Today I read an article on CNN about a guy who had lost his eye in a childhood accident and now has a prosthetic eye. What makes this story interesting is that he is working with tech specialists to put a camera in his prosthetic eye and to hook it up to nerves so that he can see again. It's a really cool article (Link at the bottom) and it made me realize that our world is slowly turning into a William Gibson novel. Soon plastic surgery will be out of style and soon we'll all be focused on getting new cybernetic implants and drug dealing will turn into RAM dealing. I think these old cyberpunk authors are right about our future. I haven't read any Phillip K. Dick so I can really throw in any ideas from his novels. ... I don't know, I just thought this was really cool and decided to give my thoughts on our future. As for cities being covered in Neon Japanese... I don't know and I honestly doubt that. Anywho, you can find the article here: BIONIC BODY 2.0
As I'm still chugging away at my "Epitaph" review, trust me it will be epic, I figure I'll give you another quick review of the other CD I got, "Covergirl" by Jared Louche and the Aliens!
One of my friends read some of my blog and asked, "How do you find all this music?" and I simply told him that it all stemmed out from one thing to another. I had discovered Chemlab by going onto the website raymondwatts.com and I wanted to see what else Raymond had done and saw that he had worked with Chemlab on the album "East Side Militia." I looked at the album art and thought, yeah I'll give it a go. I listened to that album and I was instantly hooked on Chemlab and Jared Louche. I went onto Amazon.com and saw this album. I had to get it. So I did. The day I got it I furiously removed the shrink wrap, tormented my dog with the bubble wrap, and then went on to listening to the album. In classic Jared Louche fashion it has "suture" tracks. I don't know how to describe a "suture" track because every "suture" track is different in its own way. The album opens softly with a cover of the Bryan Ferry song "In Every Dream Home a Heartache." The song ends a bit on the loud side with percussion blasting, which may sound bad, but it's pretty cool because it is built up. There are two jazz songs in here that I like a lot. A cover of Jared's own song "Suicide Jag" which done with jazz loses its intensity, but it's still very cool. The next song starts with jazz then goes into dance, which I'm alright with. I also like to note the track "Famous Blue Raincoat" it starts with the crowd cheering and Jared walks off stage and someone's in the dressing room. Well who the fuck is in the dressing room? Oh! It's the in crowd. Then Jared starts playing a nice acoustic jam. Overall, this album strays somewhat far from the usual Chemlab works and hits new levels. If you like Chemlab, if you like jazz, if you like acoustics, if you like Jared Louche then for God's sake get this album!
My friend (and affiliate) John just told me about an internet radio service called "Pandora Radio." He told me about it over Teamspeak, so at one point his mic cut out and I decided to check it out instead of having him explain it all over again. So I check it out. It tells me to type in an artist or song and so I give it the test. I type in PIG and surprisingly they have PIG! So I add it to my station, then I add KMFDM. First it plays "Here to Stay" by PIG then "Glory" by KMFDM and then it starts playing OhGr and Rob Zombie and Nine Inch Nails. At that instant I stopped using it because it's stupid that it would give me music that I don't want. I tell John what happened and then he told me there was a thumbs up and thumbs down button that can cancel or keep playing a certain artist. Now I'm back to it and giving a thumbs down to all those sucky artists... well... OhGr is good, but I'm not in the OhGr mood. Suddenly I start getting good music like Die Krupps and Powermann 5000 and some other stuff. Then with no sign of change it suddenly goes to 80s acoustic then after I thumbs down that I get death metal! If I want crappy music I will ask for it, but all I want is what I asked for! So I decide to add a couple more bands and the music continues to be crap. There are times when giving me new music is alright and when it's not. These is one of those times when it's not okay. You should examine what I like CLOSER. Adding My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult does not mean give me crappy 80s acoustic music. Adding Foetus does not mean give me death metal and for that matter what does Foetus have to do with death metal anyways? Even as I'm listening now I'm being given suck ass hair metal. It's like going to restaurant and asking for the Surf & Turf, but instead they give you grass on a slice of bread. If you really want to try this, be my guest, but if I don't get some good like with this thing soon I'm gonna quit using it.
So while I'm working on my long review of the Front Line Assembly album I figured I should post a quick review of the Foetus album "Love".
"Love" was released in 2005 by the band Foetus which features ex-PIG member J.G. Thirlwell. The album art/insert is really interesting and features vibrant art that is very simplistic. Now let's move on to the music because this is what I want to talk most about. The instrumentals are FUCKING incredible! The percussion is a little sub-par and garage, but everything else masks that. The instrumentals are incredibly symphonic and you can hear that J.G. Thirlwell used to be in PIG. Lots of horns and harpsicord. Whenever guitar shows up it's very electric and distorted, and I like that. There are occasionally a few synth loops, but not very often. The instrumentals sometimes sound like they came out of a horror soundtrack. The vocals... I'm not too fond of. They are very... whiny. It's like a punk vocalist who was inspired by main stream male vocalists. Though I'm not fond of them now, I'm sure I may become so in the future. One thing I've noticed with the music is that towards the end of songs the intensity tends to kick up and make you go, "Aw, hell yeah!" then the song ends and you feel a little down. Not to fear, the intensity does get stretched out later in the album. Overall, this album kicks so much ass! I'm very glad that I decided to get it! I recommend this album to anyone who likes early PIG works, classical music, and rock music then you should most definitely pick up "Love" by Foetus. It's a must have!
So I've gotten almost all of my stuff, I'm just waiting on the "Naive" (original pressing) cassette. I just got my new shoes today, as well as my KMFDM Russia Tour T-shirt, and yesterday my Kraftwerk sweatshirt came so I've got my new style for now. Got "Epitaph" yesterday and "Love" today. Reviews will take awhile to type up because I am reviewing EVERY song and EVERY little detail about the album so... yeah. Right now I'm half way through the "Epitaph" review.
I have about three $50 amazon gift cards left so with that I'm using them up to bring you guys reviews of stuff. I recently ordered: -Kraftwerk Sweatshirt -KMFDM Russian Tour T-Shirt -"Love" by Foetus -"Naive" by KMFDM (Original Pressing/Cassette) -"Epitaph" by Front Line Assembly -"Covergirl" by Jared Louche I will not be reviewing the clothing of course as they are merely clothes and there's nothing to say about clothes... in my opinion. I will do seperate reviews this time of all the music I get and I'll try to do it more in depth by reviewing the liner notes and individual tracks. My next order I may use up two cards leaving one left (if you know your arithmatic) by buying the KMFDM "In Your Face" tour VHS that is EXTREMELY rare.
1) Guten Tag! 2) Daft Individuals [Album Version] 3) Domination Creation Station Nation 4) Jesus Kicks the Nuclear $h!t Out of the Nazis 5) The One They Call Evil 6) Insane 7) Flip The Switch 8) Horse Goggles 9) PC L04D L3TT3R 10) Search 11) The Phinale Phoenix
So, I justed watched "Sessler's Soapbox" and Adam Sessler was talking about how Resident Evil 5 wasn't that good and it didn't live up to the hype or create the amount of tension that the old games created. While waiting for the video to load I scrolled down and gazed at the comments a little bit and saw a comment that said that Resident Evil 5 was extremely racist and that it was demonizing black people. Actually I've heard many arguments like this and if you've been closely paying attention to Resident Evil 5 stuff you'll find that a lot of people say this. What I find so weird about these arguments is that in Resident Evil 4 a white guy was killing a bunch of spanish people (that are zombies mind you) and somehow that didn't attract any attention, but now that a white guy is killing black people (that are still zombies mind you) people start to freak out. It's not racist really because in the end you are just killing zombies and afterall the game was made by the Japanese who are a race different from both blacks and whites. I'm very perplexed by this all. I think our society is just too sensitive these days.
Okay, so I have to put out an apology. I said I was going to post a video blog this weekend, but I can't. my camera and dazzle are being stupid right now and therefore I'm in too much of a pissy mood to try and upload it again. So with that said I'll just quickly post what I said on that.
In addition to my music that I got I bought an electric drum kit and a mic stand. Both are equally awesome and the employee that helped me out at Sam Ash was very cool. The electric drum kit I got is very low end, but I don't care. I got it because doing percussion on a synth sucks. So onto music. First up is "Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick" by PIG... the cassette. Every track on this album rocks! They're all different in their own way, one is slow jazz while another is latin followed by a rock song, I love it. The sound quality is outstanding! It's like the band is in my room playing right next to me. This cassette has inspired me to buy more cassettes, which I will! Overall, it kicks ass and I recommend it to ANYONE so long as you can find it (either LP, CD, or Cassette). Next up we have "Prime Evil" another PIG album, this time a CD. This album is rumored to be one of PIG's worst albums, though when listening to it you have to bare in mind that the tracks were only half done when the album was published. The reason I had gotten this was because I am collecting the PIG discography. On this album we have a cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" which is pretty good. There's too much tech for a Black Sabbath cover, but where it fails it makes up for with the chorus. I'm not a big Black Sabbath fan, but when I heard the chorus I started chanting it in my head. In addition to this there's the track "Prime Evil" and "Keeper of the Margarita". Both are pretty good, but "Keeper of the Margarita" is probably the best track on this album. It has a main synth line with some classical chorus vocals and very garage percussion, which may sound bad together, but it's actually really satisfying. The rest of the tracks are remixes and.... well... they're not that good. Enough said. I'd recommend this album to strict PIG fans. Finally (I just got Caustic Grip so I've had no time to listen to it) we have "Provision" which is a single by Front Line Assembly, so this one will be quick. It's classic Front Line Assembly, which is good, you got nice synth lines partnered with Bill Leeb's distorted voice and the percussion. It's calm industrial with this suttle intensity. The first track "Provision" reminds me a lot of old Command & Conquer music and how it's got this heavy rhythmic percussion and prominant synth lines that spew emotion. That is why I love this track, it's like a Command & Conquer song.... but with vocals. The last track on the single (told you it would be quick) is "Overkill (Surge Mix)" and it's got this very rapid punk percussion, which I'm not a big fan of. The synth lines in the background were essentially trying to keep up with the percussion, while the vocals were not that good. With that said, "Overkill (Surge Mix)" is the worst of Front Line Assembly tracks that I've heard. Overall... well... half was awesome and half was bad, I don't know what that averages out to I suck at math.
Well i ordered ore music: -Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick - PIG (cassette) -Caustic Grip - Front Line Assembly -Provision - Front Line Assembly -Prime Evil - PIG You are probably wondering why the heck I ordered the cassette version of an album. Well I don't own a record player so I can't buy the LP (priced at $20) and the CD was too expensive when it was on Amazon, but it isn't anymore so I purchased the cassette version. I might purchase more cassettes anyway to get more use out of the clock radio I have from the 80s. So I'll tell you guys all about those when I get them. I'm also thinking about doing a video blog just to see what it's like. I'll need to think about what to video blog about though.
