Enjoy Web 2.0!

Another site of mine started up a few weeks ago. It's one of those social websites where anyone can share information. Right now I'm using it to keep notes about Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series. Others use it to document their role-playing game campaigns. For fun, I've also started a list of good Sawyer quotes from Lost.

So check out the Codex of Universes!

Enjoy This Clean-up

Our blogger workaround to create categories was being exploited by some punks, but I cleaned it up.

Envision Toronto

Check out the Envision Toronto website for a great way to explore scenes from this great city of ours. It uses Google Maps to let you navigate around the city map and click on markers that show you pictures from that part of the city.

See an artist painting with chalk on a city street. See a picture of the Scarborough Bluffs in the fall. Find the Dutch Ice Cream Shop. Check out pictures of the Caribanna parade. And all these pics are located on the city map where they happened.

Brilliant.

[Hear THIS!] Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere

Rating: 4 out of 5
Reviewer: Neil

When I hear the hit single "Crazy" on the radio, I often wonder if it is brilliant or obnoxious. Do others hate this song, or love it for being abrasive and smooth at the same time, like I do? Having heard it as part of the entire album, I'm sure it is brilliant now.

St. Elsewhere is a great pop album. And a great soul r'n'b album too. And it's got some drum'n'bass in the mix. It's like a great combination of Gorillaz and Andre 3000. Danger Mouse, one of the two men behind Gnarls Barkley, produced the latest Gorillaz album, so that explains the similarity there. The other madman in this duo is Cee-Lo, whose voice helps define the distinct sound of the album. He sings with soulful agony and ecstasy.

The vocal chords and backing vocals often sound old school, while much of the music is modern and widely varied. "Transformer" is a fast drum'n'bass tune with fast vocal harmonies. "Gone Daddy Gone" is indie rock with soul. "Crazy" is driving pop with an unforgettable chorus. "The Last Time" is hands-clapping funk that demands to be performed live. There are just so many good songs. This album is hot.

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Posted by Neil to Hear THIS! at 8/21/2006 08:15:00 PM

[Read THIS!] Perdido Street Station

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
Rating: 4 out of 5
Reviewer: Neil

Perdido Street Station is an award-winning novel that is hard to put into a specific genre. In a book store, you'll find it in the sci-fi or fantasy section, but a total geek would argue it belongs in the New Weird category, of which H. P. Lovecraft is a pioneer. I would also say it resembles steampunk, although Perdido Street Station is not set in our world.

In this wildly imaginative world without comparison, you'll find magic, steam-power, electrical power, beast races, bird races, insect races, plant races, inter-species romance, bio-engineering, bio-magical-engineering, artificial intelligence, interdimensional predators, drug lords, gun fights, democracy, and mathematicians. Imagination is not lacking. The action is often fast and varied, taking the characters through different locations of the city and pitting them against different factions.

The characters are well written and avoid typical fantasy/sci-fi stereotypes. However, some characters appear at key moments in the story, like redshirts on a Star Trek away mission, only to be killed off shortly after their introduction.

"We need help with this job."
"Ok, here's someone I know from somewhere. Come on let's go."
"Oh no! He got killed!"
"Yeah, that's sad. But hey, we did it!"
"Hurray!"

But that's a minor complaint about an otherwise exciting story.

Throughout the novel is the theme of crime and punishment. Criminals in the novel's city are often punished by having their bodies altered to somehow suit their crimes. These so-called Remade are forever changed in strange and often hideous ways by the government's remakers, forcing criminals to visibly display their punishments for the rest of their lives. One of the main characters is a humanoid bird from outside the city whose wings have been sawed off his back by his tribe as punishment for a crime. He seeks aid to undo this punishment, like a refugee from a foreign country, yet refuses to explain the crime he committed. Similarly, the villains of the story, winged hypnotic predators, bring to mind the story of Lot when his wife turned behind her to look at the punishment that God had dealt to others. The characters and factions in the story make dubious choices, helping to make this a complicated, thought-provoking story.

True to the ideals of New Weird, Perdido Street Station transcends its genre, whatever it may be, and tells a story that is exciting, moving, and thoughtful.

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Posted by Neil to Read THIS! at 7/25/2006 09:31:00 PM

[Hear THIS!] Herbert - Scale

Rating: 4 out of 5
Reviewer: Neil

Searching for more "experimental" musicians, I found Matthew Herbert's song "Something Isn't Right" as part of a betterPropaganda podcast. Not exactly an experimental track, but very catchy. So I bought Scale and gave it a listen.

With the first few tracks, I felt like I was listening to a new album by Prince. Or maybe it would be a lost album from the 80's. The female vocalist, Dani Siciliano, often sings like Apollonia. Think "Take Me With U" from Purple Rain, and you've got the sound of "Moving Like A Train". Or "Nasty Girl" by Vanity 6, but without the naughty lyrics. The heavy use of orchestra and horns mixed with pop melodies is reminiscent of Prince's 1986 album Parade. Scale even has the obligatory syrupy ballad, "We're In Love".

But Herbert is an electronica experimentalist, and some of it comes through in some tracks. "Harmonise" is a brilliant, bright, and bouncy song underpinned with ambient noise and unidentifiable clicking and whooshing. "Just Once" uses samples heavily to create a dark, post-apocalyptic sound. Press releases for the album brag that exactly 723 objects were used to create samples including "coffins, petrol pumps, meteorites, an RAF Tornado Bomber, and somebody being sick outside a banquet for a notorious London arms fair." But I find it very difficult to hear any of it on most of the tracks on the album. It is possible that only tracks like "Just Once" and "Harmonise" use the samples, but in most cases the orchestra dominates.

What's the "experimentation" here? Is Herbert trying to prove that 723 objects can be sampled to create music where you can't hear any of the samples? If so, it's a waste of his time. Musicians like Amon Tobin and Daedelus use samples fearlessly, but Herbert is shy with his samples on Scale. Listeners can decide for themselves if these hidden samples add anything to the music that a single off-the-shelf synthesizer could not have done. Regardless, the music is great danceable pop that I recommend to anyone turned off by musical experimentation.

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Posted by Neil to Hear THIS! at 7/05/2006 09:56:00 AM

[Hear THIS!] Daedelus - Denies The Day's Demise

Rating: 5 out of 5
Reviewer: Neil

Daedelus is a well-respected, but far from famous, experimental musician. His music is both romantic and harsh. He takes sounds from the past and from the future, mixing Disney-esque orchestra passages, video game sound effects, dance hall synth, latino percussion, haunting vocals, electronica, and other indescribable sounds together to create music unlike anything else. His albums so far have had many enjoyable nuggets of sound and music, but often lacked a concept so that they sounded like disconnected collections of experimentation.

Denies The Day's Demise is his first album with a consistent, cohesive sound from start to finish. This album is a single work, a single vision. The music is thrilling, fun, and moving without missing a step. Make no mistake, he hasn't sacrificed experimentation for the sake of making music. But this album shows that Daedelus is better able to identify which sounds work musically to get his theme across and has discarded others.

Denies The Day's Demise is made up of songs that evoke images of chases, exploration, romance, sci-fi landscapes, alien cantinas, melee combat, rebellion, redemption, and violent tantrums.

The prologue to the adventure is "At My Heels", music for a fast-paced chase with sweeping epic orchestra riffs, crashing percussion explosions, and James Bond guitar. Then night falls in the second track, "Sundown", which tells us to celebrate the end of the day rather than mourn its end. This track has a live sound that I have not heard from Daedelus before. The loud synthesizer would fill a concert hall nicely.

"Nouveau Nova" is one of my favorite tracks, stirring my imagination with all kinds of wondrous images. It starts off with a fast synthesizer attack, followed by much more gentle exchanges between synth and piano with minimal melodies. This is the escape sequence, which is followed by a relaxing respite from the pressures of the day in "Viva Vida". Bass clarinet, clarinet-synth sounds and guitar ease the listener into the night, while Daedelus repeats the mantra "Live your life, your tired life of strife" which is sometimes overlapped with "Save your life."

The day was hectic ("At My Heels"), but the album now becomes much more ethereal. I could describe each track in detail, as each of them is unique and evocative, but that would ruin the fun of exploring the music for yourself. Give Denies The Day's Demise many listens to let the music and imagery sink in. One of my favorite tracks is "Lights Out", which sounds like music for a martial arts battle with a two year old ninja. Orchestra samples and a driving bass make you want to start punching, kicking, and dancing all at the same time, the way ninjas must dance at the ninja disco.

The music is often other-worldly. Tracks like "Bahia" are very Star Wars cantina, but more alien, and Cuban at the same time. "Our Last Stand" is how dance music sounds like when you are totally drunk at a club and have trouble distinguishing notes and beats.

The end of the album becomes mournful with the gorgeous songs "Sunrise" and "Never None The Wiser". These songs say that the end of night is what should be mourned. Those who slept through it have no idea what they missed, much like those who will never hear Daedelus' surreal landscapes of sound.

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Posted by Neil to Hear THIS! at 6/29/2006 08:01:00 AM

[Hear THIS!] Issa Light

www.issalight.com

So... it has been made official. Jane Siberry has changed her name to 'Issa Light'. And by her hand and voice there will be new music soon...

*blink*

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Posted by Ryan to Hear THIS! at 6/28/2006 07:54:00 PM