September 26, 2005
Spaces & Places
Spaces & Places is a one-off extravaganza at the Electowerkz, London, on Friday October 21st. Bit of a York-London soundclash (Tim Wright, Vector Lovers, Freakin representing the north; The Chap, Cursor Miner and Delta-9 waving the flag for the south.) Check out the Monoman-designed flyer here (front) and here (back.) Come along and meet the dark superstars.
September 25, 2005
DHL Amazon idiocy
Last Friday DHL delivered a book from Amazon to my home address. As I wasn't in, the driver stowed the book - get this - on a rain-soaked floor under a plastic tub in my back yard. It had been raining for most of the morning and, by the time I found the parcel, the cardboard packaging had practically turned to mush and the book itself was badly rain-damaged. I spoke to DHL about this idiocy and they claimed that their contract with Amazon allows them to leave parcels at the delivery address, even if no-one answers the door. In other words it was Amazon's problem, not theirs (even though a DHL driver had left the parcel outside in the rain.) Now I have to go through the hassle of dealing with Amazon customer services (notoriously useless) in order to get a replacement item. The whole experience sucks, and could easily be resolved if Amazon/DHL wrapped purchases in rain-proof plastic. Has anyone else encountered this problem? Let me know how it panned out.
September 20, 2005
Rude not to
Once upon a time someone attended the Future of Music Policy Summit in Washington. During a panel session on "Guiding Artists Through Tremendous Change"...
"...The R.E.M. manager decried all P2P as stealing. In the middle of his rant I began downloading the entire R.E.M. discography over the campus wireless network. I didn't want the music. I just wanted the irony."
Well, it would be rude not to wouldn't it?
September 19, 2005
The Singularity
The Singularity is the point at which humans and machines become one. And that point is near, according to Ray Kurzweil anyway (2045 to be exact.) His book describes
"... an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality. We will be able to assume different bodies and take on a range of personae at will."
It's not a new idea. I recall that Alvin Toffler posited something similar, based on the exponential growth of information. When information is doubling at the rate of a millisecond or so, then something intense will happen to human evolution. What that may be is clearly open to huge amounts of conjecture (Robert Anton Wilson would probably call it the Eighth Trigger.)
Whatever, I'd like to see someone try to put together some use cases for it.
September 14, 2005
The Black Metal Dialogues
This is most excellent. An email dialogue between comedian Dave Hill (masquerading as Lance - king of black metal and 19-year-old front man for blackest-of-the-black black metal band Witch Taint, and Mathias (aka Saiihtam, of real-life industrial black metal band Mysticum.) Best quote (from Saiihtam):
"In a perfect world, black metal would exist totally in the mind (as it does with me much of the time). we would hear the black sounds pouring through our brain as we sit in darkness (or maybe there could be a torch nearby). this is true black metal."
I'm off to burn my Burzum CDs now...
September 11, 2005
Review: 'Ghost Reveries' by Opeth
This new release sees Opeth almost entirely forsake their death metal roots in favour of a thoroughly progressive rock sound. In some places it’s reminiscent of the likes of The Mars Volta; in others – particularly the vocal harmonies – it is positively poppy. As always, the tracks are generally epic in length, multi-textured, and displaying some virtuoso guitar performances. Opeth sound more inventive than ever, and each track is bursting with ideas; there’s a constant danger of the band exhibiting an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach, but an overwhelming strength of vision and sense of purpose maintains the focus. Overall, the Opeth sound is less ‘blackened’ and more accessible than previous outings and, while some tracks teeter on the brink of prog-noodling indulgence, 'Ghost Reveries'
September 10, 2005
Moor Music Movie
I've finally got around to uploading the short film I put together from footage taken at the moor Music festival - the one where Jake gets a soaking. I like the ability to add notes to photos in Flickr, and I wanted to do something similar for video - so this provided a good opportunity to get reacquinted with After Effects (it's still pretty much the same six years on.) I used an MPEG4 codec for Quicktime during encoding (thinking it was fairly ubiquitous), but since had a few problems running it on certain machines. Let me know if you have any playback hassles.
Moor Movie (24Mb, right-click on link to save target.)
NB SUnday 11th - link disabled as movie not running on Windows.
September 06, 2005
Review: 'God the Lux' by Vesania
Discussions elsewhere have mused on the source of BM's next wave, with many regarding Eastern Europe as a likely contender. On the strength of the new opus entitled God the Lux
From an open letter to the Kansas School Board
I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution... I am concerned that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design. Let us remember that there are multiple theories... I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
Technobabble
What the hell does this mean? "Redundancy versus Synergy is the juxtaposition that characterizes the multi-layered city of dawning knowledge-based society. Urbanity presents itself as hypermedial chimera to which new condensations and territories are attached. Accordingly, this discourse and its accompanying installation in transpublic will reflect the latest technological research."
This kind of technobabble is both hilarious and pretentious. And ultimately frustrating, because it obfuscates the dissolved facades of synthetically resuscitated consciousness and medially pervaded surfaces.
Bring back National Service
Wasn't it Woodstock 2 that descended into total anarchy? Seems like Reading Festival got quite close this year. Alongside all the reported 'youthful high spirits' there was a variety of more unpleasant activities, including one girl who was paralysed after an attack by a tent-jumping mob, and a bloke who lost his scrotum in a gas canister explosion. Read this for more gruesome detail.