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After keeping the gaming/geek community on edge for so long, Rockstar Games finally released the trailer for GTA IV this week. I actually spent enough time with the last two GTA games that I finished them. They’re great fun. Plus when they get released, it’s great to read the Daily Mail columns complaining about how they are corrupting our youth. arf. Not entirely sure when (or even if) we’ll see this on the PC. I hope we do; I don’t fancy selling a kidney so I can afford to buy a PS3 (seems no one else does either). The trailer isn’t all that action-packed, it’s more tantalising; drawing fans in to make a load of predictions about what absolutely every little bit means. Interestingly (well, for me anyway) it uses Philip Glass as a soundtrack, complete with trade mark formulaic cadences. Guess it makes a change from the expected Kim Wilde/Grandmaster Flash (and anything in-between) of the previous games.

View the video here. Warning though; the huge hi-def copy almost crippled my (admitedly long in the tooth) computer; low-res copies are also available.

Sheffield’s Plug is a club I’m only just becoming familiar with. It definitely thinks its trendy, what with its minimalistic urban branding and all. Whatever, they bagged Four Tet and a Luke Vibert DJ set all in one night. That got my attention and I dragged along my poor friend Mark, who’d been visiting from out of town. The Four Tet guy (Kieran Hebden) brought along Steve Reid who (I now know after internets research) is some sort of jazz drumming-god. I know sod all about jazz (or drumming) but boy could this dude play. He had an advantageous position at the front of the stage and I’ve never seen anyone so into their instrument (yeah, even more than James Murphy last week). Certainly not a 60 year old anyway. I mean that in a nice way, y’know? He seemed to take point while Hebden worked his way through an array of electronic gizmos (that’s an industry-standard description of what he was doing, okay?) I love Four Tet and Hebdens other project of note; Fridge but I found this gig really hard going. I mean, the guys on the stage were masterful at what they were doing but I definitely think at the end of my week I wasn’t mentally ready for the bombarding that my ears and mind took. I’m pretty familiar with most of Four Tet/Fridge stuff, but on Friday it was all about improvisation and so nothing sounded familiar. Nothing wrong with that of course, just I personally felt like I wanted to hear something safe and recotlgnisable! I’m still glad I saw ‘em though, but the whole event felt like I was trapped in a Hawkwind intro. When would Lemmys vocals kick in? “I just took a ride in a silver machine…“

I’ve been listening open-mouthed as Frank openly mocks and stereotypes most of my friends on the radio. God, now I know what it’s like being a black muslim lesbian. Frank’s one of those two faced people who will lie to your face, and when he’s found out will say no, okay, I’ll tell you the truth now. And when he’s got your trust he’ll lie to you again, and piss in your mouth. Frank is a government anti-drugs information campaign, and my much-maligned friends are pot smokers.

The Talk To Frank campaign has been running for several years now, and has stepped from a friendly helpline service to an all-out televisual propaganda festival. From the first, Frank’s been all about matey advice and informed decisions. He’s also been about misinformation and eroding the last remnants of trust the perpetually disgruntled youth have in the British government. Frank doesn’t give a shit, he was hired to scare the crap out of kids TODAY, what happens tomorrow when they find out he’s been feeding them a crock is someone else’s problem.

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That’s the name of the current LCD Soundsystem single by the way, this isn’t the beginning of a xenophobic rant. I popped across the pennies yet again (this time on a bus; thanks to some genius envisaging that a rail link between two of Britain’s biggest cities isn’t particularly important at the weekends) to meet up with a fine young bunch of Mancunians who accompanied me to a very busy gig at the Manchester Academy. Quite an interesting crowd were present; the most annoying of which were people on pills and the (so stereotypically true to form, it hurt) MySpace hipster-types. Both seemed to spend most of the gig facing away from the musicians. This was either through confusion or through obsessive chimping, respectively (the likes of which I’ve not seen since I saw Death Cab for Cutie a couple of months back *shudders*) [thoughts on the gig itself after the jump...]

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I’ve just knocked my copy of “Doctor Kawashima’s Brain Training” on the NDS into my cup of tea. For those interested in the sturdiness of nintendo products, there is no discernable degradation in performance, however it now smells of tea and hobnobs.

That is all.