cyclonica

I finally watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica. And I have to admit, I didn’t understand it at all. Alien robots who make humanish clones who think they are human and have half human babies? And lots of gibberish about “god”.

And apparently, the vehicles of choice for cybernetic aliend from the future are 1970’s Citroens. w.t.f?

music this week

After a month or two of being a hermit and not making it out to many shows, I caught up a bit this week.

First up this week was a Robert Fripp solo soundscapes show in Carrboro. Very cool. Never seen a solo Fripp show before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Two sets, one about 30 minutes and another about 20 minutes, with a short Q&A in the middle. Second set seemed to be more along the lines of the soundscapes I’ve heard on cd before, while the first set was a touch more active. Very nice show.

Next show was a house show at Badgerhaus. Phon started out with a nice set. Next up was tzii. Very dark ambient laptop set. Next was The Master Musicians Of Hop-Frog. Synth guitar, laptop, vocals/drums. Very cool. Last set was Ripit. Nice live manipulation/remixing of a piece he had previously performed and recorded. Kind of nice being able to watch a noise/ambient set in someones living room. Spotted a flyer with some of the folks side projects listed. One of which has a new favorite band name: “I spit on your rave”.

Friday night was Dalek/Meat Beat Manifesto at Cat’s Cradle. Dalek was impressive as usual, but I think they suffered a bit from losing a DJ and moving down to a duo. The other previous DJ was very active and added a bit to the visuals, not to mentioning being responsible for the majority of the “noise” which seemed to be mostly sampled last night. Still really cool.

Meat Beat Manifesto was a lot better than I expected. I wasn’t real familiar with them (I think the only song I recognized was “helter skelter”). I wasn’t sure what to expect after the first few songs, but they seemed to pick up momentum towards the end of the set. Seemed like the early part of the set was more or less “dance beats with random movie samples with tempo synced echo” while the later part of the set moved to much more of a very impressive sound collage kind of thing.

The video integration was definitely the best I’ve ever seen at a live show. Well integrated into the music and the video projections, with the majority of the sound of a lot of the songs coming from multiple layers of video samples that were projected in sync. Very cool.

Saw a ton of people I know there, which was cool.

Now, trying to decide between staying around town, or driving to Winston-Salem to see a Negativeland documentary and talk at the Werehouse.

even more videos

youtube, I think I love you…

Godflesh video for “Mothra”
Godflesh video for “Crush My Soul
Godflesh video for “Slavestate”

Fear on Saturday Night Live

The Pixies “Head On” on the Dennis Miller show
John Lydon taunting Dennis Miller

P.I.L video for “Rise”(great song off an awesome album… And just to make it more awesome and weird, the guitar solo is Steve Vai.

John McLaughlin on the Tonight Show
John McLaughlin and friend playing Miles Davis’s “All Blues”

Garth Brooks And Kiss on the Tonight Show. KISS sucks. This proves it. As if it weren’t obvious.

Cure “End Of the World” on the Tonight Show

Eric Johnson playing “Cliffs Of Dover” on Austin City Limits
Stevie Ray Vaughan “Texas Flood” on Austin City limits 1983

David Bowie “performing” “fame” on Soul Train
David Bowie video for “I’m Afraid Of Americans”
David Bowie video for “Ashes To Ashes

Worse. Duo. Ever.

If you thought the grammy awards had reached the pinnacle of bad music with their endless onslaught of “boring popular artist featuing a special appearance by older still boring popular artist” performances, there seems to be a new contender.

So I flipped on the tv this morning. Flip though channels and stumbled upon yet another Santanna collaboration (this time with Steven Tyler). But that was just the warmup. Next up was what is hard for me to described in words. DMC featuring Sarah McLachlan performing “Cats In The Cradle”.

It’s even worse than you might think. There is the studio “hard rock” guitars. Then the super processed and Sarah McLachlan vocals. But thats nothing comparing to DMC rapping the verses. It makes my brain cry a little bit.

And just to top it off, heres the story behind the song. If there is a god, that will be the last time I ever hear that song. But theres no god, and I’ll probably have to here this crap for the next 3 months.

fretting

It seems that this image is being hotlinked alot. Theres at least three different bands on myspace.com that use it as a page background. I suspect none of them actually play a fretless guitar like that pic features. It seems to show up on the second page of results for a google image search on “guitar fretboard”. I guess thats where people are finding it.

muffin.jpg seems to get linked from a lot of message boards as well.