Author: Ian

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The American Way – Sacred Reich

This is a thrash album. During the mid to late eighties there were a number of bands who changed the sound of metal. Metallica and the rest of the big four are considered the trailblazers. I found Sacred Reich while on holiday in Saint-Jean-de-Monts during 1990. One day while walking in the town we found a market and one of the stalls was selling music cassettes.

I bought this album purely on the front cover and it being surrounded by other bands to whom I listened. After a few listens on the car stereo and possibly a Walkman the album really grew on me. I think I recognise it as brilliance now. I love all the songs, even 31 Flavors! Recently I downloaded a digital version and it’s now on my iPhone. I find this album particularly calming and often its mood matches mine perfectly. There might only be eight songs but they are all good.

Given that this album was released in 1990 I consider the political messages of the song Crimes Against Humanity rather prescient. The song is about humans polluting the Earth and although this was a major concern in the 80s it is more of a concern now with anthropocentric global climate change affecting our planet! Sacred Reich aren’t the only band to criticise human pollution, Testament and Metallica have also written songs much to the same effect.

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Amorica – The Black Crowes

I downloaded this album in the last year or so. I first saw the Black Crows at the Monsters of Rock festival in 1991. They opened the show to be followed by Queensryche, Mötley Crüe, Metallica and AC/DC. I was really impressed with them and bought their first album.
I became aware of this album in my last year or so of living in London. I remember seeing posters in tube stations of the cover of the album. If you are unaware it is a close up of a woman’s bikini bottoms with some pubic hair showing. I understand it caused some controversy in the USA when It was issued and the record company had censored covers ready!
I never got around to buying the album in 1995 or so as I was moving out of the blues/hard rock genre into a more rap/metal mix (Senser and Faith No More). I was quite happy just listening to the band’s first two albums.
As for now, I’ve listened occasionally to this but nothing stands out. I might need to listen to it more but as I mentioned before most new music just sits on the edges of my memory core and doesn’t sink in. There are some exceptions, mind!

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All Hell’s Breaking Loose At Little Kathy Wilson’s Place – Wolfsbane

I saw Wolfsbane support Iron Maiden at some time, I think. I’m trying to remember how I got into them but apart from possibly seeing them as support I have no idea. I bought this EP (kinda) on music cassette originally. It is easily the best British Heavy Metal album of the early nineties. There might only be six songs on this record but they are seriously worth having.

My personal highlights from the track listing are:

  • Steel
  • Paint The Town Red
  • Loco
  • Hey Babe
  • Totally Nude
  • Kathy Wilson

The only slightly wobbly song is Hey Babe and that’s still good in comparison to all the other stuff out there. Seeing Wolfsbane live was great and I think I saw them at The Marquee many moons ago. Apart from the song Manhunt on another album it’s just worth getting this EP.

It took me a while to find this on CD. When I was going through a phase of digitising my collection and replacing all my music cassettes and vinyl albums I searched for Kathy Wilson everywhere. I think I finally bought it from an Italian trader on eBay. The volume is a little quiet but then I think that is how the early CDs were made. In recent times it appears that they have cranked up the volume. In reality they’ve just added 5 to all the volume levels, I’m not sure you get better sound quality.

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All Beauty Destroyed – Aesthetic Perfection

There are two bands I consider to be the lead players in the aggrotech / hellectro sound. Combichrist and Aesthetic Perfection. One of the saddest things about me finding this style of music is that I started with the best two bands and the rest just don’t quite match up. More in later editions of album review.

All Beauty Destroyed is an awesome album. The beat is perfect for running. The tunes are memorable and the lyrics freak me out. It’s perfect. Favourite songs are:

  • A Nice Place To Visit
  • Hit The Streets
  • Mother*

If you don’t want to kill yourself before listening then this could help you on your way. It’s a fresh approach to dance music with catchy upbeat tunes and samples and then some sick and gravely vocals over the top. It’s all rather over the top and brilliant. It’s emotional gone crazy.

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Alice In Chains – Alice In Chains

I bought this album from iTunes during a “catch up with bands I used to like” phase. I had already downloaded the album “Black Gives Way To Blue” by Alice and decided to see what else they had. I like the slowness of the songs and the haunting vocals. This album didn’t disappoint but it’s not one I know backwards.

I’m pretty sure that all the new music I listen to just sits in the top of the memory part of my brain and I find it hard to deeply learn these songs! All the stuff I’ve been listening to for the last thirty years is stuck in there, unwilling to budge. Maybe my brain has filled to the point of only superficially remembering new things and only long learnt memories are able to be retained.

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After The War – Gary Moore

After The War by Gary Moore was bought for me as a vinyl album for my seventeenth birthday by SJR. Not sure why some album gifts and purchases really stick in my mind but this one does. Obviously, I taped the album so I could listen to it on my Walkman cassette player while at school and work and eventually I bought the album from iTunes to digitise my collection.

I don’t like the iTunes album because it starts with a non-vinyl appearance of Dunluce, Pt 1. This kinda ruins the opening of the album for me, although I won’t delete it. I don’t think this album has a bad song on it. I like them all. Interestingly I had never really heard any Led Zeppelin before this album and the song Led Clones which was meant to sound like them started me investigating who Led Zeppelin were and what their music was like.

This is just a good British rock album by an excellent artist.

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Ace Of Spades Best Of – Motorhead

I honestly have no recollection of purchasing this album. Considering there is only ONE Motorhead album worth owning I’m surprised I’ve got this one. Maybe I got it to have the studio versions of some Lemmy classics:

  • Bomber
  • Iron Fist
  • Metropolis
  • No Class

That’s it. That’s the great songs on this album. It’d be better to just have the ONE album.

 

 

 

NO SLEEP ‘TILL HAMMERSMITH

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Access and Amplify – Icon Of Coil

Strictly speaking this is an EP and so does not qualify for my “Album information” section but I am going to write about it anyway.

Icon of Coil are one of the projects of the main protagonist of Combichrist,  Andy LaPlegua. I am still in a phase of really enjoying the “hellectro” and “aggrotech” sound and Icon of Coil were listed on Wikipedia as an influence on Combichrist. So I downloaded this EP. What struck me firstly about it was it has much more of a clean dance feel to it that the Combichrist material. The EP consists of two songs and three re-mixes of Accerss and Amplify. I don’t often listen to the EP as a stand-alone source of music but I do hear the songs now and then while I’m listening to an aggrotech shuffle when I’m on a run. Ultimately it’s well constructed music but just not quite my type. It’s not so bad that I’ll skip the songs when they come on though!

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AC/DC Live – AC/DC

As music is quite a large part of my life and the things I like to do I thought I would start a series of communications extolling my thoughts on the albums I own. I am only going to cover albums, no CD singles or anything like that, I wouldn’t want this to be an unmanageable project!
All of the albums listed in this section are currently on my iPhone. There are some that are not and I might get around to writing about them one day but not in the next while. My iPhone informs me there are currently 444 albums in my library, but some of those contain single songs, again, I will only cover whole albums I have bought.

AC/DC Live – AC/DC

This live album was recorded at the 1991 Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park. I bought this album because I was there in the crowd with my sister. It was a great concert. AC/DC were (and still are) a fantastic live band.
This recording was the first live recording of AC/DC since “If You Want Blood” with Bon Scott on vocals. I think it would be fair to say that this recording of AC/DC has become iconic. The twin CD pack included 23 songs and proved that AC/DC were masters of the universe. Hearing “For Those About To Rock” with 21 real guns going off in the background gives a real sense of what the concert was like. This album gives a sense of the peak power of AC/DC. It was the tour to support “The Razor’s Edge” album and finally AC/DC had returned to the good form that was missing for a bit of the 1980s.

Personal highlights from this album have to be:

  • Sin City
  • Jailbreak
  • Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
  • High Voltage
  • T.N.T.

It’s great to hear newer versions of these classics. It puts a real energy back into the songs. Oh, and it reminds me of a great day in the summer of ’91!

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Scrolling Direction

I think a new convention is needed. Being a somewhat literal interpreter of language and also because I like playing devil’s advocate I cause confusion when asked to “scroll up” my computer screen. As part of my job I regularly project my computer screen and write on the display using Microsoft OneNote. Sometimes it is requested of me to show more of my previous writing because those who should be following my work are a little slow.

Can you scroll up please

This is what I will be asked to do and although I understand the intention (to see what I wrote earlier) I irritate by moving the display on the screen so that the “paper” moves up. This is, of course, the opposite of what was being asked.

My argument to my followers is that in the days of paper scrolls being asked to scroll up would have moved the paper up and so would allow more of the bottom of the paper to be seen. I honestly do not know what should be the correct way to move the “paper”. If I was asked:

Can you move the scroll bar up please

I would say that is pretty unambiguous. Moving the scroll bar up has the desired effect. Or perhaps if I was asked:

Could you move the screen down so I can see the earlier work please

Again, it is quite clear what the intention of this statement is. I guess one of the lovely things about language is how vague and foggy it can be. It takes time and clarity of thought and interpretation to say exactly what you mean.

The offending item:

Scroll bar

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ISS Pass 2

Don’t think I’m going to see the ISS tonight as there is 8/8 cloud cover at the moment. I’m very glad I managed to fleetingly see it last night.
I have signed up for emails from NASA informing me when the ISS is going to pass over this part of the Kent countryside. Hopefully I won’t miss the next opportunity to see it.
I need to spend more time star watching later in the summer. I could do with a decent telescope. Maybe one that connects to my phone or computer to automatically track the celestial body I find interesting.
I’ve seen Jupiter and Saturn through telescopes in Florida and Australia. It’s awe inspiring to see these bodies of our solar system. It really brings home how far science and human knowledge has come in the last 400 years.
We are still in the infancy of human scientific verifiable knowledge. I hope that one day we leave our superstition and fairy stories behind.
This communication went somewhere I wasn’t expecting!

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ISS Pass 1

I’m not really sure why I looked or how I found out but the International Space Station passed over the Kent countryside last night. It will also pass over tonight.
According to a website the sighting time last night was about 20:30 Hrs. I was preparing to head outside and observe this modern wonder when there was a knock at the door!

ISS Passes

I had a few minutes to help my neighbours out with a problem they had and get into my back garden. Fortunately they only needed a little help and I stood on the patio with a glass of wine in hand.

At 20:35 the sky was not really dark but I hoped to see the ISS pass. The moon was bright. I used my Star Walk iPhone app to check where I should be looking and waited. After a short while there was a bright star travelling fast through the sky. It was the only other thing visible in the sky apart from the moon. After about a minute I looked away and the ISS disappeared behind the dust and particles towards horizon. It was wonderful to see. I’ll be out again tonight!

BTW – I don’t like the fact the website that displays the information has a mixture of 24Hr and 12Hr clock times. I don’t think they understand the conventions!

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Olympus Has Fallen

As action films go this one is ok. It’s just like Die Hard but not done as well. Terrorists take over the White House and have trapped the President and some of his senior staff. Only Gerad Butler is there to save him.
The opening was sweet with a Christmas theme and the incident where Banning does the right thing is all well and good. Once the invasion of Washington DC started the whole thing became somewhat less realistic. It was nice seeing the views of DC again having been there recently. I recognised most of the places and the aerial views really made the layout of the city clear. I spent most of my time running around DC so I was quite aware of where things were, it was just nice to see a different view.
There were a few times throughout the film when I wanted to laugh out loud. The script was painful at times and it didn’t go smoothly. My favourite line was when a helicopter with people was taking off from the North Lawn and someone in the Pentagon said “it’s ok, we’ve got a tracker on board”. It’s a HELICOPTER. RADAR normally works quite well with big metal objects flying through the sky. What rubbish.
How you could fly an unidentified aircraft within 20 miles of DC and not get shot down for later questioning is something the film doesn’t address, but then it would mess up most of the film. It’s all rather silly.
Don’t expect anything sensible. Expect silly, get silly and suspend your disbelief. It’s not a complete waste of less than a tenner if you live outside London.

On a completely separate issue it really bugs me that the President ends his addresses to TV with God Bless America. I find it amusing that God blesses Americans and the land they stole from the indigenous peoples. The fact that God is on the side of the USA and not the Republic of Korea is even more amusing. I guess God is always on the winningest side! Read the US constitution and tell me where it mentions God!

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Oblivion

This is the first in an occasional series where I give my opinion of films I have seen. The reviews are not going to be long and not going to be that insightful. Writing is not a gift of mine. I originally started this many years ago on this Previous Films.
Warning – general plot and theme spoilers.
So, this communication is about the Tom Cruise vehicle that is Oblivion. Let’s start off by saying this film is alright. It’s not stunning. It’s not ground breaking. It’s just alright. Many of the themes the film pushes have been done before. While watching it you can almost put together the films the director/writer grew up with. If you want to watch a decent film with similar themes I suggest you buy or rent Moon, The Island (not a good film), Bladerunner, 2001 etc.. They are generally far better and more organic with better acting.
The special effects in Oblivion are seamless and so you don’t really notice them. The female actors are pretty, as you’d expect, and Tom just cruises around, but then you don’t expect wonders from him. I also feel as though Morgan Freeman is now a cliche of himself! It’s no surprise to see him popping up half way through, there are plenty other actors who would have been better and less recognisable in the role.
Overall, this film is a reasonable starter into science fiction but if you are already a nerd then it’s not worth your money. Watch the classics and philosophise all you want.

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KMFDM

Saw KMFDM at the O2 Academy in Islington. Small venue but nice and close to transport.
KMFDM were very good. Loud and funky the band played a good mixture of old and new. I’m not sure about some of the music being samples and recordings but I think I can cope with it if it’s occasional. They started with DIY and played Kunst third. Many hits followed and the atmosphere was as expected.

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For someone used to the heavy metal crowd it was quite clear that I had crossed into a newer and different genre. Some members of the audience were not metal fans and were a little more extreme and edgy in appearance. The very tall man in the dress and make up, the other man in a dress and pink hair and the man who looked like a stereotypical butch lesbian with orange hair. I’m just glad these people have somewhere to call home.

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The support bands were:

  • Sheep on Drugs
  • Explore the TV

    • Sheep on drugs were ok but Explore were awful, just not my scene or anyone else’s I think.

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    1000 Up

    It may have taken a while and lots of money but I finally have 1000 cars in Gran Turismo. Who needs another game (or life)?

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    I’m still not at level 40 in A-Spec though.

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    Bridge Construction

    When I was in America I did some running. On my last day in the USA I ran past some bridges. While running up to the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge I noticed a curious linkage design in the side of the bridge.

    TRMB

    In the UK the majority of bridges are built on rollers so that when they expand in the summer, warmer months they don’t crack and break apart. These rollers can be observed from under the bridge and the expansion joints can be seen on top of the bridge.

    This particular bridge in Washington DC is hanging from the cantilever end parts of the bridge to allow expansion in the structure. A close up below:

    Bridge Expansion

    A close up with my annotations:

    Extra

    This is quite a clever solution to bridge expansion. I also think it is quite clear that I would make an excellent dinner guest, not boring at all! One of the things I love about civil engineering is that it is Meccano but just bigger. Big bolts, big nuts and big cables!

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    They Are So Mine

    Here’re my boys looking at Rochester Airfield. They loved waking around and seeing the planes. We were going to go on a river trip but all sailings were cancelled because the river was flooded!

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