Friday afternoon music

The Knife - Heartbeats (OneMusic Session)

You need to set up an account to listen, but it's well worth it - dark melancholy pop music, with a mean hook.

Coolest picture of today's eclipse by about a mile:


Well, by about 220 miles actually. It's from the International Space Station and reminds me why I wanted to be an Astronaut when I was a kid...

Oh my god! I can't believe it! I've never been this far... far? Away?

No, that's not it.

*Ahem*

Oh my god! I can't believe it! I've actually updated my website.

That's more like it. Anyway, after a month of inactivity on my CD page I've actually updated it, you can now read some really half-arsed opinions on new CDs by Boris, The Bug, Sunn0))), Teledubnosis, Mogwai and Liars. There are also some mp3s for you to sample - the fun starts over here.

Other news, well my new laptop is kind of doing it's job - it will share pictures and music with my Xbox360, but media centre won't play nicely so no watching downloaded American TV programs through my TV - not that I would do such a thing, it would be wrong. It was the firewall, it has been punished... Now if I could only get this Transcode 360 to work

And youtube.com continues to be a source of some excellent time wasting. I found this one the other day:

Yes! It's the Swans. Now that's what I call music, can't understand why bands with axe-wielding front men weren't more popular during the eighties - makes perfect sense to me...

a month overdue...

Domino 06
Nice little freebie from The Wire, lot's of good stuff from bands like Coldcut, Battles, Sunn0))) - plus it's got this particularly extraordinary version of Windowlicker by Maxence Cyrin which I'm sure Aphex Twin fans will appreciate.

MP3: Windowlicker

Boris - Sound track from film "mabuta no ura"
Odd, but beautifully packaged CD of the sound track to a film that doesn't exist. It's nothing like the previous Boris album I got, this one is mainly solo guitar pieces, amplifier hum and a few tracks that are very rhythmic and tribal - not entirely sure it works for me.

MP3: the meddle of stairs

Razor X Productions - Killing Sound
New album from The Bug finds him on fine form, I'm pretty sure if you played this sort of music loud enough it could be categorized as weaponry. Comes with an extra CD of Dub mixes - righteous!

MP3: Boom Boom Claat

Teledubgnosis vs N.I.C.
Double CD from two dub influenced bands Teledubgnosis and Necessary Intergalactic Cooperation linked by the common strand of drummer Ted Parsons (who I know from Swans, Godflesh and Jesu). What interests me about this release though are the two Justin Broadrick remixes, one viscous beat driven one from his JK Flesh pseudonym, and a lovely dubby number credited as a Jesu Remix.

MP3: Materialismo (Jesu remix)

Sunn0))) - Flight of the Behemoth
Bass, drone, doom, Metallica cover, Merzbow remixes - Yes!!!

MP3: F.W.T.B.T

Liars - Drums not dead
This is clearly a good album, although I have to confess I really haven't got to grips with it. Possibly because I was expecting a fairly straight forward indie albums, this is far more 'avant-garde' in nature. A concept album about two characters called Drum and Mt. Heart Attack; plenty of noise, lot's of drums, odd falsetto vocals, and three extra visual versions of the album if you get the CD with the extra DVD.

MP3: Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack

Mogwai - Mr Beast
Easily the most focused Mogwai album yet, as mentioned in about a million other reviews they've been pretty ruthless when it comes to song lengths although none of the songs suffer because of this in my opinion (Dear Pitchfork, you are wrong, Love Phil). It's possibly one of the most 'metal' Mogwai albums too, songs such as Glasgow Mega Snake and We're Know Here can out metal the likes of Isis quite easily, I'm quite proud that I've been asked a couple of times to turn my headphones down at work when listening to songs like these on full whack. There are a few slower gentler numbers which slow things down a little too much at times, but as mentioned before this is a short album so these songs never have time to drag things down. On a final big plus note, this album contains a song called Travel is Dangerous which in my opinion is worth the entry price alone.

MP3: Travel Is Dangerous

My laptop at home seems to have surrendered after being dropped on the floor one too many time: it powers on if you balance it at just the right angle on my sofa, but will shut down completely if placed on any strange and unusual surface, like a table or a desk... Also, the speaker socket is broken so I've been using an external soundcard for months, and the DVD writer gave up last week.

Basic upshot, I think it's time for a new laptop, nothing too fancy as I don't play modern games on it nowadays as I have many consoles for that little addiction, decided to go for a cheap and cheerful Dell. Hopefully I won't break this one...

AS I'm sure you were aware it was Paddy McGuinness day on Friday which meant drinking Guinness whilst wearing silly hats was necessary. Being a geek I've gone one step further by purchasing one of these beauties:


It's an ultrasonic Guinness head maker! You can watch the strange voodoo magic in action here, literally seconds of entertainment.

Association Of International Glaucoma Societies

I'm trying to design a website for a company that sells drainage products, the question is can I come up with a site as WTF-inducing as the one above? Somehow I doubt it, in fact I don't think anyone could - I'm convinced that websites like that one just spawn into existence completely independent of any external influences.

The sound quality is does no justice to the amount of bass that was no doubt present, the picture quality makes it look like it was recorded using pre-colour television technology, but what an entrance!

I seem to be very much into Sunn 0))) at the moment, they appeal to my sense of fun...

Plus there are quite a few cool videos of them on YouTube, and Stephen O'Malley's website is always worth a visit.

Against all odds (well I'm at work, and I've screwed up my sleep patterns by waking up at 3:30am today - my body is fucking with me again for some reason, I won't bore you with the details) I have uploaded some pictures to my website, guess what - they show people drinking... Bet you didn't expect that.

Well it's not even close to a redesign but I've made a couple of changes to the site which warrant a mention (basically because I doubt anyone scrolls down to the super secret menu at the bottom of the page).

First change you can probably see already, it's to do with the tiny pictures that should be appearing above the adverts. These are random pictures from my Fickr account - or should I say my flickr pro account (oooh! fancy). I'm going to use this as a repository for any pictures of my days/evenings out on the town that haven't been taken by me - the same rules apply as with my camera phone page, if you find a picture of yourself there which you really don't like let me know and I'll get rid of them straight away, hopefully they should all be fairly non-offensive - I've already banned a couple of sets from being posted there mainly because I know I'll be lynched if I do. Anyway, have a look and feel free to use flickr's fancy comments to leave lot's of rude and suggestive messages.

The second change is a link to my 'myspace' at the bottom of the page, I really don't see the point of this other than giving spammers even more ways to clog up the internet with junk mail, but it seems to be the done thing to have one - and I can annoy people by linking to streaming tunes on it.

Last few interesting links from my del.icio.us bookmarks:

Natalie Portman doing gangsta rap - and becoming even more desirable
Strange Puzzle Game - bit like Samorost (google it!)
Battlefield 2 Players do the Sony bouncing ball advert - kind of relaxing
John Kricfalusi - ren & stimpy creator
Katamari Damacy 2 - you roll stuff up, that is all...
Encyclopaedia Metallum - the metal wikipedia.

I'm bored of my website - I may redesign it soon, or more likely change the colour scheme as that's less effort, the above links are a half-hearted attempt to add some content that is vaguely interesting. I'm pretty sure this attempt has failed...