‘Tis the season for a hundred top ten lists from wannabe hacks. Here’s my top ten in music for 2002.

1. Eminem. Again. An album, a soundtrack, a hit movie, getting the leg over with Kim Basinger and a very public apology from ‘let’s be friends’ fuckhead Moby. Result.

2. Bootlegs hit the mainstream. Soulwax took the art of mixing bits of one tune on top of another, mastered it and extended it over an entire album. The Sugababes covered an existing bootleg with Freak Like Me and the Freelance Hellraiser’s Stroke of Genius created something greater than the sum of its parts. Rubik cube my ass.

3. Guitar-based music wakes up. Clinic, Interpol and the Notwist all produce intelligent contemporary rock albums that kick the arse of the britpop/nu metal horseshit we’ve been fed in recent years.

4. Peer-to-peer. The peerless (hah) Audiogalaxy is sued and effectively closes down. Napster Incorporated does the decent thing and keels over. Kazaa gets sued. A Microsoft commissioned paper on P2P concludes that filesharing is ultimately unstoppable. Record sales slump. The obscure Soulseek program becomes popularised on forums and mailing lists.

5. Witnness. Arguably the finest lineup for a festival in 2002. People get down and hump in the mud.

6. Anti-folk. Kimya Dawson, The Moldy Peaches and Jeffrey Lewis spearhead a movement of simple and beautiful acoustic music.

7. Underworld. Darren Emerson is a stupid bastard. Not content with ruining my Last Big Night out of the Summer, a couple of years ago he quit as the main creative force of Underworld. I can imagine his face as he heard A Hundred Days Off. Funny.

8. The Driven reunite.

9. Acid. Acid 4 is released but it’s too slow to run on my PC so I stay with Acid 3. I learnt to love this sequencer through making a series of beat-orientated mixes. It makes your mix material into figurative lego bricks and no, it doesn’t just work with dance music.

10. B00mb0x is 2. Aww.

3 years ago: I’m in Killorglin, Co. Kerry for the barbaric boozefest that is The Puck Fair. I’m in an ould fellas pub with Seanie and his uncle , both natives of Killorglin. Some guy walks over to us and Seanie introduces him as his godfather. The guy says “Hello, how are you?” in what i thought sounded like a passable if crackly impression of Don Corleone in The Godfather movies. I always love a good pop culture joke and coming from a Kerry farmer who was about 60, it made it even funnier. I let out a hearty guffaw. Everyone starts giving me a disgusted look. See what I didnt notice was the electronic voicebox gizmo he had held up to his throat. Seanie knew what I was laughing about and he hissed at me..”You’re an awful fucking eejit”…i have to concur

All three of these selections firmly fit into the alternative/indie/college whatever- else-category-you-want-to-call-it hole. So if you never had an interest, move on to the software review below…

Sometimes, buzz is justified. And for my first 2 picks that is certainly the case; while my last is quite undeservedly still obscure even in indie/college rock land. Regardless, it’s been quite a strong year for indie/alternative work and folks saying rock is dead are (as always) looking in the wrong place (the top 40 charts).

Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights

Do you like Joy Division? How about Television? Ok then, get this album now (um; if you don’t have it already). It’s a great album and a great band. Better then anything released in 2001. Frightening, jarring, discordant, angry, yet (maybe most importantly) still transcendent. That’s about the summup for Interpol and this album.

Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robot

How do the Flaming Lips sing a song about battling a robot that makes me want to cry yet feel uplifited at the same time? I have no clue how they do it; but somehow the completely absurd lyric “Yoshimi, they don’t believe me - but you won’t let those robots defeat me” is infused with joy and tragedy. Go figure. That feeling (even when the lyrics aren’t so absurd) is what makes this album quite moving and rewarding after some exposure.

Clinic - Walking with Thee

More similar in tone to Interpol then ze Lips, Clinic opened 2002 with Walking with Thee and not much has beaten it since. Not that 2002 was such a weak year, Walking with Thee is just that good. And, sadly, seemingly ignored. Clinic had a great outing with Internal Wrangler but this album clearly announces a more polished sound that I could easily snort heroin to or listen to while traveling on a train to a place of which I’m not quite certain what will happen… It’s the soundtrack to a world (maybe a near future) that just doesn’t quite seem like this one; and somehow manages to be even darker. Good stuff for winter.

Sometimes you gotta go backwards to move forwards. Age of Mythology is the recently released successor to to Age of Empires, a game much beloved in our house. After two weeks of downloading duds, a new graphics card and burning problems we finally got the fucker up and running. Four days later with my brain panfried, glowing green and preserved in pickles for possible future use and little blue men running around the backs of my eyelids every time I blinked, I thought it was time to introduce a little rationing. Only one level of the campaign per day plus possibly a battle with the lads if it’s on. This, I reckoned, should add up to about two hours a day. It’s working out about four. This game is so addictive it’ll probably be banned and end up only being distributed by renegade software engineers in Columbia.

It has the basic structure of Empires, you build up a civilization through farming, mining and logging and this pays for amassing armies and progressing through the Ages (bronze, iron, etc.). Mythology casts the whole setting back in the imagined history of the Norse, Greek and Egyptian myths. This allows you to create all sorts of really cool monsters for you armies. Pegasus, minotaurs, Cyclops, trolls, Sphinx, centaurs and human heroes such as Ajax, Hercules and Jason. As you progress through an age you chose what god to progress through which gives you powers relating to that of the god’s. This means you can chose different paths of development even if you chose the same race repeatedly.

The attention to detail is extraordinary, if you click help a part of a game you will get a lesson on the actual belief and role the character in mythology, you could really learn something from this game if you weren’t too determined to gut that fucking Cyclops to read. The graphics are beautifully done and the storylines of the adventures are very inventive and involved, each challenge is unique and interesting while merging naturally with the greater narrative. Get this game unless you have important plans for the next few months, people are going to fail out of college over this.

I remember talking to a friend and saying so and so was a “fucking spastic” on the bus home and this girl to the right of me went crazy and said her brother was handicapped and then she called me a prick. I was shocked by her outburst and the best I could mutter was “Well, well, that’s not MY FAULT HE’S HANDICAPPED!”. Then everyone beside me hid their faces in their coats.

More tomorrow….