In Spore

I'm now addicted to this game:
This game is truly epic. It's fun, accessible and infinite. I've been playing it everytime I'm free. I can't stop making animals with the Creature Creator.

Okay. Here's a simple way of describing Spore. Imagine beginning life as a cell, evolving from there to a land creature, then your creature gets more intelligent and starts a tribe, which turns into a civilisation and control the planet. Of course then you gotta start exploring the infinite universe.

And you make everything yourself. You create the cell. You evolve it by adding parts. As it begins to move on land, you give it legs. Then it's your choice to give it what kind of arms, hands, wings, spikes, whatever. Someone came up with this, just to give you an idea of what you can do:

Yes! A goddamn Pikachu!

Then you can also make your own vehicles. The X-Wing from Star Wars, anyone?

You can even re-shape planets (!). Adjust the atmosphere, temperature, ecosystem...
I love this game.

I've been spending the last hour trying to adjust the conditions of one of my planet colonies. I had to start a meteor shower because the temperature was too low, and increase the atmosphere. I also had to create herbivores and carnivores, and also transport plants from other planets because I needed a fully-working ecosystem. The planet was also quite uneven, with small patches of water, and mountains everywhere, so I had to level with my terra-forming tools.

Yes, I sound like a geek. And I like it.

Signing out

Over and out

Review: Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Artist: Animal Collective
Album: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Rating: 4 out of 5
In a nutshell: As captivating as the album cover

People's attitude towards this album might be best explained by using the album cover itself. It's an either/or situation. You either find the image soothing and captivating, or you find it completely nauseating.

I would imagine this is the sort of music Sigur Ros would play if they were stuck with a laptop, a sampler and a keyboard in the midst of a Saturday night rave party. But then that's a very, very stretched comparison. You could throw genres at the Baltimore musicians, and none of them would even be close to sufficient at describing them. Pop? Not quite. Indie rock? Almost. Electronica? Maybe. Psychedelic electropop rock? If you must.

The music is surreal. It's intelligent music without you needing to think about it. There's no point in trying to pinpoint what they sound like. Best just to enjoy it. It's incredibly simple yet brilliantly complex at the same time. It's layered, it's bizarre. And it's brilliant.

Here's one of my favourite songs from the album.

Animal Collective - My Girls




Signing out

Over and out

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Now playing: Animal Collective - Guys Eyes
via FoxyTunes

Home Sounds

I Mean The Snakes - The Best Dressed Bet

So. I rarely talk about the music scene in Brunei. I guess I'm not too knowledgeable in that area. What little I know of it are some metal bands that has probably disbanded or on 'indefinite' hiatus. But I do know that it's very promising.

I was a fan of [H8], Wan Long Kok, Senjakala and Airholes. But after so many years, I've not heard anything from them.

But I hear it's got some really talented and refreshing stuff. Not least 'I Mean The Snakes,' who has the same knack for a guitar indie tune as Franz Ferdinand. Tongue-in-cheek and quirky is how they describe themselves, and they are not far off the mark. You can buy their album on iTunes. Then there's 3Belas, who draws inspiration from a range of influences covering from Bjork to Nirvana to The Strokes. These two are quite different in their approaches, to say the blindingly obvious.

3Belas - Aku Takkan Jatuh Cinta Lagi

What I want right now though, is a new dose of Gallows. Hardcore thrash punk at its best. I'm feverishly waiting for their new album due sometime this year. The album 'Orchestra Of Wolves' was one of my favourite albums of 2007.

Until then, I've got Rolo Tomassi to nurse my ills. Hailing from Sheffield, their debut album 'Hysterics' was one of the most intriguing hardcore punk releases in 2008. With an atypical frontman - a woman who is actually girly instead of butch - with a powerful voice and a band of musicians with atypical notions of song structure and an abundance of energy, they are a band that will go far.


Rolo Tomassi - I Love Turbulence

Now I've gotta go do my laundry.

Signing out

Over and out

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Now playing: Rolo Tomassi - Film Noir
via FoxyTunes

White Euphoria

"Jay thinks there's nothing more euphoric than dancing in a field of snow in the early mornings of February alone." 2:11am. Facebook status.

And it's true.

It's a kind of high you cannot get anywhere else. This inexplicable sense of happiness in the midst of heavy snowfall.

Snow is beautiful. Cold, harsh, yet ultimately beautiful. Exhilarating. Euphoric.

Amalina AY at 2:33am February 2. Status comment.

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”- John Ruskin ;) xXx

Thanks for that, Mal. I miss you, you know. We may not have spent much time together and haven't known each other that long, but the times we had, still puts a smile on my face.

I don't even know if you read my blog.

The snow is starting to pick up again. I love this.

I'd rather this be my heaven. Carving footprints onto the snowfields, re-affirming my existence, I dance, though awkwardly, I still dance. The freezing cold reminds me that I can still feel. And it does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. The silence is my music for tonight. And it is an apt soundtrack to this epiphany.

Do I sign out?

I'm still here

Musing Musicality II

I know. I've been reviewing music quite frequently in the past week. And I don't think it's about to stop anytime soon.
The thing is, when it comes to music, within my circle of friends there are very few who I can discuss it with, seeing that my music taste is often atypical. I listen to almost everything. And it's not just one of those broad statements that really just means I listen to anything that plays on the radio or on MTV. I don't even listen to the radio or watch MTV. I mean, I could make friends with an exclusively metalhead circle of friends or an exclusively indie-DIY group, but that just wouldn't make sense. I've got my friends, and I love my friends. I don't care if they think The Pussycat Dolls is the best thing since sliced bread. I don't care if they think Crystal Castles is a video game.

It's really almost everything. To illustrate this point, let me list you a few genres (for the sake of convenience) that I listen to:
Indie, electronica, rock, metal, pop, classical, folk, punk, country, alternative, blues, hip hop, techno, experimental, industrial, jazz, R&B, ska, soul, film score, hardcore, trance, reggae, etc...

And then we break them down into sub-genres:
indie pop, math rock, folk punk, viking metal, trancecore, neo-classical, post-hardcore, skacore, punk ska, new wave of british heavy metal, avantgarde metal, britpop, horror punk, dance punk, electro punk, folk metal, folk pop, glam rock, grunge, grime, crunk, indie rock, indie folk, brazilian tribal metal, norwegian black metal, grindcore, metalcore, pop punk, power metal, progressive rock, progressive metal, rap core, speed metal, stoner rock, melodic death metal, thrash, doom indie, experimental hip hop, folk electronica, etc...

Then the musicians that play the music that I listen to:
A.F.I., AC/DC, Adele, Adequate Seven, Aereogramme, Alexisonfire, Alkaline Trio, Alphabeat, Amon Amarth, Amy Winehouse, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Andrew WK, Angels & Airwaves, Anthrax, Antony & The Johnsons, Apocalyptica, Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, As I Lay Dying, Asian Dub Foundation, The Ataris, Athlete, Audioslave, Authority Zero, Avenged Sevenfold, Basement Jaxx, Beastie Boys, The Beatles, Beck, The Bedouin Soundclash, Beirut, Belle & Sebastian, Biffy Clyro, Big D & The Kids Table, Billy Idol, Billy Talent, Birdy Nam Nam, The Black Dahlia Murder, Black Kids, Black Sabbath, Blink 182, Bloc Party, The Blood Brothers, Blur, Bob Marley, Bon Iver, Bon Jovi, Bowling For Soup, Boxcar Racers, Braintax, Brand New...

If you're bored, skip the next paragraph. Makes sense, doesn't it?

The Bravery, Bring Me The Horizon, British Sea Power, The Bronx, Bullet For My Valentine, Cage The Elephant, Cajun Dance Party, Cancer Bats, Cannibal Corpse, Capdown, Captain Everything!, Carcass, The Cat Empire, Cavalera Conspiracy, Chad Vangaalen, Chairlift, The Chemical Brothers, Children Of Bodom, The Clash, Cobra Starship, Coheed & Cambria, Conor Oberst, Crystal Castles, The Cure, Cute Is What We Aim For, Dalek, Damien Marley, Dananananaykroyd, The Darkness, Death Cab For Cutie, Deftones, Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Dethklok, The Devil Wears Prada, Dido, Die Toten Hosen, Dimmu Borgir, The Distillers, Dizzee Rascal, DJ Danger Mouse, Does It Offend You Yeah?, etc...

You get the idea. And that's just touching until the D section. And trust me, I won't list an artist just because I've heard one or two songs from them. If you know more than half of them, I'd be mightily impressed. I mean, if I go through someone else's music library, chances are I won't have a clue who half the artists are. Unless you only listen to radio staples.

So what's my point in naming names and telling you all this? I'm not really sure. I guess I'm just trying to tell you that this blog is really the only place I can talk about the music I love, hence why I'm reviewing new albums on a regular basis.

Even Pill doesn't quite like half the stuff I like. Hahahaha.

Signing out

Over and out

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Now playing: Capdown - Wind Up Toys
via FoxyTunes

Review: Sepultura - A-Lex

Artist: Sepultura
Album: A-Lex
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
In a nutshell: A balls-out, Cavalera-free concept album

Sepultura. The Brazilian metal band that was formed by the Cavalera brothers and are now left with none of them. Does that make Sepultura irrelevant? Not by a mile.

The first Sepultura album without Igor Cavalera (who went off to form the uninteresting Cavalera Conspiracy with brother, Max) is a concept album centred one of my favourite books of all time, 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess (not the film adaptation). The title itself, 'A-Lex' both refers to the character Alex, and its pun in Russian that means 'without law.'

So yes, a character whose name suggests lawlessness sounds like a good, old source for no-nonsense metal inspiration. But does it work?

Yes and no.

Stretching to almost an hour, the album goes through the whole book in its entirety, from it's beginning ('Moloko Mesto') to the middle ('The Experiment') to the end ('Paradox'). The problem with most concept albums is how the grandness of the idea can lead to the music being flat out of constraint and control. For the most part, this is not the case in 'A-Lex.'

When you do a concept album about 'A Clockwork Orange,' it is almost a crime to leave out Beethoven's Ninth. This is where the song 'Ludwig Van' comes in. It is a peculiar re-imagination of one of Ludwig Van's most famous symphonies, and accompanied with an orchestra, it borders on the ridiculous, but it is never dull. Whether you see it as a creative re-working or a ludicrous cover might depend on whether you see this as a genuine tribute or an unnecessary gimmick.

People who has never read the book but have seen the film might wonder why I emphasised the fact that this was based on the book, not the film. Surely they convey the same ideas? Well, not exactly. The film left out a vital chapter in the book that changes the whole motive of the book (unless you're reading the edited US version). The last chapter in the original discusses free will and desire for peace of mind as equally innate as violence itself.

This is raw thrash metal, but that never means it is sloppy. This is a precise exercise in providing a fresh serving of metal that can still excite, even without the Cavalera brothers.

Signing out

Over and out

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Now playing: Sepultura - Conform
via FoxyTunes