GarethRDR

Ack, I knew I'd used this too soon and a better opportunity would come along later. Still...

One of the earliest absolute necessity of a lessons anyone needs to learn upon entering the workplace; HR are there to protect the company, not you.

Done this a couple of times t'other way, notably the Reading cup game comeback (tough to keep a lid on that one!) and at the pasting we got from Southampton on our way out the league (having to stay behind and "applaud" the home team's lap of honour was brutal). You sit the **** down, shut the **** up and react appropriately when needed.

Absolutely obsessed with Brotato at the moment. Just a wave shooter, but got some real Binding Of Isaac vibes to it.

Ultimately, football chanting peaked with "there's only two Andy Gorams".

If anything, you'd think having had to watch his "performances" up to that point that as a fanbase we'd have been very ready to believe he was accident-prone.

I've a real soft spot for Flux, of all things. Everything else outside of that and SA I've always found incredibly meh.

First new Les Savy Fav material in near-a-decade-and-a-half. Can't wait for their London show in a couple weeks, never seen 'em live before.

Legitimate contender for my favourite game of all time, and one of a very few games that I've played through to absolute 100% completion, DLCs and all. My only criticism is it set the bar so high for me, that I guess I really was never going to be anything but let down with Alan Wake 2. Wish I could erase my memory so I could go in totally blind again. Have you made it to the Ashtray Maze yet?

Les Claypool.

This will be incredibly prescient when all that alleged Neuhaus smoke transpires to have been tentative Koné enquiries.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. If it's got more phasers than an episode of Star Trek and more delays than South West Trains, it's an Omar riff.

Finally getting round to the latest Lower Decks. Still genius. I love how the title credit shot of them noping out of that big space battle has become increasingly more ludicrous with each passing season, think the big whale-talking tube from IV is this season's addition? Gets me every time. I didn't have a favourite line of Star Trek dialogue before but "Janeway straight up murdered a guy" might just be it.

This weekend's activities (train strikes permitting )... Gonna be an interesting one for me, for a couple reasons. 1) this has finally given me the impetus to sit down and actually spend time listening to Neu!, who having seemingly forever been on my list of "bands I am aware of their influence on what I like but need to get round to actually listening to" (this is admittedly a long list). Somewhat unsurprisingly, it's a from me. 2) I am super excited for James Holden. Back in my formative years - when all I was listening to was various flavours of '90s trance - Holden's Horizons was my pathway into techier, more progressive stuff and to this day I hold it up as one of my all-time favourite EDM records. That said, by the time he'd moved away from club tracks and got to writing albums proper, I'd pretty much fallen out of electronica in it's entirety, so the last few weeks I've been hurriedly trying to fill the five album gap in my listening. The rediscovery has been going pleasantly well, and in hindsight had I listened to his 2023 album at the time of release, it would have absolutely crept into my AOTY consideration. Possibly belongs in the techno et al thread, but for shits/giggles/gurning here's Horizons in all it's majesty:

Is there a word or term for "I am simultaneously happy for your success and want to smack you in the mouth"? There must be some German phrase, they've got one for everything.

This post needs more respect.

Afraid I can't, I'm a vinyl junkie.

Aussie goalie, eh? What's his track record with a) junk food b) Nazi salutes c) cocaine d) supermodels and e) kneeing the jaws clean off of Germans?

If making money was that easy, I'd have at least £5 by now.

Timely thread at any rate, as my first pick-up for 2024 dropped today; Motherwell's premier (well, possibly only?) post-rock outfit A Sudden Burst Of Colour's new LP Galvanize Lovely stuff as per.

Mountain Caller are top notch and a great bunch to boot.

Ace, I've an iPod Classic purely dedicated to Ambient stuff, this'll be going on it. Big Ultimae Records and State Azure vibes, really digging it.

A serviceable gateway into better stuff (Dillinger, Botch, Deftones, Cave In etc.)

This shit is incredible, you got a Bandcamp or something?