Ólafur Arnalds - Eulogy For Evolution

Recently Ólafur Arnalds released their/his new album this year I think so it made me remember his first album called Eulogy For Evolution. I posted his EP a while back and this one in comparison is a lot different from the EP. This was a let down for me at first but you get used to it. I didn't like it at first because the EP had an very interesting mixture of classical music, post rock and electronic ambiance while this one is a straight classical instruments + post rock arrangements album that a lot of people like but such albums often fall flat as very uninspiring and repetitive. A lot of albums might suffer from that but I don't think this one does. It has its charms.

It's a concept album about evolution so naturally the first track starts rather simple and with fewer instruments. As the album goes it gets more and more rich with sound and more energetic. Because of that for me it never grows old. Over time it became one of my favorite post rock albums and I spent my whole autumn of 2009 listening this album. So yeah, it's good. :D

Oh and I forgot to mention that most of the songs are just with classical instruments. Drums and guitar come in waaay later in the album.

Download.

Sun Ra - Reflections In Blue



Yes, another Sun Ra album. Reflections In Blue is one of those albums that doesn't really sound like Sun Ra to me. I mean, it's still jazz but it's so different from what he usually did. It's so light and carefree and easy to listen. It's one of those jazz records that you listen when you're doing something around the house and something light plays in the background to fill in the mood. Sun Ra also sings alone in I Dream Too Much which is somewhat weird because I don't recall any particular albums where he sings completely alone. Well, whatever I suggest you check this one out. I think it's really good even for those who aren't much into Sun Ra because of his space tendency of chaotic music.

Tracklist:

State Street Chicago (Ra) (7:52)
Nothin' from Nothin' (Patrick) (4:24)
Yesterdays (Kern-Harbach) (7:46)
Say It isn't So (Berlin) (6:11)
I Dream Too Much (Kern) (5:03)
Reflections in Blue (Ra) (8:20)

Swinging stuff.

Coroner - Punishment For Decadence


So back in the day when metal was thrashing mad in Germany and USA there was this sort of little and obscure band called Coroner from Switzerland. As with many other great underrated thrash bands at the time they didn't have a lot of luck so they released a few albums; stayed active in the 90s for a while and finally quit. But they are not forgotten as their fanbase grew over time and now they are rather popular it seems. Popular enough to inspire them to regroup and will supposedly attend Hellfest in 2011. I think they deserve every praise they get. Their songs are pretty much everything I ask for in thrash metal. High speed, complex riffs and mad drumwork but most of all it's very precise. It's not sloppy work as  is the case with some more popular thrash bands that I could mention. If you are into thrash metal then you should not miss this one out! And they cover Jimmy Hendrix for fuck sake! :D

1. Intro
2. Absorbed
3. Masked Jackal
4. Arc-Lite
5. Skeleton on Your Shoulder
6. Sudden Fall
7. Shadow of a Lost Dream
8. The New Breed
9. Voyage to Eternity
10. Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix cover)

Bitrate: 320

Melting faces.

Taiyo Matsumoto - Black & White (Tekkon Kinkreet)


I'll only use the term manga for this work because the author and origin of it is from Japan. Other than that this very little to do with the usual manga format. The art is a lot more European than Japanese and this is because Matsumoto was greatly fascinated with the French way of doing things in comics. What he primarily tried to do with this story is fusing European and Japanese styles of comics into one. Did he succeed? I think he did, some people might think he ruined a good story. So it's either a like or hate from what I learned by looking around.

The story focuses on two young boys. Reckless little anarchists who don't follow their peers but live an adult life filled with yakuza and other kinds of mafia. They go around and beat people with steel pipes and torture others. Fun! They are sort of like an urban legend in this strange little town. The mobsters and criminals actually fear them. One day though a sort of frightening yet laid back yakuza (that reminds me of soooo many characters that Takeshi Kitano played, like Sonatine for example) returns from jail and from then on shit will start hitting the fan very soon.

As I mentioned before the most apparent different thing in this work is the art. It's minimalistic at heart but not to the point of being just scribbles/pseudo art(?). It achieves a lot of things with only few details and some smart shading. The story and the characters are complete nutjobs so I think most of Flying Teapot readers will have no problem with it. :D As with all mindfuckery you can get lost in the story fast if you don't follow much what's happening. I had to read some chapters twice haha but that probably won't happen to others.

All in all I think this is great and you should give it a try.

Get.

Punch - Eyeless EP


Send word to thy mother for I have returned! I still have a few exams but I think I can start working smoothly again.

Speaking of mothers and female genitalia here's a short burst of some furious vegan hardcore. And we all know hardcore is far more fun when a furious (vegan) woman screams. It's nothing overly original but that's not something I really look for in hardcore music. This is 100% smashing which I love so dearly. <3

Tracklist:

1. Thank You, Come Again
2. Nothing Left
3. Waste Land
4. Convenience Store
5. Semantically Challenged
6. No Such Thing As A Stupid Question
7. Words

avg bitrate: 203

Fuck yes!

Vitalic - V Live

While I do enjoy a lot of different electronic music I never really enjoyed very much techno music. I don't really know why, it just didn't appeal to me. It was either too long and simplistic or over the top melodic and repetitive. Recently though through some interesting videos I found out about this guy. I was pretty much impressed so I decided to check his music a little bit further and I came across this album. I'm usually not a big fan of live recordings since they most of the time lack the production quality and overall atmosphere which the usual studio album provides (but that's just me). Despite that it's recorded live this is actually really good in terms of sound quality which made me like this guy even more. As to how the actual music sounds I can't really describe it since I'm not very knowledgeable about it. All I can say it has a lot variety and it hits you in the head with a hammer.

Bitrate: 320
Download.

The Seatbelts - Cowboy Bebop OST 1 (Flac)

Sorry about the excessive delay(s) of this, mediafire is giving me a lot of trouble for a while now. But enough about my whining.

First things first, when I was buying this I was sort of cheated because I thought I'm buying the original ones and not the bootleg version. Although it was pretty stupid of me to assume that they would sell real versions in CHINA. I can't really say that I notice any difference in terms of sound quality so I guess both are the same. The only possible difference is that the paper that the booklet is made of has more blurred out letters and is overall more crude in design.

The Seatbelts were a jazz troupe that was formed in order to make the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack and were led by Yoko Kanno. While the soundtrack is predominantly jazz they mix a lot of other genres in as well so you have a very diverse soundtrack; which is awesome. I already talked about this before so there's no point in me repeating anything.


Downloads not available anymore.

Scans (click on them to enlarge):



Scanlating project and some other quick thoughts.

About the cowboy bebop CDs. They are uploading at the moment and will be posted tomorrow. For some reason the No Disc album ironically can't be read by my cd-rom for some reason so I'm unable to rip it. I'll provide scans though.

-- After uploading it for like 5 times on mediafire it still didn't work so I gave up and will upload it on megaupload tomorrow. --


Oh and I reuploaded GOTH, get it here.

For those of you who used some of their time to read my yearly overview you might remember that I was mentioning something about scanlating certain comics. So far I only posted Japanese comics (yes I prefer saying comics and not manga) and I was pretty much in content with that because at the time I was deciding to do something like that I was focused on just Japanese comics. Despite the purist appearance that I might have projected I actually read a lot of European comics as well and also some American ones. I guess I'm least familiar with American comics as I only know the basic mainstream stuff that I used to read as a kid and perhaps just a few lesser known. The main problem that I have with comics from US is that they are in full color. I know it sounds stupid but I find that to be very unnatural and I'm not used to reading such comics. I feel uneasy. :S

I was thinking about posting some American ones but I'm not sure if I want to attract unnecessary attention from Dark Horse and DC comics and besides, the main mass of visitors are from the US so you guys can buy such comics with relative ease. Where I live on the other hand you can't really find much of the famous bunch. At least not the latest ones. I guess the populace over here in Croatia isn't very interested in it. Another problem is the annoying work of translating the comics and adapting them to our language. Now that I'm at it I'd just like to forward you to this blog where you can find a lot of such comics.


What we do have are comics from other European countries (mainly Italy) and from what I saw they are not very much exposed on the internets. For that very reason I have decided to scanlate one of my favorite series of comics; Dylan Dog.


Dylan Dog is actually the highest selling comic in Italy and is also very popular in neighboring countries like mine. On the photo above you can see the two types that are usually up for sale at the stores. The first on the left is just one story comic (about 96 pages) the classic stuff and the one on the right is a three story pack that has about 300 pages. In fact it looks very similar to the Tankobon style of pressing (your usual manga format) except it's a little bigger.

Comics are episodic so you can freely jump from issue 5 to issue 55 without any major changes. There is a main plot hidden somewhere but I can't honestly say that I read much about it. The story follows a man called Dylan Dog who is a detective specialized in peoples nightmares. Well he calls them nightmares but it can be anything from killers to psychotic child ghosts etc. A lot of times the story convinces you that there is something paranormal in the works but at the end it turns out the monsters are actually humans. Another thing why I think it would fit here is that it's a horror comic and is not afraid to show gore but it has it's lighter side as well. The light side is actually his side kick/comic relief Groucho (Groucho Marx that is, haha!). In all honesty his jokes always make me laugh and his play on words is something that is always an enjoyment to read.

So yeah, that's pretty much the basic stuff I wanted to mention. I have already started scanning the comic and I'll do my best to translate/adapt it to English so it can be enjoyed fully. If someone has some tips, feel free to share them as I'm quite new at this. Expect to see the first translated issue next month!

Yoshihiro Tatsumi - The Pushman and Other Stories

Here's another artist from Japan that has a lot less orthodox art style from the usual art that we see in manga books. Actually, it looks very European influenced (to me at least.).

Yoshihiro Tatsumi is in fact quite an icon in the underground (so to speak) comic scene. He's credited for starting the Gekiga style of manga. I don't know a lot about it but it seems to be Osamu Tezuka was influenced by Gekiga and because of his it spread a bit more to the audience.

The Pushman and Other Stories is a compilation of his works released in 2005 worldwide but probably a lot earlier in Japan. His stories are about daily life and seemingly normal people. By daily life I mean the daily life of for example a sewer cleaner who now and then finds a dumped dead baby in the sewers. Often his main characters look similar and don't talk a lot. It's always the lower working class like factory workers, cleaners, hookers and so on. Also I noticed some sort of hatred towards women. Perhaps it's just my mind making fun of me but in pretty much every story all the female characters are nagging bitches who only care about their interests and they always act mean towards the protagonist. Maybe the artist is projecting his own experiences through these short stories heavily mixed with fantasies.

The art is very simple but clean. It has that daily newspaper comic look. It's nice to look at it but it's not that very artistic but it doesn't matter because dark humor and irony is what dominates here.
Download.

Sun Ra - Sleeping Beauty

Yes! I'm going to shove down some more Sun Ra down your throat! In flac this time!

Sleeping beauty is another very good example where Sun Ra implemented experimentation/free jazz while not completely destroying structure and some sort of orientation as to where the music is going. In fact I think it's quite groovy. Especially the second track. The album is rather short, about 29 minutes which is a shame. I'd really wish it would last longer. Sit back and roll over in spaceeee~

Tracklist:

01. Springtime Again (9:12)
02. Door Of The Cosmos (8:53)
03. Sleeping Beauty (11:48)

In glorious flac.