat in his time on 'Fix Up, Look Sharp,' but how about the more acclaimed modern hip-hop acts.

Let's say, oh I don't know, Chipmunk.



That is TERRIBLE. And in fact, that's not the worst that's out there. Most snare drums in modern hip-hop sound more like someone cracking their knuckles than they do a beat.

I place most of the blame for this squarely at the door of Timbaland, who has made everything he's involved with sound exactly the same.

Come on people. Bring back the bass frequency in hip-hop.

1001 albums, concluded

The last album I want to talk about from the 1001 albums series is Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go.

With lyricist and anti-guitarist Richey Edwards disappeared and presumed dead in 1995, it all seemed finished for the Manics.

Instead, they regrouped as a trio, wrote the greatest song in history (as far as I'm concerned) and created the rock masterpiece that is Everything Must Go.

For the most part, there's nothing fancy about Everything Must Go. In an interview with Q magazine this year, vocalist/guitarist James Dean Bradfield said that 'there are times when I just want to write a good f**king tune,' and he's done just that twelve times here.

The majority of the album is hard-rocking songs played with pride, and sung with the most ridiculous amount of passion you'll ever hear.

But there are subtle undertones and elements you wouldn't expect. The aforementioned 'A Design For Life,' along with other cuts like the magnificent title track, are accompanied by sweeping strings.

The song which best illustrates how unique the Manics are, however, is opener 'Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier.'

Apart from anything else, opening an album that's predominantly fast-paced with the sound of the ocean and a strummed acoustic guitar is an interesting move. But it's the lyrics which are extraordinary, detailing the suicidal contemplations of the titular Elvis Impersonator.

No other band could come up with that kind of image, few other bands would begin an album with a punt out of left field like that.

Everything Must Go may not reinvent the wheel much, but it's simply a classic album without a single song that needs cutting.

1001 albums, continued

In my last blog, I discussed Iggy Pop's The Idiot.

This time round, I want to discuss Nirvana's In Utero.

I could write a whole other blog entry about Nirvana in general, but In Utero is a fascinating album in and of itself.

Nevermind, as heavy as it was on songs like 'Stay Away' or 'Breed,' had a production that the band weren't happy with, and they enlisted famous Pixies producer Steve Albini.

Trapped by fatherhood and mired in a heroin-enabling relationship with Courtney Love - both of which I'm sure made him very happy at times as well - Kurt Cobain struggled to reconcile his punk ethics with the millions of records Nevermind sold (referenced in the excellent 'Radio Friendly Unit Shifter').

The result is an extraordinary record, a howl into the abyss that was Cobain's life at that point.

On my first few listens, I didn't really see a great deal of difference between the two albums. But when I listened to them back to back, I realised that if the most commercial song and lead single on your album is 'Heart Shaped Box' maybe this isn't as much of a pop record.

The lacerating, metallic riffs on this album are set to wilfully sardonic lyrics from Cobain, claiming on 'Scentless Apprentice' that 'you can't fire me 'cause I quit.'

Indeed, the very opening line of the album is 'teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old.'

But oddly, alongside these blasts of glorious noise are understated, possibly even bluesy tunes like 'Dumb,' 'Pennyroyal Tea' or the highlight of their MTV Unplugged setlist, 'All Apologies'.

All in all, Nevermind may be the poppier album, but it's by no means the better one. In Utero is a bruising, jagged but at times serene ride - and by far the better album.

Images skills test

The National Football Museum, which has been in Preston since its founding in 2001, is reportedly to be moved to Manchester, much to the chagrin of local football nuts.

With one of Preston's precious few landmarks soon to relocate, I thought for the image skills test I'd take advantage of the opportunity to take some photos of it while I still can.

Firstly, here it is in a 100x100 pixel thumbnail.



Next, here it is in a 200x500 strip.



Then, a 400x300 version.



Finally, the original image in all its glory.

1001 albums you must listen to before you die

In a recent HMV sale I acquired the book 1001 albums you must hear before you die, 2007 edition.

The title is at it indicates, really - albums you should hear to consider yourself musically educated.

Sequenced chronologically, it's not, as many people think, a list of the greatest albums ever. It is simply a list of albums that are interesting, fascinating, or influential.

In some cases, they're just notable; and in the case of The Circle Jerks' Group Sex album the whole record is only fifteen mintues long.

I counted, and in total I'd heard 156 of the 1001 in there. I'm pretty happy with that, and since that count I've gone up to 164 through purchases of records I was interested in hearing, so I thought I'd air some of my thoughts relating to that. I'm not going to cover all eight of the new albums I've bought, just a couple of them.

First of all, Iggy Pop's The Idiot, from 1977.

Iggy Pop is one of rock 'n' roll's foremost nutters. He's known for whipping his genitalia out on television, cutting himself onstage and doing enough drugs to make Keith Richards blush. He usually sounds something like this.

On The Idiot, he sounds like he's fronting Joy Division (and oddly enough, this was the record spinning on Ian Curtis' turntable when he was found dead).

It's insane. Industrial beats, multi-tracked vocals and guitars that slither from speaker to speaker sinuously. It's nothing like Iggy had ever sounded before, and never would sound quite like this again.

I'll cover more of them in the coming days. In the meantime, if you like Iggy or Joy Division and haven't heard this yet, you need to!

Afghanistan election timeline

Gareth H. on Dipity.