The Quixotic Engineer

Here’s to another month of recommended listening!

I was linked to Los Campesinos! by Derek Tallon’s blog To Be Determined (he summarizes the video pretty well, with observations about “Big Eared Yellow Shirted Guy With A Fun Singing Accent” and “Shy Guy Who is Probably The Drummer.”) When I first heard them my inner cynic was cringing at the fake cheerleader sounds in the background, an effect that’s really overused in indie rock. Once I got over that, I really enjoyed their debut album Hold on Now, Youngster…, which includes highlights such as “Death to Los Campesinos!” and “You! Me! Dancing!” (it would seem that they’re rather fond of exclamation marks.)

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There have been a good number of grade A releases recently (I’m still working on GTA4, and recently picked up On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness), but the one that has me completely hooked is The World Ends With You, an unconventional RPG for the Nintendo DS by Square-Enix.

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Last week my arguments against the Bioshock movie revolved largely around the fact that I do not believe that the game’s experience can be faithfully reproduced in a non-interactive medium. My two arguments in favour of the film aren’t so much counter-arguments to my last observations as they are sort of lateral benefits.

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Last Friday it was announced that a Bioshock feature film was in the works, to be helmed by Gore Verbinski of “Pirates of the Caribbean” fame. In theory this is terrific news, Bioshock was one of my favourite games of last year. Its objectivist theme and unique setting made it rich for analysis, and it spawned several terrific essays from some of my favourite games writers.

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This month’s Musical Box is brought to you by Second Cup, who very kindly allowed me to leech their free wireless Internet without buying anything. *cough* Well, here’s last month’s musical discoveries (one week late.)

(If I keep posting Nav’s musical suggestions, I’m going to have to rename this series “The Copy/Pasted from Google Reader Box.”) The Internet tells me that Santogold (Santi White) is a music industry veteran, and there was a great deal of anticipation leading up to her debut release. I’m not hip enough to have caught a whiff of said hype, but I really like the album. Santogold has been compared to M.I.A., and the comparison is apt. It’s extremely hard to categorize her sound, she blurs the lines between pop, electro and alternative. The album has hits and misses, but the whole is well worth checking out.

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