The Mapfolio to End All Mapfolios

<Coventry> Still, without the ship sinking, no movie made, no getting to see kate winslet's tit.
It's not going to stop 'til you wise up.

Hi

Well, I told myself I would not let two weeks pass and there I went and did it. Sorry. I do have an excuse though, sort of, that excuse being that I was winding up to the end of school. I am finished now, so I will either have more time to spend on this page and other idle pursuits or less, depending on whether my education actually pays off or was merely a first step on my journey into obscurity. ;)

It helps that I've totally lost interest in both Subspace and Infantry and have been playing Counter-Strike almost exclusively for the last month. (The only exception being TeamFortress Classic; how's that for an exception?) I have actually made my long awaited leap into editing for 3D games and will probably be cranking out some maps for various Half-Life permutations sometime soon. Which reminds me that GiGaKiLLeR, probably the last active SVS mapper for Subspace other than myself and anna-puma, has been getting hardcore into mapping for Quake III Arena. I've not seen his work yet because I lack drivespace to reinstall the game, but will be making space for that soon and getting back to y'all with some highly biased reviews. ;)

And speaking of reviews, Map Vault is obviously quite dead. At least grant me credit that I finally got around to declaring a state of hiatus there. I never intended to be the only writer for the page and would gladly accept any competent help if anyone out there is interested. That aside, it will probably be only a few more days before I restart work on the page.

Hyperspace

I posted a questionnaire to the Hyperspace forums at the HS Dock. If you're interested in mapping for the game, or in the effects the mapping scene will inevitably have on the game's general health, have a trip over there and chime in. The server is usually down because the host sucks, so keep that in mind and check back later if so.

All Out War

I played Subspace today for the first time since the final Slayfest took place at the end of January, and aside from the fact that I have decided ALL NON-SVS ZONES SUCK SHIT, much fun was nevertheless had by all concerned at the kickoff of Black Cobra's new event series, All Out War. I wasn't really expecting a whole lot but was happy to have a somewhat progressive event to go to run by someone other than me (heh) and was pleasantly surprised by how well it was run and by the number of people who showed up. I spent the entire night vulching and otherwise laming, but there's nothing like a good minerep to bring honor to a game, right? ;)

This event series is unique in that it doesn't inhabit any one zone but will be invading different zones each week. This week's event was in SSIA Dooms Day, which I had not been in before. (Nice map there, a little laggy but generally a nice area to fly in.) The next one will be in SSCE NuMuS. Oh, did I mention I owned the little bitches 9 to 1 during the pball game and Evaugh didn't even bother mentioning it on the henceforth-unlinked NMEbase? Screw you Evaugh. :P

The Mapfolio to End All Mapfolios

I've pretty much retired from mapping for Subspace and am working on a final mapfolio for the game. If anyone has last minute requests, this is your final warning. ;) Going through my directories I was actually quite surprised by just how obsessive I've been about this game over the last three years. Shit, I made a LOT of maps. Anyway so it may take some time polishing them all and finishing up the stragglers, but when I'm done there will be a nice big resource in the mapping section here for anyone wanting to use them. Meanwhile, I may be working on some other aspects of that section so have a look in there sometime soon.


Honesty
See you in two weeks. :P


By the way . . .
Thanks much to OneIFreak for the new title image, one of my favorites so far.

Bloodflowers

    <zaurg> YEAH MOTHERFUUCKER. i just killed a big bug that flew in here
    <zaurg> with a sock
    <^PMS> zaurg, you are a mighty hunter
    <zaurg> yes 

"This dream never ends," you said.
    "This feeling never goes,
    the time will never come to slip away."
    "This wave never breaks," you said.
    "The sun never sets again.
    These flowers will never fade."

I spent about ten hours this weekend trying to find the new Cure album in its entirety on Napster. Why? Hell if I know. It's not as if I wanted much to do with them after their last album, and especially after "Wrong Number". But I was curious, and "Maybe Someday" had whet my appetite. I kind of liked it. It sounded like a Cranberries song, but it was growing on me.

Now I know where I'm going to be at 11:59 on Monday night. Bloodflowers might be the best album The Cure have ever recorded.

I say that with no small amount of caution, since I consider Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, Disintegration, and Wish all to rank fairly high on that mythical global list of great albums. Without copying the style of the album, Bloodflowers matches Disintegration in depth, honesty, and emotional impact. What's happened here is that The Cure have finally managed to incorporate the pained sentimentality of their sappier Wish and Kiss Me tracks with the anger and confusion communicated by the better songs on Disintegration. Bloodflowers is all rumbling basslines, twisty soaring guitars, emotive chord progressions and harmonics, against a background of untreated guitar strum and rawer drums than the band has ever used before. Robert Smith building on motifs throughout his songs as his vocal melodies change to fit the tone of the section, each verse expanding on the ideas of the last.

Consistency isn't always a good thing. Sameness worked on Seventeen Seconds, but made Pornography something of a torturous chore except to those unfortunate enough to share Smith's 1982 mindstate. That album may be a work of unparalleled genius, but it's as far from cathartic as music can get. By contrast, The Cure's best albums have often divided themselves up internally with songs like "Lovesong", "Primary", "Why Can't I Be You?", and "Wendytime". These tracks provided a rest, and gave the greater album a sense of structure.

Like Seventeen Seconds and Pornography, Bloodflowers refrains from this device, and achieves that magical consistency which marks a truly great album. Seventeen Seconds avoids oversaturation through subtlety; Pornography just doesn't care. It kicks you in the teeth and doesn't waste a second apologizing. Bloodflowers is a more sophisticated album than either of those, and perhaps moreso than any of their albums, because its consistency is modulated with what I can only describe as color shifts. While a single style is maintained throughout the album, the feel of it changes dramatically from one song to the next. Because the album is so carefully and passionately structured as a single work, it achieves that rare wonder of amounting to far more than the sum of its parts. A listener invested in the music might finish the album simultaneously devastated and uplifted.

Anyone who knows me is probably aware that I have been rabid to hear the new U2 material for some time now. Aside from my borderline worship of the band, a major factor in my excitement about their upcoming album and soundtrack work came about largely because of comments made by producer Brian Eno at the Belfast festival this last November, as reported in the NME. (Thanks @U2.)

    It's actually dead easy to make melancholy. It's easy to make energy, its easy to make cleverness, it's easy to make intrigue, it's easy to make glamour. But it's very very hard to make joy. To make music that really grips you and lifts you in some way. That's hard. So that's what we're trying to do in some way.

Not for a single moment have I doubted U2's ability to pull this off, especially given their past work with Eno and Daniel Lanois. "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" confirms this, and I've been dying to get ahold of the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel to hear the other songs they've recorded for that movie. But it's another thing entirely for The Cure, a band with a history of overwrought darkness and inexplicable mirth, out of nowhere after seven years of abject smugness, ugliness, and sarcasm, to emerge with an album as heartfelt and pretty as I had hoped U2 would accomplish. Never, I think, has such a harsh, dark album been so full of joy. Because of this, its beauty isn't restricted by pessimism or sarcasm, as Disintegration and Wish were.

This is not to say that Bloodflowers is a happy album. It's fairly tortured. It's really quite a rocky ride. But there's something about it that speaks to love and hope as The Cure have rarely done before. It should bring tears to the eyes of anyone possessing a soul. All apologies to U2, but I believe may well be the best album of 2000. We've probably no right to hope for another like it.