Geek Girls Rule! #137 – Review: Sepiachord Passport

I need to start off this review by stating that I’ve known Mr. Bodewell, the curator of Sepiachord for a very long time.  He is a good friend. I also know members of several of the bands on this compilation.  But, as I’ve said before, if something doesn’t work, I’ll be honest about it.

A Sepiachord Passport compilation CD.

Now, I’m not a huge Steampunk fan.  I enjoy the esthetic on others, but it’s not a style I favor for myself.  However, much of the music on this CD touches the part of me that winds up humming, “Mein Herr” from Cabaret for months on end every time I see it.

The tagline for the Sepiachord site is “Music for a Past that Never was.”  Many of the songs on this compilation (and the other Sepiachord CD) have strong vaudevillian and cabaret influences.  Jangly pianos and accordions feature strongly, as does the occasional theremin.  Everything on this CD is more than listenable, but there are a few standouts.

“The Dance Master” by Veronique Chevalier is hands down the best song on this CD. It tells the story of an evil Dance Master who seduces girls into a life of prostitution.  She has a throaty voice, with a French accent.  The first time I heard the song, I texted Mr. Bodewell immediately to tell him how incredible I thought it was.

“Hollowland” by Blackbird Orchestra is also a great song, but it doesn’t fit.  The others songs feature jangly vaudeville-sounding instruments, and Blackbird Orchestra has a very lush, full sound.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the song!  It reminds me a bit of Sisters of Mercy with some elements of the Killers thrown in.  It’s fantastic, but I just don’t think it really fits.

My other favorites on this compiliation are Walter Sickert and the Army of Broken Toys‘ “Off With Her Head,” and Miss Mamie Lavona the Exotic Mulatta and Her White Boy Band doing “Thief Song.”

“Rotten Zurich Cafe” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl is probably the weakest song on the CD.  It’s ok, but not quite as good as the rest. I think her Tallulah Bankhead impersonation was just a bit much for me.   And at first listen I didn’t think I’d like the Tiger Lillies song, “Roll Up,” but his voice grew on me after a couple of listenings, and I quickly grew quite fond of it. I’m also pretty fond of Sxip Shirey’s “Mehenatta.”

The majority of songs on this album tell stories, good ones, interesting stories, and with the exception of “Hollowland” they all fit together very well.  They’re incredibly evocative, and I could probably give you a paragraph or more about each if pressed, but I’d like to go finish getting ready for PAX now.

You can buy the Sepiachord Passport on the site (or you will be able to soon), or if you happen to meet Mr. Bodewell while out and about.

ETA:  You can buy the Passport now on Projekt’s website.

Geek Girls Rule! #134 – Game Review VOC!

On its face, VOC!  Founding the Dutch East Indies Company by Jerouen Doumen for Splotter Spellen Games, is not a game I’d have chosen to play on my own.  In fact, when we got to our friends’ place last night, and they started pulling it out and reading the rules (helpfully translated from Dutch to Dutch-lish), I pulled out my knitting and prepared myself for an evening of desultorily pushing cardboard chits around the board and making a pathetic attempt at “game face.”

Then we got to the part about HOW turns work, and suddenly this sounded like a whole lot more fun.

Let me start at the beginning.

VOC! is a game for 3-5 players, but we played with four, which felt pretty optimal, even though the game totally kicked our ass.  We played the basic game, as none of us had ever played it before.  Each player is a merchant.  There are four ships, each staffed with a row of sailors and a row of merchants, that are a combination of two players’ guys (with four players).  The player who has the left-most sailor is captain of the ship, and gets to plot the course.  Your goal is to reach ports that have certain commodities, and make it back to your home port, in order to fulfill the conditions of contract cards.  Every contract card you can’t fill goes to Amsterdam, and if, in the end, Amsterdam has more money from contracts than any of the players, you all lose.

First round, you already have three contract cards out, you flip over a fourth, and then decide which ports you’re going to make for.  Each ship has a corresponding dry-erase map with the ports they’re allowed to make for, and here is where the fun comes in.

In order to approximate 16th century navigation, you study your map, put your dry erase marker on your home port, close your eyes, and try to draw from memory to the ports, while not running aground (this is the best part).  The other player who has sailors on your ship, can give you “calls.”  They may either say “East,” “West,” “North,” “South,” “Stop,” or “Land Ho!” if you run aground, and that’s it.  And you may only make as many calls as you currently have sailors on the ship.  If you make more than the allowed number of calls, or say any other words, then you are fined five Daalders (the unit of currency in the game).

If you run aground, you lose the leftmost sailor on the ship, which usually means the other player has to take over drawing, while you navigate for them.  Also, every third round is the scurvy round, and if you are not in your home port, you lose a sailor.  If you lose all your sailors, your ship sinks.

After you make it to ports to pick up stuff, you still have to make it back to your home port without sinking before that stuff does you any good.

Like I said above, I fully expected to at the very least not like this game, if not actively despise it.  But the navigation mechanics make this so much fun, even if you suck at drawing, you’ll have a good time.  There were a few tense moments when we discovered that the Geek Husband What Rules is no better at remembering which direction East and West are, than he is with Left and Right, and with the other couple having a few, “I said ‘West!’”  ”I did go west.”  ”Yeah, about a third of a degree, then you steered right into the island!” moments.  But it was really, really fun.

Some folks do have some advantages.  If you’ve done a lot of sketching or drafting, and know how to draw controlled arcs, or if you have really good muscle memory, you’re going to be better at navigating than a lot of people.  There are a few other things you can do to increase your odds, but I’ll let you figure those out yourselves.  Although, when heading across the bottom of the map for your home port, I will let you in on the “Go until you think you’ve hit open ocean, then wiggle” strategy.

I think the GHWR and I will be picking up a copy of this fairly soon.  It’s a blast, fairly easy to learn quickly, and after we get better at it, I can totally see turning this into a drinking game.  If for no other reason than to handicap some of the better navigators.

Geek Girls Rule! #132 – Gail Carriger’s Soulless

You know how frequently when you pick up a fiction book, especially genre, especially the hot new genre, and you start reading, you find yourself thinking, “Hell, who do I have to blow to get a book contract?” 

You will think nothing of the sort about Gail Carriger’s Soulless. 

Soulless by Gail Carriger

I borrowed the first book from the Headmistress of Gothic Charm School, because I was curious, but wasn’t sure I wanted to make the monetary or space investment in a book I wasn’t sure about.  As I started reading, all I could think was, “Damn, I totally know why they gave her a book contract!”  Carriger blew me away almost immediately.  She writes well, descriptively without burdensome walls of text, her characters are engaging, they make sense within the world they inhabit.  The dialogue is believable and flows well, it is stiff when the situation would require a stiff formality, and casual where it should be.  

Miss Alexia Tarabotti is a spinster.  The child of a proper English mother, and Italian father, her father died when she was young, and her mother remarried.  Alexia is too Italian looking for the style of beauty favored in her world, English roses with peaches and cream complexions and heads full of fashion and fluff.  She’s smart, sarcastic, and very capable of taking care of herself.  She also has no soul, which makes her a danger and curiousity to London’s vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures.  Carriger is brilliant at conveying Alexia’s personality, straining at the bonds of the rigidly polite society in which she has been raised.

I highly recommend Soulless to anyone interested in Victorian, Steampunky horror fiction.