End of the year!

This is it for this year. Hope you guys/girls had a good year.

It has been a slow and not very productive year for Flying Teapot. This is mostly because I'm on my third year in college so I have to do a lot of work there. It's not exactly easy to study that damn electricity. Fucking diodes and transistors. :D But I'm not really in a position to whine since everybody has their own shit to shovel away as well.

Hopefully next year will bear fruit to many more posts and many more interesting things.

Thanks for reading and see you next year. Dreaaammmm~

Gridlock - Formless

I always like album covers that partially tell you how the album sounds.

Formless is a fine example of well crafted and organized sounds that form this formless mass. ;D

Don't really know what to type. It's great, get it  if you like electronic music. Perfect for late night rides in the bus.

Download.

Preview on youtube.

Sai Yoshiko - タクラマカン

Speaking of folky things from Japan here's another artist that's hovering somewhere in the obscurity. Perhaps most well known for collaborating with Jojo Hiroshige but she also put out several of her own albums.

Genre wise this album is a bitch to define. It flies all over the place but it's not a hit and miss type of flying. All of the songs are very well arranged and fit nicely with Sai's voice. Her voice sounds very mature and deep so thank the heavens she doesn't squeak while she sings (I hate that so much sometimes ;P especially in newer pop). A nice ballad here and and there, some psych rock, some jazz and some weirdness. Everything you could want is here.

Download.

Georges Schwizgebel - L'homme sans ombre (The Man with No Shadow)

A man one day decides his life is boring and unsatisfying. He leaves his home and lurks the streets looking for someone. He eventually reaches to a prestigious garden where a man in a red suit awaits. He offers to our protagonist riches and happiness at the cost of his shadow. He accepts and gets his riches but how will others react to his lack of shadow? Discrimination, alienation? How much will he miss this one simple thing?

That's how the story starts in this short 10~ minute animated movie from a Swiss director Georges Schwizgebel and it is one of the better animated movies I saw this year (that wasn't made in this year). The plotline is seemingly stereotypical with all too known story where a man sells his soul (or shadow in this case) to the devil but it is not that quite generic. In fact it's rather interesting because it has another view on the whole situation. First of all this is just a shadow, it's not something you will not be able to enter heaven nor you will be forsaken in hell. It shows how much people discriminate and judge different people who lack something that "everyone has". But it also show how we take little things for granted every day until we lose them irreversibly. Unlike a lot of stories of this type where characters in the end repent for what they did, burn in hell or trick the devil this takes on a more interesting and more survivalist way to develop and end.

The overall look of the movie is completely amazing and exceptionally impressionistic. It looks like it was mostly done with oil and coal(?). Something like a moving painting on canvas. Since shadows are the main drive force for the story there's a lot of play on shapes and lights/shadows. Constantly the camera spins and changes angles so that it emphasizes on shapes and moving shades. One scene starts with a box with camera revolving around it and then it constructs itself into a bigger box, then into a building, then it multiplies and forms a city and so on. Fascinating and fairly original approach but sometimes way to energetic and disorienting. Perhaps that was intended?

In any case; not to be missed.

Download.

Morita Doji (森田童子) discography

Morita Doji (or Douji?) was an (acid) folk singer during the 70s and early 80s in Japan. I don't know why they call her acid folk. I'm not sure what's that supposed to even mean. Her music is not psychedelic at all. She wasn't exactly popular at the time so the media didn't pay much attention to her but from what I read on the internets she was popular among college students. She didn't have fame but she did have a very distinctive sound and her music is something that I will always gladly listen.

All of her albums are heavily melancholic and calm so there are very few upbeat songs or anything that sounds remotely happy. I can remember just one actually now that I think about it. Her voice is finely tuned in with the music, it's very subtle and soft. A perfect fit for a melancholic sound. Through the 70s she maintained a non electronic sound with very little experimentation in sound. It's straightforward folk music until the 80s where she began implementing more electronic sound. This is apparent at most in her last album where it's mainly electronic driven. I have to admit though that her older albums are much more appealing to me because of their pure acoustic sound but her later stuff is alright as well.

Where to start? Well I started with "A Boy" (which is also my favorite album) and then got Mother Sky and then Good Bye. Her most popular album was Good Bye mostly because that's the only album that gave her some exposure (a song from that album was the only hit song she had and later on it was used in a 90s soap opera as an opening theme).

This should be all of her albums. There's also a live album but I think it's a bootleg see comments for download link (turns out it's an official live album).

Albums included:

1975 - Good Bye
1976 - Mother Sky
1977 - A Boy
1978 - Tokyo Cathedral Sei Maria Daiseidou Rokuonban (live album)
1980 - Last Waltz
1982 - Nocturne
1983 - Wolf Boy

Link: 1, 2, 3 and 4

I tagged everything in Japanese letters but the song titles on the actual files are in latin letters (Engrishly translated by someone else).

Some Vindsval's side/solo bands-projects

Vindsval is the front man of a popular black metal band called Blut Aus Nord. What I have here is a bunch of side stuff he did before and during early stages of his main band. It mostly sounds like proto-Blut Aus Nord but it should be pretty interesting to hear for someone who enjoys Blut Aus Nord.

If you're not exactly looking for just lo-fi demos I suggest you only download The Eye since that's a full length with good production. All demos-albums are synth driven black metal. I'm missing some stuff (a demo or so) but the core stuff is all here. Enjoy!

The Eye

Children of Mäani
Vlad


Links no longer available.

Lee Morgan - Cornbread

Here's one of my all time favorite jazz albums mainly because it has some really great tight rhythms and an exceptional crew. Herbie Hancock is on the piano, Jackie McLean is on alto saxophone, Hank Mobley on tenor saxophone and of course Lee Morgan on trumpet. All of these guys at the time of this album gained critical acclaim and they proved very well on this record that it's not just because they're pretty. Released by Blue Note in 1965.

I think this a great album to spark someones interest in jazz. It's very melodic and swift. Not a lot of long minute jerk-offs and screeching trumpets. Very pleasant to listen and relax.

Download.

Personal favorite track on the album.

PsyOpus - Our Puzzling Encounters Considered

Psyopus is one of those bands that most people either love it or hate it. Rarely there's someone in the middle ground. I'm one of those who love it. Actually I consider this one to be their best that they put out so far. It was the second (and last) album of the first Psyopus line up so all the band members had previous experience in Psyopus arrangements and they knew what they were doing so I think that's why this album sounds so good. Odd Sense which came out last year had a complete new line up except for Chris Arp who formed the band in the first place (and who melts nuclear reactors with his playing technique) so because of that I think it sounds inferior to this one. I have high hopes that the next installment will butcher all previous works.

People hate this band mostly because it's highly dissonant. There's very little guitar picking here, it's mostly tapping, shredding and all that jazz. This of course results in highly, seemingly, out of place melodies and unorganized song structures. I'm not exactly a high skilled guitar player so I can't really say if what they're playing is organized or if it follows measures and all that music theory crap (that I refuse to learn). All I can say is that this style of playing gives it unique ferocity and strength. To me it sounds far more extreme than some tremolo based grindcore band. So yeah, I guess you could say this band sounds rather unique. The lyrics aren't that bad either and the vocalist can really deliver some really good high pitched screams.

All in all this is a great record. If you're into "extreme music" I highly recommend you check this one out if you haven't already.

Download.

Sun Ra - Fate in a Pleasant Mood & When Sun Comes Out

A double album by Sun Ra from 1966.

Fate in a Pleasant Mood is just that. Pleasant mood. One would say this album is perfect while consuming weed but I wouldn't know since I don't do drugs. Unlike the albums I posted before by Sun Ra this one has a decent amount of atonal pieces and dissonant trumpet wankery which actually blends very good in the overall atmosphere of the album. Speaking of improvisation When Sun Comes Out is the side that has most of it.

Don't know what to say else. It's Sun Ra and it's great.

Download.

Shohei Manabe - Dead End

Somewhere in Japan there's a man who isn't very happy with his life. He has a poor job, lives in a small apartment and has only thugs for friends. Life is boring according to him. One day while strolling around through the streets a woman falls from the sky. Yeah, she falls from the sky. For a moment there I went "Aw fuck, here we go again!" thinking that this would be something along the line of Kannagi and similar "mystery woman meets a nihilistic boy" type of crap that Japanese authors really love to write. Alas I was mistaken! Dead End starts slowly in the first volume and it really seems like it's just another slice of life manga. Lucky for me (and you) the story is anything but slice of life/harem shit. The story is populated with some rather interesting and colorful characters who aren't exactly the avatars of all that's good and worthy. The plot isn't exactly something new or groundbreaking but it is very interesting. I always wondered where it would lead next and how will the characters overcome their next obstacle. The ending "explanation of everything" somewhat disappointed me but not that much so that it would make me dislike the whole thing.

The art I guess could be best explained as a mixture of Niheis and perhaps Asanos styles which is always good in my book. The characters are drawn well and are quite different from each other so you won't be wondering who is who (unlike in some other mangas I could mention) and the urban scenery (which is where Niheis influence is present at most)  is drawn beautifully. The author also does not hide any violence or gore so there are plenty of action scenes here. You'll see a lot of limbs being cut off (yay!) and other various unpleasant deaths.

Check this one out, it's certainly worth a read if you're into a bit more bleak and violent mangas.

Download.

Kenny Dorham - Afro-Cuban

Kenny Dorham was a very active jazz trumpeter during his life in a perhaps most productive time period for jazz. What's sad about him is that he always played somewhere in the back. He was in the big bands led by Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton but he also played in smaller arrangements like in a quintet led by Charlie Parker and so the list goes on. The man really knew his craft and he played for a number of big shots in jazz but for some reason (I'm guessing the absence of ass kissing and ambition) he never really made it big on his own. Some critic called him a synonymous for an underrated artist. Despite that he did put out some good stand alone albums with Afro-Cuban being one of his best.

As the name suggests the album is inspired by an afro-cuban sound. So what you get here is a very precise, rhythmic jazz mixed with African drumming and Latin-music melodies. The most apparent sound in the mix are the drums of course. It's rich with congas and similar small drum instruments that I have no idea of what they're called. So pour yourself some faggot cocktail and enjoy the rumba of this great jazz album.

Download.

Youtube preview?

Jedi Minds Tricks - The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness

Speaking of rap music here's another album that I greatly appreciate.

Jedi Mind Tricks are a fairly known group in the semi-underground scene of hip-hop and this was their very first album. This album is rather unique in their career because they later on switched to a more "brutal" form of lyricism. The Psycho-Social album is focused on esoteric and cosmic themes which is something that stands out from the heap of "I'm so awesome and you suck." type of groups. The beats and the atmosphere are very much like the lyrics, "cosmic" would be the proper word I believe. Free masons, Xenu, aliens, transdimensional teleportation, conspiracies, black magic and all that stuff. It's all very well composed and arranged.

So turn of your lights and fly away into the mysteries. For a while anyway.

Download.

Esoteric - Esoteric Vs. Japan (Pterodactyl Takes Japan)

While rap may be rather uncommon sight on this blog. It can happen. :P

I don't posses a lot of knowledge of the genre but I do tend to travel in its vast landscape from time to time. As with all genres there are those who do it for fun and those who do it for a more serious message. This album falls into the first group of guys who do it for a more softer tone. Lyrically this album makes no sense whatsoever. At times it sounds like they are spewing just some random words that go along while at other times they just tell you how awesome they are. But realistically looking an album title like this doesn't really tell you that this will be a deep contemplation about metaphysics in the first place so you can sort of expect what to find here.

What really shines here is the beats. The beats are marvelously cut out and composed. The drums sound especially good and are very warm as if they are not cut out but played by a real drummer. Something that I didn't come across before in this genre. As you might have guessed from the title the album is filled with references to popular culture from Japan. So you get a lot of Japanese samples and all sorts of effect sounds from various trashy movies from the 80s. Despite the inane lyrics Esoteric has a very quick and flexible flow so his rhymes blend very good with the music which makes the album even better. Not exactly essential material but it's definitely worth a listen.

Download.

René Laloux - Les temps morts (Dead Times)

René Laloux was a very influential French animator in his time and still is. A long time ago on this blog I posted his Fantastic Planet which was his first film that I had the chance to see and incidentally it's his most famous one (perhaps even his best).

Dead Times on the other hand was his first attempt at cinema (according to imdb) way back in 1964. It's a short 9 minute film about humans and their fascination with death and everything related to it. Sort of an satire to our way of living and how much we associate everything with death. The scenes are surreal but are very clear with what they represent in reality. The whole movie is told from someone that is not from our planet. In a way an anthropological study of us and our lives (or our killing of everything more accurately).

While this constitutes as an animated film there are also a lot of live footage and still images (something like in La Jetée). There are few glimpses of how will Rene evolve his way of animation but here this is still very crude and primitive. It does not take away from the atmosphere in any way despite that. Certainly an interesting voyage if you like other Rene's works or surreal films.

Download.

Porco Rosso aka Kurenai no Buta Original Soundtrack by Joe Hisaishi

The story of Porco Rosso is set in 1920s and is focused around a peculiar character who was an ace in the first world war. I was attracted to this anime mainly because I like that era of human history and because, unusually for Miyazaki, the story takes place in real locations. Locations are spread over the Adriatic sea so it's kinda interesting to see this movie if you live around these parts. The movie is filled with homages to early aviation and aviators and to me it gives a nice nostalgic feeling.

As with many films after and before this one Miyazaki collaborated with Joe Hisaishi on the soundtrack. The soundtrack varies from orchestral pieces to piano melodies. Everything a fan of Hisaishi could want. There are 23 songs and most of them don't clock that much. Average length is about 2 and a half minutes which I sometimes found annoying because some melodies sound really great and deserved much more time length so I found myself often repeating one short song over and over. Perhaps the most notable song is the beautiful French chanson from that age sang by Tokiko Kato. I'm not French so I'm not sure how accurate she got the accent but it sounds really great and you can feel the Edith Piaf vibe all through it. All in all this is a pretty good soundtrack. Not exactly the most original soundtrack Hisaishi ever did but it's definitely worth checking out. The anime is also recommended.


No longer available for download.

Blood Ceremony - Blood Ceremony

Blood Ceremony is a relatively new band from the Canada(!) (Toronto to be exact). This seems to be their only release (released in 2008) so far but I have high hopes that maybe next year they will put out something new.

It's basically a great blend of Ozzy-era Black Sabbath riffing and psychedelic rock which certainly is not a bad thing and along with that you get female vocals and flute arrangements. It's a fun little ride if you don't have anything better to do. Just relax and let the dooooooooom flowwww~

Download.

Part of the scene(ry)

(Post-drunk contemplation about music.)

When there are a dozen of people who have similar or same taste in music we call such collectives "scene". Local scene, international scenes and continental scenes (or not?). With popular bands or not it still is some kind of scene even if its just 10 people with two bands or something like that. Collective of friends or mainstream machinery oiled by capitalism.

So lets propose that there's a certain city or communion where the dominant music is jazz. For about three generations now this particular music is the dominant genre and you can find gigs, bands and records plenty to go around. Everyone is happy; except for those who don't like jazz. But considering that this certain genre is going around for a while now the new people are immediately exposed to the genre. So you grow up in such a place and you're exposed to jazz ever since you are born. I believe that there's a great deal of chance that this certain person will grow up and enjoy jazz for the rest of his life. His/hers "favorite genre". It's all fine and dandy but isn't this hampering the persons creative ability? The murder of ones will to explore and venture into something new and different. What if that person discovered electronic music like Autechre at a young age and became one of the greatest electronic musicians of our time?

I chose jazz as an example because the older variation of jazz which we now call hot jazz (swing and others included as well) was basically the only music you could find during the first half of the 20th century. The snobs and the rich would listen to opera and classical while the common man would listen to jazz. Or so went the stereotype. Only a handful of people (futurists for example) tried something different. Their work eventually did pay off but years and (musical) revolutions after. Sadly in the period during second world war music, like many other things, was nationalized. Jazz became a symbol of American and British democratic nations while orchestral and "more serious music" was pushed by the axis powers. This choked down any forms of experimentation and exploration with music. It took a decade more after the second world war for music to start evolving. Evolving in the west that is. The communist states started participating in the world scene with greater effect about ten years ago from now. China is still stuck behind. I wonder what's happening in North Korea?

Are things better in this day and age? Is someones creative mind being spent on something he never really liked but was sort of willfully forced into because everyone else was doing that. I think it's just a little tad bit better. There's more free will involved and things are more accessible but people still fall into patterns set out by those who defined the genre. It's just that propaganda ministers from the last century are now replaced with scenes and its "set of rules to follow".

I had the unique opportunity to be born in a remote place (even for my country's standard) that was musically dead. Dead as in sense that nobody really had any interest in music, no one really cared what you listen and nobody forced their tastes. Along with that nobody really (except one person that I can remember) expressed their musical identity through clothing and similar. The local music was basically something everybody would listen at default. Without any knowledge of what was in or out and without someone telling me what I should listen and what I should not I explored music carelessly. When I got something called "internet" only then I started to realize that there are scenes and groups of people that listen to music similar to mine. But it all seemed so distant from me so I filled myself with delusions that such people are just like me and that they would talk about music all day, go to concerts and buy stuff (something that was nearly impossible for me at the time). But they never really affected my way of exploring music without any predefined judgment.

In high school I had my first experience with being stereotyped and connected with a certain group. A group called metalheads. I was thrilled because I thought I would finally fit in somewhere and have people to talk to. I thought I had my "scene". I was torn to pieces when I found out how limited these people were. Everybody was uniformed and had very little knowledge of music they were supposed to represent. All they talked about was how they got drunk and what stupid shit they did. And those rare few who had more extensive knowledge had their head so far up their ass they wouldn't hear anybody else's opinion nor mere different thoughts. Well I could have overlooked all that if the bands were any good. Sadly that went down the shitter as well because they were all simple imitations of mainstream bands in the genre. I'll never forget when I went to some high school concert where I was the only kid around who didn't had an Iron Maiden shirt.

Scenes are like that. They dictate what's good and what's not. What should be worn and what should not be, who should be praised and who should be ridiculed. I am sort of glad to not be part of any scene. I don't think I'll ever fit into any group and I tried several of them. It just doesn't work; they limit people. What is sad is that like in the 40s this chokes down certain people who want to do something different and something that is not dictated by the collective will (so to speak). Only this time you can choose not to be a part of something and you won't be shot for it. Why should black metal be just about evil? Alcest proved that it can just as well be something completely different and it sounds great. So did John Zorn slapped the shit out of jazz. So did Whitehouse prove that you don't need heavy guitar riffs and drums to sound extreme.

Fuck groups and fuck your fake "collective of individuals". The less you are influenced by others the more you are influenced by yourself.

Huoratron - Prevenge

I don't hang around the techno and hc techno scene a lot (actually, I never go to such places) so I'm not very sure how popular this guy is. Apparently he's been in the scene for quite a while but never did something on his own until now. He knows his trade and that's actually all that matters anyway.

I can't really say a lot of things since this is electronic music so it's all about the sound and I don't like explaining sounds with words. Roughly put it sounds something similar to gameboy music mixed with hardcore techno with extremely noisy "heavy" beats. You get bombarded by dozens of sounds at once with exquisite rawness that really made me like this little EP. It's short and its ferocious. All the things I like with electronic music.

Download.

Check out the video if you're in doubt.

Paracletus is out!

For those of you who forgot, but wanted to know, the new Deathspell Omega album was released yesterday. You can download it fairly easy by just typing "name + megaupload" in google. There's a 320kbps version going around since yesterday.

The album is great! It's a perfect blend of everything they did so far and a move forward from those stages. I absolutely recommend it. The only thing that did disappoint me a little is that it's a straight metal album. There are no noisy interludes or choirs that were present in some of their early works or anything else that you could label as "experimental". Other than that and its relative short time run this is great and I'm not regretting my vinyl preorder from Season Of The Mist at all.

Also, you can find on Lurker's site a great overview of the whole trilogy as well as the lyrics for the new album. I recommend you check both links if you're interested in the whole concept a bit more than just good music.

Yuriy Norshteyn - Hedgehog in the mist

This whole day was filled with fog. The only thing I could see out from my window were three light poles and a beaming church tower that struck the clock every now and then. This made me think of this nostalgic animated film from Russia that was made back in the 70s.

Being a short movie the plot doesn't develop to some great depths. A hedgehog and a bear each night meet and they drink tea while they count the stars. One foggy night the hedgehog gets a bit lost and meets a certain beautiful creature in the fog. He dwells deeper and deeper into the fog meeting all kinds of things unknown to him. Through his journey an owl follows him around calling him a lunatic simply because the owl does not understand the hedgehogs appreciation for beauty.

A fitting movie for this day and mood. It's very unorthodox when compared to animated films from the west at the time.

According to Wikipedia there's a statue of the hedgehog from this movie in Kiev. I would really like to see that one day.

Part 1 and 2.

A Silver Mt. Zion - He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms

This could perhaps be the saddest album I had the opportunity to listen. I wouldn't really call this depressive. Maybe melancholic is a better word. Depression would be "utter darkness" while this album is graced by shafts of light here and there.

A Silver Mt. Zion (and many alterations to its name) was/is some kind of side project by several members of the Godspeed You! Black Emperor "collective" - as they like to call themselves. It's not very like their main band. The thing I enjoyed the most here is that there is much more focus on orchestral instruments with guitars only being here and there to fill in the gaps. It starts to build up to some sort of climax but then it just vanishes at the end of the third song. After the third song everything slows down and slowly goes away. Perfect timing.

It's an interesting take on post-rock. I don't usually like the term "experimental" but I'll just add it to the tags because I think they tried something different in post rock here. If you can call this post rock in the first place.

Highly recommended if you'd ask me.

Download.

Suehiro Maruo - Gichi Gichi Kun

This is perhaps the most peculiar book that Maruo ever published. It was released in 1996 a little bit after he published his graphs. Gichi Gichi is very different from anything else he really did before and after.

Gichi Gichi Kun is an episodic story about a boy named Gichi Gichi. He's in elementary school and apart from his weird looks and out of place apparel he also has super powers. He calls them "secret techniques" for some reason. Probably alluding to that he's from China. Surprisingly for a Maruo work he actually tries to do good with those superpowers. So what you really get here is some kind of twisted parody of school manga cliches.

There's not much gore or similar usual Maruo material. So it's basically not in the ero-guro genre (apart from maybe last two or three chapters).

I think one day mister Maruo said to himself (after smoking serious amounts of opium): I'm going to make a commercial mainstream school-life manga.


Absorb.

Flying Teapot year 2.

You probably didn't notice (but I did :<) but "we" didn't celebrate Flying Teapot-s second birthday. This was due to several factors which I won't really bother to explain. Well, we'll celebrate it today. Why? Because my birthday is today so I guess the analogy could make some sense. You know, the blog is 2 and I'm 20. So it's kinda similar, the difference is just one zero to me.

Despite being inactive as fvck I think the blog pretty much remained the same as it was the year before. I like it this way so I don't really see any need for changes. Recently the followers numbers have hit the 200 mark but I still get the exact same feeling of being a small unnoticed blog even though whenever I spew something out here 200 people will eventually will see it in some form and 200 isn't a small number unless we're talking about ohm resistance and we're not talking about that.

I won't hold any long speeches, words would only spoil things. I would just like to thank you all for being here and reading/downloading everything I put up. It fills me with joy to share stuff that make me what I am.

And of course what better way is to celebrate this occasion other than to download? :D

So here are some presents:

Since its my birthday as well I thought I should share something with you that marked my entire childhood. I grew up in the 90s and I didn't really have any consoles and crap like that. I grew up on PC so DOS games were pretty much all I played. Now that I think of it everybody treated me as an outcast because of that. Every kid my age had a Nintendo but I didn't care. Me and my dad used to play Lucas Arts adventure games and all that crap all the time. He would translate and I would direct actions. It's how I learned English in the first place haha. But there was one game that I played over and over and over. And that was:

Commander Keen

 Yes this motherfucker drained several years of my so called life. I played these series all the time firstly because I didn't need dad around to translate and secondly because it's one of the best platform based games that I ever played (yes that's right, I don't like Mario games ;P). I knew all the levels, all the secrets and all the cool jumps. It was my first addiction. That terrible sound when you loose a life still haunts me. I actually hear it sometimes in my dreams when somebody dies.

There are seven titles that got out for PC. 1, 2 and 3 have one, really old, engine and 4, 5 and 6 (dreams) had a better looking one. When I was little 4, 5 and 6 were the popular and active ones so I overlooked the first three for a very long time. Eventually one really boring high school summer I went through the first three and I can't really recommend them. They are pretty much inferior versions of the later ones. I uploaded the games I played so you get here: episode 4, 5, and 6 along with Dreams.

The story is about a boy who is at night Commander Keen! He goes around saving our galaxy and slacks off from eating vegetables at dinner. The story isn't very important. The important segment here is the gameplay which is rich and diverse. Diverse as dos games go so I can't really recommend this to someone who can't enjoy nostalgic old games. The last sequel called dreams is actually the weirdest one. Apparently some potato troops trapped him through some dream like machine so he has to save himself by running around in his pajamas from potato soldiers and mad carrots. Never quite understood it. :D

TWO MEGABYTES OF INFINITE FUN

I'll post more stuff tomorrow. I don't want to cramp everything into one post.

Watain - Sworn To The Dark

Speaking of popular things, here's Watain.

They released a new album this year which kinda overstayed its welcome. They had great ideas and they wanted to repeat their past fame so I guess they overdid it a little too much. They tried to repeat the fame of their album from 2007 which is called Sworn To The Dark.

I personally consider this to be their best so far and arguably one of the best metal albums of the 00s. Why I like it so much?

I'm a man (more like a child in mans clothes) who is prone to bands that tend to step forward. Bands who dare to venture in the unknown. Sometimes I strike gold and sometimes I strike myself with a facepalm and then contemplate as to where I'm going with this existence of mine. But there are times when nostalgia strikes and I feel like I should spin some Darkthrone or whatever that was popular back in the day when black metal was about confused teenagers in Norway; also murders over trivial things. But hey, people still like old school black metal and they record stuff like that in this decade as well. Such bands either have 0 imagination or they have in mind something that will give old school a new flare and something that will sound fresh despite being old school. Sometimes they sound terrible and sometimes they sound just right.

Watain would be one of those bands that sound just right. There's no ambient wankery, no drifts to other nowadays hip styles of playing or any of that crap yet they still have that touch of freshness which, surprisingly for me,  doesn't go away throughout the whole album. It's black metal as it should be and it's greatly crafted with much attention to details and compositions. Vocals are what they should be, drums kick precisely when they need to and guitars do wonders in each song. I absolutely love this album and I recommend it to all black metal fans that haven't checked it out yet.

I don't think I'll list tracklists anymore. I just don't see the need for it.

Original Soundtrack - Up

Hey, 200 followers. I feel popular. 8)

Up was a very uplifting (oh play on words) film that most of us saw, this year I think? Or was it 2009? I don't keep track of time.

Anyways, besides swell animation and a rather original and heart warming story about letting your past go this little movie also had a really great soundtrack.

What I particularly liked about it is its touch of swing in it. Somehow I felt the Rudy Valle and all the others in this soundtrack. It had that something which made me like it a lot. It has its share of orchestral pieces in it as well but I found them somewhat medicore. Despite that, it's a really good soundtrack that you should check out if you haven't already.

Download.

Jun Hayami - Bloody Angel (untranslated)

Oh here we go again.

Jun Hayami is one of the most well known and perhaps the most incognito Japanese authors of guro comics. He has a very direct style in his works which makes him rather unique among the bunch. By direct I mean that his stories are not very plot driven. Most of them are actually just events that occur somewhere to someone. Sometimes there isn't even a single word throughout the whole story which is why I think this is worth looking through despite the fact that it's not translated. You won't really miss much if you don't know Japanese. Some stories appear in other volumes that I posted before. So you practically have it 1/2 translated.

This particular release has it all. All kinds of fetishes you can think of you'll find them here; violent fetishes that is. The offenders don't get punished, the girls never end well and a lot of them are not adults.

I discussed his style several times before so I won't repeat myself. You'll either like this or won't.

Download.

Art Farmer - Baroque Sketches

Oh wow, I barely remember writing that last post haha. All of the sudden I was wondering why I started getting more followers on Tubmlr.
Here's a peculiar album that has been waiting to be posted for a few months now (yeah, lazy as usual). Baroque Sketches is an interesting mixture or more precisely an attempt to "jazzify" classical baroque music. Did it succeed? Well I think it did, to a point.
Art Farmer wasn't exactly an world wide known jazzist but he did have his own style and I throughly enjoy his works. To blend jazz and strict-to-the-note classical music is perhaps a daring challenge because these two types of music usually don't cross paths very effectively. Jazz tunes played by an orchestra don't really sound right, something is missing. So why should it be different if it's vice versa?
Well for starters Jazz is open for improvisation so there's a basic melody and structure in the skeleton of the music but it goes beyond. It dares to change it and rearrange it. I think this album does it fairly well. It's a strange little album that clocks for only about half an hour so it flows really fast to me. Worth checking out if you're into jazz and have knowledge of baroque music. Otherwise I can't really recommend this to you.
Tracklist:
01. Fuja Ki
02. Aria
03. Little David's Fuge
04. Prelude in ''E'' Minor
05. Sinfonia
06. Zortzico
07. Alfie's Theme
08. Jesu
09. Etude
10. Prelude in ''A'' Minor
11. Rhythm of Life

Download.

Bitrate: 320

Oneraspoložiti.

I feel bad for neglecting this place. Maybe more authors? Maybe not. Probably not.

Tumbling now and then.

Maybe that's why I don't do daily crap anymore.

Maybe not.

I feel even badder (is that a word?) for neglecting Terror Noise Audio even more. - Starting to hit borderline douchebaggery about now.

All I do is watch Hokuto No Ken all day.

Maybe I'll write a review about it. Never did reviews before. I think. 

I should really stop being embarrassed about my translations and post those damn comics already.

Suehiro Maruo. Did I really make just one post about him this whole year? I need to fix that.

Why do I write everything so orderly when I'm shitfaced? Why do I drink on sunday? -_-

Loro's - Dream(s)

Now that I have some insight as to what to post, here's some underrated post rock.

At first I wasn't too exited about this release. Gave it a whirl and I threw it somewhere deep down my hard drive. Then one "spring cleaning" day I came around it again and to my surprise I found this album (or EP, whatever) to be quite exhilarating.

Loro's (whatever that means) is a small band from South Korea and they have about 600 listeners on last.fm. Not that quite known but they did release their debut album recently called Pax. I didn't like Pax very much but this EP, as I mention before, is something just right up my alley. I'll be posting Pax probably in the future as I give it a more thorough listen.

It starts fairly easy and uplifting as most post rock albums begin. Judging by that you might go and say, like I did, "oh great, another guitar wanking fest". Verily I say onto you, thou is mistaken! It quickly grows in detail and texture. Sounds start to bend with piano and an acoustic guitar and it goes further and further. As this little EP goes for more and more time things become attached to it. Vocals, violin and so on, all kinds of crap. That's what I enjoy so much about it. There's a bit of everything that's good about post rock in here and it doesn't go enough long to bore you. It's what I like to call: balanced out music.

It's a nice little voyage that goes for about half an hour. Definitely check it out if you're into post rock and similar.

Download.

New Deathspell Omega coming out in november.

Fuck yeah! It will be released on November 8th in Europe. For those of you who live in the US it would probably be a good idea to know that Ajna isn't their distributor anymore. Season Of Mist took the job. This is probably because the scale of distribution is too big for Ajna this time.

The album will be called Paracletus. It is also the last part of the trilogy (first being SMRC, second FAS).

This is how the cover will most likely look:

Speculations on my behalf:

- what does the title mean and what will the album be about?

From what I researched Paracletus is some sort of advocate or lawyer in a religious context. It's a Greek word and is fairly difficult to explain. If we look retrospectively the SMRC album was about relation between God and Man. Kenose being the appendix of SMRC also covered that theme to some extent. I didn't do much research about Kenose so I can't say much. Fas was about angels and their revolt against God. The appendix of Fas was Chaining the Katechon. Katechon was/is someone/something that keeps the antichrist from manifesting. Paracletus then could be about the Antichrist or the devil himself. Not to mention that on the cover is something that looks like it's going to murder the cosmos. And it has 7 heads?

- how will it sound?

Probably in a direction that FAS took but hopefully we won't get a FAS clone. Since they have Mikko Aspa on board with them I'm sure he'll provide a lot of non-metal music in the album  and since his forte are noise and similar atonal genres I'm fairly certain it will contain a lot of chaotic noisy/ambient intervals between their common black metal arrangements. Katechon to me seemed a lot calmer and far less atonal compared to FAS so I'm guessing this time around the songs won't be screaming all over the place like The Shrine Of Mad Laughter for example. It will be more brooding and darker since it (again I speculate) deals with a far more darker and sinister being than mad angels stricken with jealousy.

- since the trilogy is going to be concluded, will they split up after that?

I highly doubt that! There are so many themes to cover in religion and the occult so there's plenty of material to work with. They have proven (to me at least and probably to a lot of you people as well) that they are highly creative and innovative people so I'm sure they will continue to surprise us with more releases every few years and I hope they will not stagnate (or do a live show, that would kill everything :< ).

What are your thoughts about this whole thing? Are you looking forward to it?

I'll be buying it the moment it comes out and preferably in some pretentious elitist limited format. :3

Hideshi Hino - Lullabies From Hell

If you watched (and enjoyed to some extent) the Guinea Pig series then you probably find this name familiar. Well, Hideshi Hino was the director of the Mermaid one and the Flower Of Flesh and Blood from the Guinea Pig Series. Despite his movie endeavors his main work accumulated in the form of horror comics.

Lullabies From Hell is a collection of four of his distinct stories. Although distinct they all share this common dread and some kind of depression. In each story, the main character is either a complete outcast or he is in a situation where everybody is against him. There is no good guys/bad guys, just bad, terrible and deranged guys. This might be a problem for people who usually when they read stories (or watch, whatever) try to connect with the characters and find similarities between themselves and the characters. I don't usually do that so I had no problems with that.

The most peculiar story from these four would be the first one. It's kind of an autobiographic fantasy tale where the main character is the author himself. It goes surreal very fast but you get to meet and understand his fascination with the grotesque. It's a bit corny but it's all good fun, not even the author took the story very seriously.

My personal favorite though would be the third one, called: Train of Terror. Oooh! More cliche names! I liked this one the most because of the constant feel of being completely alone in this rapidly changed world. Nobody seems to be what they show and there's this constant paranoid feeling. Paranoia and dementia; nuff said.

This isn't a modern day manga so the art isn't what you might except. It's more of a Kazuo Umezu style. I'm not sure when was this published but I think it's from the late 70s. There is a lot of gore to be found here but most of it isn't very explicit so gore hounds might be a little disappointed with this one. That doesn't mean there are no disgusting moments or blood crazed panels of comic violence. The aspect of gore is more focused on infection and disgust rather than on dismemberment and so on. Overall art is fairly good, a bit weird I might say. I especially enjoyed how the characters were drawn and especially their eyes. Oh the terror in them is so delightful! :D Everything is so round and circular-ish~.

All in all this is an great old school horror manga and should not be missed by anyone who enjoys this stuff.

Download.

Be sure to check this post from Unflinching Eye for another Hideshi Hino manga and some more information about his work!

Grindcore conclusion.

For those of you who aren't much into reading and more into downloading here are all the links from the last two posts:
Dropdead - Untitled II
exclaim - keep things evolving positively
Final Draft - Self Titled EP
Insect Warfare - Endless Execution Thru Violent Restitution
Iron Lung - Life. Iron Lung. Death
Kill The Client -Cleptocracy
Kursk & LycanthrophyMagrudergrind - Trax Of Thrash
Panaceja - Kad aveti proslosti razaraju mozak,strah i bijes postaju opsesija
pretty little flower - complete grindcore annihilation discography
Punch - Self TitledSplatter Whore - Kaviar Die-Hards
Spoonful of Vicodin - Bursts of Rage at the Speed
swallowing shit - anthology
Swarrrm - Thee Imitation Messiahs
the endless blockade - primitive
THOUSANDSWILLDIE - Demo
Threatener - The Hammering, the Fastening and the Bending of Throats
ulcerrhoea - line and row
Wolfbrigade - In Darkness You Feel No Regrets
Wormrot - Abuse
yacopsae - einstweilige vernichtung

Journey through grindcore - Part 2

Here's something to spark your lack of interest.

FOOOZZZZZZZYYYYYYY BEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR

So here we are at part two of the grindcore journey.

Here I'll mention a bit more bands that someone out there might enjoy them in a way that I do (or in some different way; pervert :P). They are all great bands so obviously I recommend to check them all out. Especially if you're into grindcore duh. :D


If you're reading this blog on a more constant basis you probably noticed I have a fetish for female vocalists in most areas of music but especially in more extreme genres. I'm not trying to sound chauvinistic or something like that. I just like when a woman screams. It warms my heart (sometimes pants). Bands with female singers usually get distinguished fairly quickly from the rest of the bunch simply because there's a female in it. That's a bit disgusting but hey, people are like that. Most singers in the scene are male so it's kinda natural for female fronted bands to get noticed because they are different in a way despite the fact that they play the same crap as other bands do.

Last female fronted band that made an impression is Lycanthrophy. They come from Czech Republic which is currently flourishing with great new bands. I saw these guys live a month or so ago and they ripped shit up. They don't have a lot of releases but I manged to grab their latest split while I was there. Sadly I'm unable to rip vinyls (yet) but I do have their somewhat older 7'' split with Kursk.

I can't really say anything about Kursk. They play Iron Lung~ish grindcore but a bit more faster I think. It's nothing special really. What does shine on this split is Lycanthrophy which is why I decided to share this release. Production is also far better on their side as opposed to Kursk who didn't do a lot to improve the sound of the recording but that's not really something to look for in grindcore anyway. I'm sure a lot of you out there will enjoy this, I certainly did, but it's too damn short. Longer run is actually the only thing I'm bothered with haha.

Eat children, shit holocaust.

Another band I'd like to mention is Punch. I already posted their EP not long ago so check it out a little bit down from this post. I'll still share their short but sweet self titled full length.

While Lycanthrophy is more of a face melting fast grindcore type of band Punch leans more to the punk side of things. Their riffs and style of playing is slower, there are those sudden pace changes and furious female vocals to back it all up. It's a thing called powerviolence. Some hate it and some love it. I personally disliked a lot these sudden pace changes but I grew to like them. And you will too; eventually. :P

You'll love it. Trust me, I'm from the internet. :D

While female vocalists and all that is great there's a vital part that I do not receive a lot from these bands. Perhaps I haven't found such band but I'm actively looking. What I'm talking about is ferocity. By ferocious I mean something that's so fast you can't scrobble on last.fm and so distorted that it rings in your ears hours after you listened to it. I honestly haven't found a female fronted band that could deliver me such feeling. Males do it better I guess. A prime example of a ferocious band is Threatener.

Look how happy he is! Can't you feel all the groovy energy coming out from this picture? This is how Threatener sounds for the most part. It's short, it's sweet and it melts your face with its speed. They slow down from time to time but that's just so that your ears can rest for a few seconds because they are nice people. There are also guitar solos sometimes inside this fun mess.

The Hammering, the Fastening and the Bending of Throats

But there are others like them but not quite the same. I'm talking about Spoonful Of Vicodin and their epic beards.

Bushy beards are known for making fast music. I have seen similar beards making fast grindcore and I was not disappointed. Beards also tend to scream like there's no tomorrow. They carry a message which is:

The 60's Changed The World I'm Sure You Will Too

Yet there is more! Another band decided to keep evolving things positively and that band is Exclaim! They sound like this:

They come from the land of the rising Sun.

They use distortion like there is no yesterday or today nor tomorrow. It's pure sloppy chaos we all like. Something worth living for indeed! It goes on for ten minutes because their throats and strings along with your head would explode if they lasted longer. Exclamation very much so!

We covered female fronted bands, ferocious bands so now let's get pissed off. :[

This is it. This is the moment of your death.

"Pissed off" grindcore is what I like to call bands that are generally atonal (no punkish riffing or melodic sound) with either growling or shouted vocals. They all pretty much vary in speed. My favorite of the bunch is Iron Lung and their album Life. Iron Lung. Death..

Iron Lung at first was something that foolishly overlooked. This was mostly because of the rapid pace change and somewhat radical riffs that I could not enjoy in the beginning. It very quickly grew on me so I started liking it more and more. Today I think it's pretty much my favorite pissed off band. It's a legendary band and it's fairly well known so I won't babble much about them. They sound like a broken down coal factory or you breathing through the iron long.

After I found out about Iron Lung others soon followed like The Endless Blockade which is definitely faster but somewhere near as brutal as is Iron Lung. They pack similar vocal styles (they both sound like they have some serious flu issues).

93 93/93

Shed no tears though for I have more! Here's Thousandswilldie and their short swift demo which is as br00tal as it can possibly be in its short 3:15 minute demo and it's so brutal that it makes you shower in menstruation blood.

Stillborn.

Another pissed off band that I'd like to mention is Swallowing shit, which is less similar to thousandswilldie but somewhere there between Iron Lung and some sort of humanoid machines that operate on raw oil. They come from Winnipeg and they don't like that. Just like Aaron Funk.

OIL WILL MAKE YOU EARN MONEY

And I almost forgot to upload Final Draft from Inglewood!

Their style is also "pissed off" but are probably the fastest from the bunch I mention. As we all know; who is the fastest is the bestest. Or something like that. It's one ripping little EP. It's actually that fast that I won't use any pictures.

Crucifying the Earth.

And so our journey comes fairly near the end. I covered most things and avoided the popular things, until now. Well somewhat popular I think. Perhaps I'll call this part: the part where I post things I forgot to post last time.

So besides all the things I mentioned there's still brutality to cover. Brutality is where things are very much relevant in the science of blast beats and growling, preferably screaming and a bit longer songs (minute or so).

Last year the scene was swept away by a little known band called Wormrot. They ate everything including your unborn children. It's what I call brutal when people ask me what's so brutal in grindcore. I adore them and so do a lot of people connected to the netsphere. Their album is Abuse.

Good times.

Personally I consider this band as what would Insect Warfare be if they became even better (because I like Insect Warfare so much that I fuck my pretentious vinyls with their music on it). Everyone already heard this so I won't bother much with talking about it.

Another brutality that deserves mention and praise is Kill The Client. They kill clients by request. They also have a video on youtube to summarize their sound. Sadly their other album is not that much of a success. Very generic. Cleptocracy on the other hand is pure gold and should not be missed. Even metalheads should enjoy it me thinks.

You'll like it, trust me. Tool of the state. :P

And here I'll partially stop. I say this because I don't want to let Magrudergrind sit alone in the last post. That's why I mention two similar bands! First one is Dropdead which has been around for a while and an interesting one man band (I think) called Ulcerrhoea. Dropdead I think is more superior from the two but they are both great fun. Screaming at its near best!

Enjoy them:

Dropdead and Ulcerrhoea!

This is the end I promise. All that's left is for you to get married and enjoy some German fast würst grindcore.

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