fnordication…

Just ordered this gorgeous looking thing.

Not sure what I am more excited about, the new content in the book or the included DVD. Can not wait for this to arrive. When I had interviewed GP-O for soundsect s/he had mentioned this would be coming soon. Had to wait longer than I expected, but it looks like it was well worth the wait.

Thee infamous PSYCHIC BIBLE from Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth receives an updated, expanded, corrected edition,complete with dozens of new visuals and essays. The Feral House edition is handsomely presented in smyth-sewn hardcover with a red ribbon. Thee 544 pages within are printed in two colors on high-quality 60-pound stock on acid-free 100% recycled paper stock.

This signed, numbered limited edition (999 copies only) is also presented with a remarkable DVD of impossible-to-find videos from P-Orridge archives of early Psychic TV and TOPY creations which includes the work of Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and Derek Jarman. Several of the videos included were seized by Scotland Yard in 1991, and as a result the DVD is provided here are second-generation and are reproduced in this CD for their historical value.

Head over to Feral House to check it out.  They also have a fantastic looking book out now on The Process Church (which Gen also mentioned in the soundsect interview).

fnordboy Books, DVDs, Occult

Added the Disqus plugin finally. Now I can be one of the cool kids.

fnordboy General

I just recently upgraded my 27″ CRT TV to a nice 32″ LCD, this now allows me to enjoy Blu-ray discs via my PS3. I already have a few that I purchased after I got the PS3 when I came across them cheap knowing that I would eventually be upgrading my TV. This is wonderful… but now I come into the problem of what to do with new releases. I thought it would be easy to pick and choose what releases to go with BD or DVD, but it’s getting difficult now.

For instance, Dollhouse: Season One. Do I go with the DVD since I have a habit of watching TV shows on DVD as I am going to sleep everynight (as I don’t have a BD player in bedroom right now), or do I go with the superior pic quality? Same with Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series, this is definitely a series that would be damn nice to look at in high def, but the lack of portability between rooms kind of annoys me.  And I am just not ready to upgrade to BD in the bedroom yet.

I guess price is the big problem solver in the end. Right now I think there is an $18 difference between the Dollhouse BD and DVD.  $18 is enough to make me not want to go with BD. I just don’t want to regret it a few years from now.

Decisions…

fnordboy DVDs, Films/TV

I am so glad that I have held out on buying these season sets as they’ve been coming out. This set is absolutely gorgeous. July 28th can’t get here fast enough, I still haven’t watched S4.5 (although I unfortunately know who the last Cylon was, thanks SciFi commercials).

I will truly miss this show, I never would have expected it to be as good as it was.

fnordboy DVDs, Films/TV

Shopping can be so goddamn frustrating sometimes.

I decided over President’s Day weekend that I wanted to take advantage of a sale at Guitar Center and pick up a new midi controller. Specifically I wanted to grab the M-Audio Trigger Finger, while I’ve been eyeing the Korg PadKontrol  for a while the price and lack of faders and knobs pushed me towards the Trigger Finger.

Anyway, so I picked up the Trigger Finger and brought it home. Went straight to the computer to try it out and was annoyed to find that the USB cable was really short and wouldn’t allow the controller to sit on the table I keep my gear on. Ok, no biggie I will just use a MIDI cable.  Even though I wasn’t using the USB I decided to install the driver just in case. Of course, the driver supplied with the controller wouldn’t install on Vista, so I had to hunt that down on the M-Audio website.  I installed the Ableton Live Lite edition that also came with the unit, but that wasn’t working. Figuring that it must also be a Vista incompatability I went to find out if there was an upgrade. Once logged into the Ableton site I find out that someone else is using the registration number that was supplied with the software. WTF? I just bought this brand new.

I fire off an email to Ableton to try and resolve this, but in the meantime I fire up a couple of my other progams like Reason (demo) and Reaper. The Trigger Finger has a factory default Reason map so that should work perfectly fine… nope. Nothing.  Ok.  So I try to get something working in Reaper. Again nothing. So finally I manually map a bunch of the midi notes into the controller that correspond with the VST I am trying out (i believe it was erraticCM) and nothing. While this is going on I am realizing that none of the factory presets are actually in the unit. And it doesn’t seem to be sending anything to my computer. So now I use the updated USB driver and nothing still. By this point I am fucking livid. Obviously Guitar Center sold me a returned unit since the registration number was used and the POS controller isn’t working at all.

Ableton was awesome and got right back to me the next day (they are in Germany) with a new registration number. When I went back to GC to return the controller they surprisingly gave me no real hassle, and also hooked me up with a nice discount on a guitar tuner I wanted.  As much as I would love to complain they did the right thing.  Of course, the new controller worked perfectly fine and came with a USB cable with just the right length I needed it to have.

fnordboy Music ableton, gear, midi, Music, trigger finger

Since I updated my wordpress software I figured I should post again.

The only really interesting thing going on as of late is that I recently decided to start making music again. I’ve recorded a few rough tracks that I still need to work on and tons of unfinished bits and pieces that will either go nowhere or will be cannibalized for something else down the road. At this point it is nothing more than a hobby, but it’s nice to have a creative outlet again. I was hoping to focus on my photography, but my plans and desires are too grandiose to execute. With the music I have the luxury of moving at my own pace and relying on no one other than myself, which is nice.

I don’t know what I would call what I am doing. It’s definitely got some noise elements, a bit of drone, there is some ritual. It’s experimental (yes, that was for you AR). When I originally started to think about working with synths and stuff I was thinking I would be going either straight Noise or Dark Ambient, but I found myself leaning naturally towards a hypnotic, ritualized sound. It’s still being formed, and I am sure I will end up somewhere different eventually.

So I guess I will share one of my in progress tracks:

fnordboy Art, Music

[15:30] ME: When is HT going to be back up?
[15:30] AlienRedrum: i just got word from surewest
[15:30] AlienRedrum: they said it should be up by the time you have a new blog entry

Yeah, Horrortalk still doesn’t seem to be up. :\

fnordboy Uncategorized

I have been a long time fan of vampire shows on TV, Dark Shadows, Forever Knight, I liked what I saw of Moonlight, and of course there is Buffy and Angel. When I heard that HBO was working on a vampire series I was excited, finding out the Alan Ball of Six Feet Under was the creator I was even more excited. When I found out that Anna Paquin was starring in it I could barely contain myself.

True Blood, premiering Sept. 7th on HBO, takes place in a parallel reality where vampires have recently “come out of the coffin” and outed themselves to the world. With the invention of a synthetic blood drink called Tru Blood the vampires no longer need to feed on humans for survival. Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) works as a waitress in Merlotte’s, a bar in rural Lousiana. She is intrigued by the vampires and is excited when Merlotte’s gets its first vampire customer, the 173 year old Bill. Sookie has a not-so-well-kept secret of her own in that she can hear the thoughts of every one around her.

The Best Buy exclusive disc (free with the purchase of an HBO TV on DVD title) comes with the first episode of True Blood, “Strange Love.” I wasn’t sure what to expect from the show going into it. I knew from the viral campaign that there would obviously be a social commentary, but what I didn’t expect was that the show would be as dark and sexual as it is. From oral, to “fangbangers”, to even some chains; there was a lot of sexuality crammed into these 58 minutes. The series also has a nice cast of characters that give the show some minutes of laughter. Sookie’s best friend Tara and Merlotte’s short order cook Lafayette both bring some big laughs in this episode.

All in all it is a nice introductory episode. “Strange Love” sets up the locale and the characters and seems to touch on where the series will be heading. It has definitely caught my interest and I will be faithfully watching this series throughout it’s 12 episode run. I am also interested in reading some of the “Southern Vampire” books the TV show is based on by Charlaine Harris.

The down sides to this particular DVD is that it only has a 2.0 soundtrack and is watermarked with a huge HBO logo across the middle of the screen throughout the entire episode. I don’t mind the intermittent “Personal use” text that pops up, but there is no need to watermark a DVD that you have released to the public.

The Episode:

The DVD:

More information:
http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/

fnordboy DVDs, Films/TV, Reviews

I am debating on picking this camera up:

Amazon Link

It’s an attractive price.

fnordboy Uncategorized

Stealing an idea from Frank. I decided to start adding some of the reviews I write up to this blog, one - it’s a way to keep this blog moving along, and two - this will give me that ability to review older releases that we don’t cover on Soundsect as well as other releases like DVDs and books.

So here is the first one I am adding to the blog, Nurse With Wound’s new release Huffin’ Rag Blues.

Buy From Amazon

As a longtime fan of Nurse With Wound, I was both eager and afraid to hear the latest effort by Steven Stapleton and crew, Huffin’ Rag Blues. Up until it’s release it was touted as a very lounge-inspired release with vocals that harkened back to Peggy Lee. Not really knowing what to expect I put the disc in the player and was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

The short opening track, “Willy the Weeper,” begins with a whimsical tune that fades into a terrifying growl, letting you know that this is still clearly a NWW release. Between the droning, free-form jazz of “Thrill of Romance..?”, the lounge organ of “Groove Grease (Hot Catz)”, and the piano of “Wash the Dust From My Heart” the setting of this album is created. A dingy, smoky subterranean club, pulled out of David Lynch film.

Where the album strays from the lounge concept is on the tracks “The Funktion of the Hairy Egg” and “Juice Head Crazy Lady”. The nearly 14 minute long “Hairy Egg” is mostly a traditional Nurse With Wound track for the majority of it’s length. Vocals kick in around the 9 minute mark and the underlying noises morph into the tribal drumming and animal sounds of a rainforest cacophony.

One of the more interesting choices on Huffin’ Rag Blues is definitely “Black Teeth”. The vocals by Matt Waldron make this track sound like a Tom Waits inspired Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds outtake… not something you would expect to be said about a Nurse With Wound song, especially one that apes Sheena Easton lyrics.

The highlight of the album is the track “Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’”, which has an equally great remix found on The Bacteria Magnet mini LP. Utilizing car horns, car radios and other auto related samples, it seems easily to be the track on Huffin’ Rag Blues that the most fun was had making.

Huffin’ Rag Blues could be difficult for a lot of Nurse With Wound fans to get into as it is somewhat of a departure and is, on the surface, one of Stapleton’s more accessible outings. After 30 years in the making music business, it is clear to me that Steven Stapleton is still being as experimental and innovative as he was when he first began Nurse With Wound.

This review and others can be found on Soundsect.com.

fnordboy Music, Music Review