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May 30, 2005

Album Review: Shpongle - Nothing Lasts ... But Nothing Is Lost

Nothing Lasts... But Nothing Is Lost is the third, and sadly, final Shpongle album from English producer Simon Posford and collaborator Raja Ram.

Electronic music, particularly trance, often suffers from being too genre bound. Shpongle however, since their 1998 debut Are You Shpongled?, have consistently challenged musical convention, schizophrenically blending elements of dub, breaks, psytrance, jazz, and world music to excellent effect. Nothing is Lost is no exception, and marks the full maturation of this fusion sound.

The album is one flowing piece which the producers say should be considered a sort of aural dream sequence. There's a lot more consistency between tracks on Nothing than earlier efforts, and themes from earlier tracks drift in and out giving you some reference points in the otherwise bewildering soupy soundscape.

Once again, Posford has chosen to introduce a number of vocal elements. While these occasionally grated on Tales of the Inexpressible, they work marvellously here. The Dead Can Dance like, Invocation, provides a nice contrast to the following techno oriented Molecular Superstructure, and the sung dialogue at the end of Periscopes of Consciousness between man and what is presumably a hyperdimensional creature is gorgeous.

Posford's composition is wonderfully baroque, building layer upon layer of chaotic blips, pads, samples, gulps, and arpeggios. The tracks have an astounding density, and it is a testament to his production skill that the music still remains punchy and clean. The instrumentation is varied, and the juxtaposition of the vocals and acoustics with the crunchier electronic elements gives the album an organic quality that most electronic music never approaches.

Nothing Lasts is available from Twisted Records. Friends of self dribbling bejeweled machine elves, and really anyone that loves electronic music should not be without it.

As they say, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Posted by kitsune at 12:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 17, 2005

I'll take the red pill...

I just stumbled across this item, that claims Sony have filed a patent for a non invasive brain stimulation technology, akin to the technology in The Matrix.

While we aren't likely to be jacking in any time soon, I'll keep my Fuchi corporation CDT-1000 cyberdeck on standby.

Playstation 4? :)

Posted by kitsune at 03:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

May 12, 2005

Happy 25th Pacman!

Pacman was released to the world 25 years ago to this day, and marked a significant milestone in the development of video games.

Despite having some flaws, which would later be addressed in the sequel Ms. Pacman, Pacman was a large evolutionary leap from its predecessors Space Invaders and Pong.

From a CNN article covering the anniversary:

"Pac Man changed the psychological profile of the average person," explains Twin Galaxies' Walter Day.

"Suddenly old and young, male and female, doctors, dentists, lawyers and housewives found it acceptable to be playing a video game. And Pac Man opened that door for them. Despite the fact that it was technologically advanced, it was as simple as playing a card game for them."

Here are a few things to check out:

An agricultural tribute to the gluttonous yellow ball.
An amusing, if extremely geeky t-shirt,
and the game ported to Microsoft Excel (doesn't appear to work in Open Office, sorry).

and of course the obligatory quote:

"Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."
-- Marcus Brigstocke

Posted by kitsune at 03:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

May 11, 2005

Cascading Onload Image Fades Without Flash

Richard Rutter provides an excellent script for achieving Onload image fades without Flash, which is plain marvellous. The more Flash I can do away with, the happier I'll be. Flash is great for applets, games, and toons, but is pretty nasty for navigation and general page UI.

I've extended Richard's script to support a cascading load of multiple images, which suited my purposes better. Hopefully someone out there finds this useful. Thanks for the help with this Ryan! You can also replace the window.setTimeout with window.setInterval for a somewhat interesting/amusing/useless stuttery effect.

Update: Nick provided a nice update to the code which removed the necessity to specify the number of images in the array. Thanks!

Posted by kitsune at 01:42 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

May 05, 2005

The View from the Top

Strange as it may seem, the world economy has become accustomed to the idea of 50$ crude. Merrill Lynch on CNN money, had the following to say today:

"...we believe that spot WTI crude oil prices will remain over $50 per barrel, despite the bearish signal of the super contango," ...

"Going forward, we expect global oil demand growth to decelerate modestly in line with a slowing global economy, but higher long-dated prices and infrastructure bottlenecks will likely combine to support spot crude oil prices"

If you watch the market regularly, as I have started to in a somewhat ghoulish manner, it becomes difficult to put current prices in perspective. Most sites seem to carry short term charts (typically monthly and daily), which I suppose suit investors, but don't give you much of a sense of our current situation. I managed to find the following chart on Oilnergy (does anyone else find that domain name amusing?)

Are we approaching the eye of the storm?

Posted by kitsune at 05:54 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

May 04, 2005

Maori Party Co-Leader on Peak Oil

Tariana Turia
Maori Party Co-Leader

Scoop are running a press release from Co-leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia, acknowledging the Maori Party's commitment to peak oil issues and giving an overview of their policy.

No revelations here, but it's good to see a party other than the Greens taking an active interest in preparing for the coming energy crisis. Hopefully this will stimulate more debate in parliament.

Labour, despite recognising the need to make immediate changes, have been far too quiet. I suspect they aren't willing to broach the subject this close to an election, fearing that it will hurt them at the polls... which is cowardly, and sadly, not surprising.

Posted by kitsune at 09:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack