Dead Rat Orchestra sign with Critical Heights | Music News

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Fledgling London collective/promoter/label/blog/zine Critical Heights follow up acclaimed releases by Savaging Spires and Diva Dompé by announcing ambitious forthcoming LP/CD from Dead Rat Orchestra.
Dead Rat Orchestra have become the slow burning backwater of British music; perpetually hovering on the fringes of distinct scenes, yet never fully on-board, they remain their own mutable paradigm. Having toured with the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Silver Mt Zion, Sandro Perri, Mark Almond and Baby Dee, the band have finally announced details of their official debut set for release in July. The Guga Hunters of Ness was originally scored for the BBC documentary of the same name that follows the journey of ten men from the community of Ness on the Isle of Lewis as they embark on a traditional hunt for gannets. Utilising their customarily unconventional instrumentation to create precarious and powerful abstract-folk, the trio of Daniel Merrill, Robin Alderton and Nathaniel Mann have come up with a powerful score, with compositions seeded in hours of study of Hebridean folk song.
Dead Rat Orchestra will be embarking on some live shows around the UK in June and July.
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Victoria Fox on Temptation Island | Frost Interviews

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Frost magazine has interview author Victoria Fox on her bonk-busting book “Temptation Island”. It is a very fun read and the review is here.

How did you become a writer?

Writing novels was always the dream but one I’d decided not to pursue until later. After university I got a job in publishing, joining as editorial assistant on a women’s fiction list and four years later working as an editor: this taught me a great deal about the business of how books are produced as well as an insight into the market. I realised I was waiting to find a truly exciting, shocking, racy bonkbuster like the ones I’d enjoyed as a teen, a proper brick of a book packed with sex and scandal, but none were quite hitting it for me, so I decided to have a go myself. ‘Write what you know’ is a great piece of advice for aspiring authors – as soon as I sat down to my debut Hollywood Sinners it just sort of all fell out. Curious as to whether I was on to something, I submitted a partial manuscript (about 30,000 words) anonymously to a literary agent
and happily she agreed to represent me. Shortly after I resigned from my job to complete the novel and three months later we had a deal.

Could you ever be anything else?

As a child I saw myself as one of three things: a vet, a gymnast or a writer. The first was out because I’m terrible at science (once I got 4% in a GCSE Chemistry test) and the second because I can’t do gymnastics. The last was the one that never went away. I’d be happy working as lots of things but don’t think I’d ever be cured of the writing bug. Certainly I’d be doing it as a hobby if I weren’t lucky enough to be making a living from it.




Did you base the characters on any real people?

Both Hollywood Sinners and Temptation Island feature sensational celebrity scandals, so I’d be in hot water if I said the characters were based on anyone in real life. Instead they’re inspired by what I see and read about in the papers and online, and often will be a mix of several intrigues that capture my attention. One of the great things about bonkbusters is that their characters can be truly outrageous, so I like to go all out with my players and make them as exciting and memorable as possible. If readers think they identify a real person then that’s great – I used to love trying to spot who was who in Jackie Collins’ novels: it’s part of the fun.

How do you come up with ideas for your books?




I’m afraid I read rather too many celebrity magazines. It’s a guilty pleasure. I love to see who’s dating whom, what so-and-so wore at whatever premiere, where the rich and famous have taken their super-yachts this summer . . . all that kind of stuff. Hollywood Sinners came from an idea I had about an A-list movie couple – it was a germ of a notion but enough to spin a story, and then I had all these power couples coming out of the woodwork with their individual stories and a novel was born. Temptation Island takes that scandal one step further, I suppose. This time I’ve focused on a very controversial theme, and am interested to know what people think!


What is your writing ritual like?

I have to be disciplined and stick to a routine. I’ll get up early because I’m most productive in the mornings, and work through till lunch when I’ll try to go to the gym (if I don’t do this I get really bad mid-afternoon brain slump). The rest of the day is sporadic; I’ll get distracted by emails and Facebook, but will usually produce a thousand more words before my boyfriend gets in from work. For me it’s important to try and keep to ‘normal’ work hours, so nine to five, Monday to Friday. I don’t want to be out of sync with my friends and try to keep my weekends free. However the lovely thing about working for yourself is that if it doesn’t pan out that way, and the creative tap isn’t one you can always turn on, you can make up the word count another time. It’s also wise to sustain a separate office area so you can close the door on work at the end of the day.



Do you think the recession makes people turn to novels like Temptation Island, and that need for escapism?

Bonkbusters should always provide escapism. They’re gateways into glittering worlds that we’d typically never be able to touch, arenas where everything goes and anything can happen. It stands to reason that during a recession readers reach for this kind of entertainment, but having said that in recent years it’s been crime novels – which offer a grimmer view of life – that have proved wildly popular. Perhaps the recent success of E L James’ Fifty Shades trilogy marks a turning of the tide, and a sign that the women’s market is switching to sex and fantasy for the same fix. I hope so, because bonkbusters have all the great things about erotic fiction and heaps more on top: the glam locations, the juicy storylines and the utterly transporting experience. Recession or not, I think they provide the perfect respite.


If you could go to an island like the characters, what would you take with you?

If I ended up on the one in the book, I’d take a cutthroat hack (or be one myself) so I could blow wide open the biggest Hollywood scandal in the history of the world! On a regular island, like if I were Tom Hanks in Castaway (!), I’d take a box of matches, an encyclopaedia and a pen and paper. That sounds boring, doesn’t it? Hmm. How much can I take? A fridge of chilled champagne would be good, and so would a hot guy who I’d set to work building me a raft without his clothes on.


How long did the book take to write?

Temptation Island took me four months to write and two to edit. If I’m strict about sitting down and writing every day I can normally produce around 15,000 words a week. The key is to keep pressing on and not to get sucked into re-reading what you’ve done – it’ll get changed on a later draft anyway. Once you’ve completed the book, even if you think it’s bad, you have something entire to work with and show other people. That’s when the editing process can begin and you start guiding the manuscript towards the best it can possibly be.

Do you think the bonkbuster is back?

It’s coming (ahem). The glory days were in the eighties and nineties – every girl remembers flicking through Jackie and Jilly at school and giggling over the naughty bits – but since then the genre seems to have gone off the boil. My mission is to bring it back! The vintage classics were magnificent, and today I think it’s about borrowing what was so great about those and combining it with a modern twist. Our present-day obsession with celebrity lends itself perfectly: bonkbusters should have sizzling secrets at their core so it’s all about peeling back the headlines and seeing what lies beneath. Recently I heard they’re remaking Dallas, which flags a return to these amazing multi-character sagas, and Shirley Conran’s superb bonkbuster, the definitive and fabulous Lace, is making a comeback this summer. It feels as if people are ready to embrace the genre again, and for me that isn’t a moment too soon.


What do you think of celebrities now? 



We’re obsessed, and that says more about us than it does them. On the one hand, we worship celebrities. Money and fame are seen as the quick passage to happiness, and anyone who’s achieved that gets a golden ticket to a higher plain – it’s a religion, and a fact of human nature to want what someone else has got. On the other, it’s about bringing these icons down, which is a miserable admission but true. We want to celebrate one day and criticise the next. Who’s had a breakdown? Who’s going through a divorce? Who’s had all that cosmetic surgery but still can’t get a man? Perhaps we like to gossip because it distracts us from our lives; perhaps it makes us feel better about ourselves. I’m all for celebrity when it’s earned, yet these days it’s the reality TV thing that spawns a host of wannabes who seem to be confused about what they want and can’t handle fame when it comes. Riches can reward anyone, but recognition for having achieved something is what we should be striving for.


Who is your favourite, and least favourite, celebrity?

Men I have a crush on are: Leonardo DiCaprio (he haunted my teenage years: that Romeo & Juliet pool scene), James Franco, Ryan Gosling, Chris Hemsworth and I’ve got a thing for Rafa Nadal. I’m also fascinated by untouchable megastars like Tom Cruise. Jack Nicholson is the boss; Robert De Niro close second. Actresses I love are Emma Stone, Amanda Seyfried, and Meryl Streep has bags of class. Also Chloë Sevigny is awesome. I guess my least favourite celeb would be any footballer who can’t keep it in his pants, and rides on the fact he earns an obscene amount of money yet still hasn’t learned to treat women properly.

What’s next for you?

I’m hard at work on my third novel, which is a glamorous, sexy revenge thriller set in the music industry. Watch this space!

You can buy Temptation Island here

Coriolanus DVD Review.

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Coriolanus DVD Review.

This blood splattered adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic tale is very obviously Ralph Fiennes baby. It is his directorial debut. The film is star-packed and glorious. It is hard to think how someone could take this tale and tell it in a modern way until they do.

 

Fiennes plays Caius Martius Coriolanus, Rome’s most courageous general. His downfall comes after the people’s fury grows as he publicly expresses scorn for their suffering. The people of Rome are hungry and riots are widespread. War and Mayhem ensues.

 

Gerald Butler plays Tullus Aufidius, Coriolanus mortal enemy, who becomes his ally. This film is action-packed and is full of brilliant lines. Well obviously, Shakespeare did write it.

 

Coriolanus accurately describes itself as a ‘bloody, but timeless, tale of war and revenge’. It does not disappoint. Full marks for this film. It is a spectacular film which is cinema at its best.

 

Coriolanus Available from the 4th of June on DVD, Blu-ray and download.

Max Payne 3 Game Review

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What would you do if you came home one day to find your beloved family murdered by a bunch of psychos? Become a manic depressant? Turn to drink? Drugs? Not rest until you had hunted the scumbags down and wiped them off the face of the planet? Well, Max Payne did all of the above. Now, after a lengthy nine-year hiatus and with the franchise firmly in the hands of Rockstar Games – proprietor of titles such as Red Dead Redemption, the Grand Theft Auto series and LA Noire, – Max Payne is back, gulping painkillers down like no tomorrow and killing his foes softly and…erm, not to mention slowly. But has the wait been worth it?

Rockstar Games have built a solid reputation in creating games of high calibre. Just look at their back catalogue. They don’t release a game without it being tested to extinction, they flourish in building deep storyline arcs and cinematic traits in all their titles, and in nearly all their games, they invest highly in intricate details. Plus, they’re unafraid of raw violence. Max Payne 3 might not rank as their best title to date – let’s just get that out of the way – but let’s also be clear, it doesn’t fall too wide of the mark.

The quality in Max Payne 3 shows from the moment you load up the disc. Faithful to the original game, it starts at the end and rewinds to the beginning. Strong cinematics give you a taste of what his world has become introducing you to some of the main characters with real vigour and energy. Max is now a reluctant bodyguard charged with looking after a millionaire’s family who like to live fast, and die young.

The in game graphics are superb

Looking at the screen as the sequences unfold, you can’t help but take pleasure in the quality of the animation and Rockstar’s trademark dialogue. If you enjoy movies, you’ll find it draws parallels with movies of its genre – the chromatic aberrations and the dialogue between characters where key words appear on screen – there are flavours here of ‘Man on Fire’, ‘Miami Vice’,  ‘Wanted’. ‘Domino’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’. Oh, and not forgetting ‘The Matrix’.

A shootout in a nightclub demonstrates all that’s good about bullet-time – moving from cover to cover in slow motion, flying through the air delivering headshot after headshot to save a woman from being kidnapped,  shooting a vehicle’s tyres so it has to stop or taking out foes while you dangle helplessly from a helicopter. It’s scenes like this that make you semi-orgasmic and pleased you bought this title.

Max Payne is simply a badass with badass guns and badass quips, even when he takes painkillers to restore his health. Having lost everyone he cared about in his life, he really couldn’t care less and is ‘damaged goods’ with inner demons – a reluctant hero who would be happier doing other things.

As the storyline develops, it is hard not to be engaged with Max and the struggle he gets drawn into. And wow! What a struggle he has on his hands…or rather, you have. Max Payne 3 will prove to be one tough game for some players and some levels especially can be hugely frustrating. Enemies are just so numerous and hard to kill, leg shots won’t do it, chest shots won’t always do it and if they have head gear expect to expend a whole clip. Even when enemies go down, they will fire a last few rounds to take you down with them. Now, some will argue that my criticism is unfair, after all, a game where enemies fall to the ground like dominoes would quickly become boring and let’s be honest, Max Payne himself only needs a handful of painkillers to restore his entire health. However, when some guy you have shot point-blank in the chest gets up a few seconds later and comes running at you, and delivers a head shot that means you have to restart, excuse the pun, but it is a tough pill to swallow.

It’s flaws like this that start to creep in, and the longer you play, the more apparent they become. Painkillers are few and far between and the checkpoints are unevenly and unforgivingly spread which means if you die, you will often have to redo entire sections again, and with the game as challenging as it is you can expect to die more than once.

Because of this, frustration quickly sets in. I think the programmers realised this because if you die in a section too many times the game will restart you with extra painkillers. It’s a weird compensation, especially thinking you may have to die a good number of times to get it. The steep difficulty curve also means that to survive you are forced to engage bullet-time more often and then entire stages just become a repetitive matter of slowing things down and holding out long enough behind cover.

It’s also a shame too, that unlike the original game, Rockstar did not build in some kind of bullet-time reward system so that you could increase the length of time you could enter slo-mo. I can’t help thinking it was a bit of a missed opportunity. However, if you do manage to stick with it ,you are rewarded with a dark and deep storyline full of betrayal and deceit, not to mention some of incredible set pieces.

In multiplayer, Max Payne 3 delivers excellently too. At first you’re limited to straight death-match and team death-match modes and it all feels slow and a little second-rate, but prolonged play provides benefits.

Bullet-time makes all the difference, with its use balanced by the same post-slow-mo movement issues as in the single-player game, and by the fact that it also affects line-of-sight targets, not just your character. Gain enough kills in the boot-camp scenarios, and you can also join in a Gang Wars mode. This sees two teams running through objectives in a themed mini-campaign. It’s another example of a game that can start off on the wrong foot, but that works hard to turn your initial impression around.

My Verdict
Max Payne 3 might not be Rockstar’s best work to date, but it probably is the best example of its genre. What Rockstar brings to Max Payne 3 is style, personality, cinematics, gritty rawness and an exciting and memorable experience. Max Payne 3 might not be perfect and might be frustrating as hell. But one thing’s for sure, it packs a mean punch and, despite its flaws, is a quality title

9/10

Phillip Larkin: The Mower.

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The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Cardinal Burns Video Interview

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Cardinal and Burns, the blokes behind E4 comedy Cardinal Burns, have a chat about, well, E4 comedy Cardinal Burns.

Cardinal Burns is a new comedy sketch show written and performed by Seb Cardinal and Dustin Demri-Burns. Catch it Tuesdays at 10:30pm on E4. It is brilliant. (Thank God they didn’t call it Cardinal Demri-Burns though).

Spotted!

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The Saturdays in Glossybox.

Millie Mackintosh launching the 2012 Nature Valley games at Potter’s Field in London. Alongside Millie, former British Olympic team mates Roger Black and Jamie Baulch.

And last but not least, Game of Thrones actress Laura Pradelska at Nozomi for an exclusive Italian fashion party. Some of the finest Italian designers showcased their wear, whilst guests sipped on Champagne, nibbled on Nozomi’s revered canapés and relaxed in the chilled atmosphere.

How to Avoid Sun Damage.

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We all know that sun damage is the biggest cause of premature ageing…

… So why is it that even celebrities like Simon Cowell and Kim Kardashian are being caught short..?

And it’s not just celebrities who are affected. In a recent survey by sensitive skin experts Eau Thermale Avène, 55% of us in the UK admit to suffering with sun damaged skin, with 54% agreeing that this has an impact on their psychological well-being and 30% recognising that pigmentation makes us look older or less attractive.

To prevent premature ageing and pigmentation Cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Sam Bunting, says “Sun avoidance is crucial; a diet rich in antioxidants may also be beneficial, as is applying topical antioxidants.”

Very High Protection SPF 50+ Emulsion (£15.00, 50ml Boots)

Ideal for those looking for high protection, this non-greasy formula is suitable for face and body application. This light and readily absorbed formula contains oil regulating Cucurbita pepo extract to give normal to combination skin a matte finish.

Hydrance UV Light

Paraben-free, hypoallergenic and non-comedogenic, the Eau Thermale Avène Hydrance Optimale UV SPF20 moisturisers (£14.50, 40ml Boots) are perfect for dealing with the aggressions of everyday life. They offer SPF 20 protection against damaging UV rays (without leaving chalky white marks on the skin) and Pre-tocopheryl which lends an anti-radical action and shields skin from the environment’s harmful effects, e.g. pollution, cold and stress.

Trilogy’s Daily Defence Moisturiser with SPF15 (£28.50 Boots)

Easy to apply and with 100% pure plant oils for long lasting hydration, this lightweight botanical moisturiser includes a new generation SPF15 for effective UVA/UVB protection. By absorbing, reflecting and scattering UV rays, this new generation SPF coats the entire surface of the skin, not just the higher ridges, for maximum protection. It has clinically proven natural actives to help you achieve your best complexion from the first signs of ageing and as your skin matures.

To help reduce future sun damage and erase age spots try Avène’s new D-Pigment (£35, 30ml Boots). Using a trio of skin lightening actives D-Pigment slows down melanin production, lightens the skin, helps to renew cells and provides a protective antioxidant to help prevent new spots and patches appearing. In clinical trials, D-Pigment was found to reduce lentigo hyperpigmentation, by an average of 81%, significantly higher than the placebo after three months.[2] Use D-Pigment as part of your night time regime to leave you with a glowing and even complexion.

To further avoid getting caught out, Bao-Tam Phan, pharmacist and skincare expert at Eau Thermale Avène offers these top tips to keep skin sun-safe:

· Reapply sunscreen frequently, especially after swimming, sports or during prolonged periods of exposure

· Never remain in the sun for long periods – even if using a high SPF product

· Avoid sun exposure between noon and 4pm

· Beware of reflected sun – you can burn even wearing a hat or staying under an umbrella

· Avoid exposing young children (under 3 years) to the sun – protect them with a hat and T-shirt as well as Eau Thermale Avène SPF50+ Very High Protection Mineral Cream even on cloudy days.

· Use the correct amount of sunscreen to get the maximum protection (as a general rule, apply ‘one finger’ of product to the face, and ‘two fingers’ for each other part of the body)