New Weezer

A YouTube video about YouTube videos:

Maiden, Mother & Crone

New Portishead!

It's been 10 years, but Portishead is finally releasing their third album(aptly titled "Third") later this month. Here's a preview of their first single, Machine Gun.

Gods of the Earth

If anything, The Sword has turned up the knob marked “nerd” on its sophomore album Gods of the Earth released today - April fools day.

This isn't a criticism - metal and geek culture continue to cross paths over and over again throughout rock music’s history. It's easy to forget how geeky a lot of the Led Zeppelin songs were - quests of hobbits, dragons, evil forces, etc.

Make no mistake though, Gods of the Earth rocks. Gone is the sludge/stoner/doom/whatever sound of their first album and instead we are treated to a full on thrash assault(think Metallica's Kill 'Em All instead of Black Sabbath's Master of Reality). The riffs are huge, the rhythms are sneaky and brutal, and the pacing is quick. In fact, everything has been turned up, except the vocals, which often get drowned out by the dual guitars.

Song titles include "Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians" and “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, which is by no coincidence the title of a Conan story.

As good as their first album? No, but not much is.

Epic? Of Course.

For those about to rock...

we salute you. I have no idea what Monotonix is all about, but they sure do rock. All their live shows are done at ground level - within the crowd. I can't wait to see this fiery trio from Tel Aviv.

Binaural Recording

The latest Nine Inch Nails album, "Ghosts I-IV" is a sonic achievement for headphone listening. These 36 tracks are instrumental and most were recorded in a special way: binaurally.

This type of recording uses a simulated head with microphones in the ears. The artist plays the instrument and the recording sounds exactly as what a person would hear in the recording studio. This is a key distinction as studios may be acoustically perfect, however the device(guitar, piano, turntable, etc) is being outputted to a single mic or mixer board. What you get with binaural recording is an amazing 360° degrees of sound, retaining and delivering the space the music was recorded in.

Once recorded, this effect can be reproduced only using headphones. It won't work using loudspeakers, as the acoustics of this arrangement distort the channel separation. Where you stand in the room, the direction of your ears and how close the speakers are all change the sound.

However if you listen through a good set of headphones the result is an awesome listening experience that spatially transcends normally recorded stereo. It accurately reproduces the effect of hearing the exact recorded sound, given the 360° nature of how human ears pick up nuances in sound waves. Binaural recordings can very convincingly reproduce location of sound behind, ahead, above, or wherever else the sound actually came from during recording.

Indie Rock

I discovered a group this week called Beach House. What a lonely, strange pop album this is. Check it out.

MP3: "Gila"

Video: You Came to Me