Wolves in the Throne Room

Behold! Wolves In The Throne Room, honestly...

They play by candlelight so its a tad difficult to take a decent picture with a crappy camera phone. Rather good live, apart from the candles they don't mess around with the usual theatrics associated with black metal so no face paint or spiky gauntlets to distract from the music. And speaking of the music I do like the way that the thrashing guitars, furious drumming and screamed vocals somehow blurs into something beautifully sad - not many bands can pull off this trick.

Art Appreciation Lesson 1

I don't really get on with paintings, especially old ones. All other forms of art I'm OK with - I love music, a simple chord or a couple of notes on a piano can be enough. I like photography too and have a lot of time for people who have the ability to capture a moment in time successfully. I even like some of the more unpopular forms of modern conceptual art, I like the idea of art which is created because of a new unique idea rather than worrying about skill or technique.

But painting has always left me a bit cold so I've been trying to rectify that with a visit to The National Gallery today.

Can't say it worked. There are too many pictures of Jesus and his cohorts being tortured to death for my liking - don't really care how well these sort of scenes are painted, I just don't enjoy looking at them.

However there are a handful of paintings I can appreciate, thought I'd share them with you:

1. Perseus turning Phineas to Stone by Luca Giordano

Gotta love a bit of Greek Mythology, especially when it involves monsters and people turning into stone. I like the rather silly theatrics involved in this scene, and the stone effect is done very well.

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2. Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ('The Ambassadors') by Hans Holbein the Younger

This one is a puzzle and I like puzzles. There are all sorts of objects on the table which are meant to be deeply meaningful but the one thing you can't ignore is the massive distorted skull. There are so many questions about that, why is it there? what does it mean? how did they go about painting it and why hide it in such a weird way?

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3. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby

There are some interesting musings on science, religion and magic with this one. Back before we knew about matter at a molecular level no one was really sure what happened in a vacuum. When the vacuum pump was invented and scientists started showing that things such as fire or life couldn't exist in a vacuum it lead to some interesting 'debate' along the lines of 'if there is no life in a vaccum then there is no God in a vacuum'. Of course when the religious lot caught onto this and struck back with the 'but God is omnipresent and must exist everywhere' public displays of this experiment were banned and the scientists had to go undercover so to speak and started showing this in private like a magician doing a private show - hence the painting. Anyway, I like it - I like all of the different expressions on the participants, especially the "fuck you religion! I'm doing science!" look on the face of the man in the red.

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4. The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up by Joseph Mallord William Turner

I can relate to the boat... :-/

Best album of 2009 for connoisseurs of doom

Actually bandying around words like doom is a complete disservice to this album. It is a masterclass in restraint and tension - the last song is 33 minutes long, it takes about half an hour for the song to start in the traditional sense.

I think it is bloody marvelous. Purchased from the ever reliable Inoxia Records.

Best album of 2009 already?

According to certain sources the album of the year has already been released by Animal Collective. I am going to have to agree with Mr Ellis on this one, in small doses its fine but as a whole its just too - nice...

Or maybe I'm too damn miserable to enjoy it? Cool cover though.

Best Albums of 2008

2008? Remember that one? Still trying to cling on to it? I certainly am...

Anyway, here is my list of albums/EPs/whatever that were released in 2008 and which are well worth your time in my opinion. This list is culled from my last.fm charts over the last 12 months with some editorialising to make sure certain albums got a special mention

Boris - Smile - Live at Wolf Creek
Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
Ascend - Ample Fire Within
Helms Alee - Night Terror
Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter - Like, Love, Lust & The Open Halls Of The Soul
Jesu - Battle of Mice Split EP
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
Sunn 0))) - Dømkirke
Nadja - Thaumogenesis + Thaumoradiance

It's been a very noisy year...

Some notes:

• This was going to be a much longer post with reasons why each release was included. However, I kept changing my mind and judging by the rate I was writing it would have been around April when I finished.
• Boris managed to release Smile 3 times this year, the live version is the best IMHO as they clearly allowed the songs to evolve over time.
• Jesse Sykes sneaks in here as I think the CD technically came out in 2007, but the vinyl was released in 2008.
• Sigur Rós win the prize for most expensive album I've ever brought (it comes with a very nice book of photos - one of which I'm using as the background on this site)
• Sunn 0))) are in the list grudgingly as they refuse to release this album digitally and hence I wasn't able to get a legal version.
• I've included nice legal links to places where you can download/purchase these releases. My general rule nowadays for guilt free purchasing is: first choice - emusic, second choice - get it from the band, third choice - get it from the bands label, forth choice - amazon
  ... or bleep, or conspiracy
• Best bet if you want to go down the illegal route is here
  

Although getting back to graphs about google results, this is pretty funny:

...For the love of God do not google that result - unless you are someone I don't like, then make sure safesearch is turned off and go straight to image search.

Actually maybe this is the best graph ever

...if you you want to get into the spirit of Blue Monday.

Google search results for "KH(Ax)N" for x=1 to 100

Google search results for "KH(Ax)N" for x=1 to 100
Originally uploaded by flashman

Potentially the best graph ever

Friday Favourites - YouTube

Since my attempt at automatic posts didn't work completely to my satisfaction I'm going to try a more manual approach. Every Friday I'll dig into my online bookmarks and try to summarize stuff... you know... *sigh*

Anyway, this week I'll just do YouTube,

バカロボ　キントレーZ
In Japan they have these competitions to make 'useless' robots - I like that idea - I am a useless robot... Anyway the execution of this one is suitably bizarre/nightmarish to warrant a click on the favorites link.

Autolux - The Science of Imaginary Solutions
There is something about girls singing whilst hitting things hard that I like... What I don't like is this song was recorded two years ago and is still not on an album!

Autolux - Turnstile Blues
More music from Autolux - I was feeling nostalgic.

Bit.Trip Beat video
Interesting new game for the Nintendo Wii... Looks like a single player take on the rhythm action genre with a healthy does of pong thrown in. Lovely 8 bit visuals and audio.

"The Mother of Invention" Official Trailer in HD
Trailer for a film about an inventors competition. Could be awful, could be 'charming', could be just a bit dull... Might be worth keeping an eye on...

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Right that's your lot. Onwards to oblivion and all that...

LL Phil-J... virtually

I've been playing a fair bit of Fable 2 recently, it reminds me of GTA IV - a lot. Not so much because of the wonderfully featured open world, or the creative ways you can dispose of enemies, but because of the importance it puts on relationships. As the videogame industry matures this is something I'd definitely like to so more of.

So far in Fable 2 I've been married twice (at the same time - go bigamy!), had a kid, been divorced once (disappearing for several game years to become a fascist prison guard put some what of a strain on one of my relationships), and as you can see from the picture everyone loves me!

If only the real world was this easy and didn't involve sulking too much and listening to sad songs sung by muppets...

£1 Hat

£1 Hat
Originally uploaded by cowfish

Favorites of darthphil

Review - World of Goo - Consolevania Series 4

Posted: 04 Jan 2009 05:50 PM CST

Ryan reviews World of Goo.

New Years Resolutions

1. Stop Smoking
For this attempt I'm channeling the spirit of Allen Carr through video games:

Basically this involves being told how all the 'good things' I associate with Cigarettes are lies through the medium of really bad mini games.

2. Do something with SharepointTillIDie.com
I do actually own the domain, so it's about time I did something with it - this could involve just blogging about how great/frustrating/bemusing SharePoint is to work with with the odd google AdWords widget to bring in some cash, or it could be the beginning of a rather unique consulting empire... ha!

3. Weird Music Festivals
I subscribe to The Wire, so I'm always seeing adverts for interesting looking European music festivals, why not give one a go? Or at least try to get to one of the ATP Festivals or Supersonic this year, even if this involves a solo trip since my taste in music is so much more awesome than everyone elses :-)

4. Update this blog more often
I'm experimenting with some automatic posts from delicious and YouTube. In theory a review of World of Goo should pop up soon... Incidentally how can you fail to love a game which has these sort of messages popping up:

Just perfect... :-/

I'm tempted to try to get facebook to update this blog too, but since my facebook profile is already being updated automatically when this blog updates there is the possibility of creating a nasty paradox and breaking the Internet, so maybe not.

5. Invent Time Machine
Speaking of paradoxes...