Rock history.

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An interesting outlook on the history of rock music. Funny and somewhat accurate at the same time. Click to enlarge etc.

Paysage d'Hiver - Einsamkeit

Autumn and winter are coming along, my favorite seasons, so I thought I'd share some cold black metal to fit the mood. It's still relatively warm but fuck it.

Anyways, I've talked about Paysage d'Hiver before so there's really nothing more to say about this guy. Einsamkeit is no different from his other releases in terms of production and maybe musicianship, although he got relatively better in playing as the years went by. This got out in 2007 and is so far the latest release so it makes me wonder if he'll release anything new. It has been 4 years now. What the hell man? Darkspace didn't release anything either. What are they doing? I need my black metal.

3 delicious tracks of lo-fi black metal and synth ambient. Minimalistic and atmospheric.

Download.

Charlie Parker - Now's The Time/Back Up

It's funny how your mind sometimes just clicks when you hear an artist and right there on the spot you find your new favorite musician. Pretty much this happened to me when I first heard Charlie Parker. Strangely enough I found about him through, out of all places/people, Morita Douji. I really liked her most popular song "Bokutachi no Shippai" so I decided to hunt down the lyrics to read what's it actually about. It was, not surprisingly, a love song which contained this one segment:

"I found myself all alone.
I found the Charlie Parker record you loved so,
in the room
You've probably forgotten me."

"So who was this Charlie Parker?" I asked myself and decided that I'll nab something off the torrents from him. Through my whole life up until then the jazz I listened was exclusively from the 30s and 40s and the rest more "wankery" stuff I had not much interest in. Then I stumbled upon this guy and he refurnished my interpretation of jazz. I greatly enjoyed what I heard and from there on my love for jazz flourished in new directions.

Will it reshape your thinking of jazz? I really hope it will but it really depends on your taste. Charlie Parker is widely known for popularizing bebop and forming the modern jazz and there's really not much to say that hasn't been said in hundreds of documentaries, stories, studies, interviews etc. so I thought a little more personal story would be more fitting.

In any case this is a great introductory to his work. There are quite a few of his trademark songs here like Confirmation, Now's The Time, Leap Frog, Bloomdido etc. and there's some standards that he completely reworks as well. The recordings vary from 1949 to 1953 and at that time he was really blossoming as player. So yeah, there really is no reason not to download this if you like Charlie Parker or would like to start with him.

Enjoy.

Download.

Ancient Grease - Woman And Children First

I heard some kind of shitstorm is hitting the US? Sorry for my ignorance, I don't really pay attention to the world during summer. I guess I'm lucky with living here because nothing ever happened here when it comes to natural disasters (every other kind of disaster does happen though). I guess the Romans knew their shit when they built here.

I guess this would be a fitting disaster album, even the title suggests what you should do. They were an English rock band and they released this in 1970. It's goes for that blues feeling and the whole album is a fitting soundtrack for an outlaw (or apocalypse). Yeah, it's that cheesy. It has all the usual suspects of this music and they sort of sound like Black Sabbath. Not as dark or brooding as them but when it comes to riffs they are similarly heavy. Especially the second track on this thing which is awesome riffage from start to finish.

Fun 70s rock, nothing more and nothing less.

Download.

Oh and best of luck with everything to everyone who'll get hit by Irene.

Starseed Transmission - Metamorphic Illumination

Starseed Transmissions released this back in 1994 (for some reason I labeled it as 2003 (so correct that please if you'll download it) and then drifted off into obscurity. Why? I have no idea because this is pretty good. Maybe because he was from Australia? Australians are more into deserts I guess.

As the cover suggests this is space oriented ambient music. It's somewhere between the Blade Runner soundtrack and Aliens soundtrack. Electronic keyboards, weird effects and long, long tracks that immerse you in the feeling that you're on some mining ship in the middle of the universe (preferably alive and not implanted with a chest-buster). It's nothing revolutionary or something like that, it's just good ambient space music.

Great stuff for listening while going to sleep.

Download.

Tsutomu Nihei - Blame! and so on

While we're on the subject of Tsutomu's art I think this would be the perfect time to provide you with his artbook of Blame! and some other things he did along the way.

The greatest thing that I love about this artbook is that most of the Blame! related artwork is colored. This gives a nice insight in how the author imagined all this and it definitely gives it a lot more organic feel. It's too bad none of the colored images made it into the manga aside from the front covers. There are also some different art styles here which seem much like oil paintings (or something like that, I'm not exactly an expert on art) and they are absolutely astonishing. I especially love this one:

Along with Blame!, as the title suggests, there's other art which aren't Blame! related. The first being his weird venture into American comics by doing art for Wolverine. I have no idea why he did that (on a side note he also did a short Halo comic for some reason) but I guess he likes those things although they never really impacted his original stories. Along with that you get some art from Noise and from a few of his other comics, sketches of characters and stuff like that. There's a short comic at the end but it's untranslated although you can still manage to understand some of it.

Great artbook, get this.

Download.

Valkyria Chronicles (some thoughts on the animated show)

I believe that it's healthy every once in a while to explore something that's not usually in your area of interest. I try to do this as much as I can because I think it can do either of these two things:

1. Broaden your taste
2. Strengthen your existing taste

And both are good; sort of. If you end up liking a completely new genre then great! You have a lot of new things to explore and learn. If you end up disliking your new venture then you learn something about yourself and you move a step further away from being a blob that just swallows up everything. You develop, you know, your character and opinion on things you find pleasing and of those you do not.

This summer I stumbled upon Valkyria Chronicles which seemed interesting enough and it's something that I would usually not go with. So hey, why not? I have a really cruel love & hate relationship with Japanese animation. Basically I'm really picky about the stuff I watch which is why I every once in a while, sort of, force myself to venture into something that I would not usually watch. Because if I keep being an elitist faggot I'll stop watching anime for a long period of time (happened a few times).

The anime itself is an adaptation of a video game so it's flawed from the start because it already has a predefined plot and everything that goes with it. I watched maybe half of the first season and then decided it would be best to stop or I'll have to repeatedly stab myself in the face with the rustiest barbed wire I can find. This isn't really because of the plot (it's fine for the most part but I'm not really in the position to judge since I didn't watch the whole thing) but the setting and the practicality of the system is impossible. Usually this isn't really something to bother with when it comes to TV logic but this bothered me so much that I just could not take this anymore.

First of all let's look how the cast looks like:

So without knowing the plot and the setting of the story could you guess what the anime is about judging from the looks of the characters? A lot of blue uniforms, lots of girls that apparently wear miniskirts, a nun of some sort, some guy in a suit, ties etc. Yeah, looks like your regular school/slice of life anime right? Except this is supposed to be a fucking paramilitary unit in a semi-fictional world war two.

The plot is apparently about a country that looks something like Netherlands which gets caught up in a war between two alliances. One is evil and one is good blah blah and everything from world war two is sort of changed but not really. The story is focused on a militia group formed out of citizens and farmers of the country that are trying to defend their homeland. The tanks look like they are from 1945 yet the rifles look like something from 1918. The plot is supposedly taking place in 1935; they didn't really work this through. But okay, things like that can still be overlooked for the most part because they are tolerable.

 

But the uniforms I can not overlook.

The sad part about this is that these are not their formal uniforms, they are wearing actual combat uniforms. BLUE combat uniforms in a land that's mainly LIGHT GREEN. That's like if all the SS divisions in the Ardennes forest decided to wear their black uniforms IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER. Apart from the completely missed colors why are they wearing ties? Both males and females are wearing ties? What's going on? Is this supposed to be an allegorical outlook on the post modern society of Japan symbolizing that every worker on his day job is going through an ongoing war yet he can not do anything to prevent it? Or is it because it's supposed to be cute? -_- Those who wore ties know how impractical these things are. They get in the way all the time and are in no way practical on the battlefield. Except maybe in a very gentlemanly battlefield. And yes of course the big red bandana on the girls head in case they don't get spotted at first because of their uniforms from 10km away.

Sadly this just goes on and on. Some of the female characters even wear earrings and the worst part is that our protagonists aren't infantry they are a tank unit. They are cramped in a small tight tank in those uncomfortable clothes, ties and earrings because, hey, they need to look good while they are being dismembered by an artillery strike. All of these things (and I left out a lot of things) are tolerated because this is a high school anime pretending to be a serious war drama. That's all there is to it. Why not then just make a high school drama? Why bother with all this? Oh right that's why, because they are adapting a video game that's equally brainless. But wait, what are women doing here in the first place? Why are they in the military? In same units with men? Which brings me to another main problem I had with the series.


NOBODY 

GETS 

RAPED

Imagine you're in a warzone and things aren't looking pretty well for your side. You're getting punched on all sides, communications are down and there's less and less ammo around. Night falls, you and another companion are all that's left in the bunker. The first thing at dawn you'll hear are artillery shells and then a final push that will probably end in your death or imprisonment for the rest of the war. There you sit, thinking about your last hours and you look at your companion who's sitting there beside you like this:

In those lovely thigh-highs that match her miniskirt that give her that young look and with a frail, slim body slightly blushing and that fucking ridiculous bandana on her head as if she just came back from a 50s cooking show. Obviously the first thing to come on your mind is to play a chess game with her, right? If I were in her shoes I'd aptly volunteer for a tentacle rape just to avoid that situation.

This sort of problem never comes up. Nobody really notices that an army that's mixed like that can't work because of obvious nature restrictions. Everybody just goes along with it. This was just too much to tolerate.

This anime actually had an really interesting premise. Not a lot of anime series tackle our past like this. This could have been an interesting look on paramilitary forces, how they operate and the role of women in the army. How they handled the frontlines? How desperate must a country be to force all of their citizens into fighting? But no, they had to make another school anime with stenciled characters.

I am disappoint. Maybe it gets better afterwards?

Danny Macaskill - Industrial Revolutions

If you like bike tricks you need to watch this. 

Danny Macaskill - Industrial Revolutions

Tsutomu Nihei - Blame!

Recently I've reread this and I realized that I never shared this here. Blame! is probably the most famous cyberpunk manga among the internet community (my fair estimation) so this is for those few of you who haven't read it yet.
Blame! is set in the distant future where humanity is extinct (or so is believed) and all that's left are their creations that stroll through the massive mega-structure. The story follows a character called Killy who is, at the beginning, on a mission to reach the top level.

The story itself and the plot contains much more "showing" than "telling", there aren't much words in here which is a plus and minus at the same time. The good thing about it is that it immerses you in this bleak and desolate world because there's not really much to talk about when you're alone in the middle of nothing. On the bad side it makes the plot harder to follow. Sometimes you find yourself wondering what the hell is going on because when the characters do speak they say something completely different from what you thought was happening. Although this happens sometimes you can still catch up with the story as it goes on.

The high point of this book is its world. There's nothing quite like it and I found it more and more interesting as the story progressed on. Although the whole story is set in a huge megastructure there is a lot of diversity in various levels that we see throughout the tale. Each level seems to contain its own genetically deformed humanoids and creatures of all kinds. The completely bleak art style gives a great representation of how massive and broken down this whole thing is. Apparently Nihei finished the school for architects so he knows how buildings work and his knowledge really shines here. The only thing that bothered me sometimes here is that sometimes the shading is so dark that you can't really tell what's going on but that could be due to bad scanning (some volumes aren't really scanned top notch).

The atmosphere, the plot and the interesting characters make this one of the best manga made that I've read and it would be a shame if you skip this.

Part 1, 2 and 3.

Clint Eastwood - Sings Cowboy Favourites

So yeah, apparently this came out back in 1962 when Clint was still a young cowboy stud. I'm not really into regular country music and I know nothing about it so I'm not really in a position to critique the music itself. All I can say is that Clint actually had a good voice for singing. The usual raspy voice that he's known for is completely gone here (almost to a point of being surreal). Most of the songs on it are ballads and slow merry ones and they don't deviate a lot in style but they are mostly catchy so it's not a bore to go through them. Actually the album flows by really fast.

It's weird, although most movie stars did this back in the day. It's just that I never expected to hear Clint Eastwood sing and it actually sounds good.

Download.

Jolly good.

Excellent! I just want to thank everyone for the input and while we're at it I'll axe myself in the face and answer some questions/topics that arose etc.

- more tags for manga posts: yes, this is something that I completely overlooked (because I didn't plan to post that many manga at the beginning) and I will from now on enforce author and genre tags for manga.

- Xenu's Link Sleuth: tried this and it works great, many thanks to the anon who recommended it!

- Where is Dylan Dog?: ah yes, that. This turned out to be a much more complex process that requires much more time and skill. I translated some of the story that I was planning to upload but I'm having a lot of trouble adapting it to English language. If someone wants to give it a shot and translate it from Croatian to English let me know via email and I'll send you the scans.

- More manga!: the lack of manga is I guess due to the fact that I stopped reading them for a while but my interest in them arose again recently so you can expect them soon. By soon I mean today.

- Design: although it's a bit ugly and simple it's functional. I'm not really sure how I want it to look in the future. Perhaps some tabs or crap like that. I'll need to plan this out so there will not be any changes soon.

Other than that I'm really happy to see that people are enjoying this little blog. Thanks to you all; dismembered lolitas for everyone - on the house. Now let's go back to the usual business.

An inquiry.

I'll be away for this weekend and I had some hard drive problems so that's why I suddenly stopped my marathon. I didn't have time to write more posts so it's going to be quiet over here for a few more days while I'm getting an aggressive skin cancer on the nearby island beaches.

But! I have some questions for you, readers, while I'm away. I've been running this for a while now and I always knitted it my way. So I'm wondering what's the biggest obstruction here for you? What am I doing wrong? Do you find my texts useful and readable or you just download stuff? Are tags useful? Should I write tracklists or bitrates or formats etc.? Is my English terrible? Is the overall design utter shit? Are movies that I post crap? And stuff like that, I'm interested to hear your opinion on faults of this blog so that I may try to improve them (if possible).

Oh and while we're at it, I'm slowly scanning through the blog and collecting dead links and I'm half way there. Once I scan everything for dead links I'll upload everything that's dead (if I still have it on my hard drives).

See you soon!

Craft - Fuck the Universe

Craft is a Swedish black metal band that has been around for some time now and they will release a new album soon so in order to provide some hype I decided to post my favorite album by them. Favorite and pretty much the only one I actually enjoy to the fullest. The previous two albums that came out before this one weren't that much interesting. Mid paced black metal and nothing really interesting about it, not even the riffs. Fuck The Universe on the other had traversed much better through my wax stricken ears. It's still mid paced black metal but finally they got it right. The production is much better, vocals are enjoyable and the overall riffs are much more listenable even catchy at some points (like the album title song). Black and roll I would say.

So yeah, it's kinda like mid era Darkthrone but not boring and with better production. It took them 6 years to record Void so I'm looking forward to it. Until it comes out enjoy their best release so far.

Download.

Coven - Witchcraft Destroys Minds And Reaps Souls

Coven was an interesting little flick back in the day. Yeah, I sound like an old man. This album and band were pretty much stereotypical cookie cutter product of their time (late 60s and early 70s) with one very distinct trait. Their imagery and lyrics were focused on the occult and satanism. Not very subtle and hidden but completely open and direct. This came out before Black Sabbath did their thing so ironically Sabbath were called a British answer to Coven. Sadly this isn't as nearly as good as is Black Sabbath but it has its shining points.

This whole album is like a silly exploitation movie about Satanism. The last track is actually a whole black mass recorded with chants and everything. Today we find this silly but in those days it managed to spur some controversy which eventually gave them some acclaim. Aside from their gimmicks this is nothing really nothing special and they keep the music in the boundaries of then standards. I don't mean to say that it's bad music, it's just not very innovative or original but it's fairly catchy and the (female) vocalist sounds a lot like the chick from Jefferson Airplane. So in a sense this is Jefferson Airplane that's devoted to Satan in the name of commercialism.

Some more info about it on Wikipedia.

Pulp download.

Dick Dale - Surfer's Choice

Because every summer needs some surf rock. Surf rock really doesn't sound to me like it's surfing music, it sounds much more like desert music or wild west music. Dunno, I guess history wanted it to be otherwise. This record is the epitome of surf music so if you ever wondered where to start with this peculiar genre of rock then this is the place. From the track titles to the music everything is stereotypical surf music. Not much else to say, we all know or at least assume how this sounds so if you want to hear it you'll download it if not, then wait for something else. :P

Surf.

Ferenc Santa Jr - Alma Cigana - Hungarian Gipsy Music

Speaking of violins here's another type of music that's based around violins. Hungarian gypsy music.This ttype of music is somewhat similar to jazz but not that much. The similar part is that's big on improvisation and melody, since it's (or was) mainly played by gypsies who don't really care about reading or studying music. They all play by ear and make it up as they go. The difference is that the songs are structured much more differently and they lack the jazz beat obviously. Another difference is that it's mainly string and not brass, even the rhythm section is all string instruments.

With those differences aside this is enjoyable for most listeners even if you aren't into such things. Violins are one of the most beautiful instruments ever created so if its in the right hands it can create wonders. The bad thing about music like this is that most of the songs are on the same principle since it's traditional music but then again the solos on each song are fucking mind crushing so they are worth the listen.

Download.

Stuff Smith - Hot Jazz Violin

Whenever someone mentions jazz nobody really thinks of violins as jazz instruments. Even if they do the only guy that comes to mind is usually just Stephane Grappelli and yes he was an amazing violinist that participated in a lot of historic recordings (aside from his work with Django he also played with Duke Ellington and a lot of other swing orchestras in America) but that's it. Nobody else really gets mentioned.

Stuff Smith is one of those musicians that were around for a long time but never really got very famous. I personally "heard" of him when I was studying that historic photo. So I was interested in his music and found this little compilation of his works that he did for various bands. Stuff on here by, err, Stuff is during 1917 to 1949 so there's a lot of big band swinging here that's practically on fire. It's a shame that we don't get to hear more of  his bebop recordings because later on Stuff really did kill dem strings. On some songs he's not that obvious while on some he get's even a solo or two. It's just so weird for me to hear a violin in a swing band among all those brass and wood instruments. Certainly worth checking out if you like big band music.

Download.

O'Death - Head Home

O'death is a band that I recently discovered due to their recent Outside album. I'm starting to get really fond of this strange "alt-country" genre. It's kinda like normal country but twisted and distorted into something completely different. I'd post their new album but I have this invisible policy of not posting current year albums so you'll get their debut.

It got out in 2007 and it's quite different from their current one, I it's less dark and a bit more wilder. The main thing that I find different here compared to regular country albums is that they really go for insanity and complete melancholia. This is especially felt with the vocals that are somewhat broken but still sound good; and insane.  Speaking of songs there's a pretty varied selection of them here going from really mellow and sad to complete racket of instrumentation paired with screaming. A nice little mess stitched into an album. Most are short in length and I would really like that some of them go on a bit longer but I'm content with what I got anyway. Despite the shortness this is fairly good stuff which I'm certain I'll get back to more often when autumn kicks in.

Try it for yourself, you might like it.

Download.

Monks Of The Dip Tse Chok Ling Monastery - Ritual Music of Tibetan Bhudism and Tantric Hymns

Back in the day when I was digging into the atonal world of drone and noise I heard some rumors (or assumptions?) that Sunn O))) got their inspiration from the sound of Buddhist chants. Thus began my search for this apparently spiritual music that resembles drone in many ways. To my dismay I never could find anything interesting or authentic. All I could find was watered down new age bullshit with random flutes and cheesy keyboards. The closest thing I could find was actually in Akiras original soundtrack (which I'll talk about when I eventually make a big Akira droolfest post) and some older more depressing 60s Japanese samurai films.

Alas(!) my search is over. Actually it's over for about half a year now but whatever. I finally managed to find some pure (bullshit-free) Tibetan/Buddhist music played by monks. This is completely free from all the flutes and keyboards and gentle female voices, they are all complete prayers accompanied by fittingly deep music instruments. So is this drone? Well; yes I think it is. At the start of the first track right when the humongous horn starts blowing I knew this is what I was looking for which is non compromised music from the temples of Tibet. Another thing that I noticed about this and Buddhist chanting in general is that it has a striking resemblance to the Tuvan throat singing (which I'll post sooner or after anyway so you'll hear it) so those two tings are probably connected in some weird way. Didn't read into that yet.

If you want something different and interesting to hear, check this out. If you like drone, you need to get this.

Download.