Hello! I'm Tom. I'm a game designer, writer, and programmer on Gunpoint, Heat Signature, and Tactical Breach Wizards. Here's some more info on all the games I've worked on, here are the videos I make on YouTube, and here are two short stories I wrote for the Machine of Death collections.
By me. Uses Adaptive Images by Matt Wilcox.
You demand some awesome new music to listen to on a loop for the coming weeks and thereafter associate with Christmas forever! It is a reasonable demand, and I shall do my best.
I cannot stop listening to Upon This Tidal Wave Of Young Blood by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, which even if you don’t particularly like me you have to admit can only be amazing from the title and band name. I can’t point to anything specifically Christmassy about it, but it still seemed seasonal even the first time I heard it. It is way better than This Home On Ice, which I think is a better-known song of theirs. The guy’s voice is so immediately unmelodious that you have to get over any problem you might have with it in the first few seconds, and after that, the way its loose, sharp, narcoleptically over-casual sound droops off the stiff, lush music creates a weirdly pleasing harmony. How about that.
Destroyer. You can’t go far wrong with Destroyer. The name is misleading, they’re not rubbish metal, although I’m not quite sure what they are. Craig would class them as “gay medieval music,” but that goes for more or less everything I listen to. Suffice to say they can make the line “Students carve hearts out of coal, and I just thought I’d let you know” catchy. That doesn’t really suffice at all, and I don’t have a link except to this rather unrepresentative song, but if you think you might like a band with verses like “It’s just Crystal Country showing us that everything must break to be beautiful, and honey, that’s what I meant when I called and said ‘This is fucked.'” – you’ll probably get along just fine.
It was pretty dark when I left work tonight. It felt odd because it’s summer, and I left as early as I could (six) (after a quick bout of Ragdoll Kung Fu) (/self-important brag). Clouds – that’s what I blame. Absurdly the guy walking out of the building ahead of me immediately turned back when he reached the door, nearly knocking me over, and waited with what I suddenly realised was a small crowd of people apparently unable to cope with the outside world while it was raining. Some of them had coats.
I’ll tell you what’s good music for this: Sketch Show – Chronograph. One of those from-nowhere gems John Peel used to unearth, brush off and show to us proudly. It is pointedly headphone music, a willful disconnection from your surroundings – which should ideally be modern, wet and sickly with electric light.
That is atmosphere. It’s weird how long you can go without experiencing any atmosphere to speak of, and without noticing that you’re comparitively numb during this period. The second a mood like tonight’s early storm wakes me up, everything becomes interesting, refreshing and promising. Today was completely different to yesterday, it had its own feel. Consider the following exchange from Seinfeld:
Kramer: What’s today?
Newman: It’s Thursday.
Kramer: Really? Feels like Tuesday.
Newman: Tuesday has no feel. Monday has a feel. Friday has a feel, Sunday has a feel.
Kramer: I feel Tuesday and Wednesdays.
Today is a Wednesday, and I felt it. I’m not sure anything but Fridays have a feel for me normally, and it’s a shame. You remember days with feels. I remember lying on my back with a friend from uni, listening to Seymour Stein with the windows open on a summer day on which we had one lecture each. I remember turning up to those same lectures on another day, late, in winter, biting my gloves off as I locked up my bike and bustled into the orange lecture theatre with an aura of unwelcome cold air. The difference between these days and forgettable ones is not what happened, just the weather. Sometimes it’s memorable, and everything is interesting.
Last night had atmosphere too – walking home from a meal made uncommonly cheap by a combination of special offers and the plastic prong of a salad fork found in Rich’s lettuce. Bath at night, like any British city of a certain size, is usually post-apocalyptic with pockets of angry, red-faced public druggies. But when it’s a warm, still night and all you can hear is the dark, sinister serenity of Coaxing Méche from the Grim Fandango soundtrack, it’s suddenly the soft stone of the ancient buildings, the park by the river and the wide open spaces that you notice.
The short story is that an MP3 player is necessary to slow the passage of time. I suggest an iRiver of some description, but only ever buy the international versions of their players from now on – the American ones are crippled by the forced introduction of ‘MTP’, a Microsoft protocol the device has to use to connect to your PC, designed to support Digital Rights Management (file copying restrictions to enable new ways of paying for downloadable music). The problem with it, apart from that, is that it’s sickeningly slow, bans you from copying file types Microsoft doesn’t understand – even if the player itself supports them (most notably the wonderful OGG) – only works on PCs with Windows Media Player 10, won’t let you open files straight from the device or even Explore them in the normal way, hides the directory structure and the firmware from you, frequently hangs when copying files to the player and occasionally corrupts the ones it does claim to have copied successfully. The international versions still use ‘UMS’, which means they work as a fast, restriction-free removable hard drive. And there’s virtually nothing you can throw at an iRiver that it can’t play. Just so you know.
You also need to stop eating so much. I think I was even putting on weight as my existence became comfortable. This is no way to live. Everyone should spend at least half of their life hungry and listening to music. Comfort is a bit like death, you just exist and decay. There’s nothing wrong with improving your situation to a satisfactory level, but you can’t just stop once you’ve done it – you need to keep exploring, feel like you’re traveling whether you go anywhere new or not. We are all pretty stuck in our geographical ruts, but with new music for when we’re in the world, and new everything else for when we’re not, we ought to feel like we’re at the frontiers of human experience. All the time.
Another good one for rain – anything by the Postal Service. Ben Gibbard – the common factor between them and Death Cab For Cutie – is the only person writing romantic things that don’t leave me cold. Plans, the new Death Cab, is wonderful. I’m kind of a neophile with them (and music in general), in that Transatlanticism was the first album of theirs I wholly loved, and this is frequently better. Marching Bands Of Manhattan is the one to try if you get the chance.
Let me clarify something rather suddenly and unnecessarily: we regularly have great conversations at work. Our business is a ridiculous one, and so consultations with colleagues tend to be about other-worldly matters or puns. I intend to write some of them down. But since we’re not all philosophy students, looking back at one exchange I transcribed at university still induces mild pangs of nostalgia.
Andrew: Does anyone want this last piece of cake?
Ben: Nope.
Andrew: Well, you’re wrong, because I do.
Ben: Then I misunderstood the nature of the question. I thought you were calling for each of us to say whether or not we wanted it.
Andrew: Ha! I knew you’d think that!
Me: If you wanted him to think that, that’s what you meant by it. What you mean is just what you want the other person to understand by your words.
Andrew: No it’s not! If that was true, how could anyone lie?
Me: Well, you can mean something you know isn’t true. Like, if I said my face was blue, I’d mean that my face was blue even though I knew it wasn’t.
Andrew: But I had mental pictures…
Me: You can’t go the mental pictures route. Rob doesn’t even have mental pictures.
Katy: Yeah, that’s weird.
Andrew: Who said I wanted him to think that, anyway?
Me: I guess we got that from the way you were shouting “Ha! I wanted you to think that!” whilst jumping up and down and pointing at him.
Andrew: I didn’t say that!
Ben: Yes you did.
Andrew: No, I said “I knew you’d think that.”
Me: Yeah, he’s right, actually. So are you saying you didn’t want him to think that?
Andrew: Yeah.
Me: But you knew he would, and you said it anyway.
Andrew: Yeah.
Me: So it was with a heavy heart and a deep sadness that you said this, knowing you’d be horribly misunderstood.
Andrew: Yeah.
Me: And that was why you were jumping up and down and pointing at him?
Andrew: I was angry!
Me: And laughing?
Andrew: With anger!
John Walker lauded my musical taste when he heard The Mountain Goats coming out of my speakers a few weeks ago, but in fact it was not my doing. Soma FM’s consistently excellent Indie Pop Rocks (But College Rock Sucks) station was choosing my music at the time. I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t even noticed that a particularly good song was playing, such is the usual standard. But I have now investigated, after he enthused so keenly, and lo, they are le awesome.
Rainy – before you ask – wistful, impossibly pretty acoustic indie folk, is how I would crudely characterise it. It made me think of Molasses and Neutral Milk Hotel, but they have all the earnest charm and arcane lyrics of The Decemberists and when they get silly, as they do on Dance Music, it’s as much fun as when Jeffrey Lewis does. If you don’t know who any of those people are, you might not like them. But since you can get an MP3 right here, you don’t have to risk it. And if you do like it, check out all those other people. The linked track, You Or Your Memory, is one of the softest, but firmly a grower and my current favourite. Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod is a close second.
I’m basing all this on their latest, The Sunset Tree, since that’s all I know. That’s what you should get, by your preferred method, and listen to immediately. I haven’t found myself so absorbed by the atmosphere of an album since discovering the Ugly Casanova one a few Christmasses ago. It’s one to get lost in.
The New Pornographers
The Laws Have Changed; A Testament To Youth In Verse; Chump Change
Genre: dazzling, explosive power-pop
Belle And Sebastian
Sleep The Clock Around; I’m A Cuckoo; Seymour Stein
Genre: meek, fey indie-pop
The Delgados
Favours; The Light Before We Land; Witness
Genre: majestic, orchestral indie-pop
Arcade Fire
Tunnels; Lies; In The Back Seat
Architecture In Helsinki
What’s In Store; The Cemetary; Wishbone
Clinic
The Magician; Welcome; Thank You For Living
Decemberists
July, July; Angel Won’t You Call Me?; The Soldiering Life
Gomez
Do One; Catch Me Up; Rex Kramer
Low
Step; Canada; California
Mates Of State
Goods (All In Your Head); Whiner’s Bio; Ha Ha
Radar Brothers
You And The Father; Shifty Lies; Rock Of The Lake
Seedling
The Upshot; Endora; High On The Downside
Sleater-Kinney
Let’s Call It Love; The Fox; What’s Mine Is Yours
Smog
Feather By Feather; Lazy Rain; River Guard
Stereolab
Speedy Car; Cybele’s Reverie; Metronomic Underground
Yo La Tengo
Moonrock Mambo; Damage; Autumn Sweater
AC Newman
The Town Halo; Miracle Drug; On The Table
Add N To (X)
Party Bag; Hit For Cheese; Metal Fingers In My Body
Air Miami
Dolphin Expressway; I Hate Milk; Sweet Little Heartbreaker
Aluminum Group
A Blur In Your Vision; Two Lights; Rrose Salivy’s Valise
At The Drive-In
One-Armed Scissor; Alpha Centauri; Pattern Against User
Ballboy
Nobody Really Knows Anything; Where Do The Nights Of Sleep Go To When They Do Not Come To Me?; I’ve Got Pictures Of You In Your Underwear
Belly
Super-Connected; Untitled And Unsung; Now They’ll Sleep
Ben Folds
Landed; Rockin’ The Suburbs; Not The Same
Ben Folds’ Five
Army; One Angry Dwarf And Two-Hundred Solemn Faces; Narcolepsy
Black Box Recorder
Girl Singing In The Wreckage; Goodnight Kiss; Weekend
Camera Obscura
Lunar Sea; Eighties Fan; Teenager
Cat Power
Nude As The News; Maybe Not; Speak For Me
Cinerama
Health And Efficiency; Love; Superman
Clint Boon Experience!
Comet Theme Number One; Only One Way I Can Go; Seventeen And Over
Cuban Boys
Cuban Boy 2000; Disco Boy; Kenny
Dirty Three
No Stranger Than That; Sea Above, Sky Below; Hope
Flaming Lips
Race For The Prize; Slow Motion; The Gash
French
Porn Shoes; Canada Water; The Stars, The Moon, The Sun And The Clouds
Go! Team
The Power Is On; Bottle Rocket; Panther Dash
Godspeed, You Black Emperor! *
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven!**; Moya; Blaise Bailey Finnegan III
Goldfrapp
Tiptoe; Lovely Head; Horse Tears
Hefner
The Sweetness Lies Within; The Sad Witch; Wicker Girl
Interpol
One; Obstacle One; Obstacle Two
Jeffrey Lewis
The East River; The Chelsea Hotel; Springtime
Jim O’Rourke
Movie On The Way Down; Something Big; Through The Night Softly
Ladybug Transistor
A Burial At Sea; Choking On Air; Song For The Ending Day
Ladytron
He Took Her To A Movie; Flicking Your Switch; The Way That I Found You
M83
Lower Your Eyelids To Die With The Sun; On A White Lake Near A Green Mountain; Teen Angst
Modest Mouse
Float On; Life Like Weeds; Doing The Cockroach
Múm
Green Grass Of Tunnel; Weeping-Rock Rock; I’m Nine Today
Nena
?; Just A Dream; Rette Mich
Pavement
Roll With The Wind; Elevate Me Later; Unfair
Pernice Brothers
Number Two; Seven Thirty; Weakest Shade Of Blue
Pram
Penny Arcade; Mother Of Pearl; Track Of The Cat
Primitives
Laughing Up My Sleeve; Nothing Left To Say; I Almost Touched You
Prolapse
One Illness; The Government Of Spain; Cacophony Number A
Quasi
Better Luck Next Time; I Never Want To See You Again; A Case Of No Way Out
Radiohead
Sit Down, Stand Up; Fog; Dollars And Cents
Sigur Rós
Svefn-G-Englar; 01; Vidrar Vel Til Lofturasa
Ted Leo And The Pharmacists
Me And Mia; Walking To Do; Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?
Telstar Ponies
A Little Cloud; The Fall Of Little Summer; Sail Her On
Trembling Blue Stars
St Paul’s Cathedral At Night; The Ghost Of An Unkissed Kiss; Haunted Days
Ugly Casanova
Hotcha Girls; Barnacles; Parasites
Virgin-Whore Complex
Wise And Mighty Emperor; Unrequited Love; I See More
Wilco
Jesus, Etc; Theologians; Company In My Back