I thought I had outgrown such things (not that I ever really was that much into it), I must say there’s something about Nightwish’s ye olde end of the world ballad. At least in combination with that quaility video. It could have been cheezy, but it does some steampunk/fantasy/post-apocalypse thing in a sort of pretty way.
Blue For Two - Eye of a Storm. A mood appropriate for when night is turning into morning.*
(A wonderful track from the long running co-operation of prominent swedish vocalist Freddie Wadling (probably most known for his work with Fläskkvartetten/The Flesh Quartet) and musician Henryk Lipp.)
(*I thought I had set up the software to show local time for posts… have to fix that)
I really needed that one. (Nothing seriously wrong – just sitting here with the clock going towards 2am, with a bit of the weird kind of backlash blues you sometimes get hit by as you realize that things aren’t too bad)
I have to say it at once: Portishead fulfill and surpass all expectations, and I can’t describe Third as anything but another masterpiece. But it is different. Definitely Portishead, but at the same time fundamentally different, and something entirely new.
The opening track, “Silence”, has a sound like you’d expect Portishead to sound like after maturing for a decade – maybe a bit more lo-fi, but with the familiar structure of lazy drum patterns along with familiar sounds. But then it is abruptly cut off, as if to make statement that the past ends there.
Going back, I’d say that Dummy was comfortably melancholic, while the self titled follow-up turned a few shades darker with its outcry of frustration. So, how would I define the sound of Third in emotion? Nagging anxiety, unnerving tension, restlessness and that feeling of wanting to crawl out of your own skin. The album never lets really lets you relax – if it isn’t stressing, monotonous beats or discordant semi-industrial sounds it’s sudden changes and interruptions.
“Hunter”, the second track, just lets you get into a comforting mood before an electronic arpeggio abruptly wakes you like a doorbell in the night. “Plastic” stops, starts and twists this way and that. “We Carry On” has a beat like that of some tribal ritual, and along with something like electronic imitations of primitive instruments the beat goes on and on and keeps you waiting for a break that never really comes. The whispering “Small” is broken off by determined, dissonant chords. And then we have the single track “Machine Gun”, like a martial theme out suitable for some dystopian sci-fi, a minimalistic construction of industrial beats carrying Beth’s light voice and, somewhere far in the background, a mellow flute struggling to be heard.
Minimalism is, by the way, a good description of the whole album. There is a lot going on, but the soundscape is open, even vast. It goes with the anxiety-feeling I described, and there’s something quite cold and raw about it. And along all this there is, of course, Beth’s wonderful voice – this time free from the vocal effects so common in the past.
Third is a work of musical art, far from light entertainment. It demands attention, left in the background it will turn into an distraction and lure you in – or force you to turn it off. It is Portishead, and it is something you have never heard before. And it is absolutely brilliant.
Thought I’d make a short post about the SanDisk Sansa c240 mp3-player I got a while ago (I ordered it with the Cresyn phones I mentioned in an earlier post, but due to some supplier hiccup they couldn’t deliver it until a couple of weeks later).
The selection process was pretty straightforward – my old player suffered from a loose headphone jack and I was tired of getting batteries for it all the time, so I went to an online store that had sent me a campaign code and selected the cheapest 1GB player with rechargeable battery available at that store.
I must say it turned out quite well, as the Sansa c240 scores quite well in the value-for-money category (the 2GB c250 is even better, but I was short on cash and wanted a pair of good phones as well). Besides my main requirements of storage and rechargeability, I also got nice color display and an SD Micro slot for expanding storage. Considering the price it feels pretty well built with a releatively solid, un-flimsy feel to it even though it’s all plastic, and it doesn’t look too bad (though it has to be said that you have to be a pretty bad designer to fail with basics like black, shiny trim and blue light).
Besides the drawback of being very hard to read without the back-light the display was the greatest surprise on a device in this price range. It is large enough to display four lines of text (about 15 characters wide) plus a header while browsing, and in playback mode it shows artist, track and album while displaying play mode, track number, and battery status at the top and playback status, progress bar and track timer and the bottom. Overall, the interface works quite well, with tracks sorted by artist, album, song and genre. As I said, the display hard to read unless the backlight is on, but I think the size still makes it better than the single line monochrome LCDs found on many similarly priced players.
When it comes to the sound, I have to say it’s what I expected – nothing to complain about, but not remarkable in any way. Good enough, in short. There’s also the standard five EQ presets plus a five band custom setting. I did, at first, think that the player felt a bit weak volume wise – it was just a bit over my comfort range when I cranked it to the max with the fairly sensitive Cresyn phones. I later found out that there’s an option to set the volume control to “loud”, which can be useful for those who want to use more power-hungry phones, while the “normal” setting is useful for getting the volume right with earphones.
So, I mentioned earphones, and I guess that makes it a good time to mention those included. They don’t sound particularly bad with any kind of music I tried, but the overall impression is dull. While they are far from the worst standard phones I’ve gotten with a portable music device, they are not among the very few exceptions to the rule that a small investment of 15-25 dollars or euros will make your new device sound much better.
So, what’s left to mention? According to specifications battery life is 16 hours, and that’s enough for my use which mainly is to entertain me during the half hour it takes to get from my door to my job. I haven’t tried the voice recorder, so I can’t say anything about that. Same goes for the photo display feature (it requires the images to be converted, and I haven’t found any reason to install the software). It has two transfer modes, MTP that allows transfer of WMA DRM files, and a mass storage mode when you only need to play unencrypted mp3s or WMAs (I also think that the MicroSD expansion slot is disabled in MTP mode).
To conclude, I have to say that the SanDisk Sansa c240 fulfilled my very basic requirements, and then some, for a reasonable price. So I’ll say it’s a good low-budget choice from a company that seems to begin to take serious interest in the media player market (the Wi-Fi enabled Sansa Connect looks pretty interesting, for example) instead of just being a memory manufacturer that decided to slap some basic playback electronics on their chips to make a few buck more.
I thought I’d make a little roundup with few mini-reviews of some favorite albums from various regions of my (what I’ve been told) broad music taste. While they come in groups of three, they are not any top lists or anything, just a few albums I thought about at the same time. The mentions got longer than I expected, and at first I thought about splitting it up in a series of posts, but then I thought the mix could be interesting for anyone who drops in searching for something and gets suggestions for something completely different as well. Anyhow, lets start in the the more intense end of the selection, with…
Three hard albums
Vader - Litany
The name Vader might not automatically lead the thoughts to premium grade death metal, but that is exactly what this Polish band has been delivering for two decades – and Litany is a great example. The band’s style is hard but still quite technical – not in the show-off sense, though, it’s just that their performance is so tight. It’s like the whole soundscape has been welded together. Litany weighs in at a modest 26 minutes, but it’s 26 minutes of death metal greatness. If you ask me to name the greatest death metal track ever, it would be “Wings” from this album.
The Crown - Deathrace King
Another favorite from 2000 is by Swedish The Crown (originally Corwn of Thorns, disbanded in 2004). Not sure if this generally is considered one of their best, but I think Deathrace King takes you on a damned entertaining ride through the areas of thrashy death metal. The sound is a bit more fast-paced than simply crushingly hard, much thanks to Janne Saarenpää’s intense drumming, and while they hail from the region they stay well clear of the typical melodic Swedish West Coast sound. Favorites on the track list are the two final tracks, “Total Satan” and “Killing Star (Superbia Luxuria XXX)”.
Ministry - Rio Grande Blood
While it is a step away from the two titles listed above, Rio Grande Blood is probably the most metal-influenced album ever produced by Ministry – most likely thanks to Prong guitarist Tommy Victor’s intense riffing. The album is also a continuation of the massive kick in the nuts of the Bush administration, and most everything generally right-winged American, that the previous album was. Tracks I particularly enjoy are the intense outbursts of the title track and the following “Señor Peligro”, “Palestina” and the menacing, doom metal-tanged “Khyber Pass”.
So, after the three albums above I thought I’d leap right over to the other end of the musical spectrum, and it struck me that the next three albums have several things in common: they are all more or less acoustic, and by female artists from Nordic countries. Despite an Italian-sounding name we start in Iceland:
Emiliana Torrini - Fisherman’s Woman
Her international debut Love in the Time of Science (1999) had a relaxed electronic sound, perhaps best mentioned along with Portishead and Björk, but with the following album being released some five years later changes can be expected – and Fisherman’s Woman brings a subdued sound focused on acoustic guitar and that sweet voice, with light background arrangements. It is simple and beautiful – great “soundtrack to thoughts” album, but also full of tracks that have me clicking in the playlist every few minutes so I can listen to them again and again.
Sophie Zelmani - Sing and Dance
Next is a Swedish singer/songwriter that I started listening to quite recently, and I could have chosen any album for this mention, so I went with what was playing at the moment. She’s another one of those artists that, if they have to be labeled, are best described as acoustic singer/songwriter music. Maybe a bit towards acoustic rock, but still undefinable I think I have developed a bit of an addiction to that kind of music in recent years.
Ane Brun - A Temporary Dive
While the two women mentioned above have very sweet voices, Ane Brun takes has the one that has enthralled me the most. I saw the video for “My Lover Will Go” late one night, and it didn’t take me many minutes before I decided to go online and order the CD. And it, or one of her other albums, has been on my playlist ever since. The songs are creative and original, but still have a familiar feel the first time you hear them, and the moods range from playful to melancholic, and it is simply beautiful.
If the three albums above contain music that is great to think too, the next three are more of the kind that that gets the mind going, in one way of the other. The musical styles vary a bit, but they all share the traits of having plenty psychedelic and surrealistic elements.
My Dying Bride - 34,788%… Complete 34,788%… Complete is problaby My Dying Bride’s most under-estimated album, but I suppose that is what you get if you as a doom metal band lose the violins, turn down the distortion on the guitars and dump a load of electronics on your sound. Personally I enjoyed the the mix of guitars-based passages, psychedelic moments and ambient, dreamy interludes about as much the previous and following albums. “The Whore, the Cook and the Mother”, the twelve minute opening track, is one that can make me feel completely different when I close my eyes and listen intently to it.
The Tear Garden - To Be an Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide
Featuring Edward Ka-Spel of The Legendary Pink Dots and cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy, this project has all it takes to produce great, weird stuff, and it ends up in the form of psychedelic synthpop (according to the wikipedia entry, and I guess that’s a description as good as any, personally I’ve thought of it as “gothic pop”). The sound is rather subdued, often with rather minimalistic and spacious arrangements. And while it probably is pretentious and “emo” to think so, I think To Be an Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide is a great title for an album (and one that speaks for the contents as well).
The Mars Volta - De-loused in the Comatorium
Along with Ministry probably the most well-known band in this post, but I think The Mars Volta still are worth mentioning. De-loused in the Comatorium is a concept album, describing events experienced during main character Cerpin Taxt’s week-long coma (which he fell into after attempting suicide by morphine overdose). It’s the band’s debut album, and it is probably the best starting point for new listeners as their intricate progressive/experimental rock gets looser, more jam-session styled on the following album (a trend which, I’ve heard, continues on the upcoming release Amputechture)
I guess that’s it for now. Turned out to be a rather massive post, but it was a fun way of going through a bunch of CDs. Maybe I’ll do another one with books, movies or more music some time in the future.
I was watching TV the other night (I watch TV most nights, but you have to start a post some way), and it struck me that the creepiest tune ever must be that circus/clown tune they use in The Simpsons. You know, the one that goes like this:
doot doot doodle oodle OOT doot do do
doot doot doodle oodle oot doot do do
doot-doodle oot oot
doot-doodle oot oot
doodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle doot doot
It’s a familiar sounding melody (Thunder and Blazes by Julius Fucik) of the kind that makes me uncomfortable under normal circumstances, but the Simpsons version somehow almost makes me shiver. Maybe it’s the key it’s played in, or something, but I find it really, really creepy. Is it just me, or does anyone else get the same feeling?
And for “the stickiest tune ever”, check this post (at your own risk).
A robot may not seek to be promoted above a human being who has been at the company longer, because the human being may have a wife and kids to look after whereas the robot just goes home and tries to have relations with a bucket. -Isaac Asimov's 30 Laws of Robotics
I've mentioned that I decided it's about time I set up an artist's site, and I'll try to do better than most artists, who in my opinion very often don't take that very seriously. But I doubt it will end up as ambitious as Wim Delvoye's site, with a whole little pixel town to explore. At least not until I have studio emplyees to delegate that to. And a studio to keep them in....
Firefox 3 (you have gotten it already, haven't you?) comes with support for color profiles. Even though it's disabled by default for various reasons, I think it's good news since it means that when everything gets ironed out more images will get to be seen as they were intended to. More info from DRIA.
...haven't I read Ken MacLeod before? Why, why, why? I picked up The Star Fraction yesterday, and I'm probably going to finish it tonight. It's so damned brilliant I'm almost considering sunglasses to be a good precaution when going near it. Got to make a note to get the rest of the Fall Revolution series asap!
I think this needs some sort of change in direction, as far as there ever was one. Both closing the site down or just letting it sit here being updated every other month seem a bit like the wrong options.
...William Gibson's Spook Country, and I just "accidentally" added the Deluxe Collector's Edition of Chan-wook Park's "Vengeance trilogy". Probably the most extravagant film item I've ever bought. More to follow on that, and that much anticipated book, when they arrive.
So, the multiplying posts are gone. Seems it was an older version of this otherwise very nice Sideblog plugin not playing nice with a newer version of Wordpress.
Weird Al is back, kicking off his upcoming album with "Don't Download this Song", a Band Aid-style anthem about not downloading songs. "Don't take away money from artists like me, how else could I afford another solid gold Humvee".
I have to say it at once: Portishead fulfill and surpass all expectations, and I can’t describe Third as anything but another masterpiece. But it is different. Definitely Portishead, but at the same time fundamentally different, and something entirely new.
