Db0's Music Journal

Love

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:51:21 +0000

Finally I can "love" tracks from my profile page. If there was one thing that really irked me with the previous setup it was that I just could not mark songs as loved unless I was listening to them on the last.fm radio or I wen to my Facebook profile and marked them from there.

It seriously prevented me from marking songs as loved a lot.

In an unrelated note, I would really like an RSS feed of last.fm's recent activity so that I can use it in my lifestream but apparently that's not possible (even though friendfeed can apparently do it somehow. API?)

On an even more unrelated note. While the old forum search sucked, It now seems that there is not search function at all.

Visualized Last.fm

Fri, 7 Mar 2008 08:15:51 +0000

Yay, thanks to C26000 I now have my own personal stats visualization thingy ;)

I am guessing that the colours are calculated based on the tags the song has, so the more different the tags, the more different the colours.

In my case, it seems to be separated into three distinct periods.

1. When I started using last.fm (audioscrobbler back then) you can see that I was listening to mainly the same kind of music and thus the whole things is basically one colour. That didn't really change much until I moved to the UK and phase 2 began

2. In phase 2, I pretty much stopped scrobbling most of my music due to lack of computer time and later due to lack of cumputer. I did listen to a lot of Mago de Oz for a period though ;)
Eventually I stopped tottaly for 2 months which created that "pinched" effect you see in the middle. Then phase 3 strarted after I moved to Deutschland

3. Here my taste started to vary a bit. You can see where a friend introduced me to Ska-P and later on I found Freak Kitchen and all the German Medieval bands which started squeezing all the metal away. However the red core remains ;)

Audiosurf

Fri, 1 Feb 2008 18:05:01 +0000

So I've recently discovered this little game that seems very interesting. I've downloaded the public beta and played with it a while and I must say that releasing it to the public like that must have been the best thing they did for promotion.

The game plays very interestingly and has various levels of difficulty to keep you occupied. I personally didn't try the very difficult levels but stayed in the medium and even then didn't manage to catch the max. Still with just one hour of play I didn't expect much

It uses some algorithm to calculate your level setup before you start by analyzing the song and thus give you an appropriate ride. Unfortunately, as with most of these kinds of algorithms, it's not really tuned to work well with metal songs as it expects electronic music. Hmmmm, now that I think about it, perhaps I should have been playing some Machinae Supremacy instead of Saltatio Mortis :-/

An annoying thing is that it does not currently read tags but rather just looks at the filename. Since my filenames include artist, album, track nr and name,this made it impossible to select some songs from some albums as the select window is non expandable and the font is huge. So before you use it, I suggest you create an extra folder and copy your songs to it so that you can just play one after the other.

It's a pity it doesn't run under linux however as I would totally buy it. Currently I am not certain if I will as it's quite a hindrance to dual boot just to play it and I'd rather work on Wesnoth

I've also scraped my old playlist in order to make a new one that will probably, hopefully be good with it. Let's see. If you however have some songs (you think I would like) to propose, be my guests.

UPDATE: You should use a tag to mark good songs to ride. I personally use audiosurf

Why the recording industry is so out of touch

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:27:45 +0000

Basically, the stink comes from the head...as always

Just read this article..

Wow, just wow (and I don't mean Blizzard's)

Manowar Resurgence

Mon, 9 Jul 2007 11:16:09 +0000

Fri 6 Jul – Magic Circle Music Festival

I wrote a blogpost here about it.

_{Manowar|Gamma Ray|Majesty|Stormwarrior|Holy Hell}

Ambush Awakening

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:20:22 +0000

I've just recently discovered this great project called NEU World Order that manages to marry music and sociopolitical messages in a wonderful package of information.

It is true that most people are too bored to try and listen, read or see anything outside their very limited interests and that is why they let themselves be stepped on. They will only go and see something controversial because it's popular (or in another sense, ad-forced on them) like Michael Moore's films; try to have a discussion with them about such a subject and they will immediately get defensive, bored or both.

It is a curse of our time that people spend so much time at work that when they return they do not want to bother themselves with learning. They are happy to watch TV or play video games, which is exactly what the powers that be would like you to do.

That is why this project seems so promising imho, the music is quite relaxed and smoothing but what you hear, even when you're not paying attention, is really powerful. You don't have to waste you active time but you can listen to it while working, reading or playing.

That is why I propose people start aggressively tagging this artist. That way when people play it on the last.fm gloval tag radio, it will pop up. My initial idea is to tag it as chill out but if you have another opinion I'd love to hear it.
I truly believe that everyone should listen to these songs, at least once. But even if you do not, take the few seconds required to tag it for the greater good.

Maybe this way, some people may discover it when they do not expect it. Perhaps the message contained within will strike a chord at a few more "sleepers".

Headbanging

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:29:13 +0000

I always felt that Machinae Supremacy's Rogue World Asylum would be excellent in a night club and I was not wrong. last week I brought a CD to the Final Destination that contained this song and the DJ, who is fast becoming my favorite, among others played the song.

I knew I was going the be headbanging to it, but I didn't expect a few other people to do so as well. 'Twas nice and at the heavy riff point it was better :)

Among others, the DJ played my favorite epic song, Ase Katw to Dikanno Giagia but I didn't have time to listen to Ρεμπέτης Μεταλλάς but the time will come soon :).

Why not to sign up with a major label

Thu, 24 May 2007 08:37:41 +0000

Now this is a very interesting article on why signing up with a major label is a very bad choice for fledging musicians.

Along with articles like this and this, it actually makes me wonder why people still help the recording industry cartel who's main actions lately seem to be stuff like killing the online radio, lie and sue into submission.

R@W: Machinae Supremacy - Webography

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 22:49:26 +0000

Wow, it's been almost a year after my last R@W , I've finally settled to my new City (and country) and I was itching to write a new one for a while now.

This time I have decided to take over a still pretty obscure band, Machinae Supremacy.To make it even more interesting, I decided not to review any of their albums but rather the songs they released freely on the web before that, excluding Jets'N'Guns OST which is a normal album as well.

The musical style of Machinae is what immediately draws attention.Not only because they use the Sidstation but the general melodies give them a truly unique feel.
A blend of melody and metal with a healthy sprinkle of Geekiness is what most of their early work is about. They truly deserve the term progressive as well. Some times you might feel the song is going to move into electronic territory but the Electric Guitar is a constant reminder that their roots are fimly into rocks.

Their lyrics as is to be expected, are not about love. The main issues they take up are either rebelious (such as Follower
or Legion of Stoopid), game-related (Arcade) or just plain weird. It's not always quite easy to get the general meaning of their songs as their lyrics are not always easy to understand.

My personal preference is to their instrumental songs over their normal ones but this mostly has to do with the fact that I can't get used to the voice of the singer. It just doesn't give the passion that is needed. I've yet to listen to their later works such as Redeemer, however so this aspect may have improved.

One such amazing Instumental song that immediately drew my attention is Cryosleep. The whole melody behind it transfers a very melancholic feeling to the listener.
This should of course be chased by Winterstorm which is on a similar vein but with lyrics this time ;)

Hero has become one of my favorites as well as it starts powerfully with an interesting riff and even includes a nice solo near the end in the classic spirit of rock.

For those nostalgic of those 8bit times long past, you'll be happily surprised by Steve's Quest whose happy sid-music is certain to brings back memories

Machinae seem to like doing strange covers for songs and for a rocker, any such covers are always an improvement. Starting with the charming phrase "Support your local terrorists" Sidstyler is on of those where you get the nice melody of Freestyler with a good dose of Metal and Sid. ;)

Of course thir review would not be complete unless I mentioned the Sidology trilogy. Three instrumental songs, the second of which goes on for 12 minutes, and the last one is just a trip into memory lane with covers of songs like the Arcanoid and Bubble Bobble theme songs...in metal! Fun!

Machinae Supremacy are now one of the newer bands I follow. I tend to listen to them frequently just because of the inherent geekiness of a band like that. The fact that they mix Rock/Metal into this makes them that much better.
I heartily propose any Geek with metal tendencies to check them out asap and anyone interested in interesting progressive bands should not miss them either. With the songs of this review available for free on their webpage, you have no excuse not to check them out.

The end of Last.fm Radio?

Sat, 3 Mar 2007 23:06:57 +0000

This is greatly disturbing.

If this passes it means a radio station would have to pay exorbant fees just to keep broadcasting. I don't think last.fm would be able to afford this even if every registered user was a subscriber.

Now I know some of you will say that last.fm is based in London, UK, but EU countries are usually quick to copy US based regulations.

Fight to get this greedy policy stopped before it destroys everyone's experience.

EDIT: Here's a good analysis on Techdirt