All posts tagged 2012

  • BuzzFeed story: ‘The Royal Prank’, August 2013

    A story for BuzzFeed; my first for the site’s longform vertical. Excerpt below; click the image to read the full story.

    The Royal Prank: The Story Behind The Worst Radio Stunt In History

    by Andrew McMillen / illustration by Justine Zwiebel

    When a pair of Australian DJs went viral by prank calling the London hospital treating Kate Middleton last December, they were lionized at home and vilified in the U.K. Then the nurse who answered the phone committed suicide amid the outrage, raising questions about mental health, privacy, and the very definition of a joke. What responsibility do pranksters have to their victims?

    'The Royal Prank: The Story Behind The Worst Radio Stunt In History' by Andrew McMillen for BuzzFeed, August 2013. Illustration by Justine Zwiebel

    Speaking with the Queen of England on the telephone, even for a moment, is, by any measure, an out-of-the-ordinary experience. But Jacintha Saldanha, a 46-year-old nurse at King Edward VII’s Hospital in central London, didn’t mention her brief conservation with Her Majesty to her husband Benedict Barboza on Tuesday, Dec. 4, last year.

    Barboza and their children — Junal, 17, and Lisha, 14 — lived 118 miles away in Bristol. Along with the hospital’s reputation of caring for upper-class British citizens came a higher income than Saldanha previously earned at Southmead Hospital in Bristol, which in turn allowed the family to live in comfort while they paid their mortgage. Saldanha’s life consisted of staying at nurses’ quarters during the week and savoring weekends at home.

    The nurse spoke to her family again on Wednesday and made cryptic reference to the fact that they should watch the news on television. But she didn’t call at all on Thursday. Concerned, Barboza called the hospital soon after 9 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 7, and asked a colleague to check on his wife. What they discovered in her room was a lifeless body with cut wrists, hung by a scarf tied to a wardrobe.

    Three suicide notes were found: two at the scene, one among Saldanha’s belongings. The first note was addressed to her employers, and reportedly contained criticism of hospital staff. The second asked that she be buried in her hometown of Shirva, Udupi, India.

    The final handwritten note read: “I hold the Radio Australians Mel Greig and Michael Christian responsible for this act. Please make them pay my mortgage. I am sorry. Jacintha.”

    ++

    The hospital had been quiet that early Tuesday morning. That one of the most famous women in the world, the Duchess of Cambridge, was resting upstairs, recovering from acute morning sickness was not unusual; the hospital had been treating royalty since 1899. Elizabeth, the queen mother, underwent treatment here many times: In November 1982, a fish bone was extracted from her throat during surgery. The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip, was hospitalized here for five nights with a bladder infection in June 2012. There was no reason for the skeleton staff on the night shift to expect anything out of the ordinary.

    On the other side of the world, in Sydney, Australia, two radio announcers at 2Day FM were recording a bit for their nightly program. Michael “MC” Christian, 25, had only that week begun hosting the summer edition of the Hot 30 Countdown program, broadcast nationally through Southern Cross Austereo’s Today Network each weeknight from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m., alongside 30-year-old Mel Greig. The show mixed pop hits with softball celebrity interviews and gossip items and, as such, attracted some of the country’s biggest advertisers. It also launched the careers of a few now-famous Australian radio personalities such as “Ugly Phil” O’Neil, Kyle Sandilands, and “Jackie O” Henderson.

    “Here’s the thing,” Christian said at the beginning of the segment. “We’ve been handed a phone number. We’ve been told that this phone number is the hospital where Kate Middleton is currently staying. We thought we’d give it a call. We don’t want to cause any trouble, we don’t want to stress her out. But I reckon we could maybe get her on the radio tonight.”

    “Look, I don’t know,” Greig faux-cautioned. “I mean, everybody would be trying this.”

    “Well, this is why I’ve thought of a plan,” Christian replied. “We can’t just ring up and go, ‘Hi, it’s MC and Mel from the Summer 30, can we chat to Kate?’ Hang up. Not gonna happen. You are going to be the queen…”

    “This is awesome!” whispered Greig, a former Amazing Race Australia contestant. She affected an upper-class British accent. “Hello, I’m the queen.”

    “I’m going to be Prince Charles.” Christian gestured through the glass to his producers, Emily Mills, 26, and Ben Hamley, 21. “Ben and Em, you’re involved in this as well. We thought that maybe you could be the royal corgis, if you’re OK with that?”

    The pair made enthusiastic barking sounds. “Sure, we’ll pop on in, in a sec,” replied Mills.

    “This is fun!” Greig said. “I mean…” She readopted the posh British accent. “…this is fun.”

    Christian gave his best attempt at imitating a British man nearly 40 years his senior. “Hello. Prince Charles over here, mummy!”

    “Oh, you’re Prince Charles,” Greig-as-queen said. “I like your ears.”

    Shortly after 5 a.m., a telephone rang at the hospital’s front desk. Answering the phone wasn’t really Saldanha’s job, but since the reception switchboard wasn’t staffed overnight, she must have felt obliged to pick up after three rings.

    “Hello, good morning, King Edward the Seventh Hospital,” she said.

    A haughty, straining British accent replied, “Yes, hello, I’d like to speak to my granddaughter, Kate.”

    Saldanha recognized the voice immediately, though if she was taken aback by this request, she didn’t show it. “Oh, yes, just hold on, ma’am,” she said.

    Gentle strings and a tinkling piano played while the pair held the line.

    “Are they putting us through?” asked Christian, dropping the Charles facade.

    “Yes!” Greig replied. They both laughed.

    Christian lowered his voice. “If this has worked, it’s the easiest prank call we have ever made.”

    To read the full story, visit BuzzFeed. On a personal note, I’m honoured that this story resulted in my first mention on both Longform.org and Longreads.com, the web’s two leading aggregators of longform journalism.

  • The Vine interview: Maynard James Keenan of Puscifer, December 2012

    An interview with Maynard James Keenan for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Interview – Maynard James Keenan of Puscifer: “You can’t please everybody”

    Don’t ask about Tool. Don’t ask about A Perfect Circle. Definitely don’t ask when Tool’s next album – their first since 2006’s 10,000 Days – is due. These are the publicist-stated rules of engagement when interviewing Maynard James Keenan, frontman of those two bands and also Puscifer, a “multimedia project” that encompasses music, film, performance, wine and clothing, and has released two albums so far: 2007’s V Is For Vagina and 2011’s Conditions Of My Parole. Keenan is touring the Puscifer show outside of North America for the first time in February 2013, with three Australian theatre shows booked around his commitments with A Perfect Circle at Soundwave Festival.

    These interview restrictions open up lines of questioning largely outside of Keenan’s music, which has enthralled millions of hard rock fans since Tool’s first LP, Undertow, was released nearly 20 years ago. The singer owns and operates Merkin Vineyards and Caduceus Cellars in Arizona, where he’s lived for 17 years. Winemaking would be a gimmick – a distraction from his enormously popular musical outlets – if only Keenan wasn’t so damn serious about it. Multi-million dollar start-up costs aside, the business was built with a view to be sustainable, and Keenan says he has met this goal. A remarkable achievement, considering that Arizona had no wine reputation to speak of prior to Keenan’s involvement. Such is the pulling power of the man, perhaps, but it also helps that the wine is fantastic.

    Hello Maynard. Where are you calling from?

    The bunker. [At the Caduceus winery]

    Australia was the first country to import your wine: I’ve met the two guys behind [Caduceus wine importers] Sip & Listen here in Brisbane. I’m guessing that exporting was always on your list of goals, but were you surprised the Australian opportunity came up as soon as it did?

    I guess so. We don’t really have a lot of volume, so that we had enough to actually export was a surprise. It was good timing; we had a little extra.

    Australians will also be the first outside of North America to see Puscifer tour. Why is that? 

    The opportunity came up. It’s a tough project to get out of the country because of all the extra stuff we put into the performance. It had to be the right scenario, the right situation for us to be able to afford to do it.

    You said in [2010 documentary] Blood Into Wine that touring becomes more gruelling on your body as you get older. How do you take care of yourself, and your voice, while on the road these days?

    Just like anybody else would: just pace yourself, get good sleep.

    Is that different to what you were doing when you were touring in your 20s and 30s?

    Well, you know, back then you have a little more resilience, and you can kinda push it a little harder, move a little faster. You don’t necessarily have to pay attention to maintenance much.

    I get the impression that all of your musical output these days – touring, releasing music – is done primarily to fund your wine business. Am I way off the mark?

    Hmm… no. I think the touring is just because we like to play music and we like to perform. The wine business – it takes care of itself. Of course, there’s a lot of initial investment, from prior touring. I used a lot of that money to get it going, but that was instead of buying a Ferrari.

    So after the initial start-up cost, the ongoing costs aren’t so great?

    Yeah, I mean, it’s barely paying for itself, but it is sustaining itself. The point of even doing it was to establish a sustainable endeavour.

    Do you feel that reorganising your life around the wine business has had a positive effect on your art so far? 

    I would think so, yeah. It’s in tune with where I am. So if your art is, in theory, you expressing your take on the world, or your place in it, or your interaction with it, then I guess, yeah, it’s more in tune.

    Do you find it freeing to create music around the wine season, or restrictive?

    I haven’t really found anything that was restrictive. I kinda schedule things as I schedule ‘em. There’s a timing involved with harvest, so a lot of stuff has to take a backseat during that period of time, but it’s not like I’m writing every day.

    Which is more satisfying: completing a recording session, or finishing a wine harvest?

    I think they both stroke you in a different spot.

    For the full interview, visit The Vine.

    Further reading: my first interview with Maynard, in late 2010 ahead of Tool headlining the 2011 Big Day Out.

  • Rolling Stone Q+A: Paul Kelly, December 2012

    A Q+A with Paul Kelly in the December 2012 issue of Rolling Stone. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.

    Q&A – Paul Kelly

    The singer-songwriter on his new album, having his life documented, and nephew Dan’s cooking skills

    Few of us will ever know the feeling of watching a feature-length documentary about our own lives while sitting in a cinema filled with friends and family. Paul Kelly is one of the lucky few, though he probably wouldn’t use that adjective when describing the premiere of Stories Of Me at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August. Its limited release in October coincides with the release of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s eighteenth album, Spring And Fall, which sees Kelly pare back rock-band tropes in favour of largely acoustic, softly-sung songs.

    Before we discuss that, though: what was it like to watch your life dissected on film? “It’s something I want to do only once in my life,” Kelly replies. “I had some of my brothers and sisters there. That was the best part of it for me; the celebration of my family. The rest of it was a pretty awkward thing to watch. But I got through it.”

    First the memoir two years ago, now this film. What in your life hasn’t been documented, Paul?

    I think too much has been documented, so it’s probably time to jump back into the shadows again for a little while! [laughs] I gave Shark Island [Productions] pretty good access, but from that point it was their film, not mine. It’s funny; I don’t feel connected to the doco like I would to my own work. I liked that they picked up a lot on my family; generations back, as well as my wider clan. That’s showing that people don’t work in isolation – they’re a product of a whole lot of things.

    Speaking of family, you and your nephew Dan have spent thousands of hours together, both onstage and off. Which trait sticks out more in your mind: the fact that he’s a great musician, or that he’s family?

    Family’s first, but he’s a joy to play with. He can be a bit of a worrier. He’s a great cook, so he’s great to travel with. He cooks like he plays [guitar]; never really follows a recipe, but he’s a great improviser. His playing has big, deep roots, because he listens widely to a lot of music. He’s got one of those ‘fermenting’ brains: there’s always a lot going on in Dan’s head, and it’s just a matter of catching it as it falls out.

    Spring And Fall is a love story – what can you tell us about the starring characters?

    It’s a love story from a couple of different points of view. Some of the songs are narrated, like ‘When A Woman Loves A Man’; ‘Time And Tide’ feels a bit more like a third-person story. Others are more directly speaking from the characters involved. But to me, the emotional arc of the record starts with love’s beginning – the ‘spring’ – and there’s a turning point in the middle around ‘Someone New’, followed by the aftermath.

    With your characters, do you go as far as envisaging their physical appearances and personality traits?

    Not on this record. I didn’t have it that defined; I don’t have names for them. But a bit of a model was a Willie Nelson album from 1974 called Phases and Stages. It’s the story of a divorce: side one is the man’s point of view, side two is the woman’s. I wasn’t getting quite as specific as Willie, but I kinda liked that idea.

    I’m not sure what you’ll make of this, but every time I listen to your song ‘When A Woman Loves A Man’, I think of how perfect it’d be as the soundtrack for a sex education video.

    Really? [laughs] Well, you know, if you know people in the know, then send it off!

    “Time and tide wait for no-one,” as you sing. You seem to have taken aging in your stride better than many musicians, perhaps even working harder as you grow older.

    Songwriting’s really a form of play. I still find it fascinating. It doesn’t feel like a grind. There are certain aspects of my job that’s grinding; sometimes the touring, and proofing, and approving YouTube videos. [laughs] If you want to be any good, you have to get involved with everything. There’s more work on the creative side now. And also, the record companies do less now than they used to: I do it, or me and the team do it. But the actual thing that starts it all is ‘play’: writing a song. Nothing would happen without playing in the sandpit. And that’s all it is.

    That’s a view that hasn’t changed over the years?

    Yeah. Songwriting’s not real work. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s a “craft”. It’s play.

  • The Vine live review: Harvest Festival Brisbane, November 2012

    A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    Harvest Festival
    Botanic Gardens, Brisbane
    Sunday 18 November 2012

    Arguably the hardest part of arranging a music festival is securing a headline act so superior that they simply can’t be followed. For the second year in a row, Harvest has achieved this. Sigur Rós are a delight: challenging, brave, and pure. Like Portishead last year, their main stage set is a sterling example of how to end a day filled with remarkable music. It’s a true spectacle, carefully structured to include peaks and troughs and the band work at eliciting a wide spectrum of emotions. There’s a real art to this, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the thousands gathered before the Riverstage: a silent and attentive audience hangs on every note played.

    Before meeting the day’s peak, though, we find ten hours of solid entertainment bisected by a half-hour break in proceedings, owing to a storm cell menacing inner-city Brisbane. Organisers make the seemingly rash decision to evacuate the entire festival grounds – the first time I’ve heard of this happening in Brisbane – but in hindsight it’s a good call, at least from a public liability perspective. Hail and heavy rain lash the Botanic Gardens while thousands seek cover within the neighbouring university grounds, trading cigarettes and stories.

    During the storm I stand beneath a QUT building, adjacent to a construction site filled with plenty of objects which could easily become deadly in high winds. That doesn’t eventuate, though, and we’re all invited back inside at 6.30pm. A voice from the Windmill Stage coaxes us, urging us not to run, telling us that there’s room for everyone. Indeed. The situation is handled smoothly and professionally, all things considered.

    It rains intermittently throughout the day, starting one song into The War On Drugs’ set. This is not particularly interesting; most of the crowd came prepared with ponchos, given that the city was assaulted by severe storms the day before. (I won’t mention the weather again. Promise!) I love War on Drugs’ stage manner: the Philadelphia indie rock four-piece are calm, unpretentious and confident – it appears that nothing else concerns them right now. Their positive attitude is contagious. How much of the crowd is here because of their name alone? There seems to be few serious fans among the hundreds watching, yet they’re met with wide applause. They comply with a request for ‘Buying The Farm’from diehards down the front; in the closing moments, frontman Adam Granduciel removes and retunes a broken guitar string in 90 seconds flat. I’m impressed. It’s a strong start to the day.

    The Dandy Warhols are suited to the main stage when playing their singles, mostly taken from Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia; when indulging in slower, lesser-known material – including three plodders from 2012 release This Machine – they’re less appreciated. It’s a balance between crowd-pleasing and pleasing themselves, I guess. Their June 2011 show at The Tivoli was one of the best I saw last year. This feels a little flat in comparison. Silversun Pickups do too: the bass is nearly inaudible for the first few songs, Brian Aubert’s guitar parts are a little sloppy, yet his voice is spot-on. Drummer Chris Guanlao windmills his hair throughout the entire set, which draws material from their three albums. I’m a big fan of this band – Neck Of The Woods is one of my most-played albums of this year – but this performance feels far from their best. They namecheck Valley Fiesta, where Aubert tells us they played their first show outside of the US in 2007, and end strongly with ‘Lazy Eye’.

    Mike Patton is at home on the main stage, leading an orchestra through Italian pop songs. It’s a highlight because it’s so different from every other performance today. The Mondo Cane album is fantastic, and it’s a pleasure to see Patton working the songs in person, ever the genial frontman. The music is elegant, majestic, and all of those adjectives. It’s great that Harvest decided to book them: it wouldn’t have been cheap to hire, rehearse and tour that orchestra, nor is there a huge audience on the hill watching it take place. But damn, it’s fantastic. The Black Angels played a blinder headline set at The Hi-Fi last year, yet their performance on the smaller Big Red Tractor Stage is no knockout. While they play, I think about the quality of the Harvest 2012 line-up, and how there are few overlapping genres. This Austin-based psychedelic rock act play it cool, showing little emotion or enthusiasm before the hundreds-strong crowd. “You guys have been great,” singer Alex Maas says at the end of their set, and it’s hard to tell if he’s being serious.

    For the full review and photos, visit The Vine. Above photo credit: Justin Edwards.

  • The Weekend Australian album reviews, November 2012: Spencer P. Jones, Crystal Castles

    Two album reviews for The Weekend Australian, published in November.

    ++

    Spencer P. Jones and The Nothing Butts – Spencer P. Jones and The Nothing Butts

    For Australian rock fans, this supergroup is a match made in heaven: two members from Beasts of Bourbon and two from The Drones combining to make a beautiful racket.

    On the group’s self-titled debut, the best of both bands can be heard: smart lyricism, enviable energy, finely tuned ears for melody and fantastic guitar sounds.

    Drones leader Gareth Liddiard doesn’t sing here, but his sonic fingerprints are all over these nine tracks: spiralling natural harmonics, whammy-bar flexes and overwhelming klaxon-call effects in the coda of ‘Freak Out’. Removed from the context of his masterful songwriting – Jones is the only lyricist here – it’s apparent exactly how exceptional and valuable Liddiard’s guitar playing is: no other rock guitarist in the world sounds like he does. The noise is enthralling.

    ‘When He Finds Out’ is the centrepiece, filled with unsubtle innuendo and stretched across eight gripping minutes: “Blood is thicker than water, your father screams and shouts / I shudder to think what he’ll do when he finds out,” sings Jones, while James Baker’s hi-hat bounces out an uneasy rhythm and Fiona Kitschin’s sparse bass notes add to the mystique. There’s no humour here, just unresolved tension: the extended guitar freak-out is effectively a stand-in for a violent confrontation. Fearsome stuff.

    Elsewhere, titles such as ‘When Friends Turn’ and ‘Duplicity’ hint at the headspace Jones was in while writing. Not a second is wasted: at 39 minutes, the album feels tantalisingly brief and demands repeated listens. This is an absorbing and cathartic collection of songs performed by four accomplished musicians. Not to be missed.

    Label: Shock
    Rating: 4.5 stars

    ++

    Crystal Castles – III

    The third full-length album released by this young Canadian electronic duo lacks the immediate sonic punch that made their first two albums such compelling listens.

    It’s their darkest set yet, but that isn’t such a bad thing. It shows that producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass seek artistic growth, and that they’re not content to stay within their comfort zone.

    With their 2008 self-titled debut, Crystal Castles emerged with a fully formed sound that merged synth-led pop ideals with ugly, distorted chiptune sounds, born from Kath’s experimentation with bending circuitry. The music they produced was unique four years ago and remains so.

    As with previous releases, the vocals on III often take on an eerie quality, as Glass rarely sings without the aid of pitch-shifting effects. Those few phrases that are allowed to penetrate through the wash of sound are stark and blunt: “Catch a moth, hold it in my hand / Crush it casually,” she sings sweetly on ‘Affection’, yet the song ends with a cold, cyborg-like voice stating: “We drown in pneumonia, not rivers and streams.”

    This merging of man and machine seems to be one of Crystal Castles’ main goals and they’re bloody good at it; most of the time there’s little sense that human beings had a hand in creating this work. They did, of course, and they undoubtedly worked hard, yet III gives off no sense of struggle. This isn’t their most accessible release – that is 2010’s II – but it’s still a fine extension of their effortless sound, at once beautiful and ugly; intentionally flawed, yet polished to near-perfection.

    Label: Shock
    Rating: 3.5 stars

  • Rolling Stone story: ‘Building A Better Brain: Wired on Nootropics’, November 2012

    A 4,000 word feature story published in the November 2012 edition of Rolling Stone Australia; my first non-music feature for the magazine. Click the below image to view a PDF version, or scroll down to read the article text.

    Building A Better Brain: Wired on Nootropics
    By Andrew McMillen / Illustration by Amanda Upton

    A new generation of “smart drugs” that promise to enhance cognitive ability are now available, but are they the key to the human race’s next evolutionary leap or merely 21st century snake oil? Rolling Stone finds out…

    Before he swallowed the designer drug NZT, Bradley Cooper was having a shitty day. Scratch that; he was having a shitty life. Cooper was an unproductive, depressed writer with few prospects and fewer friends. His long-suffering girlfriend had recently left him. His unkempt appearance implied that his deep apathy extended to his body image. Here was a man broken by the accrued stress and malaise of living a seemingly pointless, joyless existence in modern day New York City.

    Moments after taking the transparent, odourless NZT pill, though, Cooper’s world changed dramatically. His visual and auditory perceptions sharpened significantly. His brain could instantly summon previously forgotten snatches of glanced-at facts and figures. His empathy and charm were suddenly amplified to the point where he was able to bed a woman who previously loathed him. A burst of inspiration saw him cleaning his apartment for the first time in years while forgoing both food and his usual addiction to nicotine. Within a few hours, Cooper produced a hundred pages of brilliant writing, which pleased his editor like never before.

    As his interior monologue put it, “I was blind; now I see. I wasn’t high, wasn’t wired; just clear. I knew what I needed to do, and how to do it.”

    This isn’t a scene from Bradley Cooper’s actual life, of course. It’s the life of a fictional character named Eddie Morra, which Cooper portrayed in the 2011 thriller Limitless. Right now, I’m psyching myself up for a Bradley Cooper moment of my own. My version of the make-believe NZT is a little, white, very real pill named Modalert. Produced by Indian manufacturer Sun Pharmaceuticals, the drug’s generic name is modafinil and it costs around $2 per 200mg dose. In Australia, it’s only prescribed to narcoleptics and shift workers who have difficulty staying awake. I’ve acquired some through an online retailer and at 5pm on a Monday, I take the drug for the first time.

    By 10pm I’m wide awake, and aware that my resting heart-rate is higher than normal. By midnight my mind is racing around like an agitated puppy: “Hey! Here I am! Play with me!” I occupy myself with the normally tedious task of transcribing interviews; when I next look at the clock, it’s 3.30am and I’m finished. I’m washing dishes to take a break from work, when I realise that my randomly chosen soundtrack has taken on an eerie parallel to real life. In the classic Nas track ‘N.Y. State of Mind’, he raps: “I never sleep / ‘Cuz sleep is the cousin of death.”

    For as long as I can remember, my answer to that age-old ‘just one wish’ hypothetical has been ‘to never fatigue’. To never need to sleep. To be able to learn, create and achieve more than any regular human being because I’m no longer confined by the boring necessity of a good night’s sleep.

    Thanks to modafinil, I’m closer to this long-held dream than ever before. And I feel incredible. Not high, not wired; just clear. The computer in my skull is crunching ones and zeroes while the rest of the world sleeps. I yawn occasionally, but my mind feels focused, at capacity, even as 5am approaches.

    It’s a kind of cognitive dissonance I’ve never experienced before; I know I should be feeling fatigued by now, but everything’s still working well. At 8.30am – roughly fifteen hours after taking the drug, which corresponds with its stated half-life – its effects wear off, and fatigue sets in. I take a three-hour nap, then pop another modafinil upon waking. I’m back on the merry-go-round of sleeplessness, and loving it.

    Giddy at the near-endless productivity possibilities that I’ve suddenly unlocked, I confess my off-label use of Modalert to a Sun Pharma spokesperson via email in a moment of clarity (or, perhaps, over-earnest honesty). The reply arrives in my inbox a short time later, and I’m briefly quietened by its ominous tone.

    “You’ve seen Limitless?” the Indian drug rep replies. “The cost is too much. Please evaluate what you are doing, even for test purposes. Neuronal circuitry is not to be messed with.”

    ++

    Modafinil is the brightest star in a galaxy of drugs and supplements called ‘nootropics’. The word was coined by a Romanian doctor in 1972; in Greek, its definition refers to ‘turning the mind’. More commonly known as ‘smart drugs’ or ‘cognitive enhancers’, nootropics work in one of three ways: by altering the availability of the brain’s supply of neurochemicals; by improving the brain’s oxygen supply; or by stimulating nerve growth.

    Smart drugs are not a new concept. Last century, both cocaine and amphetamine were considered to have enhancement potential. As researchers at the University of Queensland wrote in a 2012 paper, “…their use for this purpose was regarded in a wholly positive light. [Cocaine and amphetamine] were seen as safe and effective ‘wonder drugs’ that increased alertness and mental capabilities, thereby allowing users to cope better with the increasing demands of modern life.” These views became unpopular once both substances were found to be addictive: cocaine became a prohibited substance, though amphetamine is still widely prescribed as a treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) under the brand name Adderall.

    The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), Australian drug regulation authority, does not yet recognise nootropics as a class of drug, as “the information available on nootropic products provides a very broad definition.” A TGA spokesperson tells Rolling Stone that they are unable to comment on the matter, as “the issue here is that the definition of nootropics goes from nutritional supplements all the way through to prescription medicines, so depending on what the product is and its claims, it might be considered as listable, a registered complementary medicine, or a registered prescription medicine.”

    So regulation is a murky topic, then. But nootropics aren’t illegal, either. Admittedly, taking modafinil off-label is not a smart thing to do. I am not a narcoleptic. I sleep just fine, if begrudgingly. I am a healthy 24 year-old male who exercises regularly and eats well. My recreational drug use is occasional. I’ve never been addicted to anything, and I intend to keep that clean sheet. I would like to be able to concentrate for long periods during the work week, though. I’d like to be able to instantly summon previously forgotten snatches of glanced-at facts. In short, I’d like to be smarter. Who wouldn’t?

    In the fictional account of Limitless and its inspiration, a 2001 techno-thriller by Irish author Alan Glynn named The Dark Fields, the universally appealing idea of self-improvement through minimal effort is explored by a guy taking a designer drug to boost his brainpower to superhuman levels. In reality, nootropic enthusiasts claim significant cognitive benefits with few, if any, side effects from taking these supposedly non-addictive, non-toxic substances.

    Sounds too good to be true? You bet. With my bullshit detector cranked up to eleven, I’m wading into this contentious field with the goal of separating science from fiction. Are smart drugs the snake oil of the 21st century? Or am I about to become a better man just by taking a bunch of coloured pills?

    ++

    After Eddie Morra tires of writing while under the influence of NZT, he turns his attention to the far more lucrative stock market. When I tire of writing on modafinil, I waste away the night-time hours by shooting terrorists in Counter-Strike: Source online, trawling internet forums, and reading about nootropics.

    With a newfound surplus of time arises an interesting dilemma: how to spend it? I chose to alternately work, read, and play games. What if every night was like that, though? What if I had all that time? How soon would I become accustomed to operating on little, or zero, sleep? What would be the side-effects of this for my health, my relationships, my career? Would I become a kinder person? Would parts of my personality become amplified, or atrophy? Obvious productivity gains – or productivity opportunity gains – aside, would less sleep make me a better person?

    All Tuesday night, I’m keyed into a writing task with laser-like focus. By sunrise, I’ve produced an article which, at the time, feels like some of my best work yet. (When it’s published online, weeks later, I read it with fresh eyes and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that I still feel the same way.) On Wednesday, I choose to take a break from the drug, but I’m still up until 4am. My sleep cycle has been totally disrupted.

    Thursday just feels like a regular day. I’m yawning more than usual, probably due to the sleep debt I’ve incurred this week. But it does feel a little… boring to be operating at this level, rather than on modafinil, where I feel like I’m connecting all of the dots all of the time. I suddenly find myself weighing up the costs and benefits of taking a pill right now. I have nothing in particular that needs to be completed for the remainder of the week, but there’s an internal argument happening: “Being awake is so much more enjoyable than sleeping. Who needs sleep, honestly?”

    I dose another 200mg, and within the hour, I again find myself making connections in music that I’d never previously noticed. The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song ‘Stop’ aligns with my current mindset: “We don’t know where to stop / I try and I try but I can’t get enough…

    I feel like an outlaw; as though I’m in on a secret to which everyone else is oblivious. I know how to subvert sleep; that knowledge is in the shape of a small white disc containing 200mg of modafinil. I feel as though taking this drug might be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I want everyone around me to take it, too, so that we can share our experiences and revel in the euphoria of the unclouded mind.

    That night, I drive to and from a rock show. I meet friends and strangers at the venue; as I talk, I feel as though I’m not making sense, and that those around me are acutely aware of this. I feel in control, but my mind is racing faster than my mouth can keep up. I buy one beer and feel a little drunk, but I don’t come close to crashing my car on the drive home. Around 2am, I note that I’ve got an impending feeling of doom going on. Like I’m riding this too far, and it’s about to start doing some serious damage. I turn in at 3.30am on Friday.

    My first nootropic odyssey whimpers to a close, after beginning with a giddy bang at 10am on Monday morning. I’ve taken three 200mg doses of modafinil during that time – 5pm Monday, 1pm Tuesday, 2.30pm Thursday – and napped for around 11 hours total. In all, I’ve been awake for 79 out of the last 90 hours.

    I arise at midday, refreshed, having effectively reset my debt with one normal sleep. I reflect on how my views toward modafinil have veered between utter devotion to, now, in the cold light of day, a realisation that it’s probably not a good idea to be taking that shit on consecutive days. I was feeling so fucking average the night before. I couldn’t bear the thought of continuing to stay awake. The body and the mind aren’t made for it.

    ++

    Next, I purchase some homemade nootropics from a vendor named Tryptamine on Silk Road (SR), an anonymous online market where illicit drugs are purchased with virtual currency and sent through the international postal system. Tryptamine’s vendor profile states, “I am a biologist who develops nutritional supplements to improve your health, sleep, and cognition. I use only natural or orthomolecular ingredients, and no adverse effects have been reported from my products.”

    Tryptamine makes and sells three nootropics. I order two 24-pill bottles of MindFood (“designed to optimize brain function, protect against stress- and drug-induced neurotoxicity, prevent/alleviate hangovers, and reverse brain aging,” among other alleged effects), and ChillPill (“designed to promote relaxation, attenuate stress, calm excess brain activity, enhance mood, and promote dreaming”). The seller kindly includes a bonus five-pill sampler of ThinkDeep (“designed to stimulate brain metabolism and glucose uptake, improve memory formation/recall, expand attention span, prevent mental fatigue and enhance blood flow”), too.

    The total cost is around AUD$100. As I pay this seemingly exorbitant amount, I’m reminded of that old aphorism about fools and their money. The package lands in my mailbox via the state of New York around two weeks later. The pills are brightly coloured and strong-smelling. I try all three nootropics in isolation, one or two at a time, on different days.

    After swallowing a ThinkDeep for the first time, I realise that I just took an anonymous black and red pill created by an anonymous internet seller who claims to be a biologist. They’ve got a 100% feedback record from over 400 transactions on SR, which counts as a sort of social proof, but still: bad things could happen to me after taking this pill, and the person responsible would never be caught out. (Tryptamine denied Rolling Stone’s request to verify his/her identity, or scientific credentials. “Whatever image you have in your mind’s eye from reading this, that’s how I look,” the seller wrote.)

    “Silk Road allows me to sell my products anonymously, and provides me with hundreds of thousands of potential customers who already take pills that aren’t made by pharmaceutical companies,” Tryptamine tells me. “On the other hand, it is a bit off-putting to see my products listed beside bags of heroin.”

    As it turns out, ThinkDeep doesn’t do much for me, even on another day when I double-dose. In fact, the only significant effect I notice from these three products is when one dose of MindFood eradicates a hangover much faster than my regular methods of paracetamol and/or ibuprofen. Perhaps ThinkDeep and ChillPill are so subtle that I don’t notice their effects; perhaps they don’t work at all. Potential hangover cure aside, it’s difficult to recommend these products for cognitive enhancement purposes.

    At the other end of the nootropic spectrum, far from secretive biologists and solo recipe-tweaking, is an Austin, Texas-based company named Onnit. Their flagship product is named Alpha Brain, which is slickly marketed as a “complete balanced nootropic”. Their biggest public advocate is the comedian, podcaster and former host of Fear Factor, Joe Rogan; they also have a few World Series of Poker players hyping the product on their website. I ordered a 30-pill bottle of Alpha Brain for around $40.

    Each green pill includes small amounts of eleven impressive-sounding substances, from vitamin B6 and vinpocetine, to L-theanine and oat straw. The serving size on the label suggests two pills at a time; as I discover, taking one does nothing. With two Alpha Brain pills circulating in my system, though, I feel an overall mood elevation and a heightened ability to concentrate on tasks at hand: reading, writing, researching. These effects last for between four to six hours.

    Alpha Brain worked for me, but it also feels like a triumph of marketing, too. As there are no clear estimates about the financial side of the nootropics industry, I ask Onnit CEO Aubrey Marcus whether it’s a lucrative field. “Absolutely,” he replies, though he won’t comment on Onnit’s annual turnover. “It’s something that everybody can benefit from. Whenever you tap into something [like that], there’s ample opportunity to make good money.” Marcus says that Alpha Brain has been purchased by around 45,000 customers across the world since launching last year. The company currently employs 13 full-time staff.

    He acknowledges that nutritional supplement manufacturers are met with their fair share of critics. “The pharmaceutical industry has done a good job of telling people that synthetic drugs are the only things that have an effect on the body. There are plenty who’ve never tried our products who’ll swear that they’re snake oil,” Marcus laughs. “We encounter that, and we just do our best to show as much research behind all the ingredients that we have.” He mentions that Onnit are intending to commission a double-blind clinical study on the effects of Alpha Brain, which he believes “will go a long way to silence the critics.”

    ++

    Perhaps nootropics aren’t a mainstream concept yet because the people most enthusiastic about their potential benefits are all scientists, marketers out to make a buck, ‘body hackers’, and other weirdoes. There are few ‘normals’ taking these drugs and supplements on a daily basis, so it all looks too strange and confronting for outsiders to try. As a society, we’re taught by our peers and the media that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

    There’s also the possibility that nootropics will never become mainstream because their effectiveness is difficult to qualitatively measure, or alternatively, they don’t work at all. In this regard, Australian researchers are world-class sceptics of cognitive enhancement. When I visit the University Of Queensland’s Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR) in Brisbane, I’m greeted by Professor Wayne Hall, who was first published on this topic in 2004. His essay, which appeared in a European biology journal, was entitled “Feeling ‘better than well’: Can our experiences with psychoactive drugs help us to meet the challenges of neuroenhancement methods?”

    Hall has studied addiction and drug use for over 20 years. “There’s been a fair amount of enthusiasm for cognitive enhancement [in scientific circles], but it hasn’t looked critically at the evidence on how common this behaviour is,” he says. The professor and his peers argue for “taking a step back, and not getting too excited or encourage unwittingly lots of people to experiment with stimulant drugs for the wrong sorts of reasons”.

    “If you look at the lab studies that have been done on whether these drugs [work], the effects – insofar as there are some – are fairly modest and short-lived,” Hall says. “To be jumping from that, to saying it’s good idea for people to be using these drugs regularly to enhance their cognitive performance, is a bit of a long bow.”

    Dr Bradley Partridge is another UQCCR academic who specialises in investigating “the use of pharmaceuticals by healthy people to enhance their cognition”. I bring along my bottles of Alpha Brain and Tryptamine’s homemade nootropics for him to cast a critical eye over. “I have never used any of these things,” Partridge says. He peers at the labels with bemusement. “And I’ve never heard of most of these ingredients.”

    He places the bottles back on the table. “The thing is, a lot of these supplements are touted as being ‘all natural’, and for some people, that implies that they’re perhaps safe. But it’s very hard to evaluate exactly what’s in it. Aside from safety, where’s the evidence that they actually work for their stated purpose?”

    “There’s no scientific literature on some of this stuff; for others, the results are very mixed. Also, there might be a really strong placebo effect.” He holds up the Alpha Brain bottle, which mentions ‘enhancing mental performance’ in its marketing copy. “You take this and you do an exam; maybe simply taking something makes you feel like you ought to be doing better, and maybe you convince yourself that you’re getting some effect.”

    Hall and Partridge co-authored a study which analysed media reports on “smart drugs”. They found that 95 per cent of media reports mentioned some benefit of taking a drug like Adderall, Ritalin or modafinil, while only 58 per cent mentioned side effects. “I tend to be very cautious about this stuff,” Partridge says. “I don’t like to see this getting portrayed as a widespread phenomenon, as a fantastic thing, that it works, that there are no side effects. That runs the risk of encouraging people who hadn’t thought about it to take it up, which could cause problems for people.”

    I offer to leave some of my nootropics with Dr Partridge for him to conduct his own research; he laughs, and politely declines.

    ++

    Underscoring this entire discussion is the threat of one-upmanship. If I’m taking these drugs and they markedly improve my performance, am I nothing but a filthy nootropic cheater? To address this question, I spoke with Dave Asprey, who has used modafinil constantly for eight years and describes himself on Twitter as a “New York Times-published Silicon Valley entrepreneur/executive/angel who hacked his own biology to gain an unfair advantage in business and life.”

    Asprey has a prescription for the drug, after a brain scan showed a lack of blood flow at the front of his brain – a common symptom of attention deficit disorder (ADD), he says. “Modafinil is actually used commonly as a treatment for ADD,” he tells me. “It’s an off-label use, but it’s accepted; it’s even reimbursable by some insurance companies.”

    Asprey takes modafinil most workdays, upon waking. “It’s not like it’s a great secret out there, it’s just that people don’t talk about it because there’s some feel as though it’s ‘cheating’,” he says. “My perspective is different: if you eat healthy food, then you’re also ‘cheating’, because that impacts brain function. Surprisingly, the only people who’ve ever given me shit about taking modafinil are like, ‘but how do you know it’s not hurting you?’ I’m a bio-hacker; I’ve done all sorts of strange things to my body and mind in the interests of anti-aging, health and performance. I look at my body as part of my support system.’”

    Asprey says that he considers modafinil to be on the healthier spectrum of drugs. He’s also a fan of aniracetam, a fat soluble version of piracetam, which itself was the first-ever nootropic discovered in 1964. “It’s longer lasting [than piracetam],” Asprey says. “I recommend it as a basic biohack. I’ve been using it for a very long time.”

    Though Asprey has never met anyone who bluntly considers nootropics to be bullshit, he hears another argument reasonably often – and he has a clever rebuttal ready. “People say, ‘[nootropics] are evil, because if you take them, then everyone else will have to take them!’ I don’t think that’s a very fair argument, because from that perspective, fire is evil. Back when there were two cavemen, and one had a fire, the other said, ‘you can’t use fire, that’s unfair!’ Well, we know who evolved.”

    ++

    Whether or not I’m qualitatively smarter after experimenting with nootropics for this story is difficult to measure. I feel slightly wiser, and more aware of the limitations of both mind and body after that week of bingeing on modafinil. I certainly appreciate the restorative value of sleep better than ever before, after staying awake for the best part of a full work-week. I found that Alpha Brain is useful for focusing for a few hours, but considering that a two-week supply costs $40, it seems a touch on the expensive side.

    I did order a few dozen additional pills of modafinil, but I intend to use these only when emergency deadlines necessitate long hours. (I’ve read it’s good for combating the effects of jet lag, though, so perhaps I’ll try it on my next international flight.) Ultimately, the nootropic I found most useful – and intend to continue using regularly – is aniracetam, which Dave Asprey told me about. Its mind-sharpening effects are subtler than Alpha Brain, but it’s much cheaper – around $40 for a month’s supply if purchased online – and its effects taper off much more pleasantly than Alpha Brain’s comparatively sudden drop-off in concentration and energy levels.

    Late one night while researching this story, modafinil coursing through my body, I watched Limitless for the second time. It’s not a brilliant film, but it’s entertaining and thought-provoking enough to make the viewer consider seeking out smart pills of their own. It’s easy to see why the nootropic industry’s shadier sellers have attempted to draw parallels between their products and the fictional substance of NZT. After viewing the film, I contacted Alan Glynn, the author behind the 2001 techno-thriller The Dark Fields, which Limitless was based on, via email.

    “The original idea of NZT – called MDT-48 in my book – came from the idea of human perfectibility, of ‘the three wishes’, of the chance to re-invent yourself, of the shortcut to health and happiness,” Glynn tells me. “This is why the diet and self-help industries are so huge. Hold out a promise like that and people will respond. The fact that most of these products and therapies don’t work, or are bogus, doesn’t seem to matter. The real magic here, the real dark art, is marketing. I think that if nootropics ever go mainstream, they’ll be fodder for the marketing industry.”

    I send Glynn a link to the Alpha Brain website and mention that I’ve been taking it while researching this story. “Look, I’m just as much of a sucker as anyone else and when I look at that website, I’m going like, ‘Woah, gimme some of THAT!’” he replies. “And I’m actually seriously considering ordering some. So, from a marketing point of view, I’d say it’s a total success. It’s shiny, professional-looking and stuffed full of ‘the science bit’.”

    “But it’s the massaging of the science bit that is the marketer’s real dark art. The truth is, I couldn’t argue with someone who can talk about ‘GPC choline’ and ‘neurotransmitter precursors’. My instinct is that it’s all bullshit… On the other hand. I don’t know. Have you taken Alpha Brain? Does it work?”

    I reply in the affirmative, and describe my findings in some detail. Alan Glynn, author of the book that inspired the movie that inspired me to write this story in the first place, writes me back immediately: “That’s interesting indeed. I’ve ordered some Alpha Brain, and I’ve just got an email to say it’s been dispatched. I’ll report back to you – in the interests of science, of course.”

    Note: At no point should any of the products mentioned in this article be ingested without first consulting a health professional. An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Ritalin as an amphetamine; it belongs to the methylphenidate class of stimulants.

    To read more on nootropics, I recommend that you continue your research at Smarter Nootropics. Good luck!

  • The Weekend Australian book review: ‘Trust Me, I’m Lying’ by Ryan Holiday, November 2012

    A book review published in The Weekend Australian on November 3. The full review follows.

    New media’s Machiavellis

    “My job is to lie to the media so they can lie to you,” 25-year-old Ryan Holiday writes on the first page of his first book. “I cheat, bribe, and connive for bestselling authors and billion-dollar brands and abuse my understanding of the internet to do it.”

    It’s a frank admission from the marketing director of Los Angeles-based clothing company American Apparel, and one that sets the tone for an explosive insight into new media manipulation.

    Trust Me, I’m Lying documents Holiday’s consistent exploitation of online publishers – from small-fry blogs to the websites of national media outlets – in the name of publicising his client list, which also includes Tucker Max, a popular American author whose stories centre on binge drinking and sexual debauchery.

    By revealing his tactics and explaining his strategies, Holiday exposes the blog-led model of “pageview journalism” as a vapid and desperate sham.

    Though this book concentrates on American websites such as the Huffington Post and Gawker, its message is relevant to all online publishers. Holiday describes his mission “to rip back the curtain and expose a problem that thus far everyone else has been too intimidated or self-interested to discuss openly”. Namely, the web is “hopelessly broken”:

    The economics of the internet created a twisted set of incentives that make traffic more important – and more profitable – than the truth. With the mass media – and today, mass culture – relying on the web for the next big thing, it is a set of incentives with massive implications.

    This economy – in which websites and blogs simply need traffic to sell advertisements, and where a perusing reader and accidental click are one and the same – leads the incessant hunger for new content. By design, this is a situation ripe for exploitation, as the income of many bloggers depends on their page views.

    “It’s a great time to be a media manipulator when your marks actually love receiving PR pitches,” Holiday notes.

    The first half of this book is devoted to how blogs work or, as Holiday describes it, “feeding the monster”. In an apparent nod to his mentor Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, Holiday outlines nine tactics, such as “give them what spreads, not what’s good” and “use the technology against itself”.

    These are all valid tactics that Holiday has used when promoting his clients. However, he notes some readers may be tempted to use them as an instruction manual for manipulation of their own. “So be it,” he writes. “You will come to regret that choice, just as I have. But you will also have fun, and it could make you rich.”

    In the second half of the book, “The monster attacks”, Holiday ruminates on what blogs mean. He takes a blade to press-led online extortion, iterative journalism (one top blogger is quoted as saying “getting it right is expensive, getting it first is cheap”), the sad truths of “snark” writing and “online entertainment tactics that drug you and me”.

    This book is essential reading for anyone working in the media, online or off, and also for those who want to understand how the PR industry influences what appears on screens, in newspapers and magazines, and over airwaves. Marketers and the media are increasingly on the same team; this book is something of a wake-up call.

    “The world is boring, but the news is exciting,” Holiday writes. “It’s a paradox of modern life. Journalists and bloggers are not magicians, but … you must give them some credit. Shit becomes sugar.”

    Similarly, it is a credit to the author’s writing style and analytical abilities that this book never becomes weighed down in media theory. Every point is backed up with penetrating personal anecdotes.

    The narrative is tied to a rich understanding of media history, all the way back to the street vendor “cash and carry” innovation of New York newspaper The Sun in 1833, which is eerily similar to the gaudy, attention-grabbing media model of 2012.

    Holiday is incisive and merciless. It is clear he has the perceptiveness and wherewithal to turn his still-nascent career into a fortune from advising the rich and powerful, yet this book is a step back from that dark art. In the introduction, he writes of his hope that, by exposing these vulnerabilities in the media system, they’ll no longer work as well. We’ll see about that.

    Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator 
    By Ryan Holiday
    Portfolio, 272pp, $26.95 (HB)

    Andrew McMillen is a Brisbane-based freelance journalist.

    For more on Trust Me, I’m Lying, visit its website. You might also be interested in my interview with Ryan Holiday from October 2011.

  • Kotaku story: ‘What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights’ X-Men: Destiny?’, October 2012

    A 6,000 word feature story published on Kotaku in October; excerpt below. This is the result of 15 months’ investigative work.

    What Went Wrong With Silicon Knights’ X-Men: Destiny?
    by Andrew McMillen

    Bad video games are released all the time. A raft of factors conspire to influence the quality of the outcome. Maybe tight deadlines are to blame. Or maybe the problems include inexperienced developers, incompetent project management, impossible publisher requests, funding concerns. It’s a seemingly unavoidable fact that not every game can be great, or good, or even average.

    So how does a game, one made by a celebrated studio and backed by one of the richest game publishers in the world, turn out to be a bad video game? This is a story about exactly that. It’s about Silicon Knights the studio behind the great Eternal Darkness, the miserable X-Men: Destiny. It’s about a proud leader, frustrated ex-employees, many internal clashes and a secret sequel everyone hoped would be great.

    To an extent, it’s the role of the gaming media to warn potential buyers away from these inferior gaming experiences, and encourage them to spend time with well-designed games developed by skilled teams, led by sound project management, and unhurried by unrealistic demands. The conventional wisdom is that life’s too short to play every game — or read every book, or listen to every album, or see every film — and as a result, we tend to only want to invest our time and money into the very best.

    X-Men: Destiny — developed by Canadian studio Silicon Knights for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii — could have gone either way. Sure, previous X-Men titles didn’t exactly set the world on fire: 2006?s X-Men: The Official Game, averaged a score of 52 out of 100 on Metacritic across seven platforms, while 2009?s character-focused X-Men Origins: Wolverine averaged a 65 across six platforms.

    But X-Men: Destiny (XMD), released September 27, 2011, underperformed them both with a dramatically low Metacritic score of just 41 across four platforms. (The DS version, developed by Canadian studio Other Ocean Interactive, registered a 33 on the site, making it the single worst-reviewed X-Men title in Metacritic’s records.)

    There are plenty of possible explanations for the poor result. Maybe the game’s publisher, Activision, rushed the release in an attempt to hit a quarterly revenue goal. Maybe it was just dragged down by the weight of a crappy, overdone superhero licence, as so many games before it. Maybe the title just didn’t come together in the end, or simply failed to resonate with reviewers.

    These are all possible, but discussions with former employees of XMD developer Silicon Knights suggest that the game’s fate was sealed long before Activision gave the project a green light back in 2009. The following story excerpts extensive interviews with former Silicon Knights employees who describe their experiences at what they say was a disorganized, unfocused company that squandered ample time and resources before being forced to release a game it was far from proud of.

    Management at Silicon Knights refused to be interviewed on the record for this story, despite repeated requests over many months. A spokesperson for the game’s publisher, Activision, also declined requests for comment. Accordingly, keep in mind that what follows is but one side of a very complex story. When first confronted with wide-ranging allegations of XMD‘s tumultuous development in mid-January 2012, company president Denis Dyack gave the following statement:

    “Silicon Knights is obligated to its partners (in the case of X-Men: Destiny — Activision and Marvel) to not disclose the development process of any project they work on. These obligations also apply to all the people who worked on X-Men: Destiny. Silicon Knights appreciated the opportunity to work on the game and we hope to get an opportunity to work together with Activision and Marvel again.”

    This statement remains the only comment that Kotaku can attribute to the man behind the biggest failure in the studio’s 20-year history.

    Enter: “SK Whistleblower”

    It’s not as if Silicon Knights was some untested, fly-by-night developer brought on to quickly crank out just another licensed title. Founded in 1992 by current company president Denis Dyack, the St. Catharines, Ontario-based company is best known for their 2002 GameCube hit Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, which scored a “universal acclaim” score of 92 on Metacritic, based on 41 reviews. The company’s 2004 Metal Gear Solid remake, The Twin Snakes, scored 85 across 54 reviews. And while Silicon Knights’ 2008 Xbox 360 release Too Human averaged a sub-par score of 65, the company’s history still suggested it could produce good games.

    But X-Men: Destiny stands alone as the worst game that Silicon Knights has released since it was founded. How did a company that was once known for compelling, original, quality video games come to release a title best described as “mediocre,” “mindless,” “generic” and “an absolute mess”?

    (1UP gave the X360 version a D+, concluding that the game is “is an absolute mess that isn’t worth your time.” IGN gave the PS3 version 5.5 points out of 10 — “mediocre” — and remarked that “even for an action brawler, this one is as mindless as they come.”GameSpot reviewed the same version and awarded the game 4 out of 10, noting that XMD “does the incredible: it makes being a genetic marvel a generic bore.”)

    “I am writing to you in regards to Silicon Knights’ upcoming title X-Men: Destiny,” read the July 21, 2011 email from a mysterious, throwaway Hotmail account with the handle SK Whistleblower. “Silicon Knights’ executive team has just recently implemented a new policy to discredit all employees who have recently resigned. This includes employees who have worked on it for between six months and three years. Between 35 to 45 former employees will fail to have their credits appear in the game.”

    I knew firsthand how to deal with such serious allegations. At the time, IGN had recently published my 4,500 word feature story based on interviews with 11 anonymous former employees of the Australian studio Team Bondi, in which those developers detailed seven troubled years of work on L.A. Noire; years that culminated with many of those employees failing to receive the credit they believed they deserved for their work. Now, someone was suggesting that Silicon Knights was having similar problems with its latest title.

    “Much of what was written about Team Bondi’s situation can be said about Silicon Knights as well,” SK Whistleblower continued. “I am certain that if you contacted former and current Silicon Knights employees and offered them anonymity, you would receive evidence of an appalling antipathy from management towards the employees, publishers, and the quality of their games.”

    Anonymous allegations are easy to make; verifying them is much tougher. I spent the next couple of months reaching out to dozens of former Silicon Knights employees, including a list of 32 allegedly omitted names supplied by SK Whistleblower. Many of those who responded confirmed that they, too, had heard the rumours of their names being removed from the credits of XMD. Some refused to speculate (“I can’t confirm who made it into the credits or not until the game is released, so I’m unable to comment”); some expressed concern for their former colleagues (“I feel that any information I give you will only hurt the current employees at SK”); others feared the ramifications of their involvement in this investigation (“any other information possibly leaking would not look good towards my professionalism and possible future opportunities”).

    Ultimately, I secured interviews with eight former SK employees who worked on XMD, including the initial whistleblower. Between them, these former staffers represented over 45 years of service to the Canadian game development studio. All of them spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, for obvious reasons. Interviewees suggest that the company has been plagued by a complex set of internal problems for years. It soon became clear that this story was about much more than a minor grievance with SK’s crediting standards.

    To read the full story, visit Kotaku.

  • Album biography: Grinspoon – ‘Black Rabbits’, September 2012

    An album biography I wrote for the Australian rock band Grinspoon as part of the press pack that was sent out with their seventh album, Black Rabbits, released 28 September 2012. Click the below image to view as a PDF.

    Grinspoon – Black Rabbits

    Bad habits. We’ve all got ‘em. Some are more public and less healthy than others. As far as Australian rock bands go, Grinspoon are more readily associated with that phrase than most. It’s fitting, then, that they’ve chosen to name their seventh album after Cockney slang for bad habits: Black Rabbits.

    These twelve tracks are the sound of a rock band experimenting with power-pop aesthetics, and succeeding. Following the heavy rock barrage heard on the East Coast quartet’s last album, 2009’s Six To Midnight, singer Phil Jamieson and guitarist Pat Davern were both motivated to write “lighter, more melodic” material.

    “We were going for big choruses and major melodies,” says Jamieson. “Lyrically, I was writing on themes that weren’t too downtrodden, or too angsty. Musically, we wanted tighter arrangements all ‘round.”

    Davern agrees. “I’d describe it as more ‘songy’ than ‘riffy’. I didn’t want to do another Six To Midnight, which had a lot of aggression. I didn’t feel like writing that kind of music.”

    “I was listening to a lot of four-on-the-floor,” continues Davern. “We hadn’t really done any of that driving beat, groove-based stuff, which has more forward-motion than sideways-motion. I definitely had that in the back of my mind when I was writing: ‘I want this to be up.’ I didn’t want there to be any kind of negativity or anger going on musically. I don’t feel that way, and I don’t want to feel that way musically anymore. I think you can hear that in the music that came out. It’s different for us.”

    Emphatic lead single ‘Passerby’, at radio and available August 13th, acts as both album opener and a lens onto the band’s newfound emphasis on melody and groove. It’s the foundation song of Black Rabbits; the artistic breakthrough that the songwriters had to have before they could build the proverbial walls and ceiling.

    “’Passerby’ was a point of difference, and it didn’t sound like we were treading water, or being lazy,” says the singer. “It didn’t sound like we were hangin’ out, smokin’ cones in Lismore – not that that’s a bad thing” he laughs. “It sounded like we were doing something.” Davern concurs: “It’s a statement of intent that we weren’t going to be doing the same shit we’d done before.”

    Los Angeles-based rock producer Dave Schiffman – whose past credits include Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and The Bronx – was chosen to handle the recording sessions, after all four members of Grinspoon fell in love with The Bronx II.

    “As history shows us, Los Angeles makes excellent rock records,” says Jamieson. “I think Led Zeppelin worked that out a long time ago. They’re just really good at rock there. They’re really point-to-point about it, so we felt that we needed to get over there this time to make this record.”

    Visitors to Schiffman’s studio included Tim Rogers (You Am I), Chris Cheney (The Living End) and Scott Russo (Unwritten Law), who all contributed back-up vocals; Cheney even lends some tasty lead guitar licks to ‘Another Sun’, which Davern describes as the album’s “Black Crowes-y, bluesy” track. ‘Casualty’ is a tale of “unrequited love, and the desperate measures one goes to, in order to feel adequate again,” says Jamieson, while ‘Branded’ is inspired by the zombie-themed television series The Walking Dead.

    The Lismore-born quartet – Jamieson, Davern, drummer Kristian Hopes and bassist Joe Hansen – burst onto the national music scene in 1995 via a string of hits which later appeared on their 1997 debut album, Guide To Better Living. The band’s six albums have sold a combined total of over 450,000 copies in Australia, including multiple platinum certifications and an ARIA Award in 2005 for Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills (‘Best Rock Album’).

    “The reason we haven’t repeated the debut album is because we can’t,” says Jamieson. “And I don’t know whether we should, because we already did it. You just don’t want to repeat yourself, ever. The body of work you’ve released is laughing at you, going, ‘yeah, fuck you, you can’t do that again! You were awesome in 2002, dickhead!’” the singer laughs. “You’ve got to change the game for yourself, and challenge the band as to how and where you want to be.”

    The chorus in penultimate track ‘Tightrope’ is the key that unlocks the album, and moreover, the quartet themselves after seventeen years together: “You’re getting closer now to what you’ve always wanted in your life,” sings Jamieson.

    Reflecting on whether that memorable line can be self-applied, he says: “I’m not sure of what I want in my life; I don’t know whether anyone does. But this is a fucking fantastic gig, and I love it. I’m not sure where I want to be, but here’s pretty fucking good.”

    –  By Andrew McMillen

    The music video for first single ‘Passerby‘ is embedded below.

  • The Weekend Australian book review: ‘Gaysia’ by Benjamin Law, September 2012

    A book review for The Weekend Australian, published on 8 September 2012. The full review appears below.

    Revealing journey through gay Asia

    After exploring his upbringing in the 2010 comic memoir The Family Law, Benjamin Law turns to another topic close to his heart. An Australian of Chinese ancestry, he sets out to explore attitudes to homosexuality in seven Asian countries.

    Gaysia is Brisbane-based Law’s first attempt at book-length journalism and it consolidates him as one of the most surprising and entertaining voices in Australian nonfiction writing.

    On the first page, he writes: “Of all the continents, Asia is the gayest.” Given it’s populated by close to four billion people, he goes on, “doesn’t it stand to reason that most of the world’s queer people – lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and transsexual folk – live in Asia too, sharing one hot, sweaty landmass and filling it with breathtaking examples of exotic faggotry?”.

    This balancing of of blunt humour and interesting information is one of Law’s strengths. Each chapter deftly combines reportage with historical facts.

    For example, Law strips off at a clothing-optional gay resort in Bali while interviewing the owner, who discovered this gap in the tourism market in the 1990s. The result is a strong narrative with one foot in the present, the other in the past.

    Given the topics at hand – nude resorts, prostitution, Thai ladyboy beauty contests, to name three – there’s lots of room for graphic descriptions, and Law revels in it. He’s clearly at home writing about our sexual urges and bodily functions.

    From male hookers in Burma begging him to share his penis size to witnessing an awkward threesome through his neighbours’ curtains, he has masses of material to work with.

    There is a serious side to Law’s investigations. The Burma chapter is particularly affecting. Law interviews widely while exploring the prevalence of HIV. The final anecdote is brutal: a desperate, 22-year-old prostitute – who had no knowledge of the virus until she tested positive – asks Law whether he can help her. To the author’s shameful realisation, his answer is no.

    Gaysia is more a window on to a troubled world than a travelogue. The stories Law tells, the problems he discusses, are ones rarely explored in-depth by the Australian media. Some solutions are simple – cross-cultural sex education and widespread distribution of condoms, for example – yet many are not.

    Much of the tension in this book comes down to differing social mores. In Japan, where drag queens are a constant fixture on television, Law notes that “so much of queerness seemed to be a performance for straight people”.

    Yet he contends few seem to understand that homosexuals exist in reality, away from TV cameras. “As long as they’re invisible, they’ll be tolerated,” a gay bar owner tells him.

    Several chapters highlight those who view homosexuality as a “bad mental habit”, to quote Baba Ramdev, a yoga instructor whose Indian followers number more than 80 million people.

    In recent times in China, homosexuals were prescribed self-flagellation techniques (a rubber band on the wrist, to be snapped whenever a homosexual thought was had) electroconvulsive therapy and even, in one sad case, a cocktail of conflicting psychotropic drugs that resulted in irreversible neurological damage.

    Law presents these instances of misunderstanding, persecution and outright homophobia matter-of-factly, without drawing his own conclusions.

    In Malaysia he meets Christian and Muslim fundamentalists who treat homosexuality as “an affliction that can be cured”. When questioned by them, Law plays the neutral journalist, perhaps a little too well: he doesn’t reveal his sexual identity.

    Yet by keeping quiet and quoting his sources faithfully, Law certainly gives them enough rope.

    Highlights of this book include Law’s account of the madly detailed lengths Chinese lesbians go to when arranging fake marriages, so as to please parents on both sides; his immersion in the hysteria surrounding an annual ladyboy beauty contest watched by 15 million Thais; and a chance meeting with an excitable yet closeted Indian man on a 30-hour cross-country train trip. (Law generously transfers his gay porn stash to his new friend’s laptop.)

    Gaysia is a book of powerful, enlightening stories on a fraught topic, told with care, empathy, grace and good humour.

    Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East
    By Benjamin Law
    Black Inc, 288pp, $29.95