Jan
30
2008
Min-Sik Choi to appear in “Himalaya: The Place Wind Blows”
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
Min-sik Choi hasn’t been seen on the big screen since his 2005 film’s “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” and “Crying Fist”. Within the last year he has kept a lower profile than usual due to bad publicity. Last year, when popular Korean actors and directors protested against the lowering of screen quotas for foreign films, Min-sik Choi took an active part in those protests. Shortly afterwards he appeared in paid commercials for a Korean company named Leadcorp (리드코프). Leadcorp is a lender of money to consumers, but allegedly charges unusually high interest rates. The public took Min-sik’s protest appearances (promoting Korean culture) and his paid commercial appearance (advocating unusually high interest rates to the public) and deducted those two acts as being self-centered, callous, or insincere to the public’s interest.
Since that time, he hasn’t been seen in the public very much but that should change soon. The man who played “Oldboy” will be appearing in his first film in over three years, which will be called “Himalaya: Barami Buneun Kot (The Place Wind Blows)”. In the movie a Nepalese man, who is a factory worker in South Korea, dies. Min-sik’s character then takes the worker’s remains back to his home village in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal (perhaps “Failan” - minus the romance and shown from the vantage point of a factory worker and his exposure to Nepal?). The film will be directed by highly regarded indie director Soo-ill Jeon, who has done such works as “With a Girl of Black Soil,” “Time Between Dog and Wolf” (***I’m dying to see this film***), and “My Right To Ravage Myself”. Filming will start next month in Nepal.
Movie News, Movies, News |
Jan
30
2008
GAP 2.4.0 - the GIMP Animation Package
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
The Gimp Animation Pack, better known as GAP, has unveiled a new 2.4.0 version. GAP is a collection of plug-ins for Gimp, which gives the open source image editor the ability to edit and create animations as a sequence of single frames.
Version 2.4.0 of GAP is mostly a bug fix release that makes GAP compatible with the Gimp 2.4.x series of releases. Users willing to install from source can download GAP files from ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp/plug-ins/v2.4/gap . For others they just have to wait for binary packages from their distribution of choice.
For people who are interested in learning how to work with the plugin, brief instructions can be found here or here. Once the plugin is installed you will have a collection of options under “Video” … one of the most important is the “Move Path” which looks like this :
Jan
29
2008
Britta Persson - Kill Hollywood Me
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
Band: Britta Persson
Album: Kill Hollywood Me
Release Date: January 16, 2008 (Sweden)
Website: http://www.brittapersson.com/
Label: Amigo
Editor Rating: 7.5
(5 Votes, User Rating: 9.2)
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“I am 26 years old, and I come from Vattholma, Sweden, some kilometers north of Uppsala; now I live in Stockholm. I have made two demo recordings, one EP and one album. So KILL HOLLYWOOD ME is my second album, quite different from the first one, yet still on the same path. To kill the Hollywood-me is not easy but – pat, pat on my own back – I’m doing quite well.”
That’s about all I know about Britta Persson. What jumps out first about her new album “Kill Hollywood Me” would be the familiarity it shares with girl fronted American indie acts from the late 80’s/early 90’s. That’s an era I’m familiar with, so the songs on “Kill Hollywood Me” had an immediate shoes-that-are-broken feel to the songs. Which kind of goes back to Britta Persson’s bio and her proclamation that she’s from Sweden. I don’t think there’s a sound identifiable with the Swedish music scene, but with her songs I would have certainly bet they came from the same ilk as Mary’s Danish or the Tanya Donnely songs from Throwing Muses and Belly.
The songs on “Kill Hollywood Me” are all easily accessible, dealing with the familiar topic of love, but when there’s an appreciable underlying pop hook without the icky sacharrine goo from lesser material … well what you have is some great music. The better songs do seem stacked more favorably to the first half, but there’s good stuff found all around nonetheless. “Cliffhanger” has an intro guitar hook that recalls the riff from “Trout” by Nenah Cherry and Michael Stipe, then goes off on an more urgent pacing, with well done time changes and catchy (did I say catchy?) … well let’s say it again.. catchy choruses. “At 7″ is all cutesy, but again, without crossing that invisible line into tackiness. I’m not sure what exactly she is singing about on “At 7″, but the mood of the song is universal (hint - There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done). Title track “Kill Hollywood Me” is radio friendly but you would never feel embarrassed singing along with it in your car. “Happy Hour” may well be the highlight of the second half of the album. The instrumentation and vocal phrasings scream out classic (insert your favorite female fronted 80’s/90’s indie band here).
When you crave something accessible, but not dumbed down and catchy throughout “Kill Hollyood Me” by Britta Persson is an album you should check out. Heck its even from Sweden.
buy it from
Tracklist:
01. Cliffhanger
02. At 7
03. In or Out
04. Kill Hollywood ME
05. Enter and Leave
06. Happy Hour
07. Teambuilding
08. U-Turns
09. Car Song
10. Zig Zag
Jan
29
2008
Chan-wook Park’s “Evil Live” - brief update
Posted by luna6 | 4 Comments
Following up on the article Chan-wook Park’s busy 2008 (Evil Live, New York I Love You, Hongdangmu, Snow Train), there has been an update on Park’s vampire/adultry flick “Evil Live”. The plot for “Evil Live” has been changed a bit, where the main character, a priest (played by Kang-ho Song), travels abroad to Eastern Europe to study. There he becomes the infamous Dracula. After his transformation he meets a married couple and goes on to have an affair with the wife. Furthermore …
Chan-wook Park is having difficulties in casting an actress to play the wife due to heavy requirements for nudity and sex scenes with Dracula. I would bet if they had casted Joe Odagiri as Dracula they wouldn’t have this problem. Casting is still on going for the film.
Movie News, News |
Jan
29
2008
Guillemots premiers new single on Radio 1 tomorrow, new album “Red” to be released March
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
I like the Guillemots alot, so I’m pretty stoked to hear the band will release their new album “Red” sometime this March. The band are an unusual mix of lads and ladies from across the globe that can make a mean pop tune or two. Before that, for U.K. fans that has access to Radio 1, the will premiere their brand spanking new single “Get Over It” from that album. For further information just read below the fold.
From The Guillemots mailing list :
Hello everyone… quite exciting this, our new record is finished, it’s called ‘Red’, it’s out on March 24th… you probably know all this already, but it still feels good saying “our record is finished”… and Zane Lowe is going to be giving the first play to the first single from the record, ‘Get Over It’, tomorrow night - that’s Tuesday 29th January, between 7 and 9pm. So have a listen if you can, we hope you like it. Magrao’s directed the video for it too, and it’s looking great… that should be out to the TV people very soon as well. We’re all still finding things like this first radio play really exciting this time round. You work away on something for months and then suddenly it goes out there, out of your hands, and everyone can hear it. Tis a good feeling.
Interview with Magrao from the Guillemots mailing list:
Hello Magrao. What have you been up to this week?
“Last week we have been working on the video for the new single, ‘Get Over It’. We had the shooting day on Thursday - a really long day, trying to get everything together and get everything done in time.
“It’s been really exciting to be working with a really good group of people - the guys from Up The Resolution. We’ve just spent the whole weekend working on the editing of the video.”
Can you talk us through what happens in the video?
“Well, it’s basically… well, we’ve got a few scenes of Fyfe and Arista in this really old looking car. It’s quite interesting really - we’re approaching it in an old school way, with back projection and stuff, instead of trying to make it look real.
“There’s elements in the video that refer to the song - like you have some photos of Fyfe as a kid. There’s also girls dressed up as cats, which is a kind of fantasy - it represents temptation, I would say.
Why did you guys pick ‘Get Over It’ as the first single?
“We went through phases where we all liked different songs as the potential first single, and we definitely wanted something that was upbeat. We thought of ‘Get Over It’ a few times but we never really had the right mix of it. Then at the last moment, just as we were finishing the album, it all dropped into place and started sounding really good. Then we all got really excited about it as the single.”
What music are you listening to? Is there anything you’d like to recommend to the fans?
“I’ve mainly been listening to my friends’ bands really. There’s a band called Dibidim, I’ve been listening to them quite a lot.
“Then there’s Alex Ward - who used to play saxophone with us and might do again in the future - he has a band called Dead Days Beyond Help, who are really great.”
Is there anything else you want to tell people about?
“Well, I’ve been making short videos for some of my old songs - my side projects and stuff. I have a page on youtube which is www.youtube.com/magrao78, where people can check them out.
“I had a few songs that I recorded a couple of years ago but never really had the chance to put out. I just made a few animations and strung some pictures together and turned them into videos. I though this was a good way to get the songs out there and also practice making music videos. I’m quite pleased with them, they’re quite experimental but it’s been a good exercise for me.”
Music News, News |
Jan
29
2008
Ebay revamps seller program
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
For Ebay sellers and buyers for that matter, they should be interested in Ebay’s revamped selling policy. The company has experienced stagnant growth, while online competitors like Amazon has seen continual growth in their online sales. Because of that Ebay is lowering selling fee’s (while slightly raising final cost fees), offering free gallery listings, and for the first time offering discounts for “power sellers.” Ebay is also making other modifications to promote Ebay’s top sellers, while lowering the exposure of sellers who have less than stellar track records.
Excerpt from William Cobb (President of Ebay America) on their new pricing strategy:
Pricing
* First, we’re reducing the up-front risk for all of you by lowering insertion fees for auction and fixed price listings across the board…and we’re balancing that change by adjusting some final value fees. We will take a similar approach with Store Inventory Format listings.
* Second, we are making Gallery free – at last!
* Third, we are going to create tiered pricing for Featured Plus, which will make it more accessible for to sellers.
Seller Standards
In addition to pricing changes, we’re making the minimum standards for selling on eBay more stringent, primarily to discourage bad seller behavior on our site. And we’ll do this in 2 key ways: through decreased listings exposure in search and safe payment requirements.
Starting in February, we will decrease listings exposure in search for the relatively small number of sellers who have a high buyer dissatisfaction rate and low DSRs over the last 30 days, especially for charging excessive shipping and handling.
Second, we will be requiring sellers with high buyer dissatisfaction rates to offer a safe payment option.
Last year, we started requiring all new sellers to offer PayPal or a major credit card as a safe payment option. This gave buyers a higher degree of protection when they transacted with sellers who had little or no track record.
This year, we’re expanding this requirement to include a small number of sellers who have the worst rates of buyer dissatisfaction or who have less than 100 total feedback.
Seller Standards – For PowerSellers
We’re also going to raise the bar on what it means to be a PowerSeller – we want the PowerSeller icon to really mean something to buyers and sellers. Given that this program has historically only required a certain level of sales and a 98 percent positive feedback rating, a number of our buyers have complained that there’s not a consistently great experience when they’re buying from PowerSellers.
We’re going to change all that by making PowerSeller status a competitive advantage … and it all starts with setting a higher bar for sellers using their DSRs.
We’re going to give you some time to do this, but starting this July, you will need to have a minimum 4.5 score in all four DSR criteria over a 12-month period to be designated as a PowerSeller (or remain in the program).
Incentives for Great PowerSellers
For PowerSellers who meet or exceed our standards, we’re going to make sure they are rewarded for delivering great customer service. And we’ll do this in three major ways:
* Discounts for PowerSellers (for the first time ever!)
* Better payment protection for PowerSellers
* And for all qualified sellers, greater exposure for listings in search
Fee Discounts
Let’s start with the fee discounts for PowerSellers … Beginning with your April bill, we’re offering two levels of discounts for qualified PowerSellers that will be based on Detailed Seller Ratings you have received over the last 30 days:
* For those with a 4.6 and above on all four DSR criteria, we’ll give you a 5 percent discount off your final value fees.
* And for PowerSellers with a 4.8 and above, the reward is even better: 15 percent off all of your final value fees.
PayPal Enhancements
You’ve also asked us for a number of changes with the way you do business with PayPal. We, and our friends at PayPal, have heard you and I think you’ll be happy with what we’re going to do for you.
Starting in February, PayPal will dramatically improve seller protection for PowerSellers. Currently, PowerSellers are already protected against unauthorized and non-receipt claims and chargebacks. With expanded seller protection:
* PayPal will no longer require that PowerSellers ship to confirmed addresses for items sold on eBay. Every address in the PayPal system will be considered a confirmed address for PowerSellers.
* For PowerSellers there will no longer be an annual $5,000 limit on seller protection…you’ll have unlimited protection coverage.
* Also starting in February – seller protection will be extended to cover transactions with buyers in many markets around the world (instead of only to US, Canada and the UK). Now PowerSellers can sell with confidence to a much larger group of buyers.
Finally, the Unpaid Item Protection Program that refunds feature fees to PowerSellers in the event of an unpaid item will become a permanent benefit of the PowerSeller program. What’s more, in addition to auction-style listings, we will also be extending this protection to single-item fixed priced listings.
Incentives for All Great Sellers
In addition to these economic rewards for our PowerSellers, we’re also going to be giving all great sellers an advantage in terms of increased exposure for listings in search.
We’ll be doing this specifically for “Best Match” search results. As you know, we rolled out Best Match last year, and it’s one of the sort methods we’ve provided that allows buyers to find relevant items faster.
Since we rolled it out as a search option, we’ve seen that Best Match helps buyer conversion more than any of our other sort methods. That’s why, starting in March, it’s going to become the default sort method site-wide.
And there’s one important enhancement that will make it even more useful to the buying experience. We will begin using Detailed Seller Ratings in the Best Match algorithm to differentiate between sellers who provide a positive buying experience and the small percentage that don’t.
Here’s how it’ll work: Great sellers, as defined by high DSRs within the last 30 days, will get higher visibility in search results than sellers who have lower rates of buyer satisfaction.
With this key change, we are effectively linking search with seller performance. Of course, the algorithm for Best Match will continue to include factors like “Time Ending Soonest.” But we believe that also exposing the listings of our most trusted sellers more prominently will help drive noticeable improvement in buyer satisfaction overall.
Jan
29
2008
Aoi Miyazaki & Junichi Okada’s “Bloom in the Shade (Kagehinata ni Saku)”
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
Count me in as a huge Aoi Miyazaki fan (although I wasn’t smitten with “Virgin Snow” or “Hatsukoi“). When she has a good script she’s about as appealing as anyone in cinema and with that there’s some good news about her new movie “Blood in the Shade (Kagehinata ni Saku)”. The movie opened up last weekend in Japan and ranked as the second highest grossing film of the week, missing out on the #1 slot (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street) by only a few houndred thousand dollars. Not to shabby eh?
“Bloom in the Shade” also stars V6 pop star turned actor Junichi Okada (who turned in a great performance with “Hana yori mo naho”), along with other popular Japanese stars like Takashi Tsukamoto and Aya Hirayama. The movie itself is based off of the popular novel of the same name by well known actor Hitori Gekidan (Memories of Matsuko/Christmas on July 24th Avenue/Dororo). With the renewed interest in the book, his novel has now sold over a million copies. In the movie version of “Bloom in the Shade” there’s four intertwining stories with Junichi Okada playing the lead role as a debt laden man. To get out of debt he tries to swindle an old lady out of her money. Aoi Miyzaki plays a young lady that he meets along the way. For the folks that live outside of Japan, here’s hoping the DVD gets released quickly with English subtitles.
Movie News, Movies, News |
Jan
29
2008
VMware Fusion 1.1 released
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
VMware has released a new updated VMware Fusion 1.1 with significant enhancements. For gamers the most exciting feature found in 1.1 would be the virtualization software’s ability to work with DirectX 9 games (prior versions only worked with DirectX 8). Albeit, VMware has noted if the game requires DirectX 9 “shaders” than the game probably won’t work. Other new features found in VMware Fusion 1.1 are : Support for Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”, improved Unity mode, improved Boot Camp compatibility, eject key now works for drives within the Virtual OS, and many bug fixes. To test drive VMware Fusion 1.1 you can download their trialware here.
What’s New in VMware Fusion 1.1
* Support for Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”
* Access to even more Windows 3-D applications and games, with experimental support for DirectX 9.0 accelerated 3-D graphics (without “shaders”)
* English, French, German, and Japanese versions all in the same download
* Improvements to Unity in VMware Fusion 1.1 that makes Microsoft Windows on the Mac even more seamless with:
o Support for Windows Vista 32- and 64-bit editions
o Support for Windows XP 64-bit edition
o My Computer, My Document, My Network Places, Control Panel, Run, and Search are now available in the Applications menu, Dock applications menus, and the Launch Applications window
o Option to show/hide the Windows taskbar and Startmenu in the VMware Fusion View menu
o VMware Fusion Launch Applications window now appears only when you choose
o Improved performance when resizing and dragging windows in Unity view
* Boot Camp integration even better with VMware Fusion 1.1:
o Use Microsoft Vista Boot Camp partitions in VMware Fusion virtual machines
o Automatic remount of Boot Camp partition after Boot Camp virtual machine is shut down
o Improved support for detecting and preparing Boot Camp partitions for use as virtual machines
* Other improvements:
o Ability to sync iPhone with Outlook in Windows virtual machines
o Eject key now ejects the optical drive when attached to a virtual machine
o VMware Shared Folders created with Windows Easy Install now defaults to Read-Only access of the Mac’s home directory for maximum security>
o Option to hide the VMware Fusion status bar, to take advantage of more screen real estate
o Installation status and “out of date” status for VMware Tools is made more obvious on the status bar
o Necessity to power off a virtual machine to modify virtual hardware setting is made more obvious
Bugs Fixed in VMware Fusion 1.1
VMware Fusion 1.1 includes the following improvements and bug fixes:
* Intel VT is now correctly enabled on 64-bit Intel Macs when powering on or resuming a virtual machine after the Mac is put to sleep or awakened
* Fixed issue where VMware Fusion would use more memory over time
* Resolved issue where windows would freeze in certain cases in Unity view
* Improved DNS resolution when using NAT networking
* Fixed issue where Caps Lock mapping preference would always be reset after using VMware Fusion 1.1 Beta
* Restored ability to shrink virtual disks lost after using VMware Fusion 1.1 Beta
Screenshots from VMWARE 1.1 beta :
Jan
29
2008
Byeon, Hie-bong
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
Name: Hie-bong Byeon
DOB: June 8, 1942
POB: South Korea
Height:
(1 Votes, User Rating: 10)
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Filmography:
The Game (2008)
Small Town Rivals | Yijang-gwa gunsu (2007)
Mission Sex Control | Jal sarabose (2006)
The Host | Gwoemul (2006) - Park Hie-bong
Detective Mr. Gong | Kong Pil-du (2006)
Crying Fist | Jumeogi unda (2005) - Sang-hwan’s coach
Another Public Enemy | Gonggongui jeog 2 (2005)
Lovely Rivals | Yeoseonsaeng vs yeojeja (2004) - Headmaster
Sisily 2km (2004)
Au Revoir, UFO | Annyeong UFO (2004) - Real estate agent
Spring Breeze | Buleora bombaram (2003)
Memories of Murder | Salinui chueok (2003) - Sergeant Koo Hee-bong
Teacher Kim Bong-du | Seonsaeng Kim Bong-du (2003) - Old Choi
Scent of Chrysanthemums | Gukhwaggot hyanggi (2003)
Volcano High | WaSanGo (2001)
Barking Dogs Never Bite | Flandersui gae (2000)
A Surrogate Father (1993)
Eunuch | Naeshi (1986)
Jan
28
2008
Ceremony – Disappear
Posted by mikespiegs | Leave a Comment
Artist: Ceremony
Album: Disappear
Release Date: October 15th, 2007
Label: Safranin Sound And Design Records
Editor Rating: 6.0
(2 Votes, User Rating: 7.5)
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It doesn’t take a genius or a fortune teller to tell you what’s going to be going on with music trends in 2008 judging by this new onslaught of Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine inspired bands that have been popping up out of nowhere (see: A Place to Bury Strangers). I suppose noise pop is the new fashion but unlike the Interpols and Hot Hot Heats of the world noise pop is always a welcome change, especially when it comes in the form of a band like Ceremony.
Ceremony, most likely lifting their name from the Joy Division song, features members that were previously in a shoegaze band called Skywave. The shoegaze influence definitely shines through as each track on this record is laden with enough noise and delay to fill any room. Ceremony primarily shifts between borderline industrial/synth pop tracks and poppier Jesus and Mary Chain tracks. The first two songs on this record almost had me writing them off as a Depeche Mode clone. They were a little too dark a little on the cheesy side and didn’t really do it for me. It wasn’t until “Never Love Again” graced my stereo that I knew that Ceremony was different. With its (perhaps unimplied) Stephen Merritt sounding vocals, MBV like lead riffs, floodgate of noise and sing-a-long rhythm it’s a winner all the way. This is the type of song that makes you instantly fall in love with a band. Every other song on this record could completely suck but this song would carry it through. Fortunately, the other songs are pretty good.
“Nothing Inside” kind of flips back to synth-pop mode and we see the synthesizers come out in full force. This one has the tone of the crappy techno New Order songs that you skip to get to the more catchy tracks like “Love Vigilantes” but where New Order lacked, Ceremony fixed. The next track “Cold Cold Night” would fit perfectly on Goth night at the local club. While not as chillingly sterile as most “goth” is there is still this white face makeup and black eyeliner appeal to Ceremony. Perhaps they’re more on the side of a band like The Cure then say… VNV Nation (if you’ve never heard them, don’t worry. Just think vampires, bondage and electronic music… or Germany circa 1996). “No Good for You” is another one of those undeniably catchy tracks that makes you wonder what Joy Division would have sounded like in the 1980’s if Ian Curtis didn’t kill himself.
I find myself attracted to Ceremony most when they are using driving bass lines and a shitload of noise like they do in “I Heard You Call My Name.” The chaotic nature of the noise and the dark vocals seem to all be hanging on the bass line that would make Peter Hook proud. It’s funny how easy it is to compare Ceremony to Joy Division and New Order yet how different Ceremony sounds.
Overall, this is a record to make the vampires happy. I haven’t really been keeping up with the Synth Pop and Gothy bands since Wolfsheim was popular but Ceremony should be the new band rolling off their lips at 80’s night; it is a tough sell though. Ceremony may be too indie for the Goths and too Goth for the indies. Although one thing that is certain is that Ceremony will find some love somewhere.
buy it from
Tracklist:
Nothing Inside
Cold Cold Night
Eurotrain
No Good for You
I Heard You Call My Name
Future
Without Your Love
Dull Life
You Never Stay
Never Love Again
Miss You
Jan
28
2008
Supergrass to release 6th studio album via Astralwerks on April 15th
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
Hmm…regardless of which band it is, by their 6th studio album they’ve probably been in and out of rehab twice and and just a record or two away from a “Greatest Hits” re-release, but this is Supergrass, so give em the benefit of doubt and you can probably hear this pumping on your stereooo on April 15th.
Press Release: SUPERGRASS is back. A fantastic new album entitled Diamond Hoo Ha, a brand new home on Astralwerks, and a sixth studio album showcasing the youthful energy and witty musical stylings of these Britpop pioneers.
After a dozen years, Supergrass (Gaz Coombes–Vocals & Guitar, Mick Quinn–Bass & Vocals, Danny Goffey-Drums & Vocals, Rob Coombes-Keyboard) have rolled back home, and rolled back the years, while marching firmly into the future. “We wanted a record where you got all of Supergrass,” says frontman Gaz of this decisive return to form, “The joy, the intensity, the darkness, the melodies. All of those have always been important to us and still are.” Hence Diamond Hoo Ha (release date: April 15th, 2008) an energetic album bristling with hooks to hang your coat off and melodies to lose your shoes to.
Recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin and produced by Nick Launay (PiL, Gang Of Four), Diamond Hoo Ha is the band at their exuberant best. What other British band is still able, with seemingly effortless ease to conjure up songs and videos that crackle with breezy enthusiasm, humor and inventiveness?
During the summer of 2007, with the album completed, Supergrass supported U.K. stadium tours for Arctic Monkeys and Coldplay. Two very different invitations, both indicative of the regard in which Supergrass are held by the (slightly) younger generation. Of all the British rock bands who burst through in the mid-Nineties they’re the only ones still alive, still forging ahead, still – musically speaking – Having It.
SUPERGRASS DIAMOND HOO HA TRACK LIST
01. Diamond Hoo Ha Man
02. Bad Blood
03. Rebel In You
04. When I Needed You
05. 345
06. The Return Of Inspiration
07. Rough Knuckles
08. Ghost Of A Friend
09. Whiskey & Green Tea
10. Outside
11. Butterfly
Music News, News |
Jan
28
2008
These United States prep debut album “A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden” March 4th
Posted by luna6 | 1 Comment
Yikes, I’m sitting here overloaded with a million things to check out and do, but I did stumble upon this little gem that made me throw everything else off the table. Of course it’s only a single and who knows how the album will sound, but if it’s as good as this single… it’ll be exciting. A little bit of electronica, a little bit of folk, in the same ballpark as Tunng, with vocals a bit like Mercery Rev. There debut album will appear on March 4th via United Interests. Check it out…
Free Downloads: First Sight By
Press Release: Free-wheeling DC psych-folk collective These United States will release its debut album, A Picture of the Three of Us at the Gate to the Garden of Eden, via United Interests, on March 4th. With 300+ shows across the U.S. and Europe in the two short years since its formation, These United States has emerged a wide-eyed amalgamation of intricately layered lit-pop and the punk rock ethic, a band of merry pranksters led by Jesse Elliott, spinning something fiercely, unapologetically positive out of the sinking reality of an empire gone Titanic. For his project’s debut release, Elliott called on an old friend, David Strackany – known to the music world as Paleo, author and sole executor of last year’s remarkable Song Diary (365 songs in 365 days, what Paste magazine called “a streetfight of freakish prolificacy”). The result of the collaboration is a 36-minute allegorical whirlwind through time, space, and sound – think Paul Simon narrating an Andrew Bird master-minded break-in of Bowie’s near-infinite Labyrinth. Between them, Elliott and Strackany roped in upwards of 30 DC- and Midwest-based musicians, and the mixing prowess of District stalwarts Chad Clark (Beauty Pill, Smart Went Crazy, producer for Fugazi, Dismemberment Plan) and T.J. Lipple (Aloha).
“Preface: Painless,” the first track on A Picture of the Three of Us, sets out sailing on a single word, follows it immediately with one mysterious sound – which re-surfaces in waves and dreams throughout the album – and then settles down into the confident core that carries the album: uncommonly ambitious storytelling floating on a sea of masterfully subtle layered production. Indeed, Paleo’s “collage” technique borrows as much from African dub and impressionistic painting as from any tricks currently used in the new-folk universe. This approach is in full evidence on “First Sight,” a pulsing organic near-electronica word-torrent that shoots for the ever-thumping heart of Love, as seen from the first human beings on earth to the last. From underneath Elliott’s breathlessly exuberant vocal delivery, Paleo builds track after track of sound, in effect sampling all of TheseUS’s own live instruments and performances, without a fixed idea of where in a song – or even in the album as a whole – they should eventually end up. As layer after layer is painted on and then stripped away, faded up here and back down there, entire microscopic communities of sound gurgle up and die back down – the Petri dish conjures Casios and hi-hats only to have Saadat Awan’s tabla flourish triumph at the climax…and then be overtaken again by the human voice in the song’s denouement.
On “Kings & Aces,” we’re beckoned by a single French horn into Elliott’s deep dark childhood nightmare imagination, and we look on as the narrator comes of age within seconds, wanders further into the woods, stumbles somehow into a clearing, back again, forth again, all as the tangles of the forest’s avian siren eventually wrap him tight round the knees and the undergrowth overcomes. Ah, youth. It’s there again in “The Business,” an overjoyed ode to sweet resignation, living to work, and working to love in the modern white-collar world.
From there, the album grows both down into the soil and upwards into the air, ebbing and flowing an ocean’s worth in an incredibly short time. The Velvet Underground influenced “Jenni Anne” give way to the psychedelic piano lullaby “Diving Boards Pointed at the Sky.” “Burn This Bridge” could almost be mistaken for a saloon sing-along, were it not for the tribal and trembling undertones of its low tom and lyrics. “Sun Is Below & Above” serves as perhaps the most ethereal of all the tracks, a Paleo production highlight if ever there was one (and there are many). “Remember Dear” and “Slow Crows Over” bring the tide and tempo back up, chasing Elliott’s deft wordplay and rambunctious vocals as they sprint out through fields of cello, accordion, glockenspiel, mandolin, and even the underbelly of an old player piano. As their titles suggest, the album’s dark dynamic duo “So High So Low So Wide So Long” and “Only the Lonely Devil Knows,” end it all on a more existential note, as open-ended and yearning as the album itself. “Devil” is also the album’s most live performance, recorded in two takes in the middle of a frigid Chicago January night by a group of accidentally reunited friends who’d never played together before this cryptic closer.
Music News, News |
Jan
28
2008
Nokia to acquire Trolltech for $153M
Posted by luna6 | Leave a Comment
Interesting news for Linux users. Nokia has announced the acquisition of Trolltech for a cool $153 million dollars. Trolltech is a Norwegian company that develops application framework, most notably “QT” - a cross platform application development framwork used in KDE and “Qtopia” used in embedded and mobile devices. Trolltech also recently accounced that QT would adopt the GPLv3 license in addition to the GPLv2 it already uses. For fans of Nokia’s smart tablet devices, it’s interesting to note that those devices are based on the Gnome environment. You may well see a KDE like desktop on the next generation Nokia N8xx series of smart tablet devices. Who said there’s no money to be made with free software?
Trolltech Press Release: Nokia and Trolltech ASA today announced that they have entered into an agreement that Nokia will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Trolltech (www.trolltech.com), a company headquartered in Oslo, Norway and publicly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Trolltech is a recognized software provider with world-class software development platforms and frameworks. In addition to the key software assets, its talented team will play an important role in accelerating the implementation of Nokia’s software strategy.
Nokia will offer NOK 16 per share in cash. The board of directors of Trolltech has unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept Nokia’s Offer. Holders of 35,024,830 shares, representing approximately 66,43 % of Trolltech’s issued shares and votes have as of January 27, 2008 irrevocably undertaken to accept the Offer. Haavard Nord, Vuonislahti Invest AS (controlled by Eirik Chambe-Eng), Teknoinvest and certa