scottyboy

(I just gave it a once over so don't take it too seriously either way, but since you're complaining about tumbleweed and if you're really ganting on feedback...) I didn't like it all that much. I can't definitely put my finger on why, but I think basically neither the singing nor the drumming is very good and it doesn't hang together all that well. (I clicked the live/unplugged link first, thought the drumming sounded out of time, read the post, then went back to EP link...) while I dunno enough about drumming and/or this style to say the guy can't play very well, a lot of the time the drumming style sounds a bit insipid and/or not to fit the music. With the singing, I'm guessing this is a keys player who happens to be doing the vocals and it's just a bit ropey. I did really like the key lines on the second track and I more or less enjoyed the instrumental jams sections in a straightforward jazzy way. More generally: like a lot of stuff in the feedback forum - or music in general, really, now that there is infinite free music at a mouse click - ultimately, I don't dislike it and would probably enjoy myself if I happened to find myself in a live gig, but there's no reason to give it listening time, let alone buy it or go out of my way to see it live, for obvious (too much awesomeallkillernofiller music in the way) reasons. With regards to it "not hanging together": I dunno, but seeing the name and the Rubik's cube I was expecting something maybe deliberately "clever" and/or technical in addition to irreverent. And listening to it, I'm not sure if it is just that and I'm not getting it, or if it's really just trad R'n'B and that's just not my cup of tea and/or it's not that well done. Unless I'm much mistaken you used to play in/post about the Oxbow Lake Band (I Googled it and seems there's some personnel overlap); (this was again just based on mostly once-overs, and since I don't live in Aberdeen any would-I-see-it-live? statements are just hypothetical, but) I really liked the stuff I heard from that band, and I thought that was a great combination of: interesting trad genres; eclectic irreverence for those (and any other) genres; serious, sophisticated chops; as well as, natch, satisfying song-writing and compositions. With these tracks, it feels like a similar approach, badly executed. (wow-that-was-a-lot-of-parenthesis).

*supply chain

(Not familiar with Anselmogate specifically) but I don't think any level of cuntery could stop me enjoying what I thought was good riff/tune/song (or Appreciating the Artistry), per se. Though like everyone else above, I can't say there's any real test case in my head. I can still dig the one Lost Prophets' track that I previously liked (even though there's also the undeniable "I'm listening to That Guy singing" additional thoughts).Sweet Home Alabama is probably the closest; or maybe some of RATM's more down-with-the-imperialists moments. Or Chuck Berry. On the other hand, if I really liked a band's music but thought they were criminally reprehensible, I'd still probably avoid buying their stuff, paying for gigs, merch; sharing their publicity. Much like a brand of burger/chocolate/soft drink/coffee/sardine/etc. might be really tasty, but I'd still try to resist buying it if i thought it was produced by some child-slaving, worker-poisoning, unionist-murdering company/supply change. I guess the threshold would there be serious crime, explicit racism, active support of a political platform/party/candidate I thought was truly immoral. Hmm.

Wasn't Winehouse an Unnatural Causes? I think I missed an Unlucky 13 by a day once (just googled it and Sihanouk by a day, and Ieng Sary by two).

(Mine isn't the most thought out either way but) all the Abus are Daesh leaderz which I got from Wiki.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-daredevil-tancrede-melet-falls-to-his-death-preparing-for-stunt-a6802876.html Doubt anyone had him but 32, and fell from a hot air balloon...

I haven't forgotten but am still brooding over mine.

Wonder how many KarmaTsunami finished?

I didn't listen to enough new music this year to really even manage a top-3 but: Plini - The End of Everything (an EP really) and CHON - Grow Haven't really listened to these enough, but pretty-cool-worth-a-look at least, stretching it to 5: Ludovico Einaudi - Elements The Aristocrats - Tres Caballeros Tricot - A N D

Fiction: Wolf Totem (Jiang Rong); Revolution (Jakob Ejersbo); Sea of Poppies and RIver of Smoke (1st two of a trilogy) as best fiction. Kipling's Kim and The Jungle Book were also unexpectedly amazing. Also really worth a read are The Spies, Einstein's Monsters; Lobster Boy (good children's fiction, Dahl meets Hemingway); Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh; The Last man Standing; The Human Part; Dumb Luck. Maybe I'll put up some notes on each later. Non-fiction: Apart from a handful of specialist books, I'd highly recommend almost any of them. Either of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse; The Third Chimpanzee too, maybe just a bit dated now. The Sixth Extinction in a slightly similar vein. Political Order and Political Decay. Mao's Great Famine is an amazing piece of scholarship, though a thoroughly grim read. Similarly The People's Republic of Amnesia*. Most of Zealot (attempts to be a biography of the historical Jesus, the actual guy) is really atmospheric and interesting, even if one isn't much interested in the attendant religion. Capital in the 21st Century is really worthwhile. A Brief History of Time is amazing if you haven't read it. And Japan like I posted a while back. *I see I missed this in this list, but definitely read it this year. So I got 51. Hooray. If I didn't miss anything else...

Everyone can relax now: I managed 50. (sorry for messed up copy paste formatting) Fiction: 1. Jerome Ferrari Where I Left My Soul 2. Cees Nootemboom The Foxes Come at Night 3. Luis Fernando Verissimo The Spies 4. Jacob Ejersbo Revolution 5. Jiang Rong Wolf Totem 6. Alissa Walser Mesmerized 7. G.R.R Martin A Game of Thrones 8. Khaled Hosseini And the Mountains Echoed 9. Martin Amis Einstein’s Monsters 10. Mo Yan Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh 11. Gustav Flaubert Madame Bovary 12. Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea 13. Terry Pratchett Unseen Academicals 14. Rodman Philbrick Lobster Boy 15. Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies 16. Davide Longo The Last Man Standing 17. Norbert Gstrein Winters in the South 18. Mohsin Hamid The Reluctant Fundamentalist 19. Virgil The Aeneid 20. Shakespeare Richard II 21. Marie NDaiye Three Strong Women 22. Nguyễn Ngọc Thuần Open the Window, Eyes Closed 23. Beowulf 24. Tom Pollock The City’s Son 25. Rudyard Kipling Kim 26. Vũ Trọng Phụng Dumb Luck 27. Kari Hotakainen The Human Part 28. Amitav Ghosh River of Smoke 29. Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book 30. Nguyễn Nhật Ánh I See Yellow Flowers on Green Grass 31. Haruki Murakami Norwegian Wood Non-fiction: 1. Andrew Wells-Dang Informal Pathbreakers 2. Francis Fukuyama Political Order and Political Decay 3. Jared Diamond Guns, Germs and Steel 4. Elizabeth Kolbert The Sixth Extinction 5. Elizabeth Economy, M. Levi By All Means Necessary 6. Jared Diamond Collapse 7. Frank Dikotter Mao’s Great Famine 8. Patsy Lightbrown, N. Spader How Languages are Learned 9. William Easterly The Tyranny of Experts 10. Reza Aslan Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth 11. Thomas Piketty Capital in the Twenty-First Century 12. Jared Diamond The Third Chimpanzee 13. Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time 14. Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater 15. Edwin O. Reschauer Japan: The Story of a Nation 16. Jeffrey Sachs The Price of Civilisation 17. Niall Ferguson The Great Degeneration 18. Tony Morning Coffee with Tony 19. D. J. Hand Statistics: A Very Short Introduction

From the fiction I've read this year, there's a few I'd describe as "mega good"; Sea of Poppies if you want a big fuck-off page turner (I'm reading the second one now).

Jonah Lomu http://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/34853536

41. Still pretty sure I'll manage 50, but I'll be cutting it fine...

Not really Poland. But Vietnam, yeah.

I don't have much hope of finding a copy here in Poland (now) either...

I just googled it and completely hadn't realised it was a 1950s book; too many modern works called Fahrenheit something or other (and I guess this is the source of that, now I see...) Anyway, maybe it's more like 1984, from the bit I read on Wiki (won't read any more in case I spoil it). As I mentioned in one post above, people kind of split 1984 and BNW into two different kinds of very prescient dystopian predictions. In the 1984 scenario the state watches your every move, controls you completely and directly, etc. In a BNW, the state on the face of it lets you do whatever the hell you please, and it might even look relatively libertarian (e.g. BNW compared to real world 1930s Britain), but for one reason or another (the state's devious orchestrations, human nature, or some combination of the two) people spend all their wherewithal on vacuous drivel. Or it could be the book doesn't fit into either category. As you were.

Sounds like Brave New World... Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart is another good, and darkly comic, contemporary update, I thought. My favourite dystopian read was probably Music, in a Foreign Language (both a more highbrow and everyday feel; like Kafka only not as fucking bland as that guy); though it's another one I read once years ago.

If we are just talking about amp-modelling software (or pedal models, other effects plugins, etc.) then absolutely I think it's great technology, and more so in the future if it can match, or better, current hardware amps (this could arguably-kinda-sorta-depends be the case already). It may be the case that the best-sounding amplification for an electric guitarist, since the 70s or 60s or 50s or whatever it is, happens to be a massive, heavy fragile valve amp, that moreover sounds best when it is turned up literally deafeningly loud; but if one can get away from the romantic attachment, surely that's hardly an ideal situation. I have some of the Amplitube stuff (though haven't used it, or anything else for a while) and I really love the JCM800 model. I had a real one too, but enjoyed the software one more because I had more opportunity to actually use it. That would honestly be "my" preferred "tone" for any for-release recording I were to do as of right now (if there were other actual band members, and live recording or engineering, or mixing or whatever else needed done and paid for, presumably there'd be at least some studio amps to experiment with though), certainly for anything rhythm or bluesy lead (I also like the other classic amps, Marshal, Fender etc., just don't see that I'd use them much over the JCM800). The one thing I don't like so much are the high-gain lead sounds - with Amplitube there isn't a good sophisticated sounding one (the 5150 model can do a good Van Halen sound, which is fun; but on my own stuff I wouldn't necessarily want to sound like Van Halen; the Mesa models etc. just sound cheap, wet and fizzy to me). (Looks like the Amplitube 5150 was the one used in that track in the second video). Weirdly the (good) music I've heard being done on models tends to be real heavy, saturated stuff - prog-y djent and what have you. Often just on PODs actually. Those guys are going for a really digital, compressed, saturated rhythm sound - which I enjoy listening to but isn't for my own style. Anyway tldr is that if it sounds the same, and you are talking about amplifying and playing with the tone/distortion etc of what the guitarist (say) is actually doing with his fingers, and it's cheaper and more convenient, then hell yes, do it. With automated stuff like robot drummers or the acoustic --> electric thing you're talking about, at the moment it's convenient, useful for getting music made which otherwise wouldn't (talented composers alone in their bedrooms) and isn't powerful enough to be concerning either way. Sampled drums I think are ubiquitous in music outside ultra-punx anyway, for whatever reason (didn't RARM drop "samples" from their no-this-that-and-the-next-thing list in latter days?). If one is talking about using loops or drum machines for otherwise live performances, I think it is fine but will weaken the performance for a few reasons, so it's really up to the performers if they want to do it and the audience if it wants to pay for it, If it's just about "digital vs. analogue", I think that's pretty much bollocks. Why stop there? Why not disallow electricity (see Dylan). Or mechanical tools (instrument = tool; who cares if it's digital or analogue) - and only allow a human voice (IS incidentally, with added nastiness of "god says so" and "or else we'll kill you", concededly). For stuff like autotune, where you can actually make a singer sound like they did something they physically didn't, it may be a bit different. (or for some kind of autotune-for-guitar - or whatever - or a Guitarpro that sounds like it's an actual guitarist; I dunno if these are quite around yet). I've heard the argument that none of this is different from Bach writing down a bunch of stuff for loads of instruments, that he could never have (entirely) played himself, and given it to the worlds best musos to do. Same with session musicians playing the on mainstream groups records (Jimmy Page on the Kinks); Busted and god knows how many others. Presumably you could probably replace a mainstream pop megastar singer on record as well and none of her fans would know the difference. But then there's the possibility of doing something a human could never actually play (and then the possibility of saying that it was actually played). There a (dead) guy whose name escapes me, but he used to custom build programmable pianos, which could then play automatically and perform feats (and compositions) a human couldn't (in his case he wasn't saying otherwise; it was kind of the point). And the guitarist Shawn Lane, inspired by him, just using a samples of individual notes, put together an unplayable recording. And then Buckethead heard it, thought it was "real", and his attempts to replicate it are the source of a lot of the wilder tapping one hears these days. Anyway, didn't need "digital" and ended up a force for creativity. There are also examples of people recording insane licks in multiple takes in a studio and then being too feart to try them live, but again not necessarily digital. Tldr if you are not a lip-syncing chart-topper, and you are anyone from a punk to fusion-shred band, if you can't actually play your own stuff you will still probably get found out; though you don't need digital tech to try it.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34606799?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook "We thought that all Germans look like that." All these damn whities look the same. Brilliant.

Felt pretty easy when I did it in Higher English. Really good too: like I said in the classics thread, still sticks in the mind as one the 20th century big names that I've enjoyed the most (just read it the once). Much better, and certainly much more prescient than 1984. The latter might have really nailed the Stalinist state (still extant in... North Korea) but Brave New World describes what you now see in modern China, anywhere like it, and probably for a long time yet.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-34537841 "Boris Johnson has knocked over a 10-year-old child while playing touch rugby in Japan." A good one for the satirists and Boris's PR team:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34450057?ocid=socialflow_facebook

I was thinking about linking the Foreign Policy article, too. (most of the discussion about this seems to be going on in the Corbyn thread; and I don't have a large enough bargepole to hand.) I don't really get the aggression towards Cameron (sheer funny-internet-pic-shadenfreude aside) or the bullingdon club. The former must've been a grotesque sight to behold (and that's about it) and the latter a set of asshats when they were students, no new revelation there; it just looks to me like a billionaire (another few zeros) trying to wreck the career of an elected politician, via Daily Mail-decades-old-sex-and-drugs pish (yeah a pig, I dunno, why couldn't he have just sacrificed a goat or shot some heroin into his cock) because he didn't get the side-gig he wanted. Even from a cynical politics standpoint I don't see why anyone would want Cameron replaced with any other Tory.