Good morning, humans. It's a strike day today, so what better time to show you what's passed across my paint desk recently. Somehow I've found time amid all the exam board/student support jobs in the last three weeks (done at half pay, no less) to finish the last ten Orks from the Assault On Black Reach Boyz Mob. Very proud of these; if they're not the best squad I've ever painted, they're surely in the top five.
Here's all eighteen of the emerald hooligans, all of them desperate to kick yer zoggin' teef in.
Also, we once again Compare and Contrast, with my latest 'Nid Warrior painted like it's 1996. He's simple, he's bold, he's got a ludicrous gun in ludicrous colours. Ah, nostalgia.
One last picture I wanted to show you: I've finally gotten every one of my painted miniatures into glass display cases at the new(ish) house. The wider cases are for 40K, with the smaller cases being taken up by Warhammer, Dreadfleet, Battlefleet Gothic, Space Hulk, and Talisman figures (along with some spare 40K scenery).
Pretty proud of this set-up, even if a miscalculation regarding plastic pegs caused one of the shelves to fall, taking out three Blood Angels Strike cruisers and nine assorted System Defence installations on the way down. That was a sombre day at Casa del Calamari, I must tell you.
The thing about Interpol’s debut is that it sounded so much like Joy Division. The thing about Joy Division is that I only really liked them when they weren’t sounding like Joy Division.
You can see the problem.
Sure, points for honesty. The brief, tyrannical reign of New Wave 2.0 was always about extrapolating what could have come after the 1989, had the music industry not chosen instead to wholesale recycle the Seventies with far worse fashion. If we hadn’t had the gall to mock trousers that were needlessly wide at the ankles while wearing T-shirts that changed fucking colour. If you goal was a do-over, who better to base that on than one of the greatest what-ifs of the eighties or any other decade? Let other bands hide their guiding lights under a bushel. As their first album declared, Interpol was letting you know exactly where the flame spilled out from.
Not that light is in evidence here. Even the night is blind here, finding what might be pinpricks of illumination through heat alone. The one mode that Prelimterpol tended to get right for me, as we’ve discussed, was the cavernous soundscape. The alien world described over a distorted connection by a feverish, dying astronaut. “Leif Erikson” nails that mode perfectly, from the title outwards; an insomniac always on the verge of falling asleep, experiencing the flow of time as a moonless sail across an infinite, glass-flat sea. Trapped in the liminal prison where everything thought circles, ripping your skin with each rotation. What was it she said about me? What if she shows up early? What if I’m as dead as she thinks I am? Everything repeats, everything hurts, nothing resolves, nothing heals.
There are songs you should only listen to at night, and songs you mustn't listen to at night. This is both. A hymn for the gloaming. A warning of what’s coming, on those nights where sleep is an ocean away.
Predicting a close one for the snooker this year, lads, though I'm even less certain I'm getting this right than I usually am - yesterday just felt too crazy to properly parse. Ah well.
Jesus! He'd probably be into 40K, innit. Likely play as Chaos, too, really wind up the SO-CALLED religous authorities. Just how he rolled.
I've been busily chipping away at the same Assault On Black Reach mob of Orks that I've had on the go for well over a year now. Another five of them have fallen off the end of the conveyer belt.
Along with the three I'd already done, that puts me almost halfway through the squad.
I also finished my last Advaned Space Crusade Tyranid Warrior too, still clinging doggedly to my bare minimum/ham fisted incompetence colour scheme that has graced my 'Nids for almost three decades now.
The other big development in my hobbying is that I've finally got enough glass display cabinets to house every miniature/scenery peie I've painted since I was sixteen. I had planned on photographing them to include in this post, but one of the shelves collapsed on Monday, dropping three metal Strike Cruisers on my collection of resin Imperial Defence Platforms, causing some pretty aggravating
I've managed to salvage two of the crusiers and all the platforms (though one of the latter looks like its had a brush with the Warp that it won't be coming back from). The last ship should also be fixable, but it's going to need pinning, and for that I need to find a drill-bit that I haven't spent a decade using to re-open superglue nozzles that have gummed themselves shut. Until I've managed that, I don't have the heart to show you the 99.5% of my collection which isn't smashed to bits.
Roddy Woomble once said “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was Joy Division’s best single, if only because it’s the only one that captures the band’s live energy. I was four months when Ian Curtis killed himself, so I had to take Woomble’s word for it, but it certainly feels unusual – almost unique - within the band’s songs. This is one of those contrary takes wearying dickheads pretend are “unpopular”, or – heaven forfend! – “cancellable”, but I’ve never been able to get next to Joy Division. I don’t quibble with Peter Hook’s contention their music seemed to come from some other place. It just wasn’t a very enticing place, cold and distant and half-illuminated with polarised light. Extraordinary doesn’t have to mean engaging.
“Love Will Tear Us Apart”, together with equally late cuts “Atmosphere” and (so late Curtis was dead before it was recorded, and it came out as a New Order joint) “Ceremony”, represented the band moving into more interesting territory. Or, given the previous metaphor, perhaps I should say they represented a shift in how the band processed the territory they were already exploring. Songs about how it felt to traverse this strange, alien world, rather than terse reports about what it contained.
There are all sorts of offensively self-centred ways to link Curtis’ last months with the quality of the song. All of them we shall ignore. No song is so good it is worth a human life, and no band is so good them losing one among their number is primarily sad because the music stops. Instead of inferences, then, let’s stick to the one certainty we have in this: “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is one of the greatest songs ever recorded. That should be - HAS to be - enough.
