Est. 2003
The blog of one Michael Heilemann, expatriated Dane coming to you out of New York City. Half machine, half grapefruit, Interface director at Squarespace, design lover, film enthusiast, Star Wars historian, creator of the Kubrick and K2 themes, and holder of opinions, many of which are shared on his Twitter account.
I'm tripping on Red Dead Redemption (and spaghetti westerns in general) these days, as well as its amazing soundtrack, and I came across this live rendition of Jose Gonzales's Far Away, recorded on a rooftop a few blocks from the Squarespace Office.
Great song, amazing game
Blessings of the state. Blessings of the masses.
THX 1138 is certainly not the most accessible film of all time, but for my money it remains not only timeless, but both engrossing and devastating. It’s as uncompromising in its portrayal of a fundamentally alien society as it is in ignoring and avoiding traditional narrative structures and science fiction tropes.
What’s more, the soundscape of the film remains to this day perfection. A full character in its own right, and as distant, unfamiliar and unsettling as the images, Walter Murch’s magic touch puts THX in a sparsely populated category of films. Those that are truly unique.
The DVD version of the film comes with a sound effects-only track, which almost makes the film even better. And as it happens, I found a copy of that track, with some of the voices restored, cut into album form by Wiel. I’ll save you the hassle of horrible download sites and let you grab it off of here (200mb) instead (with proper tagging and everything).
And as an added bonus, there’s a similarly themed album for Blade Runner, called ‘November 2019‘ (165mb) (via), which uses sound effects mostly from the game (sourced from the movie) to create ambient sound scapes from the various locations of Blade Runner.
‘Tis the season after all.
Spent the last few evenings glued to the screen, bouncing from hotel to hotel, trying to find the right fit between price and location for our stays in LA, SF and Vegas. Maybe I’m picky, but that stuff is draining. I don’t know what I’d do without Trip Advisor to be honest.
Originally we had planned to stay wherever, but as our plans started crystalizing, we decided for peace of mind, to book places while in the cities, rather than trying to find something in the stress of it all.
So now we’ve got the car ready, hopefully a true all-American Mustang V6 convertible, what other way is there to roadtrip the US? We’ve got hotels in the major cities, we’ve got our 4000+km route. We’re going to see Pixar and Skywalker Ranch! I’m meeting up with various people, including the venerable Michael Rubin, and we’re going to see both John Williams and AC/DC while in LA.
Holy crap.
Oh, and I’m still hoping for some NIN tickets for LA on the 7th, though that’s looking remote, to put it mildly. I might be able to convince Rikke that we go down to the venue on the night and see if we can pick up some tickets; it being the last concert of the tour (and supposedly for a long while), it would be epic.
And once we get home? Well, someone has to figure out how to convince our bank how we could possible be considered responsible and grown with spending habits like the ones we’re about to display. I honestly have no clue about that one. But this is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, and as such, irresponsibility is part and parcel.
The worst part? Three weeks doesn’t look like a whole lot anymore.
War Stories by UNKLE. I recommend finding the two-disc limited edition, and complete it with the Australian/Japanese bonus tracks Buying a Lie and Mistress. Also, get End Titles… Stories for Film, End Titles… Redux and More Stories. Why it has to be so hard to get the full ‘album’ is beyond me, but it was worth it.
What are you listening to these days?
We were seated far, far away from our friends at the Depeche Mode concert (the sound was atrocious where we were seated, so I can’t honestly say if it was a ‘good’ concert, though it seemed pretty rockin’ down on the ground) this tuesday, and as we idled away, waiting for the old geezers to take the stage, we spent the time messaging each other, trying to get a visual in-amongst the thousands of people, because… Well, there wasn’t a lot else to do.
It struck me next day, that all we had to do was use Google Maps in our phones to send our locations to each other, and we would have saved ourselves the trouble. It wouldn’t have whiled away the time, but it would’ve been cool.
Consider; no more walking around searching for someone at the beach, in the park, at the concert, at that back-alley café, downtown club. They send you their location, bingo. Map, compass and directions always at the ready. It didn’t hit me until just then, but that’s a pretty wicked application of everyday information-age tech.
Update: Mr. Maber let me know that there even exists an app which makes it exceedingly easy to send your location in this manner.
I’m fascinated with the old idea of the mixtape — or the playlist, in our day and age — as more than merely compilations of same-genre music. Instead of transporting the listener around A, I’ve always preferred mixtapes that moved me from A to B.
It took me somewhere between 4-5 months to cobble together this one, which was culled down from about 12 hours of material to about 2.5 hours where it stay for a good while, until I finally took the plunge and made it a nice and lean 84 minutes long. If you’re up for it, I suggest that you don’t skim the track listening too much, don your finestest headphones, and enter… The Night (uuuuhhhhh).
I credit the fact that Lawrence of Arabia is in my top 10 half-way because of David Lean’s audacious cinematography and half-way because of Maurice Jarre’s sweeping score. Rest in peace, thank you for the music.
So I’m leaving you with some UNKLE.
You got somethin’?
Rikke and I were at the VETO/Spleen United double-whammy concert yesterday here in Copenhagen, and it kicked some major ass. Probably in fact, the best concert I’ve been at in… ever. I don’t think I’ve seen a crowd that worked up since Metallica (and that was 50.000 people, so… quite an accomplishment for little ol’ K.B. Hallen).
Anyway, I need to spread the gospel, so here are some videos for you to kick off your friday with:
VETO – We Are Not Your Friends
VETO – You Say Yes, I Say Yes
Spleen United – Suburbia
Spleen United – My Jungle Heart
The Spleen United YouTube Channel, their official site and Veto on Myspace (and Supertroels’ site) and their official site.
Have a good weekend.
Thanks.
It is remarkably rare to see your latest iTMS purchase accompanied by a digital booklet in the shape of a PDF file. Remarkable because whereas a physical booklet requires the use of large color-corrected printers, ink, distribution outlets, delivery vehicles (and men), loss in profits and much more, digital booklets require only ‘print to PDF’, and you’re done. Considering that, I do wonder why all my albums don’t come with booklets.
When they do however, it makes for a nice addition to the otherwise pretty non-tangible purchase that is digitally distributed music. In fact, in the degradation from LP to CD to digital audio, the only thing truly missed by the too-busy-with-life-or-too-sane-to-be-anal-audiophiles portion of the population is the art of proper packaging.
Yes, you can still go out and buy your Amon Tobin on LP with beautiful luxurious cover art the size of your head or order up the latest ultra-deluxe limited edition from Nine Inch Nails and get fantastically well-crafted paraphernalia you’ll look at maybe once a decade. In fact, when you take into account the work some b®ands put into creating their packaging, buying digitally is really a damn shame (never mind piracy).
Well played Lars. Well played.
Now for the bait ‘n’ switch in which we turn our the attention to how iTunes deals with those accompanying PDF files in a most annoying manner.
It lists them in the same file-listing as all the music tracks, which makes sense, after all where else would it list it? But what happens when you’re in coverflow view and you double-click an album-cover to play said album and PDF is listed at the top of the album’s files?
The album doesn’t actually play, as you might expect. It simply opens the PDF file! And adding insult to injury, the PDF file opens in your PDF-reader-of-choice—which in my unfortunate case, is Adobe Acrobat—taking you away from iTunes and probably launching you into the teeth-grindingly long process of telling Adobe Updater ‘please, with all due respect; fuck off’. This will probably take up to several minutes, depending on your system and the PDF being opened with what app, before you can return to iTunes and actually play the album you wanted to listen to in the first place.
Listen. No. Alright? Just no. Bad designer.
This is a perfect example of the system performing an ‘expected action’, which in the user’s mind is most likely absolutely unexpected. After all, when would you expect double-clicking an album cover to open a PDF file? And even worse, this is the only action you can perform in iTunes which will actually transport you away from iTunes!
So, I’m kind of into soundtracks. And I’m kinda, sorta, maybe, a little… a little anal about my music library and album artwork and those sorts of things. So when I came across a collection of iTunes Library-grade resolution soundtrack covers that I hadn’t even seen before, I think I peed my pants a little. A little.
I think most of the ‘non-normal’ ones are fan-made; but contrary to most fan-made things on the internet, these are actually in pretty good taste. And if nothing else, they’re great as alternates for the real albums, when you have unofficial extended cuts, promos or other cover-less albums in need of some nice coverflow-friendly graphics.
Check out this one for Fight Club which matches the limited edition DVD, or this Pan’s Labyrinth by Mike Mignola, a whole slew of very cool Zodiac ones and some Life Aquatic and Lord of the Rings ones under L. A neat Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within one, which matches the artbook (good ol’ Goldenthal doesn’t let us down). And this There Will Be Blood cover certainly kicks the crap out of the one that came with my purchase.
But reigning high above all the others, is Kill Bill (I always loved the Japanese ‘Kill is Love’ series of posters) and Star Wars.
I met Angelo Badalamenti on Blue Velvet and since then he has composed music for all my films. He’s like my brother.The way we work is: I like to sit next to him on the piano bench. I talk and Angelo plays. He plays my words. But sometimes he doesn’t understand my words, so he plays very badly. then I say, “No, no, no, no, Angelo.” And I change my words a little bit and he plays differently. And then I say, “No, no, no, no, Angelo,” and I change my words. And somehow through this process he will catch something, and I’ll say, “That’s it!” And then he starts going with his magic, down that correct path. It’s so much fun. If Angelo liveed next door to me, I’d like to do this every day. But he lives in New Jersey, and I live in Los Angeles.
- David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish, Hardcover ed., Tarcher/Penguin, 2006, p. 65
It’s out, and it’s free.
Grab Discipline and have a listen to Echoplex:
Apparently something is going down on nin.com on the 5th…
Holy shit; where did that come from!? A 36-track double-album from Trent? That’s a hell of a way to start the week. A hell of a way.
Did anyone hear about this ahead of time? It’s like the polar opposite of the release-extravaganza that was Year Zero. And judging from what I’ve heard so far, so is the album itself. The album art is different for each track by the way.
bq.. Nine Inch Nails presents Ghosts I – IV, a brand new 36 track instrumental collection available right now. Almost two hours of new music composed and recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I – IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.
Trent Reznor explains, “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.”
The torrent-included readme.txt
Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I (2008)This torrent is an official upload from Nine Inch Nails.
We’re very proud to present a new collection of instrumental music, Ghosts I-IV. Almost two hours of music recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I-IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.
Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.
We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. It’s licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons.
We’ve also made a 40 page PDF book to accompany the album. If you’d like to download it for free, visit http://ghosts.nin.com/main/pdf
Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts I-IV. Undoubtedly you’ll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you’re interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5. You can also order it on CD, or as a deluxe package with multitrack audio files, high definition audio on Blu-ray disc, and a large hard-bound book.
We genuinely appreciate your support, and hope you enjoy the new music. Thanks for listening.
I love my iPhone, but there’s one thing I don’t understand. With my iPod, formatted with FAT32, I could connect it both at home and at work, and effortlessly stream music off of it or even copy music onto it in both places. Not so with the iPhone. It is bound to my workstation. Sure, I can connect it to my workstation (or my MacBook Pro or Rikke’s Powerbook or someone else’s computer), and they will detect it just fine. But the music on it is inaccessible…
If I try to turn on ‘manage manually’, which is what worked with my iPod, it tells me I have to erase the music library to bind it to the current computer!
Combined with the minijack port being compatible only with Apple headphones (what’s that about?!), this effectively makes it a pain in the ass to use at work. After all, I spent good money getting myself a pair of awesome headphones (Beyerdynamic DT 770); yet if I want to listen to something off of the iPhone, I have to use Apple’s headphones?
In turn, this has me switching back and forth between headphones, as I have to listen to something from my workstation and then back on the iPhone for a podcast, or whatever.
I love that it can be disconnected at any time, so I can take a call if necessary, and as such I accept that it doesn’t work as a HDD. But how can this be intentional? At least let me stream my own music off of the damn thing; that’s the least you can do.
The fires in southern California have caused the complete recordings of Return of the King to be delayed until the 20th this month.