Update: the band released their first album in December 2009

Last month I blogged about the Romanian band called duteVino. On the 8Th of March they had a concert in Suburbia and I decided I should go.

The bar is nice. It is slightly smaller than Fire, but a little classier, with small tables and taburets on one side and with a more open space (less colonnades). I got there with my wife and a friend and hunted the chairs until we had some table space.

The band started singing soon enough and they sounded really nice. The girl vocal has it all: the looks, the voice, the nicety. The band itself is made of four people and, since I am not a musician, I can't comment on the quality of their instrumentation. They sounded OK to me. duteVino played (I think) all the songs from their upcoming album, ten in total, and Gruv they left for the encore piece.



Unfortunately, the sound engineer was a moron. It's not like you can find good sound engineers anywhere on the street, but at least find one with guts! You see, the "chicken" way is to maximize the sound of instruments and minimize the sound of the vocal. In this way, even if there is faltering in the voice, most people won't realize it. Or at least I think that's the explanation why most concerts leave you almost deaf from the sound of the instruments while you struggle to understand (or even hear, as was the case here) what the vocal says.

The result here was that the voice of the singer was almost inaudible and I wonder if I would have enjoyed the concert if I didn't know some of the songs beforehand.
All in all, I like the band. I won't call myself a fan, but I will try to buy their album, nonetheless.

Ok, let me feed my weird side. This is the soundtrack of a very nice anime series, itself spun from an anime movie called Ghost in the Shell. The series was called GITS - Stand Alone Complex and this was the opening song. This is not the official video for this song, especially since it depicts images from the movie, not the series, but I liked it better. Enjoy!

The original video was removed from YouTube, this is another, same song.

[youtube:h71xGNXpRVo]

Inner Universe - GITS SAC OST
Composed by Yoko Kanno
Performed by Origa
Click here for lyrics and details.
You can also download the manga for Ghost in the Shell and its sequel (GITS 2 :) ) at narutocommunity.net, after a very annoying registration and a lot of popups (or javascript errors).
Try these direct download links, although they might not work:
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell 2
Warning: don't use multiple connections or download accelerators. This site only allows one connection from one IP, apparently.

And here is Making of a Cyborg, by Kenji Kawai, the original soundtrack for the movie.

[youtube:-u77XdL8_B4]

I don't usually enjoy live performances better than the studio sound. I am sorry, I know that there is a completely different atmosphere, that the true quality of the artist is revealed in live concerts and that the creativity and spontaneity of the band or singer can only be seen face to face, but the sound is usually worse and the way it comes out not usually exactly what the artist wanted or expected.
But this particular performance from American band Evanescence was very emotional and it moved me, even from a recording on YouTube. Enjoy!

Evanescence - Taking Over Me - live at Rock am Park

theSTART are a Rock / New Wave / Electronica band from Sudden Valley, California, as it writes on their mySpace web site. They also have an official website. I've discovered them quite a long while ago, but back then I didn't use to put images and video to the blog. Anyway, without further ado here is the videoclip to the song Gorgeous, by theSTARt. I hope you enjoy it.


Yesterday, the video worked, today it's stuck on "Loading". Just in case you experience the same problem, here are the available videos with theStart.

Have you ever wondered how these beautiful girls and boys appear suddenly on your TV, singing a completely meaningless song while looking like they're having the time of their life? And how they seem to overwhelm the TV, then the radio, then appear in tabloids, then completely disappear? Where is a small tutorial on how to make your own!


The clip is from a movie called Before the Music Dies (or B4MD, how they chose to shortcut it) that exposes the bad things in the music industry today. Here is the link to the IMDb entry for the movie. I will see it as soon as I can and review it, then update this post.

Update: their official site is not valid anymore and there hasn't been activity on their myspace page hasn't been changed from mid 2006.

A while ago I got this song from a friend of mine, it was called gruv.mp3. No id tag, nothing about the origin of the song. I thought it was nice, but it bothered me that I didn't know who the hell sang it and, of course, where I should get more. Finally, after searching for the lyrics on Google every one month or so, I finally found out who the band was.

They are called duteVino and they are from Romania, mind you. They are singing in English, though, and there is almost no accent whatsoever. The genre of their songs is something like Alternative/Funk/Jazz. Visit their myspace site to get a feel for their music.

How about some pop-rock music for a change? Of course I am depressed all the time if I only listen to sad music. Here is a nice, pop, rock, sexy, jiggly song from a Finnish band called LAB (their official site at labplanet.net is down, the band is disbanded): Beat the Boys



If you liked this, you might want to check two other LAB videos: Machine Girl and When Heaven Gets Dirty
Update:
I've gotten all their songs and they rock! This band is like a better Garbage! Original and strong. I just love their songs.

Update:
It's so difficult to find the band members without knowing more than Ana's first name and Pekka "Splendid" Laine having quite a common name. It doesn't help that they are Finnish, either. The story, as far as I can ascertain is that the members split up and went their separate way. Ana and Splendid worked on an album together that was supposedly finished in 2009, but was never released. Their new band is not called LAB anymore, but "Rain Hill", another commonly found name on the Internet, although not as bad as Lab, I guess. Their band page shows activity in early 2013 and even two songs that I cannot find anywhere for free, but their previews are pretty cool. It smells like another failed project. That is so bad.

Anyway, the links to the new band's Facebook page is this and the link to their official (and horrible) web site is this, where you can also listen to two 30 second previews.

Check out the newly released Coma video, to celebrate the release of the new album on the 30 of november in Club Fire, Bucharest, Romania!