A while ago I was reporting the release of theStart's latest album, Ciao Baby, and the disappointing direction of their singing. I've revisited them and noticed that Aimee Echo, Jamie Miller and Chelsea Davis started a new band called Normandie which sounds very much like the old theStart, at least from the songs they've published on their MySpace site. Here is a clip from YouTube as well:

Kanon Wakeshima has a cool cello and voice song, taken from the soundtrack of an anime, of course, but still, a pretty cool song: Kanon Wakeshima - Suna No Oshiro




Emilie Autumn
has some really nice instrumental songs, like the one I put here, and some nice voice songs. Unfortunately I don't like the instrumentation of the voice songs. I am still looking for a perfect crazy electric violin and voice song, but it may be that singing and playing the violin is impossible or at least too difficult. So here is Emilie Autumn - Manic Depression:

I've remembered this song when reading a review of the third movie in the Lost Boys franchise and watching its trailer. Really, you should watch the first one. The others two are a probably a completely different thing. I haven't watched them, yet. The remade version of the song in the trailer immediately rekindled some of the feelings I had when watching as a kid the atmospheric original film; this is proof of its value, I believe. Also, many artists have covered the song in different and interesting ways, listed below.

I will not get into the whole "Poor Corey Haim" thing, I didn't really have much love for the guy, but in Lost Boys he was cool. Here is the song, with a fan made video:


Some nice covers from the tube:
by Ashford Twins
by Blutengel
by Nikki McKibbin
by Carfax Abbey
by Ventana

Enjoy.

It's been a while since I've last posted some music. This is not the kind of music I would listen to, mostly, but it is all Japanese music, 5 seconds of each band, a lot of bands. I thought it was a nice overview of a type of music I know almost nothing about. Enjoy!

The concert was supposed to start at 21:00 and end at 23:00, so at about 20:57 my friends started saying that the show will probably start at 22:00, because "all the bands" do this. Three minutes later, AC/DC started singing. I could have synchronised my watch by them. Also, at 23:00 they left the stage. The entire show was professional to the second, things worked almost perfectly, the coreography of their stage actions being totally in sync with the cameras, lights and other props.

I am not a great fan of the Aussie band, I like their music, but I only used to listen to their music when I was a child and I was falling asleep on Highway to Hell. Maybe that's why I thought that song and For Those About to Rock were the best of the songs and the rest weren't even close. But they were good enough.

I thought the vocal didn't quite have it in him, since after about an hour, the guitarist started a solo that lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. The energy in that man (Angus) puts me to shame and would have put me to shame even when I was a teen! While the audience was stuglling with the uncharacteristic cold weather and freezing wind, Angus Young was running around in his underwear, playing the guitar as he did so.

Here is a video from the event. Hav fun!

[youtube:ruBvN3QhRxM]

I haven't posted a music entry in quite some time, but this will compensate. Here are three female singers and some very good songs:

Cosmic Love from Florence and the Machine. You might also want to listen to The Drumming Song



The Girl you Lost to Cocaine from Sia. You might also want to listen to Buttons, with a fun video.



Hollywood from Marina and the Diamonds. She is a very prolific song writer and I like many of her songs. Not to mention she has a voice I love and she's cute as well. You might also want to listen to Mowgli's Road

Here is a small funny video combining music and science in a geeky mix. I know, the music could have been less 80's rap and the dancing... well, could have been dancing. I mean, if even I noticed a lack thereof, it must really have been awful. But then it wouldn't have been geeky enough, right ;)

A while ago I was blogging about a Romanian jazzy band called DuteVino. They didn't have an album, just leaked songs over the web, and they sounded rather nice with their female singer having a wide voice range.

After quite a while, they are releasing their first album, "0.1 Prototype", maybe a subtle irony to their lack of activity these past three years, or something to do with all the 2.0s clogging the names of new media. The album itself is formed of their songs so far and, hopefully, it means they plan another soon enough. Nice enough, it is freely downloadable from their site.

The release is due on Friday, December 4th, at 21:30, at Control Club. More information on their official site. If you have difficulties seeing the site, look for a popup poll (which is actually not a popup, but on the edge of the screen) and close it.

If you watched one of the episodes of Rescue Me you possibly have noticed that there is a cool song in the opening. It is Com'on Com'on by Von Bondies. Here is a live performance for Letterman's Show:

Yay! Post 600! I will post about a new song that you have certainly heard during movie trailers or if you watched Requiem for a Dream: Lux Aeterna, composed by Clint Mansell. No video for this one, even if the embed is from YouTube.

It's just nice and hints on the rithm of development of both myself and the blog ;) Have fun!

Ok, would I like to make a music video and then all the people watching it on YouTube instead of buying the record? Well... actually yes! If they like the song they will either buy the record or download it from a peer to peer network. And it beats people NOT watching my videos and listening to my songs.

I may not be the perfect example of a musician, since I don't sing, play or dance, but still, what happens on YouTube just doesn't make sense: Most of the cool videos of original songs were deleted! Even those with scenes from movies and such. Are actually the band members surfing the net, fishing for videos of their band and requesting their removal? NO! It's (again) the distribution companies, the record companies, that think this is some sort of way of either

1. decrease piracy
2. make some money out of Google

. And , at least for me, this makes me even less likely to apreciate that band and buy their album.

It all reminds me of what happened in my home country of Romania. After the revolution, nobody could be bothered with copyright laws, therefore the streets were littered with people selling pirated CDs. Then the economic stability brought some law enforcement (and widespread Internet) and now you can't find pirated CDs on the street anymore. Do people buy more music albums now?

In the end it is all about the ease of purchase. If you stumble upon a nice CD from a band you love, you will buy it, provided you actually use a CD player anymore. No one goes out of their way to a store specifically for music unless they are collectors. It's so much easier to just watch TV, listen to the radio or watch/listen to their Internet versions. Online stores are not much better. They anally query for all of your personal details in order to buy a crappy thing. It may work for electronics, but not for data!

Probably some day a brilliant idea - like combining IM identities with pay later accounts, or maybe vending machines with USB ports and touchscreens to load any music on your MP3 player for a fixed fee - will work, but until then, people will do what is the easiest thing to do. I mean, if writing music CDs and then distributing them is so damn expensive, why should I pay for it when getting the music online?

Do I feel a little guilty for listening to music and not paying for it? Yeah. But not that much.

The finale of what seemed to become my favourite sci-fi series ever (at its beginning) left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Not only it makes no sense, but it is overall incredibly idiotic. If you haven't watched the end of the series, don't read further, because this is the mother of all ranty spoilers ever.

What makes it so emotional for me is not only that I really liked the show, but that this was not a show that was ended because of lack of planning or budget or the economical crisis, so nothing was rushed or changed. This was "meant to happen". And it sucked! Sucked worse that a vampire caught in the event horizon of a black hole that is falling into another black hole!

Not only did it not explain anything in a manner that would make sense to me, but instead it went completely overboard on all the things that I hated in the show. God exists, he somehow planned all this (oh, yeah, real modesty here, mr. Moore!), the model 6 in Gaiuses head was an angel, so was Kara Thrace, in the end they all reach Earth (this Earth) and decide to leave all technology behind (they throw the ships in the sun!!!) in the hope that starting anew would make them "break the cycle" and Hera became the chromosomal mother of all future humans. I guess leaving all that technology behind wasn't a good survival strategy for the rest of the 38000 people left alive, was it?!

If everything was God's plan, then there was no cycle except in its brain!! Forgetting mistakes is NOT a step towards not repeating them. Leaving behind technology is just as stupid! And ending the show with a couple of angels walking on Earth now and making bets on if we repeat the mistakes again or not, with background videos of the latest developments in robotics was.... there is no word in the English language for it. It is dumber than creationist! And the last half of the last episode was all about people saying goodbye to one another then going to live alone (read DIE!!) somewhere!

There is a glimmer of hope left though. The centurions were given their freedom and the last baseship. I will be looking at the sky hoping for them to return, nuke Moore and then air an all Cylon TV show about how they didn't repeat any mistake and just carried on!! Gods, this was frakking retarded!

And, of course, there is one more good thing in the series, and that is the Bear McCreary's remix of Bob Dylan's/Jimmi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower. I am embedding the video with the cool transition from simple piano to all the instruments. Pretty cool!.

Guess what? F***ing YouTube removed the video because of a copyright infringement. What? One minute and a half of a movie scene? Geez! Couldn't find the same scene, so I am embedding All Along The Watchtower.

[youtube:qMo7WybtTWI]

The sound bit of the scene, sans the scene, can be found here. You can also see the live performance of the song here. You might also want to try Bob Dylan's original song.

Update: check out this Google event with McCreary playing the BSG theme with Raya Yarbrough as the vocalist.

I heard a bit of this song in a super market and remembered it and couldn't get it out of my head. The funny thing is that when I listened to it properly, it didn't sound so good as I remembered it... Is there another version or is my memory playing tricks on me?

Anyway, here it is, British singer Bryan Ferry playing with his band Roxy Music.

You probably know Melissa Auf der Maur as the bassist of the band Hole. She was the cute skinny redhead. She also toured with Smashing Pumpkins for a while. I don't remember where I've heard of her, but I got her album and listened to it and I really enjoyed it. Here is a taste of her music from her (so far) only album Auf der Maur.

About a second album, I am quoting Wikipedia:In a 2007 interview, Auf der Maur announced that she had finished her second solo album which would go hand in hand with a graphic novel and a concept film, the release dates of which are unclear. The album will be released under the name of MAdM, whereas the comic and film will go by Out of Our Minds, or OOOM for short. A website containing teasers of the projects, as well as a movie trailer, was launched in August, 2007 and can be found at xMAdMx.com

Enjoy!

I've listened to this song for a long time now, it was only proper that it would appear on my blog sooner or later. Sandra Nasic sang for Guano Apes and after the band split she released a solo album in 2007 called The Signal which features some good songs, although a little mellow for my taste. You can listen to fragments of some of Sandra's songs on her MySpace site, visit her official site or just plain google for videos like I do :)

So listen to this symphonic Sandra Nasic sound. I wish she would have done more pieces like this.