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Musical musings July 16, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Music, Ramble , add a comment

So, I say right up there in the tag line that I talk about music, but short of a few gigs and bits and pieces on Opium Toad I haven’t done much. Over time, I’ve really come to learn what makes good music for me although still new things open up and make me think in different ways.

The easiest thing for me to write about would probably be where I am at now musically, and to do that I’m gonna consult my last.fm profile. My top charts from the past 6 months say a lot I think, although said a little more a month or two back. Here they are:

  1. Porcupine Tree
  2. Karate
  3. Ayreon
  4. Riverside
  5. Turisas
  6. Finntroll
  7. Clutch
  8. Seth Lakeman
  9. Kalmah
  10. Opeth
  11. Dark Tranquillity
  12. dredg
  13. Alestorm
  14. Eluveitie
  15. Paul Simon
  16. Anathema

Symphony X, Queensrÿche, The Sword, Megadeth, Pure Reason Revolution, Korpiklaani, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Blackfield, Kiuas, Orange Goblin, Show of Hands, Equilibrium, Ensiferum, Children of Bodom, Spock’s Beard, Jethro Tull, Metallica, Thin Lizzy, Down, Municipal Waste, Indukti, Annihilator, Taint, Arch Enemy, Bert Jansch, Primus, Edguy, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, Pineapple Thief, Afro Celt Sound System, AC/DC, Weather Report, Led Zeppelin.

The big ones right at the top there, PT and Karate. Porcupine Tree have to go down as my all time favourite band. Still when I listen to them now I love them as much as when I first heard “Where we would be” amazingly, a song that is very different to much of their work is what brought them to me and I love it. PT did actually drop to 2nd to Karate whilst I was still in the US and indeed Karate deserve a mention.

They are a band that came around at exactly the right time. “Some Boots” somehow captured me exactly as I was when I first heard it, listening to “Airport” in my guitar lesson, it’s smooth main idea just took me away, combined with lyrics that filled me with what I like to refer to as “future nostalgia” and a unique delivery. They are a band completely different to any other, I’ve listened to their number one similar artist on last.fm and they sound nothing like them. Spectacular. Indeed, “Airport” is currently the number 2 most played song in my iTunes library, the only song in the top 50 to have been added to my library in 2008. Every other song there is there because, yes, I love them but I listened to them over time. This is one of the only times I can say that a single song got me through so much but it’s true. It’s an absolutely magnificent achievement but I can only do so much to sell it to others. It has such a personal connection to me that I love it as much for the memories and comfort it gave and continues to give me than for the music itself (which is still very good).

There it is, for all to enjoy.

A shout has to go to Ayreon too, for the music of Arjen Anthony Lucassen has taken me on many adventures in the soundscape. I do really enjoy his music, as demonstrated by the number of plays he has. It’s also down to how much of his music I have due to his tendancy to always produce double albums and my tendancy to like all the songs on them.

Number four is a band that have captured my attention for a little while now but are still fairly recent additions to my regular listening; Riverside. Their style of progressive rock is one that I can really connect to and they do a great job of balancing good song writing with interesting musicianship. Somehow their music manages to be appropriate for being happy, being sad and everything in between. That in itself is a bigger accomplishment than I think many would realise.

Turisas and Finntroll remain strong as my favourite offerings that folk metal have. To me, these two are the quintessental folk metal bands. They have the perfect combination of folky melodies and rocking metal riffs that are what define the genre, as well as the little bits of extra epic cool fun that folk metal should be full of.

Clutch have been entertaining me with their breed of stoner rock for about a year now and I’m still loving it, “Blast Tyrant” remains an incredibly strong album, an unrelenting onslaught of rock. I haven’t delved much further into their offerings but do enjoy a good portion of “Pure Rock Fury”.

Then comes Seth Lakeman, the only indication of the oncoming of more folk influence into my spectrum. I was delighted to see a few BBC shows at the cambridge folk festival which introduced me to a few folk artists, the one that stuck being Seth Lakeman. I really struggle with folk because as a genre it’s just so varied. I absolutely love strong folky melodies and strong story telling vibes mixed with top notch vocals but so much of folk is just same old acoustic guitar chords with a bit of singing on top, just not enough for me. I want to hear violins and vocal harmonys, I want engaging stories not just crappy love songs that I can hear on any pop record. Seth gives me a great mix of the stuff I love and I’ve been continuing to listen to his music on a regular basis since seeing those tv pieces.

Wow, I seriously have waffled on here. I’m not entirely sure what this was supposed to be exactly, but I think it’s collapsed in on its self. Still, I put quite a lot of time into writing it so I mayaswell post it. You’d have to care quite a lot about my personal musical motives to really find it interesting though, and I get the feeling that audience is very small.

Like, 1 person max.

The what? June 28, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment, Rants , add a comment

The Happening has to be one of the lamest serious movie titles I’ve ever laid eyes upon. It’s possibly the exact opposite in movie titling mistake to Snakes on a Plane.

In the first, you’ve got the most general title for a film/book/play ever conceived. I mean seriously, how many of these things are there were there is no happenings, no events? I can’t think of anything where something doesn’t happen, where there is no happening.  Things must happen in order to create something interesting, it’s just the way these things work!

On the other hand, you’ve got Snakes on a Plane, which essentially sums up the entire movie before you’ve even planned out your weekend.  I’ve not seen it, so I can’t be sure but I must assume that there is a plane, which through some kind of event (happening if you will) has been filled with, presumably, many snakes.  Samuel L Jackson, being the bad ass that he is, will somehow save the day and get rid of said snakes, probably with some tasty phrases thrown into the mix.  I don’t really think I need to see the movie.

Back to The Happening – you may aswell have just called it “Event” or perhaps even “Title” or “Movie”. Seriously guys, lets sort this out, maybe it was just an attempt to make the title so vague people would go and see it just to find out what it’s about, on a whim perhaps,  I can’t imagine that anyone is going to assume some kind of original and mind bending cinematic experience with a name like that.

The Penultimate Day June 18, 2008

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This is the day before my last exam.  By tomorrow lunch time all the worrying, the procrastination and sporadic work will be over and I must simply wait.  Wait to find out my fate, to find out what I have the horrible feeling I already know the answer to.

I really don’t like this feeling…

Dream Onslaught May 28, 2008

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I seem to be under assault from dreams at the moment.  Everything from random and wacky through epic adventures to life lessons.  It all seems to contribute to feeling really crap in the morning.  Particularly this morning, where my dream was filled with things that I would love to happen and that when I awoke it felt a bit like having it all ripped away.

Of course, these dreams are pretty typical in that they don’t shy away from blatant references to things that I have seen or felt, for example whilst I was with some wanted fugitives adventuring from a pub in the west country we had tracked down enemy and criminal (who incidentally, had no arms) to a field when a load of police cars pulled up and I feared my companions had been caught but instead they all just rushed into the field to capture the person we had found.  This is probably a reference to a video I saw the other day of some thieves running our of a shop they had just robbed and getting into a car when a load of cops appear and all rush into the building whilst the robbers calming drive away.

This post is pretty pointless, I have nothing to conclude from all these dreams happening, only perhaps that I am in a great state of emotional change as I shift between phases of my life.  Of course, depending on your psychological viewpoint you could say these dreams mean nothing or they mean everything however that is part of module 4 and as my exam in 2 weeks is on module 5 I don’t want to fill my mind with such distractions.

Coursework Conundrums May 6, 2008

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I should be doing my psychology coursework right now. Well, I am. Trying to do it at least…

We started doing this coursework absolutely ages ago but I was always going very slowly. I got the practical and results out of the way a long time ago but writing the report for what I did seems horribly difficult. In fact, coming up with an original study (well, original compared to what everyone else did – replicate last years coursework and then use it as a guide) is a huge disadvantage.

What I did was a bit weird anyway but I have very little relevant guidelines. Unless I do what I sometimes seem to and just pull a good piece of coursework out of the bag with pure fluke this will be a terrible failure and since I’m relying on the shinyness of an A in psychology to overshadow the almost unavoidable C in physics I can’t have shoddy coursework.

Did I mention it has to be in tomorrow?

And of course, due to the fact that May is already in swing, this is one of those deadlines that the teacher has very little control over, I can’t just magic up an extension from anywhere.

One of the most horrible things is that when I’ve talked to him about it I’ve gone away feeling good, feeling like I can tackle the problems. But then when I sit down and actually try and write, nothing comes out. I mean, I’ve been thinking of things to put in this coursework for months, it’s something that interests me and actually gave results that I wasn’t necessarily expecting but now that I try to write about it I can’t seem to find any words.

The title of my blog is looking very appropriate now…

Rather crazy day May 15, 2007

Posted by Sharny in : Life , add a comment

Well, I’ve been feeling ill today and yesterday which has just contributed to the general crazy-feeling of today. I guess the most important thing would be finding out that instead of the C I thought I got in my first Chemistry module I actually got a B. This really pissed me off in some ways since I really wouldn’t have retaken the module had someone actually told me I had gotten a B, I assumed that for the score I got the grade boundaries were the same across all the subjects and modules, which would be logical since they are scaled up from the actual mark you get on the paper. Finding out that was wrong made me check the AQA website and after some digging found the grade boundaries, revealing that I had in fact gotten a B.

Another part of it lies in that I was asked for another £5 for the May ball. Now I’m absolutely certain that I had paid enough (I was giving in the money for me and a friend, we both owed £25 and so I gave over £50) but as I walked into my first lesson I was told I was £5 short. I didn’t really want to argue at the time because I figured my friend must have owed more than he thought so I just paid it. Later however, in Chemistry, my friend was asked for £5 as well. He told them he had already paid and they went away but I don’t think they will drop this. Now we’re completely sure that we owed £25 each and I’m absolutely sure I handed over £50 (I didn’t have any money left afterwards, I know that for sure). I figure £10 of that must have been lost in transit or something, so essentially I’ve been scammed out of £5. I guess I’ve got to have the grace to let it go, I want the ball to go ahead and if my paying extra £5 helps that happen then I should be happy, I suppose it makes up a bit for my lack of enthusiasm towards fund raising. I guess I just don’t like getting ripped off in such a way.

At least writing it down seems to have helped me get over those little things, what with feeling pretty ill it hasn’t been a great day really. I’m off to bed now, tommorow I just have one lesson first period then I’m going shopping to sort of piece together a suit for the previously mentioned may ball…