For metal fans using Spotify, the Century Media pull-out is a BIG DEAL. Hundreds of records have disappeared from the service overnight, leaving a gaping hole in its hitherto impressive metal catalogue.  In terms of significance, it’s akin to a hip hop collection without any Def Jam albums or an indie anthology sans Rough Trade. So why would a well-respected independent label like Century decide to pull the plug on the increased visibility and revenue stream that Spotify offers niche artists?

Context

Spotify: ripping off artists?

In an official statement released on Monday, Century Media claimed that the decision to withdraw was taken to protect the interests of its artists.

“While everyone at the label group believes in the ever changing possibilities of new technology and new ways of bringing music to the fans, Century Media is also of the opinion that Spotify in its present shape and form isn’t the way forward…”

“At the same time Century Media also believes that Spotify is a great tool to discover new music and is in the process of reintroducing their bands to Spotify by way of putting up samplers of the artists. This way, fans can still discover the great music released by the label.”

“Physical sales are dropping drastically in all countries where Spotify is active. Artists are depending on their income from selling music and it is our job to support them to do so. Since the artists need to sell their music to continue their creativity, Spotify is a problem for them. This is about survival, nothing less and it is time that fans and consumers realize that for artists it is essential to sell music to keep their heads above water”.

While I’m aware that the relatively low royalty rate Spotify passes to independent labels is something of a sore point within the music industry, I find Century Media’s statement thoroughly objectionable. As one of the aforementioned fans and consumers, and an avid Spotify user, its naivety and myopia is nothing short of astonishing. There’s a real sense that Century is still clinging bravely to the shattered ruin that is the music industry’s traditional business model, despite the fact that the rise of the internet has allowed extreme metal to thrive in a way that was never possible before. Let’s take a more detailed look at some of the myths the Century Media statement attempts to perpetuate.

#1 – Spotify is causing physical album sales to fall

Nobody is going to dispute that CD sales are in steep decline. As the graph below reveals, since hitting a peak in the late 90s, album sales have fallen year on year. It’s also true that revenue from digital downloads has not even come close to making up the difference. Everybody is acutely aware that the traditional model of selling music is all but redundant.

That said, attempting to pin the blame on Spotify is simply ludicrous.  Spotify has been active since late 2008; the seemingly terminal decline in album sales started well over a decade ago. While there does appear to be some correlation between an especially pronounced fall in sales volume in the last three years and the launch of Spotify, let’s remember two important details. Firstly, this period dovetails neatly with the bottom falling out of the world economy. People simply don’t have the same amount of disposable income to blow on records as they did five, eight, ten years ago.

Secondly, while Spotify has been operating for a little under three years, it hasn’t had a simultaneous roll-out in all territories. This is important. It finally arrived in the USA in July after a couple of years of music industry cockblocking but is still unavailable in most European countries. Live in Germany, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium or pretty much anywhere in Southern and Eastern Europe and want to use Spotify? Unless you’re savvy enough to run it through a proxy and avoid detection, forget it.

Trying to find any pattern in sales figures from countries where Spotify is available versus those where it isn’t is a futile effort. While German album sales have fallen more slowly than those in the UK, Ireland has seen one of the sharpest declines in Europe; only 2% of all the albums released each year sell over 5,000 copies. If any pattern emerges across the continent, it’s that fewer records are sold in countries that are experiencing severe economic difficulties; less money in pockets equals fewer sales at record store tills. Local market conditions clearly have far more of an impact on sales figures than the presence or absence of Spotify does.

#2 – Spotify is preventing metal musicians from making a living

Like punk rock, metal isn’t a genre where you play for the money. Unless you’re in the top tier of bands with enough crossover appeal to bring in mainstream audiences or one of a very, very lucky few, you aren’t going to be able to make a living from playing extreme metal. This has always been the case; even at its commercial peak in the mid-1990s, the vast majority of performers in the Norwegian black metal scene held down a day job – assuming they weren’t dead or in prison – to make ends meet. Nocturno Culto of Darkthrone was, and still is, a primary school teacher, while Emperor’s Ihsahn kept himself afloat as a music tutor.

If anything, Spotify has actually opened an additional revenue stream for metal bands. While the genre has suffered at retail as much as the rest of the industry, there remains a very loyal, extremely devoted base of hardcore fans who continue to support their favourite bands by buying physical albums, attending live shows and purchasing merchandise. Many of those fans, including myself, also use Spotify. In June I bought Devin Townsend‘s Deconstruction and Ghost records on CD but also listened to them extensively on Spotify at work and through the Spotify app on my iPad. Thanks to Spotify, Devin – one of my favourite artists – has been paid twice over.

Then there’s piracy. Spotify has actually allowed artists to make some money (albeit on a very small scale) in a situation where sales were never likely going to happen in the first place. Century Media have fallen into same the trap as everyone from movie studios to video game publishers by assuming that a pirated copy of an album/movie/game is equivalent to a lost sale and that its associated monetary value represents lost revenue. This is preposterous; the overwhelming majority of pirates were never going to buy the record in the first place. Instead, Spotify offers users a legitimate way of listening to music for free (ad-supported) or for a relatively small fee (a Spotify Premium subscription) with royalties trickling down to bands on independent labels. However meager the sums of money involved, it’s a damn sight more than the artists see from outright piracy.

#3 – The internet has damaged independent record labels and niche artists

I don’t think anybody is going to deny that the internet has completely cannibalised the financial base of the majors but I’d argue that it has opened up opportunities for independent labels and niche artists that simply never existed until the dawn of the online age. Metal in particular has enjoyed an explosion in popularity and while it’s still very much a specialist interest, the internet has allowed thousands, if not millions, of new fans to discover groundbreaking artists that would have otherwise slipped under the radar. The never-ending stream of new bands, the rise of new sub-genres like Djent and the continued growth of the live scene owes much and more to the emergence of the online space.

Extreme metal has always suffered from a visibility problem but the internet has allowed the genre to grow, even while it has been increasingly marginalized at retail. As record stores – including large chains - have struggled to stay afloat, they’ve reduced the back catalogue stock they carry and gradually squeezed out niche artists, replacing them on shelves with cut-price DVDs, t-shirts and perma-discounted albums from artists on the majors. In short, unless you live in a major city it’s virtually impossible to find metal records from labels like Peaceville, Nuclear Blast, Southern Lord, Hydrahead and, yes, Century Media on shop shelves. Yet despite this, more people than ever before seem to be listening to extreme metal.

While I don’t have the figures to back it up, I’d argue that the revenue pie  has grown in recent years from a combination of records sales, merch and gigs. If Century feels that individual bands are finding it harder to make ends meet, that’s most likely down to the fact that more artists than ever before are competing for their piece of that pie, which can only be for the greater good, on a creative level at least.

Century are quite right to say that Spotify is a great tool to discover new artists but taking their back catalogue away and replacing it with a piecemeal selection of “sample tracks” isn’t the way forward either. Give people the ability to play their favourite tracks, recommend them to friends and share them in playlists so that extreme metal artists will continue to benefit from the increased exposure that only online word-of-mouth can bring.

Final Thoughts

Spotify’s response to Century Media has been interesting, as has that of the metal community (I’m planning to put together a Storify piece on this that I may retroactively embed in this post). The statement released by Spotify correctly points out that the service has helped to monetise an audience who were previously pirating music wholesale and that countries where Spotify is available saw an average 43% growth in digital sales versus 9.3% in neighbouring countries without Spotify. According to Billboard, Spotify is now the second largest single digital revenue source for European record labels, of which Century is one. This suggests that even if Spotify does result in an acceleration in the decline of physical sales, it’s offset by growth in the digital downloads sector.

As far as the blogger reaction goes, I’m very much with Vince Neilstein of Metalsucks on this one. I think Century Media have made a poor judgement call on this and are clinging to the shell of the music industry as it was. But those days are over. Rather than burying their head in the sand, Century should be looking at ways to open new revenue streams online and Spotify is just one of a variety of ways to do that. Withdrawing from Spotify only serves to push potential customers back towards piracy and make it less likely that they will buy physical CDs from Century Media, or indeed anybody else.

In the immediate wake of Century Media pulling out of Spotify, I toyed with the idea of cancelling my Premium subscription, which I’ve been happily paying for the better part of a year. After a little reflection and putting my thoughts in order when writing this post, I’ve decided to keep giving Spotify my £10 a month. Why? Several reasons. Firstly, Spotify helps provide niche artists with an alternative revenue stream to the decaying physical sales business model. Secondly, it allows me to share my favourite artists with both friends and strangers through public and playlists. Finally, Spotify is simply a fantastic service that is incredibly cheap considering how much it offers in return for your monthly subscription fee.

Ultimately, I’m not going to let Century Media or anybody else bully me about the way I listen to my music.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to examine in detail how journalists (and bloggers, who without a big media brand name to fall back on are usually even more reliant on search engines to deliver traffic to their websites) can optimise their work to improve search engine rankings using simple, easy to follow steps. We’ll begin by working our way through a standard news article or blogpost, starting with the title and headline and gradually making our way down to the meta information your readers will never see. On the way we’ll take a look at how to make the most of your article’s web address, how to optimise your copy using keywords and how to correctly add links and spread the word about your content using strictly ethical means.

Just one quick word of warning before we plunge into our first topic – contrary to popular belief and the sworn testimony of thousands of quack ‘SEO Gurus’ around the world, Search Engine Optimisation is not a magic bullet solution. It does not guarantee an enormous increase in the number of hits your site receives or first page rankings on Google search. In fact, if performed incorrectly, it can actually reduce your site’s traffic or stop readers from finding your content altogether. With a little care, though, it can improve your chances of achieving highly placed rankings for carefully selected keywords and phrases which will ultimately produce tangible results.

Introduction

In this first article, we’ll be starting at the top of your post and examining how to write your headline, set your Page Title and correctly use headings for maximum possible search engine exposure. No knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP or any other web development language is required to follow this guide, though those with a grasp of the basics may find it easier to come to grips with the underlying principles of SEO. Below you’ll find a screenshot of a webpage containing a news article with each page element we’re going to discuss highlighted and labelled. Feel free to refer back to the screenshot if you feel lost at any point.

We will begin by discussing the first thing your readers will see when they click through to your article: The Headline.

Headlines

If the art of the headline writing is truly dying out, good SEO practice may well be the root cause. There’s no doubt that an expertly crafted headline still has the ability to amuse and engage but when it comes to writing with high search engine rankings in mind, utility wins out over a clever pun every time. “Up Yours, Delors” might have elicited a few xenophobic chuckles back in 1984 but in 2010 “Thatcher Set to Snub Delors Over Single Currency” or “Prime Minister Fundamentally Opposed to Federal Europe” will yield considerably better results from Google, Bing et al.

When writing headlines for your online news articles or blog posts, try to extract the key people, places, events and concepts from your copy – these will be the terms search engine users will most likely type into the search field –  and use them as the building blocks for a short and snappy sentence. Where possible, use simple, straightforward nouns rather than adjectives and unusual phrasings and avoid jargon – more people will search for “Paris Bomb Blast” than “Parisian Incendiary Explosion” and a headline containing the former will likely be placed more highly on Google’s results than one with the latter.  We’ll cover keywords in much more detail in the third article in this series when we looking at body text and SEO copywriting.

Title Tags

While we’re discussing headline titles, it’s worth considering Title Tags. In lay-person’s terms, a Title Tag is simply the text that displays in the title bar of your web browser when viewing a webpage – in this case, your article. The Title Tag is of critical importance because it’s the first thing the user sees after a search engine pulls up a page of results. A concise, informative title that summarises your article in one sentence is much more likely to be clicked on than an entry with a vague, muddled headline.

For those comfortable working with HTML, a title can be set using the <title> and </title> HTML tags but fortunately, most Content Management Systems (CMSs) automatically generate a title based on your headline and many allow the writer to edit it further. It’s usually best to edit the Title Tag yourself if the option is available to ensure that you’ve included enough relevant keywords from your body copy – after all, house style might limit your headline to just a few words but allow you a little more freedom with the page title. It’s worth remembering, however, that most search engines only register the first 60 characters of a Title Tag to prevent insalubrious keyword stuffing, so keep it fairly succinct.

Bloggers may want to consider using one the many SEO plugins available for the most popular blogging platforms to gain access to all title editing features. All-in-One SEO or SEO Ultimate are both excellent choices for WordPress.

Heading Tags

Before we wrap up our discussion of headlines, lets take a look at enclosing them in Heading Tags. Headlines (and sub-headings, which we’ll come to next) are usually denoted as such in your text by putting them on a separate line and in a larger font, or by making them appear in bold or underlined. Just as text formatting draws the reader’s eye to a headline, clearly marking it as a separate entity from the main body copy, Heading Tags tell search engines that the text within is more important, in terms of navigation and structure at least, than what comes after.

All good CMSs will allow you to apply appropriate heading tags to the various headings in your copy. When manipulating HTML, this is just a matter of enclosing the text in <h*> and </h*> tags – <h1> and </h1> in the case of main headlines. Those not proficient with markup should ensure that they actually use their CMS’s text editor to properly style text as a headling rather than simply formatting it in bold and manipulating the font size. Only text in tags will be recognised properly by search engines (and by your browser, for that matter).

While many CMSs automatically create a <h1> tag based on your post’s title, bloggers using popular blogging platforms like WordPress and Google’s Blogger may find that they need to create a separate headline at the top of their posts themselves. Whether or not this is necessary is entirely down to the theme your blog uses; some web designers have constructed their templates to automatically populate the <h1> tag while others have not. The best way to find out if your blog generates its own tagged headline is to view Page Source (Ctrl+U) and search the code for a <h1> tag. If it’s there and contains either your post title or a line of code that retrieves the title for you, all is well. If not, you’ll want to add one to your posts manually.

More on Headings

It is possible to modify WordPress and Blogger themes to populate the headline tag automatically but unfortunately this requires getting your hands dirty with some basic HTML and PHP and that you host your own blog, rather than using WordPress/Blogger.com hosting. Those who find manually applying headline tags to their blog posts extremely arduous might want to consider looking around for a stock template that supports the function automatically.

It’s also important to remember that when dealing with <h1> tags, only one should be used per post, so if your template does generate one on its own, under no circumstances create a second. While your blog likely won’t be penalised severely by search engines for having two <h1> tags, it’s best practice to keep it to just one and to use that tag for the post headline and nothing else.

A final – and somewhat confusing – point about heading tags. Exact tag usage varies from one website to another and while the system detailed above is the most common, used by the BBC, Guardian and Daily Mail news sites, there are other variations out there. CNN, for example, use <title> for the page title, <h1> as a container for the site logo and <h2> for the main headline (more on this tag in a moment). It’s usually best to check with your editor or tech team what the site’s headline convention is before getting started. If you’re a blogger and are managing your own website, you probably won’t need to worry about this much.

Subheadings

Correctly marking up your subheadings is also very important, not only for making your article easier to navigate for your readers but for drawing a search engine’s attention to important subsections of the text.  All of the same rules you used when writing your headline also apply to crafting subheadings; keep it brief, use keywords that crop up in your text and avoid the temptation to sacrifice clarity and utility for the sake of a delicious pun. You’ll also need to apply heading tags to ensure that search engines recognise sub-headings, although unfortunately in this case there’s no chance of the CMS looking after it for you automatically.

When tagging your subheadings, you’ll be applying styles like Heading 2, Heading 3 etc, all the way down to Heading 6 (where Heading 1, as your main headline, is the most important, and Heading 6 the least). In HTML these styles represent the <h2> to <h6> tags and these enclose your sub-headings in exactly the same way as the <h1> tag contained your headline. As a general rule, you should structure your sub-headings hierarchically, Heading 2/<h2> for your main sub-headings, Heading 3/<h3> for sub-headings nested under those and Heading 4/<h4> for sub-headings of Heading 3 and so on. It’s unlikely you’ll ever make it down to Heading 6 in an article or blog post but if you do, the rules remain the same. Unlike <h1> tags, you are encouraged to make use of multiple <h2> etc tags to clearly denote your subsections and, indeed, its best practice to do so..

See the diagram above for a more visual demonstration of this principle.

Checklist

Correctly writing headlines and subheadings, setting a suitable Page Title and applying heading tags to your text where appropriate are some of the most fundamental techniques for optimising your articles or blog posts for search engines. They are straightforward tasks that can be performed by anyone reasonably familiar with a WYSIWYG text editor; if you’ve managed to publish a blog post in the past you’ll certainly have no trouble in assimilating them into your posting routine. I’ve created creating a step-by-step SEO checklist to help you ensure that all necessary SEO tasks have been performed before you publish your article. As the series goes on, I’ll gradually add more steps to the list as we discuss different aspects of the SEO process.

1. Is your Headline written in an SEO-friendly style and enclosed in a <h1> tag somewhere on the page?
2. Is your Page Title written in an SEO-friendly style and enclosed in a <title> tag or entered into a Page Title field?
3. Are your Subheadings written in an SEO-friendly style and enclosed in the appropriate heading tag?

Final Thoughts

While Search Engine Optimisation is a valuable skill and something all journalists and bloggers should be avid evangelists of, let’s spare a moment’s thought for the fine art of headline writing. There’s a belief that good SEO practice is killing the ancient tradition of pun-based headlines and while there’s some truth in this, it’s simply not the case that writing with search engine results in mind always comes down to sacrificing creativity for utility. There remain plenty of opportunities for wordplay in excerpts, straplines and picture captions, where they remain easily visible to readers without diluting your content’s indexing potential. Headline writers are a resilient bunch and no matter how powerful search algorithms become, there will always be room for both witty double-entendres and mind-numbingly awful puns in the digital world.

Further Reading

Econsultancy – A Journalist’s Guide to SEO

Wordstream – SEO Title Tag Formulas: How To Create High Performance Title Tags

SEO Book – How to Craft Kick-Ass Headline Tags and Titles

The Guardian – Search for the Perfect Headline

In Part 2, we’ll be looking at Permalink Structures and URLs and discovering how you can use a page’s web address to maximise your content’s SEO potential.

Special events range from spectacular gala evenings for high-profile films, including The Illusionist and a 3D screening of Toy Story 3, to After the Wave, a retrospective look at the “lost and forgotten” years of British cinema from 1967 to 1979.

Meanwhile, Sir Patrick Stewart discusses his work as a Shakespearean actor, a Star Trek captain and more besides at a special BAFTA Scotland interview on Monday 21 June and The Dunwich Horror, based on the work of HP Lovecraft, promises a uniquely terrifying ‘No-D’ experience. In contrast to the 3D visual feasts of Avatar et al, The Dunwich Horror is an audio-only experience taking place in a darkened cinema and guaranteed to scare you out of your wits.

Elsewhere, Sir Sean Connery’s 80^th birthday is celebrated with a special screening of The Man Who Would Be King, from 1975, and various creative workshops and panel discussions dissect the art of film-making.

After feasting on the clips on show at this morning’s press launch and having perused the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival brochure, I’ve selected my top five movies to watch out for this year.

The Illusionist

An animated spectacle set in the Capital itself, The Illusionist is the perfect movie to kick-start the Edinburgh International Film Festival at the Opening Night Gala on Wednesday 16 June. Described as “a love letter to Scotland and Edinburgh in particular”, the film follows the titular illusionist as he moves from Paris to Scotland in search of work, trying to convince all around him of his magical abilities. Directed by Sylvain Chomet, of Belleville Rendez-vous fame, The Illusionist maintains its own distinctive visual style, while drawing on the beauty, life and elegance of the director’s previous work.

Jackboots on Whitehall

Billed as Britain’s answer to Team America: World Police, Jackboots on Whitehall is an irreverent, animated alternate history of World War II, that depicts the nightmare scenario of a German invasion of Britain in the 1940s. An entirely stop-motion endeavour, the film is also strongly reminiscent of  Wallace & Gromit and its associated spin-offs. Winston Churchill flees northwards to Scotland, where the lawless Highlands serve as the only refuge from the oncoming Nazi armies. With an all-star voice cast including Ewan McGregor, Richard E. Grant and Timothy Spall, Jackboots on Whitehall combines the best of British cinema talent with beautiful animation and a script so sharp it could cut itself.

Restrepo

Restrepo, Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s docu-drama set in the midst of the ongoing Afghan conflict, is perhaps one of the most intimate and unflinching accounts of how modern warfare is conducted ever committed to celluloid. Granted unprecedented access to US armed forces, the filmmakers spent 15 months embedded in the 173^rd Airborne Brigade, recording shockingly powerful images of the human cost of the war. Restrepo promises to be the definitive Afghan war movie and, in time, may even rank amongst the genre greats.

Mr Nice

Making its European premiere at the Film Festival, Mr Nice documents the rise and fall of the infamous international drug smuggler Howard Marks. Based on Marks’ own autobiography, this biopic stars Rhys Ifans and chronicles the heady days of the 1970s and 80s when Marks was rumoured to control over 10% of the global cannabis trade and was under constant threat from the law, fellow smugglers and the IRA.  Just as charming and mischievous as its titular anti-hero, Mr Nice is leading the charge of superb British films at this year’s EIFF.

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is the latest project by celebrated German director, Werner Herzog, combining drama, psychological horror and deadpan black comedy to make a gripping and unsettling film. Lead character Brad has locked himself inside his house after stabbing his mother to death. The narration jumps between the murder scene and the outside world, as police painstakingly uncover the chain of events that lead Brad to such a dark place. Willem Dafoe stars alongside Michael Shannon, Chloe Sevigny and Udo Kier.

This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival runs from 16 – 27 June at various locations across Edinburgh, including the Festival Theatre and the Filmhouse, Cameo and Cineworld cinemas. For more details and to book tickets, see the EIFF’s website.

Data has been sourced from VoteThemOut while address details for constituency offices, used in the postcode search, came from Westminster Parliamentary Record.

The final total out of the 59 Scottish MPs was 18 For, 5 Against and 36 Absents. Here follows a constituency-by-constituency breakdown for each MP. Keep reading after the list for analysis and a party-by-party breakdown.

Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire

Aberdeen North

Frank Doran (Labour) – For

Aberdeen South

Anne Begg (Labour) – Absent

Banff and Buchan

Alex Salmond (SNP) – Absent

Gordon

Malcolm Bruce (Lib Dem) – Absent

West Aberdeen and Kincardineshire

Robert Smith (Lib Dem) – Absent

Angus and Dundee City

Angus

Mike Weir (SNP) – Absent

Dundee East

Stewart Hosie (SNP) – For

Dundee West

James McGovern (Labour) – Absent

Argyll and Bute

Argyll and Bute

Alan Reid (Lib Dem) – Absent

City of Edinburgh

Edinburgh East

Gavin Strang (Labour) – For

Edinburgh North and Leith

Mark Lazarowicz (Labour) – Against

Edinburgh South

Nigel Griffiths (Labour) – Absent

Edinburgh South West

Alistair Darling (Labour) – Absent

Edinburgh West

John Barrett (Lib Dem) – Against

Clackmannanshire and Perth and Kinross

Ochil and South Perthshire

Gordon Banks (Labour) – Absent

Perth and North Perthshire

Pete Wishart (SNP) – Absent

Dumfries and Galloway, Scottish Borders and South Lanarkshire

Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk

Michael Moore (Lib Dem) – Absent

Dumfries and Galloway

Russell Brown (Labour) – Absent

Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale

David Mundell (Conservative) – Absent

East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow

Adam Ingram (Labour) – For

Lanark and Hamilton East

Jimmy Hood (Labour) – Absent

Rutherglen and Hamilton West

Toomy McAvoy (Labour) – For

East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire and South Ayrshire

Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock

Sandra Osborne (Labour) – For

Central Ayrshire

Brian Donohoe (Labour) – Absent

Kilmarnock and Loudon

Des Browne (Labour) – For

North Ayrshire and Arran

Katy Clark (Labour) – Absent

East Dumbartonshire and North Lanarkshire

Airdrie and Shotts

John Reid (Labour) – For

Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill

Tom Clarke (Labour) – Absent

Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East

Rosemary McKenna (Labour) – Absent

East Dumbartonshire

Jo Swinson (Lib Dem) – Absent

Motherwell and Wishaw

Frank Roy (Labour)  – Absent

East Lothian

East Lothian

Anne Moffat (Labour) – Absent

East Renfrewshire

East Renfrewshire

Jim Murphy (Labour) – Absent

Falkirk and West Lothian

Falkirk

Eric Joyce (Labour) – Against

Linlithgow and East Falkirk

Michael Connarty (Labour) – For

Livingston

Jim Devine (Labour) – Absent

Fife

Dunfermline and West Fife

Willie Rennie (Lib Dem) – Absent

Glenrothes

Lindsay Roy (Labour) – Absent

Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath

Gordon Brown (Labour) – Absent

North East Fife

Menzies Campbell (Lib Dem) – Absent

Glasgow City

Glasgow Central

Mohammed Sarwar (Labour) – Absent

Glasgow East

John Mason (SNP) – Absent

Glasgow North

Anne McKechin (Labour) – For

Glasgow North East

Willie Bain (Speaker) – For

Glasgow North West

John Robertson (Labour) – For

Glasgow South

Tom Harris (Labour) – Absent

Glasgow South West

Ian Davidson (Labour) – For

Highland

Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross

John Thurso (Lib Dem) – Against

Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey

Danny Alexander (Lib Dem) – Absent

Ross, Skye and Lochaber

Charles Kennedy (Lib Dem) – Absent

Inverclyde

Inverclyde

David Cairns (Labour) – For

Midlothian

Midlothian

David Hamilton (Labour) – For

Moray

Moray

Angus Robertson (SNP) – Absent

Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles)

Na h-Eileanan Siar

Angus MacNeil (SNP) – Absent

Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands

Orkney and Shetland

Alistair Carmichael (Lib Dem) – Against

Renfrewshire

Paisley and Renfrewshire North

Jim Sheriden (Labour) – For

Paisley and Renfrewshire South

Douglas Alexander (Labour) – For

Stirling

Stirling

Anne McGuire (Labour) – Absent

West Dumbartonshire

West Dumbartonshire

John McFall (Labour) – For

Analysis

Labour

• 17 Labour MPs voted For the DE Bill.
• 2 Labour MPs voted Against the DE Bill
• 20 Labour MPs were Absent or Abstained.

Only two Labour MPs – Mark Lazarowicz and Eric Joyce – broke the whip to vote against the Bill. There were also many high-profile Labour absentees including Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, with the likes of John Reid shoring up the For vote. Still, more than half of the party’s MPs stayed at home despite the presence of the whip and government’s determination to drive the Bill through.

Liberal Democrats

• 0 Lib Dem MPs voted For the DE Bill
• 3 Lib Dem MPs voted Against the DE Bill
• 9 Lib Dem MPs were Absent or Abstained.

No Lib Dem MP voted in favour of the Bill, but only three turned out to vote it down, despite the party being firmly against the proposed legislation. More big name absentees here with Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell staying at home. Bizarrely, the MPs for the far-flung Caithness, Sutherland and East Ross and Orkney and Shetland managed to make the vote, while many of their southerly colleagues were absent.

Scottish National Party

• 1 SNP MP voted For the DE Bill
• 0 SNP MPs voted Against the DE Bill
• 6 SNP MPs were Absent or Abstained.

Yet another high-profile absentee here with Alex Salmond nowhere to be seen, though he is stepping down from his Westminster seat to concentrate on his duties as First Minister of Scotland after the forthcoming election. Pete Wishart was surprisingly absent after robustly engaging with the debate during the Bill’s Second Reading the previous evening.

Conservatives

• 0 Conservative MPs voted For the DE Bill
• 0 Conservative MPs voted Against the DE Bill
• 1 Conservative MP was Absent or Abstained.

The Conservative Party’s only Scottish MP fails to turn up for the vote. I bet his constituents are thrilled.

In total, far less than half of Scotland’s MPs – a pitiful 38% – bothered to turn up and vote on the Digital Economy Bill.

I don’t doubt for a moment that Apple’s slate will be a masterclass in hardware design; sleek, shiny and immensely covetable. Equally, I’m sure that it will be just as accomplished in the UI and functionality stakes, in so far as it will do exactly what Apple have designed it to do extremely well indeed.

Despite that, I won’t be parting with my money when the iPad eventually finds its way over to Blighty later this month. Here’s why:

1. I’m not an early adopter.

Let’s be clear – I’m a huge fan of new technology and love nothing more than getting to grips with the latest devices. But I usually wait a few months before I actually spend hard-earned cash on a new shiny. There’s the obvious benefit of prices falling after the initial release (less of a factor with an Apple product, naturally) but early models can be less reliable (think how many launch Xbox 360s are still in active service), as well as being being more expensive.

2. It’s the first iteration of the product

Closely linked to the perils of early adoption, it’s inevitable that within the space of a year, a new, more fully-featured version of the iPad will be announced. I was burnt by the original iPhone – I bought one four or five months after release and two months later the 3G was announced at a lower price and with a better feature set. When the basic iPad model comes with 3G and a respectable amount of storage, I’ll be much more likely to take the plunge.

3. It’s a little on the expensive side…

Which brings us to the fact that the iPad is certainly not cheap. We don’t know how much exactly it’s going to cost in the UK just yet but £399 seems a good ball-park estimate. And that’s for the basic 16 GB model, not the significantly more pimped-out 3G-enabled 64GB version. Apple products have always been priced at a premium but when a couple of games consoles, a well-specced laptop or a 37-inch 1080p TV can be picked up for around the same price, it makes me stop to consider if it represents real value for money.

4. It can’t multi-task

Like the iPhone, the iPad only allows one application to be open at a time, the integrated iPod aside. While it does offer some improvements over its smaller cousin, the iPad is still not capable of true multi-tasking. This is the real deal breaker for me. I need to be able to hop from browser to email client to terminal window to e-book instantly and without worrying about having to save my work at each step or waiting for apps to reopen. I’m genuinely baffled as to why the iPad can’t do this.

5. Create vs. consume

I work in media, so I create content almost as often as I consume it. The simple fact is that while the iPad has a limited set of creative functions, it’s really not all that well-suited to the role. A netbook meets my needs as a creator far better; it’s light and portable, has a fully functioning keyboard, far greater storage capacity and full range of applications for my chosen OS. While it lacks the grunt of a fully-fledged notebook or desktop, it provides a perfectly serviceable workstation when needed. As if to prove a point, this blog post was composed entirely on a netbook, including all reference reading and image-editing. I think I’d struggle to put everything together as quickly or easily on an iPad.

The best is yet to come

Let me reiterate that I am entirely convinced that iPad will be a very successful product. I’m also sure that, sooner or later, I will buy one. But now isn’t that time. The iPad’s main function is media consumption and, as a creative, I need a device that can do more, especially at the price Apple are asking. My hope is that by the time iPad 2.0 is announced, the software will have evolved and entirely new possibilities will be opened up, just as the App Store accompanied the launch of the iPhone 3G. Until then, I’m afraid my money will be staying firmly in my wallet – even if the sight of a friend or colleague playing with their shiny new tablet makes me sick with envy.

Lose Your Illusion

Paradigm shifts. They’ve been at the core of every new Final Fantasy release from the late Eighties onwards. With each iteration comes a new game world, a fresh cast of characters, a revamped battle system and a bewildering array of new concepts, factions and jargon to grapple with. There’s a sense of incremental improvement – if only on a technical level – as each new title pushes its host platform to the limit and redefines accepted benchmarks for graphics and sound. As with any other Final Fantasy, paradigm shifts lie at the core of the thirteenth incarnation, not only as the lynch-pin on which the game’s new combat system hangs, but as a byword for the drastic overhaul brought on by another generational leap.

Final Fantasy XIII has not quite received the unanimous critical praise lavished upon many of its predecessors. That’s hardly surprising;  in the era of Fallout 3, Dragon Age and Mass Effect, the stubborn linearity of Square Enix’s latest effort seems almost anachronistic. Even set against its recent JRPG peers – Lost Odyssey, Persona 4 and Eternal Sonata – there’s something painfully austere about FFXIII’s approach to player-pathing.

Not that this is a break with series convention. With the exception of the open-word aspirations of 2006′s FFXII, each major Final Fantasy release since the iconic seventh installment has interspersed blatantly linear gameplay with sections of apocryphal non-linearity.  Even within the comparative freedom of the overworld, players are usually confronted with the illusion of choice rather than true agency. While five destinations may be available to visit at a given time, only one will actually advance the story. Now, in Final Fantasy XIII, even that thin façade of non-linearity has been torn away in favour of a streamlined, stripped-down experience. But to what end?

Eye-Candy

Lightning and Sahz take in the sights

To showcase the jaw-dropping visual feast, for one. Final Fantasy XIII sets a new high water mark for console graphics, particularly the PS3 version. The game’s conservative approach is likely as much a product of the astronomical production costs of the HD Era as it is of any design decision. With current hardware limitations, it’s difficult to imagine FFXIII’s visual fidelity and artistic achievement recreated in a true open-world environment. Whether this amounts to a trade-off of gameplay for graphics is largely irrelevant; the proof of Final Fantasy’s gaming pudding has always been in the meat of the battle system and story rather than wandering aimlessly between towns.

Which is just as well really, since towns too have been entirely excised from the early part of the game. Though urban environments abound, they appear mainly in cutscenes or as combat zones in their own right. It’s part of a wider philosophical shift in which NPC conversations too are largely conspicuous by their absence. Much of the story is conveyed through the cut-scenes, while shopping and upgrades are handled entirely through menus available at every save point. But similar to Square dropping the pretence of non-linearity elsewhere, not as much has actually changed as first impressions would suggest. With very rare exceptions, dialogue in Final Fantasy games has been strictly limited and more often than not simply a matter of jabbing the X button enough times to persuade an NPC to divulge plot details. Once again, FFXIII simply strips away the thin veneer of free choice.

Combative

Final Fantasy XIII's battle system in full swing

Whether narration through cut-scenes is ideal in the first place is a separate debate but it’s certainly in-keeping with Square Enix’s reductionist vision for FFXIII. Indeed, reducing the game’s core elements to first principles is a design choice carried over to the battle system. For the first two and a half hours of Final Fantasy XIII, many of the more complex combat mechanics are hidden from the player, only to be slowly introduced one by one over the next 7-8 hours of gameplay. While this hand-holding can feel obnoxious at times, the slow start is somewhat excused, if not entirely forgiven, once the full flower of the battle system begins to bloom.

Once again, there’s another jarring change to the status quo. Unlike previous titles where all members of the party could be given hands-on direction, in Final Fantasy XIII only one character is directly under the player’s control. The reasons behind this decision become more clear in light of the frantic pace of combat and once more complex battle concepts are rolled out but having two out of three party members controlled by the AI at any given time is certainly disconcerting.

Final Fantasy XIII’s combat mechanics hang on the notion of Paradigms – Jobs or Classes in other FF titles – and Paradigm Shifts. At the core of this system is the ability to change between different class assignments for all party members on the fly – the aforementioned Paradigm Shift. Once Paradigm Shifts are introduced about three hours in, the true tactical depth of the revamped battle system begins to emerge.

Alongside Paradigm Shifts are the related concepts of Chains and Stagger. Chains – simply a  series of attacks – fill a Chain Gauge which, when topped up, forces enemies into Stagger mode, allowing party members to inflict obscene amounts of damage in a short space of time. Chains decay quickly and must be topped up lest the Chain Gauge empty completely. However, certain Paradigms – most noticeably the Commando, decrease the rate of decay, allowing characters with pure damage-dealing roles – Ravagers – to quickly drive enemies into Stagger.

Paradigmatic

It’s difficult to convey the full potential of this system in play but the following is a fairly common example. The party engages a tough enemy and Paradigms Shits to a Commando, Synergist  (buff class) and Medic (healer) combination. Once the Synergist has applied protective shields to the party and the Medic has topped up everyone’s health bar, we switch to a Commando, Ravager, Ravager setup to quickly fill the Chain Gauge and Stagger the foe. While in Stagger, we change again to Ravager/Ravager/Ravager for maximum damage-dealing potential. As Stagger ends, the enemy swipes out at all party members, dealing serious damage and casting a damage-absorbing shield on itself. We switch to Medic/Medic/Saboteur (debuff class) to quickly heal up the damage and strip away the shield and then return to Commando/Ravager/Ravager to begin the cycle again.

Between the six available Paradigms (there’s also a tank-like Sentinel), the combat system actually gravitates more towards the feel of World of Warcraft party combat than preceding Final Fantasy titles, with the presence of a given Paradigm at the right moment being crucial to success. Learning to identify what Paradigm combinations – and the correct sequence of Paradigm Shifts – is best-suited to a given enemy is one of the game’s many tactical pleasures.

(Un)Conventional

The enigmatic Fal'Cie

For all that though, it’s hard to deny that Final Fantasy XIII’s stripped-down design aesthetic is jarring. It’s not helped by the excruciatingly slow pace of the game’s opening and haphazard storytelling. Early on, key concepts – Fal’Cie, L’Cie, Focus, Pulse – are bandied about with reckless abandon but remain as little more than obscure jargon until the game finally deigns to explain what they are and, crucially, why the player should care. It’s a good eight and a half hours before a character that might be considered a main villain is introduced. Even compared to recent slow-burners like Assassin’s Creed 2 and Dragon Age, the pacing of Final Fantasy XIII’s opening hours is rarely any faster than glacial.

It takes a while but these early misgivings do gradually begin to subside once the game opens up and starts to let players actually play it. For many, this will come around the three hour mark, when character levelling and the Paradigm Shift concept are introduced and the setting mercifully changes from the endless walkways of FFXIII’s opening sections. Others will have to wait a little longer, until the story begins to get its hooks in and starts to reveal more about the game world and character backgrounds in an intelligible fashion.

Though it sticks closely to many long-established conventions, Final Fantasy XIII is a paradigm shift in a very real sense, especially with FFXII suggesting a more progressive future for the series back when it was released in 2006. Four years on and Square Enix have abandoned any pretence of non-linearity, adapting a strictly reductionist approach which strips the latest title to the twin cores of the Final Fantasy experience – story and combat. It’s a brave move and one that won’t be received well by all of the fanbase but whatever else it might be, it certainly makes for a spectacular experience.

5. Batman: Arkham Asylum (360)

I really wanted to dislike Arkham Asylum. My view was coloured partly by conspiracy theories circulating before release that suggested that Eidos were trying to buy high review scores from magazines and partly by the fact that the last non-Lego Batman release, Batman Begins, was utterly, utterly dreadful. I even held off playing the game for four months because I was so convinced I would hate it. I was wrong. Very wrong, in fact. Pass the ketchup, I have a hat to eat.

Drawing its inspiration mainly from the 1990s Animated Series and the gritty Christopher Nolan films of recent years, Arkham Asylum is a much darker and adult game than previous attempts at making a compelling Batman title. It drips atmosphere and the Unreal Engine adds a real sense of weight and presence to the game world, not least the lead character. Developers Rocksteady have taken a first principles approach to the combat mechanics, stripping back the control system and allowing the player to worry more about timing and spectacle than mastering multi-button move sets. It’s an elegant solution that lets the action flow unhindered and makes brawling a pleasure rather than a chore.  Stealth sections are handled with the same amount of care, turning rooms of heavily armed guards into satisfying puzzles as Batman attempts to silently take down enemies without being seen.

Unfortunately, boss battles are something of a disappointment. The 2D Scarecrow sections quickly lose their novelty and occur just a little too frequently. The Poison Ivy encounter is a wretched piece of game design, a poorly-checkpointed exercise in pure frustration. Killer Croc is a damp squib, after a lengthy build-up, and like Poison Ivy, relies too much on trial and error and learning attack patterns and directions by rote. The problem here is that the boss encounters rely on gimmicks rather than the Arkham Asylum’s bread-and-butter combat and climbing abilities and are, in some cases, disproportionately difficult compared to the rest of the game. There’s nothing that will really hold anyone up for any great length of time but there’s an overwhelming feeling that boss fights are to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Thankfully, there’s more than enough here to make up for these deplorable sections. Arkham Asylum’s detective mode borrows heavily from Metroid Prime but without the tedious backtracking and re-spawning enemies that made that game drag severely in places. Again, it’s a minimalist approach to exploration and the environment that allows the player to get on with enjoying the game world without becoming bogged down in mundane and unnecessary tasks. A special mention must go to the game’s superb voice acting, particularly Mark Hamill, reprising his role as Joker from the animated series. Batman: Arkham Asylum is perhaps 2009′s most unlikely success story, with an unknown developer taking a high-profile movie license and producing a game which has redefined what we expect from future licensed titles.

4. Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)

Let’s set the record straight here. The first Assassin’s Creed was by no means a bad game. There’s no disputing that it failed to fully live up to the levels of expectation generated by the industry hype machine but it still managed to pull off slick, polished and entertaining with aplomb. Had Assassin’s Creed 2 been released in its place in 2007, it would likely have been declared one of the greatest games of all time. But as it is, things have moved on in the last couple of years and ideas that once seemed fresh and exciting have long since been absorbed into gaming convention. Instead Assassin’s Creed 2 is merely one of 2009′s finest games.

Ubisoft have atoned for the sins of the father by removing the fat that made Assassin’s Creed 1 corpulent and unfocused in places. In the first game there was always plenty to do but thanks to repetition of missions types and no overarching goals to work towards, there was little incentive to actually do it. Assassin’s Creed 2 brims over with content and constantly dangles tantalising carrots in front of the player in the form of achievements, new weapons and armour, extra health perks and hidden videos. The new currency system helps of course, with the game able to hand out monetary rewards for completing optional goals to go towards buying new shinies. Elsewhere, combat has been overhauled and is fun and stylish, a ballet of parries, counters and disarms with lead character Ezio facing anything up to a dozen opponents at once. And of course, Renaissance Italy is as gorgeous a place as any to set a game and one that makes the very best of the AC2′s wonderful graphics engine.

Not that Assassin’s Creed 2 is without its faults, of course. The Animus story conceit is as unnecessary as it was in the original game and only succeeds in shattering the player’s sense of immersion at regular intervals. Climbing controls are occasionally ropey and take quite some time to get to grips with (geddit?). For the first few hours, accidentally leaping into thin air while scaling a hundred metre tall church spire occurs with irritating regularity. Then there’s those opening hours themselves, where the game really takes its time getting up to speed and giving the player something approaching a full set of moves and the freedom to explore the beautiful surroundings. It feels restrictive and patronising and is a stark contrast to the free-roaming delights of mid-game and onwards.

Still, these shortcomings are relatively minor and with the exception of all the rubbish Animus stuff, mostly disappear after a few hours. They certainly don’t stop Assassin’s Creed 2 being deep, stylish and, most importantly, a great deal of fun. The original game has been scrubbed and polished to within an inch of its life and Ubisoft’s care and attention to detail has produced a sequel that stands head and shoulders above most other games released in 2009.

3. Dragon Age: Origins (PC)

Reports of PC gaming’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Dragon Age: Origins shows that the platform can still hold its own against and even surpass upstart console titles. Indeed, the PC version of Dragon Age is very much the definitive version of the game and harks back to the golden age of Infinity Engine-powered top-down games while preserving the closer third-person perspective of the 360 and PS3 conversions. It’s a huge game with an inordinate amount of replay value and one of the finest RPGs released in the last decade.

For a while though, it all looked as if Bioware might have dropped the ball. The marketing campaign leading up to Dragon Age’s release was crass and sold the game as a “mature” title, featuring blood, boobs and a silly Marilyn Manson soundtrack, shoehorned in without any trace of irony. Thankfully the final game proved to be an altogether more refined affair, even if gratuitous violence and cringe-inducing sex scenes did rear their ugly heads from time to time. In many ways, Dragon Age is the true successor to the Baldur’s Gate series, with a depth and complexity many modern RPGs lack. Combat is tactical and challenging and the game’s morality system thankfully abandons the binary good/evil approach in favour of building relationships with individual characters based on a combination of deeds and conversations. Decision-making becomes a genuine dilemma as the player attempts to weigh multiple potential outcomes, aware that their choices may alienate at least one of the supporting characters.

Blood and boobs aside, Dragon Age is let down somewhat by the fact that is, above all, a Bioware game. It follows a basic structure that has remained virtually unchanged since Neverwinter Nights and Knights of Old Republic and relies on similar narrative conceits. There’s a real sense that we have seen many of the NPCs before and despite the fact that it has been seven years since the company released a true fantasy RPG, the game just doesn’t feel new or fresh. There’s also the question of difficulty level, with Easy a pushover for most players and Normal an often gruelling and punishing affair with relatively straightforward encounters proving disproportionately frustrating.

Regardless, Dragon Age: Origins marks one of the first major shifts in PC RPGs for several years and is a real breath of fresh air after a long succession of MMORPGs and rough and ready German and Eastern European efforts. It’s a high budget, Western title with a developer determined to return to the roots of the modern genre it helped codify. More importantly, it demonstrates that there remains a niche for PC gaming – those playing Dragon Age: Origins on a console really are missing out on the full experience.

2. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)

You’ll probably already know Uncharted 2 as The Official Game of the Year, as voted for by Eurogamer and any number of other sites. I have no qualms with that but I can’t quite claim that it’s my personal Game of the Year. What I can say is that it’s about as good a game as you could possibly hope to play in any given year. It’s perhaps the most polished game yet released, both in terms of its jaw-dropping good looks and gripping gameplay.

Like Assassin’s Creed 2, the sequel to Uncharted has advanced leaps and bounds over the original game. While the first Uncharted was poorly paced, endless waves of enemies occasionally interspersed with some platforming, Among Thieves nails the mix of combat and exploration and makes the former much more engaging and entertaining. Drake’s Fortune was no slouch in the looks department but the sequel is genuinely gorgeous, with particularly impressive urban environments. The is also full of memorable set-pieces, from the game’s opening in a train carragie overhanging an icy abyss to the encounter with a helicopter on the rooftops of a Nepalese city and a head-on fight with a tank in a Himalayan village.

Great though Uncharted 2 is, it’s not perfect. Its early chapters are schizophrenic and suffer from inconsistent pacing and the player is forced to suffer through the ignominy of a forced stealth section in the second level. As the game reaches its climax, firefights become increasingly predictable and usually degenerate into weeding snipers and grenadiers before mopping up the rest of the human detritus. Technically though, it’s virtually flawless, with only a few minor bugs and glitches popping up in a playthrough. whether the multiplayer mode really adds much is debatable but it seems to have attracted a reasonably devout following on PSN either way.

Those are very small potatoes, however. In all ways that matter, Uncharted 2 is the new peak of the action-adventure genre, the Resident Evil 4 of its generation. It would take a very special game to beat it to my Game of the Year and, as it happens…

1. Demon’s Souls (PS3)

They’re not supposed to make games like this any more. Stoic, uncompromising, difficult. Compelling, rewarding, unique. If there’s one thing you can say about Demon’s Souls it’s that it is quite unlike any other game released in 2009. But it’s so much more than that. Demon’s Souls mixes old school values with genuine innovation, grafting an ingenious online infrastructure onto its action RPG framework. It strips the sub-genre to its core elements, ditching everything from strictly defined character classes to conventional currency. And it must be emphasised that it’s tough. Really tough. But behind its unforgiving façade is a game that rewards every second you invest in it tenfold. It’s definitely not for everyone but those who persist in spite of the difficulty will be hard-pressed not to fall under Demon’s Souls captivating spell.

On paper at least, Demon’s Souls does everything that modern games design seems to expressly forbid. With players losing all collected souls – the game’s single currency exchanged for everything from levelling up to repairing armour and upgrading weapons – on death, it punishes failure. Players are expected to learn from mistakes and are never held by the hand. The game’s tutorial is minimal and new characters face the task of clearing the lengthy first level and killing the final boss before being allowed to level up. But though it’s harsh, Demon’s Souls is never unfair. Players die because they have screwed up – misjudging an enemy’s swing, running out of stamina because they have been flailing their sword wildly rather than hiding behind their shields and making calculating swipes at the right moment – rather than at the hands of some arbitrary machination by the game. And with the stakes so high, every enemy defeated feels like a true triumph, every downed boss a cause for genuine celebration.

If there are any criticisms to be levelled at Demon’s Souls it’s the game’s menu and inventory systems. This aspect of the interface is gaudy and poorly designed and selecting a particular item often involves navigating several screens of ugly menus. There are also slight framerate issues when things get a bit busy on screen but it’s never enough to seriously affect the business of killing. There are, of course, those who will find the game too difficult and the only answer to this is that it’s a very niche title and those who are adverse to a stern challenge should stay firmly away.

What’s most amazing about Demon’s Souls is that for a resolutely old school game, it’s actually the most refreshing thing I’ve played all year. It’s certainly stern and forbidding but underneath the surface is a game that rewards the player like no other recent title. In many ways, playing Demon’s Souls is like being involved in a torrid love affair. It’s difficult and often frustrating but the highs are so ecstatic that it doesn’t matter. It abuses you and yet you keep coming back for more, convinced that you’ve deserved your punishment. Demon’s Souls: it only hits you because it loves you. And that’s why it’s my Game of the Year for 2009.

Honourable Mentions

Torchlight (PC): RPG that’s like Diablo with a sugar rush.

Left 4 Dead 2 (PC): More zombies. Can’t really be a bad thing, can it?

Flower (PS3): Immensely pretty and relaxing PSN title.

Braid (PS3): Technically a 2008 release but a recent release on PSN secures the time-based platform puzzler a place in this year’s Honourable Mentions.

Street Fighter IV (360/PS3): The epitome of the modern beat ‘em up.

5. Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino returns in glorious, Nazi-smashing technicolour. Though hardly the most serious or subtle film of the year, Inglourious Basterds is never less than thoroughly entertaining. Brad Pitt stars as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, leader of a crack brigade of Jewish-American soldiers operating deep behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France but is upstaged by stunning performances from German actors Christoph Waltz and Diane Kruger. Waltz’s Colonel Hans Landa, the SS’s infamous “Jew-Hunter”, is perhaps the year’s most memorable movie villain, a pantomime foil for Pitt’s rootin’ tootin’ redneck hero. Utterly tasteless but wickedly funny, Inglourious Basterds proves that Tarantino’s star burns as brightly as ever after a string of poor efforts in recent years.

4. District 9

Proving that megabucks are not a pre-requisite for success, District 9 was an altogether more satisfying watch than 2009′s other big sci-fi hitters, Avatar and Star Trek. Set in a near-future South Africa, District 9 centres on the plight of the ‘Prawns’, a sizeable alien civilisation stranded on Earth and interned by humans in segregated settlements. Social commentary is as much a feature of the film as action or humour and though the parallel between post-Prawn Johannesburg and Apartheid South Africa is dealt with somewhat heavy-handedly, this is still much more intellectual fare than the rest of this year’s sci-fi offerings. Sharlto Copley’s Wikus van de Merwe falls at the hapless end of the hero spectrum but the development of his character over the course of them film is one of District 9‘s highlights.

3. In The Loop

Malcolm Tucker finally reaches the big screen in the film adoption of Armando Iannucci’s The Thick Of It. Forsaking the Westminster bear pit for the more polite, if equally frantic, world of Anglo-American relations, the TV show’s breakneck pace and vicious humour make the transition to feature length production unscathed. Peter Capaldi is the undoubted star, reprising his role as bile-spitting government spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker, and is supported by returning cast members alongside one-off additions including James Gandolfini. A resolutely British comedy, some of In The Loop‘s humour may be lost on North American audiences not familiar with the rough and ready approach to everything from ad libs to filming but those who persevere will be rewarded with a film that is unrelentingly funny and endlessly quotable. Be warned, the video embedded above includes language that is most definitely Not Safe For Work.

2. A Serious Man

The best Coen Brothers film since The Big Lebowski? Perhaps (in a universe where Oh Brother, Where Art Though doesn’t exist, mind). One of the year’s darker releases, the film follows the Goptiks, a Jewish family living in Minneapolis during the sixties. Professor Larry Gopnik’s life is falling to pieces around him: his wife is having an affair with a family friend, his son is constantly stoned and his daughter is stealing money from him to fund a nose-job operation. At work, Larry is up for Tenure but his application is under threat from malicious anonymous letters and Clive, a failing student determined to pass his exams at any cost. A Serious Man joins the canon of quintessential Coen Brothers movies, though it’s unrelentingly bleak at times.

1. Moon

Equal parts 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running, Moon is the great film-making triumph of 2009. Produced for a paltry five million dollars by British director Duncan Jones, it tells the story of Sam Bell, the lone crewman of a mining base on the surface of the Moon, nearing the end of his three-year stint away from Earth. Sam Rockwell shines as Bell but is supported by an excellent voice-only performance from Kevin Spacey as the installation’s computer, Gerty.  Moon takes a minimalist approach to sci-fi, throwing out many modern genre conventions in the process. CGI is, for the most part, replaced by model work while the sets are basic and have a distinctly retro feel. Themes of identity and loneliness are explored in depth here but there’s a stark beauty amidst all the bleakness. The plot is simple and elegant and though the main twists are easily spotted in advance, the film’s understated style means they always resonate. Perhaps the highlight though is the utterly beautiful soundtrack from Clint Mansell, simple and elegant yet powerfully evocative, much like Moon itself.

Honourable mentions

Zombieland: essentially Left 4 Dead – The Movie but no worse for that.

Drag Me to Hell: dark, disgusting but hilarious Sam Raimi horror flick.

The Hangover: charming neo road-trip movie set in Las Vegas.

Watchmen: convoluted and over-long but very impressive super hero film nonetheless.

Coraline: creepy kid’s 3D film based on the Neil Gaiman book.

For all their flaws though, I find the process of drafting and redrafting annual lists utterly compelling. I’m never entirely happy with any of my lists and actually compiling them usually entails many compromises and tough decisions. This year’s were no different and I fully anticipate looking back in six and then twelve months time and grinding my face into my palm over some of my choices. But that’s what being a critic is all about, right, having to eat your own words sometimes?

Anyway, to kick off the Best of 2009 lists, here’s my Top 10 songs of the year that was. I’ve even thrown in audio for a few tracks.

10. Gorgoroth – Rebirth (from the album Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem)

Gorgoroth’s Infernus has always had a talent for writing dark, funereal dirges and this post-Gaahlgate effort is one of his best. It’s suffocatingly grim and oppressive, its unrelentingly sonic bleakness the signature of a band revitalised and even, as the title would suggest, reborn. Worth listening to for vocalist Pest’s blood-curdling scream at around the two minute, fifty second mark but definitely not one for those who veer away from the darker things in music.

9. Dinosaur Jr – Pieces (from the album Farm)

While Farm wasn’t quite the album Dinosaur Jr fans had been hoping for, it was certainly a much more rounded piece of work than 2007′s Beyond. Pieces is a classic Dinosaur Jr track, from the minor-key progressions, to the wall of guitar sound that only become apparent at higher volume levels to J Mascis’s nasal vocals. Easily up there with the best from Green Mind and Where You Been.

8. Infected Mushroom – Herbert the Pervert (from the album Legend of the Black Schwarma)

The Israeli psychedelic trance duo are their best when blurring the boundaries between genres and introducing real instruments into their electronic cauldron. While not quite as magnificent as Suliman from 2007′s Viscious Delicious, Herbert the Pervert once again showcases the mind-blowing results that can be achieved from adding rock and heavy metal instrumentation to a hard dance track. Really remarkable stuff, with a fantastic name to boot.

7. Dream Theater – The Count of Tuscany (from the album Black Clouds and Silver Linings)

At nineteen minutes and sixteen seconds, The Count of Tuscany falls four minutes short of 1995′s epic A Change of Seasons. And while it doesn’t quite match that particular classic in terms of quality either, it’s undoubtedly one of the finest pieces of work the band have released in years. Endless guitar solos, rousing choruses, acoustic interludes, all are resplendent in their prog-tastic glory. Overly self indulgent, perhaps but no less majestic for that.

6. Butterfly Explosion – Comfort of the Dark (from the EP Vision)

Up and coming Irish shoegaze group Butterfly Explosion may well be the Next Big Thing once they finally release their long-awaited debut album in 2010 but for now they are simply floating in a sea of potential. Though the band usually sound like an Explosions in the Sky/My Bloody Valentine hybrid, this track actually bears more resemblance to something by the Smashing Pumpkins, before Billy Corgan disappeared up his own back passage. The slow build to the song’s glorious crescendo is undoubtedly its highlight.

5. Katatonia – Idle Blood (from the album Night is the New Day)

Sounding like a lost cut from Opeth’s Damnation, Idle Blood is one the highlights of an album hardly short of choice cuts. Internet speculation on whether Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt was involved continues unabated but regardless, Idle Blood is a remarkably beautiful and haunting track that sees Katatonia incorporate layered vocal harmonies and acoustic instrumentation in a way they have never before attempted on this scale.

4. Sonic Youth – Anti-Orgasm (from the album The Eternal)

Sonic Youth were never a band to waver in the face of commercial pressure, let alone do what anyone expected of them so it’s see something of a surprise to hear the fifty-something New Yorkers revive the accessibility and sexual politics of their early-nineties major label peak. Anti-Orgasm is a grungy, lo-fi track that’s worlds away from more contemplative recent releases but shows that despite their age, Sonic Youth still have a thing or two to show the kids about how to write abrasive rock classics.

3. Pelican – Ephemeral (from the album What We All Come to Need)

A tighter and much more focused reworking of an EP track from earlier this year, Ephemeral bears the mark of a resurgent Pelican, confident in fusing their newly discovered sense of melody with the riff-laden legacy of their earlier work. Somewhat reminiscent of the monolithic Drought from Australasia, this track gradually evolves from a simple bass riff to a writhing, complex monstrosity as layers of instrumentation are added, then taken away again before crashing back in once more with double the force. A real lesson in post-metal songwriting.

2. And So I Watch You From Afar – Set Guitars to Kill (from the album And So I Watch You From Afar)

As well as being an absolutely blistering slab of instrumental rock, this track undoubtedly walks away with the award for Best Song Name of the Year. Probably the best thing to come out of Northern Ireland since George Best, And So I Watch You From Afar somehow create catchy, danceable songs without resorting to verses, choruses or anything else that remotely resembles a traditional song structure. The sheer energy and euphoric joy expressed by the album version of Set Guitars to Kill is surpassed only by the utterly remarkable live performance.

1. Devin Townsend Project – Addicted! (from the album Addicted)

With a towering Wall of Sound that would make Phil Spector cry with envy, Devin Townsend must surely rank as one of the world’s premier producers. When he turns his hands to his own work, the results are usually remarkable and Addicted! is no exception. The title track of Addicted, the former Strapping Young Lad mastermind’s tongue-in-cheek attempt at creating an MOR rock album in the style of Nickelback, the song stays close to Townsend’s metal roots but adds layers of sound quite unlike anything seen in his previous work. From female vocals to soaring choruses, Addicted! is perhaps one of the most uncharacteristic tracks Townsend has ever released yet is all the more remarkable for that. It’s a sonic wonderland, the sound of an artist both exploring and pushing his limits and a genuine joy to listen to.

And that’s it for now. Check back over the next week or so when I’ll be listing my favourite albums, movies and games of the year, plus perhaps a look at some of 2009′s prize turkeys.

WWACTN sees the return of the dense, heavy riffing that characterised the Chicago four-piece’s early releases, blended seamlessly with the more melodic leanings of recent efforts. Delicate piano parts have been torn out and replaced with chugging, leaden bass lines and tortured lead guitars to create a record that is darker and more sombre than its predecessor. But for all that, WWACTN is perhaps one of the band’s more accessible albums, with their recent focus on song-writing and composition finally starting to pay dividends in the complex melodies that seamlessly link riff after heavy riff. Guitar duties are split between Trevor De Brauw and Laurent Schroeder-Lebec as usual, with Aaron Turner of Isis adding a third guitar on the title track and Sunn O)))’s Glen Anderson filling the same role on “Creeper”. Bryan Herveg excels on bass throughout, though Ben Verellen of Harkonen is drafted in to help out on “Glimmer”, while brother Larry Herveg’s performance on drums is vastly improved from City of Echoes, greatly assisted by a much more flattering mixdown.

The album opens with “Glimmer”, its lazy, ponderous intro quickly giving way to a crashing rhythm onslaught and soaring guitar melodies. “The Creeper” sees a return to Pelican’s sludgy roots, though with a generous helping of bass groove stirred into the mix. “Ephemeral”, meanwhile, is a re-working of the title track from the EP of the same name, released earlier this year. The WWACTN version is a much tighter and more focused affair, its gradually evolving riff structures highly reminiscent of “Drought” from Australasia and an undoubted highlight of the album. The contrast between the melodic and the menacing that underpins this record is perhaps most pronounced on the dreamy, spaced out “Specks of Light” and the brooding “Strung Up From The Sky”, the latter showcasing one of WWACTN‘s most memorable riffs and frankly mind-blowing bass chops from Bryan Herveg. Closer “Final Breath” sees Pelican enter entirely new territory with the addition of vocals, anathema to most instrumental bands of their ilk. It’s a brave move but one that ultimately fails to pay off, with the dirgey track feeling out of place against choice cuts elsewhere on the album.

Closing song aside, WWACTN is a resounding triumph for Pelican and real return to form for a band that many felt had left their roots behind for good. Production is exemplary throughout, adding a tangible depth and presence to each track and really allowing the breathtaking rhythm section to shine. Though all the songs come in under the eight-minute mark, there’s a focus here that earlier albums lack and a real sense that this is a band finally hitting their stride after a string of inconsistent efforts. It’s a record that should calm long-term fans, anxious that Pelican had strayed too far from their core musical values, while offering an ideal entry point for newcomers. If What We All Come to Need is in any way an indication of the band’s future direction, Pelican fans should be very excited indeed.