Dust - A Dirt Track Odyssey

[chrisnz]

Has anybody else tried this?

It's a real weirdo. Two of the main players come from The Herbaliser which is a downtempo Hip Hop kind of outfit whose last album, Something Wicked.. bored the tits off me and was resold in a heartbeat. Odyssey is so different that it's disorientating. Perhaps the only thing that gives a clue to their background is that occasionally a rather thin idea is stretched out beyond breaking point for the sake of the groove.

So it's guitars then dude, acoustic, electric even some lubricious slide that wouldn't sound amiss on a Stones'y honk. Cinematic strings, Floydian/Beatlesian melodies and a vibe that recalls the most blissed out moments of Primal Screams - Screamadelica.

There's not a new idea to be had on the entire disc but as I type this, watching a thin winter rain through the window, it's a cruisy summer evening inside and that's a GOOD thing!

I can't find many reviews at all but there's this on AMG..

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=UIDMISS70311062319391283&sql=Ajsrc284l05na

Strange but good then.

Chris.

[Davey]

Has anybody else tried this?
Not me or anyone I know besides you, but it does sound kind of cool. Are the vocals a rap or singing? Anything with a Portishead reference in the description/review is worth exploring to me. I wonder if there will ever be another album from them. Guess not after this long.

[chrisnz]

Not me or anyone I know besides you, but it does sound kind of cool. Are the vocals a rap or singing? Anything with a Portishead reference in the description/review is worth exploring to me. I wonder if there will ever be another album from them. Guess not after this long.

It's singing, there's nothing on here that references hiphop at all. There's no jagged edges either which I usually like but what can I say it's just... nice :-) They've re-released it with a bonus disc of remixes, which I may check out, and AMG mentions good reviews but I can't find any.

NP Squarepusher - Ultravisitor and it sounds pretty good, much to my suprise.

PS. I just read the first SF book since I was about 21 and I thought of you. Pat Cadigan - Synners it was in a display at the library of readers favourites and I took a chance, not earth shattering but interesting. You got any recs? Not space cowboys!

Hang on, I have actually read some of Iain Banks' SF stories so not the first since I was 21. I've seen one in the bookshops, Neuromancer(?) that looked interesting.

Regards, Chris.

[Davey]

PS. I just read the first SF book since I was about 21 and I thought of you. Pat Cadigan - Synners it was in a display at the library of readers favourites and I took a chance, not earth shattering but interesting. You got any recs? Not space cowboys!

Hang on, I have actually read some of Iain Banks' SF stories so not the first since I was 21. I've seen one in the bookshops, Neuromancer(?) that looked interesting.

Regards, Chris.
Science Fiction! Alright, let me get out my nerd hat :)

I don't know what you've read in the past or what your taste might be, but in science fiction (and I guess fiction in general) my taste is somewhat similar to what I like in music and film, kind of dark and quirky with lots of strong imagery. You mentioned Iain Banks and he's written some really good novels in the last 15 years. The Neuromancer novel by William Gibson is very good and was what many point to as the beginning of the cyberpunk era of science fiction, something for which I think he should get both credit and blame. Really enjoyed it at the time but that type of story got old with me pretty quick. He wasn't really the first as people were jacking in for many years previously (including the excellent Samuel Delany <i>Nova</i> from the late 60s that I list below and which I sometimes claim is my favorite sci-fi novel) but that book was extremely popular and set the scene so well.

So here's a quick ten that come readily to mind spanning the last 50 years in roughly chronological order. Most of them are acknowledged classics, visionary and timeless, and I think they are all highly acclaimed so should be easy to find. Descriptions at amazon but I might recommend Dan Simmons <i>Hyperion</i> for a start. It's about 10 years old and is just a beautifully written book recounting the individual stories that brought a handful of diverse people together on their present monumental quest. Leaves you hanging at the end as it is the beginning of what became a 4-part series, but taken on its own it is one of the most memorable books I've ever read. The second part was a letdown for me and I didn't go any further, but I still love that first one.

Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
Walter M. Miller Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz
Samuel Delany - Nova
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
John Brunner - Stand On Zanzibar
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
Iain M. Banks - Consider Phlebas
Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Jack McDevitt - A Talent for War
Vernor Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky




And here's a few more of my favorites for a better context....

Samuel Delany - Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Isaac Asimov - The Gods Themselves
Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed
Frederick Pohl - Gateway
Michael Kube-McDowell - Alternaties
Arthur Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light
Greg Bear - Eon
A.A. Attanasio - Radix
Gregory Benford - Across the Sea of Suns
Norman Spinrad - Child of Fortune
Walter Tevis - The Man Who Fell to Earth
Robert A. Heinlein - The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age
Vernor Vinge - A Fire upon the Deep
Clifford D. Simak - Way Station
Iain M. Banks - The Player of Games
Iain M. Banks - Use of Weapons
Michael Flynn - The Wreck of the River of Stars
Hal Clement- Mission of Gravity
Jack Vance - Planet Adventure

[chrisnz]

I think it might be a little late in the game to be trying to convince anyone 'round here that your nerd hat would be removable with anything short of surgery :-)

Ok I've ordered Hyperion and Neuromancer. Looking through your list (printed out for future reference) there's quite a lot that I remember from the days when I used to inhale them in the 70's. Not that that's going to be a problem, I've just finished reading a book that I first read five years ago and aside from the vague notion that I'd already been there I could remember very little of it. I'm trying to put a brave spin on this worrying trend by thinking of all the money I'll save just rereading everything I've previously bought rather than shelling out for any new ones...

Chris.

[Dusty Chalk]

Thanks, Davey.

I love Greg Bear. I would think Heads would be a good place to start (being as it's short).

Ender's Game is everyone's favourite, but the problem with that is, it just makes you want to read everything else in that series (and if you include Ender's Shadow, it's two series). Enchantment or Songmaster are good stand-alone books that will get you started out just fine.

Good choice on Roger Zelazny -- whoa! Takes me back. First author that I considered my "favourite".

I would also recommend one of the Jerry Pournelle/Larry Niven collaborations -- Mote in God's Eye, Hammerfall, or Legacy of Heorot.

[Davey]

I love Greg Bear. I would think Heads would be a good place to start (being as it's short).

Ender's Game is everyone's favourite, but the problem with that is, it just makes you want to read everything else in that series (and if you include Ender's Shadow, it's two series). Enchantment or Songmaster are good stand-alone books that will get you started out just fine.

Good choice on Roger Zelazny -- whoa! Takes me back. First author that I considered my "favourite".

I would also recommend one of the Jerry Pournelle/Larry Niven collaborations -- Mote in God's Eye, Hammerfall, or Legacy of Heorot.
Ya know, I'm not really a big Greg Bear fan. I have <i>Eon</i> and the followup <i>Legacy</i> in the bookcase so decided to put that on the list, but to be honest I think Arthur Clarke's similar <i>Rendezvous With Rama</i> is far better and I haven't read those Bear novels for eons. But I do really like his more recent <i>Moving Mars</i> that I mentioned in the Dave and Brad go to Mars sci-fi discussion here recently which I think is what prompted me to include <i>Eon</i>. Brad doesn't like it nearly as much as me though. Never read or even heard of <i>Head</i> so I'll have to check into it. I might have read <i>Darwin's Radio</i>, or at least started it, can't remember. He doesn't really have much of a writing style, does he?

My bookcase is right behind me when I'm home on the computer so that's where most of the list came from except for the newer stuff which I've mainly been scrounging from the library. Probably left out some of my alltime favorites but didn't spend much time on it. If I think of some grievous omissions you might enjoy I'll drop you and Chris a note. Tons of classics not on the list, and lots more that I haven't read in ages. The good ones are always worth reading at least a couple times, especially since, like Chris, I tend to forget what I've read after a few years (or in some cases, a few days :)).

I never made it very far in that Ender's series, probably only read the first two. Some of it after that seemed to get a lot more into the fantasy world than I'm usually into. I tend to prefer more solidly sci-fi novels, especially if they include lots of lurid sex in vividly imagined alien environments.

Yeah, that Niven/Pournelle <i>The Mote in God's Eye</i> is good. Haven't read it in probably 20 years but it's another real classic. Pretty hard sci-fi though. Niven's <i>A World Out of Time</i> is another old classic that I just recently reread. Fun book. Another one that isn't much more than a novella. He really does his best work in the shorter forms since he's more of an idea guy. Guess many of the sci-fi writers tend to excel in the short story, and then the good stories are sometimes expanded into novels.

I'm reading the almost brand new Peter Hamilton <i>Pandora's Star</i> right now but not sure if I'll finish it. It's a giant book and when I started I didn't realize that it was just the first in a series. Lots of interesting little but seemingly disconnected stories that I guess must get tied together at some point, but not sure if I wanna hang in for that long. He's a good writer, but I'll probably take it back to the library as I'm only up to page 100 of 755 and am starting to lose interest in it.

[Dusty Chalk]

Ya know, I'm not really a big Greg Bear fan...He doesn't really have much of a writing style, does he?I don't know -- I just noticed from the few books I've read by him that he usually really captures the human emotions and evokes them well.
I never made it very far in that Ender's series, probably only read the first two. Some of it after that seemed to get a lot more into the fantasy world than I'm usually into. I tend to prefer more solidly sci-fi novels, especially if they include lots of lurid sex in vividly imagined alien environments.I highly recommend Ender's Shadow. It's the same story told from Bean's perspective instead of Ender's. I forget on which book cover I read it, but someone said that Card really captures humanity well, and I have to agree. Even though Ender is a hero-type, he still has strengths and weaknesses, as does Bean, and yet they're different. At least he didn't go off into la-la land like Herbert did in the latter half of the Dune series.

Yeah, Enchantment is pure fantasy, and Songmaster isn't that much more hard sci-fi. I definitely don't mind that. And yet, you enjoyed that Stephenson book. I guess it's mostly hard sci-fi, but I remember some fantastical elements to it...or am I wrong? I guess you don't like Gibson much, he always includes some mystical element (except for maybe Pattern Recognition).
He [Niven] really does his best work in the shorter forms since he's more of an idea guy.I have to agree. Even though some of his ideas are so huge, that they do merit a novel (Ringworld comes to mind).
It's a giant book and when I started I didn't realize that it was just the first in a series.Yeah, I had the same problem with Quicksilver (Stephenson). From what I gather from inside the back flap, he's already written the next two.

[Davey]

I highly recommend Ender's Shadow. It's the same story told from Bean's perspective instead of Ender's. I forget on which book cover I read it, but someone said that Card really captures humanity well, and I have to agree. Even though Ender is a hero-type, he still has strengths and weaknesses, as does Bean, and yet they're different. Yeah, Enchantment is pure fantasy, and Songmaster isn't that much more hard sci-fi. I definitely don't mind that. And yet, you enjoyed that Stephenson book. I guess it's mostly hard sci-fi, but I remember some fantastical elements to it...or am I wrong? I guess you don't like Gibson much, he always includes some mystical element (except for maybe Pattern Recognition).
Well, I know what you're saying in that Orson Scott Card is truly a very gifted writer and just about anything by him would probably be a worthwhile read. I guess it must've been Xenocide that I started to read last year because I do have the first two from the Ender series in my bookcase. Just didn't interest me that much and I hadn't read the first two since the late 80s so almost felt the need to go back and read them again. But I remember not really liking Speaker For The Dead all that much. Maybe a fresh read many years later would spark more interest in the rest of his books, he sure has a ton of them. I hear that there is a deal in the works to make Ender's Game into a movie. Don't know what his previous credits are, but Wolfgang Petersen is to direct. Just looked at amazon and there are over <b>2000</b> reviews for that book!

I don't dislike all fantasy, and certainly many of my favorites include fantasy. It's mainly the ones that live in the world of swords and dragons (metaphorically speaking) that I don't generally like to read. But it isn't a hard and fast rule. Delany has written some great stuff that I like. Joan Vinge and a few others too. The Diamond Age is so quirky it doesn't really matter the setting. Just a fun book to read. And it is futuristic. Lately I tend to shy away from historical type fiction, instead preferring the far future. I think I've read Gibson's Neuromancer and Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive but kind of OD'd on him so haven't read anything since. I'm kind of the same with books as I am with music so seldom read much more than 2 or 3 books by any one author except for a very select few. Just too many others to check out. I can understand why people would continue to read Stephen Kind after about 50 novels, but it just isn't me :)

PS: I guess it might be better to continue offline since we long since gave up any pretense of maintaining a music context in this thread and some people might get peeved seeing it continue to pop up to the top ;)