In the prologue to his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil makes this observation about how humans perceive death and the passage of time: “A great deal of effort goes into avoiding it. We make extraordinary efforts to delay it, and indeed often consider its intrusion a tragic
One of my favourite bands, Caspian, often play recorded recitals of Charles Bukowski poems at the start of their live shows. One that stands out is Roll the Dice, which begins with the following lines: If you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start.
I’ve started to think of the three most recent entries to Makoto Shinkai’s filmography as the “Natural Disasters” trilogy. your name and Weathering with You both tell very personal stories with the involvement of some sort of cosmic or environmental intervention, which is quite a departure from his
The Budokan arena probably doesn’t need any introduction, being one of the world’s most prestigious venues. Even though it’s not the biggest, newest or even the most well-suited spot for a live music event, there’s still that hard-to-define sense that any show held
I was hoping to buy a thirtieth anniversary edition of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream album on vinyl but, for some reason, I’ve yet to find such a thing on sale. What did however appear in stock at my local online record store recently was, in some ways, even
Here be spoilers. I’m not doing a deep dive into the whole show here, because better minds than mine (I’m looking at you, Jonathan Clements, and I recommend anyone reading this to check out his articles too) can explain its place in the pop culture landscape that it
It’s been four years since I’d last had a proper holiday, so I incorporated my visit to the AnimagiC 2023 convention into a European city break trip that I was already planning to make sometime this year. I wouldn’t have otherwise chosen August due to the summer
By almost any measure, Haibane Renmei is odd. Perhaps because its creator came from a different type of artistic training from most people in the anime and manga industries, it certainly looks different. Character designs aside though, it’s still a very unusual piece of television that’s hard to
Well, here we are. Kalafina’s fourth full-length LP, Consolation, is now a decade old. At the time of its release the band was enjoying more success and a higher profile, but you could argue that they had less to prove. Perhaps this is why it feels sonically bigger
The RPM Challenge is inspiring, because it gives me an objective and a set deadline to fight procrastination, but it’s also frustrating because I don’t feel that I have enough time to do anything properly (but then, when I do have enough time, I just procrastinate *shrugs*). Because
On January 23rd 2023, Kalafina’s debut single, Oblivious, turned fifteen years old. It was also five years since their tenth anniversary concert at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan arena, which made me 1. feel old and 2. wonder where all that time went. Two of them still join their old
As a science fiction geek, I have a particular fondness for the cyberpunk genre. I only recently tried to seriously ask myself why after watching the new streaming hit Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Here’s the thing: I have an aversion to “downer” stories where bad things constantly happen to people who