New song: Lumiere March 27, 2010 at 11:37 am
I’ve put a new demo song on my portfolio page (and now, also here!). It’s a cute, simple jazzy kinda tune.
Surasshu-Lumiere
No Breaks February 13, 2010 at 9:54 am
Old dog, new trick February 12, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Just testing out my new Bandcamp account!
Mass Effect 2: Different but better? February 9, 2010 at 4:08 am
As a big fan of Mass Effect 1, I was looking forward (but also dreading) the sequel. Would they do it justice, would it ruin the storyline etc.? Well, I just finished playing it and I’ve got a sort of wishy-washy verdict on the game. They sort of changed a lot of things, made a lot of things a lot better and then also made a lot of things worse and introduced new issues and problems.
The most annoying thing to me has to be that the PC version is basically unfinished. No double-clicking (except in space travel for some reason), no scroll-wheel support for any of the windows, shitty mouse support in general, no ability to turn v-sync on or off (I want it on, but still), no anti-aliasing without a stupid hack (renaming the binary to UT3.exe if you have ATI Radeon, how ghetto is that), and I’m probably forgetting a good few things. I was able to correct some of these things by hacking into the .ini files and turning off stuff like mouse smoothing (and it even allows you to set mouse speed properly for each game element, making scanning much less of a pain), but it’s an indication of how little Bioware thinks of the PC gamers. I suppose we should be thankful they release the game for the PC at all, but I sort of expect more from them.
On the other hand, they made the actual gameplay fun, unlike the first game where the gameplay was either boring or frustrating, and incredibly easy. Your teammate AI is still pretty bad, but they’re not quite as useless as in the previous game. The game now plays like a proper third person action shooter type game, with everything you’d expect from such a game (headshots, cover, melee, etc.). They greatly reduced the complexity of the RPG elements, but to be honest, they were kind of broken in the first game so I didn’t miss them much. To compensate, the characters are now much more different from each other.
Of course, the real reason to play the game is for the story, and on that front they really delivered. I really liked the changes they made to the world, and the fact that the game was very different from the first one, but still captured the universe in a good way. I especially like what they did with the Asari (I won’t go into it more than that for spoiler reasons), but overall the universe is much better this time around, less “generic scifi-verse”. Also, the game is a lot funnier than the last installment (and the last one had its funny moments as well), with a lot of great little details thrown throughout the game.
So what are the flaws? Well, the action-based gameplay is still a bit rough around the edges–it’s pretty clear to me that this team is not used to making this kind of game. They did a great job, but sometimes the response time of the units is just not there. Especially when you’re trying to jump over an obstacle or get into cover, occasionally the game just doesn’t do it right. Furthermore, while they replaced some of the more boring elements in the game (such as the driving on planets, which I personally enjoyed but I hear a lot of people hated it), the scanning “game” they replaced it with is just too boring. Also, it seems like there aren’t that many secondary missions in this game, making it feel less epic than the first game, where I was almost overwhelmed by the amount of sidequests and little things you could do.
Overall, I loved the game, despite its flaws. I heartily recommend it if you’re into sci-fi at all. But, play Mass Effect 1 first!
Top 50 albums of the DECADE December 15, 2009 at 1:26 am
Tough list, but here goes (short review for the top 5, then the whole list)
1) The Back Horn – Pulse
my favorite album from my all time favorite band that has never, ever let me down with any of their albums, each one being better than the last. the singer just hits me where it hurts, and their songs are fantastically composed. i had to think a long time what i would put as #1, but once i thought of this album, it became pretty obvious that this would be the one. i can’t really explain my love for this band, but they somehow get everything just right for me. honestly i could just fill the list up with every TBH release since 2000, but that would be cheating…
2) Sigur Ros – ( )
there are few albums i have to listen to start to finish if i’m going to listen to it, and this is one of them. Absolutely breathtaking!
3) Mastodon – Crack The Skye
Mastodon gets better with every album they release i think, and the latest in their oeuvre is the closest to prog metal and includes some of the most shockingly original metal compositions i’ve heard recently. the band really has its own sound going, but still appeals to my melodic senses. absolutely wonderful. the last baron is probably one of my all-time favorite metal songs
4) Capsule – MORE! MORE! MORE!
this is one of the best-produced albums ever made. from the fantastic title track onwards it’s an absolutely wild ride, with every song being original and familiar at the same time, mixing genres in a perfect blend of capsule’s old melodic pop-jazz material and later electro stuff. if you are at all into japanese music, this is required listening. heck, it is even if you’re not!
5) Shpongle – Tales of the Inexpressible
this is the first shpongle album i ever heard, and remains my favorite. out of the albums in the top 5, this is arguably the only one that might have some weak spots (Around the world in a tea daze is good, but it also feels slightly overstretched to me), but the opening track “dorset perceptions” and “my head feels like a frisbee” take this album to such stellar heights that it almost doesn’t matter what else is on there.
full list! (vaguely in order of preference… emphasis on vaguely):
(a lot of japanese, mostly electro, pop, or metal)
the back horn – pulse
sigur ros – ( )
capsule – more! more! more!
shpongle – tales of the inexpressible
capsule – s.f. sound furniture
dream theater – systematic chaos
daft punk – discovery
AKINO – lost in time
jim white – no such place
frost* – milliontown
YMCK – FAMILY GENESIS
the back horn – ikiru sainou
amon tobin – splinter cell: chaos theory soundtrack
symphony x – the odyssey
trix – MODE
eminem – the marshall mathers LP
radiohead – kid A
boards of canada – geogaddi
dj sharpnel – RUNNING ALL NIGHT
immi – switch
jim white – transnormal skiperoo
lela – 裸の月 (tsuki no hana)
supercell – supercell
the back horn – headphone children
amon tobin – foley room
radiohead – in rainbows
she wants revenge – this is forever
plaid – twin figures
blind guardian – a twist in the myth
demetori – il mondo dove e finito il Tempo
prefuse 73 – surrounded by silence
muse – origin of symmetry
maximum the hormone – ぶっ生き返す(buikikaesu)
DEPAPEPE – let’s go!!!
허밍 어반 스테레오 (humming urban stereo) – 2집 – purple drop
JUSTICE – cross
tsunku – rhythm tengoku gold OST
perfume – triangle
mosaic.wav – superluminal G AKIBA-POP
radiohead – hail to the thief
bela fleck and the flecktones – the hidden land
muse – absolution
lady gaga – the fame /w fame monster
sambomaster – boku to kimi no subete wo Rock ‘n Roll to yobe
yuzo koshiro – Sekaiju no MeiQ² *syoou no seihai* Original Soundtrack
the shanghai restoration project – instrumentals
sound horizon – moira
SSH – 冥土陰埼玉 (SSH)
mc sniper – HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT
New player, new song: Never Sleep September 1, 2009 at 6:55 am
I think I never posted this one on my blog so enjoy:
You can download the track in high quality from the Soundcloud page.
New player, old song: No Breaks at 5:49 am
Michael Jackson June 26, 2009 at 11:42 am
This isn’t a cheerful post for once. Last night, Michael Jackson passed away from a heart attack at the age of 50.
I truly hope this will make people forget about the later years and focus on what he did best: some of the best music ever made, along with basically basically the invention of the proper music video, and the spectacular extravaganza performance.
Michael Jackson has not released a single truly crappy album, with the possible exception of Blood on the Dance Floor, or at least the remix section. Starting from his Jackson 5 material, with some of the most memorable Motown tracks (”ABC”, “I Want You Back”, and now tell me you didn’t get those choruses stuck in your head when reading the titles), and basically perfecting the signature mix of pop, disco and jazz in Off The Wall. Of course, most people would consider Thriller to be the best pop album ever produced, and I certainly think it contains the best pop songs, but when it comes to pop production, Bad and Dangerous were possibly even better. If “Thriller” is the best composed pop song, then “Jam”, on the Dangerous album, is arguably the best produced pop song. The influence of these tracks can be heard to this day. Even later albums, that have been not quite as acknowledged as his earlier work, were genuinely good albums.
Furthermore, he has both revolutionised and perfected the music video. Even early stuff like Blame It On The Boogie has some fairly high concept stuff, but of course the culmination of that effort was from Thriller onwards. I remember that as a child, every time a music video by Michael Jackson came out, it was a huge event. It was all we could talk about, and every music video was fantastically original and amazing. I may not care too much about music videos and PVs in general, but if done right, they are amazing entertainment, and no one did them more right than Michael Jackson. The Nostalgia Critic even did a review of Moonwalker (which, in his style, was scathing and hilarious), but he couldn’t find anything bad to say about the “Smooth Criminal” music video, declaring it “perfection”.
On a personal note, I can’t put into words how much his music inspired me, and how sad I am that he passed on. The first music album I ever bought, in vinyl, was Bad. I still think it’s one of my best decisions ever.