The zombie apocalypse is here! It’s arrived! It’s happening, right now! But before you go running off to get your chainsaw and baseball bat and head down to the nearest supermarket to barricade yourselves in, let me just remind you… not that kind of zombie apocalypse. In fact, that very term has come to mean something very different than it did perhaps a decade or two ago. I did have an original point, but let’s leave that for a moment as we travel through the ascending harp-strings and ripple dissolve of a flashback sequence.
Zombies were once shambling, groaning limpers, dragging one foot behind them at a snail’s pace, lowly muttering their desire for brains and having the occasional limb unceremoniously drop off with a dull, wet thump. For the most part anyway. There was that one time when Michael Jackson was cornered by a shambling crowd, had his face turned gaunt and managed to get a flashmob dance going in a graveyard, but we’ll leave that instance alone for this. I can only assume that when the funky music stopped, the recently undead went back to moaning, groaning slow walkers. Actually, we know they did. The girl managed to run away, lock herself inside a wooden shack and whimper for eight-and-a-half minutes before they started to punch the walls in.
The point here is that it was very easy to run away from these kinds of zombies. Movie makers of this century couldn’t salvage last century’s zombies and make viable horror stories. These days, the stakes need to be raised beyond simply running away. The zombies need to be up to speed too. They need to put up their half of the chase. They need to eat the rest of the body rather than just the brain. They need to shriek manically instead of just moan. And so, around 28 days later, the modern “rage zombie” was born.
This kind of zombie is more familiar to a crowd in the current climate of popular culture. It’s spawned so many stories across movie, TV show and video game formats, all to differing degrees of quality. Before long, this kind of zombie became a cash-cow; the latest big thing, the new superheroes. No, wait. The new werewolves. Actually, what was it? No, rage zombies was first, then werewolves took over that, then superheroes. I think. Sorry, my memory got warped somewhere in the ripple dissolve and I don’t know when I am. Let’s assume rage zombies were first out of those three, which means something predated them, like Steps. There, that’ll do, rage zombies became the new Steps. (TRAGEDY!)
Somehow trying to wrangle this back to my original point, today’s modern zombie popularised by various entertainment media is not the kind of zombie I refer to. Instead, I refer to the mindless drone-type, relentlessly shuffling onwards in search of a fruitful reward that will likely be forgotten about almost as soon as it’s been obtained. Those zombies are here. They’re on our streets, aided by pieces of handheld technology to desperately seek their goals. Only it’s not a human brain they’re after. It’s not even to learn some funky dance moves from Jacko. He’s dead. He’s not undead. The undead aren’t real. He’s not a real zombie and he won’t be doing any thrilling dances for us. No, the reward is collection of geo-caching coordinates in the shape of a colourful mutant-animal character lots of us grew up with in the nineties. Actually, fuck Steps, rage zombies became the new Pokémon.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for video gaming and nostalgia. Combining the two is almost on par with eating a stack of pancakes covered with ice cream whilst lying on a memory foam mattress at Christmas, accompanied by the sound of your mortal enemies wailing in eternal agony coming all the way from the Underworld. I’ve certainly been intrigued by the concept of Pokémon GO since it was announced however long ago that was (memory’s still stuck in the middle harp-strings somewhen) and have looked forward to taking part. However, over the last week, I’ve been given an insight into how others are using the app. Even though it hasn’t received its official release in the UK yet (as of Tuesday night – it’ll probably be available Wednesday afternoon though, just as this goes out, thus making me look right foolish), several people have begun using it through various workarounds and following their phones blindly into the streets.
I’ll take this moment to admit I also succumbed to the workaround method for a moment there, during the weekend. I’ve since stopped and removed the offending bit of software after remaining housebound, virtually throwing a virtual ball at a virtual worm (that inexplicably appeared atop my radiator) and suffering numerous failed loading attempts after quitting and trying to get back in. Trying to use unstable software that the creators aren’t satisfied with actually giving public access too just feels wrong to me, really. Having been out in the wider public, though, I’ve noticed many unfazed by this, staring only at their phones as they almost walk into canals, only to stop and raise their handset as if to take a picture of the gap between a tree and a dilapidated building. It’s reached the point where after only two days, I’m suddenly sceptical of anyone in the street looking at their phone. Sure they’re probably texting, but we can’t be sure of that any more. Virtual Rattatas are apparently everywhere these days.
Whilst I’m still interested in downloading the app for real when it becomes available and enjoying the experience beyond these four walls for myself, I have to admit that from the outside, it all looks a bit odd. Before this week, nobody walked down the street buried in their phone only to stop suddenly, make a few swipes and then turn back and walk in the other direction to repeat the process. Quite frankly, I’m a little concerned that I too will become one of these shambling zombies of the Digital Age. And as much as I know I’ll enjoy the nostalgic game-based characters of my childhood, I fear that the more cynical portion of my psyche will assign every single one of my caught Pokémon the nickname “BRAAIIINS”. That is, apart from the one that will be named “Michael Jackson”.
You remember Moloko, right? They did that one song Sing It Back (bring it back, sing it back, bring it back, sing it back to me, etc.) Yeah, that one; one of the hot dance pop hits of the late 90s. Well, the voice that sang it back to you has grown up a bit over the last twenty years or so and adopted a somewhat eccentric style, bringing to life the idea of what Lady Gaga might’ve looked like if she ended up being a construction worker on the London Underground.
With a pretty respectable album released last year and a recent follow up comprised of overflow material, she manages to create the sense of an obscure electro-pop sound somehow being out-there, kooky and weird as much as it is relatable. Just don’t let the accented spellings of Irish Gaelic mislead you into thinking Ro-sheen’s name sounds like Raisin.
Róisín Murphy – Ten Miles High
Jamie Walsh 
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