Music

Radio Scorpio 106 FM, 's lands oudste vrije radio, lanceert in de maanden mei en juni een grootscheepse benefietactie. De bedoeling is om de alternatieve zender, die uitsluitend op vrijwilligers werkt en geen inkomsten haalt uit reclame, een structurele financiële injectie te geven. Twee verhuizingen in de recente geschiedenis van Scorpio zorgden immers voor een zware financiële aderlating.

De vzw acht de tijd rijp om de last uit het verleden definitief af te schudden, zodat ze de nodige investeringen kan doen om aan nieuwe behoeften van haar luisteraars te voldoen. Een prioritair project is internetradio; de vraag om Scorpio te ontvangen strekt zich immers ver buiten de Leuvense regio uit.

Verschillende evenementen worden georganiseerd om geld in het laatje te brengen. Scorpio draait in de eerste plaats om (alternatieve) muziek, wat zich uit in verschillende fuiven en benefietoptredens ten voordele van Scorpio. Maar er is meer. Op de symbolische datum 10/6 zijn alle sympathisanten van de welbekende frequentie 106 FM welkom op het Scorpio-buffet in restaurant Rossi in Leuven, waarvan de opbrengst integraal naar Scorpio gaat. Op de Scorpio-veiling worden verschillende objecten ten voordele van Scorpio te koop aangeboden op ebay. Opmerkelijk is ook dat de zender een aantal uren radio veilt: de vier hoogste bieders zullen in de maand juni elk een uur naar believen radio kunnen maken op 106 FM. En tot slot houdt Radio Scorpio een eigenzinnige Scorpio-tombola; de prijsuitreiking is voorzien op het Scorpio-labo.

Wie Scorpio zonder meer financieel wil steunen kan een overschrijving doen op 001-0793790-18 met vermelding 'Benefiet'. Vanaf dertig euro krijgen de schenkers een fiscaal attest; gulle schenkers krijgen vanaf honderd euro een Scorpio-T-shirt cadeau.

Man, this must be one of the saddest news items I've ever heard :

"After the announcement of Peter Heppner releasing a solo album, Wolfsheim's Markus Reinhardt has now officially announced that they will split up. He will continue alone with a new singer. The silence since their 2003 release Casting Shadows can be found in a difference in vision on the future of Wolfsheim."

'Casting Shadows' is my all-time favorite album. A real bummer we won't see any more goodies like this one...

Yay ! Gothic Festival 2008 @Waregem, July 25-27th.

ANNE CLARK
Suicide Commando
Absolute Body Control
Combichrist
The Neon Judgement
[:SITD:]
In Slaughter Natives
Sonar

and many more...
You'll know where to find me end of July !

How do you get to sleep at night, when your brain is still working in overdrive, digesting the stress from the previous work day ? Some people use ambient music, composed from samples and recordings of naturally occurring sounds, like wind, water or birds, or music like new age.

I like dark ambient. It's the darker, creepier opponent of the 'regular' ambient music. The king of dark ambient is Lustmord, and the album 'The Place Where the Black Stars Hang' has been my favourite for years. I recently searched for some other dark ambient recordings, and this is what I found :

* 'Celestial Geometries' from Oophoi & Tau Ceti, an enigmatic and deep album of slow dynamics, ceremonial intensity and methodical pacing. Synth pads grow, thicken and gentley shift, a creature calls from the distance through a mist of reverb and echo, harmonics alternately become dense then fall away to a shiny smooth ribbon of sound. This album does not lead, but stays right with us as we navigate a way through whatever scenario the composition brings out: exploring the surface of some distant dead planet, or as the title implies, traversing some great distance in the vacum of space.

* 'The Magnificent Void' by Steve Roach is truely deep space music : a sonic journey to the true depths of inner space and beyond that flows through you,making you not a passive listener but part of the music.

* 'Nostromo' by Sleep Research Facility : by far the best album, ultra deep ambience, based on the first 8 minutes of the movie `ALIEN` which depicts the deep space haulage vessel slowly moving through the void. The disc takes you through a slow trip into the ship via tracks DECK A through E, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the `NOSTROMO`. Colossal dark ambience from the abyss, with beautiful artwork that evokes the sinister atmosphere of the ship.

TW Classic is over, and judging by the number of visitors (over 50 000), this years edition was a great success. With bands like Simple Minds, Arsenal and Sting, the line-up surely was way better than last year.

Only two things were annoying :
- the food was way less varied than the previous years (eg no chinese stuff this time)
- the stench that surrounded the festival area was immense. Whether this was due to the large number of visitors, or to the last week's 80 000 people visiting Rock Werchter is unknown.

The following site takes the blogosphere by storm : Music from the 80ties is a site where you can pick a video clip from your favourite 80ties band. Mind you, not every video clip is an official one : several are clips from a gig (like Wild Boys from Duran Duran).

Industrial music is still alive, it seems : Hitachi put up some .wav files with the sounds of hard drives gone bad. Gizmodo is offering a sweet Tokyoflash Equalizer watch to the person who uses those sounds to create a song that makes the whole world sing.

The first batch of entries is in. You can give them a listen over at Odeo, or use the RSS feed.

There are plenty of tracks that sound like Autechre, even Ryoji Ikeda.

This image is circulating internet for a few days; it comes from Virgin, and they claim it contains 87 music bands. How many can you spot ?

It looks like the music industry has won another battle : ISPA members (which contain all Belgian internet providers) have closed all mp3 newsgroups on their newsservers. One might consider this move quite strange, as some of the mp3 newsgroups were used to post own mp3 samples, like people posting music they made themselves. On the other hand, won't this encourage people to spoil other (non-binary) groups with mp3 stuff ? Anyway, a sad decision; I have downloaded music in the past too via newsgroups, and even bought some CD's from the music I downloaded, so it wouldn't surprise me if this decision might even further lessen the CD sales.

But it seems that the music industry is even winning the war : the majority of downloaded music is coming from 'legal' sources like iTunes and stuff : thousands of people downloading crapp-ass-quality mp3's or wma's (128 kbit encoding really sucks) for a price that is as expensive as a normal CD.
How ironical.

Gigposters has put together a staggering collection of nearly 45,000
concert posters, indexed by band and designer, for you to browse and discuss.