Music

Sol

Storage is cool
Joined
Feb 10, 2002
Messages
960
Location
Cardiff (Wales)
I guess all the political/emotional issues towards the end of season 2 bored me. The politics and emotional factors are part of what made the series worth watching in the first place but when it got so there was nothing else for a few episodes it was like watching a soap opera in space and I stopped really caring about what happened to the characters...
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
Sol, you need to track down and watch the most recent two episodes of BSG. The three episodes of season three leading up to the most recent have been what I would call the extended foreplay leading up to a HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD OH MY GOD YES YES YES climax.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
Hans Zimmer has some AWESOME film music to his credit.
My personal favorite is the piece called "Journey to the Line" from The Thin Red Line, but he's also responsible for Crimson Tide, Backdraft and The DaVinci Code (which is nice but rather more repetitive than I expected).

The first track on the Gladiator soundtrack is a theme that's basically ripped whole from Henryk Gorecki's Third Symphony ("The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs"). As it happens I wrote something about that particular work just a few days ago...

Henryk Gorecki's Third Symphony is unique in classical music. In a world where contemporary classical music is a niche even less visible than sub-genres of gospel music, broke on to the charts. No, not the classical charts, the Pop charts. The ones that usually feature Madonna and Britney Spears. Composed in 1976 and recorded in 1991 with a very young soprano named Dawn Upshaw as the vocal soloist, The Symphony of Sorrorful Songs somehow made enough of an impression that it came to be known outside the small remainders of the classical music-buying public.

Simply put, Gorecki's Third symphony is the musical evocation of grief. Not grief in in a country music sense. Pain in a "They are committing a mass genocide of my people"-sense. Which is fitting, because Gorecki wrote the symphony as a rememberance of the end of Hitler's occupation of Poland.

Each of the three movements in the symphony includes a lengthy soprano solo - a prayer or plea, voiced by a mother or a child, for a child or a parent. The soloist is grieving and haunted, but her voice swells to transcend pain, into something that is wrought with righteous purity. The words are sung in Polish and in Latin, and their meaning, even without language, is clear from the swelling bass drama beneath them and the pleading anguish in every note formed on the soloist's mouth. Grieving mothers, children lost to brutality, are a thing more universal than any language.

I am literally transfixed by this music. The emotional response I have to it is a wellspring of tears. Tears! I cry as I listen, every time. How can one not respond, knowing that the words sung in the second movement are a farewell letter, found scrawled on a wall at Birkenau, to the mother of a young woman about to be sent to the gas chambers?

I do not know why this piece of music captivated public imagination so. There's no dancing pop diva, nor a pounding bass line nor an amplified electric guitar. It is a symphony orchestra, a young woman with a powerful voice and some utterly heartbreaking words that must be sung.

If you're going to crib a heavily emotional piece of music, you might as well start with something that has an appropriate gravitas.

Anyway... Film music.

I really like James Newton Howard's stuff. He did the scoring for Unbreakable.

Not even gonna mention Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings stuff, beyond this.

A score that I really like, oddly, is Vangelis' Bladerunner. Vangelis is basically a cheesy new age-type composer, but the mixed sensibilities of near-future noir and synthesized jazz really work.

Clocker, you'd probably go for Basil Poledouris's Conan the Barbarian score if you like Gladiator's. Lots of bombastic, basso-profundo stuff.

I really like Ennico Morricone's film work. Morricone wrote the positively iconic themes for Clint Easywood's spaghetti westerns, among other things.

Heat was the movie that featured the first on-screen meeting of Pacino and DeNiro. It also has an uber-cool mix of avant-garde classical and electronica tracks.

Wanna know a great movie score? Last of the Mohicans. It's usually ranked as one of the all-time top selling CDs on Amazon.com (Amazon sales rank 1221 as of this writing).

Whenever I talk about soundtracks I also wind up mentioning Solaris, cause it is also a damned cool score.

Anyway, that's a start.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,511
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Just bought the first album of a new band from SF called Honeycut. Not really the style of others here; but I really enjoy it, and I think the production is brilliant. I've been reading a book called "This is your brain on music"; and this band works all the right emotional angles in their songs.
 

Clocker

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 14, 2002
Messages
3,554
Location
USA
Merc-
I will definitely check that out. Thanks for the suggestions.

Bombastic...definitely a word I need to start using. Nice.
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
10,865
Location
Michigan
The first track on the Gladiator soundtrack is a theme that's basically ripped whole from Henryk Gorecki's Third Symphony ("The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs").

Gorecki must have ripped off Gustav Holst's The Planets then too, because the whole Gladiator soundtrack borrows heavily from it. In fact the Gustav Holst Foundation is suing Zimmer. http://www.playbillarts.com/news/article/4750.html
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
That would not surprise me a bit.

Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughn Williams each have an extremely litigious estate; both produced Anglican hymns that were printed in the standard CoE hymnal until British law extended copyright to some new and unreasonable number of years after the author's death.
 

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
1,209
I was camping in Cape Breton this weekend. Literally, the first thing I did when I got back was download the torrent for this last weekend's Battlestar Galactica episode.

Boring? I haven't watched TV in two years! After watching Season 1 on DVD & Season 2 off torrents, I'm turning on the old tube every Saturday since Season 3 started up. Battlestar is science-fiction in its most true and its greatest tradition: displacing humanity and our culture into a setting to better examine serious social and political issues --and most of all, to bypass people's natural fingers-in-the-ear response to criticism of things they long ago decided were good/necessary. Oh, and I do have to admit the music is terrific; I hadn't considered buying the soundtrack --didn't even know they were available-- but I think I might check out at least one of the discs. I distinctly remember that the percussion in some of the Vyper scenes has definitely affected my heart rate. Any recommendations on which disc to buy if I was just going to get just one at Merc?


(I do have to admit there was a brief period in Season 2 where things were a little less awesome.)

To better understand Gilbo's "woohoo" respones to Eugene silly rant of 'this is my forum, stop that shit, or you're out of here' (without giving an meaningful guidelines or specifics...which is very typical of an Eugene response/answer/statement with respect to his biases in his 'vision' of accurate HDD reviewing); you do know of course that discussion of what you're speaking of above in boldface, has been outlawed on SR as of Nov.4, don't you?

Start a wine of the week thread on this site, and I may reply, but not likely on SR. Because like politics, opinions vary; and if you read wine geeks forums there are often heated terse debates going on...let's give a hypothetical "Gilbo you obviously have little in the way of varied or large tasting mental database to base your conclusions on, also not much taste from such a narrowminded bias in favor of such wines. I, on the otherhand have tasted many of the wines you like (like big concentrated wines, but not of the what the Burgundians would consider 'vulgar' type that appeals to your present palate which many change with more years of experience...or maybe not, different strokes for different folks, and you have a 'Parker palate' (usually considered an insult amongst wine geeks, btw ;) ), but you don't understand there are so many 'style' variations within a given grape varietal, or even the same varietal grown in the same area of the world.

Bitch! (is there a smart arse smiley icon?) $9, 40yr old grenache vines (you'd only know this if you had a subscription to the Wine Advocate) from Australia. Nothing bitchy about it, but I get a 1/2 empty bottle to this lovely Korean woman who I invited to a sushi restaurant she'd not been to before, along with a few of my wine weenie friends. She loves the color pink, and the label is pink. She laughed at the label, and asked me if I was trying to say something to her, imply the label was in reference to her :p. So many different styles of wine making for grenache (which I far prefer to Syrah, as it's even bigger in many cases, but with a more seductive, jammy fruit that women, especially those who are not regular wine drinkers, seem to favor...Le Continental strikes again), so many I don't care for. You have to read wine writers (yeah, one of the person's at our group was an awarded restaurant critic and he used to write a wine column, and he hasn't read reviews in a decade)...simply because you tend to miss out on wines, there are too, too many floating around, not even all the wine writers in the world, and now bloggers, can taste/cover them all.

If you have a CostCo near you in Canada, Grape Expectations is now importing to CostCo as a client (at least in my area of westcoast) so you can get Dan Philips' other bold, thick, extracted style Oz reds @$13 for the least expensive one @ CostCo that is now in stock.

Getting OT, here so a couple of pix of the wines we've made so far (2006 Sangiovese is in barrel right now, from Central Calif. sourced grapes, over produced to the tune of 8 tons/acre!...2-4 times optimal, but it was relatively low cost). Than monster Zin 17+% alc. in a thick heavy old fashioned style Bordeaux bottle(final alc. level never lab tested, you get some reduction from the élevage, but originally it tested @ 17.58%) has closed up, the fruit is attenuated, and lost a lot of color since removal from barrel and bottling this January-really disappointing for me at least, my friend is of enormous ego and refuses to acknowledge the significant change, w/professional wine makers heaping up praise, out of 260+ silver medals given at this year's Orange Country Fair in the homemaker wine competition we got a silver medal...hoping that it will come back around to taste something like it did out of barrel in the next few years...it should outlast us, but will it still have any of what it had in barrel in the future? Drink this one in 30min. and you'll be posting rants in ddrueding's pizza thread on SR, and having FS insult you for that, lol. And you won't be having any sex with the g/f that evening either.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/udaman/Wine-et al/LAZin04.jpg (smaller file size, lots of compression, but pix quality more an function of the lousy Olympus C-50, full manual control of exposure and viewfinder it's only positives...thinking of the Fuji F30, but it has flaws/lack of features that make it short of an ideal compact digicam)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/udaman/Wine-et al/Larner03Syrah-3sizes-lg.jpg (large file size, larger pixel size image)



Battlestar, we'll if it's got a Ceylon like Boomer, can't be all bad...damned series is very difficult to follow, even when they had a season opener that recounted what had happened in the prior season. (hmm, why don't I see the img link appearing, is there a sticky posted on this subject of how to post images, correctly, or different methods?)

gracepark1.jpg
 

Will Rickards

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
2,011
Location
Here
Website
willrickards.net
udaman, you are like obsessed with SR. Time to reconsider your time commitments.

Back to the music topic....
Anybody listen to the new Breaking Benjamin - Phobia? I think it rocks.
 

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
1,209
udaman, you are like obsessed with SR. Time to reconsider your time commitments.

Back to the music topic....
Anybody listen to the new Breaking Benjamin - Phobia? I think it rocks.

Really WR, maybe you are confusing me with Handriun then, lol. See this thread, and who started it, lol storagereview...where is it going these days?

At any rate, the comment was made in reference to Gilbo's posts here on this thread, and his new found excitement over SR. Maybe you are confused with me & Gilbo then, lol. I see similar 'clique' 'group think mentally' of WR on SR, and it seems WR wishes that to be the status quo on SF...too bad. WR, do you know why early SF member jtr hasn't been posting on SF in a long time, I do.

Back to music then, I have an upcoming long comment for Merc's interesting-long, 'just a starter' recent post above with respect to movie soundtracks (do a search on SR and you'll find long gone member Prof. Wiz speculating in an angry rant that I might be Mercurio from SF, LMAO on that one-my "time commitments" don't allow for that amount of posting at all- other than pr0n, our views couldn't possibly be more different, especially when it comes to politics, but that's OT, and banned from the dictate of the 'new' Eugene/ SR, maybe it should be here too then, ban pretty much 90% of available topics?)...even if WR's obsessive group think/clique mentality doesn't agree; what do I care, I have better taste in music (just like in wine, lol) ;) .
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,737
Location
USA
You're a bit off udaman... I'm not obsessed with SR at all. That thread was an observation and if you go find my account on SR, you'll see I have spent very little time there in the past 5 years. What was jtr's reason for not posting?
 

timwhit

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
5,278
Location
Chicago, IL
Just bought the first album of a new band from SF called Honeycut. Not really the style of others here; but I really enjoy it, and I think the production is brilliant. I've been reading a book called "This is your brain on music"; and this band works all the right emotional angles in their songs.

I checked this album out. Not too bad. It's not what I would normally listen to, but I try to be open to new music.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
I see similar 'clique' 'group think mentally' of WR on SR, and it seems WR wishes that to be the status quo on SF...too bad. WR, do you know why early SF member jtr hasn't been posting on SF in a long time, I do.

There are a fair number of long-time friends here, udaman. I've sent SF members hardware (including jtr, whether he posts here or not), loaned them money, arranged for gifts and generally made Real Life-type, non-forum-drama things happen. Others have done the same for me.

That's something a lot deeper than just a forum clique.

(do a search on SR and you'll find long gone member Prof. Wiz speculating in an angry rant that I might be Mercurio from SF, LMAO on that one-my "time commitments" don't allow for that amount of posting at all- other than pr0n

I haven't visited SR's forums in probably three years. I really don't care what happens there any more. One of the reasons I *do* post here so much is because this is where I come when I have five minutes to kill while I'm installing software, waiting for a PC to boot, or while I'm talking on the phone. I have "time commitments" too, but it doesn't take much to make the odd forum post.

but that's OT, and banned from the dictate of the 'new' Eugene/ SR, maybe it should be here too then, ban pretty much 90% of available topics?)...even if WR's obsessive group think/clique mentality doesn't agree; what do I care, I have better taste in music (just like in wine, lol) ;) .

That's SR's forum drama, and it doesn't belong here. This site is not SR.
I know you had a post that was moderated, so you think there's some relationship between this site and SR in terms of moderation policy, but that simply is not the case. There have only been around a dozen posts, ever, by active members that have ever been moderated for unsuitable content. Probably half those posts were mine. I don't take it personally.

As an aside, I'm finding your posts difficult to read. You seem to post in a sort of stream-of-consciousness fashion where you flit from topic to topic, sometimes omitting important punctuation. Also, you seem to be an SR forum regular, but I don't know who you are. Others might, but I bet other people HERE are slightly puzzled by your posts as well. Perhaps a more formal introduction is in order?
 

timwhit

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
5,278
Location
Chicago, IL
Personally, I don't give a flying f*ck about SR.

I believe one of the reasons this forum was initially created was to escape SR and start something for people that were pissed off by the massive failure of the SR database, many people losing (loosing for DD and Handruin) thousands of posts.

I also can't understand Udaman's posts. For the most part, I simply skip reading them because they are so poorly written that trying to figure out what he is trying to say will waste valuable seconds.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
Udaman's posts are hard to read, but there's no reason to call them gibberish. He's obviously spent some time here, reading and typing. Give him some credit.
 

Will Rickards

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 23, 2002
Messages
2,011
Location
Here
Website
willrickards.net
Yes, he positively contributes to some threads. I just think he likes forum drama too much. I get my drama fix from TV.

How about Evanescence latest, "Open Door"? Anybody listen to that?
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,737
Location
USA
I didn't know Evanescence had a new CD, I'll have to take a look.

I've been enjoying the newer CD from Yellow Card, Lights and Sounds. I think it's one of their better albums.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
I'm not quite sure what to make of his posts in this thread either.

Last five recordings I've listened to:

1. Gershwin's "An American in Paris" suite
2. Mahler's 1st Symphony
3. Miles Davis's "Birth of Cool"
4. Takemitsu's "Orion and Pleiades"
5. Wendy Carlos's "The Well-Tempered Synthesizer"
 

Stereodude

Not really a
Joined
Jan 22, 2002
Messages
10,865
Location
Michigan
I'm trying out the new Evanescence CD right now. I'm on the 3rd track, and I'm not sure what to make of it yet...
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
Mahler was one of the last composers of the Romantic era. He's well known for the enormous ensembles required by his orchestration.

Takemitsu is somewhat unique as an avant-garde classical composer native to Japan. He does quite a bit of work for movie soundtracks as well. His music is essentially minimalist, but where a composer like Arvo Pärt at least works with Western Instruments, Takemitsu builds his works with traditional Japanese instruments. It's a REALLY different sound.

Wendy Carlos is famous for her work with the Moog synthesizer. The Moog is a very interesting instrument in that it is just as far removed from a traditional keyboard as one can possibly get, but Carlos used it to perform the ultimate works of keyboard virtuosity, Bach's "Well Tempered Klavier" (GaryH will be along shortly to comment about the Moog, I'm sure).

Today I've moved on to:

1. Bill Evans - Live at the Village Vanguard
and
2. Reich Remixed - a collection of the music of Steve Reich rearranged by Club DJs and others involved in electronic music.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
I think it's interesting music. It's what was playing in the Borders I went to last night. I don't know what I heard, exactly, and the guy I asked did not know either, but it was a weird fusion of about five different musical styles.
 

Computer Generated Baby

Learning Storage Performance
Joined
Dec 16, 2003
Messages
221
Location
Virtualworld
Mercutio said:
Has anyone ever heard of a band called "Stereolab?"


Sure, definitely. I've got essentially all of their early albums (CD) in the wack original packaging, which I do know to be quite rare and ermmm... collectable some 10 ~ 15 years later. I also saw them live -- for free -- in 1989.

I don't have any of Stereolab's "later" stuff at all, because after their respite in the mid 1990s, they decided to go commercial a bit too damn much for my taste. Then, one of the leading band members was killed around 2002 riding her bicycle in central London. I don't believe the remaining members made anymore new Stereolab albums after that.

Stereolab's sound and compositions often borrow a LOT from an early/mid 1970's German band called Neu! (an exclamation mark is the 4th letter in their name). Neu! only produced 3 albums, but they were a pretty influential band as far as 1980s and later European and English bands go.




Here is a database dump of all the Stereolab albums (all on CD) I own:


Stereolab "Aluminum Tunes" Drag City USA
Stereolab "Cybele's Reverie" Elektra GER
Stereolab "Dots And Loops" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Fluorescences" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "French Disko" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Jenny Ondioline" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Low Fi" Too Pure BRIT
Stereolab "Mars Audiac Quintet" (Ltd. Ed. 2-CD Version) Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Miss Modular" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Miss Modular (Remix)" Duophonic / East-West JAPAN
Stereolab "Music For The Amorphous Body Study Center" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Peng!" Too Pure BRIT
Stereolab "Ping Pong" Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Refried Ectoplasm" [Switched-On Volume 2] Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Space Age Bachelorpad Music" Too Pure BRIT
Stereolab "Spacey Double Spiral" - BRIT
Stereolab "Switched On Stereolab" Too Pure BRIT
Stereolab "Transient Random Noise Bursts With ..." Duophonic BRIT
Stereolab "Wow And Flutter" Duophonic BRIT


My NEU! Discography while I'm at it...



Neu! "Neu '75" Germanofon GER
Neu! "Neu" (1st) Germanofon GER
Neu! "Neu 2" Germanofon GER
Neu! "Neu 4" Captain Trip JAPAN



 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
After a considerable amount of thought, I believe the appealing thing about the music I heard was its resemblance to the light but complex jazzy stuff I remember hearing in a couple really nice department stores my mother used to frequent when I was really little.
Which is probably not what they intend.

Anyway, I got my copy of The Two Towers: The Complete Score. Again, it is too awesome for words. There's a spifftacular book included and the single disc with three hours of DVD-Audio is worth the $60 bucks I spent, easy.
 

Computer Generated Baby

Learning Storage Performance
Joined
Dec 16, 2003
Messages
221
Location
Virtualworld
After a considerable amount of thought, I believe the appealing thing about the music I heard was its resemblance to the light but complex jazzy stuff I remember hearing in a couple really nice department stores my mother used to frequent when I was really little.
Which is probably not what they intend...

No, they definitely intended it. In addition to Stereolab's obvious Neu! krautrock influence, they *very* frequently dabbled in early '60s elevator / novelty popmusic.




Mercutio said:
...Wendy Carlos is famous for her work with the Moog synthesizer. The Moog is a very interesting instrument in that it is just as far
removed from a traditional keyboard as one can possibly get, but Carlos used it to perform the ultimate works of keyboard virtuosity, Bach's "Well Tempered

Klavier" (GaryH will be along shortly to comment about the Moog, I'm sure)...


The only Walter/Wendy Carlos album that ever liked was "Sonic Seasonings" or maybe "A Clockwork Orange," though I know some that like "Tron" a lot.

As for the Moog synthesiser, I am the original owner of an original Moog. It's still in excellent working condition. The control areas and the walnut cabinet are in excellent cosmetic condition as well.



Today I've moved on to:

1. Bill Evans - Live at the Village Vanguard
and
2. Reich Remixed - a collection of the music of Steve Reich rearranged by Club DJs and others involved in electronic music.



Well, let's see, so far this week I've listened to:



e12044cintm.jpg

Nektar -- "Recycled"





h44615hxdrb.jpg

Ultravox -- "Systems Of Romance."


 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
21,562
Location
I am omnipresent
William Byrd - Mass for Four Voices, Ave Verum Corpus (Motet)
Glass/Eno/Bowie - "Heroes" Symphony
Eno - Music for Airports
Rachmananinov - Vespers

I have plenty of time to listen to music today, since I'm trying to figure out just how pathetic Vista (RTM) is on our current classroom PCs.

From ddrueding's list, I can say that I've heard of Norah Jones. She's Ravi Shankar's daughter.
And I like her Jazz vocals better than Diana Krall.
But not as much as Maude Maggart's cabaret-type singing.

... and in that weird stream of consciousness way, here's another odd one:
Antony and the Johnsons
 
Top