Another one I missed out on which looked awesome. I haven't listened to it yet, but I plan to.

DIRECT LINK TO THE mp3 FILE; 37:18

Pen and Ed were joined by Dr. Maia Sauren, who recently completed a PhD looking at the effect of mobile phones on your braaaain.

They talked about James Cameron and his mad dash to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the saving of the Australian Synchrotron, Australian megafauna and its collapse, how some crazy kids flew a ginormous paper airplane, a new peanut intolerance test that might not give the potential sufferer anaphylaxis, quantam interference (not going into much detail here because I'm a bit flummoxed!), and the satisfaction one gets from telling a scorching lie.

****

And this is sort of, very tangentially, related to science...I'm going to pimp a band my mate Ben is a member of called High Tea, who play spacey sort of instrumental...well, shoegaze, I suppose you'd call it. They're actually strongly influenced by the cosmos and Carl Sagan, which somes across more in their studio stuff which you can listen to or download here on their Bandcamp page. As far as this sort of music goes, they're excellent, and far outshine their contemporaries in the local hipster scene who have the chops but not the delivery.

I saw them perform at a local pub on Friday night, and they utterly killed.

Ben's the long-haired stoner looking dude with the guitar. The drummer was in a previous band of his called Baseball on vocals and violin (yes, I wrote that correctly) and they played sort of amped-up Pixies-influenced hard rock with Middle Eastern tones. Yes, they have eclectic tastes...

"But I got ten dif'rent kinds of diseases..."



Fuck I love this band.

I already did this in Faecesbook because, well, I'm lazy, and it was easier. But damn it, I keep saying I'm going to stay off that shitty enabling social network of doom, and I'll be damned if I don't at least half get that right. So here we are, with album art and a youtube clip for each (well, if I can find one - I'm not going through all the fucktardry of actually uploading tracks myself if they're not there).

This is by no means all the releases I listened to, and there were some that didn't make the lists but were close (as evidenced by the "almost-rans"). And yes, they were all metal. Because I'm a narrow-minded, elitist wanktard that way, obviously. (In all seriousness, I did listen to non-metal this year but not enough to make as comprehensive a list as the one below).

( The list )

Well, that post took way too long for something that only a few people will even bother reading... ;P

....but it's a meme.

( La Musica )

I want to actually use this LJ more than I have been. But I want to use it as a real writing outlet rather than just a forum for me to air grievances about my boring life. I'm looking at a career change which (maybe) involves more creative writing, so I'll need all the practice I can get. And that means more than Having A Whinge^TM, or not updating because all I want to do is Have A Whinge^TM.

That being said, update on life in general coming soon. Probably.

Jordan Rudess' response to Mike Portnoy leaving Dream Theater: an improvisation on his Steinway. He gets right into it and even does some ad hoc vocals (which aren't very good, but are heartfelt). asylum_at_sea, I don't know if you like Dream Theater but I think you might get a kick out of this, especially.

I've always been more of a fan of Kevin Moore and Derek Sherinian than Rudess even though he is much more technically skilled than either of those two, but this is quite stunning. It's very emotionally-charged, which is something that a fair bit of DT's stuff hasn't been in recent years. I wish he'd play more of this stuff in Dream Theater than the overly processed synth stuff he's been messing around with since he joined the band.

As to Portnoy leaving - well, I'll always thank DT for getting me much more into metal, but I think they've had their day. If they fold due to this, I think it'll be for the best. They've done what no other progressive metal band has done, which was to gain mainstream recognition, and that's nothing to be sneezed at. It'd be a tragedy now if they became a self-parody by not knowing when to quit.

Due to recent emo, and general badness, I will attempt to counteract with pr0n.

Last night I picked up a secondhand Sony stereo from an eBay seller. I could have bought a swanky new freaking tiny one as is all the rage nowadays. But:

a) I wanted a tape deck. Yes, you bloody well heard me: a tape deck. New, they're as rare as hens' teeth, and usually of crappy quality. But I have tapes that I like to occasionally play;
b) I want something sizeable, for fuck's sake. I'm sick of this "smaller is better" attitude. I want something that is visually obtrusive. None of this "hide-it-in-a-corner-and-wonder-oh-my-what-large-sound-where-it-come-from???" crap; and
c) I wanted to set up our turntable that we got as a wedding present as well. I've had a pile o' vinyl sitting in a corner, and I keep adding to it, and it hasn't been played and it FELT RONERY. I could've set it up alongside one of those titchy ones, but it would've felt and looked weird.

So here we go:

Finally I can spin the black circle. I have missed playing vinyl so damn much. I'm telling you, "Phantom of the Opera" sounds so much better in original analogue than remastered digital.

From a review by a fellow called Nokturn on Type O Negative's "World Coming Down", what he essentially claims was ToN's, and goth's, last great masterpiece:

"I saw Type O Negative live in early 2007. Peter Steele, who had just gotten out of prison and recently broken his cocaine addiction, looked older and more haggard than I'd ever seen him before. There was a certain hopelessness and apathy about his performance: most of the notes on his bass were hammered, and he generally seemed to not want to be there, despite the uptempo and (more) fun nature of the songs. But moreover, there was an acute depression about him: as he gazed on the audience, composed almost entirely of teenaged goth girls, all dolled up for their weekend concert, and the boys they dragged along with them (who were clearly hoping they could get laid if they only dressed up and acted to part enough), you could practically hear him thinking 'This is not what I wanted.' Perhaps the precise moment where you could see his heart break is when every little girl in the audience delightedly sung on with set closer 'Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)', completely unaware, or perhaps not even caring, that the lyrics were squarely about them. Peter Steele won't play material off 'World Coming Down' because it reminds him of the worst part of his life: 'I had no idea that it was an album about the future.' "

I couldn't agree more.

My singing instructor recently released an album called 19 Steps, and she's doing a few gigs to plug it. She sent me and her other students the details for a small gig this coming Wednesday.


Her MySpace

No, it's not the stuff I normally listen to, but I think she's a very evocative singer and I'm a sucker for blues/country-tinged folk, so if you're interested, I'll be propping up the bar there!

EDIT I might not be there until right on 8 if you come in looking for me (because I'm that vain that I think you might be coming just to see me...)

Procrastinating on the Metal Archives forums yesterday, I came across a comment about a Mexican "depressive BM" band called Drown in Solitude, and how the vocalist sounds like an elephant. Nay, like a herd of elephants.

Surely this is an exaggeration, I thought to myself.

No. No, it's really not...



As I listened to it, I got an image of a herd of elephants in bullet belts self harming. I laughed so hard that I almost peed myself...

...nor a devil. If such an entity did exist, he wouldn't allow His Unholy Genre to be abused in such a manner:

Behold: An industrial black/death (whatever the fuck that sounds like [no, I'm not going to the MySpace. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!]) one-man band whose lyrical themes are...Harry Potter.

Yes, that's right. A metal band about HARRY. FUCKING. POTTER.

Metal is truly dying a slow, painful death.