Sad news, so sad. Richard Wright died earlier today at 65, apparently after a short battle with cancer.
Rest in peace, you old magician of the keys. You knew there’s no us and them, we’re all one. See you at the great gig in the sky!
Sad news, so sad. Richard Wright died earlier today at 65, apparently after a short battle with cancer.
Rest in peace, you old magician of the keys. You knew there’s no us and them, we’re all one. See you at the great gig in the sky!
Brief thoughts about some clips that I saw recently. Most of the links lead to YouTube. Be forewarned: all of these are quite loud.
Unleashed – “Black Horizon”. Unleashed are not my type of death metal band, but this clip is seriously good. The visual presentation is quite stylish, and very much tilted (tinted) towards gray/black/blue. Unexpected and pleasant surprise.
Omnium Gatherum – “Nail”. This is a very weird Finnish band. Very heavy, and somehow very non-standard. Also an odd videoclip, that’s why it got my attention. We’ll hear that new album when it comes out, see how it goes.
Trivium – “Down from the Sky”. Trivium started discussing real-world human issues on a larger scale in The Crusade. This here comes from their new album, and seems to be about war in general and nuclear war specifically. Aside from the fact that the song is built in their own intriguing manner, the video shows so much interrupted footage from this and that war that it feels like war itself. Quite a good job there.
F5 – “The Reckoning”. Although I liked the song, I couldn’t like the video. It seems dull and uninspiring to me. The things don’t fit – particularly all those stupid explosions. I guess I will listen to those guys rather than watch their clips.
In Flames – “Alias”. A Sense of Purpose is an album I like better than their previous effort, Come Clarity, but this video was unneeded. Alright, the special effects are reasonable, and they do say something about the idea behind the song, as do the funny acoustic guitar melodies synced to electric guitars video. But playing in a dark room with lights running along the walls doesn’t seem the bright thing to do at the moment. The previous video off the same album, for “The Mirror’s Truth”, was another story: scary and moving to death. Or to life. Doesn’t matter, it was touching, somehow unlike this one.
Dream Theater – clips from the forthcoming DVD. Another DVD? This is going to be their sixth. In 15 years. Come on, guys… “Shut up, we know you can play,” as Steve Vai put it once (I think that was “Juice”). This DVD releasing spree might actually be something of a group obsessive-compulsive disorder: we don’t put out a DVD, our next album’s gonna suck. I couldn’t believe such a thing even if I had a million people tell me otherwise. Well, at the end of the day, if DT really insist on doing it, no one can stop them.
Instrumentally yours,
Qondory Weary
One day last week I was at work, pushing hard at a translation that had way too many of those twisted, page-long German sentences. At one point, I got so happy about being able to cope with the thing, albeit slowly, that I started to exhibit my usual signs of joy, that is, whistling/humming, tapping, kicking as if playing kick-drums, and being generally twitchy. Blissful and ignorant, I was stopped cold in my tracks when my monitor suddenly went black and then said it’s going to go into suspend. In the first second, I panicked: what if this old crate that they gave me for a computer decided to play dead on me right now, in the middle of a hard-shell translation? The shock went away quickly and I thought about the situation for a second. The lamps for power, hard-drive, etc. were still on, so the problem must have been somewhere else. After a minute or so, I thought I might check the cables. Surprise, surprise. Last time someone moved my workplace (they already did that a couple of times this year), they did not screw in the small bolts at the monitor connector sides. Nice job… Got me thinking about how often things like that might happen – turning your own monitor off by kicking. Shame this doesn’t happen every so often with surveillance equipment and such. Just imagine: some hidden individuals spy on people around the world via CCTV and whatnot, and they’re getting so high on all the surveillance power, then suddenly one kicks the equipment and it all shut downs in a wink. Killing a monitor might be a good thing, all depending on the people to whom it does happen.
As always, spoilers ahead.
In the fragments of time devoted to the uneasy process of nerve-soothing after work-related mind-breakage, I replayed Crysis. Actually, I finished it some 10 days ago, but just found the time to write about it.
Crysis is, of course, gorgeous. From the moment you swim to the shore and find a turtle walking the sands under the stars, you will be hooked, in case you haven’t been already. Combat is very satisfactory, especially using the fun suit powers: cloaking/invisibility, speed increase, enhanced physical power. The weapons mod system also functions without a glitch and, what’s more, makes sense: use the red dot for better aiming, but make foes aware; use the grenade launcher of your rifles, but careful not to blow yourself to bits; change the ammo type; put a sniper scope on the shotgun; etc. In fact, the only weapons I found difficult to use were the different grenades, although I still took out several enemies with the frags. The vehicles were better for that purpose. The sound designers did an excellent thing there, they put in easily discernible sounds for the things you hit by shooting with a gun: earth, metal, wood, plastic, human, bird, armour, alien, and so on. Not that this is something entirely new; it is just very well implemented.
There were several strange annoyances along the way. Although I did update to the latest version, I got some weird dying here and there. The funniest moments came when the aliens I killed fell out of the sky exactly on top of my well-trained military head dressed in a superhuman war costume. Those were instant kills, so I guess the aliens must weigh at least several tons apiece. Quite interestingly, shacks and barracks falling on my head did no damage at all. That’s why I suppose the patches must have made the aliens a lot fatter, as well as very precise jumpers (or fallers out of the sky, if you prefer). Also, they did make them stronger, which was a somewhat pleasant challenge until the final battle. There it took me a couple of hours to learn how to liquidate smaller aliens fast in order to get clear shots at the bosses.
All in all, the graphics, the sounds, and the level design seemed even better (patches?) than what I remembered from the first play-through after release. The only thing I still find unexplainable is this discrepancy: all characters are done so well in every detail, with the exception of expressions. They are still quite stiff to me, although movement and body postures are excellent. That type of advanced modelling is obviously rather difficult to program. I will be waiting for someone to surprise us with flesh-and-blood characters better than those in Half-Life 2.
The story refresh was also welcome. Only part that I found, again, out-of-place was the CIA operative that almost sprang into the story out of the blue. Otherwise, the team boss Prophet, Psycho, the archaeologist’s daughter Helena, and especially Major Strickland are very believable people. Thanks to the voice acting, it’s clear that they have their quirks, aims, beliefs, that they struggle for their thing (well, probably not in Psycho’s case, but still). The story is somewhat flat – a tyrant tries to capture a great source of power – but this is just the premise. More importantly, the character played, Nomad, becomes a witness of events, just like Gordon Freeman. The enjoyable thing about it, just like Half-Life (again), is that the flow of the narrative is rarely interrupted. One instance I can remember is the torturing exit-search while on alien premises in their ship/building/hive/whatever. That really took some time getting used to, but was, in a sense, very realistic: a human is not supposed to orient themselves well in an alien-built environment, especially not under the given circumstances. Other than that, the story flowed smoothly, almost frighteningly so. The one character I hated most – I suppose most sane people do – but who influences the outcome the most, is the idiotic general. He reminds me too much of the power-position figures in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, or the fictional U.S. general in No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way. In a way, this character was quite the opposite of what the others were fighting for. Good work on the part of the Crytek story writers.
I am now looking forward to both the continuation of the main story as well as Psycho’s point of view in Crysis Warhead. Let’s see if the programmers have managed to make the engine edible for more computers (mine had trouble here and there, but very much so at the end). Until then, I’ll be focusing on other, more evolutionary stuff.
Mentally yours,
Qondory Weary
Hot on the heels of the In Memory post, I set 5 minutes aside to listen to the way famous Greek metalheads Firewind cover Nevermore’s “Believe in Nothing” (available on the Century Media MySpace page). This will be part of the compilation “Covering 20 Years of Extremes”, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Century Media, out on the 15th September (not sure about that date though).
Firewind’s version has too many vocal harmonies. It also sounds oddly slow to me. The original had this verve in it that, I guess, cannot be replicated so easily. Firewind do a great job of playing faithfully and paying their respect to the original. They were not trying to rewrite the song into something other than metal (I did expect as much of them), unlike what happened to some Maiden songs in the Kerrang cover album. What ain’t my cup of tea about the cover is the transforming of a bleak but inspiring song – especially considering the video – into another slow, depressive-sounding ballad. Sometimes, rhythm is essential; if you tinker with it, you fall.
For comparison purposes: here (YouTube) is the video for the Nevermore original.
This was the first Nevermore album I’ve experienced in an unmediated way – not actually played by someone for me, although at the time (was it 1998? 1999?) recommendation by showcasing was an everyday thing. It’s a mini-album (or an Extended Play, if you like those old classifications), contains just 5 tracks, one of them a bizarre medley-like cover. I don’t think it’s been written in memory of someone particular, but rather holds some serious pondering about future memories that, in the end, depend on all of us to get created, be it even by listening to this record. The CD is covered in stylized (grape)vines and emits the feeling that you’re holding something living – although not growing, only very slowly aging – in your hands, your eyes, your ears, and hopefully in your memory.
“Earth Mother, life giver, we can’t live without her…
So foolish, men who say that they don’t care –
They’ll be gone anyway.” (“Matricide”)
“Burn out the times, burn out the tears, forget who’s to blame;
Hold out your hand and see through the years:
You’re just a foolish mortal man.” (“In Memory”)
Of course, this quotation doesn’t reveal the strength of the title song, just indicates its topic.
The cover I mentioned contains actually two songs by Bauhaus, but rearranged in a manner only Nevermore can make work. I’ve heard the Bauhaus originals, but they can never have the same effect on me. This song is one of the most frightening/sublime experiences in music I’ve ever had (not considering the first time I listened to A Social Grace, but that’s another story): the way Warrel Dane utters “clock” for instance, so sinister, so full of a threat and a fearful promise, so real.
As with every living thing, In Memory is crowned by something simply beautiful. I wouldn’t attempt to describe the last song; for those who’ve never heard it – “you still have time,” as Peter Hammill puts it. Instead, I’ll just give you this programmatic quote from the first one:
“The optimist understands why the world’s gone down the drain.
The pessimist never bends, constricting thoughts in vain.
From the pessimist’s point of view, there’s nothing we can do.
As I paint this picture gray and taste the pain,
I’ll play the optimist.
Again.”
Gosh, I got so psyched by writing this, I’m just gonna go play In Memory again. And probably again.
Finally got my hands on Spore, but not enough time to dive seriously into it. So far, it’s been a hilarious ride through the early stages of evolution.
Oh nucleic acids, when will I have some quiet hours to spend on evolving?
I find myself reading too many books at once. Not a recommended experience… usually. One of them I started several months ago, but am still somewhere in the beginning; the title says it all: Gravity’s Rainbow. Another book I will probably be reading for just as long but which I began a couple of days ago is Ulysses.
Third, there comes Neil Peart’s Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road. I have already managed one fifth, but this is a slow book. Its subject matter also doesn’t very much contribute to fast reading, although it does bring up rather serious things one wouldn’t definitely come up with on one’s own.
Finally, I’m going fast through Watchmen. I know I am too old to be reading this for the first time, but it simply has to be. Impressions and opinions after I finish any of these.
As one good friend of mine remarks so often, there is something astonishing and downright magnetic about insects, birds and all the hatching they do. The coccoon metamorphosis seems to be relevant these days for me. Sadly, I haven’t done this (both writing and metamorphosing) for a long time – and while I was doing it, I wasn’t as serious as I should have been. So here goes the re-hatched/rehashed version of Qondory, hoping that this time it might gather some in-air or on-air hours.
Returning to the global fold:
Qondory Weary
