(Just Like We) Breakdown

Computer problems mean another untimely week off. I shall leave the MP3s up. Take this opportunity to catch up and hopefully I'll have a stable computer to work with after this addition week of servicing. In the meantime, do check out the Contrast Podcast and the many fine blogs linked to in my sidebar.

Note to self: more art.

S15: Voicst - Sgt. Gonzo

"You're talking to a freak."

Way back when (actually, not so long ago) I was Head of Music on a student radio station. This seems like an exciting job at first, until you realise that around 95% of all you receive is pap (you may choose either definition, especially given the number of people famous simply for having breasts getting into the recording studios has risen dramatically these past few years). It then becomes a grueling task, getting up and trying to find the diamond amongst the rough. For a while I had fun sending biting reviews to the marketing companies, until one suggested that perhaps we ought to find a Head of Music who actually liked music and I stood down, instead taking over the role of Programmer, which with its dependency on Spreadsheet management, suited me far better and allowed me to make some much-needed changes to the output of the station.

One band who did capture my ears not unfavourably were Dutch three-piece Voicst. Their name means "manic energy" in Afrikaans and this so precisely defines their sound I feel at a loss describing it else. This song, like the song on which promo it was featured (Acts of Fire), is from their debut, 11-11, released in 2004 in Holland before putting a girdle about the world at a snail's pace, though not for a lack of impact. They've supported the likes of The Raveonettes, Nada Surf, The Bravery, The Presidents of the United States of America, and others. Working hard on touring and building up their fanbase the old-fashioned way, they have only just this year released their second album - A Tale of Two Devils - on which they worked with producer Peter Katis (Interpol, The National).

Good luck finding that one if you're not an iTunes user, like myself.

Much of the information for this article was researched on their Wikipedia entry, which was either penned by someone from their native Holland, or by an English-speaker with a curious idea of the proper application of the present and future conditional tenses.

Download: Voicst - Sgt. Gonzo

And here's a video. We've not had one for a while*. This is the aforementioned Acts of Fire:

Voicst's official website (a few streamable songs set amongst a too-oft clumsy design)
Buy 11-11: Amazon UK (where they've gotten the name wrong) | US

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*EDIT: I remembered I could have added one yesterday, so have just done so.

S13-14: Thomas James - 15 Years / Belle & Sebastian - Simple Things

"I don't exist in usual places."

Two tracks on the blog today, simply because I missed yesterday's. No big deal as I would have had nothing much to say about the last track, except that I found it here and that it's nice, which as we all by now know is hardly a compliment. More a thinly veiled disinterest. Still, with only two samples, however, it is difficult to get much of an impression of the artist. * I think this is especially the case in instrumental piano music. It didn't grab me, so I guess it's not for me.

I don't have a lot to say about today's artist either, though for quite different reasons. This is the peril of such a systematic blogging technique: you don't always have oodles of knowledge to spew forth about the chosen topic for the day. As it is, however, I'm sure most of you probably know more about Belle & Sebastian than I could claim to. As much as I like their clever lyrical wordplay and their seeming simplicity of composition, I can never recall going out of my way to listen to them.

Of course, I have a lot of music to listen to and tend to dart about a little haphazardly around my collection (except the past couple of days when I have been listening almost exclusively to Do or DIY on WFMU, compiled by People Like Us). I have, however, taken to listening to albums again over the last two years; more than I ever did even when CDs were the dominant format. I can't remember the number of tapes I recorded songs onto, re-recording over and over until they wore themselves out - all for my own personal use.

Belle & Sebastian have always been, in my mind at least, a band for the summer. I am more an autumnal type with wintry leanings, preferring The Divine Comedy's earlier work over the pop drivel of their latest album. One interesting fact I can tell you is that Arab Strap, the band after whom the album (The Boy with the Arab Strap) was named, were not so happy with the tribute claiming "there's a limit to putting someone else's name on an album". Arab Strap are now defunct, though both Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton are still active, both with an album release this year. Those who wish to know where the original Arab Strap took their name from should take a look here, then scrub their eyes with soapy water.

See, I can talk away and never get to the point where I get down to really discussing an artist or even the particular songs posted**, but the point of this blog is to allow the music to provide the destinations. The route I take remains entirely up to me and these are but early days. What I have done on this occasion to mask my ignorance of one of the great bands from over the wall is to garnish this entry with myriad links to websites where you can get a lot of free music to sample if you look around. I shall also, as is my current modus operandi, leave you with these two MP3 offerings:

Download: Thomas James - 15 Years (from FreeSoloPiano)
Download: Belle & Sebastian - Simple Things

A video for Simple Things does exist on YouTube, so here it is:

Thomas James's official website
Belle & Sebastian's official website
Buy The Boy with the Arab Strap: Amazon UK | US

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*I'd previously typed "Excet" here. God only knows what I was trying to say before I got distracted and went off to edit another paragraph. I never tend to write in a direct top-to-bottom fashion.

**The song actually provided me the quite wonderful lyric for which I went out looking for picture opportunities to accompany. There were a few oddities I spotted in my excursions, the favourite of which graces the top of the entry. Unless somebody can tell me how to add a 'jump' to my blog entry, however, these others shall remain in the picture bin for possible use in future entries.

S12: Bulldozerman - 8 Hours 53 Minutes

No picture, but then this is a short track* so I shall make it a short entry.

This track is part of a larger project conducted by Soulseek Records, the first of those entitled 24 Hour Massacre. This is a collaborative work where the artists try to segue from the piece preceding theirs in order to make a seamless-feeling unit. With 40 minutes each to make their contribution and get the work delivered to the next artist in line, this demonstrates a unique form of music-making under pressure. It is worth a listen, even if you find it not to your taste. Personally, I've listened to it on a good dozen or so occasions. I find there's a lot to be taken in and a subtle artistry in the arrangements as each artist inputs their unique style into the framework of the piece, moving from another's work into their own.

They have repeated this project a subsequent two times and there is plenty more listening available on the website, including 1 Minute and 1 Second 'Massacres'.

Download: Bulldozerman - 8 Hours 53 Minutes (FTP). Try here (HTTP) if that doesn't work.
Album: On Archive.org | On Soulseek Records | Direct Download (ZIP)

To fully appreciate the track you should listen to it in context. Give it a go, even if you never listen to it, or anything like it, again.

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*Honestly. The track is not 9 hours long. Not even almost. The time in the title is the time respective to the start of the 24 hour window for the project that this musician received the work.

S11: George "The Fat Man" Sanger - Misc. Scary

"Oh no! The dolls are the children!"

The 7th Guest was one of the first computer games I ever played after getting the first family PC - having prior to this been a household of Commodore A550 users. For a game that is simply a series of logic problems its premise is rather complex and its atmosphere tense and, on occasion, rather terrifying, in spite of being unable to 'lose' the game by dying in any way. Part of the reason I failed out on posting early on last week was because of stumbling onto one of the songs from its soundtrack and feeling drawn to actually finishing the damned thing as I never did at the time.

The rest of the week I just felt tired - quite unrelated to the game - and set about on a mission of recovery. Come about Wednesday I decided that it was looking like my first week off and I should resign myself to it and look into hosting of the previous fortnight's music as recompense.

I'm not actually sure where this music can be heard in the game. I dozed off on my two-seater - my sleeping location of choice this past week - whilst playing and must have heard the Downstairs Puzzles music around a quarter of a million times before getting sufficiently energised to get up and turn the computer off. This is why these slow sorts of games are, generally, the only type I ever play. I'm not much of an enthusiastic gamer so anything that requires reflexes or kills you off just because you stopped concentrating on what it was you were meant to be doing for a couple of hours isn't much for me. As it is, what with the Internet and the occasional intelligent person crafting a sufficiently complex spin on this genre - to say nothing of the rather more common non-intellect who also see fit to create their own tribute(s) - with Flash, new games in this vein rarely surface. An unofficial sequel to The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour is being worked on, the Myst franchise seems determined to reach into triple figures and The Fool's Errand (full game download available on the site) also looks to finally be getting a sequel, though the release date has been moved back several times the past five years, sometime this year being the latest predicted.

Here's the opening sequence from the game, in lieu of anything else to post, video-wise:

Download: George "The Fat Man" Sanger - Misc. Scary

The 7th Guest on Wikipedia - also has links to a page where some other relevant MP3s can be found, if that tickles you.

You can probably find the game itself secondhand somewhere. On the other hand, it is now considered Abandonware and can be downloaded from Lost Treasures, here (the site is in French, but the game itself is the English-language version).

S1-10: MP3s.

Following the advice on hosting from FiL JC*, and as a means of making up for the past week's absence, here are MP3s of the first 10 songs talked about on the journey so far (follow normal procedure to download these files; I have limited bandwidth so would prefer streaming was kept to a minimum):

S1: Beck - We Dance Alone
S2: Jason Webley - Eleven Saints (with Jay Thompson)
S3: Mark Hamn - Mono
S4: Yann Tiersen - Monochrome (Live)
S5: Jodie Foster - La Vie C'est Chouette (from Ubu Web)
S6: Sade - Somebody Already Broke My Heart
S7: Various Artists - It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (Deadly Avengers Takes the Mick Remix)
S8: Goo Goo Dolls - It's Over
S9: Casual, Rock Marciano, Vordual Mega & Tragedy Khadafi - Think Differently
S10: The Bulgarian - Listen Man

All songs hosted now and hence will be made available for 7 days only. If you like the music, throw some support the artists' way - it's how the music keeps on coming. If you own the rights to any music here and wish them removed, fire an email my way - splus7DOTeironATgmailDOTcom (you ought to be able to derive an email address from that) - and I'll see to it they are so.

I hope to be back on form from tomorrow. In the meantime, you could do worse than to head over to the Contrast Podcast, where the theme this week was Snap!, as suggested by myself.

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*Oops. Sorry, JC. FiL is great too, but it wasn't his advice I was following on this occasion.

S10: The Bulgarian - Listen Man

The Bulgarian. I know nothing about him except what I learned from Acid Girls (specifically here, where you can, I believe, still download the track along with many others). Acid Girls was one of my regular places to visit back when I read a ridiculous number of blogs. Probably too many. They are now posting on an on-off basis, though the emphasis lies on the off. I shall add them to my BlogRoll all the same, so you can see there if they post anything new.

I had a job interview today and, having failed to get to sleep last night, I've now been awake for approaching 40 hours. That's why this is all you're getting from me today. More organised service, hopefully seeing me taking pictures of things beyond my own four walls, will resume commence next week. I am also thinking of means of sharing the music a little more. Can anybody recommend good, but extremely affordable, hosting options?

The Bulgarian's MySpace