June 2007 Archives

[Moozik: Killing Joke - This Tribal Antidote]

2007 looks like a busy year of solo projects for both former and current Depeche Mode members. In a little over a week, Alan's new Recoil album, Subhuman, comes out. I've heard some previews and I'm really looking forward to it. Then later in the year, Dave Gahan will release his second solo album, Hourglass. From the press release.

While Depeche Mode is catching their breath, Gahan recently returned to the studio to record an array of songs that would become Hourglass. Created without the pressure of a deadline, Gahan wrote and produced all the songs in collaboration with Christian Eigner (drums) and Andrew Phillpott (guitars) of the Depeche Mode touring band. They worked at Gahan's 11th Floor Studios in his adopted hometown of NYC where he's lived for the past 10 years. Tony Hoffer, known for his work with Beck, Air, the Kooks and the Fratellis, has been tapped to mix the album in July.

Gahan says Hourglass is more electronic-sounding than Paper Monsters, "but we were very aware of the importance of keeping urgency in the sound and a feeling of spontaneity. We didn't want to get bogged down in trying to make everything sound perfect. You want to keep the rough edges."

Gahan adds: "Christian plays drums and Andrew can easily find his way around bass and guitar - and then we're basically cutting all this stuff up and fucking with it by using ProTools, effects and all kinds of stuff. Accidents do happen, and they're good."

[Moozik: The Damned - Wait For The Blackout]

Sometime last year I caught the tail end of the Flight of the Conchords' comedy special on HBO and absolutely loved it. I made a mental note at the time to pay attention to anything they do in the future. Well, so much for that as I totally missed the start of their new series. I think I have some catching up to do.

There are some decent clips on YouTube of course. Totally my sense of humor ;-)

[Moozik: The Sisters of Mercy - Something Fast]

I've enjoyed reading chromatic's When I Am Emperor series of rants. To date, my fave has been DVD Commercial Inventors.

When I am emperor, I will find out who invented unskippable commercials that play automatically at the start of DVDs and I will force them to manage rooms full of dozens of toddlers who want to watch their movies but have to wait for ten to fifteen minutes of unskippable commercials to finish — commercials for other fun-looking, but truthfully inane, movies that aren't even out yet, or are no longer available. Then the toddlers will attempt to watch the same movie, but the power will keep going out five minutes into it, resetting the DVD player and forcing them to start over with the commercials.

All day.

Every day.

Toddlers.

It won't fix things, but I will feel better — and I don't even have children.

[Moozik: Rammstein - Mein Teil]

The Cure announced the dates for their 2007 North American tour yesterday. And quite absent from the schedule is a stop in Arizona. Which is rather lame and I'm really quite disappointed. I've been a Cure fan for the last 18 years or so and have never managed to catch them live. I'd heard rumors that they were touring this year and I thought perhaps 2007 would be my year where I would finally catch up with them.

[Moozik: Cabaret Voltaire - Automotivation]

Hmm, I see that the Mesa Amphitheatre has just announced that Muse will be popping in to say hello in September. Nice.

[Moozik: Clock DVA - Bitstream]

I've lived here in the US for just over ten years now and I've come to the conclusion that no matter how many times you experience something, there are going to be things that you never quite get used to.

Guns. Standing in the queue at Walgreens waiting to pay and the bloke in front of me has a gun in a holster attached to his belt. Obviously there are gun shops and people are allowed to own guns but there's something a little creepy about taking your gun with you while you go get your prescription refilled. I dunno, maybe it's just me.

Heat. Currently it's 108°f outside and they're predicting 114°f tomorrow. Which, you know, is a little warm. I think I mention this every year so didn't want 2007 to feel left out.

Truck nuts. Seriously. WTF?

[Moozik: Ultravox - Quiet Men]

At the end of last month I mentioned that the great American Summer Teevee Wasteland had begun. Turns out I was wrong. Two programmes that managed to hook me last season, The Closer and Big Love, have returned. The new season of Big Love aired last week and The Closer season premier airs tomorrow.

Oh, and there are brand spanking new programmes that I'm a bit partial to as well. John From Cincinnati and Traveler are really interesting and have a lot of potential. Here's hoping the teevee execs don't pull the plug on those two prematurely and actually let them develop.

[Moozik: Lead Into Gold - Faster Than Light]

I do actually hope they do a better job than David Chase did with The Sopranos. At least, I hope it's not quite as boring. The creators of Lost spoke this week at the Promax/BDA conference .

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Three days after the controversial finale of "The Sopranos," the two creators of "Lost" on Wednesday promised that their hit ABC drama would not conclude in similarly murky fashion.

We will not be ending with a blackout," said Carlton Cuse, referring to the black screen that delivered an unresolved ending to HBO's mob drama.

He and Damon Lindelof told electronic-media professionals at the annual Promax/BDA conference that they fleshed out a plan for the last three seasons of "Lost" during a recent writers' "minicamp."

"Lost" will end in spring 2010 after 48 hourlong episodes, 16 per season. Lindelof said "Lost" has to move from asking more questions to answering the questions posed during the series' run.

"Obviously, we can't wait to the 48th hour to say, 'Here are all the mysteries of the show,"' Lindelof said. But Cuse also noted the reality of the sometimes vociferous and heavily engaged viewership of the show, which uses the Web to advance theories and post explanations and even freeze-frames to parse further meaning.

"I'm not sure there is any ending that will satisfy everyone," Cuse said. "Our hope is that the ending will be ... the logical conclusion of the story."

[Moozik: Blancmange - Don't Tell Me]

Mike Gravel, a candidate for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for President, produces quite possibly the creepiest campaign ad I think I've ever seen.

[Moozik: Chris & Cosey - Sacred Silence]

Years of "no one will ever know, out of sight out of mind, it won't be our problem anyway" may finally be catching up with us. And it's all rather disturbing actually.

First up, plastic ocean.

Returning to Southern California from Hawaii after a sailing race, Moore had altered Alguita’s course, veering slightly north. He had the time and the curiosity to try a new route, one that would lead the vessel through the eastern corner of a 10-million-square-mile oval known as the North Pacific subtropical gyre. This was an odd stretch of ocean, a place most boats purposely avoided. For one thing, it was becalmed. “The doldrums,” sailors called it, and they steered clear. So did the ocean’s top predators: the tuna, sharks, and other large fish that required livelier waters, flush with prey. The gyre was more like a desert—a slow, deep, clockwise-swirling vortex of air and water caused by a mountain of high-pressure air that lingered above it.

It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.

How did all the plastic end up here? How did this trash tsunami begin? What did it mean? If the questions seemed overwhelming, Moore would soon learn that the answers were even more so, and that his discovery had dire implications for human—and planetary—health. As Alguita glided through the area that scientists now refer to as the “Eastern Garbage Patch,” Moore realized that the trail of plastic went on for hundreds of miles. Depressed and stunned, he sailed for a week through bobbing, toxic debris trapped in a purgatory of circling currents. To his horror, he had stumbled across the 21st-century Leviathan. It had no head, no tail. Just an endless body.

It is no secret that the U.S. military has used the ocean as trashcan for munitions in the past. Peter discussed at the Old DSN how federal lawmakers were pressing the US Army to reveal everything it knows about a massive international program to dump chemical weapons off homeland and foreign shores. "The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels."

I was eating my lunch when I watched this and I found myself with my mouth open mid-bite. This bloke is amazing.

[Moozik: Sultans Of Ping F.C - Back In A Tracksuit]

Ok, the demo of photosynth is mighty impressive.

[Moozik: Blancmange - Living On The Ceiling]

The very last Sopranos episode aired tonight. Wow. Quite possibly the worst ending to a TV show I've ever seen. An entire country stares at the TV screen and says in unison, "You have got to be fucking kidding me!". Mental note so self, avoid anything remotely associated with David Chase from this point on.

Update: In hindsight, avoiding anything with David Chase's name on it was perhaps a little harsh.

[Moozik: Type O Negative - Be My Druidess]

I had the day off from work today to go into the University to take my writing competency test. The test involved being shut in a room with some paper and a pen for two hours. In that two hours I had to write a critical essay on the distribution of wealth in America.

This was interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly I can't remember the last time I've had to actually write an essay on paper. With a pen. My handwriting is something approaching unreadable at the best of times so I had to really struggle to make my essay somewhat legible. Secondly, compared with typing, I write soooooo slowly. I'd never really paid any attention to that until today. Perhaps it was because I was really trying to write neatly. And lastly, no auto spelling or grammar checking. Thankfully they provided a dictionary. I also can't remember the last time I actually used a proper (i.e non online) dictionary.

I think it all went well. Thankfully I did know the topic at hand before today so I was able to research and prepare. My "packet" will now be sent to the English department on the main University campus to be graded. I'll find out next week whether I passed. This test is a prerequisite for my final English course so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[Moozik: Rammstein - Engel]

Dear CNN/MSNBC,

Please provide more coverage of Paris Hilton today. You haven't quite yet become 'Us Weekly' magazine so you still have a little work to do. For example, you had the nerve to stop talking about Paris for about half an hour this morning. Shame on you, do you honestly think people want to hear the actual news?

Yours sincerely.

Kevin Spencer

[Moozik: Angels & Agony - Surrender]

This morning before work I took my dogs out for a walk. Nothing unusual about that. But this morning, in a stunning attempt at comedy gold, I decided to liven things up a little.

My dog Foster decided that he didn't really fancy walking directly into a tree trunk and started moving to the right in order to avoid his moment of comedy gold. In doing so, his lead somehow got caught on my knee and I ended up bumping into his rear end.

What I did next can only really be described as making a total wanker out of myself. I sort of slipped, tripped, and bumped my own legs together while waving my arms around. This all ended with me falling flat on my face.

Of course, there were people watching. It's at this point when you realize that whatever you say or do cannot take away how much of a spaz you just made of yourself. So I just laughed, got up off the floor, and did a little bow to my five neighbours and mumbled something like "thanks, I'll be here all week".

I then walked as fast as is humanly possible around the corner in order to die of embarrassment. Oh yes, good times.

[Moozik: The Sisters Of Mercy - Ribbons]

Rather long but really interesting Google TechTalk by Jeff Minter. It was really cool to take a wee trip down memory lane as Jeff created some of the earliest games I ever played on the Commodore 64. Seeing his career in a nutshell was really quite fun as Jeff went through early Llamasoft titles such as Revenge Of The Mutant Camels through to his most recent XBOX360 game Space Giraffe.

And I must say, Space Giraffe does seem all rather old skool Llamasoft and may yet be another reason why I buy a 360.

Update: And the man has a blog too.

[Moozik: New Order - Dream Attack]

Wow. Is this song really 20 years old? I remember buying this on 7" single when it came out. Yes, you young whippersnappers - on vinyl.

[Moozik: Depeche Mode - Rush (live)]

Ohh, the Movable Type 4 beta is available for download. I think I might just have to have a play around with that. Quite like the new look from the early screenshots.

[Moozik: Jesus Jones - Trust Me]

Is it June 29th yet? Must stop drooling...

[Moozik: The Cramps - I Was A Teenage Werewolf]

I'm a Survivor fan. There, I said it. It's my weekly TV guilty pleasure and the only reality TV programme that's even remotely watchable. There are four or five like minded fans in my office and every Friday morning we have a pow wow about the previous night's episode.

So, last night, the creators of Survivor aired their new reality programme, Pirate Master. A kind of Survivor but with Pirates. Pirates you say? How could it go wrong? Well, turns out a number of ways actually and the general consensus this morning in the office was "oh my god did that suck".

They tried far too hard, far too early. The contestants (sorry, Pirates) gave far to many fake "woohoos" and "yeaaaaahs" whenever there was the slightest mention of anything Piratey or treasury. Far too much emphasis was placed on letting us know who the "edgy" contestants (sorry, Pirates) were in the first 30 mins or so instead of letting us figure that out for ourselves over the course of the next few weeks a-la Survivor.

The first "challenge" involved paddling a boat up a river, unlocking a padlock, and finding a chest on the riverbed. Yawn. We didn't really care who won or who lost - it was far too early for that. Yet they insisted on making sure we saw exactly how upset the losing team were.

Needless to say, I bailed. Dear CBS, you owe me 35 minutes of my life back.