>>Nostalgia For Infinity

Okay, okay, so the title is a little more melodramatic than it needed to be. I really couldn’t resist the temptation to reference one of the first music reviews I wrote here on Nostalgia For Infinity. It felt entirely appropriate.

As the astute will have probably gathered from the above, I’m wrapping up my music reviewing. It’s been an absolute blast over the last couple of years, not only in flexing my writing muscles and thinking about ways to articulate my feelings on a ton of different records, but also in listening to some fine music, hearing some fantastic new bands (a number of whom have become firm favourites) and chatting with some great people from various bands, labels and PR companies.

At the time of writing I’ve got about 130 record reviews (albums, EPs, singles and splits) up on NFI, with a bunch more queued and about 50 more records that have been sent to me that I’ve yet to write about. And if your record is among these then don’t worry, I’ll be honouring everything I’ve been sent up until today unless I really can’t think of anything to say about it, which going by past precedent is unlikely as I am an opinionated and rambling son of a bitch. If you’re a fan of reading my record reviews, they’ll still be going up regularly (two or three a week as usual) pretty much until the end of 2011.

I won’t be accepting anything more for review, however. The submissions page has been updated to reflect this.

I have a number of reasons for hanging up my guitar-shaped novelty pen. The first, and most important, is that I want to focus my time and energy on other projects. I want to spend more time getting better at guitar and writing songs for my own band, Wrecktheplacefantasic. I also want to turn my efforts at writing elsewhere; not only a renewed focus on the younger project that is Arcadian Rhythms but also getting back into writing some fiction. Not only that, it would be nice to have more of a social life again. I’ve been hanging on in there – I do regularly enjoy a pint or four and a sprawling conversation with friends – but you’d be surprised how much of your free time music reviewing takes up. I can’t remember the last time I spent a day off from the day job that didn’t involve a few hours of writing-related activities of some kind.

A slightly more shameful reason is that I’ve increasingly found myself with a sensation that I’m beginning to repeat myself, which I suspect is the inevitable result of writing in-depth about a lot of music that faithfully follows in the footsteps of what inspired it. Now, it should be patently obvious from my prior body of writing that I am quite far from having a problem with this. I am not an innovation-or-bust critic and have always tried to engage with music on its own terms or to at least explain why I couldn’t. However, whilst I am quite comfortable with holding this opinion I’m less comfortable with repeatedly restating when I’m supposedly writing about a particular collection of music. It becomes a little dull to essentially repeat yourself, even if you do have an excellent soundtrack at the time.

Anyway, those are my reasons, and I figure I owe it to my readers and my, ahem, suppliers to explain them rather than just stop replying to emails and allow the post schedule to decline as so many blogs and review sites do.

For the record NFI itself will continue going strong (I will inevitably write about whatever I’m up to and continue to post original material here too), and I may even decide to write about records or shows that I have something in particular to say about, but they’ll be sourced by yours truly and written on my whims.

That’s it… goodbye. For now.

So! The project I have spent the last few months and especially January working on has gone live and the first content is beginning to appear. Check it out!

One thing the internet does not need is another gaming blog. So, here is another gaming blog!

We like to play games. We like to drink (most of us). We like to talk, or rant, or ramble. We slip through our days in ARCADIAN RHYTHM.

Mostly of interest to gamers, what with it being a group blog about gaming, but you may enjoy having a poke around regardless as some of our writers can be quite amusing. Plenty more content going online this week and we have regular updates scheduled for the next few months!

Forthcoming pieces from myself include a response to Jonathan McCalmont’s arguments around the idea of a videogame canon in Futurismic last year, a biographical piece examining the question “why game?”, reviews of indie titles Recettear, Flotilla and The Void, and contributions to group pieces – one arguing the toss about achievements, the other looking forward at what’s coming later in 2011. Plus some occasional fluffy pieces – like one about my naff Minecraft constructions or me bitching about how tough the last levels of Syndicate Wars were.

Here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: the 2nd part of this 2-part blog post in which I gaze at my navel and discuss the epic history of some stuff I did in 2010. Part one is here.

Other writing & projects

It was a very quiet year for fiction. I wrote one flash fiction story (here) and worked on a few unfinished short stories. It’s a shame to have let this lapse but equally I think it’s been beneficial to let those fields lie fallow for a bit. The itch to write stories is returning, and thanks to thinking rather than doing I have some ideas on how to improve my weaknesses as a writer of fiction (chiefly that my characters tend to be of a type or flat, and my prose lacks descriptive character and colour).

» Read the rest of this entry «

A bit late in the day for my 2010 roundup but hey, I’ve been busy.

I’ve split this post into two parts to break it up a bit; if you’re wondering where the other bit is, be patient. I’ve scheduled the two posts an hour apart.

Music writing!

Over the course of 2010 I posted reviews of (in chronological order) Nothington, French for Cartridge, Victoria & Jacob (twice), Rolo Tomassi, Throats (twice), Antares, Blacklisted, Bomb the Music Industry!, Bull See Red, Growns Ups (twice), Stegosaurus, Sundials, the Menzingers, Deftones, Boy Mandeville, the Black Keys, Dirty Tactics, Static Age, Campaign, Off With Their Heads, Victor! Fix the Sun, Junior Battles, Everyone Everywhere, Iron Chic, Frontier(s), Ghost Robot Ninja Bear, Come On Gang, Bastions, the Holy Mess, Pianos Become the Teeth, RVIVR, Banquets, Fake Problems, Charles the Osprey, Mixtapes, Direct Hit!, Bangers, the Border Surrender, Daughters, Young Adults, Let’s Talk Daggers, Jackals, Museum Mouth, Go Rydell, the Great Explainer, Castevet and Candy Hearts.

» Read the rest of this entry «

I didn’t know people reviewed blogs, but apparently they do! A reader has reviewed me on Scribnia:

Shaun Green manages to put literature, gaming, punk Rock all together to somehow turn this into a blog. It hosts or points at his fiction, book, music, game, film reviews, info about his musical projects, and other general bloggery. Honestly when i saw the name Nostalgia For Infinity, I thought what a terrible name. I still dont know what im reading about, Shaun Green either has something orignal and unique or completely horrible. I find his book reviews to be much more interesting than reading about his music reviews, but still nothing amazing..

“Still nothing amazing” smells like a tagline to me!

For what it’s worth, I’ve considered splitting the different strands of content into separate blogs in the past, but others persuaded me against it. I’m now fairly comfortable simply writing about what interests me. I can only hope that a few other people share some of my interests and enjoy reading some of what I write. Thanks to the author of the review above for sharing their views!

Oh yes, and the name of the blog is a relic from back before I learned to use WordPress. It’s a reference to some of SF author Al Reynold’s novels. The other names I considered were Haste Killed Creativity and Muscles Burning Alcohol and Nicotine because holy crap did I love Against Me! at the time.

Hey, loyal readers and random googlers (I hope you find the BioShock/Gor slashfic you’re looking for). There’ve been a lack of reviews recently for these exciting reasons:

1.) My band is recording a second demo tomorrow. TOMORROW! So I’ve been busy practising our newer songs, installing new tubes in my amp (turns out that balancing the power tubes in a DSL100 is pretty easy, even when you’re drunk) and restringing my guitars (ugh, replacing strings is for when you break them, at least in my book). EXCITING.

2.) I’ve had a promotion at work at the same time as a friend / colleague has left so I’ve been pretty preoccupied with plugging gaps in dayjob-world.

3.) I’ve been kind of inclined to spend my free time chilling out with films, videogames and friends rather than writing in a darkened room. Not that I have a problem with the latter, but it’s more like work than blowing off steam.

4.) IT’S THE SUMMER <3 <3 <3

I’ll post up the occasional review as and when the mood takes me & will be back with three more levels of experience and a +1 Something of Whatever in the near future. I may also have other cool stuff to share, e.g. a friend and I are going to collaborate on an indie game… I’ll provide writing and “ideas” and she’ll do the hard work. Awesome!!!

If you want to follow something I’m doing in the meantime, check my twitter or tumblr thingies.

…if you can make it down, we’d love to see you there!

Sometimes blogging can seem like a bit of a thankless slog, or worse a pointless endeavour… pissing words into the winds of the internet. This harsh fact is evidenced by the corpses of hundreds of thousands of abandoned blogs and websites. I enjoy writing, I enjoy sharing the things I’ve written and I like the idea that they’re being read, either by friends, those who simply stumble by, or by regular readers who I don’t know. Still, on occasion I wonder if it’s worth pushing myself to keep at it – if I should just focus on my band and writing the occasional story and review stuff when I feel in the mood.

Today a chap I work with, who I think has reviewed books for The Guardian in the past, spoke to me regarding a review I’d written on this blog. He mentioned that the author, who was a friend of his, had sent the link to him as he was pleased with it. The author’s friend realised the reviewer was me… small world, huh? Anyway, it was a really cool thing to hear as I thought a lot of the book in question. Little things like this make the whole endeavour feel a little bit more worthwhile.

It’s also cool when people stop by and leave comments – I’m glad you guys do that. Thanks!

Anyway, I’m posting this mainly because today has been a good day. Despite being shittily hungover and tired all day at work, and getting done pretty much none of the stuff I wanted to do this evening, I feel upbeat about this blog and my writing, and to cap it all off I’ve just found out that my band will be playing its first headline show next month. And now I’m off to get drunk and play music with my friends in said band.

Today is a good day. Have a lolcat.

P.S. Yes yes yes I am still working on my Four Lions review. Apparently a nearby screening this weekend has a Q&A with Chris Morris and the cast. I’m tempted even though I have very few monies…

It’s a while since I posted here about what my band is up to. In fact, I think it’s been so long that I haven’t even mentioned that we now have a MySpace page. Yes, it’s true, we finally caught up with 2004. We’re just in time for MySpace to continue its decline and watch as it becomes a swan dive into a financial black hole. If that’s not punk rock I don’t know what is.

In other news, Jake “bass” “face” Powis left the band in the middle of last year while he swanned off to Japan “for a few months”. It ended up turning into the rest of the year, and now he’s staying for 2010 as well – he’s met a girlie out there. Aww! So we replaced him back in November with Chris Watson, a stalwart of a number of bands around Brighton, presently Another Day Lost (for whom he sings). I first met Chris at the Concorde2 – who we were there to see, I don’t remember – where we found out that we both liked obscure 90s British melodic punk bands like broccoli and Hooton 3 Car. He’s a cool guy not to mention even taller than Jake, and his bass playing brings a more aggressive edge to our sound that I feel has re-invigorated our songs.

We have our third gig – ironically with our third line-up – on January 15th, where we’re opening Friday night’s punk round-up at the Brighton Hobgoblin. It’ll probably be pretty busy so no doubt I’ll be bricking it.

As for the demo which we recorded, oh last May or something, Ben is still mixing and mastering the bloody thing so who knows when it’ll be done. To be honest I’m on the verge of sticking the unfinished mixes online because he’s taking so long to get the proper versions sorted. Anyway, if we don’t have anything available to listen to come the day before our gig I’ll stick those early mixes online so people have something of ours to check out.

Big love and many boozes from Wrecktheplacefantastic!

Time to break the radio silence. Yes, the good ship Nostalgia For Infinity has been coasting through the black unmanned for a while, but things should pick up again now that we’ve crested the wave of 2009 and are bearing down on 2010.

On a personal level the last three or four months have been pretty fucked up, but after a relaxing and head-clearing break over Xmas and the New Year I’m feeling a lot better and more optimistic, which is always a good thing for my writing. I’ve got some reviews queued up for the next few days and will hopefully continue to provide semi-regular content as this shiny new year grows.

Thanks for your patience!