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Pancrace: The Fluid Hammer - VINYL LPTitle: The Fluid Hammer Artist: Pancrace Label: Penultimate Press Product Type: VINYL LP UPC: 769791974784 Genre: Jazz Release Date: 2019 10 04 Number of Discs: 2 Additional Details: 2 PACK Pancrace is a quintet from France comprising Prune Bcheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Lo Maurel, and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace began with a residence in 2015 at the Saint Pancrace church in Dangolsheim where the instrument inventor Lo Maurel resides. Pancrace's debut
Title: The Fluid HammerArtist: Pancrace
Label: Penultimate Press
Product Type: VINYL LP
UPC: 769791974784
Genre: Jazz
Release Date: 2019-10-04
Number of Discs: 2
Additional Details: 2 PACK
Pancrace is a quintet from France comprising Prune Bécheau, Arden Day, Julien Desailly, Léo Maurel, and Jan Vysocky. Pancrace began with a residence in 2015 at the Saint Pancrace church in Dangolsheim where the instrument inventor Léo Maurel resides. Pancrace's debut self-titled double-LP was released by Penultimate Press in 2017 and ended up on The Wire's best releases of that year. After the first record and subsequent tour the band were despondent that the main character of their story, the church organ, was not there. A series of meetings and chance encounters resulted in the band developing their own organ which they named "Organous". The approach of Pancrace is based on the physicality of sound, a choice of specific tone qualities within a given spatial contextual awareness. Therefore, the manufacturing and usage of the musical instrument are constantly reassessed. Consequently, playing with the mechanical aspect of the instruments is central to their musical approach and narrative. Designing an unbound pipe organ - though emulating some of the mechanical idiomatics of the initial Pancrace church organ - seemed the obvious way to gain more spatial control over a vast choice of places. This allowed them to approach their music from a totally new angle and work from within the organ. The results of these experiments are captured here, on their second opus, The Fluid Hammer. This new beast of an instrument, somewhere between a spider or an octopus, led Pancrace to compose from the frontality of the instrument as well as with the interactive tone possibilities brought by other instruments. With it's six panels display (two bass registers, two treble, and a pair of crumhorns) the organ projects sound like the musique concrèt Acousmonium giving the listener a spatialized perception of a wide range of tones and harmonics. Fluid Hammer is the result of the research and experiments undertaken with the Organous and other instruments. Fluid Hammer is a more rhythmic and percussive affair than it's predecessor, bringing to mind the experiments of Conlon Nancarrow as well as fairground barrel organs. The wide range of polyrhythmic patterns generates a constant tension between the machine and the human play. Music for Organous (spatialized and MIDI-controlled pipe organ), Uilleann pipes, Pi-synth, piano, motorised bow, boîte à bourdons, gaida, Baroque violin, hurgy toys, toy piano, componium, bodhran, low whistle, bird calls, AM radio, and shaker.
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★★★★★ 5
From Pixels to Problems! Great read!
Format: Hardcover
“Play Nice” offers an enjoyable deep dive into the tumultuous history of Blizzard Entertainment, chronicling its journey from a ragtag group of brilliant college students to its evolution under corporate ownership and its current state. Schreier provides fascinating insights into the antics of Blizzard’s early employees, showcasing their outlandish attitudes, relentless work ethic, and tight-knit camaraderie.
The book explores how Blizzard transitioned from a company renowned for producing high-quality, polished games that left competitors in the dust to one struggling to preserve its heart and soul amid mounting corporate pressures. While the corporate side and C-suite executives are often cast in a negative light, Schreier thoughtfully examines the motivations behind their decisions, offering perspectives from all levels of the company—from executives and middle management to QA testers. This balanced approach provides a refreshing take, avoiding oversimplified blame and instead considering multiple sides of the story.
And while it’s easy to villainize the suits in the boardroom, Schreier does a great job showing why some decisions were made. From executives to QA testers, he pulls back the curtain to reveal a mess of perspectives, reminding us that every bad decision has some kind of reason behind it (even if it’s still a bad decision).
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Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Reads like your favorite succession episodes
Format: Hardcover
Great book—thoroughly researched and delightfully written! Highly recommend to all my gamers and friends from that era.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2025
★★★★★ 4
Great insight into an otherwise obscure world
Format: Hardcover
As someone who grew up playing blizzard's games for an unfathomable amount of hours I've always been interested into their inner workings, especially considering their downfall in recent years. This book holds a ton of information and knowledge, is well sourced, and is the work of someone with obvious deep familiarity with the industry and its particularities.
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Overall, an entertaining piece of insight into a world that is normally quite unknown, even to long time gamers like myself.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Great read
Format: Hardcover
Extremely interesting book
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Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2026
★★★★★ 3
Great insight on what happened at Blizzard but...
Format: Kindle
My main issue with the book is the lack of non-american stories that explained the bigger picture. As a former Blizzard dev, there's much more than what happened in Irvine and Korea, with Europe's office mentioned almost as a footnote, and nothing else from the other regional stories. Shame but I guess the book would've been double the size.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2025