Tom Davenport

"

You forget, when you’ve been away from sports and sports watching for a while, how visually and emotionally ravishing sports of all kinds can be. Even football — which I have gone to impressive lengths to avoid watching and playing — can be as darkly gorgeous as peering down on warring amoebae through a high-powered microscope. Something like humanity’s cultural ancientness is revealed through sport, which reminds us of what we actually are: savage, noble, strange, playful, and, above all, creative beings.

Whatever art is, it must be, in some way, beautiful. Acts of physical beauty performed within rule-set confines are not art, but acts of mental beauty performed within only slightly less rule-set confines (like, say, a sonnet) are. Is that really how we’re going to play this? It doesn’t sit right. Here’s what I just realized: A world in which sport at its best is not seen as some kind of art is a world that doesn’t deserve any art.

"

—

Tom Bissell (on making Madden NFL)

Never thought I’d learn something from sport, but there you go.

At The Drive-In reunite. I react.

The band that changed my life is coming back from the dead.

I first saw At the Drive-In on the cover of Kerrang, a magazine that I had arranged a work placement with but had never read. I didn’t know anything about rock, even. I had about four months until I would walk in that office and have to feign some knowledge, and buying their magazine seemed a good place to start.

But there was a problem. Upon the cover was a sweating, wide-eyed lion of a man with an afro to match. Jesus Christ. I can’t get into this, I thought. This is not for me.

With the same issue was a CD, and I grew to like much of it. But only one song really affected me. It wasn’t emotional, nor was it a lyrical connection. It was the energy. My heart raced, and I wanted to jump and jab out my arms and stamp on everything. Sometimes I did. It was ‘Pattern Against User’ by At The Drive-In.

Relationship of Command was that feeling for almost an hour. It was their last and most aggressive release. Their previous records, notably Vaya and in/CASINO/OUT opened my eyes to the world of emo. True emotional hardcore, that is - nothing with black makeup or tattoos. Just great, heartfelt songwriting in a punk gown. Real emotional hardcore, as it should be.

I wanted to see them live so I could spazz out to this music freely, albeit with respect (because moshing was a big no-no at their shows), but as a 14 or 15-year-old, my mum wouldn’t allow it. Maybe I just didn’t know how to explain how much I loved them. This remains a regret.

But their split - rumoured to be in a haze of heroin and inter-member sex - left their legion of fans devastated. 

The first website I became addicted to was their forum. I remember the mourning, which sounds ridiculous, but we congregated there because we so adored them.

Thankfully the first Mars Volta EP and album were just as energetic, and Sparta were a great live band. We got over the split, and moved on with our lives. I went to uni, had two children, and morphed all the way to being a journalist.

When I read today that the band were reforming, I didn’t believe it. I started tweeting people to point out that it was a hoax. 

Then Jim Ward retweeted it. 

Why would Jim Ward, guitarist of ATDI, retweet a fake message?

It became clear this was official. My girlfriend was calling me for dinner, but I couldn’t miss this unfold. Everything about my teenage years came flooding back, and even now my heart races like it did in my bedroom back in 2000.

So they’re playing Coachella, according to Antiquiet. They’ll probably play other gigs. Better now, by their mid-30s, than when they’re too old to spazz out like the old days. Maybe they’re selling out and need the money.

I don’t care.

I just want to be 15 again.

Best Amazon Review Ever →

Handmade animation from Spike Jonze and Olympia Le-Tan.

Christian Dubstep. Dubstep is over.

You have to hear this.

As eloquently put by Modeselektor on twitter:

Now you can buy Christian Dubstep on Amazon . It really does sell anything.