It took me a while to decide upon which order I wanted to do the next Media Break in and eventually settled upon books. Now books are a tricky one for me really because I am a bit of a bibliophile so it is difficult to nail down on particular favourites without rattling off a list that would take me hours to type. So instead I will focus on my favourite genres and my personal recommendations within.
First off is a relatively unknown genre that is something of a newcomer with very old roots, and that is; urban fantasy. This particular genre is characterised by the idea of a fantastical (or terrible) demimonde hiding beneath the layers of mundane reality. Now, I say this genre has old roots because the works of one of my very favourite authors, H.P. Lovecraft, can easily be considered an urban fantasy (fantastical yet harrowing). More contemporary authors that I would highly recommend are Sergei Lukyanenko and his Watch series, Kate Griffin and her Urban Magic series and also Ben Aaronovitch and his Rivers of London series.
Second on my top list of genres is that of the cyberpunk, characterised by 'low life and high technology'. Now the considered king of the cyberpunk genre is William Gibson, yet there are many more authors to choose from today. Top of my personal list in this genre is the Petrovitch series by Simon Morden, closely followed by often hilarious Avery Cates series by Jeff Somers. Another author worth of note here, despite not strictly fitting into the cyberpunk genre, is the extraordinary Hungry Earth/Mortal Engines series by Phillip Reeves.
I guess that's enough for part one. Hopefully I've named some authors you've not yet read and inspired you to check them out.
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I know that I've titled this post the same as those little news snippets featured in Robocop, but I wanted to write a little on the different media mediums that inspire my sculpting, writing and general creativity, so in future posts I will be looking at; art, novels, movies, television, theatre, games and so on. But first focussing on music.
Music plays a big part of my life; I listen to it whilst strolling about the city, on the train, at home, whilst writing and even when working on sculpts. Music helps me to find the rhythm in everything and work with it. My own personal tastes tend to fit a specific spectrum of genres, from industrial to synthpop.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of the albums produced by Russian distributor Skyqode, who are relatively new but are quickly becoming the main name for synthpop, futurepop, electro and aggrotech in Eastern Europe, The Ukraine, Russia and The Baltics.
One particular artist I would like to share with you is Cold in May, who have recently released their third album titled Холодный Мир (or, The Cold World), a review of which can be found here (apologies for those who cannot read Cyrillic, but I'm sure most browsers can offer to translate the page for you).
I do thoroughly recommend you listen to some Cold in May, and other bands advertised through Skyqode. I hope they give you as much inspiration as they do me.
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