The Last.fm Straw

The Internet is a wonderful invention. Like the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, Gutenberg's printing press, fermentation, distillation, the Brazilian wax and XML, it revolutionised our lives. One of the reasons why the Internet has staying power is because everything you could possibly think of is available within a few clicks. Eel porn? Yip. Midgets mud wrestling? Probably. Rants against people who call midgets midgets instead of little people? Yes. Mothers Against Drunk Driving? Of course. Drunk Drivers Against Mad Mothers? Slayer be praised! Indeed. The Internet also has less educational side effects like Sparknotes and MIT's entire university course material. Free!

Why is this web of intrigue so damn intriguing? Everything is free! Until recently, you didn't have to sit through propaganda of adverts to see a streaming video on youtube. You certainly didn't have to worry about licensing rights to listen to a song on Last.fm. Now you do.

Last.fm Man Standing

Last.fm used to be a great site. From scrobblers to radio stations to plug-ins for virtually every music player available, sharing your passion for music has never been this convenient. They certainly had the slickest looking player available. Major labels picked up second rate half-baked punk bands who smell like teen spirit from Last.fm. These artists went on to sell millions of units of that stone age technology called compact disks. It seemed like a win-win all around. What went wrong?

The Last.fm Straw

Suddenly, you have to pay to listen to streaming audio. Now, this would not be such a big deal if Internet access outside of Germany, the UK and America were freely available. Only its not. In South Africa, we have the most expensive telecommunications in the world. Certainly, three odd Euros per month is not too much to pay to starving artists.

Only it's not going to starving artists. It's contributing towards Hannah Montana's training bra and Britney Spears's rehab. Not to mention the raise that some CEO who thinks that Josh Groban is the best thing since titty plugs will get for suing the dentures out of some old lady who doesn't even know what P2P is for downloading a rap artist she would kick in the balls if she even knew him or what he was saying about ladies like her in his nursery crimes.

The big 4 labels need to wake up and realise that you can't force your market to buy your product in a format in which you want to provide it. How would you feel if they stopped making coffee mugs with ears and you had to sip hot drinks out of a hot ceramic container without a handle? Simple. You'd stop buying those ceramic containers. How would you feel if the huffing and puffing badass lawyer of ceramic container companies came huffing and puffing down your neck, forcing you to drink hot drinks out of a ceramic container that you can't even hold in your hand? This is not free market capitalism. This is a cartel and it deserves to go bankrupt, just like that little syndicalist experiment called General Motors.

Yet there is more wrong with this than merely Mafia tactics. The big four can carry on syndicating to the likes of Last.fm and Myspace all they like, but they are missing the point. Like NIN, they should embrace this viral marketing medium - the kind of marketing that money can't buy - and cash in on it instead of trying to swim against the streaming. How do you do this?

Connect With Fans, Give Them a Reason to Buy

It's painfully simple. Connect with the fans and give them a reason to buy. Trent Reznor is rolling in the cash. It's not because of his fame - his status as a sex symbol has long since waned. It's because he connects with his fans and he gives them a reason to buy his music. He realises that music is a social phenomenon that is meant to be shared among all and sundry. You can't record the world's greatest album and keep it in a box. Led Zeppelin tried and tested this exact same model during their meteoric rise to fame. They never even released a single, they were loathed by critics and detested by radio, yet they are among the best selling artists of all time. Why? They connected with their fans in a big way and they gave them a reason to buy their records. Pearl Jam and Tool prove that you don't even have to be talented - just connect with your fans and be a little creative with your CD packaging, and it will sell - even if it leaks on P2P networks before being released.

Some Facts About Music

• Music makes a shitload of money. Artists don't. Music publishing - selling your tunes to movie soundtracks or adverts - this makes money. For your record company. Artists are lucky to get a percentage.


• Record companies will always be the bad guys.
  Nobody is going to buy an album merely because it has a SonyBMG logo on it. In fact, after their rootkit extortion fiasco, people will put it back and not buy it specifically because it has a SonyBMG logo on it. Record companies are obsolete, as artists no longer need to sell their souls for exposure. It takes a little bit of skill, it takes blood, sweat and tears, it takes a bit of getting the Internet sussed and you're the next big thing - whether the big 4 like it or not.


• You can't stop P2P downloading. It doesn't matter what you do, P2P is here to stay. Copyright is by its nature not applicable to CDs or DVDS, since these are not originals, but copies to begin with. Besides, studies have shown that those who use P2P do discover new music end up buying lots of music. Why would you want to cut off your nose to spite your face?


• Fans don't mind giving money to artists. Radiohead, NIN, you name it. Fans love their musical heroes, but they despise anything that stands between them and their heroes. Anything that could help you to connect with your musical heroes is good. This means P2P good. Anything that distances you from your musical heroes is bad. This means record company bad. This means P2P lawsuit bad. This means DRM bad.


• If it aint broke, don't fix it! Napster didn't need fixing. Last.fm didn't need fixing. CD dynamic range did not need fixing. CDs did not need fixing to piss off the record buying public who could no longer rip their music to their MP3 players thanks to DRM. Smart move, assholes.


• I want my MPfree! An album is by its nature a promotional item. Give it away with magazines, share it freely on P2P networks, allow fans to remix it, crap on it, play frisbee with it, snarf off it, whatever. The point of an album is to promote a band. Preferably a band with a badass live show that you can't replicate - no matter how high your resolution is or how many channels of stereo you want to add. If an 'artist' like Madonna or Britney can't keep a tune, then they should work on showing their tits or something, but they can't be expected to pay their rent with promotional items. They're entertainers, first and foremost. They have to entertain in the flesh and their albums are merely promotional items to promote their shows.

Between the low audio quality of CD to compensate for iPod listening, the lack of freely available good quality albums, the difficulties compared with the former convenient uses of existing infrastructure to share music and the dangerous, unconstitutional assaults that these clowns are conducting to try and force us to buy antique technology, there really is very little reason to still buy music. As a music passionate, I could endorse a live show and buying a t-shirt or even a CD directly from a band, but cut out the middle man whenever and however you can. Unless you really want to sit through more Pop Idols?

The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype

This is part two of "A field guide to Chauvinism". You may find the other parts here:

1. A field guide to chauvinism, part 1


2. The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype, part 2.


3. Why we still need chauvinism, part 3.


4. The singularity age, part 4.

A field guide to chauvinism, part 2

When times are tough, the conquering alpha male archetype rules. When times are comfy, the nurturing alpha female archetype rules. You need the alpha male to scare away lions and tigers and bears. You need the alpha female to ensure we don't use our nucelur bams on each other when the lions and tigers and bears are no longer a threat. Perhaps male and female are unfortunate terms in this regard. Let's call the alpha male the conquering archetype and the alpha female the nurturing archetype, since a male may very well fall victim to retail therapy maggoty faggotry and a female may well fall victim to the conquering ways of dungarees and chewing tobacco.

Patriarchy: The extreme of the conquering archetype

When most individuals in a society are conquering types, you get a patriarchy. This has nothing to do with fatherhood, although gender roles tend to enforce the overriding national character of a society. This is also not necessarily oppressive, because in some societies it is crucial for slow runners to be fed to the wolves, no questions asked. Naturally, you can get an oppressive patriarchy, which usually results in a revolution that causes the overwhelming character of a society to evolve into a more nurturing matriarchy again.




Singapore. Civilisation, something I have never seen.

An example of such a society where the conquering archetype needs to rule is Singapore, which is a meritocracy. Fastest runners get the rewards, slowest runners are figuratively fed to the wolves in their thriving free market capitalist society. It works, because their capitalism is in a position where it exploits their natural and human resources in an effective way with no clear sign of running out of resources any time soon.

Matriarchy: The extreme of the nurturing archetype

When most individuals in a society are nurturing types, you get a matriarchy. Again, this has nothing to do with gender, but gender roles do serve to affirm the overriding characteristics of a society. It is likewise absolutely crucial in some societies to stick with the berries.

An example of such a society is Zimbabwe. They are going to have to get rid of their hunter-gatherer nurturer leader in favour of an agrarian nurturing leader who can restore their agrarian age society and put it on course to develop into an industrial age nation, and thereafter into an information age nation. More on that later.

Conquering and nurturing archetypes are always in equilibrium. If your society is unsure of its place on the conquering/nurturing equilibrium, it tends to get androgynous. Androgynous creatures make their appearance whenever a society is bound to go from one extreme to the next. Think of the monster nurturing Victorian zeitgeist that the androgen Oscar Wilde had to battle in his day right before the Industrial revolution.


Oscar Wilde. Not that Wilde by today's standards. Also not that effeminate by today's standards.

Coincidentally, in emerging economies like India and China, people are starting to eat more meat and less berries, while simultaneously turning from societies ruled by nurturing archetypes into societies ruled by conquering archetypes, but for the time being I'll assume this is a case where correlation does not imply causality.

The waves of civilisation

Alvin Toffler's famous book the Third Wave describes three waves of civilisation:

1. The first wave was agrarian civilisation, which replaced hunter-gatherer society. Hunger-gatherers try to conquer by taking from their environment with little regard for anything except the booty. That's booty as in bounty and not booty as in tits and ass. Hunter-gatherer societies were tough and called for blundering, conquering archetypes. Cave kids who were slow runners were fed to the wolves. Cave women were big, strong, mean and probably grew beards as frequently as men did. However, cave women somehow felt warm and fuzzy over cave kids who could not run fast, and tried to prevent feeding them to the wolves. Conquering cavemen refused, because hunting and gathering required fast runners. Women argued that they could find a way to sustain the lousy hunters without hunting. Cave men said: “Over my dead body!”.
   
   I imagine a particularly conquering type of bearded cave woman took this to heart, got a cave woman style divorce with the aid of a spiked club and fed the entrails of her cave divorcee to the wolves. She then taught the slow running child more gathering than hunting, which meant more staying where the berries were. She also learned that where they crapped out their berries, more berries grew, thus the slow running kids were not reliant on a nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle. Slowly but surely, this lead to the agrarian revolution, which caused the hunter-gatherer style conquering to fall out of favour.


2. The second wave is industrial civilisation, brought about by the industrial revolution. During the first wave, the nuclear family with the big bad farming dad that could sustain a modern slow running kid tinkering with mechanics in the shed over weekends and the self-sacrificing cooking mother in the kitchen creating the necessary society to give rise to the industrial revolution.
   
   The first wave called for a nurturing archetype, until the industrial revolution. The cut-throat capitalism which resulted due to the industrial revolution called for the conquering archetype again, and developing nations still need to free themselves from the nurturing bondage of the agrarian society by embracing free market capitalism if they are to develop into an industrial society and beyond.
   
   By contrast, conquering in a capitalist sense is not sustainable if it doesn't give heed to the lessons learnt by the nurturing agrarian society. These lessons include not exploiting your environment to the point of barrenness, but harnessing natural processes in order to make you more fit to conquer.
   
   The first wave favours running, the second wave favours learning. In an industrial society, slow learners become employed by the military, the church or the government, which is the equivalent of feeding them to the wolves, only much worse.


3. The third wave is the information age, which is created by the information revolution. The information revolution started with the printing press (although some trace it back to the invention of writing), and it calls for the nurturing archetype again.
   
   Actually there are societies which are already past the information revolution. These societies are in trouble once more thanks to the bondage of the nurturing archetype in the shape of an overly zealous ever watching Big Brother. If the pattern of civilisations so far is anything to go by, these societies are going to have to breed conquering archetypes again if they are to bring about the revolution to ride the fourth wave.
   
   An information society favours innovation. Slow innovators end up spending daddy's industrialist fortune on a cookie cutter politically correct humanities degree, a mass produced Mercedes Slk, vacuous overseas trips which stray far from anywhere culturally significant like the Beyreuth Festspielhaus, donations to Peta and Che Guevara T-shirts to dampen their feelings of guilt for having access to all this wealth without earning it. They feel that buying a Che Guevara T-shirt entitles them to claim solidarity with socialist nurturing nanny states without realising the irony. That is, slow innovators usually end up in management.

Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Designed by Richard Wagner himself. You can get your ambrosia at the door after Der Ring des Nibelungen. That is if you can still walk after that many multiple eargasms.

What do the third waves of civilisation have to do with chauvinism? Plenty.

A field guide to chauvinism

This is part one of "A field guide to Chauvinism". You may find the other parts here:

1. A field guide to chauvinism, part 1


2. The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype, part 2.


3. Why we still need chauvinism, part 3.


4. The singularity age, part 4.

This is in response to a quirky and yes, feisty new blog on Thoughtleader called On Cue. The entry in question is What to know about women. Check it out!

Defining chauvinism

Contrary to popular belief, being a chauvinist does not make you a guy who treats women as your subjects. Chauvinism means that you are particularly enthusiastic about a cause without valid reason. Therefore, a guy who is misogynistic is a male chauvinist, because he is particularly enthusiastic about keeping girls out of his clubhouse for no clear reason (and most girls are suspicious about the kind of clubbing that goes on in that clubhouse). A girl who is a radical feminist is a female chauvinist, because she is particularly enthusiastic about keeping guys out of her hornet's nest for no good reason (and most guys are thankful).

Feminism originally meant campaigning for the equal rights of both sexes. This is why the smart girls like Wendy McElroy can call themselves feminists, while supporting individual rights and opposing affirmative action, while seeing the value of the freedom in a society that allows pornography, while still getting a guilt-free bee in the bonnet every now and again. They are truly supporting equal individual rights and not blanket female chauvinism.

Milk, sausage, tits and ass

"Why buy the whole cow if you want a little bit of milk? Why buy the whole pig if you want a little bit of sausage?" - Anon

The sausage: Men are shallow thinkers

Men are shallow. Guys are calculating creatures. I'm not saying that this calculating equals smart, I mean trying to divide by zero is still calculating, but it is based on cold if inaccurate logical reasoning. When it comes to relationships, this reasoning takes the shape of: "Tits and ass good.. must have tits and ass!". Hey, I warned you that it doesn't have to be smart.

The milk: Girls are deep feelers

Girls are feeling creatures. This internal dialogue does not resemble cold calculation, because feelings carry more weight. This is why girls can go from calling each other bitches, to crying together calling each other best friends forever, to calling each other bitches again in mass hysteria all in the course of one pyjama party. Yes, Doppelganger is not only rooted in fantasy.

When it comes to relationships, I have no idea what kind of reasoning girls use to get involved with a beer guzzling, wife beating, Volkswagen beetle bench-pressing grease monkey, but somehow that happens. I can only imagine what the internal dialogue of such a girl must be like: "I wonder what he sees in my tits and ass. All girls have them, I don't think they're that great. I hope he's not just after my tits and ass, that would make me feel like a tramp. Then again, maybe my tits and ass are great, I mean the guy at work always stares at them. Perve! But I kinda like it. Oh my god I love those shoes! They would probably never fit me. Maybe they would. I don't know, but they look good on her. OK now I hate those shoes. Oh look, a sale!"

Clearly, to me the female mind is the kind of mysterious abyss that Nietzsche had in mind when he said that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.

Tits and ass with personality go all the way

I've heeded to the warnings of smarter people than myself who stated that I should never try to understand a woman, because I will be wearing a Napoleon outfit and a white jacket before the week is over. What I've managed to observe is that if a guy makes a girl feel good, he can get away with nearly anything. If a girl can somehow short circuit the cold calculation of a guy, she can get away with nearly anything.

Unfortunately for smart ugly girls, guy calculations tend to be short circuited by attractive tits and ass. Unfortunately for us guys, girls tend to take unkindly to the manhandling of their tits and ass unless you make them feel warm and fuzzy inside.

This would explain why a guy starts dealing the psycho-card if a girl sees her unborn children in your eyes after the first date. Guys are programmed to calculate how to get tits and ass. Girls are programmed to get the maximum amount of feel good. A long-lasting relationship will only result of the guy thinks the trade-off between getting tits and ass and enduring a particular set jaws that comes with them are worthwhile, and if the girl gets the right amount of feel good knowing very well that the guy is most likely only interested in tits and ass.

What I'm saying is, a girl with tits and ass with personality goes all the way. A girl with only personality alone gets entry into the clubhouse. You could have more ambition than Napoleon, Nobel prizes enough to use as toilet paper dispensers and enough diplomatic skill to negotiate peace in the Middle East, but without good tits and ass, guys will treat you as if you were one of them. That is, a member of the no girls allowed clubhouse. Hey, I did point out that our calculating is not always that smart.

Similarly, guys can be the nicest creatures in the world, but without a conquering streak that manages to make a girl feel good about proverbially being dragged back to the cave, the nicer you are the more likely you are to end up at the all girl equivalent of the no girls allowed clubhouse: the pyjama party.

This causes the metrosexual syndrome. Metrosexuals act like girls because their cold, calculating sides are hampered by the oestrogen treatments of our food to think the law of attraction has merit by virtue of being shown something to that effect on the Oprah Winfrey show. They are actually consciously trying to get into the pyjama party. While wearing girl pyjamas. That's not really what the no girls allowed clubhouse captain had in mind when he said: "Let's try to get into their pyjamas!"

You might think that this mode of thinking is old fashioned, outdated and no longer valid. Allow me to convince you:



Paris Hilton. Socialite. Parasite. Capable of messing up classic horrors all by herself thanks to starring in their remakes. Do we hate her for it? Aikona wena.

That's Paris Hilton. Why is she famous? Tits and ass. Why is she popular? Tits and ass. Why is she socially acceptable? Tits and ass. If you are reading this and it doesn't make sense to you, you are a woman. If you are reading this and you are a guy, (assuming you carried on reading after the picture of Paris Hilton), be honest: What was your first reaction upon seeing this picture? Did you wonder what her IQ was? I say nay nay.

What do you think? Feel free to send me hate mail or leave a comment.

Darker Days Ahead by Terrorizer (2006) Review

Conclusion
Pete Sandoval on drums and the Mexecutioner, Jesse Pintado, on guitar for the last album he recorded before he sadly passed away due to a liver that couldn't keep up with the party. It is the only grindcore album I own, and my knowledge of the genre is limited to singing along to a few Anal Blast songs, so take my review with a pinch of salt and a shot of tequila. But I like it.

After recently reading up on clostridium botulinum, I decided this little fellow is so awesome that I had to dedicate most of my new layout to the bacterium. You may know c.botulinum as food poisoning or Botox, but I know it as the cause of botulism. Probably the most toxic substance known, a 2 kg bag of c.botulinum has enough potential to destroy mankind. Cthulhu would however make for a more cinematic apocalypse.


That's what could be lurking in your baked beans. Image taken from marlerblog.com.

According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, some of the favourite party tricks of c.botulinum include:

• double vision


• drooping eyelids


• slurred speech


• dry mouth


• difficult swallowing


• muscle weakness, and eventually muscular paralysis

Quite a little terrorizer.

Review

• All of the music is written by Pete Sandoval (Morbid Angel) and Jesse Pintado. Expect killer riffs and lots of brutality, although I found for the most part this album is less taxing than most grindcore out there. Read: sick, but slightly more melodic. If you are a grindcore purist, this might not be a good thing. I mean all the tracks are longer than a minute.


• Pete Sandoval's drumming may cause double vision.


• Anthony Rezhawk does a rasp of Cerberus similar to Steve Tucker's very own bark. Could just be my recent overdose of Morbid Angel, but this is the kind of growling I like. He also wrote all the lyrics. In proud grindcore tradition, a couple of verses are offered, after which the song title is repeated a few times. This is not rocket science, but it is good for shaking your fist. I said Cerberus, not cerebral.


• Ghost Train is a kind of piano and skull-fucking double bass pedal drumming interlude. The kind that would make Jaws float upside down. This track could cause drooping eyelids. Even for sharks.


• Apocalyptic visions delivered in slurred speech, with a slight tequila and mescaline nasal drip. Ah, tequila. Just the thing for a dry mouth.


• The fact that all the tracks are longer than a minute makes for difficult swallowing. Similar to health drugs. But that's only if you are a grindcore purist. Sandoval plays in one of the founding bands of technical death, so a little meandering is expected with the brutality. Rest assured - there's enough complexity to merit an average of 3,5 minutes per track.


• Muscle weakness? No, there's not much of that here. This is a review for Terrorizer, not c.botulinum. But if you've ever had one of those 24 hour fill-station shop pies, I'm sure you could write a good review of c.botulinum, or at least salmonella enteritidis.

Track listing

1. Inevitable


2. Darker Days Ahead


3. Crematorium


4. Fallout


5. Doomed Forever


6. Mayhem


7. Blind Army


8. Nightmare


9. Legacy of Brutality


10. Dead Shall Rise V.06


11. Victim of Greed


12. Ghost Train

Personell

• Tony Norman: bass; vocals.


• Jesse Pintado: guitar.


• Anthony Rezhawk: vocals.


• Pete Sandoval: drums.

Rating

The Moral Panic Surrounding Seal Clubbing

A seal basking in the sun. Apparently it tastes like chicken.

Ever since the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) kicked Glen Benton's ass, I've been intrigued by these vigilante fanatics. I am a recovering Protestant, with a mind warped by petty indoctrinations concerning the dangers of sex, drugs and Satan.

Ever since reading Rock-musiek: Die reg om te weet (Rock music: The right to know) by Dr Rodney 'Die Rod' Seale, and subsequently discovering that his claims were largely baseless and his concerns largely unfounded, I've been intrigued by rock music and by extension, heavy metal.

His other book, Satanisme: Die reg om te weet (Satanism: The right to know), sparked the Promethean flame in my life, and for this I am eternally indebted to Dr Seale. I've since been cautious to jump on the bandwagon of any moral panic, preferring to evaluate the claims of moral watchdogs critically before I do something stupid I might regret later. Like chaining myself to a tree.

Dr Seale's spirit lives on in the war on drugs, the war against terror and Peta's war against omnivorous humans with a penchant for the finer things in life. Like seal pelt clothing. And sex, drugs and Satan. Ironically, Dr Seale's name lives on in this post too.

Good reasons to hunt a seal

Seal hunting happens for the same reasons as any other kind of hunting:

• For food. Contrary to Peta propaganda, seal meat is actually a source of food for small coastal communities. It is simply not true that only the pelt is used and the rest of the seal is discarded. Seal meat is an important source of protein, vitamin A and omega fatty acids.


• For fun. That is, as a sport. Since 2006, the Norwegian government has allowed tourists to hunt seals.


• For profit. Seal pelts are quite expensive. And the more noise Peta and other animal rights activists make about it, the more expensive the pelts will become. Which means, more incentive to hunt seals.

There are only five nations in the world that allow seal hunting, namely Canada, Norway, Russia, Greenland and our neighbours, Namibia.
In all of these countries, seal hunting is strictly regulated. Seals may be shot, but the bullets may damage the pelt of the seal. For this reason, a special kind of weapon called a hakapik is used. It is a kind of club, with a hammer on the one side of the head and a pike on the other.



A hakapik, the weapon used to hunt seals in order to protect the pelt. Apparently, it's as humane as hunting gets.

It is this method of clubbing that gets Peta up in arms. Seal hunting as a tourist activity is only allowed in Norway, and then never with a hakapik. Tourist hunters are only allowed to shoot the seals, since clubbing requires a specific technique to minimise pain to the seal.



Some animal rights activists acting like animals. Solidarity, brother!

Reasons not to hunt a seal

Besides running the risk of being harassed by fanatics like Peta.

• For moral reasons. If you find seal hunting morally objectionable, you would have to be a vegan. Research has shown that clubbing or shooting a seal in the wild is no more painful than killing an animal in an abattoir. If you eat meat, but you feel sick every time you see a seal being clubbed in the press, I would seriously doubt your integrity.


• For environmental reasons. Seals are not endangered. This is another myth spread by animal rights activists. There are more environmental reasons to allow seal hunting than to ban seal hunting. Seals could seriously impact the number of cod in the water. Seal hunting quotas are largely determined by culling needs.

Clubby the Seal

This is a game I found at Free Online Games. Enjoy!

Conclusion

Seal hunting, just like any hunting, offers the prey a sporting chance. Personally, I find it more morally objectionable to domesticate animals purely for the sake of eating them than to go out in the wild, in excruciating conditions, with a hand weapon, chasing after an animal in its own habitat. While synthetic materials do offer the same function as pelt, they may contain dangerous toxins with more environmental impact than biodegradable and reusable pelt.

The seal hunting thing is just another moral panic. A moral panic is a public outcry, echoing the belief that a group of people are deviant and pose a threat to society, without any basis for such a claim. Since seals are not endangered, clubbing causes as much anguish as killing animals in an abattoir and seal hunting offers a livelihood to human beings (who take precedence over animals if you ask me), there is no valid reason to stop seal hunting.

Related links

• An environmentalist claims seal hunting is less dangerous than the distorted facts animal rights activists give to the public.


• Harpseals.org, volunteers who take action against seal hunting. Sounds dangerous to get in their way.


• iStockPhoto, for the image of the seal basking in the sun.


• The official Peta website. Peta makes about $25 million per year. Maybe I'd chain myself to a baby seal for that.


• The Wikipedia page on seal hunting.

Necrophagist - Epitaph (2004) review

Review
Since the days Ritchie Blackmore played classically inspired leads for Deep Purple, a neo-classical movement has erupted in popular music. Yngwie Malmsteen became synonymous with the movement thanks to his high level of technical virtuosity, particularly his sweep arpeggios. Since then, the cheese has been cut back considerably but the sweep picking technique remains a trusted item in the metal guitarist bag of tricks.

Necrophagist released their debut, Onset of Putrefaction, in 1999. Suiçmez played and recorded most of the instruments on the album and left the drum duties to Steve Jobs. The sound on the album is lacking, and of course for this kind of music having a machine do any work is a disgrace. The album has recently been re-recorded by Suiçmez, who was never pleased with its sound. Despite this, the album caught on well with fans of brutally technical music.

Following the relative success of Onset of Putrefaction, Suiçmez assembled a band of session musicians and toured extensively. Epitaph was recorded after the tour, mostly with live musicians.

You will be completely arpeggionated after listening to Epitaph. Suiçmez is an incredibly skilled and amazingly tasteful guitarist - enough so that Ibanez designed their Xiphos guitar with him:



The lyrics deal with your standard death metal fanfare of death and destruction. That much is compulsory, but the riffs drip with melody. All the arpeggios provided by guitarist and bassist (and one could almost claim the drummer too) are enough to confuse a nest of killer bees. There is a feeling of very strictly organised chaos in every track. Picture the nest of killer bees getting confused and then proceeding to fly along sine graphs, cosine graphs and a host of other hypnotic trajectories to torment a ferret on a raft in the Limpopo river. Despite the fact that Africa does not have killer bees. Or ferrets. Basically, imagine extremely mathematical noise.

Conclusion
Suiçmez is a fair vocalist, clearly from the Melissa Cross school of screeching, but applies these methods to gargling and growling. The technical skills on display with this album are on par with that of Vital Remains, with Necrophagist being far less brutal. It lends itself to the Cynic school of odd rhythms, syncopated palm mutes and aristocratic drumming. There is a great variety of styles on display. Even though the album is barely longer than half an hour, it doesn't leave one with a feeling of emptiness once it is over. In fact, you want to listen to it on repeat.

Track listing

1. Stabwound


2. The Stillborn One


3. Ignominious & Pale


4. Diminished to B


5. Epitaph


6. Only Ash Remains


7. Seven


8. Symbiotic in Theory

Personell
Muhammed Suiçmez: Guitar; vocals.
Christian Muenzner: Guitar.
Stefan Fimmers: Bass guitar.
Hannes Grossmann: Drums.

And in case you were wondering, my personality type:

INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

Rating

Fidelity on High: Say goodbye to dynamic range on CD

"The recording industry has decided that since you like a bit of salt, they're going to screw off the cap and tip the entire fucking cruet on your meal." - The Ladyfingers Blog



Format wars
Hi fidelity sound. There are few things more glorious than relishing the full sized cover of vinyl, seeing the heart of the record player fed by the veins of the groove and being soaked in the full dynamic range of a high quality recording.

My father is a fan of classical music. He used to buy Herbert von Karajan conducted Beethoven excursions on vinyl, then transfer it to cassette deck for his car and personal use. We did not have a grand hi-fi setup, but it was sufficient to enjoy good music. My father was not alone, it was the norm to record your vinyl onto cassette deck. Even so, it would be ludicrous to suggest vinyl should be produced to cater for cassette quality sound. Most blindfold tests find that the sound of vinyl is superior to that of a CD, with cassettes wiped under the carpet as an embarrassing gadget of the 80s.

The justification of the industry to produce CD recordings of lacklustre quality is the way music is consumed. Most people are likely to never own a copy of their favourite song, since they can listen to it on-line or get it free on their iPods if they visit certain kiosks. If they do own a copy, it is likely to end up in mp3 format. I see certain parallels with the cassette tape of the 80s.

CD quality sound
CD quality sound is technically defined as digitised sound at 44,1 kHz and 16 bits. This is the ISO definition, the so-called Red Book ideal of what CD quality sound should be. These numbers are not arbitrary (see the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem), as a sampling rate of double the maximum frequency to be recorded is needed. This dictates that you need at least 44 kHz to represent an audio spectrum between 20 Hz and 22 kHz, which is approximately the range of human hearing.

The 44,1 kHz number refers to the frequency of samples taken. 16 bit refers to the size of the samples taken. For a stereo recording, 16 bits are used for each channel.

MP3 quality sound
MP3 is a compressed audio format. It works by stripping unnecessary (supposedly inaudible) aspects from sound. Since the sound is stripped, it does have lower sound quality than CD. Apple's AAC and Microsoft's WMA are currently competing with MP3 as downloaded formats, although most companies offer high quality MP3 as consumers tend to demand MP3.

Since most consumers tend to rip their CDs to MP3, or merely consume music on radio or in MP3 format to begin with, the industry insists to level the dynamic range of CD recordings. In other words, all the brights are as bright as the dull parts. Dynamic range needs the disparity between quiet and loud - something Black Sabbath calls 'heaven and hell.' CD recordings now have MP3 quality. Instead of ripping CD quality MP3s, you can only rip MP3 quality MP3. Instead of listening to CD quality CDs, you can only listen to MP3 quality CD.

Your dynamic range or mine?
I am a convert to the CD format. While I do appreciate the rich tones of vinyl, it is a matter of convenience for me to own a CD. Optical formats tend to last longer, and I can choose my own sampling rates when I rip my CDs onto my hard drive. Since I treat my CDs as master copies, I do not feel the need to buy MP3 quality CD.

Why do people still buy CDs when the odds are stacked against them? The RIAA is suing women and children - in some cases even people who rip their own CDs onto their computers. The major players are slowly realising that DRM enabled formats are deterring the already dwindling consumer market, but not fast enough. All these factors merely make it more convenient, more logical and more reliable to download unsolicited content. It removes the risk for the consumer of sitting with MP3s that can't be transferred between devices and now, thanks to the industry catering for the demands of MP3 listeners, doesn't even capitalise on the benefits of CD quality sound.

Resources

• CD quality sound definition from tiscali dictionary


• MP3 definition form tiscali dictionary


• Rolling Stones article on the death of high fidelity


• Wikipedia article on compact disks