У многих людей моего поколения калифорнийский дуэт The Crystal Method напоминает о целой эпохе, когда звук был жестким, энергичным и задевающим за душу. Музыку “кристалов” использовали для оформления многих культовых фильмов и игр того времени и вдохновлялись ей для написания саундтреков.
В 2004 году группа выпустила альбом Legion of Boom, и практически затихла – за 5 лет они записали только пластинку ремиксов (2005) и саундтрек к фильму “Лондон“ (2006).
За это время многое успело измениться, и начинало казаться, что звук группы уже то и дело устаревает и она готовится к заслуженному отдыху среди других основателей брейк-бита и электроники. Но фанаты группы, в том числе и ваш покорный слуга, не давали надежде умирать – и, как выяснилось, не зря. Continue Reading…
“Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you“
- Moby
I believe it’s quite easy to tell whether the concert you’ve just gone to was any good. Just remember how many times you stood up and danced and sang along – the more you did it, the better the show was. Talking about last night’s Moby concert in Kiev, I don’t ever remember sitting down. Now my feet and palms hurt like hell from all that dancing and clapping and singing together with Moby and the rest of the folks in the Palace of Sports. So how was it?
One of the first things that amazed me was how versatile Moby is as a musician. Throughout the show he played guitar, drums, keys and sang in some of his songs. Besides, the fact that Moby felt free to perform his pieces in a variety of mixes was a pleasant surprise – his famous themes were reborn in genres from disco to semi-acoustic, from techno to more of a soul-like sound. Most of the mixes appeared to be very different from what you’d hear on the studio albums, so there was good old Moby with some new twist to the sound.
Moby’s way of performing also caught my eye – he did little to look appealing – instead, he seemed to concentrate on his music, strolling the stage back and forth in his meditative manner during slow pieces and frolicking around when playing something with more energy to it. This looked a bit simple yet sincere and powerful, and it showed Moby as an artist who focuses more on his actual work than on the presentation. He could have talked to us more – the audience roared when he only walked up to the mic – but apart from his lyrics he didn’t say that much, save for his trademark “thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you“.
When you go to one of your favorite artists’ shows, you always have a sort of a “list” of songs you would love them to play. For me, these were Mistake/Scream Pilots, I’m in Love, Victoria Lucas and some other pieces, but it so happened that yesterday Moby didn’t play many of those. Yet, every song he did made us remember how many great works he actually has – including some stuff from Go and 18 that we forgot about, but which sounded very cohesive with his latest sound as well. Well, I guess I’ll go to a couple more Moby concerts and get to hear those as well!
So thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you, Moby!!! Do come here again – we love you!
Every morning, we are headed into the giant heart as it pumps us in. Once inside, we fill it with what we do, what we say and think, bringing it to life. As the night draws near, the heart thrusts us out, leaving its streets empty until the next day.
Posted November 19th, 2010. Add a comment
We had the enormous pleasure to attend the Vinnitsa Jazz Festival in late September. The whole event was very well-organized, the atmosphere and the sound were tremendous. Here are some of the artists we had the chance to listen to:
Unfortunately, we could stay in Vinnitsa for only the first day of the festival, so we missed some good performances as well. But as it was, the whole experience was amazing.
Lastly, here is a little photo gallery from the festival:
Posted October 18th, 2010. 2 comments
It’s really amazing how one longs to get distracted when there are massive amounts of stuff to do. My law school exams are coming up yet again, and guess what I’m preoccupied with? You guessed that right – streaming music services. Just like before.
Anyway, my endless searches and somebody’s advice finally led me to a decent ‘net radio service. The thing is called Grooveshark. It’s loaded with cool features, most of which are free!
Most importantly, Grooveshark uses an awesome business strategy – “Get the basics free, pay extra for more yummy stuff!”, which is successfully used for years by many services, including Google Docs, Dropbox, DeviantArt… erm… John the Ripper, and many other places. Now this is so much better than the “free for a couple of countries, 30-song trial period for the rest of the world” strategy used by some competitors, lol.
Grooveshark supports playlists, shuffles & repeats (things that VKontakte lacks), and most importantly, suggestion of similar songs and artists and genre radio stations, which are all real benefits. You can also annoy your facebook pals by posting what you listen to on your wall, or scrobble to last.fm (as if anyone needs last.fm anyway), and other stuff – all completely free.
Needless to say, nobody’s completely perfect. The free version has a sidebar with ads (easily disabled here, though), the on-line client is somewhat heavy and cumbersome, the songs are poorly organized and not everything I’d like to hear is on there yet. But as the creators say, they’re only just beginning, so I’d expect the service to change for the better. To encourage the makers, I’d suggest that we occasionally click on ads, or better still, get a paid subscription.
Have a melodic day!
