Ice cubes in the fire

Yay! Yay yay yay!

It looks like the UK launch of Apple's iTunes Music Store will be the day after my last exam. Oh I am so very, very excited right now. I've been waiting for this day for so very long!

Das Lied von der Brad

There's a wonderful piece up on (the New Yorker Music Critic) Alex Ross's blog analysing the soundtrack to that awful, awful film, Troy:

Horner is presenting us with a kind of musical meta-narrative of deconstructive requotation—a postmodern tour-de-force on par with the Pierre Menard Don Quixote. Notice the emphasis on Shostakovich and Prokofiev, two composers who served unwillingly as mouthpieces for totalitarian terror. We are being told that the hero Achilles has let himself become a figurehead for the tyrannical Agamemnon. The citation of Britten, meanwhile, is a sly acknowledgement of the story’s homoerotic subtext, which was evidently omitted for fear of persecution by the Bush regime.

It's a great laugh, so go read the whole thing.

A Memo

Albums to acquire -
(1) Snow Patrol - Final Straw
(2) Scissor Sisters - Scissor Sisters
(3) Air - Talkie Walkie

I am masculine... Really...

Okay, I'm going to reassert my masculinity now, and say that I am very, very excited by the fact that I am seeing Radiohead at Earls Court tomorrow evening, and Muse at Wembley the day after. See the bold bits? That shows how excited I am.
Oh yeah, and there will be gig reports as soon as I get back from them. How exciting, again!

So you think you know music?

This is such great fun! The world's first album-cover pop quiz:

"There are sixty album covers - some better known than others, but none intended to be overly obscure - from which the artist and title information has been removed via the magic of the clone tool and some artful blurring."

I did appallingly, only recognising about 9 of the 60, and that's only because I worship those bands...

Go see if you can do better.

So this is what it feels like

I'm not quite sure what has just happened. I woke up this morning, thinking it would be a nice, quiet, relaxing Saturday. Maybe I would see a few friends, have a few drinks, get some work done. Never in the proverbial million years would I have expected to see the band I adore, playing in the ideal venue, with myself standing about a metre away from Matt Bellamy, the heart and soul of Muse.

That's right. I saw Muse today. They were doing an astonishingly intimate recording of three songs from Absolution, for an audience of about 150 people. The songs were, if you're interested, Time is Running Out, Hysteria and the mindblowing Butterflies and Hurricanes. The chain of events that led to me seeing this band in such a perfect venue is somewhat complicated, and involved a little trickery, a little indecisiveness, a whole string of coincidences, the presence of David Isaacs, and a whole lot of luck, but somehow myself, David and Pip Kennedy managed to smuggle ourselves into Studio 1 - Riverside Studios and end up being within touching distance of perhaps the greatest musician of our generation. I'm not afraid of hyperbole, not after this. If you live in the UK, and have the time and inclination, watch the next episode of CD:UK. You'll see me standing directly in front of Matt Bellamy, grinning like an idiot, making a fool of myself and being the happiest man alive.

I'm still in shock.

What is this Radiohead of which you speak?

Being a hot-off-the-presses review of the album Absolution by Muse, to be released 22nd September 2003

(written with Dave Isaacs)

"You've got to be the best, you've got to change the world and use this chance to be heard." Matt Bellamy (all-round musical genius) could well be talking to himself, because if Absolution gets the reception it deserves, he might achieve it. It's good, it's very good.

From the opening march of the apocalyptic opener, Apocalypse Please, you know that this album exists in its own world. Distorted guitars, crashing pianos and Bellamy's wailing, sonorous and yearning voice all come together to make it sound - to all intents and purposes - like the end of the world. This is a truly universal album; the paradoxically hopeful first single 'Time is Running Out', a frantic mix between love song and funereal dirge, comprises of a Michael Jackson-esque vocal line rising above a baseline reminiscent of Radiohead, but the end result is something only Muse could produce. It is a song for every man, woman or child who has ever felt in danger of losing something valuable. The general tone of the album ranges from the brutal, violent Stockholm Syndrome to the gentle disco ballad 'Endlessly', in which Bellamy sings - his tortured voice sounding more pained than ever - 'I won't leave you falling if the moment never comes'. It's beautiful.

Perhaps the highlight of the album is Butterflies and Hurricanes, in which Bellamy's trademark guitar sound plays against a soaring orchestra, before breaking down into a solo piano attack. With the upcoming 'Kick up the fire and let the flames break loose' and Elbow's stunning 'Cast of Thousands', we are witnessing a revolution, banishing all those garage rock bands and their overstyled haircuts back to the seventies. Is this the end of music as we know it?

Domo Darko

What happens when a Japanese cult animation and a brilliant American horror (for want of a better word) film meet, get along famously, and then decide to go to his place? This.

The good folks at B3ta have the low-down.

Domo-kun is a web cult. You must have seen him, he looks like a weetabix with a mouth. His 30 second stop-motion vignettes exude a charm and warmth that have brought him fame greater than his real job as the mascot of Japanese satellite TV show BS2. Fnord has taken clips and remixed them with the song Mad World from Donnie Darko. The result is unlike anything we've featured on b3ta before. It's exquisite.

This is the last time I'll abandon you

I'm going to have an early(ish) night for once, but before I go, I would like to shamelessly plug Muse's latest single, Stockholm Syndrome. It's magnificent, and only confirms Matt Bellamy's position as a musical genius. Plus he's cute as hell. Ahem. Yes.

It can be downloaded for only 99p from the band's website, where you can also listen to a sneak preview of their next single, Time Is Running Out. I'm going to see them in November, and having listened obsessively to Stockholm Syndrome, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I am very very very very excited.

And now, good night.

Glastonbury Photos Up

I've finally managed to upload half of the Glastonbury 2003 photos. They can be found here. Why haven't I put them all up yet? Because then you would have no reason to visit me tomorrow!

Well, the fact that it's 3 AM and I can barely keep my eyes open might also have something to do with it.