Haters gonna hate... alas this is hypnotic

Digital Radio in Sydney

Well folks, these holidays aren't going any faster.
The days outside are cold and wet, meanwhile college is overrun by American tourists who have the interesting pattern of disappearing during the whole day and coming back to college at 2 AM after a time out in the city. And boy, they sure are loud.

Anyway,
My computer has a TV tuner, and so I am able to watch digital TV, which is slowly but progressively catching speed and becoming better and better. Many national broadcasters are now offering HD quality channels. And they bring out new channels quite often too, it's great to see how I'll be killing time these holidays.

But I do not fully endorse TV viewing, I actually enjoy radio a bit better than TV. And as per usual I tune in to SBS everyday to listen to the Spanish broadcast. It's great to listen to something in my native language often, for I really don't want to lose practice and appear as a total foreigner when I come back to visit.

But radio in Australia is changing as well. Not long ago, digital radio has been introduced to the market, and very quickly a lot of radio stations\ appeared or transferred to digital to offer quality broadcasts.

And one of them that has really captured my attention is SBS Chill, a digital exclusive broadcast featuring nothing else but great chill-out and world music. And one time I even heard a bit of Latin Drum 'n Bass. How awesome is that? It really makes my day. I haven't enjoyed listening to a radio station in such a manner since Radio Bondi FM was good. Sadly, I don't have a digital radio (as of yet), but I can still tune in through the website. And what is good is that the broadcast does not rip a large chunk off of my bandwidth and yet still have a sound quality a bit superior to a 128 kbits MP3.

I really enjoy it. Check the SBS Chill site to have a taste of it. Good times.

Keep on chillin'

Another discovery

Wow, I've been going discovery after discovery these past weeks. All because of the Vivid Sydney Festival.

This time, it's something quite different as well. It's a band of throat singers called Chirgilchin. These guys come from the very heart of Central Asia, at the very southernmost tip of Russia near Mongolia. The guys themselves don't look Russian at all, but a bit Mongol I suppose. Their music is very entrancing because it is just something that I've never heard before in my life. They use their throats to take advantage of resonant effects of the passing air when they exhale. In other more descriptive words, they practically whistle with their throats.

Now, it's not really your normal kind of whistling. But rather of a very bizarre kind. Instead of air resonating from within the mouth, like normal whistling, throat singing uses the entire air tract from the mouth, larynx and voice box to resonate air. Just listen to it:



I just find it really interesting how charmingly happy those guys are with their music, even if it sounds so weird.

I really thank Vivid Sydney for introducing me to this kind of stuff. Every month I realize how much music I really want to buy, and I sadly look at myself in my present economic situation. Go P2P for the WIN.

New discovery

Hello people.
I am in much better health than before, but I'm still not fully 100% back.

Just today I discovered a Japanese band: Boris. What a band name. And yes, by Japanese I don't only mean that they are awesome, absolutely insane to the extent that our western music standards of craziness are nothing in comparison to what those japs do every single day and consider the norm. Yep, you guessed it, they are from Japan. Damn! What a surprise...

Ok, no. They are something quite extra special, since they were invited to be featured artists in the Vivid Sydney Festival run this year. I discovered them in a brochure of the festival during breakfast. It featured all three members of the band holding double-necked guitars. And I thought: "Wow, that looks soo cool. I wonder what their music is like." I checked their MySpace site, and listened to their tracks.

I got blown away by firstly listening to this one:


And then, the floodgates open and I am completely entranced by the incredible sound they produce, even if they only have three members, even if there was actually only one double-necked guitar (the poster was deceiving!!):


I'm now addicted to their music. In less than 13 hours. It has been incredible!! I'm already considering buying music from my free-shipment music shop site of preference. Wow, damn, wwwwooooww!!! Really hot stuff right there.

And yeah, now I'm trying to get a job. The barista option is too unstable, too unfrequent, perhaps the nightfill shifts may come in handy once again. God it's that time coming back again.

I'll see ya peeps later, keep rocking.

And those three words

This is possibly one of the most interesting music videos I've seen in the past months. The music, an interesting mix of house and pop, with a very slight hint of trance, is pretty cool. I normally look at "commercial" music as tasteless, but I guess I just take things in music with a very biased perspective, but every now and again, there is some good stuff out there. Of course, and taking into consideration the present nature of the artistic world at the moment, some of the music that is currently popular is just outrageous and ridiculous.

I guess what got me in this video is the visuals. The splitting images, the blending of the camera shots, and how everything seems to sit so naturally in place even if the cameras move in opposite direction, makes this video quite pleasing and engaging to the mind. It's like a diptych, but just with video. The creative part of myself is trying to piece the things together, trying to form some sort of meaning out of the plain but odd room featured there, with the people twirling around and with the very plastic appearance of the singers. But it may just not have any sense at all. Meh, it happens. It's art.

Yo poseeré tu corazón

Perhaps the most evil techno music ever

I know a lot of people that would never talk to me again for posting this. I honestly do not like this particular kind of music (I love techno, but not of this kind of techno). Having to wake at 4.30 in the morning to this music induced psychological trauma to many of us in college, so the song has been burned into our brains. I think that it is a very tasteless piece of work. But my comments make no difference; these guys, The Bloody Beetroots, are insanely famous all over the world. And I do have to admit, this is a very good song to dance/rave to. But it is still a very evil song. Very evil.

In the many concerts they have played, they always see the same thing every time: massive crowds of people jumping in unison, like one single body. Now that is just insane but awesomely cool. The many youtube videos out there of their concerts are proof of it.

Mr. and Mrs. Compost

Bibio is one of my favorite acoustic-electronic one-man bands in my collection.
And that's just a sample of his beginnings, when he worked with lo-fi technology and progressively merged onto fully electronic but experimental music. Really good stuff.

Oh! We love Philip Glass. We love Philip Glass. We love Philip Glass.

I just realized...
that I could use my music collection as a weapon to annoy people real bad. Philip Glass could make a real impact on the group (and my reputation), oh dear.

It's not that my music collection is bad. Philip Glass, among the other contemporary composers that I feature in my library (Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Hans Otte, John Cage, Arvo Part, etc.), is quite an incredible artist. But you need some serious heavy-duty mental gear to go through the entirety of his pieces, because they are absolutely NUTS. And not boringly nuts, but rather 'why the hell do you even listen to this?' kind of nuts.

It's a good thing, however, that some people in my group have heard of Philip Glass before.

sigh..

Back to work...

This world is pretty

Qué canción más bonita.

Para alguien especial

This is proof that there exists beauty and purity in the thin border between silence and sound. Despite there being no orchestra or anything major playing throughout the whole piece, making it minimalist in appearance, the subtle and few in quantity piano notes manage to evoke an emotion so deep into our souls unlike any other sound; it's just overwhelming.

Just turn any distraction away from you, shut your eyes and let the music carry you away through an emotional journey of sound.



If this isn't beautiful, then I don't know what is.
This was Fur Alina, by Arvo Pärt.

It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in.

         Ricky Fitts, American Beauty (1999)

Si me entiendes, quítate la camiseta

Lonely was never the new dance party

I've come to realize something about my music collection.

During the four month holiday after the HSC, I spent most of the time on my own, working for a meagre amount of money every week and sometimes struggling to make ends meet. Those were desperate and dark times. Meanwhile, I started collecting music from a record label called Ghostly, whose most prominent artist, The Sight Below, I was quite interested in. Some months ago I wrote about this particular artist, about his strange blend of shoegaze harmonies and the consistent drum beat which made his songs have an up-beat feel to them, while at the same time containing a rather beautifully sorrowful song within.

Almost every time I listen to his music, now that I've started a new life here at university, I feel sad and highly contemplative on negative things. Would this be induced by the music's dark feel, or by the fact that I spent most of that period of solitude and darkness listening to such music? Nowadays, I try to not to play his music, fearing that I might return to my previous state. Regardless of that, I admit that his music isn't bad, it's quite an original repertoire of alternative-techno-ambient music. Now I'm just listening to new artists and getting immersed in new genres which I wasn't quite fond of before.

I am always surprised by the power of music.
How is it possible that bare mechanical energy that gets translated from sound to electrical impulses inside the brain induce someone to feel something he or she has never felt before?

Last night I went out with my college to a club. Although I had donated blood the other day, and I was not in a 100% condition to be involved in such activity, I was still able to party hard during the majority of the night. But my body succumbed to tiredness and ached. I looked authentically drunk: I was sweating real bad, my walking pattern was irregular, I couldn't stand straight. But I wasn't drunk at all! I had enjoyed being in company of such cool people and with such good music (it was ok) so much that my body just couldn't take it. I had such a great time.

It makes me ponder on how my music collection reflects on my emotions and thoughts, maybe even my past.
Right now, I've never felt so good, so happy, in my life. And the music that I'm coming across here in college is just great!! Good memories shall reside in the new collection I'm currently building.
This is just too good to be true.

Orgullosamente jarocho

A pesar de que nací en la Ciudad de México,
pasé la mayoría de mi juventud en Xalapa, la capital de Veracruz; el estado más bello de México.
Y pues, es interesante que llegue a estas tierras lejanas para tener una mejor vida, a pesar de las cosas bellas y mágicas experiencias que Veracruz me ha ofrecido. Desgraciadamente, mi futuro no queda en México, sino en un planeta Tierra sin fronteras. Aún así, me considero orgullosamente jarocho.

Yo nací con la luna de plata 
y nací con alma de pirata.
He nacido rumbero y jarocho,
trovador de veras,
y me fui lejos de Veracruz.
Veracruz, rinconcito
donde hacen su nido
las olas del mar
Veracruz, pedacito
de patria que sabe sufrir y cantar
Veracruz, son tus noches
diluvio de estrellas, palmera y mujer.
Veracruz, vibra en mi ser,
algún día hasta tus playas lejanas
tendré que volver.

Agustín Lara - Veracruz

Saludos a toda mi gente!

Oh God, it had to happen one day.

Antibiotic treatment is going ok.
I feel just fine, slightly weakened from the antibiotic but I feel OK.

Now, I have to admit I am a 東方(touhou) fan. It really embarrasses me to tell people that I'm that guy who's into anime and that kind of things. Luckily, I'm not a complete freak, I'm not a goddamn otaku (thank you God!!).

But Touhou is right now the Biggest thing in Japan. The internet community over there is just exploding with fan made material based from it. And you wonder.. "what is touhou?" Just google it, look it up on youtube. Chances are you'll find something that will make you laugh and go wtf while having a brainf*ck.

To summarize, Touhou is a videogame where chicks shoot colorful bullets which also shoot more bullets at you. More like a shoot 'em up game with heaps of colorful 2D graphics. The thing is, the game is just unbelievably hard. And by hard I mean that the bullets come at you in continuous waves that form patterns in your screen. So when you play, instead of being a shoot-to-kill game it is more like a HOLY-SHIT-HOW-DO-I-GET-THE-FUCK-OUT-OF-THE-WAY kind of game.



The game has tons of characters, which means heaps material for fans to make stuff with.
And it also has pretty cool music, which is what brings most of the fans together. Doodles and comics is what makes the majority of the fan-based content but music based from the game's music is also a great thing that appears all the time on the internet and keeps fans busy.

I guess that if you use Youtube a lot you are very likely to have been RickRolled, and there's a chance that you've been McRolled as well. Well, the music that McRolled is based on comes from Touhou. No, Touhou did not rip the music off McRolled, McRolled ripped the music off from Touhou. And it's just such a hit over there. (Seriously, the guy who made the game, music and characters is basically a millionaire. He's an alcohol-lover, a bad drawer and likely to be a pedo (just kidding)).

And some japs have made a video about that same tune, but put along with custom-made Mario World levels. AWESOME!!

And that's my reason to blog for today. I might add more Touhou related stuff in the future, but I just can't afford being embarrassed on the internet. Seriously. I cannot even afford to show my Touhou remix music collection to my friends, some who are even anime fans. It's not that the music is bad, it's actually quite good and original, but it just makes me cringe to know that people I know are aware of what Touhou involves as part of the internet community. Oh gawd.

About my taste in music

{Sorry, I don't do tl;dr.}

Naturally, as a son of a musician, music is and has always been a great influence in my life. It has accompanied me during the brightest and the darkest times of my life, given the many strange things that I've seen/heard/felt some sort of tangible meaning, and made me appreciate the little things in life.

But I've noticed that my taste in music is distinctively different to many people, mostly because it just covers a wide range of genres, eras and styles, and also that I have my set of "rules" when it comes to music. And I've also noticed that people have different ways in which they listen to music. Some people, like me, focus in melody or rhythm, while others focus on lyrics and musical "hooks".

I guess that I might begin with my music rules. Firstly, if the music that I hear has any musical instruments that can be played by a human being (as in, actually play it, tangibly hold the instrument, etc.) then it must not, under any circumstance, be substituted by electronic music synths. I ABHOR listening to a violin, a trumpet, a guitar, EVEN HUMAN VOICE (I hereby declare myself an enemy of any Vocaloid fan/producer/developer/user), that comes from a computer or machine. Not only is it wrong and unnatural, but it is simple torture to the ears. But, hey, I know that musicians who can play those instruments are expensive, so record labels/artists sometimes go the cheap and easy way. Sometimes you can't blame them.


As I mentioned earlier, I've realized that people listen to music differently. First off, I was born and raised among classical musicians and classical music. I wasn't introduced to the real rock stuff until I was like 16 or 17. So I have this tendency to like soft, tranquil and good-sounding music, such as ambient and classical itself. But I have an emphasis on melody and rhythm, so then electronic music kicks in. Hence I like trance (for its soulfulness and progressive inter-melodious-phases (what a mouthful)), techno (rhythm and melody), drum & bass (for their artistic play with all audible frequencies and mostly for rhythm. But since the newer d&b bands are crap I stopped listening to d&b), and experimental/minimalism (this one is for rhythm). Glitch, gabber, happy hardcore and electro-rock/electro-pop can all go to hell. They are the abomination, the sick child of electronic music.

There is also a trend that I have noticed within music that is "commercial", or that which is aired on radio 24/7 and gets tops of sales, and which generally sucks. It's a fact that such commercial music gets sold solely because of the "hooks" that it has. By "hooks" I mean the combination of melody, rhythm and lyrics that sticks to your brain and it just won't let go. "Hooks" are predominantly present in music we consider as cheesy. I am not completely against commercial music, sometimes some songs of such type end up being my favorites. And I admit that a lot of people like music like that. It's just that sometimes that music is just plain annoying and gives me headaches. But I have a tendency to appreciate music that may sometimes has no hook whatsoever. Sometimes when I share my music to people they go: "wow, this is just boring", or "why is there so much repetition in this song? there is no theme or hook to it" or even "I can't believe that this can even be considered as music". Sometimes I listen to music as I would look at a painting by Pollock. Sometimes the art medium may be profusely mixed and messed up, without order, without sense, but I can appreciate such art by ignoring the confusion and the sense of senselessness, and enjoy it in its full splendor without looking at the minute details of its apparently destructive construction. Like, half ignore, half look at attentively. That's how I listen to ambient music, and that's how I manage to listen to post-rock hardcore (although I am still in a training process to fully appreciate such style). I can listen to Philip Glass and still like Alexisonfire, music styles that are completely millions of miles apart from each other.

As an example:




When I share my Philip Glass music collection to people they go: "What the hell is this music? Such repetition is just horrible!" And then I come back with: "Well, that music that you listen too is just as repetitive and annoying!" When people share their hardcore rock collection I go: "What is with this music? All distortion and yelling?" And they come back with: "Well, that music that you listen to is just as senseless and destructive!"

And without hooks, I mean, nothing that a person's mind can grasp firmly and walk along with it. As an example:




The good thing is that I expand my musical collection all the time, trying to put in stuff that I've never listened to before in my life, new genres and new bands. Just recently I've been trying to immerse myself into rock music like never before, to catch up with the stuff that I missed while living in a world of only classical music and techno. Recently, I've been finding things that have changed my musical life by quite a lot.

I love music!
'til later... gotta watch the Endeavour space shuttle lift off, the last one done in the night!

The shoegaze masters

Lately I've been looking into shoegaze, this branch of the rock genre that focuses on the manipulation and distortion of guitar-driven sound. Somewhat like rock gone funny with Brian Eno on drugs. It's the most interesting genre I've heard. Since I like ambient music, and since rock may sometimes not be my thing at times, shoegaze is that in-between phase of rock and ambient, with a hint of experimental and minimalism. Truly music that is out of this world, and which was completely ahead of its time in 1991.

That's it for today, I'm incredibly exhausted from yesterday's friend's gig. A truly new experience.

Awesome find...

///I know it has been more than a month since Christmas, but here it goes anyway. This is perhaps the most beautiful thing I've heard in quite a long time.///



These past months I've been living through a personal process of self-revelation, discovering the bright and dark sides of my personality and my bonds with the people that I know, love and hate.

Living on my own has given me a lot of time and space to reflect on my own being, as an entity of an ever-changing universe who happened to land luckily on the Pale Blue Dot suspended on a beam of sunlight we call Earth. And boy I'm happy of being here. :)

Naturally, it's been a hurdle to pull myself together now that everything is up to me. Everything. And that's where it gets interesting, because I suddenly realize the actual weight that my decisions have on the many aspects of my life. A single expression can change an emotion, a single handshake can strengthen a friendship, a single glance towards a beautiful person can create a new relationship. And all of those can have so many effects on my life in the future.

Sadly, I've come to realize how my own inertia (I'm a lazy person, I have to admit it) has held me from doing the things that now I wish I could have done. Nearly at 3 months after the HSC, I realize of the mistakes I have committed. I abandoned two friends that I saw as possible chances to have an intimate relationship with. I screwed up. I didn't get a scholarship to aid me through this tough first year at university, I was doubtful of my own ability as a human being when applying for them. One of the biggest scholarship programs had a ranking that I was predicting not to reach, partly because of fear of success, partly because I was unsure of how I could even do such an amazing thing. It turned out that my ranking was considerably higher than that threshold, so I missed out on such a huge opportunity. Shit, I screwed up. Now, I hope I can force myself not to commit such pathetic mistakes, for the sake of my life.

But at the same time, I realize just how fortunate I am. Firstly, I have successfully completed the HSC, which I had feared to be the biggest and most horrifying thing to happen to me in High School: super hard exams, incredibly awful stressing, just freaking out. It turned out to be quite a challenge, but far from being the nightmare I had imagined. Actually, I survived victoriously. Knowing that I came from a dark third world country into the wide blue yonder and do so well means so much for me, I feel so much more fortunate. I guess, more special. And now I'm going to study in university here in Australia. Superb!

I guess that there are always ways to counter some of the mistakes that I have done.
I guess that I can still have a wonderful life regardless of the silly mistakes that I make (it truly depends on the severity of those mistakes of course).
I guess I need to get out more often >_<

Shoegazing

Yeah, it's that time again. About two years ago I got a PSP Go!Cam for my PSP (duh) and filmed just about anything. But mostly, I filmed train trips, documenting the scenery flying past the window. Sounds like trainspotting? Meh, camera-users go through that phase. Making videos out of them? Meh, camera-users do that too. So finally I used some film that was taken 2 years ago and put them to accompany a piece of shoegaze music by the almost unnoticeable one-man-band The Sight Below. This song comes from his latest album Glider.


Yeah, go ahead and complain about my poor taste in music. Bwahahah.
No, seriously. It took me just as long to make this film. I had trouble using the appropriate song for it. My original plan was to use a Philip Glass piece, but it would be just too long and over-repetitive. There was a time when I needed to get more footage. And then I decided to choose The Sight Below. Firstly, because I dig his stuff. Secondly, that guy might need some help spreading his works. TSB is unusual for me, as I try to expand my musical taste. TSB blends in ambient music with a thumpy dance beat that really produces something out of the ordinary. It's like ambient, but just not that boring (I mean, ambient music is boring if you listen to it with full attention. Ambient music was not intended for such attention, listen to it accordingly hahahaha (so in other words, ambient is awesome but only for the trained listeners)). So there it goes, another video that I promised to deliver. I wonder what I'll do next this year.

You’ve got to be joking…

Since the past 5 years I have been an avid listener to Last.Fm, what was once a free music streaming internet service that introduced me to tons of new music genres, artists and styles; completely revolutionizing my own musical spirit.

Sadly, today I discovered that I now have to pay for a subscription to use the service (unless I lived in UK, US or Deutschland, or used a crummy proxy). I was listening to some shoegaze artists, and suddenly this came up:

And I was like

  (( ° Д °)’’’’’’’’’’’  oh crap oh crap oh crap

I’m screwed!! >.<  What am I going to use now that gives me the same flexibility as Last.Fm?? I checked out Libre.Fm, but it’s just not the same thing. Maybe I should go back to Myspace and do what my friend does, check the musicians’ friends to listen to more music. But it’s just, once again, not the same thing. I can’t get the same excitement and semi-randomness that Last.fm has.

So then… what’s next?

I should just shut up and pay for the goddamn thing, 3 bucks a month may not be too much. BUT I’M SO POOR RIGHT NOW. I guess I’ll go back to Myspace.