Tag: music

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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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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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    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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