December 2007 Archives

[Moozik: Nine Inch Nails - Vessel]

Final five of ten albums released in 2007 that are worth a mention. The first five are here. So then, in no particular order of preference.

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

The Fragile and With Teeth, while both solid albums, left me a little underwhelmed. Fighting words for NIN fans I know, but that's my honest opinion. I've been a huge fan of Trent Reznor since I first heard Head Like A Hole all those years ago and always look forward to a new release. I loved this album from the very first listen. His best work since The Downward Spiral. Recommended track: The Good Soldier.

Interpol - Our Love To Admire

Interpol are reminiscent of Joy Division, but in a good way, and if you like that sort of thing - this is that sort of thing. I must admit that Our Love To Admire almost didn't make the list as there were a couple of other albums that I thought were just as good that I left out. But make the list it did as it's a solid album. Not quite as good as Turn On The Bright Lights and Antics but a worthy addition to anyone's music collection. Recommended track: The Heinrich Maneuver.

She Wants Revenge - This Is Forever

When I heard their debut album I could have sworn they were a Factory Records cover band. Seriously. What they do, they do very well though. References to Joy Division, Interpol, and Bauhaus are bound to be made but I love those bands so She Wants Revenge fit in quite nicely. Recommended track: Written In Blood.

The Mission - God Is A Bullet

One of my favorite bands with Gods Own Medicine featuring on that "if you were stuck on a desert island..." list. I was rather ambivalent towards Neverland, Blue, and Aura though and thought their best years were certainly behind them. When I read that Wayne was going to hook back up with Simon Hinkler and Julianne Regan for collaborations on The Mission's new album I had some new hope. And it was well founded. It's very much The Mish of old. Which is a good thing. Recommended track: To Love & To Kill With The Very Same Hands.

Mind.In.A.Box - Crossroads

Another band I'd never heard of until this year. Electronic certainly. Industrial? Maybe although I've seen them labeled as futurepop and progressive trance (whatever the hell those mean). Hard to really classify. It's one of those albums you just have to hear to appreciate. Vocoder vocal effects are used throughout and work very well. Excellent synth work. Good stuff indeed. Recommended track: What Used To Be.

[Moozik: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Took Out A Loan]

The first five of ten albums released in 2007 that are worth a mention. In no particular order of preference.

Dave Gahan - Hourglass

Dave's second solo album. I'll admit that I was so disappointed with Paper Monsters so was a little apprehensive about this one. I needn't have been worried at all. A fine synth/industrial album. Recommended track: Kingdom.

Editors - An End Has A Start

Had never even heard of them until this year. Certainly Editors are really the find of the year as far as I'm concerned. I like this album more than their first which is really saying something as The Back Room is an amazing album. Comparisons to Joy Division and Interpol are to be expected. But that's not a bad thing. Hard to recommend one track but you can't go far wrong with the title track.

The Birthday Massacre - Walking With Strangers

If Editors are the find of 2007, The Birthday Massacre were certainly the find of 2006. Their first album, Violet, is on my "If you were stuck on a desert island..." list. I'll admit that on first listen I felt underwhelmed. It didn't seem quite as good as their previous album but certainly grows on you. So much so that many of the tracks on this album are my favorite Massacre songs. Recommended track: Goodnight.

Skinny Puppy - Mythmaker

I'm a huge Puppy fan. I heard Assimilate many moons ago and never looked back. Over the years they've been a little hit and miss. After Too Dark Park, mostly miss. And then it looked like they'd never get back together. But they did and Greater Wrong Of The Right was born. And lo, it was good. So I was all rather excited when they released Mythmaker this year. They are totally on form on this album. cEvin Key's synth work is sublime and Ogre's lyrics are, well, they're Ogre ;-) Recommended track: Magnifishit.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81

And now for something a little different than I usually find myself listening to. Another band I'd never heard of until I saw them being played quite regularly by my last.fm brethren. Hard to describe. Rock certainly. Led Zep influence possibly with perhaps an occasional hint of Jesus and Mary Chain. I dunno, others will probably totally disagree with that description but that's what I hear. Recommended track: All You Do Is Talk.

[Moozik: Japan - Ghosts]

MTV stating that 2007 is the year the industry broke is amusing. Amusing because MTV itself hasn't exactly helped the cause by favoring 24 hour craptacular reality TV shows instead of, you know, actually showing music videos.

Just saying.

[Moozik: The Sisterhood - Jihad]

20 years ago I was watching Top of the Pops and happened to see a video from a band I'd never heard of before. The song was This Corrosion by The Sisters Of Mercy.

I was only 14 at the time and had never heard anything like it before. I was totally blown away. I saved all my pennies and bought Floodland on cassette. That same year I took my walkman on a school trip to Belgium and played Floodland to death.

It was only later that I learned of the history of the Sisters, Wayne leaving to form The Mission, and the sheer and utter brilliance of First and Last and Always. But Floodland is where it all started for me. Where my love of the Sisters started, and where I started getting into music from the oft-derided genre known as (ssshhh) goth.

The album itself has aged really well. I still love it as much today as I did then and often find myself playing it. The simple pounding bass of Lucretia My Reflection, the synth of Flood II, and the haunting vocals of Driven Like The Snow all work tremendously well.

[Moozik: Android Lust - Dragonfly]

With the lack of CD sales, those poor musicians just aren't making any money anymore. Cough. I wonder what the figures would be if they added in merchandising along with ticket sales?

1. The Police ($131.9 millon)

2. Kenny Chesney ($71.1 million)

3. Justin Timberlake ($70.6 million)

4. Celine Dion ($65.3 million)

5. Van Halen ($56.7 million)

6. Tim McGraw/Faith Hill ($52.3 million)

7. Rod Stewart ($49 million)

8. Genesis ($47.6 million)

9. Josh Groban ($43 million)

10. Rascal Flatts ($41.5 million)

[Moozik: The Sisters Of Mercy - Lights]

Last Thursday I bought an album from the iTunes Music Store and have been checking my bank account every day since to find out exactly how much they charged me.

So, it's now Monday and no transaction has appeared yet. At least I received an email receipt from them today to confirm my purchase, albeit four days old.

I wonder why it takes them so long? Every other online store I've used in the past couple of weeks charged me the same day and sent a confirmation email receipt immediately.

[Moozik: The Mission - Island In A Stream]

Except when we do.

An enterprising neighbour of mine didn't let lack of snow in Phoenix stop his daughter from having a snowball fight.

[Moozik: The Frozen Autumn - Faceless Names]

Perl 5.10 is now available and has some rather nice new features. Along with a faster interpreter with a smaller memory footprint, Perl now has a switch statement, a defined-or operator and a new smart match operator.

The defined-or operator // is handy as you no longer have to write

defined $a ? $a : $b

and can instead just write

$a // $b

The new smart match operator ~~ is a powerful new feature that just does the right thing depending on what its arguments are. Smart matching in detail has all the new implied matches. I love that you can use ~~ in such a wide variety of matching decisions.

Does my array contain the number 5?

if (@array ~~ 5) ...

Does my hash contain the word Simon?

if (%hash ~~ 'simon') ...

Does my variable contain the string bugger?

if ($variable ~~ 'bugger') ...

Are these two coderefs identical?

my $a = sub { print "howdy\n" };
my $b = sub { print "howdy\n" };

if ($a ~~ $b) ...

Oooh, handy Firefox extension of the day, Read it later.

I found that during the day (and especially at work), that I would run into sites and articles that I wanted to read, but couldn’t at that time. Mostly, I would just send the link to myself via email, and in the end, they would never get read because I’d lose it in my inbox. I needed a simple way to keep track of the things I wanted to read, but didn’t want to bookmark (at least not at first).

The man, the legend, Jeff Minter, resurrects his old Commodore VIC-20 in his latest blog post.

This is the ur-Vic in its Welsh expansion unit. This Vic is basically the origin of Llamasoft. The games that began Llamasoft were coded upon this actual Vic.

[Moozik: Epoxies - Radiation]

The search bar in iTunes is great. Except when it isn't. It doesn't handle The The at all well. Which is really annoying. So my The The albums are now in their own playlist. The only other thing I could think of would be to add Matt Johnson as the composer of each song and then search for Matt Johnson instead. All rather yucky really.

[Moozik: Fad Gadget - Salt Lake City Sunday]

A 61 year old Stallone running around the jungle. What could possibly go wrong? I must admit, I liked First Blood, even though the book was better. The Rambo series jumped the shark immediately thereafter.

It would appear there's still some jumping to be done.

[Moozik: The Sisters Of Mercy - Logic]

I don't have a Cherry Coke Zero problem. I can stop anytime I want to.

[Moozik: The Pogues - Streams Of Whiskey]

I remember buying Fairytale Of New York on 7" single when it came out many moons ago. I was 14. This year though after 20 years of playing it on the air, Radio1 decided to censor it. And then they decided not to censor it in an apparent moment of comedy gold.

The Radio 1 controller, Andy Parfitt, has reversed the decision to censor the Pogues' Christmas hit Fairytale of New York after the station was inundated with complaints by listeners.

In what could prove to be the shortest ban in pop history, Parfitt said the broadcaster was "wrong" to bleep the word "faggot" out of the 20-year-old duet with Kirsty MacColl.

Parfitt added that the unedited version of the song would be played from now on.

"After careful consideration I have decided that the decision to edit the Pogues song Fairy Tale of New York was wrong," he said.

[Moozik: Coil - Love's Secret Domain]

I spent the better part of the weekend burning my old VHS music videos to DVD. Yes, videos from back when MTV and VH1 actually played them. What a concept. Some of the videos I hadn't seen in years and it was a good trip down memory lane. What I found quite interesting was the wide range in quality of the video itself. Some bands seemed to at least put a little thought and effort into their videos whereas others not so much. To be honest, a lot of the videos simply made no sense at all ;-)

Some examples of good videos included New Order's True Faith, Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence, and Safety Dance by Men Without Hats (ahem, don't laugh). Some not so good examples and quite frankly, there were almost too many to pick from, included U2's New Years Day, Invisible Touch by Genesis, and Musical Youth's Pass The Dutchie.

I just admitted in public to having a Musical Youth video didn't I?

Anyway, the conversion to DVD was long overdue and now means no more bloody fast forwarding and instant access to the videos I actually want to see.

[Moozik: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Weapon Of Choice]

Yesterday's final exam marks the day that I thought would never get here. My last class before I graduate from University. It's been a looooong time coming. Balancing a job, life, class and homework is certainly a struggle. An immense weight has been lifted from my mind. Huge.

So what lies ahead in academia? For the immediate future, nothing. The Bachelor's in Computer Science will be it for a while. At some point a year or two down the road who knows. I might be in the mood to take a crack at my Master's. Maybe.

[Moozik:Siouxsie & The Banshees - Voodoo Dolly]

Great, another TV show that I actually like just got axed.

Journeyman.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The journey is coming to an end for NBC's freshman series "Journeyman."

NBC had until Tuesday to give a full-season pickup to the time-travel drama starring Kevin McKidd. The network let that option lapse, practically canceling the series, which posted its lowest adults 18-49 rating (1.7 rating/8 share) on Monday without a "Heroes" lead-in. The network already tried out fellow rookie "Life" in "Journeyman"'s Monday 10 p.m. slot last week.

Despite the Hollywood writers strike, "Journeyman" was able to complete its 13-episode order.

The remaining two original segments will air as scheduled, an NBC spokeswoman said.

[Moozik: Sister Machine Gun - Addiction]

Your congress, working on the important issues in America. H. Res. 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

Dec 11, 2007: This bill passed in the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority. The totals were 372 Ayes, 9 Nays, 50 Present/Not Voting.

[Moozik: Front 242 - U-Men]

I've never really been a fan of Led Zeppelin. A bit before my time and not really the kind of music I was into when I was younger. That being said, whenever one of their songs came on the radio I must admit that I didn't change the channel.

So, as the whole planet knows by now, they played their reunion gig in London on Monday night. I was talking to my Dad at the weekend and we were wondering how Robert Plant's voice would hold up. I'd read some rumors that he'd been struggling in rehearsal and my Dad said he'd seen him in a supermarket a while back and he looked really old. When Fleetwood Mac got back together, Lindsey Buckingham's voice was a shadow of it's former self so was really hoping that time had been kind to Mr Plant.

As I was driving into Phoenix this morning they happened to play one of the songs from Monday night's gig on the radio. Robert's voice was spot on. And they sounded really good. I've since read some of the concert reviews and they've all given a universal thumbs up. The multi-multi million dollar world tour announcement can only be weeks away at this point.

[Moozik: The Cure - One Hundred Years (live 1985)]

I got a reminder of those English winter mornings of my youth. Grass crunchy underfoot? Check. Frost on rooftops? Check. Fog? Check. Heater blasting in car? Check. Brrr.

[Moozik: Motor - Botox]

So there I was, whining that Editors were skipping Arizona. I need not have worried.

Editors will also be playing the following venues as part of the US Tour:

Salt Lake City - Avalon Theater, UT, on Sat 2nd February
Tempe - Marquee Theatre, AZ, on Tues 12th February

So, to Tempe then.

[Moozik: Sonic Youth - Purr]

I knew that Peter Garrett had focused on politics since Midnight Oil disbanded, but this totally escaped me until today. He's Australia's new environment minister.

For 25 years Peter Garrett was the frontman of Midnight Oil, an Australian rock band known for its raucously loud music and protest songs about social and environmental issues. Then the bald 6ft 6in singer hung up his microphone, disbanded the group and exchanged his rock star clothes for the sombre suits of a politician.

After a meteoric rise through the ranks of Australia's Labor party, he was yesterday named environment minister in the newly elected government. The 54-year-old said he was "excited and humbled" by the opportunity.

[Moozik: Sonic Youth - 100%]

Earlier today I got a call from Qwest. It was an automated message informing me that products or services I'd recently ordered had been completed and my service was ready for use. All rather puzzling since I had neither ordered products nor requested service. So I called them to ask what happened.

Turns out my DSL service has been upgraded from 5MB/sec to 7MB/sec today. On a Sunday. For free. Which, quite frankly, rocks and I told the customer service tech as much after thanking her ;-)

[Moozik: Pixies - Debaser]

I haven't been to Blackpool since I was young. I do have some really fond memories though. And oddly enough one of the things I remember most is obtaining my first ever Kraftwerk album on cassette in a record shop there. Oh, and the arcades. As a wee nipper on holiday, arcades were my life.

But most of all, I remember the Blackpool Illuminations. It would be many years before I'd see the bright lights of Las Vegas so for the time, the illuminations were, as they say, the bollocks. So, I did enjoy having a gander at the Blackpool Illuminations photos on Flickr this morning.

[Moozik: Siouxsie & The Banshees - Tenant]

Do you remember back in the good old days when receipts were small and concise? They served as proof of purchase and gave you only the important info you might need to know later on. Why then, do stores now insist on giving me receipts that are close to 2 feet long? I don't want to take your survey, I don't care about any specials or coupons or anything else you could possibly wish to tell me for that matter.

I was in Sears last night and I kid you not, for the privilege of buying two shirts, I was given a 5 page extravaganza. The girl behind the counter actually looked rather embarrassed as the thing kept printing and printing. She said she was sorry as she handed me my essay receipt.

[Moozik: Editors - Open Your Arms]

Seriously, have you ever seen Dubya squirm this much? How uncomfortable does that man look?

For more comedy gold, look no further.

[Moozik: Fluke - Expo]

The thumbs up, thumbs down post from the past few week's DVDs.

Spider-Man 3. Loved the first movie. Thought the second was meh so resisted watching SM3 until now. Unfortunately I found this one all rather ho-hum as well really. Action sequences were good at least. Felt embarrassed for Tobey Maguire in the middle of the movie. If you've watched it, you'll know the part of the movie I mean. Watch again? No.

Mr Brooks. This one I already saw in the cinema. The fact that I watched it again should tell you that I liked it. Kevin Costner is actually really quite good, as is William Hurt. Surprisingly Dane Cook didn't make me want to slap him. Watch again? Yes.

Ocean's Thirteen. Eleven was amusing. Twelve was a trainwreck. So I was a little apprehensive about Thirteen. And rightly so. Better than twelve but to be honest, that's not saying much. I so wanted Eddie Izzard to say death by tray it shall be. Watch again? No.

Live Free or Die Hard. In the mindless entertainment department, I don't actually mind the Die Hard movies. Are they unrealistic? Yes. Are they fun to watch? Yes. So, the latest outing for Mr Willis is, well, it's ok. The things I didn't like: overdone CGI, totally unrealistic "hacking" meme, and Kevin Smith. I'm sorry, he's made some good movies but that doesn't mean that the bloke can act. Things I did like: as with all Die Hard movies, it entertained me. Watch again? Yes, if given enough time.

Ratatouille. In recent years I don't think there has been a Pixar movie that I haven't liked. And Ratatouille is no exception. I thought it was really quite funny and the animation is just spectacular. Watch again? Yes.

[Moozik: Curve - Lilies Dying]

ORA-00979: not a GROUP BY expression

Which in general means that you haven't accounted for all your select expressions in your group by clause. Except when it doesn't mean that at all. Like today. I actually had an error in my order by clause and my group by was completely fine.

[Moozik: Editors - Lights]

Not every movie Christian Bale is in turns to gold, but I must admit that I'm a fan and was pleasantly surprised to read he may star in the next Terminator movie. I really hope it doesn't suck.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Christian Bale is in negotiations to star in "Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins," the fourth installment of the hit science fiction series.

"T4's" story, by David Campbell Wilson, John Brancato and Michael Ferris, focuses on John Connor, now in his 30s, as he leads what is left of the human race against the machines.

[Moozik: The Sisters Of Mercy - Burn]

Stephen Fry's latest post made me giggle this morning.

How come we British are just about the only nation on earth who have to make the tedious and entirely unnecessary three extra keystrokes every time we type a URL? I could be stephen.fr in France, stephen.za in South Africa, stephen.ru in Russia, stephen.nl in Holland, etc, etc, but here? Oh no, it’s stephen dot co dot bloody uk. How annoying is that?

All right, not very in the great scheme of things, but nonetheless, who was responsible for getting us trapped into it? Did they think the nation was getting an extra fancy couple of initials which would lend a commercial gravitas that might be equivalent to America’s .com? Well, they were deluding themselves if that’s what they believed. All they got was the puzzled contempt of other nations. Let’s fight for a pure .uk, I say. The BBC can lead the way by becoming bbc.com now that they’ve finally bought the domain.

This could be the campaign that finally unites our apparently fractured and broken society. Hurrah.uk letitbeso.uk.