Saturday, April 29, 2006
Redeemer
Wheeee, I got the new Machinae Supremacy album Redeemer :D Been waiting for this album for so long, ever since getting their first album Deus Ex Machinae really. I love this band! Planning to do a track-by-track walk through of the album, but first, some reasons everyone (or at least everyone who reads this) should love Machinae Supremacy...
- They give away 50+ songs FOR FREE on their website.
- They've made their own online shop and therefore all profits go directly to them, no evil music industry involved
- Their sound is completely unique, Metal/Rock/Computer Games Influences/Synth/SID
- Their album art is awesome
- They actually post on their website forum and keep in touch with fans
- They ROCK
01. Elite
Great "random quote at the beginning" really makes this a classic Machinae Supremacy track from the start, bringing a feeling of their old downloadable tracks like Attack Music and Earthbound :) The guitar, SID sounds, and lyrics equally sound like classic Machinae Supremacy, which makes this a great first track on the album.
Anyone with their ear to the ground
knows we will not be bound
You can push but you can't beat us down
we deliver the sound
Love it :)
02. Rise
Great nostalgic SID to start of, really sounds like something I should recognise but I'm not sure... Reminds me of Motoya's Cave from Final Fantasy... But yeah, not sure. Comment if you know :P
Anyway, been listening to this for a while now since they released it as a teaser for the new Album (did I mention this band give a lot of music away for free? ;P) and I love it, nice long intro and then onto the wonderful anti-reality MaSu lyrics :) My only problem with this song would be that it's 5:31 and has 15 lines... A lot of repetition which gets kinda annoying. Oh well :P
03. Fury
Another song I heard before getting the album, this time because they released a live version from one of their concerts :) Straight into lyrics this time, and what lyrics! Talk of "the immortal beast" and "the dragon roar" kinda reminding me of DragonForce (another band) too much, I like Machinae Supremacy because they sing about computer games... Maybe it's a computer game dragon :) I do love this song though, particularly for the "Now! Woaoaoah" bits... They're cool! XD Then you have the amazing middle 8, some great electric guitaring from Gibli the band's guitarist, I dunno what "setting" they have that guitar set to but some great SID-sounding sounds come out of it :D
04. Ronin
The first (but far from the only) song on the album with Japanese influences, which most people reading will know I love :D Their downloadable tracks have never really shown the band's love of Japan but Ninja on their first album made me so happy and this album really has not disappointed me for Japan-love either!
our disease, everywhere
I wander
I trail the song of
your despair, everywhere
don't you breathe, don't you dare
Mmm Ronin~ Again a bit of a long song with too few lyrics so quite a bit of repetition, but I don't really mind because they're good lyrics!
05. Kaori Stomp
Another Japanese-love song, and the first (but not only) song on the album to actually feature Japanese lyrics! I can't tell you how happy I was thumbing through the lyrics booklet that came with the CD and suddenly coming across hiragana and kanji amongst the lyrics! <3 Also the lyrics booklet is just beautiful, but that's another story.
Despite being 4:18 this song always seems to me one of the shortest tracks on the album, something about the beat of it just makes time fly by for me and this is one of my favourites on the album by far. My only complaint would be that the Japanese does actually seem out of place, much like when the Japanese randomly use English in their songs... I'd love to hear MaSu put out a song that's completely in Japanese, or even just have the whole of the chorus in Japanese instead of the odd sentence :P
06. Hate
I love the effects and the general sound of this song, it's unique on the album and a welcome break at track 6 from the first 5 which are more classically-MaSu-sounding. The synthy tune going through the whole song in the background is really cool and makes the song kinda calming despite the title "Hate".
This song is also one of the few that has enough lyrics for the whole song, a simple verse chorus verse chorus verse layout that works well :)
07. I Know the Reaper
This song sounds great, brilliant guitar work and drumming, the tune is good. I don't really like the lyrics though... The line "I tell you, I know the Reaper" is repeated twice per chorus and it bugs me. :P Actually that's probably the only problem I have with it, the verses are nice and well written, it's just an annoying chorus... *shrugs* Just me, I'm sure loads of other people love the song :P
08. Seventeen
The second of two songs on the album to have the classic MaSu "quote at the beginning", and again this one sounds like one of their original songs from before their first album, it's great.
We are the ones who are setting you free
now you can share our beliefs and be just like we
We bring you out from under tyranny
and into our economy
Nothing quite like taking the piss out of America ;P
09. The Cavern of Lost Time
At 0:34 this is definitely the shortest song on the album, but that doesn't stop it from being really really pretty :) I'm not even sure what it's on, it sounds a bit like a violin or something but my guess is it's Gordon on his keyboard :)
10. Rogue World Asylum
I loooove this song! Again it sounds like classic MaSu, or maybe like something from their first album, it's just a great song with a catchy drum beat and some good lyrics:
In a rogue world we are free
we have found the colored keys
but I know that we are still here waiting
Coloured Keys, Doom/Quake references... Love it :)
11. Through The Looking Glass
Mmm piano to start off and then into guitar and drums with the piano, great :) Great lyrics in this song, away from the geeky computer game references and the political stuff this one goes straight for the MaSu philosophy about time and such. The piano remains prominent throughout the song giving this a really unique sound in comparison with the other songs MaSu have done :)
12 Oki Kumas Adventure
Quite a calm and synthy track with some good lyrics about an old Japanese warrior (not sure whether he's real or they made him up ^^;;), one of the great Japan-inspired Machinae Supremacy songs with a really catchy tune. Nice piece of Japanese speaking near the end too, and then some female vocals! :) (The lyrics booklet thanks Chika Kawahira and Erica Oeberg, I'd guess Erica did the singing and Chika did the Japanese speaking, but I could be wrong.)
13. Reanimator (March of the Undead III)
Whatever happened to March of the Undead I huh? Ah well... This is a really nice song, starts off slow and then kicks off about 2 minutes through and really kicks a lot of ass, a great sequel to March of the Undead II (one of their freely downloadable songs.)
Another bit of Japanese speaking at the end of this one too. It's good to hear MaSu using their own Japanese words rather than simply sampling from an anime, I do love it when they use quotes from various things but translating your own stuff into Japanese has got to be cool too :) I want a whole song by MaSu in Japanese!
14. Prelude To Empire
A little (1 minute 37 second) track which rips clips from a few of Machinae Supremacy's oldest tracks, it's really cool to hear them in the background because over the top of them is this really eerie sound... It's great! My only real complaint is as a "Prelude to Empire" it doesn't blend flawless into the beginning of Empire, but oh well, I guess with this being a CD release there's that 2 second gap for people who don't rip their tracks anyway right?
15. Empire
I LOOOOOOOVE THIS SONG!! Amazing drumming, female vocals (which could actually be synth'd) and guitaring at the beginning, and then the synth comes in in time with the drums on each beat, it's just AMAZING :D This is basically the Machinae Prime (an instrumental track from their first album) of this album, and it fits perfectly and ends the album wonderfully. Empire isn't entirely instrumental, but at 6 minutes 53 and only 8 lines of lyrics it might as well be, the instrumentals of this song are really at the front and it just shows off all that Machinae Supremacy are capable of. I really can't describe how much I love this song, it has parts which sound completely new and parts which are classic MaSu and parts which just plain make me happy... Go buy the album I guess!
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So there you have it, my review of Machinae Supremacy's new album Redeemer :D Go to the Machinae Supremacy site right now and download some of their free tracks, see what you think! :)
As for me, well I'm gonna leave Redeemer on my playlist, take my laptop over to my bed, and read some notes on Statistics, Software Engineering, and Operating Systems... This was enough procrastination I think XD
Leave comments and stuff :)
-- Kaoru
Saturday, April 22, 2006
New Environment
So I got back to London on Sunday, K-Li came over and we were hanging out in my room on IRC, she on my PC and me on my laptop, and she was having trouble with my user interface. I've used Fluxbox for the last 3 years, and I've always loved it, Gnome and KDE just seemed slow and nasty in comparrison, with their big nasty menus, it was too windows-like (I know a lot of Gnome fans will scream at me for saying that, but the big centralised menu is windows-like) and I liked my comand-line stuff. That said, I try to promote linux whenever I can, and if people coming to my house are getting fluxbox as their first linux experience maybe that wasn't great... Besides, I could do with a change.
Enter: Xfce, sort of like Gnome but stripped down with a right-click-on-the-desktop-style-menu (the way I like it), but with a much frendlier task bar and a little panel thing and everything. I played around with it a lot, making the menu have /only/ what I want in it (I hate big menus full of useless crap :P) and moving the task bar to the bottom and the panel to the right (on autohide) to make it as fluxbox-like as possible really... But it does seem much nicer and user friendly. The rounded windows for everything are really cool :)
Here, have a screenshot of my current setup while i write this :)
Other new things you may notice from the screen shot... SCIM is a much better input method for writing Japanese, my old one sucked so badly, in GTK programs (Gaim, X-Chat, Firefox etc) it would automatically start in Japanese >.< This new one is great, perfect in almost every way, except it makes Opera crash. I have no idea why. Hopefully it'll be fixed in a newer version of either Opera or SCIM. And yeah, that's the "other" new thing, Firefox is in my icons on my panel, which is unusual for me because usually I'm an Opera zealot :P
Uh, not much else to rant about... Exams start Monday (April 24th) and continue until May 12th... Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it! XD
-- Kaoru
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Back for good...
Whooooooooooooooooo~!! Slackwise.net is back for good! (Ok that's jinxing it but whatever...)
We now have lovely amazing beautiful hosting with Dream Host, who it seems as their name would suggest are a complete dream... I just published all my old blog entries in about 3 seconds O_O Loving this!
Anyway not much else to say... Going back to London tomorrow! Yay, can't wait ^_^ Unfortunately then got my exams between the 24th April and 12th May... Eugh >.<; If you want more detail about my exams check out my Google Calendar! Although it's not shared fully so if you want to be added to my "people who can see my calendar" list leave me a comment or send me an email or something ^^
Bye people! Leave comments ^_^
-- Kaoru