Posts tagged with "music"

Postal Service, J-Pop, And More

Jackee has been sent me the entire Postal Service album, Give Up, which is a great blend of sooth­ing elec­tron­i­ca with even more demul­cent vocals. An inter­est­ing fact about this group is that their name comes from the process used in the cre­ation of the album, con­sist­ing of mail­ing musi­cal parts from one mem­ber to the oth­er in order to com­plete a song.

She also sent me some J‑Pop music videos of Mini Moni and The Pillows. J‑Pop has nev­er real­ly been my thing, but I can’t seem to stop watch­ing these hyper­ac­tive clips of girls run­ning around pre­tend­ing to be Power Rangers, or the wacky antics of male front­men. There’s some­thing mes­mer­iz­ing about these cul­tur­al­ly rich videos, almost as if a sub­lim­i­nal mes­sage has been implant­ed, telling me that I love the flashy colours and rub­bery facial expres­sions. When a clip is done, I don’t know whether I should watch again or have an epilep­tic seizure.

The Summer Nights Alone

It’s night and I don’t feel like sleep­ing. My eyes tell me I’m tired, and my mus­cles empha­size the point. My cat is asleep under my bed, hud­dled behind the skirt, wait­ing for me to give her the chair. A night show is play­ing on the Aborigal Peoples Television Network, some small bud­get­ed pro­duc­tion host­ed by a pho­ny man with an imper­a­tive voice. The cur­rent act, a group of three women with ban­shee-like voic­es, bang on the sim­ple drums they hold as they sing quick mov­ing melod­ic lines. My room glows blue from a sin­gle Candela perched atop my desk.

I’m in an odd mood. Not quite con­tent, not quite lone­ly. I try to remain sto­ic nev­er­the­less. Sometimes it feels as if the night is the only thing that accepts, the only thing that under­stands. Can I express my mind to you, the silent ora­tor?

Perhaps I’ll fall asleep to some Portishead, a rem­nant of some pleas­ant mem­o­ries.

Unfamiliar pil­lows with unfa­mil­iar sheets.

AFI Concert, Future Concerts, Etc.

I got back from the AFI con­cert about an hour ago, after see­ing Aaron and Wheaties off, and grab­bing a relax­ing show­er. The con­cert was decent, but that’s in com­par­i­son to see­ing my favourite band live. The light­ing was amaz­ing­ly done, with the cor­rect colours and spot­lights to match the music. Davey Havok was singing almost a semi-tone flat through most of the con­cert, so he must have been pret­ty tired. I only enjoy their last album, Sing the Sorrow, but at one point dur­ing the sum­mer I was lis­ten­ing to it to no end. Dina asked me if I thought there were any pret­ty girls walk­ing around between sets and all I could answer was “lots”.

There aren’t too many bands I feel as if I need to expe­ri­ence live. I’ve seen Tool, the Dwarves, and the Misfits live already, and those are the only bands I feel that I enjoy enough for me to attend. I would go to anoth­er Tool con­cert if they came around again, and def­i­nite­ly a Portishead show if they were ever doing one. I would be up for an Ellen Ten Damme con­cert with Darren, but unfor­tu­nate­ly she seems to only play in Europe and the UK with a few Japanese tour dates. I could go for a Dreamtheater con­cert, but I have the live DVD, so a per­son­al view­ing isn’t quite as imper­a­tive. The Dears is a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but I’d have to get more into their music before going.

I bought The Frozen Throne expan­sion for Warcraft III, and I’m impressed with it’s depth. It’s basi­cal­ly a com­plete­ly new game now, with dif­fer­ent units, heroes, and build­ings. I find that it’s much more strat­e­gy based and less focused on micro. Since I’m unem­ployed, I’ve been play­ing quite a bit with Artfag, and since she’s unem­ployed as well, there’s nev­er a chance to guilt the oth­er into look­ing for a job, which is some­thing that I’m find­ing hard to get moti­vat­ed about.

Speaking of which, I spent the last week send­ing out résumés to var­i­ous com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions. I have a résumé that I’m pret­ty proud of right now, after Pat helped me fix it up. No phone calls so far.

Drowsy Thoughts

It’s 9:18 in the morn­ing and I can’t sleep. I end­ed up falling asleep around 5 and wak­ing up around 8:30. I dis­cov­ered a splin­ter in my foot I must have acquired while walk­ing to get a glass of water. There’s too much activ­i­ty in my brain. Perhaps I’ll fall back asleep again, when I can for­get about all this, so I don’t need to think so much. Not that my think­ing is vol­un­tary.

I’ll let this song play me out. I’m rarely one who’s able to stop in the mid­dle.

The Dreamtheater DVD, Live, Titus

I cracked and bought the Dreamtheater DVD, after pur­chas­ing a $60 LG DVD-ROM from a small com­put­er shop. My old DVD-ROM refused to accept any dual-lay­ered, sin­gle-sided DVDs, and I sus­pect that I knocked the lens out of align­ment when I was dust­ing out my case. When watch­ing Jordan Rudess work the key­board, I can only sit in dis­be­lief.

Speaking of music, I heard of a new Live album recent­ly, which I’ll con­sid­er check­ing out. Secret Samadhi is an album which I’ve always enjoyed. It reminds me of a time when I lived with my Genexxa speak­ers on the sides of my bed, and I’d fall asleep to music in the sum­mer. Much like now, it was a time with no end, when each day had as much (or as lit­tle) mean­ing as the next. The Radiohead album also seems promis­ing, and I might have pur­chased it on the day it came out, had I not been so dis­ap­point­ed by Kid A. Radiohead is a band which has fol­lowed me through every rela­tion­ship I’ve had, much like Portishead and Tool. Oddly enough, it was Ashley who intro­duced me to all of them.

I quite enjoyed myself with Trolley, Aaron, Dina, and Wheaties yes­ter­day. We toast­ed to both Aaron and Trolley’s new jobs and end­ed up watch­ing Titus. Aaron and Dina had to crash here, since the movie end­ed at three in the morn­ing and the bus­es had stopped run­ning. They both had to go at eight this morn­ing, so I still don’t feel as if I’ve recov­ered after see­ing them off.