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Auditory Flashbacks: The Crüxshadows

Now as then,
still truth.

You Keep Using That Phrase …

… but have you ever won­dered where the expres­sion “Drink­ing the Kool-Aid” comes from?

 

Auditory Flashbacks: Informatik, Assemblage 23, De/Vision

I’m about to head off for the evening, but before I do, here’s a music post … because, rea­sons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmo_u0TCVs4

 

 

Auditory Flashbacks: Sea Songs and More

When I began going through my posts as part of back-end main­te­nance the oth­er day, I real­ized I haven’t done an arti­cle on sea songs yet. Con­sid­er­ing how deeply that genre runs in my heart and my con­nec­tions with the sea, I feel a bit sil­ly at not doing it sooner.

So here’s a smat­ter­ing of old favourites. I’ve searched a while for spe­cial ver­sions of some of these songs, which you’ll notice below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDds4D3w9NU

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Slam Poetry: “Hi, I’m a Slut”

Back in my uni­ver­si­ty days, I jumped at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a vol­un­teer for our show­ing of The Vagi­na Mono­logues. I loved the for­mat of that per­for­mance and the way it engaged the audi­ence, and I’ve been on the hunt ever since for sim­i­lar­ly off-beat, hard-hit­ting con­tent that gets dia­logue start­ed about impor­tant issues.

So, when I found this video by Savan­nah Brown in a friend’s FB feed today, I could­n’t resist post­ing it here. Her unpre­ten­tious, cut-to-the-bone style makes lin­ger­ing points and delves deeply into our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry on the patho­log­i­cal sex­u­al­iza­tion, ram­pant objec­ti­fi­ca­tion, and vic­tim-blam­ing that goes on all too often as a fea­ture of the social fab­ric in North America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6CCePrJlaU

I’m also throw­ing in an old­er video she made called, “What Guys Look For In Girls.” The mes­sage, again, is too impor­tant to leave out:

Auditory Flashbacks: Cauda Pavonis, Adversus, Flesh Field, Aesthetic Perfection, Aïboforcen, Aeon Sable, The Birthday Massacre, Battery, and Qntal

After more than ten hours of hard work, the Links page is final­ly up to date, along with a slew of new addi­tions to the music sec­tion. Artists begin­ning with let­ters A through F are com­plete, with each entry researched pri­or to list­ing in order to make the most use­ful resources avail­able to read­ers who are inter­est­ed in explor­ing fur­ther. In cas­es where an artist has retired or gone on hia­tus, I’ve tried to link to resources that offer the most com­plete overview of their musi­cal works.

Now that that’s fin­ished, ON TO THE MUSIC!

Start­ing off tonight’s round of offer­ings is the awe­some, dri­ving sound of the one and only Cau­da Pavonis:

Next up, we have the ulti­mate grave­yard ser­e­nade: Adver­sus’ See­len­win­ter. The song is an old favourite of mine, and see­ing the video hits even hard­er than any­thing before.

Those voic­es, those melodies … they’re eight bliss­ful, soar­ing min­utes of pure lovelorn flight. I adore every part of it. Stu­dio ver­sion here. Frankly, though, I think this one works much bet­ter live.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Auditory Flashbacks: the Music of Ost+Front, Megaherz, and Lord of the Lost

Some­where along the way, my lis­ten­ing list got so large it hit that mag­i­cal tip­ping point where it became its own nov­el. By the end of this post, it will offi­cial­ly be 442 artists. Even the fair­ly robust Word­Press Edi­tor was hav­ing issues last time I tried to add more band links. I’ve post­ed *maybe* a quar­ter of them here on my site by now, but made full-fledged dis­cus­sion posts for far too few.

That’s going to change this year, as I’ll even­tu­al­ly get around to revamp­ing my con­tent a bit, along with a few changes to update fre­quen­cy and post format.

But for now … LET’S DISCOVER SOME MUSIC!

Today’s theme is Neue Deutsche Härte, and to that end, I have three sub­mis­sions for your lis­ten­ing pleasure.

First, there’s Ost+Front. What can I real­ly say here? Their stage pres­ence is the result of some­one sneak­ing into a genet­ic engi­neer­ing lab to com­bine Ramm­stein’s DNA with the entire cast of Dead Snow. Nazi zom­bies with awe­some voic­es? You’d bet­ter believe it.

BUT WHERE’S THE FIRE? In the lyrics, of course …

Con­tin­ue read­ing

On the Death of David Bowie

There’s “pass­ing away with style,” and then there’s “I’m going for one more encore, and I’m not just going to love this, I’m gonna strike the bold­est dot imag­in­able on the excla­ma­tion point that is my life.”

When I heard about David Bowie’s death, I part­ly expect­ed to hear about him doing some­thing notable or dra­mat­ic on the way out — ain’t that just like him.

The end is near, the odds are tan­gi­bly impos­si­ble, and even as the world comes crash­ing down around his ears, here he is on set cast­ing a music video, singing with that same sweet, sil­very pas­sion that’s defined so many of his life’s oth­er accomplishments.

Not florid prose nor mourn­ful dis­course nor sim­ple won­der can prop­er­ly describe the inspi­ra­tion and beau­ty in such a ges­ture. Lyrics here. Links to the Cana­di­an and Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­eties as well, because why not con­tribute?

Now, if you haven’t clicked PLAY on the above video, you’d bet­ter turn off every­thing else around you right now, and load it up.

And don’t for­get the encore …

May you be well remem­bered, and remem­bered well in all the ages to come.

Keeping Our Perspective on War

When one takes a bird’s-eye view of bat­tle and civil­ian casu­al­ties by the num­bers, the results as shown above are shocking.

All of this helps one main­tain a healthy sense of per­spec­tive, and reveals that not only do present-day news chan­nels and dis­trib­u­tors exag­ger­ate the fre­quen­cy and feroc­i­ty of con­flicts on a reg­u­lar basis by flood­ing the pub­lic space with over-report­ing and embell­ish­ments, but we almost invari­ably are fed infor­ma­tion to arrive at a mind­set that makes us for­get on a dai­ly basis the major pow­ers have not fought one anoth­er since World War 2, and today’s war deaths (mil­i­tary and civil­ian) are minus­cule in comparison.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Owl Give Ya Somethin’ Cute …

I present for your view­ing plea­sure one baby Great Horned Owl singing The Mon­ster Mash.

My life is offi­cial­ly complete.

Auditory Flashbacks: Hungry Lucy

This is the title track from their 2010 album (lyrics here). If this isn’t pure, wild, refined beau­ty, I don’t know what is.

Look­ing back in time, Hun­gry Lucy has fit my tastes in a decid­ed­ly odd way over the years. I’ve been a fan of their work since at least 2000 with the advent of Appari­tions, but some­how their orig­i­nal work did­n’t end up in my col­lec­tion until more recently.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Tea: the Perfect Metaphor for Consent

In light of all the news sto­ries dis­cussing peo­ple who’ve had prob­lems con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing sex­u­al con­sent or estab­lish­ing rea­son­ably safe bound­aries for engag­ing in sex, these ani­ma­tors came up with a nov­el way of explain­ing it.

Here’s con­sent rewrit­ten as some­thing any­one can read­i­ly under­stand and com­mu­ni­cate to their partners:

A Primer on Global Warming and Climate Change

Chances are you’ve heard some men­tion in the media or among gov­ern­ment in recent years about the top­ics of glob­al warm­ing, extreme weath­er, or cli­mate change. I won’t do sci­en­tists the indig­ni­ty of con­sid­er­ing the mat­ter a ‘debate’ much less use this word, because it would imply we’re still at the stage of try­ing to see if the meter swings one way or the oth­er on this impor­tant issue. No, much to the sur­prise of many, sci­ence has devel­oped itself exten­sive­ly and spo­ken in great cer­tain­ty: there is no longer any debate, and glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change are both real and caused by humans.

So if there’s one post you peek at on the sub­ject today, let it be this one.

Con­tin­ue read­ing

Understanding Electronics: The (Non)Magic of Free Energy

I fig­ured I’d make a brief post to wet my read­ers’ feet in the vast pond of elec­tron­ics engi­neer­ing. Here’s a real­ly inter­est­ing video about the sub­ject of free ener­gy, nar­rat­ed by a spe­cial­ist who actu­al­ly works in and under­stands elec­tron­ics, and is able to point out in fair­ly com­mon terms why and how free-ener­gy devices are not pos­si­ble to create.

TL;DR — it’s not because there exists any set of spe­cial workarounds to our exist­ing laws of physics, or that alter­nate laws of physics exist for well-known phe­nom­e­na that are some­how wait­ing to be writ­ten. Rather, it’s almost uni­ver­sal­ly the case that peo­ple, even well-mean­ing ones, tend to mis­in­ter­pret units of mea­sure, fail to prop­er­ly con­cep­tu­al­ize math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tions, and fail to incor­po­rate numer­ous sci­en­tif­ic pro­ce­dures and prin­ci­ples in their work. To add fuel to the fire, most peo­ple who cham­pi­on free ener­gy devices gen­er­al­ly choose to spend their time with those of the same mind­set, an effect which in time mul­ti­plies the shaky devi­a­tions of com­pre­hen­sion and foun­da­tion­al stud­ies, and fur­ther dimin­ish­es the capac­i­ty to be self-correcting.

Sheep Pong and Other Feats of Engineering

So, I loaded up Face­book this morn­ing and saw this in a friend’s feed:

Sheep. Pong.

This is SERIOUSLY awesome.

There’s no easy way to explain the efforts that prob­a­bly went into mak­ing this video, or the huge amount of time it must have tak­en to set things up and get them work­ing just right, but as a part-time home tin­ker­er who owns a few cas­es of elec­tron­ic and LED parts, I can appre­ci­ate the extreme­ly dif­fi­cult, beau­ti­ful feat they’ve done with this.

Good work, and keep doing what you love. My hat’s off to you, sirs.

Auditory Flashbacks: Darkhaus

Ear­li­er this week, I was lis­ten­ing to some music I’d been intro­duced to quite recent­ly when this lit­tle ear­worm by Dark­haus came scream­ing in.

It’s called “Son of a Gun,” and it’s way too catchy to keep to myself.

Lis­ten, enjoy, and pass it on:


Lyrics (here).

Auditory Flashbacks: Johnny Hollow does Temple of Love!

It’s been a while since my last post, and that’s because I’ve been fair­ly busy with sev­er­al projects on the go.

Any­way, I heard this song tonight and had to share:

Auditory Flashbacks: This Ascension

It is present­ly five o’clock in the morn­ing, and I just arrived home from work.

Along the way, I was hit with a real­iza­tion, the same one I’ve had many a time but nev­er real­ly shared here before: fin­ish­ing these late shifts always ends with a real­ly qui­et ride home, and it’s some­thing I’ve grown to appre­ci­ate. It feels like cycling through a dead city after the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse has come and gone, with not a soul in sight unless you count wildlife, and even that tends to be pret­ty iso­lat­ed and sparse in the three-to-five win­dow of time.

Actu­al­ly, I love it. The world just seems like it’s tee­ter­ing on the brink of some­thing amaz­ing at moments like those, so full of qui­et pos­si­bil­i­ties, so very ready to burst forth into a flur­ry of life and motion.

In the spir­it of that soli­tude, here’s a blast from the past from a band who (sad­ly) isn’t togeth­er any longer but whose mem­o­ries and glo­ri­ous sound will always cast a com­fort­able shad­ow in these halls … This Ascension!

And you’ve got to admit, there’s hard­ly a bet­ter sound to accom­pa­ny a sink­ing cres­cent moon and indi­go skies.

For­ev­er Shak­en ( +lyrics ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgnTlSItujk

Angel Light:

YouTube Treasures: Space Oddity at the ISS

A few years ago, I was floored by Col­lide’s awe­some ren­di­tion of David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” Then, much more recent­ly, I found this ver­sion by Cana­di­an astro­naut Chris Had­field in the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion dur­ing his final mission.

Talk about going out with a bang. He tunes the lyrics ever so slight­ly to the mis­sion … and sud­den­ly the Inter­net explodes with rever­ber­a­tions of his sheer awesomeness.

This is how such a beau­ti­ful song was meant to be performed …

(source via YT user David Bowiefans)

Raccoon Rumble

Ear­li­er this week, I came home from work late one night only to bear wit­ness to one of the most amaz­ing spec­ta­cles I’ve seen in a long time: a fam­i­ly of rac­coons out on the town for a night of fun and mayhem.

At first I noticed a noise in one of the bush­es out­side my house, and when this prompt­ed me to take a look, I quick­ly dis­cov­ered a pair of adult rac­coons wrestling one anoth­er in the midst of a large mud pud­dle in a near­by vacant lot. Hav­ing real­ized they were being watched, they quick­ly broke it up and went back to scav­eng­ing for food.

It was­n’t long before they were at it again, this time in a tree! A round of loud chit­ter­ing and squeal­ing broke the silence, this time going on for quite some time, so I grabbed my cam­era and flash­light and head­ed for the source of the noise. What fol­lowed are two of the most fas­ci­nat­ing videos I’ve cap­tured in ages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfpDilrFBuo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFRQ9zzLpgM

I should also add that despite my first impres­sions, the rac­coons’ actions seem to con­vey some­thing more along the lines of horse­play, play-fight­ing, or at most, estab­lish­ing the peck­ing order. These lit­tle guys don’t seem to be caus­ing each oth­er any harm, but damn can they crank up the volume!

This has been one of the many rea­sons I love Vic­to­ria: the wildlife is extreme­ly abun­dant here, and if you look hard enough, there’s always some­thing cool going on.