After many months of being too busy, tired or otherwise unavailable to write my usual well-thought out, pertinent and damn witty posts, I have a huge backlog of albums, songs, and random oddities to pontificate about. I realised the other day that some of my favourite records of the year have been totally unposted about, such as Low. I’ve been to great gigs, like M Ward, which have likewise been unposted. And some great tracks have popped out over the months, which I’ve totally missed.

The first of these being The National’s “Exile Vilify”, which debuted in the game Portal 2, of all places. Now you’ll not get any snooty anti-videogame tirade from me, no sirree. I’ve been playing the sodding things for a good thirty years, and some games, like System Shock series, have a deep and unshakable place in my heart, as pieces of art as emotionally powerful as anything Hollywood, Nashville or Manchester has to offer. Quite frankly, I’m just amazed that games are now such a part of the mainstream that the likes of The National are releasing records on games. Yes, of course bands have been videogame music for some time, what with Gran Turismo and the GTA series being almost as well defined by their musical content as the actual gameplay. But an esoteric wonder like Portal 2, featuring The National? We live in wonderful times, my friends, wonderful times.

Now, to have Mastodon doing the music for Skyrim¹. That would rock.

¹ Which leads me briefly onto this:

I’ve spent hundreds of hours playing this man’s games but have never known what he looks or sounds like. Which, I guess is where one area that games massively differ from music and film; you really don’t care what the people making the games are like.