Living Colour - Shade

I have to something to confess: I haven't to anything Living Colour has put out more than half-heartedly since Collideoscope dropped in 2003, which itself was their first release since Stain put an end to a triple threat of excellent records 10 years prior. A couple of months ago I stumbled on their first EP released since before I was born entitled Who Shot Ya?, which was basically a cover of The Notorious B.I.G.'s titular track packaged with a couple of remixes by other artists. I saw that they had actually done a music video for the song and gave it a shot, curious to see how these guys had aged in the last decade and a half (the video itself is pretty good, if you haven't seen it yet and like hip hop or rock I recommend it). More than anything in the video itself I was blown away by Vernon Reid's guitar tone as I had never heard it sound so thick and chunky - he's always been an amazing player long suffering from a less-than-befitting tone which was never quite as full-throated as I would have liked, even at his heaviest. Who Shot Ya seemed to indicate a change to all that and when the full album Shade finally arrived after many years of delays, setbacks, and scheduling conflicts, I was very pleased to discover that his tone hasn't sounded this good in a long, long time. Truthfully his guitar and Doug Wimbish's bass both sound so huge I would've believed you if you had told me Brendan O'Brien had produced the album.

In reality Shade was produced and partially engineered and written by Andre Betts, a low-key industry vet with production and writing credits from the likes of Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, and Living Colour themselves. Credit where credit is due: Shade blasts out of the gate with all cylinders firing and basically never lets up until the last track is finished, which unfortunately don't quite end things on a super satisfying note despite a nice feature from Celebrity Jeopardy stary George Clinton. The pieces that work the best here are the ones most liberally soaked in the blues: the fantastic trombone and keyboard accent of "Who's That", the so-low-its-almost-crawling cover of Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues" and the straight-ahead blues rock of muscular opener "Freedom of Expression (F.O.X)", although that isn't to say the more hard rock oriented tracks disappoint. "Pattern in Time" sounds like a time capsule stretching back to the group's early 90's sound from their first two albums while unassuming foot tappers like "Invisible" and "Blak Out" are just plain groove machines. The thick, raw production really elevates the material here and erases any doubt that Living Colour might have lost their bite, even as they focus more heavily than ever before on topics of racism and inequality on the aforementioned "Who Shot Ya", "Program" (Why do I only ever hear black groups doing little skits like the one at the beginning of this song? It does a lot to humanize these bands) and a nice cover of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" to round the whole package out. I mentioned the production before but I really have to stress again how rich of a an experience Shade is sonically. Doug Wimbish in particular sounds better than ever (think Rick Skatore on Strength In Numbers or Heavy Metal Soul By the Pound or dUg Pinnick on Dogman) while Corey Glover's pipes don't seem to have worsened with age an iota (his enthusiasm is infectious, especially on "Invisible", "Blak Out", and "Who's That"), and I've already noted how much fuller Vernon Reid's guitar tone is here. If it seems like I'm singling out stickman Bill Calhoun I'm really not, truthfully he's just been giving the same insanely tight performance for the last thirty years so it's hard to find much to say besides "he killed it again here". I find that the he isn't quite as in the pocket as he was on Stain but that was almost 25 years ago.

Shade certainly isn't subtle either musically or lyrically, but I don't think that's a bad thing in its case. As someone who has been listening to this band for a while it's a bit difficult to divorce myself from that experience and put myself in the shoes of someone who has never heard of Living Colour, much less the idea of an all black hard rock outfit. I like to think that Shade being released at this point in time with it's socially aware lyrics and Mike Brown liner artwork is less of a re-invention to the band's core audience and a wake-up to a larger music industry complex that found a place for Pharrell and Kanye but left this group, 24/7 Spyz, Follow For Now and others to fend for themselves in a post-grunge landscape. These groups have been a revelation to me in the last few years, and I can't even imagine the impact hearing a song like "Program" or "Preachin' Blues" would have on a black teenager in this era (if they dig it). More than just a collection of good tunes, Shade is a shoreline beacon for the next generation of disaffected youth of America that have grown tired of the current pop music scene.

Mafia III: One Year Later

Mafia III has generated a lot of strong reactions in the year since it's release, with many comments focused on its buggy initial release to its film-quality cutscenes and beefy, immensely satisfying gunplay while the game as a whole seems to have slipped into the back of peoples' minds while developer Hangar 13 plugged away for a year, releasing a major DLC expansion every couple of months until finally calling it after July's offering, Sign of The Times. While I think all of the DLC is worth the entry price, I don't think I'm going to cover how it all shook out in the same way that I talked about the base game, especially as Noah Caldwell-Gervais just put out another solid video going over exactly that and I'm still figuring out how what I think about all of it. If I had to give a quick hits list, I would say Stones Unturned is my favorite and the overall most well-done despite it throwing the "grounded exploration of racism" vibe of the base game out with the bathwater, out of the Sears Tower.

Faster, Baby! and Sign of The Times both have problems with their relation to the tone of the base game as well, but Stones Unturned felt much more committed to a singular tonal experience and consequently a bit more compelling to follow. Yes, that experience was naked Predator worship but the DLC's island setting was stunning and the focus on linear combat arenas, plus the new toys gifted to Lincoln along the way made the experience more than just passable. To me the cracks showed more visibly in the other 2 DLC packs as they failed to mesh their gameplay with their tones - the pairing of stunt driving a la The Dukes of Hazzard with violent rural bigotry in Faster, Baby! is about as natural a duo as you can imagine and Sign of The Times' earnest and very affecting portrait of a person who was psychologically ruined by a freaky cult features slo-mo gun battles in nightclubs with knife wielding Manson sisters who cruise around in funny car hearses with motherfucking Addams Family spiderweb grills. Also, there are "psychedelic" drug trip sequences because why not. So maybe Stones Unturned is my favorite because it just picked 1 thing and did it well without stretching itself out over a thinner, more repetitive sequence of missions like the other DLCs.

Past the DLCs and their individual experiences, though, I wanted to talk about an aspect of the Mafia III package that I haven't seen as many people mention as I would have figured: its presentation, from graphics to UI, and music choices in both its licensed soundtrack and original soundtrack. Because this game has some of the strongest presentation and sense of style that I have experience in quite a while.

Presentation

Lighting

Since Mafia III does not have a photo mode its difficult to produce screenshots that really do the lighting system at work here justice, but I've spent some time trying anyway and so have some other auteurs. Take a look:

No screenshots of the pre-rendered scenes, because that is cheating. Everyone has already mentioned how utterly amazing they look, and I am in complete agreement. I've played through Mafia III 3 times at this point and still find myself glued to the screen whenever a scene is playing, no matter how trivial. They're all executed with such style and pathos (as is the writing), and the performances are rendered so powerfully, particularly by Alex Hernandez, who plays Lincoln Clay, although truthfully the whole cast of characters is wonderfully portrayed.

Anyway, the lighting. You can probably tell by the daytime shots above that there is a noticeable amount of blur present, and while it isn't something everyone enjoys I feel like it fits the cinematic nature of the game. When you choose to open the main menu with a countdown reel and frame the whole narrative as a years-later documentary it tracks that the resulting images will be a bit more film-like than life-like, and while the overexposed sunlight can be a bit frustrating when it blocks out the road during the sunrise, it is more than when worth it when you find yourself in the bayou at a quiet moment as the wind breezes through the trees and the warm orange Louisiana light seeps through the canopy. Nighttime is where the lighting truly shines, though, as billboards and neon signage cut through the darkness and the rich interior illumination of bars, clubs, and even modest homes lend a real sense of place to the environments of New Bourdeaux. It's also the best time to enjoy the many minute details that dot the game's world and objects that contribute significantly to immersion, mostly related to the cars. Such as:

- The reflection of lights on car exteriors is fantastic at this time. Reflections also bounce of chrome bumpers and trim with equal fidelity, unlike during the day when they just look off.
- Headlights and taillights turn on & off slowly as the bulbs heat up/cool off instead of the instantaneous on/off of modern halogen lights.
- Car bodies shift noticeably when people get in and out, as well as when you turn the wheels while the car is stationary.
- Exhaust pipes start rattling once the car is started and fumes are only visible issuing from the pipe when the car is actually revving.
- A handful of cars in the game are customizable and feature different Mad Max-sized blowers that can be installed. Some of these are visible jutting through the hood a la the Black On Black's famous Weiand supercharger while some have custom hood scoops modeled specifically for that ride. Another little thing, but a nice touch all the same.

There are also a couple of more simulation-ish mechanics supposedly functional in the game code that were either removed during development such as the need to manage your car's fuel gauge and occasionally top up, and methods for the engine to track tire traction by factoring in different treads and fuel levels (!). Whether or not it was a good decision to remove these pieces is not the point of this piece, but even as Mafia III stands today it is obvious that a huge amount of work went into the design, modeling, and texturing of the cars in this game and in my mind it really stand out as great stuff. The Mafia series has always been a period piece and American cars a huge part of the time and place that is part of all of the games in this series, and Mafia III impresses in that area.



Audio

Like all period pieces, the visual side of things is only one piece of the puzzle. Creating and utilizing a suitable stable of sound effects and tracks is essential for building and maintaining the atmosphere Hangar 13 was trying to create here, and Mafia III is probably more successful in this realm than the visual aspect of its presentation - at least, I've heard a lot more people praising the soundtrack and included licensed songs than the graphics outside of the custscenes, and probably for good reason. The combination of original music and licensed tunes is so strong and well-used in this game I have a hard time of thinking of other examples that do a similarly good job. Like Grand Theft Auto, Mafia III's are never really mentioned or commented on by the game itself, unless you count the collectible album covers in the latter which seems like a stretch. The original pieces recorded specifically to fill out the game's aural space remind me of Red Dead Redemption in how they so excellently match the tone and feel of the game's themes while elevating the minutia of the experience like loading screens, small repetitive bits of combat, etc. Then there is a third group of pieces that could probably fall under the "Original Soundtrack" heading as they are found solely out in the open world as the "b-sides" of Mafia III, popping out from stereos, leaking audibly out of houses, and filling the jazz clubs found in the game's version of the French Quarter.

The influence of popular music in Mafia III cannot be overstated. Between the softly plucked notes of the OST accompanying the concept-art loading screens and menus and the naturalistic beauty of the title screen featuring Jimi Hendrix's iconic cover of "All Along The Watchtower" swirling all around, even the more technical "game-y" elements aren't permitted to deviate from the atmosphere Jesse Harlin and Jim Bonney's rich score have woven. Normally the main menu of a video game is the least immersive piece of it, affixed with a grid of options for tweaking controls and deleting old save files, but Mafia III's main menu has none of that: two simple options - continue, and new game. The PC version has a bit of a cop-out in the form of a splash screen menu that comes up before the game properly launches allowing you to tweak settings but it's clear that even the under-the-hood maintenance of difficulty settings and different resolutions are intended to be just as much a part of the Mafia III experience as the actual gameplay. The title screen's heavily stylized nature reminds me of similarly pathos-drenched titles like those of Frictional Games, notably the gut-twisting dirge of Amnesia: The Dark Descent  and the harsh glitch-horror aesthetic of Soma; Red Dead Redemption remains the closest point of comparison in terms of atmosphere and sound design to Mafia III in my mind.

Original Soundtrack & Other Assorted Noises

The original soundtrack is a rich stew of delta blues, swamp rock, and quietly plucked acoustic mood pieces that accentuate combat and cutscenes, never actually playing while the player is just roaming around, which is an interesting choice. If you're in a car then it obviously makes more sense to just listen to the radio but if you're pounding the pavements you are left with the raw sounds of the city to occupy your ears - cars fading into and out of earshot, the idle conversations of NPCs around you, and snippets of muffled songs faintly heard playing from within houses and buildings. While the conversations between NPCs are generally pretty funny and decent enough at selling the period (discussing that goofy new show Star Trek or remarking on L. Ron Hubbard's fantastic new book), the sequestering of the OST tunes into combat arenas and discrete story moments is maybe more common than I am aware of, as I have not played any open world games besides the Far Cry series and Mad Max in the last couple of years and both of those games weave their music into their minute-to-minute gameplay which I assume is the default way of implementing soundtracks. I would be curious to see if GTA V does this as well?

The rest of the music you'll hear outside of licensed material is more ephemeral - random jazz tunes and other forms of semi-elevator music not really significant enough to be included as part of the OST proper apparently. Just like Red Dead Redemption with it's saloon piano pieces! I haven't been able to find any credits for these tracks so I'm not sure who to give credit to for them, but they are another square in Mafia III's atmospheric quilt ranging from free jazz to instrumental slot-fillers on the radio to commercial jingles and more.

Licensed Songs and Radio Programs

Here we get to the real meat n' potatoes of Mafia III's audio - 100+ tracks ranging from set-in-stone classics (Rolling Stones, Jimi, Aretha Franklin) to long forgotten standards (CCR, Sam and Dave) down to (as someone who was not alive in the 60's) some fairly deep cuts, in particular "Needles and Pins" by The Searchers which is just bizarrely funny to me as a longtime Megadeth fan . That "100+" number seems a little high to me as someone with 120 hours in the game, because I experienced a lot of repeats on the radio during my time with Mafia III but whatever. This is the part of Mafia III people mention the most besides the cutscenes and for good reason, because it is incredibly impressive how well the soundtrack fits this game. You could write a whole essay on the relationship between the game and just Credence Clearwater Revival's music as it fits the game so well it's almost scary. Fuck, maybe I will because blasting through the bayou in a knockoff Ford Torino with "Born On The Bayou" piping in through the speakers is way way way more enjoyable and thematically on point than you would think it is reading it on a screen. Of course if you aren't a fan of AOR than you probably won't be spending too much time with the dial cranked but if you were willing to try the game at all I think you self-selected for enough of a tolerance of vaguely cinematic historical stuff that you will either grin and bear it or find something else to enjoy with the game.

Anyway, the final piece of the auditory puzzle I wanted to mention is the nature of the radio programs in Mafia III because they are a bit different than the ones you have heard in GTA and Saint's Row. There are only two actual "shows" in the whole game (three if you count the news bulletins that chime in about the latest interchangeable Sopranos extra that you rapidly ventilated and sprinkle in references to topical news events), one being a kind of revolutionary BLM type after hours rant (delivered by the golden-voice goodness of Dave Fennoy) and the other a landed-gentry polite racism talk show. What is most interesting to me about these smaller chunks of the radio content is how easy they are to miss, because as far as I am aware none of them are mandatory even though they are queued up to coincide with particular story beats, and they are surprisingly lengthy, coming to a total of about an hour of runtime throughout the game's narrative. If you aren't interested in buying the game just for the opportunity to listen to the in-game radio you can check out one of the shows here .

Prey First Impressions

One of my friends is a big fan of slower-paced action games, the kind that emphasize player agency and freedom instead of setpiece moments and cutting-edge design trends. Referred to as "immersive sims", these types of games are an endangered species in today's game development environment with just a handful of studios and projects carrying the torch that Deus Ex and System Shock set aflame - the Bioshock series by 2K Boston / Irrational Games (featuring former members of System Shock creators Looking Glass Technologies), Dishonored 1 & 2 by Arkane Studios (another harbor for former Looking Glass employees), Far Cry 2 by an Ubisoft team headed by emergent gameplay maestro Clint Hocking and GSC Game Worlds' S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, among others. Prey, the newest title by Arkane Studios, follows in these footsteps with an open-ended design methodology that will feel very familiar to any fans of the 'Shock series or its many children.

The game takes place aboard a space station called Talos I with you filling the shoes of Morgan Yu, who is basically a space-age yuppie caught up in a conflict with your brother Alex and a mysterious race of aliens known as the Typhon who have infested the station. While the premise is new and the CryEngine tech is quite nice looking the core gameplay will feel very comfortable to immersive sim old hands:

• You start off with a wrench and then can acquire further weapons in mostly whatever order you want
• You use "Neuromods" to upgrade Morgan's abilities and to unlock new ones. These are basically just Plasmids in space.
• You are guided throughout the station by a mostly unseen character while picking up audio logs and reading emails to give context to life on the station before everything went to shit (sensing a pattern yet?)
• Instead of scripted missions, you are given a loose narrative thread to follow and numerous optional objectives to complete at your leisure.
• The game has several systems you can interact with, including keypads you can hack, turrets and robots you can deploy, items you can craft, and enemies to fight, evade, and scan for research all nested in several expansive hub areas that are partitioned off with loading screens.

Sounds a lot like one of the 'Shock games, right? That's because Prey basically is the System Shock 3 we never got, and it is fantastic if you are a fan of that genre. I'm 12 hours in and I'm pretty sure I'm on the B side of the main plot and I still have several side quests I'd like to wrap up as well as a few more areas to comb through, all while continuing to make tough choices about how to upgrade Morgan and my weapons and making plans in the back of my mind about the strategies I'll pursue when I inevitably run through it again. 

So if this sounds at all like fun to you, I highly recommend Prey. It's on sale on Steam right for $40 and is well worth it for such well-wound package. After I finish it I would like to talk more in-depth about its design but I still feel like there is a lot to learn and absorb with this one, so we'll see when I get around to that.

Video Games as UBI and the Unnecessariat

Recently I was recommended this article about young guys my age are turning to video games in favor of that old chestnut gainful employment and found it pretty interesting. The rising importance of video games in my demos life doesn't seem very surprising to me, especially considering how quickly we've gone from:

to

The big takeaway: "For Hurst, the pull that games exerted on his son helped illustrate what's happening to young men in the broader economy. Between 2000 and 2015, he said, the percentage of lower-skilled men aged 21 to 55 who had a job dropped from 84 percent to 77 percent, "a massive change relative to historical levels." The decline is particularly acute among men in their 20s. Employment fell 10 points over the same period, from 82 percent to 72 percent. In 2015, he noted, 22 percent of men in their 20s who lacked a college degree had not worked a single day during the previous year—up from 10 percent in 2000." A couple of things here. First, as someone who enjoys video games quite a lot I think it would be insane not to admit their addiction potential (and if that isn't the right term for it I'm not sure what is) - its in their nature as games to be at least somewhat addicting dopamine release tools, they just require a significantly lesser amount of effort than playing a game of basketball or something. Since we all love dopamine (internet porn is pretty big I hear) it tracks that some people will choose to forsake their less-than-dope waking existence, especially if their choice of jobs is between flipping patties at Wendy's or stocking shelves at Ace Hardware and they can maintain a sufficient standard of living by either living with their parents or taking handouts from Uncle Sam. 

If this was really such a historic phenomenon you would think that we have begun to see at least some indication of these missing dudes' presence, but I don't I personally have noticed anything. As far as I can tell houses are still being built, roads are being maintained, and trucks are being driven... but to be fair, the type of guy that this article talks about probably isn't one that I would've really had much experience with in my life regardless. I grew up in a fairly affluent small town in Michigan and was pretty solidly middle-class so college was more of an inevitable thing to be planned for than a potential option among many, and right now I can only think of 1 guy I knew from high school who I know for sure did not go to college, and he is going to be in prison soon so... yeah. This trend of under educated guys dropping out of the workforce like this reminds me of another article I read about a year ago about a torrent of people, disproportionately white, women, rural and not well-off, who are not even "unemployed" at this point. They've been rendered obsolete by technology and automation and are currently committing quiet heroin/alcohol-aided suicide in pretty historic numbers as the global information economy leaves them in the dust (another great piece on this situation). This phenomenon of young men passing by the hours in front of video games seems like a companion piece to what is happening to their female counterparts, and while it certainly isn't ideal I wonder how much worse this will get before it gets any better, since I doubt Amazon has plans to slow down anytime soon. Luckily these gaming fiends seem to be pretty cool with it for now so we won't be seeing molotovs through the windows of Congress just yet, but I'm very interested to see how (if at all) the government begins figuring out new, more constructive pursuits for all of us in the unecessariat after the singularity.

(And yes, I acknowledge that games are a valid entertainment art form just like movies and books blah blah blah, that isn't the issue. The problem is that when you give people a relatively cheap and easy way to feel happy/engaged/challenged like you normally would at some crappy minimum wage job I'm not sure how surprised we can be that they choose illusion instead of reality).  

Living Colour - Stain

A 3 year gap and a shift change in the bass player department didn't slow Living Colour down a bit as they delivered their leanest and most focused album to date in Stain. Shaded more noticeably in metal and grunge influences than anything they had released before, Stain is focused less on breaking through the color barrier of the rock world than it is in showing everyone what Living Colour can do when their sole concern is making music that only they can make. Well, maybe not only they can make, but they certainly have a unique take on the downtuned grunge sound that pervaded the early 90s.

What's more surprising about Stain, though, is how little Living Colour's sound actually changed. The big choruses and foot-tapping hooks came along for the ride, as well as the insanely tight rhythm section of Will Calhoun and new recruit Doug Wimbish (bass duties previously provided by Muzz Skillings) while the whole package is glued together with guitarist Vernon Reid's iconoclastic riffwork and solos, which have never sounded better. Song after song he delivers high-bar guitar work, particularly on the tracks that bridge into solo sections that have a level of groove not seen recorded outside of a King's X album - see "Ignorance Is Bliss" and "Never Satisfied" for ample evidence. Reid's playing recalls John Petrucci's on a raw technical level but his style is purely in the service of the riff on Stain as he pivots effortlessly between heavy blues ("Mind Your Own Business") industrial thrash ("Auslander", "This Little Pig") and even a couple of lower key pieces ("Nothingness", "Bi"). Nearly a quarter of an hour shorter than its predecessor Time's Up, Stain took a hot knife to Living Colour's progressive excess and revealed a filthy, funky skeleton beneath.

Living Colour - Time's Up

Time's Up improves on every aspect of Living Colour's early sound and is up there with King's X's Gretchen Goes to Nebraska as one of the best (and most memorably so) 2nd records. 10 minutes longer than Vivid, Time's Up offers largely the same musical qualities of its predecessor mixed into more interesting and effective compositions by the band, touching on Bad Brains-style hardcore riffing, funk and R & B, and plain old hard rock delivered with a characteristic spin. The material is more diverse and the peaks are higher here, with fewer tracks that feel like a band grasping for an identity. The group's chops are just as impressive as they were on Vivid and the rhythm section of Muzz Skillings and Will Calhoun in particular shines on these pieces, particularly on standouts like "Pride" and "Solace of You". Guest spots from Queen Latifah, James Earl Jones, and others, along with a generous application of samples and a few short interludes help to break up the long stretches of music but at the cost of a runtime that always feels just a bit too long by the time we arrive that the closer. With songs this good I can figure a bit of excess, though, so it doesn't change the fact that this is a fantastic album through and through.

Living Colour - Vivid

An all-black rock band from Brooklyn forming in the 80's that were earnestly pulled along by the chain of the mainstream music machine as a hot new unit well-deserving of fame and fortune, Living Colour is probably simultaneously the most recognizable band of all time and the most forgettable. The story is so cliche its almost too trite to recount: a group of small-time Berklee notables under the stewardship of guitarist Vernon Reid, who was cursed to have his style always described as "eclectic" and nothing more insightful, along with drummer Will Calhoun, bassist Muzz Skillings, and frontman Corey Glover backing him up. Reid's regular presence on the international jazz circuit caught the attention of Mick Jagger who took a shine to the group and became interested in producing their first album, which was released in 1988 to critical and commercial acclaim, chiefly off the ample carrying capacity of lead single "Cult of Personality", which sits lazily at rest up there in the clouds next to "Highway Star" and "Career of Evil" in the pantheon of legendary opening album tracks. The rest of the album is unfortunately a bit light on the ground as the excellent "Funny Vibe" and so-good-I-didn't-even-realize-it-was-a-cover "Memories Can't Wait" do what they can to prop up the more quizzically played-straight numbers like ballads "I Want to Know" and "Broken Hearts". The groove is definitely real on the more metallic pieces ("Middle Man", "Glamour Boys") but there is feeling of the band holding back throughout Vivid, but that could just be me projecting. Regardless, Vivid remains a solid introductory effort thanks to the strength of a couple of choice singles which seemed to have given the band the time and budget they needed to fully realize their sound on disc numero dos.

B-