Been reading the Koran as a form of light relief- simply can't take the thing seriously - perhaps it's the translation.
From a sura called "The BEE": "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful: The DOOM (emphasis not added) of God cometh to pass." ... Pardon?
Then they go on about couches: "...and couches of silver to recline on; and ORNAMENTS OF GOLD (emphasis not added) : for all these are merely good things in the present life; but the next life both thy lord reserve for those that fear him." Wow. Old testament-ey.
m@
Just updated my Windows XP speedup/tweak guide, for anybody who's interested - it needed a tweak or two ;)
Cheers, m@t
Once upon a time, in another place (or WAS it?) there lived a pie salesman, a humble pie saleman- that is, a humble man who sold pie, not a man who sold humble pie. That would be very very silly. Anyways,
the pie salesman came to town one day and everybody crowded around and asked stupid questions like "Who the fuck are you and where did you come from?". To those who questioned he would answer politely, serenely, and be about his business of selling pies- that, after all, was his job. In case I previously hadn't made it clear enough, this man is a pie salesman. A very, very good pie salesman. Anyways, one day everybody stopped buying his pies, and he was all like, WTF and OMG???
Turned out everybody was copying his pies and selling them on the internet, or in some cases, just trading them for free- and again, he was all OMG and WTF. He asked a friend why, oh why friend, are people not paying for my freaking pies, and his friend was all like, "Well, people can get them for free, so why shouldn't they? I mean, it's not about the money man, get a grip!". The pie saleman said "WTF man, WTF?? I need that money to, like, eat and shit." and his friend was all like "Well why don't you just eat pies?" and he was all like "YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I DO THAT A DIET CONSISTING PURELY OF PIE AMOUNTS OF AN UNBALANCED AND UNHEALTHY DIETARY REGIME!!! And also I'd run out of ingredients...". His friend commiserated and said "Well, we'll always have mexico". The pieman wasn't sure what that meant but at any rate he gave up trying to sell pies, and instead settled for pummelling rocks into small mounds of dust and selling the dust as insect repellent, which didn't work, of course, but had a sweet placebo effect.
In the meantime, all around the world, pie salesmen stopped plying their wares, in the knowledge that all around the internet illegal and hacked copies of their pies were circulating, and in some cases, perambulating.
They gave up, and most of them became dentists, which was funny, because before they were pie salesmen, and now they got to see all the teeth that had been eating all their pies. This was funny. Anyways,
one day the pie saleman's friend came back to him, saying, "Hey, do you like, have any pies left?" and the pie salesman said "Even if I had the ingredients to make some, never again would I make a pie for you, my friend. In the past you have only circulated my pies for free on the internet, preventing me from earning a living". The friend looked downcast, and so the pie salesman asked "But my sweet friend, why are you so downtrodden? Surely you can download many, many pies for free?" and his friend replied "Yes, but after a while, they all lose their taste. Surely you understand. Having sated your appetite with one thing, you crave variety".
"Pray, go on", replied the pie salesman, and so his friend did: "But now everybody has tasted all the pies that have been made, yet because all the pie sellers have ceased to do so, there are no new flavours for us to savour". "I see", said the pie salesman. "Dear friend", continued the other guy, "sayist that thou will return to ply your wares to us, and sell us new kinds of pie - for, if not you, then who?". The pie maker sat considering for a moment, then slowly raised his eyebrows, and shouted "Yes! From this day forth, I shall make pies forever!!!". "Really?", said the friend. "No, get fucked." said the pie salesman. He returned to crushing his rocks, which by this point he had managed to make a nice little mountain of dust out of, which would fetch many a pound on the underground market.
THE END (or IS it? Ah-haaaa!!!)
If using sexuality to sell a product is illegal, as in the recent NZ Burger King ad that got banned, why are C4 allowed to play R&B clips? I mean that stuff is terrible-
Anyway, I was surprised to switch on C4 recently and hear two songs which didn't suck- that hasn't happened for at least half a decade. "See, I can get sexual too" by ??/ (can't recall unfortunately) and the new R&B video where the guy's telling the girl that he has a lot of money, and he's going to buy her a drink because he's got lots of money and can totally, like, afford to.
I thought that was real swell.
:)
And who said Gold Farming was dead?
HP are the worst PC manufacturer I've ever come across- if I have to deal with one more of these MC Escher-style cases, low-budget power supplies and quasi-borderline schizo setups, I may just do the world a big damn favour and set the thing on fire. Who would've believed that they had the jumpers stuck on 'cable select'? Still- three days later- it works. Barely.
By the way, they've apparently gotten better with their human rights violations, along with the other main PC manufacturers - three years ago, things weren't so good.
... in more interesting news, I found it hard to find an english-patched version of 'Akuji' (cute side-scrolling windows game, where you are an incredibly cute demon on it's way to regaining demonic powers, and defeating the good guy) - so I've uploaded my own mirror of it here. It's a great game, if a little easy, cute and very short. Good though. Did I mention really, really cute? Cute???
Added to the links page -
Not to be confused with Akuji the Heartless - which is a completely different game entirely.
Enjoy.
m@
I recommend an obscure BBC documentary called "Century of the Self", about how Freud's ideas of the unconcious sexual and physical drives came to dominate mainstream thinking and culture, ended up denigrating the idea of democracy to a form of mass consumerism, and corrupted the public perception of the self to nothing more than a collective of obsessive unconcious drives, rather than the multifaceted intelligence capable of such things as nobility, sacrifice and altruism that anthropologists and other folk know it to be (to the extent that excessive individualist narcissism is now, accepted as the norm).
m@
Original source here.
By JEFF LEEDS
May 28, 2007
'"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the Beatles album often cited as the greatest pop recording in music history, received a thoroughly modern 40th-anniversary salute last week when singers on "American Idol" belted out their own versions of its songs live on the show's season finale.
But off stage, in a sign of the recording industry's declining fortunes, shareholders of EMI, the music conglomerate that markets "Sgt. Pepper" and a vast trove of other recordings, were weighing a plan to sell the company as its financial performance was weakening.
It's a maddening juxtaposition for more than one top record-label executive. Music may still be a big force in pop culture - from "Idol" to the iPod - but the music business's own comeback attempt is falling flat.
Even pop's pioneers are rethinking their approach. As it happens, one of the performers on "Sgt. Pepper," Paul McCartney, is releasing a new album on June 5. But Mr. McCartney is not betting on the traditional record-label methods: He elected to sidestep EMI, his longtime home, and release the album through a new arrangement with Starbucks.
It's too soon to tell if Starbucks' new label (a partnership with the established Concord label) will have much success in marketing CDs. But not many other players are.
Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services. Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. "Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales," Mr. Sinnreich said, "and then everything goes kaput."
It's been four years since the last big shuffle in ownership of the major record labels. But now, with the sales plunge dimming hopes for a recovery any time soon, there is a new game of corporate musical chairs afoot that could shake up the industry hierarchy.
Under the deal that awaits shareholder approval, London-based EMI agreed last week to be purchased for more than $4.7 billion by a private equity investor, Terra Firma Capital Partners, whose diverse holdings include a European waste-conversion business. Rival bids could yet surface - though the higher the ultimate price, the more pressure the owners will face to make dramatic cuts or sell the company in pieces in order to recoup their investment.
For the companies that choose to plow ahead, the question is how to weather the worsening storm. One answer: diversify into businesses that do not rely directly on CD sales or downloads. The biggest one is music publishing, which represents songwriters (who may or may not also be performers) and earns money when their songs are used in TV commercials, video games or other media. Universal Music Group, already the biggest label, became the world's biggest music publisher on Friday after closing its purchase of BMG Music, publisher of songs by artists like Keane, for more than $2 billion.
Now both Universal and Warner Music Group are said to be kicking the tires of Sanctuary, an independent British music and artist management company whose roster includes Iron Maiden and Elton John. The owners of all four of the major record companies also recently have chewed over deals to diversify into merchandise sales, concert tickets, advertising and other fields that are not part of their traditional business.
Even as the industry tries to branch out, though, there is no promise of an answer to a potentially more profound predicament: a creative drought and a corresponding lack of artists who ignite consumers' interest in buying music. Sales of rap, which had provided the industry with a lifeboat in recent years, fell far more than the overall market last year with a drop of almost 21 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (And the marquee star 50 Cent just delayed his forthcoming album, "Curtis.")
In other genres the picture is not much brighter. Fans do still turn out (at least initially) for artists that have managed to build loyal followings. The biggest debut of the year came just last week from the rock band Linkin Park, whose third studio album, "Minutes to Midnight," sold an estimated 623,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.
But very few albums have gained traction. And that is compounded by the industry's core structural problem: Its main product is widely available free. More than half of all music acquired by fans last year came from unpaid sources including Internet file sharing and CD burning, according to the market research company NPD Group. The "social" ripping and burning of CDs among friends - which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing efforts - accounted for 37 percent of all music consumption, more than file-sharing, NPD said.
The industry had long pinned its hopes on making up some of the business lost to piracy with licensed digital sales. But those prospects have dimmed as the rapid CD decline has overshadowed the rise in sales at services like Apple's iTunes. Even as music executives fret that iTunes has not generated enough sales, though, they gripe that it unfairly dominates the sale of digital music.
Partly out of frustration with Apple, some of the music companies have been slowly retreating from their longtime insistence on selling music online with digital locks that prevent unlimited copying. Their aim is to sell more music that can be played on Apple's wildly popular iPod device, which is not compatible with the protection software used by most other digital music services. EMI led the reversal, striking a deal with Apple to offer its music catalog in the unrestricted MP3 format.
Some music executives say that dropping copy-restriction software, also known as digital-rights management, would stoke business at iTunes' competitors and generate a surge in sales. Others predict it would have little impact, though they add that the labels squandered years on failed attempts to restrict digital music instead of converting more fans into paying consumers.
"They were so slow to react, and let things get totally out of hand," said Russ Crupnick, a senior entertainment industry analyst at NPD, the research company. "They just missed the boat."
Perhaps there is little to lose, then, in experimentation. Mr. McCartney, for example, may not have made it to the "American Idol" finale, but he too is employing thoroughly modern techniques to reach his audience.
Starbucks will be selling his album "Memory Almost Full" through regular music retail shops but will also be playing it repeatedly in thousands of its coffee shops in more than two dozen countries on the day of release. And the first music video from the new album had it premiere on YouTube. Mr. McCartney, in announcing his deal with Starbucks, described his rationale simply: "It's a new world."'
I'll be blunt - this is a sad and depressing time for musicians not directly involved in alternative revenue systems in the music industry -
m@
The two articles are here and here - very basic stuff, but worth saying; particularly the points about fanatical linux users. I suspect it's the arrogance of the common linux user which puts most people off Linux & related platforms. Ditto Mac (tho' Mac users aren't usually quite as bad)...
m@
Cool.
Yes - you guessed right.
Blizzard have finally announced Starcraft 2 - WOOT!!! F*cking WOOT!! I liked the original so much I avoided my flatmate Shane at the time specifically to play it... I'm not that much of a dork nowadays, but still excited.
Hoorah!
Link to the Main Starcraft 2 website-
[UPDATE: looks incredible - crazy graphics - m@]
To quote Max Payne, which I'm playing at the moment (thanks Rob! (for getting me onto this stuff))):
"... cars arrived, sirens singing in the offkey harmony of a manic-depressive choir...". Beautiful!
Also watching Gundam Wing - 1996 - really nice stuff - better than most of the crap anime out there.
For the life of me I can't understand why anyone should choose to watch these things in english - or why on earth that is always the default on foreign DVDs - american voice actors always do absolutely appallingly flat, atrocious hacks of the vocals compared to the japanese with subtitles - it's so out-of-keeping with the tone of the film, it's like watching different films altogether.
And the exceptions to the rule are few & very far between: Cowboy Bebop, and the english version of Hayou Miyazaki's "Howls Moving Castle" are the only two that come to mind at the moment.
Even on higher end stuff (Princess Mononoke) they often butcher some parts of the vocals.
m@
love this song:
"All we want is a headrush.
All we want is to get out of our skin for a while...
we have nothing to lose because we don't have anything... anything we want, anyway.
We used to hate people; now we just make fun of them. It's more effective that way -
We don't live, we just scratch on day to day with nothing but matchbooks and sarcasm in our pockets and all we are waiting for is for something worth waiting for -
let's admit America gets the celebrities we deserve, let's stop saying "Don't quote me" because if no one quotes you - you probably haven't said a thing worth saying.
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
We need something to kill the pain of all that nothing inside -
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
We all just want to die - a little bit.
We fear that pop-culture is the only culture we're ever going to have -
We want to stop reading magazines, stop watching Tv, stop caring about Hollywood; but we're addicted to the things we hate.
We don't run Washington and no one really does - Ask not what you can do for your country - Ask what your country did to you...
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
The only reason you're still alive is because someone has decided to let you live
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
We owe so much money we're not broke we're broken, and we're so poor we can't even pay attention
So what do you want?
You want to be famous and rich and happy, but you're terrified you have nothing to offer this world?
Nothing to say and no way to say it -
but you can say it in a few languages...
You are more than the sum of what you CONSUME
Desire is not an OCCUPATION
You are alternately thrilled and desperate -
Sky-high and F*ked-
Let's stop praying for someone to save us and start saving ourselves -
Let's stop this and start over.
Let's go out...
Let's keep going-
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
This is your LIFE - this is Your F*king LIFE.
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
We need something to kill the pain of all that nothing inside -
Sex drugs rock yeah sex drugs rock... America.
Someone's writing down your mistakes
Someone's documenting your downfall."
...So lovingly dystopic...
m@
Ryan Geiss, who is, BTW, a great guy, conservationist, and a super-talented visual programmer (remember 'Geiss', the winamp plugin? And milkdrop?), has a fantastic guide to becoming vegetarian (while staying healthy) on his website: here.
Which is great, cause it's actually hard to to find this stuff on the net - you find a drab of information here, a drop there but nothing consecutive and straightforward. Couldn't find anything in my local public libraries either - which is why this guide is so welcome.
Personally I still eat a little bit of meat - after two weeks of a fairly well-balanced vegetarian high-iron diet my iron, b12 and iron-binding protein levels get shot to hell, regardless of supplements.
Haven't eaten chicken or pig for about 6 years.
I like fish, but I think pisce-vegetarianism (Eating fish only) is a fairly bad idea that nobody should do, given that fish contain no haem iron, and little protein or b12 compared to land mammals, not to mention within 25 years all fish on the planet (or all the ones we end up eating) are going to be extinct as a result of our current eating habits (then again, we're all going to be in a world of crap by that point).
To return to the point, I eat a hell of a lot less meat than I used to and don't believe that I'm an utter hypocrite - I do actually give a sh*t.
Ryan's guide above is so articulate and informative on a wide variety of health issues that I recommend even people who don't plan on going vegetarian, ever, read it too.
On a related subject, some delicious things that I have discovered, recently:
* Greenways Apple Juice (like freaking comets dropping in my mouth).
* The newer-style vege sausages available from New World etc - delicious, expensive, but very filling and quite energising.
* 'Lush Vanilla' Soy milk combined with Hubbards 'Outward Bound'-style muesli (it's the sh*t!).
This is one of the clearest, most sentient descriptions and thoughts on what is happening in the global media economy today, and how to adjust to it: here.
If I could say anything about William Fields' new album 'timbre' (available on Gears of Sand recordings), it would be, "Gentleness". I exchanged my o2 for a copy of timbre- the experiences of both could not be more diverse. Whereas 'o2' is more akin to being plugged directly into a RGB output and watching your frontal cortex malfunction & cross-wire synapses to the aural sector of your brain, the closest analogy I can think of to 'timbre' is of being gently immersed in a bar of sweet-smelling soap, and trying to avoid the bubbles.
There's a lot of bubbles on the album, alot of 15k activity above the general hum and whistle in the 500hz-1k territory, gently interspersed with some glitch-inspired background static and chatter- don't get me wrong though- this is not a 'glitch' album. Because whereas the forerunner thought of 'glitch' is to say "guess what's coming up? Bet you can't guess! BANG!!! - bet you didn't expect that, huh???", the ambient smother of 'timbre' appears to be more along the lines of "It's okay, you're in a safe, if heterogenous and artificial place, there's nothing to be worried about, nothing to be ashamed of, here, have some more bubbles".
I'll be upfront about this - I am no ambient fan - and even less of 'glitch ambient', an arena which wildly bores me. But timbre is something slightly different, something slightly off-kilter, more 'personal' than most generated music, and while I doubt I would've warmed to it so very quickly if I were not already a fan of Mr Fields' work, it remains that this is a very good album, very well-thought-out. The artificiality (of which we'll talk more of later) never quite eclipses the overall melodic 'feel' of the album, the random elements of the songs never sound unplanned (ie. the use of FSU devices - if present - feels restrained and part of the song), and while I personally would've dropped back the 15k activity a little, the album is well-mixed and mastered well. The cover art is also very nice, although the arial-esque fontography detracts from it, somehow. Given the overall personalised feeling of the album, I feel that handwriting would've matched the subject matter, more closely.
Overall, it stands up well - not perhaps in the league of bigger players such as "Bola", but nearing their field, certainly. Indeed, the only criticism I can find in my listening to this album, is similar to what I have said of Bola's most recent album, Gnayse- that being, the artificiality of the soundscape leaving a pleasant, but somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere, to the extent I feel a real need to get outside and immerse myself in nature and natural elements afterwards. Could this be alleviated by incorporating more natural non-generative background sounds and instrumentation?? More than likely- and given his recently announced desire for piano (see his blog), it could be assumed that these small issues may be absent in Bill's future recordings. I think my favourite track is 'floatingpoint', with a low bass accompanied by statical pops and waving synths. Having said that, the whole album is fairly consistent, and a high point in William's output to date.
Saluté Bill- congrats on a very interesting album-
m@
People think this country is clean and untouched. Looking over Hamilton from Whatawhata, on a clear day with no wind, a brown layer of smog hovers over most of the area- ironically, because we're more spread out here, with fewer people, more people drive cars because public transport becomes less economical and more unwieldy. Farmers burn pretty much anything they can get away with (cause they're pretty f*cking _stupid_) rather than disposing of it correctly, or you know- leaving it alone. That and our rivers are polluted with all the farm runoff you could hope for- nitrogen, lime, you name it. Still good to swim in though (though I wonder what unseen effects it has...).
Per capita, we're one of the worst polluters in the world- just not per square kilometer. But that's the advantage of a smaller population- nature'll take more of what you give her- but not for long. Reading a book on Indian leaders in North America at the moment - WisdomKeepers. It's written in 88, but the amount of references made by the leaders to everything going balls-up and the mother earth shaking man off her back in the non-distant future, is pretty remarkable- then again, I suppose this was the eighties, when conservationalism was popular (again, like it is now - but now is called environmentalism. Notice the difference?).
The difference now is that people are more savvy to what's going on than ever before - but there's some big ego&/money-driven leaders (Bush, Cheney, Blair) holding the rest of the world back- why? To what effect? The world is dying, and there's nothing we can do about it, save lessen the impact-
Sorry to be such a downer.
Needs to be said, though-
32 die in steel smelting accident.
Industrial accidents killed more than 127,000 people in China in 2005. This is the price they pay for our cheap goods and services. Please consider buying non-"made in China" products in an effort to support industries which don't treat people as expendable slaves.
I'll admit to being biased to Nitin Sawney, to the extent that I think the guy can do no wrong (virtually) - this album, just as good- while the lyrics are kinda vacuous compared to 'Prophesy', "Philtre" (means medicine, or something) is essentially a feel-good album in an entirely non-vacuous sense- and the better material, as always, is the stuff without vocals or lyrics.
How does this guy do it? He continually comes up with not just new material, but new approaches- there's no way to differentiate between the flamenco, the drum & bass, the hiphop and the IDM/middle-eastern themes - everything combines to one tune.
Not his best work - he seems too settled now to bring up the subtler emotions and confusion of 'Beyond Skin' but still wonderful music- just more restful than his previous performances.
Heres the album.
In the DVD-authoring/re-authoring vein today...
The difference between appreciation and entertainment.
The use of sound in old films - dynamics, spacing and foregrounding-
as opposed to wallpapering.
Sofia Loren - ham acting-
Charlton heston - good as young actor.
long film but it doesn't feel it - time between words, between thoughts, between movements - time given for the audience to appreciate the film, enjoy it for what it is-
a good film does not need a constant stream of action to keep it's audience entertained - but more importantly, a good audience doesn't require constant overstimulation to entertain itself, and to appreciate the work and craft gone into a film.
Just wanted to say that my new business, Soul Studios recording studio/composition, is online:
www.soulstudios.co.nz
It's quite a pretty site, and shows off my work well. The song snippet that's looping on the main page is from a new piece by me, which will feature on a future album- if I get the energy to do it.
Doesn't quite seem right to note this holiday season with only commercial news, so here's another thingy: a nice piece (MP3, 3.3MB) - a hidden track from 'The Interesting EP'. Enjoy :) Also included on the music page.
Game Giveaway of the Day - You know how I was complaining about modern games being too... no-fun? The site linked to gives away a payware game each day (with permission of the developers of course), the type of which seems to be almost exactly my cup of tea - independently-developed, quirky but not poor-quality games with tons of interest and originality. My favourite so far has been "Chak's Temple" by Sigma games - a great little spin on the Arkanoid-clone game genre-
Aften GUI - Simply the best AC3 encoder out there (alright, I haven't tried Surcoder, but we're talking FREEWARE here) - kicks' ffmpeggui's arse.
R8brain - a very good high-quality freeware sample rate converter. I still use Cool Edit SE, but this comes quite close-
Xvid - To those who don't already know - and there can't be many left - Xvid is the best MPEG4-based codec out there - full stop - the living proof of this became apparent to me when trying to encode O2 to several different formats - due to the extreme visual complexity of O2, it was impossible for any of the codecs (including Divx, Apple's MPEG4 implementation and Sorenson) to do a decent job of it without resulting in absolutely massive filesizes. Colour me extremely impressed!
O2 can be viewed, plus a preview of it can be downloaded from it's website: here.
In addition it is also now linked to on the music page, way up at the top. Enjoy.
In my dreams,
I walk home from the bus stop, or miss the bus & wander aimlessly to school, or home from school, or to random places dotted around the countryside - places where I have no place to be...
Those areas, so blended in my subconscious, neither here nor there, never actually exist in the real world-
yet so real are these imaginings, and the feeling that radiates about them so intense, tangible, that it's almost like I
dreamt my whole childhood and these areas come back to me,
to remind me of what really happened while I was dreaming.
My new film, O2, has been finished and sent off to a variety of organisations, festivals and competitions- hopefully it'll win some of them, or get me mentioned somehow-
for details on how to get a copy yourself- just wait. I'll get around to it: for the moment I'm waiting on confirmation of any place it'll be played- after that, it'll be available for everyone (on DVD).
Enjoy (soon, I promise).
A long time ago a guy suggested to me that I should or could
replace my music recording with forest sound recording, and sell the 'meme of the
bush' to those trapped in the city, and in their lives. I have always been ill-at-ease with this thought, and
it's moral implications. Why is it immoral? Because we have a pure crap-load of natural bush in
New Zealand.
If we didn't, we'd be as ecologically screwed as the rest of the planet (actually we already
are, per capita, just not per-square-kilometre)- so encouraging people to accept the 'meme' of
the bush rather than just getting out of the cities and going and actually experiencing something,
not only reduces their chances of health (a recording does not a live bush experience replete with oxygen,
replace) but also reduces the number of people who would willingly contribute to having to sustain
that natural resource, or that way of life. The fantasy has no value beyond short term escapist experiences.
You can see the same thing on the music videos, at the moment-
nostalgia is rampant, not just in the BOC-style and studio ghibli area's
(which I consider to be fairly harmless, and quite nice)-
'old' is 'in', in many areas -
check out videos by christina aguilera (last name sounds like a disease) as well as
'Youth group', Kanye West, and many others-
And it's more than 'retro' - people are actively yearning for a less visceral, more sheltered,
happier time- but are more than willing to take the easy path- 'accept the meme' through movies, music and any other form of media,
rather than actively create those things in their own lives - which, after all, would be the more long-term path and therefore harder.
In some respects the heros of our time must be the people unwilling to accept the society
westerners live in, with our rampant individualism and competitiveness, who back out,
drop out, and create their own societies - christain cults, buddhist communities,
intentional communities, all of the above are good for poking fun at if you're a cynic,
and harder to take lightly if you are genuinely affected by the harshness
of our throwaway lives. Drop your books, walk outside- accept the real thing. And I don't mean coke.
New song: It's in my life - demo quality, only- enjoy.
And BTW: O2 coming out soon(ish) ;-)
[PS: Like, wow and holy crap and sh*t - this is rendered - not a photo]
I don't have a problem with wandering into random parties occasionally, if I feel intuitively that it'll work.
Once there's that discernment that you're not a threat (ie. a cop, or stoner (or both)) people tend to warm to you (well, me actually) reasonably rapidly. And you always meet the most interesting people outside of your habitual social environ.
Tonight met a MS guy (multiple Sclerosis) - interesting because he's on the opposite slope to me- downwards instead of upwards- which is obviously quite horrible- but we share similar experiences - and in particular, frustration.
But he's not trying to get better- or to maintain what he has - because he sees little point in it-
I guess I am extremely lucky in that regard.
Something else which amused me this evening was watching kareoke at the local pub- country pubs always seem so different to city ones- an old maori woman got up and burbled out a few broken waiata (maori songs) and then swore at the audience - "F*k you, and f*k you, and F*K YOU!" and wandered off- all in a nights work. And all fine in the context (drink).
Strange how those same actions would be perceived in a difference situation...
that's the great thing about nightlife- abnormal becomes acceptable. Try doing that in central Auckland in a daytime shift.
A few low-burning meteorites tonight- bizarre- never seen them that close.
M@
Some people might question my apparent hostility towards China. Of course, the hostility is not towards chinese themselves but for the Chinese government. The main reason for this is my ongoing research into the occupation of Tibet from the 1950's onwards.
When the chinese invaded tibet they :
(a) Killed all local wildlife that they could, to starve the local population and make them dependant on external supplies.
(b) Deforested large sections of tibet and shipped the wood back to china
(c) Ripped out the tongues of tibetans with meathooks to prevent them from calling out the dalai lama's name before they were put to death.
(d) Raped tibetan nuns with electric cattle prods and made them stand naked out in the middle of frozen ice-fields to try and force them to renounce buddhism.
(e) Forced family members of devout buddhists to beat and throw rocks at them in public in order to get those individuals to renounce buddhism.
(f) Destroyed tibet's natural environment.
(g) Killed, maimed and/or raped a large percentage of all tibetans.
(h) Destroyed most buddhist temples and cultural habitats.
These are claims made by tibetans themselves, not specifically by the Dalai Lama- though he has obviously heard these events. Many have been verified by United Nations researchers.
To this day the following is true:
(a) Tibetans are shot on sight if caught trying to leave tibet, the most recent incident being about four months ago.
(b) Tibetans are prevented from practicing buddhism or from obtaining pictures of the dalai lama, who they regard as their spiritual leader/boddhisatva of compassion.
(c) The chinese government spreads propaganda throughout it's own citizens and the world to try and convince people that 'everything is okay'. It sickened me to walk into Rotorua public library (of all the places) to find a chinese propaganda magazine, "China's Tibet", sitting in the magazine aisle.
(d) Torture remains widespread in both Tibet and mainstream China.
(e) To this day, if you ask a chinese person about tibet, they will tell you that china 'liberated' tibet.
What tibet was before the chinese was not perfect by any means (it still had serfdom - which many people (including the chinese government) incorrectly refer to as "slavery"), but the fact was that the current political leader of the time was trying to modernise the country and bring it forward into the international world- the chinese by comparison have raped tibet, raped it's people, raped it's environment and culture, and this is a last dash attempt, by the dalai lama after 5 decades of failed negotiations with the chinese government (which is entirely the chinese government's fault) to release tibet from environmental and political slavery, to try and turn back the worst of what the chinese government has done to the locale. It will fail, but it is honorable to try. Even if people are too uneducated or too pigheaded to understand what the chinese have done to this beautiful and culturally vibrant country. Now, china, is bringing in a railroad which will deliver even more chinese into tibet, at a rate which the local tibetan culture will not survive. Tibet has been dead for some time- now China is raping a corpse.
m@
There's some excellent music to download, for free, no signup required- here:
http://www.artistdirect.com/freemp3s. Some of it is really good. My picks would go out to Falling by the Wayside (People in Planes) & Belle and Sebastion-
Brazilian Girls' "Lazy Lover" also very good. For some reason artistdirect are still using iTunes to encode their MP3's-
which happens to be the worst MP3 encoder (near enough) on the face of the earth. If they'd only switch to Lame or something similar, we wouldn't be having to download 160bps MP3's all the time. The 128bps version they have of "Smile" on that site is so heavily artifacted it's unworthy of download.
m@
The 3D development "revolution" is over- watching "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straights, you get a sense of how far we have come in the 3D field.
Back then, getting 5 frames of polygonal animation per second with maybe 500 polygons on screen at once was a major achievement. Now, the mystery is gone, we have computer games that look like real life and the only real barrier is getting faces that look human enough to fool us. Other than that, the zing, the aura of "cool" is well and truly dead-
as my friend Richard Mans of 3D company Fuzzy Realms says, the "wow" factor of 3D is gone- we see it in so many things, from movies to computer games to tv adverts. I think I preferred the 80's. Then, the sense was that there was this brave new world to be discovered, so there was an excitement. Programming in 320x200x256 was a big thing-
now, 1048x768x16000000 (or thereabouts) is standard, and the graphics make computer-generated movies from 5 years ago look like dog crap.
I think I'm a bit tired of it. I like my computer games interesting, their characters varied, and their faces horrifically pixelated to the point of incomprehensibility.
And I'm just not getting that with todays crop of games- nobody expects anything other than a huge graphical achievement or a Wacky wavy arm-flailing controller (Wii). Not that I'm against the new developments, but there is too much of a focus on technology, something is missing.
Back in the early 90's a few developers (two) could create a game that would surpass the wildest of expectations (Doom, Star Control 2- and countless others). Have you even read the developer list for WC3? It's about ten minutes long!
And as a result, everything is a little homogenised-
I'd settle for less. Worse graphics, better story, fewer sales, more individual personality. Not gonna happen.
The last commercially-released game I saw with real personality was Heart of Darkness- one of the last games developed in 2D.
I'm playing Doom 3 Resurrection at the moment- Graphics-wise it's great, but I don't feel anything emotionally bar a few shocks and splinters. And I'm not into buying the next $500 chunk of hardware to play more overrated graphically-intense games, because it's just not that big a deal to me. I'd like something with soul-
and you just don't get that nowadays. The best games I've played in recent years have been free, light-hearted and 2D- Cave Story, N, Seiklus. It's because they're developed by individuals, that nothing gets watered down-
I'd love to see more of that in the world in general- it's a more hit-and-miss approach, for sure, but what is a world without risk?
I stoked myself up on coQ10, Vit C and glyconutrients and headed up to the big day out. I'd scheduled two days of rest prior, and helped by the fact that my Dad did the drive up to Auckland, it managed to be a very good experience, despite initial lack of ticket- I decided not to pay the extortionate fees charged by folk on trademe (NZ-equivalent of eBay, with less illegal activity), opted instead to just head up and see what turned up. Ended up getting a door sale, which BDO don't advertise (because then everybody would just turn up on the day without committing to going);
was only $130, which makes the guy on trademe who bought his for $610 look a little foolish (unless he's really, really rich and hence doesn't actually care).
Anyway, was prepared to jump the fence when I spotted the ticket booth - I would've bought one in advance but I tend to leave things till the last minute because of my illness (so as to be able to cancel stuff if I don't have the energy for it at the time), and Big Day Out 07 had 'sold out' five days prior to opening-
would have been severely gutted (NZ-slang for 'extremely disappointed') if I hadn't made it up. Missed out two years ago and regretted it intensely.
So this year they had Tool, Muse, Blindspott, The Killers, The Vines, Lily Allen, Violent Femmes and Evermore, amongst others- I was predominantly there to see Tool and Muse, but others were very good. I kept going with constant 500mg Vit C tablets and managed to make it through the day without falling down, although I screwed up a bit by not staying over at a friend's (Kris's) place in Auckland overnight. I opted instead for the long drive home, which left me exhausted and sleep deprived. Anyway, onto the actual event:
Tool and Muse were of course superior-
out of all the acts there, Muse more than anyone had songs that you didn't have to know to get into - the music spake for itself. Muse are rock/emo gods- in the best sense of that term, in that the aggressive energy isn't faked- and they were quite intense. Whatshisface (lead guitarist/vocalist/pianist) got amazing sounds out of his instrument.
The Killers, by comparison were also good- despite the fact that several people had told me they were crap live, and that the singer couldn't sing (incorrect on both counts, or they've improved since my friends saw them)- but when it came to songs I didn't know (which happened to be all songs except the first three), there was nothing to interest me.
I was curious to see whether My Chemical Romance were as mediocre, bland and stupid as they were in their music videos- yes. They're what Guns and Roses would've been like, if Guns and Roses had taken prozac 'stead of drugs and alchohol.
Lily Allen, although I'm not into her stuff, was a good live act from what I saw of her, for some obscure reason relegated to the boiler room (dance stage/tent) - she with a full horn section and all-
The New Zealand acts which I saw were all-and-all quite apathetic, with the exception of Evermore, who were quite good (and they're ex-pat). None of the others were really up to standard in terms of energy- mind you, I only checked out four besides Evermore - Scribe, Shapeshifter, Blindspott and the Mint Chicks. Blindspott were fairly relaxed and fairly boring, to be honest- and I can scream better, apparently. Ex-flatmate thomas compared my scream to a mig jet fighter dropping a kettle of boiling water on top of Danny Filth's (from Cradle of Filth) head, which I take to be a fairly positive and massive compliment, despite that I'm neither into Cradle of Filth in a straightforward way or from an ironic standpoint.
Asides from that, Blindspott used backing tracks- big no-no for a metal band- really deprecates the sound- which was not terrific in the first place. I caught shapeshifter during a quieter part of the set, so that may have affected my perception of them.
But I suspect the mint chicks were either bored, or sick of trying to live up to their 'amazingly energetically-charged-live-act" rep. At any rate they were enjoyable, and the sound was good, but they were obviously not into it, for one reason or another.
And Scribe is about as interesting as live rap gets- that is, not amazingly- I always felt him and p-money were overrated. Gotta feel sorry for the Listener (NZ journal mag/rag) - they voted him in as one of NZ 50 most powerful people back in 2005 - I mean come on - you can't differentiate 'real' power from one-hit wonders??? Sad.
They even used the hackneyed phrase "When he speaks... the kids listen." Please-
Onto the rest of the international acts- Kasabian were alright, but a bit bland- good overall noise. The Vines were awesome - the only act besides muse where it was irrelevant whether you knew the songs. The lead singer sure can scream his ars off!
And then of course there was Tool. Tool tool tool tool tool- I've seen them a few times before, so I know the routine-
Maynard, and all the rest of the members, barely move - this is because they're so busy concentrating on getting the rhythms right and their tonation correct for the songs that they can't jump around- Maynard says two or three words between each song (longest this time was 'nice weather today' :) and moves around organically, but without either energy or a great deal of machismo- All the energy comes from the crowd, which in this case was fairly substantial - they were obviously the drawcard for a fairly substantial percentage of concert-goers. I didn't get sweft away in the mosh, but there was certainly an organic human sea of limbs and elbows and sweat, going on. The overall effect is akin to a much louder version of John Cage's 4'33", only with lots of fists in the air... This was one of their better performances, and the songs were great -
in addition, Tool always compensate for their complete lack of stage energy with complicated visuals on screens behind or beside them, rigged to play trippy visuals in sequence with the music via an attendee playing a midi keyboard to trigger the replay/skip/reverse events- this creates quite a sense of energy without the band having to do much, and altogether avoids the use of a click track- beat-sensing wouldn't work because the polyrhythms of the material are too complex. The songs:
Sober, Stinkfist (I think - I'm trying to remember here), Schism, 46 and 2, a bunch of tracks from the new album (Melissa Stoned, a few others) which were quite long, and that track off Aenima which goes 'hey-hey-hey-hey' but the name of which escapes me for some reason. They were amazing- completely awesome-
apparently they're coming around again in November/Dec, but I'm good. I'm good. I was even moshing! Yes, I'd been saving up the energy all day so, even I have the energy for that, when it came to tool- but I was stuffed afterwards- so as to why I chose to drive all the goddamn way back to hamilton I will never know- some things can't be explained- like the anti-emo hatred of the crowd in general (I told a friend I liked the kindof crossover emo/hard rock that Muse seemed to have, and a burly guy turned around and said- all aggressive and serious-like- 'Dude. They are NOT emo'. I laughed in the dudes face).
That's it. SO that was the Big Day Out '07- Overall the sound left much to be desired - way too much sub and bass-in-general, which I guess is the trend of the times, but it completely f*cked up the overall soundscape. I hate way over-loud kicks in a live mix- when they dominate the rest of the sound they are a waste of time-
lots of drugs floating around the place- not that I minded - there's something orgiastic about the drugs thing, in that it's actually quite an intimate personal experience, so sharing it with another person, and particularly a group, is in both primitive and modern society, a kind of binding event. Very strange at times though-
Having said that, the whole day was completely awesome- if you missed it you totally suck :)
m@
I felt I should repost this, as it's now a year after the album release so my criticisms no longer matter- but it's still a good review.
as a side-note, this album has become my 'Boards of Canada Car Album'- that is, it's virtually perfect for driving- has a very cruisy, light feeling to it that translates well into
doing 100's of kilometres- and while it doesn't have the range and depth of previous releases, that's what makes it so good for driving - I don't feel the need to pay absolutely close attention- which I would almost certainly do with "Geogaddi"- anything less would be sacrilege :):) But it adds a certain panache to the overall driving experience, like vodka in soda.
Anyway,
I've been listening to the new Boards of Canada album, and while I love it, my feelings and thoughts are somewhat mixed -
on many levels, it's their strongest work to date - breaking out of the more artificial background of groundbreaking electronica that was their first and previous albums, the guitar/acoustic-based approach to IDM is truly the absolute best possible direction they could have contemplated going-
at a time when many, like myself, grow to resent the somewhat hollow artifice of many electronic artists (bola, for example- while wonderful, I do crave a bit of organic material mixed in with the beats and loops), BOC are taking their art to the next level-
and in doing so have connected themselves and the listener back with some strong roots in 'music' rather than 'IDM music', per se.
It's not all flowers and roses - in fact, this may be what is lacking on their new release - the subtle, yet always present, inability/conscious choice to wrestle (literally, or metaphorically) with the same devils that brought such multi-variabled depth and transitory meaning to the previous works-
as a result the new work appears beautiful yet somehow lacking a distinctive core upon first listening - it's like the situation in the world is so bad today that to acknowledge it would bring a darkness/foreboding to the music which they have consciously chosen to avoid, this time around.
Similar trends are noted in other electronic-crossover artists such as Nitin Sawney, Massive Attack and even Autechre to a limited extent - the post-september 11 refusal to even look at the global state-of-the-world, or reflect on it in any way - in other words, at a time when the world itself seems to be unravelling to it's edges- the corresponding tendency in music, in these cases, are not to comment, but to bring positivity back to the world in a digestible format-
unfortunately, that blunt refusal to plumb the heady depths leaves The Campfire Headphase feeling a little like it's got a hollow center - in the sense that while their previous releases seemed filled to the core with heady and wildly variable emotions, this release appears reluctant to go to that level-
I love it, but at times am left wondering, where's the refusal to give themselves away completely, the mysterious/quixotic element that made the previous albums so elusive/attractive?
The reviewer from Pitchfork summarises it best, I think: here.
It's an absolutely beautiful album- but not a headstrong, capricious runaway ala Geogaddi, nor a stoned-adolescent reminiscing on times past ala Music has the Right. All in all, worth buying - but it won't propel them into the 'mainstream' music market in the way they seem to hope it will, and nor will it touch base at the levels their previous work touched at.
The sea swooping in, the phantoms and air falling down like ricochets of glass. The tide rising up in flames.
Comfort trees, drenched in sweat, forced to submission, occupying false terrain.
Cherry lights dance in the dusk, accompanied by a combination of the usual nighttime swell of silence, and an obscene haunted-house tune played in time with Christmas.
Other than that not much to speak of, really-
All bullshit opinions & writings (c) Copyright 2006 Matt Bentley except when quoting others
