Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Bleak Music for Bleak Times

Harking on about My Dying Bride again so soon, sorry. Anyway, was listening to the last album of theirs i ever got, the dreadfully entitled 34.788%... Complete (i bet there's a story behind that, but i really don't care). i wasn't that impressed with this effort back in 1998 and i have no idea of how they might've progressed/returned to their roots/degenerated into boring crap since then. i hope they got back on track, i was a big fan back in the day...

yeah, it was the perfect timing for that CD to come on - driving home in the pelting rain, doing 30 on the freeway, exhausted after several long, manic days. powerful, dismal, pretentious and hypnotic. it's funny how under certain circumstances even a dodgy album from a fave band can be enjoyable. i wonder if old fans feel that way about Jon Bon's latest shitfest?

ps. it sounds like they returned to their roots and displayed some good form (and their old logo) on their next albums... might have to back there one day.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Naive Art Explosion



Girl Throws Bike After Unknown Beasts That Appear to be Fleeing (or charging the 'artiste')


Happy Jumping Fish (detail)


Bemused Crab


Genderless Possum Clings to Tree with all its Might, as Shitbox Car Looks On (detail)

Dog-like Creature is Dropped into Bubbling Acid by the Artist's Disapproving Daughter

Who Needs Elephant Art...



...when you've got a 1.5er doing this?

obviously i had nothing to do with either of them. although the Pink Tigga graffiti almost never happened, the little girl was given another chance to stay up if she behaved... and lasted only about 10min.

i really like the colours in Deranged Doggie.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Will YouTube be the Death of the Music Video Show?

I've been watching a fair few clips, mostly live recordings, on the good ol' YouTube site, and it's really amazing how much stuff is there, even quite eclectic, like Japanese noise dude Merzbow, heaps of John Zorn's avant garde projects, home video recordings of Ween, interviews with people from TV, etc. it's truly a great resource for finding (and sharing) files. i guess the one major downfall is the quality is often pretty bad - i don't know how much of that is due to the size restrictions of files on YouTube or the fact that much of what i was watching was either filmed live by fans or recorded from TV.

i think music video shows (like my much beloved RAGE) will continue to live on, they are great for checking out new releases, adn for guest programmers. the excitement of not knowing what's next is a big part of the fun. and getting introduced to bands you've never heard of before.

anyway, since i finally got an account there, in order to be able to comment on stuff, i've now, many more months later, finally started to try out the 'favorites' and other features of having an account, and i like how it works so far. in case you find yourself particularly innerested in what i find enjoyable/intriguing, you can check out my faves, so far i've gone a bit overboard with Ween (but they are like totally amazing dude) and Secret Chiefs 3 adn John Zorn.

also, on a completely unrelated subject, for some unknown reason last night i started a travel blog. i don't know how it's going to go, but anyway, we'll see.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Awesome Doom/Death Metal Clip

I used to be obsessed by this band, My Dying Bride, back in teh 90s, and this was a clip of their first single (Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium), which other than it's awesomely over-the-top latin pretentiousness, blew me away back then, and is still excellent/amusing in that tacky way that most metal is. you gotta laugh, really. and with lyrics like:

" Failing Enochian tapestries / Depict the prince of fallen virtues / In almost poetic rhapsody "

... what metalhead can complain? and what the hell is 'Enochian' anyway? i think it's something from that H.P. Lovecraft's fantasy world, that somehow a number of metal bands (like Morbid Angel and even early Metallica) drew inspiration from, when those books really were a bit of a croc. actually, i've discovered Enochian really relates to magick. but it's still boring. actually, it appears as though old Lovecraft was seminal in horror/sci-fi writing back in teh early 90s, so maybe i should give him another go. looks like 'Tal were inspired by this book of his: The Call of Cthulhu - i shall have to give it a go one day when i'm less likely to fall asleep after the second sentence.

anyway, i'm just so glad of youtube in moments like these, when clips are at your fingertips, well, several minutes of loading, rather than having to find them on an old, grainy RAGE tape.

Update: just watched an amazing MDB clip, Black Voyage, which they pulled off really well live, even the awesomely eerie middle section. and great violin. never caught them live, so i'm glad to have an idea of what they might've been like. an amazing 9.5min song off their last good album, i reckon.

Update2: and while we're on Doom Metal, i couldn't pass up the opportunity to revisit my love of early Paradise Lost - here's their song Gothic (only audio)... wish they had Rotting Misery.

>

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The Ripple Effect

Another thing i came across on the intriguing Random Vandal site is Ripple - a charity organisation, which, has two easy and painless ways of raising funds: one merely by using their google-powered search engine, and the second if people click on buttons placed on a web page. either action, as far as i can tell, raises about 1 or 2 cents (paid for by an advertiser) for a range of help for less fortunate people - and 100% of the revenue is meant to be passed on. words from the site:

" ripple exists to harness the power of the internet advertising in the true spirit of the internet - providing a tool for people to help others. We are leveraging the market for internet advertising to generate revenue to help people rather than our pockets. "

check them out, you can easily make Ripple your homepage (and go straight to google search via them, which seems pretty much the same) and feel like it's also helping someone else to a very small degree. the more that use it the more money raised. i don't know how successful it will be, but i don't imagine it could hurt to try.

so i've just done the homepage thing, and it seems to work like a treat...

now i can do 'pointless' searches for eg. "hah!" - and i simply must check out the "Heathens Against Hate" site... and no surprise there's a wiki ref in there.

Later Note: don't go to that heathens site, it's weird, but more boring than anything and goes on forever. i'm not even linking it. whoever wrote that is all paranoid and wanting to be some peace loving heathen or something and distance them self from evil and racist heathens, and while that's fair enough, it just goes nowhere and eats up precious seconds of your life, rather like what this sentence is doing for me (and now you, unfortunate reader)...

i really do drop too many of those rabbit droppings...

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Graffiti and Street Art

I've been totally lost in links of amazing artwork, starting from MissV's post of (and links to) the Crate People, then via another link of hers to Random Vandal, who posts some interesting graffiti art, and some thought provoking discussions follow on from the images. i then discovered Banksy (you have to scroll across to the right on this page) from a comment on Random Vandal - this Banksy dude appears to be quite well known, subversive, controversial and intriguing.

it's really a web of intrigue out there and you can never get beyond the tip of the iceberg.

Friday, June 15, 2007

The Mighty Boosh

How totally amazing is this show? I probably missed half of them, and i still can't get over the Old Gregg episode, with the infamous line (which i thought was cool, but now i've recently realised it's gaining cult status) "easy now, fuzzy little man peach" - that phrase gets over 3700 hits in google. and it was casually dropped into conversation last week sometime on the RRR breakfast show, totally blowing my mind on my drive to work. i surfed some Boosh stuff, freaking out over teh amount of stuff out there, obsessive fans reporting every single detail, quote, analysing the Boosh universe etc. and i know i shouldn't be surprised. it is awesomeness; the best comedy in years.

there's a funny interview of the Boosh dudes on youtube. they appear to be just as insane in real life, which is just perfect.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Cuttlefish and the wonders thereof

i've long been fascinated by these strange creatures and recently my wife adn i caught an amazing show about cuttlefish, which demonstrated amongst other things that they were the smartest of the cephalopods (and i love that that's greek for 'head-foot'!), when previously octopuses were thought to have been the nerds of the species. they have this awesome ability to change colour, and even to put on bizarre 'light shows' to dazzle their prey and also for attracting a mate - but it's just the males who do the prancing, ala peacocks.

here's another, smaller video which shows a 'light show' used in hunting (off Irian Jaya).

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Amateur - Lasse Gjertsen

Awesome clip on youtube. you've probably already seen it; if not do it now.

and he reckons he can't play either instrument, but he's certainly got a good ear for music. somewhere amongst his answers to the more than 11,000 comments he explains that he used Fruity Loops for the audio, made a wav of it and then did the video editing on top of that, don't know what he used for that... in only 15 hours! i think it would take me a lot longer. gotta get better with FL, i think.

big thanks to Bruce n Jeff up in sunny(?) QLD for the link.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

The Bumblebeez - Dr. Love

Just can't get this song out of my head. and thought this was some wacky Brit band, when they're from NSW... if i could stand listening to JJJ i might've known they were unearthed a few years back. Anyway, this is one of the best clips i've seen for a long, long time (and a damn fine song too). and I think they're singing about a mate of ours, Trevster - peace out to yo in the US!

(screen shot of an awesome moment in the song/vid)