Category Archives: Hedonism

The 1960s were a time of progression in art, fashion, and cultural values, but also a period of decadence, hedonism and excess. The Rolling Stones, and founding member Brian Jones, in particular, embodied this brave new world.

During their early rise to superstardom in the slipstream of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones entered the unprecedented fray of fame and rock worship on the streets of London. Naturally, their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, needed to arrange for some security. An integral part of the bands security network in the 60s was Tom Keylock, an ex-military cab driver who became responsible for getting the Stones from A to B in one piece.

Keylocks initial role as chauffeur rapidly grew into an all-rounder position. His duties expanded to include bodyguard, road manager, groupie and procurer. As a loyal servant to the band, who were often challenging him with their antics, he became fondly known as the fixer, or as Keith Richards dubbed him, Mr Get-It-Together. When Bob Dylan toured Britain in May 1966 during his divisive electric tour with The Hawks, as portrayed in the rarely seen D.A. Pennebaker documentary, Eat the Document, Richards offered the American visitor Keylocks services.

Upon his arrival in London, Dylan accepted the offer and was chaperoned by Keylock for a few weeks. This period was particularly eventful for Keylock. One night (early morning), he bore witness to Dylan and The Beatles John Lennon jibbering incoherently in the back of his car. On another, he recalls being chased by a stoned Brian Jones while escorting Dylan back to his room at the Mayfair Hotel.

Keylocks memories of the car chase began at Dollys, a popular club at the time located on Jermyn Street, London. Dollys Club was like a meeting place for a lot of musicians at the time, Keylock remembered. That was the first time I remember the Stones meeting up with Bob Dylan. I was, in fact, minding Dylan on this tour, the one that was made into a documentary called Eat the Document. I was asked to do it while the Stones werent working.

Keith [Richards] and Brian [Jones] had already enjoyed a couple of tokes, two hits of Blue Cheer LSD and several cocktails while in their car. Another trip or two to Dollys bar and one to the gents, and Keith, in particular, was flying. Dylan didnt seem to be in a friendly mood. He was talking to Keith, and he told him: The Stones are no longer the best band in the world. The Hawks, my backing band, are better.

Brian and Keith got totally fucked up, and Keith suddenly took offence at Dylans song Like a Rolling Stone and accused Dylan of taking the piss. Dylan said: I could have written Satisfaction, but no way could you fuckers could have written Mr Tambourine Man. There was an exchange of fuck yous between Keith and Dylan. Brian joined in and wanted to thump Dylan down, and the whole scene started to get ugly.

Now, Dylan was totally uptight and wanted to leave and get back to the Mayfair Hotel where he was staying. He wasnt in any fit state anyway. Not that he could punch his way out of a paper bag, hes that small.

Keith was saying: Come on you, out of the way. And I told him: Look, when I work for you, I do the same for you, but right now Im looking after him. So if you want a fight, youll have to come through me. With that, I grabbed Dylan, pushed him into the car and took off back to the hotel, much to my relief. Then, I look in my rearview mirror and right behind me were Keith and Brian in Brians Rolls Royce. They were out of their brains. The car was doing about 80, weaving in and out of traffic. You could just see Brian peering out over the top of the dashboard, laughing like a madman. He was a bloody awful driver at the best of times.

I got to the hotel and got Dylan in just as I saw Brian trying to get the Rolls Royce up onto the pavement and through the revolving doors.

Keylocks final image of Jones from that evening, high as a kite at the wheel of his Rolls Royce, was by no means the last he would see of the volatile Stone. After Jones dismissal from The Rolling Stones in June 1969, Keylock was asked to keep tabs on the wayward star. Just a month later, Jones was found dead in his swimming pool during a party at his house in East Sussex.

The events surrounding Jones death are subject to ongoing conjecture. Some theorists point toward Jones builder, Frank Thorogood whom Keylock recommended to the musician as being responsible for the would-be murder, with eyewitness reports of an argument between the pair during the party. In the immediate aftermath of Jones death, Thorogood made a phone call to Keylock, who arrived at the scene just after the police. Some allege that Keylock was involved in a deft cover-up operation.

One thing is for sure, Dylan and The Rolling Stones soon buried the hatchet and got over their differences. Not only did Dylan join the band on tour, but he even once proclaimed them to be the greatest rock band of all time, clearly dismissing his own notions that The Hawks had trumped them.

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LSD, Dolly's and a Rolls Royce car chase: How Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones nearly came to blows - Far Out Magazine

Cin Fabr and her investment partner Aldano were walking briskly through the halls of a Times Square hotel one evening. Key in hand, they opened the door to a room they had booked and found themselves staring at the bare behind of one of their clients, caught in the middle of the act with a sex worker. Wordlessly, the pair closed the door while their client, oblivious, continued what he was doing.

This was par for the course for Fabr. While she and Aldano had walked in to ensure the hotel room was clean and client-ready, she was unfazed by her clients actions. As a stockbroker on Wall Street in the late 1990s, she often found herself enticing clients to stay with her firm by offering them drinks, dinner, and dessert dessert being the services of a sex worker. As a broker, Fabr considered it part of her job to make sure that clients were satisfied. That meant checking to make sure hotel rooms were up to standard for whatever was being offered.

Fabr was in her mid-twenties at the time, the daughter of Haitian immigrants. She had no college degree. But she was handling millions of dollars, including the portfolio of an owner of a prestigious UK football team, working at one of the oldest firms on the New York Stock Exchange.

How she got there is the subject of her memoir, Wolf Hustle: A Black Woman on Wall Street (Henry Holt, out now) which chronicles the racism, sexism, and hedonism that ran Wall Street until the dot-com crash and which Fabr believes still runs Wall Street today.

Fabr had always had the hustle mentality. As a teenager in a Long Island City high school, Fabr would steal lunch tickets from the school office and sell them for their $1 face value, using sales skills to get students to buy from her rather than the school. She also worked part-time in a Cohens Fashion Optical outlet, taking in $50,000 a year before high school graduation. And when a friend offered her an interview with his investment company, Fabr jumped at the chance.

I knew I could be a stockbroker, Fabr says to the Post. There was no doubt in my head I could do it. I never had this question, Oh my God, Im a woman and Im black. I actually thought that was my advantage. I could be the dark horse that no one sees coming.

The reality was different. The firm where she was interviewing, VTR, was an offshoot of Stratton Oakmont, the firm made famous in the 2013 film Wolf of Wall Street. Like Stratton Oakmont, it was known in Wall Street parlance as a chop shop or boiler room a firm selling securities by pumping up stock shares of certain house stocks and companies. And she wasnt interviewing for a broker job she was interviewing to be a cold caller. The expectation was that she commit to working 12 hour days, making at least 500 phone calls a day in order to generate ten leads to give to her broker. If she was able to manage this for at least three months, she might be able to receive the books to study for a Series 7 license the entrance bar to become a stockbroker.

The brokers insulted the cold callers, plied them with cocaine to keep up with the hours, and occasionally threw lavish Hamptons parties with strippers as guests to keep them coming back to work. Wives were never seen at these parties. Through it all, Fabr observed everything and kept her head down. Id have a cocktail, but I didnt want the distraction, she says. I would look at the brokers and they were the best reason to never do drugs. They looked like fools every day. And I was on my own high. I had a passion for what I was doing.

Fabrknew the cold calls were a means to an end there was no doubt in her mind she would move to the other side of the room and be a stockbroker.

Once Fabr passed her Series 7, she moved to the other side of the room and respect for her increased.

As the only woman and the only Black person who worked as a broker, her colleagues were unsure how to relate to her. They joked about the size of her breasts; her boss often asked her to compare her breast size to different fruit sizes. She would mumble a response. It just wasnt worth it to show the men you were bothered by their lewd comments or hooting jokes, she writes. There was simply no way to respond to every inappropriate act. I never would have gotten my work done if I tried.

Brokers would ceremoniously have their tie clipped when they opened their first account. But, sinceFabr wasnt wearing a tie, the brokers jeered for her bra to be cut. Eventually, they settled for shaking her hand.

I could be the dark horse that no one sees coming.

While Fabr felt she had earned the respect of the brokers, shebegan to realize that what the firm was selling wasnt necessarily making investors money. Im 20 years old. I didnt have any education. What I knew was sales. And the information we were getting was rigged. But there was barely any internet, I didnt think to pick up the newspaper and analyze the stocks, so I bought into the hype.

Fabr didnt realize VTR was in trouble, but a broker who had left the firm explained what was going on and invited her to interview at his firm. His firm, a respected Wall Street company, was where Fabr began her legitimate financial education. But overall, Fabr felt her clients respected her.

I would answer the phone by barking, Fabr! Fabr says. You better be calling me to give me more money. Dont call me for any other reason. I wasnt here to babysit anyone. I wasnt here to have these hour-long conversations about your partners or your wife or whatever it is that you were going through. I was here to make you money. And if you werent going to pay me for my time, as far as investing, then we had nothing to talk about.

At one point, Fabr flew to the UK to meet some of her high-net worth clients. She writes about how one of her UK clients, who owned almost all the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in England, was taken aback when he saw her.

I didnt know you were Black, he said quietly.

I didnt know you were white, Fabr threw back at him.

Moments like these forged Fabrs backbone, but they also left a mark on her psyche.

I always walked in like I owned the room. You know what I mean?, says Fabre. And if youre a good guest, we can hang out. But if youre going to come at me, then youve got to go.

Even at the more respected firm, Fabr felt her clients were always testing her, trying to see if she would sleep with them. It was something all my clients hinted at, she says. But they also immediately saw how tough I was. So I feel like I scared and excited my clients at the same time. But I would have to say,If you wouldnt talk like this to a man, dont talk to me like that. Dont treat me any different. Dont expect me to comfort you and hold your hand more because I am a woman. Im not your mother. You know what I mean? Im nothing like her. So I think there was a lot of respect that came with that.

Fabrs stockbroker career ended in early January 2002, shortly after her mother and her brother passed away. She was successful, but her entire life was wrapped up in work. The aftermath of September 11 had caused marketturmoil, and she felt herself pondering her purpose. I thought of everyone who had been lost on 9/11 and all the words the families didnt get to share with their loved ones who died,Fabr writes. No amount of money could have brought back those cherished sentences. She passed her book of business to her partner, took her Gucci purse and left. I had given everything I had to fight and stay and be respected in the business, and I had won, Fabr writes.

Today, Fabr lives with her wife and her four children in Paris. She invests privately, but has spend the last several decades primarily focused on her family.

If I had to do it over again, I would, says Fabr. At the end of the day, its a New York story. Were the type of place where were like, Hey, if you have a dream, you can make it. Thats why everyone comes to America, right? The American Dream. And my parents believed in that. And whether its an immigrant mentality, I believe in it. And its what I teach my kids.

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I survived the sex, drugs, and misogyny of 90s Wall Street to make millions - New York Post

Photo: iStock.com/Alihan Usullu

Photo: iStock.com/Alihan Usullu

Everything is relative, and that certainly also applies to hedonism. What for one person already means hedonism, for another is only the beginning of pleasure, which for some of us can still be greatly increased. Whereas pleasure addiction also exists in numerous areas of life, from eating and drinking to sex addiction.

Pleasures are attributed to Venus, and by that we mean, of course, those that are enjoyed in the right measure. Then it fits. But everything has its extremes, which also applies to Venus, as well as to every other star, and such a critical constellation is announced in the sky today by the opposition of Venus to Jupiter.

Which is why we could easily go over the top now. Because our will to live healthily is easily forgotten, or perhaps sent to the back room of an inn so that we can feast in the front room. And we then enjoy everything that is served. Jupiter likes to exaggerate and show off in this constellation, and so we do with him. And we feel like God in France.

Moon

moon (Sagittarius)

waxing crescent

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The Stars Advise: Dont Overdo It in Indulgence - astrosofa.com

Kenyan brand Procera has released 300 bottles of its Red Dot and Green Dot Vintage 2022 gins in the UK.

Kenya-based Nairobi Distillers launched Procera Gin in 2018 with an aim to showcase African botanicals from across the continent.

Both gins were made using fresh African juniper (juniperus procera), with Procera claiming it is currently the only gin using this indigenous African juniper species.

Procera also said it is one of the only distilleries to distil fresh juniper as opposed to the dry fruit.

While both boast an earthy, nutty flavour profile, the brands Red Dot and Green Dot releases differ in style, with the former showcasing a distinctive spicy profile thanks to the use of five African pepper botanicals.

Only 300 bottles of each of the vintage expressions will be released to the UK in October, retailing for RRP 95 (US$101.65) for the Red Dot Vintage 2022 bottling, and 115 (US$123.05) for the Green Dot Vintage 2022 Gin. The gins clock in at 51% ABV and 47% ABV respectively.

The distillery has planted 15,000 Procera trees in the Kenyan highlands since its launch, and utilises only recycled glass. It also collaborates closely with local farmers and artisans, building long-term partnerships that aim to benefit communities and create employment.

Stockists of the vintage releases include Harvey Nichols, Master of Malt and Hedonism Wines.

Last year, the brand secured a UK listing with luxury retailer Harvey Nichols.

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Procera rolls out vintage gins - The Spirits Business

Happy (early) Halloween. Cult 1987 horror flick Hellraiser is lined up for a present-day reboot, with Sense8 and The L Word: Generation Qs Jamie Clayton playing its iconic villain Pinhead. Originally written and directed by horror and fantasy author Clive Barker, the flick often tops lists of must-watch horror films. The plot centres around a mysterious puzzle box with a highly cursed aura and the troubling ability to summon up a cult of sadomasochistic demons called the Cenobites.

When certain humans get a hold of the magic box, they expect to find a world of hedonism waiting on the other side, but unfortunately the Cenobites have lost the ability to differentiate between pain and pleasure. In other words, their interpretation of S&M is less like Rihannas dancefloor banger of the same name, and more like getting tortured and experimented upon for all eternity.

An updated version of a classic, the David Bruckner-directed refresh centres around a young woman struggling with addiction [who] comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, according to Hulus synopsis. Unfortunately, shes unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension. Uh Oh!

As well as hinting towards a gripping refresh for the horror classic, a new trailer also shows Jamie Clayton as the storys scariest villain Pinhead. Grand Armys Odessa Azion, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoos Goran Visnjic, Boss Levels Selina Lo and 13 Reasons Whys Brandon Flynn also play unconfirmed roles.

At time of writing, theres no UK release date for the horror reboot, which airs in the US on Oct. 7 via Hulu. Though a UK network hasnt been announced yet, Disney+ could well be a good shout, since The Walt Disney Company has majority ownership over the Stateside streaming platform and frequently gives a second home to Hulu shows.

Bustle has reached out to Disney+ for comment.

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How To Watch 'Hellraiser' In The UK: Horror Film Reboot Set To Terrify Audiences - Bustle

We all want to live forever that is until we spend time with those who do. The night world of the undead is not a happy place, especially if, like the elegant Louis de Pointe du Lac in Interview with the Vampire, you still have a conscience and even the barest of emotional ties to humans. Immortality is a lonely, indifferent existence from which you will never escape, an existence crowded with the death and destruction of everyone except you and your kind.

The excellent, transfixing new series adaptation of Anne Rices 1976 vampire classic, which premieres Sunday on AMC and AMC+, fully captures that particular breed of despair known as the dark gift. Created by writer-producer Rollin Jones, of Friday Night Lights and HBOs Perry Mason, the show alters specifics of the novels story line in ways that wind up working spectacularly well, and that will surprise fans of the book, even while they may frustrate purists. I couldnt get enough of the five episodes AMC made available for review (there are seven in all), relieved that Rices complex, sensual creatures have survived the transition to series TV intact, and delighted by the superb acting and rich production design.

In this version, the titular interview takes place 49 years after the interview that frames the novel. The interviewer, reporter Daniel Molloy, is now older and wiser (hes played with grizzled cynicism by Eric Bogosian), and he has come to Louiss massive, high-tech apartment in Dubai to listen to his story once again. Louis, now 100+ years old, has had more time to think about his life, and he wants a do-over interview in order to be more frank and circumspect. As Louis speaks to Daniel, occasionally feeding on one of his houseboys between vignettes, and occasionally challenged by Daniels judgmental comments, we see his life play out, beginning just before we meet the vampire who will make him, the dazzling Lestat de Lioncourt.

Louiss story has been moved from the late-18th century of the novel to the visually sumptuous 1910 New Orleans on the verge of the Jazz Age. Hes now a Black man running a brothel in the red-light district, instead of the novels white plantation owner, which naturally makes him more sympathetic. Hes more layered, too, as a man whose financial success has made him a threat to the citys racist politicians men wholl later find themselves glamorized, to use the lingo of True Blood, by Louis and Lestat. Before he becomes a vampire, Louis is already living a life on the fringes, excluded from social acceptance, coping with same-sex attractions, and judged by his family for his work (even while they enjoy the money it brings). Becoming a supernatural figure laden with secret hungers and doomed to nighttime almost serves as an ideal metaphor for his human situation.

On the show, Louiss overt desire for men, and the lusty relationship between Louis and Lestat who is more fluid in his attractions make the novels queer subtext (like that in Brideshead Revisited) more explicit. Louis and his handsome French libertine are quite clearly a couple, and they become parents of sorts once Lestat turns the young Claudia (Bailey Bass) into a vampire. The men are quite clearly in love see them literally rise into midair while embracing although their resentments do emerge, as they will when you have forever. Louis still blames Lestat for making him a vampire, and Lestat is bored by their domesticity and threatened by the bond between Louis and Claudia, who can hear each others thoughts when Lestat cannot. Aristocratic and amoral, Lestat also tires of Louiss torment, watching Louis with contempt as he feeds off animals to avoid killing humans.

As Louis, Jacob Anderson, best known for his turn as Grey Worm in Game of Thrones, is remarkable. He gives us young Louiss remorse and sorrow, particularly as he watches his beloved family recede from his life, but never too much. And he gives us the older, more resigned Louis, who takes in Daniels brash assessments of him patiently. Sam Reid is just right as Lestat, with his intense charm, endless hedonism, intermittent boredom, and sadistic streak. He and Anderson have plenty of chemistry, both as a team who balance each other out and as a couple who tear each other apart. Bass is increasingly moving as the tragic Claudia, as she begins to realize shell always be a child.

Just as Louis wants to be more upfront in retelling his story to Daniel, AMCs Interview with the Vampire, with its inclusions of race and intersectionality, wants to meet this moment. But at its core, its still very much the same saga, with all the seduction, romance, and regret youd hope for. If this is what the next phase of Rice adaptations is going to look like, Im for it.

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

Starring: Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, Bailey Bass, Eric Bogosian

On: AMC and AMC+. Premieres Sunday on AMC+, Sunday at 10:06 p.m. on AMC

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.

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Fresh blood brings new life to Interview with the Vampire - The Boston Globe

Bankers and other assorted finance bros are an inescapable presence on the London nightlife scene. Industry, the British-made TV drama that follows a group of graduates on (and off) a City trading floor, begins its second series on BBC1 tonight and spares no detail of the drug-fuelled hedonism of its young bankers. One plot arc in the first series starts when the protagonist, exhausted after a long night on the powder, executes a trade in the wrong currency.

Some in the field have protested that the on-screen excess is unrealistic. But much of it is apparently inspired by real-world experience. Mickey Down, one of Industrys creators, spent just over a year working at Rothschild at the beginning of the 2010s. Among his peers, working hard and playing hard was taken to extremes: Its not natural to do a 100-hour work week, but somehow your body acclimatises to it, he says. Those long days in the office turned into long weekends (often starting on a Thursday) of partying at high-end clubs such as Cuckoo in Mayfair, where bankers would spend thousands on bottles of Dom Perignon with sparklers strapped to them.

Aside from among the straight-laced eastern Europeans, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine use was rife, Down says. Italians, Germans and the French were finally able to let their hair down after the rigours of business school, whileSwedes and Down concedes this is a slight generalisation would take lots of coke. But it was the British who held the gold medal in drug use, having gone through a three-year intensive training programme as undergraduates.

The same antics still occur a decade later. But what has changed is that more and more bankers are shirking expensive bottle-service clubs for those which can be considered cool venues such as Fabric, Fold and Oval Space, many nestled in the half-gentrified warehouse districts of east London. These play techno, house and other strands of electronic music which eschew the sugar-rush build-ups and bass drops of commercial dance.

Many bankers treat this more in-the-know kind of clubbing as social camouflage: escaping the stigma of a boring corporate job with a night under strobe lights. Graduates leaving prestigious universities and considering how to cash in their degrees are confronted by a trade-off between social and financial capital. At one end of the spectrum sit arts jobs which pay a pittance but give you dinner-party cachet; at the other, corporate law and finance, which offer six-figure salaries in your early twenties but little in the way of glamour.

This kindles a degree of status anxiety in corporate types, which some try to quell by striving for a compensatory level of cool in their personal lives. In the 2015 film adaptation of The Big Short, Adam McKays biting account of the 2008 financial crisis, a Deutsche Bank salesman played by Ryan Gosling is found in a Manhattan bar filled with yuppies swilling champagne. He turns to the camera and plaintively protests: I never hung out with these idiots after work, ever I had fashion friends.

Look at David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs and semi-professional DJ. Solomon started DJing in 2015 he says it helps his left brain, right brain balance and has managed to acquire millions of monthly listeners on Spotify and high-profile performance slots, despite heading a bank so rapacious its nicknamed the vampire squid. Some of Goldmans board members are reportedly sceptical about Solomons side hustle, especially since he used the firms private jet to fly to a gig at Chicagos Lollapalooza music festival this summer. Implicit in the wider backlash (and mockery) is a more fundamental contention: rich bankers simply shouldnt be allowed to have that much fun.

So, how do you square a job that hands you near-unlimited resources to enjoy yourself with the attendant constraints of social stigma and punishing office hours? As finance folk can probably appreciate more than most, the market finds a way. The relentlessness of the era that Down remembers has been tempered by the rise of wellness culture, and the growing recognition that sleep isnt an optional extra. This has led to the advent of day festivals such as Field Day and Waterworks. These big-budget parties, held in Londons parks, lay on fancy food stalls and a whos who of DJs, with ticket prices pushing three figures. Crucially, they also tend to wrap up by 11 p.m., giving attendees the chance to be tucked up in bed by midnight.

Day festivals have multiplied over the past few years, with promoters labouring under the (correct) assumption that many partygoers want their hedonism at least a little gentrified. If, Down says, enough bankers find social refuge in clubbing, its unsurprising that eventually clubbing starts to reflect their own, less subversive habits: Its a snake that eats its own tail.

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Why do bankers love techno? - The Spectator

Before they were grunge, Alice in Chains were a glam-metal band. Sort of. Formed as Alice N Chains in the mid-80spunctuated conspicuously like Guns n Rosesthe Seattle band only lasted about a year, but they made the most of their stockpile of Aquanet, playing Armored Saint covers and recording two demos before splitting up in 1987. They bore little to no resemblance to the group that opens the Seattle-scene immortalizing Singles soundtrack with Would?, and theres a good reason for that: Only vocalist Layne Staley was a member of that band, joining up with guitarist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney within a year to form a new band. But Alice N Chains werent part of the local underground punk scenethey were, as Stereogums Tom Breihan described them, a straight-up good-time nerf-metal band.

Alice In Chains glam-metal roots in large part help to explain why they often stood apart from many of the now-legendary bands that grew out of grunge scene, despite the fact that many of those bands ultimately ended up making a musical journey some distance from those sludgy, early Sub Pop and SST records. Pearl Jam seemed to channel classic rock more than their peers, while Mudhoney leaned the farthest into Stooges-y proto-punk and garage rock, Screaming Trees channeled heavy psychedelia, and Tad delved into a noxious squall of noise rock. Alice In Chains closest peers, at least sonically, were Soundgarden, whose 1991 breakthrough Badmotorfinger showcased just how heavyand dazzlingly imaginative at being heavygrunge could be.

In terms of career arc more than actual music, Alice In Chains hews closer to a band like Pantera, who in 1990the same year as Alice in Chains own debut album Faceliftrebranded themselves with the hostile, thrashy groove of Cowboys From Hell. Likewise, Alice in Chains proper debuta nasty piece of work that actually preceded the release of Badmotorfinger, Nevermind and Tenrevealed no remnants of glitter in their pedal chain. A song like Man in the Box pounded like a sledgehammer into iron spikes, its one-chord riff grinding and spinning in place until its groove starts to evoke something more violent and angry. This was just metal, hold the glam. But unlike Pantera, Alice In Chains could actually write a song driven by an unforgettable melodyno matter how raw the riff.

The bands second album Dirt, now 30, refined many of the elements that made Facelift an early, defining moment in grunge as a cultural phenomenonif one with a somewhat delayed acknowledgement as such. But even as Alice In Chains helped to create a new space for heavy metal among pop audiencesalong with records like the Black Album by Metallica, with whom they toured in 1993perhaps more importantly, they made more space for pop in heavy metal. What the conventional wisdom seems to overlookthe historical record suggesting that grunge was the death knell for spandex metal warriors like Motley Crue and Poisonis that grunge and glam-metal are yin and yang. Theyre more complementary than contradictory, each one is a pop-friendly delivery system for metals rawness and power. One employs major keys and hedonism over uglier tones and darker introspection, but theyre still both, ultimately, heavy metal catalyzed into pop.

For pop-friendly heavy metal, though, Dirt kicks ass. At the time it seemed like the heaviest record Id ever heard, outside of maybe Helmets Meantime. Try to think of a rock record in recent memory that sold anywhere in the ballpark of five million copies, which Dirt did(!), with a song that goes for the throat like Dam That River does, or which carries a riff as nasty as the one that drives Rain When I Die. Youll probably come up empty.

Those are the deep cuts, but the singles for the most part go just as hard. Opener Them Bones literally screams out of the speakers from the jump, Jerry Cantrells meaty chug backing Layne Staleys sardonic look at mortality: I feel so alone/Gonna end up a big ol pile of them bones. Its even weirder to ponder that a song like Angry Chair received airplay, its dissonance and gloom challenging the very idea of what a radio hit should sound likebut then again it was also around this time that thrash metal icons Anthrax were elbowing into alternative radio space with a lengthy single inspired by Twin Peaks. It probably didnt seem like it at the time, but 90s rock radio was wild.

Dirt isnt a concept album, but struggles with drug usewhich Staley grappled with up until his death in 2002are a consistent throughline. It takes on a dark, harrowing arc in its second half with the sequence of Junkhead, Dirt, Godsmack, and Hate to Feel, all of which follow a loose narrative of someone being pulled into the throes of addiction. The final song in that sequence, in particular, stands as arguably the heaviest moment on record, showcasing the bands ability to push an ostensibly radio-friendly sound to its white-knuckle edge, its heaviness carrying through to the lyrical content as well: Used to be curious/Now the shits sustenance. Certain versions of the album include Down in a Hole at the end of this series of songs, which would suggest that the end of the narrative is death, though thats ultimately misleading. Down in a Hole, the best song on Dirt, is actually a love song that Cantrell wrote for his longtime girlfriend. And while its an ostensibly morbid song, theres a tenderness to it that reveals an even wider swing of the pendulum toward a more refined pop space. Its not exactly a monster ballad, but the dynamics of itgentle acoustic opener into its powerful, anthemic chorusshowcase Alice In Chains at their most versatile.

The albums closer, Would?, has become their most enduring single, not so much a chartbreaker as a grunge standard that remains a favorite on alt-rock radio 30 years later. Its also the one that sounds the most like a hit, tempering their heavy metal crunch in favor of subtler embers of psychedelia and an elegiac meditation on their late friend Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone, their affection for whom being something that they did share with the rest of the Seattle scene at the time.

Despite being the rare band capable of being able to sell five million copies of an albumlet alone one so dark and frequently hostile as Dirt isAlice In Chains admit to being somewhat on the outside of the grunge phenomenon. At least when compared to bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana, who in the early 90s couldnt escape the public eye, in the case of the latter to their tragic detriment. The band, in part, attributes that to making their debut before the wave crested: We actually kind of got pushed out because we were kind of a little before that, so it really, I think, took a much bigger toll on Pearl Jam and Nirvana and Soundgarden than it did on us.

Theres more to it than timing; Alice In Chains came from metal more than they did punk, their own arrival at grunge coming from a different perspective. To create one of its greatest triumphsa singular document of heavy metal viewed through the lens of pop musicthats exactly what they needed.

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Alice In Chains : Dirt - The heaviest grunge album at 30 | Treble - Treble

"Good writing" is a phrase that gets used quite often, and it can mean a lot of different things. Is good writing a good story? An unguessable twist? Fancy prose or deliberate themes? I'm sure I've used it at some point when what I meant to say is really: "lots of long words I don't completely understand."

Still, Pentiment has good writing - wonderful writing, actually - and in this case I do know what it means. This game's writing is witty, it has tempo and timing, it is genuinely, wickedly funny. It is also, above all, natural - something that so often seems impossible in games, things where you're so often controlling a character impulsively, pulling their puppet strings on a whim. How do you write around that? Pentiment, Obsidian's surprise new thing that I am judging from an admittedly quite brief hands-on at Gamescom, seems to manage it remarkably well.

Things begin in Pentiment with you choosing a background, in a fairly typical, tabletop RPG-inspired way but with a nicely in-theme twist, whereby you play as a semi-educated bloke with a choice of studies and interests. I chose to have studied Logic and dropped out halfway through Theology, with an interest in the Occult, a mediaeval gap year to Flanders and a bit of a taste for Hedonism (although I was tempted to be a Rapscallion who liked scampering about picking fights and generally being a peevish little imp, like a kind of Dark Age Bart Simpson. Hedonism ultimately just felt like it suited a dropout Theologian a little better.)

Your job is to solve a local murder, and in my brief time with Pentiment that generally meant walking around the village talking to people. This is, honestly, something I usually find to be a bit of a dirge, but Pentiment knows that if you're going to spend a many-hours-long game doing not much more than having conversations, those conversations have to be at least quite interesting - and that often the most interesting conversations are the funniest.

For me, this all manifested itself as completing a series of comically mind-numbing chores for an absolutely furious old woman. This lady is livid. She hates people, she hates you, she hates picking up twigs (this is relevant) and above all she hates the church, which is important because the church is quite a significant thing in mediaeval Europe, and not something you're supposed to tell people you hate.

Conversations with her often come to an abrupt end, her dialogue, scrawled across her speech bubbles in jagged chicken scratch, punctuated with screen-shaking emphasis and frantic typos. (Pentiment does this wonderful thing where the font used seemingly reflects the background of the character speaking, so monks will use a proper print, and yours as a moderately educated guy is quite fancy.)

When you do get talking, especially after collecting twigs for her firewood and subsequently snapping them at just the right length (she was very particular), it's possible to dig a little. Why does she hate the church? None of your business. Okay. Carry on with some more chores, like framing some important pieces of paper, and you might learn about some land dispute in which she's been wronged. Or you might opt for some judgy retort about how she shouldn't talk like that about the church and, presumably, get told where to go - I tried to be sympathetic because, again, Theology dropout.

Clearly there are deeper systems at work, dialogue choices that are more clearly labelled with "this will be remembered" annotations, like whether I chastise her for trying to use a log from the church's forest (stolen from the village people) or tell her to crack on. And ones that must surely have some subtle impact, like how blatantly I pry into her very angry personal history. Perhaps my love of the occult might come in handy with such a blatant heretic! Or perhaps I'll put my foot in it one too many times and she will tell me to eff off. Either way there is a vicious, pointed tip to everything this woman says, part of a delicious bleakness and black humour that seems to be laced through each layer of the game.

This is all the stuff you can pick up off the surface of Pentiment, mixed in with the wonderful little dashes of texture - the way misspellings in speech bubbles get scribbled out pointedly, the little mutters under your breath, internal monologues, dodgy persuasion attempts gone wrong. The most obvious reference point must surely be Disco Elysium, another razor sharp, detective RPG talk-em-up, although at a glance Pentiment seems a touch lighter, both in terms of systems and the density of dialogue and thought. This game picks you up and carries you along with ease - much like a bit of good writing.

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The simmering wickedness of Pentiment's dialogue is a delight - Eurogamer.net

One of the standout elements of the first season Industry, the HBO drama that documents the high-pressure working environment and pressure-releasing hedonism experienced by a batch of graduates seeking to make their way at London investment bank Pierpoint & Co, was the atmospheric synth soundtrack provided by Canadian electronic music producer Nathan Micay.

Unsurprisingly, Micay was asked back for season two - currently airing on HBO in the US and coming soon to BBC2 in the UK - and hes been telling The Daily Beast how the score has evolved to mirror the development of the characters.

This season, we really had the ability and the confidence to push it, Micay explains. Theres a lot of faster synth arpeggios, if thats even possible, and a lot more bold sound choices.

Micay also revealed that, in contrast to the first season, he didnt shy away from sort of cinematic drums, having cultivated a closer working relationship with showrunners Konrad Kay and Mickey Down.

Following the success of his first Industry score, Micay has written music for a number of other shows, and seems set to work on more in the future. The way we work in the scoring stuff is exactly how I work with my own albums. And it just makes me so happy, he says.

The Industry season 2 score is set for release on streaming services and vinyl soon.

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Nathan Micay on his standout electronic score for Industry season 2: There's a lot of faster synth arpeggios, if that's even possible, and a lot more...