Tag: music

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Testing Heaven And Hell

In my last communication I stated that I thought the difference between my two relative frequencies was not significant. I think I have now performed a test, but whether it is valid or not can be up to you.

If Heavy Metal focuses on the dark side of life then there should be many references to to Hell in the song title. Conversly, there should be only a few references to the term Heaven in song titles. If this is the case then it could be expected that the frequencies of each would be independent of each other, assuming the subject matter for songs is random and the use of words follows this.

My Calculations follow, but essentially I have found that, at a 5% significance level, the distribution of Hell and Heaven is random and that the frequency of hell is close enough to the frequency of heaven for this to be so.

hell1

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I am fully aware that I have really pushed the limits of my significance test and it probably doesn’t even work properly for this type of problem. But, my happiness about this communication remains about 75% (+- 3% for 95% confidence level).

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Heaven and Hell

I’ve been thinking about the dark nature of heavy metal music and I am not sure that the reputation is deserved!

My hypothesis is that heavy metal music and hard rock is not at all as bad-ass as people think. I predict that the number of song title references to Hell will be fewer than those that reference Heaven. At the time of writing this is just a confirmation bias speaking.

Assuming that my music tastes for heavy metal and hard rock are reasonably consistent with the music genre and assuming that I have a random collection of this type of music in my library I will perform a count of the words in the song titles of my library.

This really is being done live. I don’t know the results at the moment. Here goes:

Heaven:

  • Heaven’s Dead
  • Heaven Sent
  • When Heaven Comes Down
  • In Heaven
  • Heaven Can Wait (Gamma Ray)
  • Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door
  • Heaven Can Wait (Iron Maiden)
  • Stairway To Heaven
  • Heaven Help
  • Heaven For The weather, Hell For The company
  • Heaven Can Wait (Meatloaf)
  • Good Girls Go to Heaven
  • Christmas In Heaven
  • I Wish U Heaven
  • To Be With You In Heaven
  • South Of Heaven
  • Heaven’s Gate
  • Super-Charger Heaven
  • Heaven and Hell
  • Heaven Tonight
  • Heaven Beside You

So that’s 21 song titles that include the word Heaven out of around 5000 songs in my library.

Now for Hell:

  • Cold Day In Hell
  • Right Next Door To Hell
  • Highway To Hell
  • Go To Hell
  • Heaven for the Weather, Hell for the Company
  • To Hell We Ride
  • Hell Child
  • Bat Out Of Hell
  • Into The Lungs Of Hell
  • Green Hell
  • Hotter Than Hell
  • Help Me I Am In Hell
  • Hellraiser
  • Run Like Hell
  • Come Hell Or High Water
  • To Hell And Back Again
  • Hell Awaits
  • Hellbound
  • Hell Raisers
  • Heaven and Hell
  • Hells Bells
  • Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be
  • Hell Or High Water
  • Private Hell
  • Hell To Pay
  • Earth On Hell

So that’s 26 references to Hell in a song title out of about 5000 songs in my library.

Now, I have no idea if that a significant statistical difference. It doesn’t seem so to me. It also appears from the titles of some of these songs that perhaps the context in which the title is used might be more important. A couple of the Heaven songs seem more to do with the dark side that good stuff and some of the Hell songs come from sayings.

I don’t think any conclusions can be drawn from this initial study. Perhaps with a research grant I’d be able to investigate the context of these words within the Heavy Metal form and get a good answer.

Rock On!

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Testament – KoKo

Went with my best man and best pal to watch Testament at KoKo in Camden on Fri 30 Nov 2012.
They were good and very good fun to watch. Not a great front man but the music was hard and fast.
Liked the venue. Small and intimate.

Here are my photos:

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Reaper

This is not a communication about the TV show Reaper, although I thought that was good fun. It is also not about Mr Grimm as what could I say about death? It is definitely not about the rock classic “(Don’t fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult. This communication is about the rare ambiguity that occurs in iTunes.
I rather like the music genre of Aggrotech or as it is also known – Hellectro. There is a band called Reaper who have released some music and recently it appeared that is was quite cheap on iTunes so I downloaded all of it.
The problem is that when I played back the EP “Monsters in my head” it was quite clearly a different genre of music. It was more electro than hellectro. Perhaps this was an early Reaper piece but I had my doubts. A little bit of Internet research and I discovered that there were two Reapers of similar music but different enough for me to spot. Bugger. “Monsters in my head” is a little too clean for me.
So I checked the other Reaper downloads and it turns out that the Reaper album “Gardens of Seth” is by a metal band and definitely not anything whatsoever to do with Aggrotech. The ban might be Italian, definitely not from an English speaking country. As it stands “Gardens of Seth” is rather outdated and has a rather late eighties sound. It is quite good at what it is but not quite what I want. Perhaps I will listen to it more when I’m having an Iron Maiden revival.
The moral of this communication is that you should check discographies on the Internet before downloading songs by an artist whose tunes so far you have rather enjoyed.

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One Night

Over the last week I have “borrowed” the soundtrack to the Megadeth live DVD recorded in Buenos Aires – That One Night. Once the soundtrack was ripped I had to separate out the tracks so I could import the files into iTunes. This was rather fun and I enjoyed using Audacity.

This process is now complete and I have a lovely album on my iPhone of Megadeth live. I have to say that the energy and quality of the music is brilliant. It really makes me want to listen to the original songs again.

There were some issues. The orignal rip was rather quiet and I had to try and increase that within iTunes. Also I cut the tracks without always listening to them and I had two which had some acoustic impovisation in front (which would make sense watching the DVD but not when listening to the soundtrack) so I have gone back to my original recording and re-cut those tracks. Going to import them back into iTunes and onto my phone tonight. Love it all. :-)

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It Took 20 Years

About 20 years ago I borrowed my dad’s car. I got in and turned on the ignition. The car radio was tuned to Essex FM and after a few seconds a dance / drum and bass song came on that stunned me! It started with a woman speaking about various sex acts and I was rather surprised it was broadcast.
I’m used to dodgy lyrics, the song Animal by WASP, Kickstart The Fight by Combichrist, F^^^machine by Combichrist, and quite a few songs by AC/DC all have dodgy or explicit lyrics. I do understand that these will probably never make it to broadcast.
Someone in Essex FM really messed up. This drum and bass song was explicit and obviously so. I guess they don’t always listen to everything before broadcast. I once heard Killing In The Name Of by Rage Against The Machine played in full on the BBC Radio 1 chart show when it was released!
Every now and then over the last 20 years I’ve wondered if the song existed. I’d never heard it again and didn’t really mention it to anyone. Recently, when I’ve thought about it, I’ve tried Googling but not really found anything. It was quite hard to decide what search terms to use.
Today was a breakthrough. One particular key phrase from the song brought up a YouTube link that seemed promising. I have played the link and am fully confident that it is the song I heard 20 years ago.
I feel somewhat relieved! Firstly I didn’t imagine the song. Secondly, it is as rude as I remember. Unfortunately the song is pretty rubbish apart from the “lyrics”.
Should you want to sample some of this disturbing song then try searching for “Andy C” and “Dirty lil slut”. You might be surprised or you might not.
Direct link here.

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Long Time

Continuing the iTunes and iPhone theme I have here a list of songs arranged by time (descending).

iTunes sorted by length of song
Long Songs

I need to listen to most of these to check whether they are proper songs or just tricks that have lots of empty space. Time to melt by Lard definitely seems to be a proper song. Over time I will check these and get back to you. The list stands as follows:

  • Lard, Time To Melt – seems a proper song.
  • Therapy?, Sister – seems some parts of silence, cheats!
  • Combichrist, At The End Of It All
  • Senser, Weatherman
  • Lodestar, Iliac Crest
  • Nirvana, Something In The Way – gaps and silence.
  • Throbbing Gristle, After Cease To Exit
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Current Most Played

Here’s my list of top played songs from my iPhone. Actually the first 5 were all children’s songs so I haven’t kept those in the picture.

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As you would expect Combichrist are at the top as are some other Aggrotech or hellectro bands. Some might question Boston’s Foreplay/Longtime but I reckon if you listen to it you’ll realise it’s a very good song. Black Betty by Ram Jam is one that gets my children dancing so, although I appreciate it is a good song, without them it probably wouldn’t be in the top.
It’d be very interesting to mine my mind for data about songs I have listened to in my lifetime as this list really only covers the last year since I rebuilt my iTunes library. AC/DC’s If You Want Blood and plenty of Iron Maiden and Megadeth would be in the list. Would there be some shocking surprises? Maybe some Prince!

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Excited

Very excited. I just bought my ticket for Download 2013. It’s a heavy metal festival held at Donington Park somewhere in the midlands. Now, I’m not a great fan of festivals and in all reality this will be my first, but, what a beauty it is going to be. I am going with my mate as it is his 40th birthday near to then and this seems to be the perfect way to celebrate.

First things first. I can’t go on the Friday as I have to work. So that means I am going to miss Slipknot. This is not a bad thing. I really am not bothered about seeing them. I will be travelling on the Saturday morning and then returning at a god-awful hour on the Sunday night / monday morning to head into work.

Headlining on the Saturday are IRON MAIDEN. This is good news as they were the first band I ever saw also the birthday boy was there for that one too. That was in 1988 and they were on the “7th Tour of a 7th Tour” tour. What makes this festival rather special is that they are going to be playing pretty much the same set as on that tour. It originally was filmed and released as the “Maiden England” video and I have a copy of that somewhere. Seeing Iron Maiden pretty much play the same set list as I saw 24/5 years ago is going to be brilliant. None of the new stuff will be played which is good as I’ve never really listened to anything recorded by them past about 1990!

On the Sunday the German industrial metal band RAMMSTEIN are going to be playing. This is also a good thing. I saw them a couple of years ago at Wembley Arena and they were brilliant. I am so looking forward to seeing them play again.

The headliners are making me sweat just thinking about it. I am very much looking forward to seeing the rest of the line up released. With a bit of luck Combichrist will be on there with, let’s say, Wolfsbane or the almighty for some real 80s throwback stuff.

 

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Aggrotech or Hellectro

As I explain on the page called My Music in the About Me section, music is something special. If it moves you then enjoy it. Metal is my preferred form of music. Heavy guitars with bass and drums. Vocals not always necessary as it’s just another instrument to me. I don’t really dissect the lyrics but friends if mine do.
Anyway. Rammstein was my band of choice for quite a few years. I go in phases of trying new bands and then becoming a bit obsessed. When my #1 son was born I explained to WW that there were two bands I still wanted to see:

  • AC/DC
  • Rammstein

If these bands toured I would go and see them. Rammstein sound new and different and so I really liked listening to them and AC/DC are just ace, even if you include the 4 shit albums they made in the 80s and 90s! I guess they are a bit like Iron Maiden. Class bands who keep releasing new material but it’s not as good as the stuff they wrote when they were young and trying to make their place in the world.

I saw AC/DC at Wembley Stadium and also I saw Rammstein at Wembley Arena. AC/DC were, of course, brilliant. Rammstein was just awesome. The support band for the Rammstein gig was called Combichrist. They sounded really good. So, I bought an album, taking a guess at what one might be their best.

Today we are all demons – Combichrist

I loved it. It has no guitars but is very heavy dance music with sick lyrics and metal type vocals. I bought another album and found it was very good to run to.

What the F^^K is wrong with you people – Combichrist

Now it was time to start investigating this rather strange new music style. It turns out it is called Aggrotech which is an off-shoot of EBM. It all came out of the industrial sound and went wild in the Benelux countries. Who’d have thought it eh?

So now I am the proud owner of a number of titles in this genre. It’s good to run to and emotionally a little crazy. Lovely.

  • Aesthetic Perfection
  • Combichrist
  • Icon of Coil
  • Scandy
  • Suicide Commando

Some other bands I have downloaded recently are:

  • Front Line Assembly
  • KMFDM

Although these are a bit industrial they definitely don’t fit into an aggrotech shuffle as they have guitars and, trust me, that’s a shock when you are running to sick clubby music to get loud guitars making a din!

My definition of aggrotech is:

Heavy metal with keyboards instead of guitars

or

Heavy dance music with sick lyrics and poor singing

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