I have a broad musical taste, ranging from classical to metal, from ethnic to industrial. I am drawn to all these kinds of music because of the physical and emotional impact. Music has to move me – I have never been a follower of hit lists. It’s not about the song texts, more important is the atmosphere conveyed by the song text. I like to be surprised by sounds I have never heard before, or a musical direction that is new to me. Ethnic music especially appeals to me – perhaps because as a young child, my dad used to let me listen to cassette tapes full of eastern and african music.

On the topic of ethnic music, which is what this post is about, what I appreciate in music is when it achieves a fusion of cultures. For instance, combining traditional ethnic melodies and instrumentation, with contemporary music and production. In a broader sense, mixing the old with the new. That is what keeps the old music alive and gives the contemporary music a new soul. Germany is full of bands that create an exciting mix of medieval and ethnic song structures with electronic or rock music. Musical purists have a hard time appreciating these blends… I have had discussions with friends and family about how old music is being killed by fusing it with modern rhythms. Well, to each their own taste. I enjoy myself immensely and to me that is the important bit.

I rarely listen to radio stations these days. When I was young, I was hooked to  my stereo because that was my source of musical education. Now of course there is the endless ocean that is the Internet… I visit a lot of music blogs and let myself be inspired by the stories told. If you’re interested, you may want to look at the Totally Fuzzy music blog aggregator.

Recently, I have been listening to some contemporary Mongolian folk music that was mentioned on one of these blogs. Mongolia is a country that has been influenced by its big neigbors China and Russia, who both ruled there in the previous century. Several hundreds of years earlier, Mongolia’s culture was touched by Tibetan Buddhism, but of course we all know it best for Genghis Khan, the ruler of the Mongol Empire some 800 years ago.

I was intrigued by the discovery that contemporary Mongolian bands practice the same “throat singing”, also called “overtone singing” or “höömii” that I was familiar with… but assumed to be limited to Tibetan Buddhist monk chants. What do you know.

A nice example of the art of throat singing, accompanied by an ancient mongolian musical instrument (in this case, a morin khuur) is displayed in the following video (exemplary is the comment “cameraman at 4:38 trying to identify where that sound is coming from – then he’s like WTF?!?!“):

I was pleased to learn that there is a thriving musical scene in Mongolia, centered around its capital city Ulan Bator. I also found that I missed several concerts in the Netherlands and Germany that I could have attended if only I had known… but there are some good video registrations which I will link to further below.

Egschiglen is a group that has been around for some 20 years now. Their music has a trance-like feeling to it. It is inspired by works of classical Mongolian composers, and their instrumentation is fully acoustic and authentic. Quite different from the more modern sounding folk/rock groups I will discuss next, the two albums by Egschiglen I heard (Zazal and Gereg) touched me on a deep level. Perhaps because I have not really experienced a lot of traditional Chinese music? I found it magical.

I found a recording of a live performance in Berlin (the band has a second home in Germany) by three of Egschiglen’s members, followed by a larger set where you can experience the full band including their female singer:

Of the bands that produce contemporary music, perhaps I like Altan Urag best. There’s so much energy and originality here! The song “Khukh Tolboton (Blue Mark)” of their album “Made in Altan Urag” featured during the closing credits of the movie “Mongol” (2007). Here is a link to a video that was made by joining shots of that movie with shots of the band (the song is played at a slightly higher pitch than the original album version, probably to make it fit with the movie credits):

Completely different atmosphere in their song Requiem:

And then there is Hanggai – a Beijing based group founded by a former member of a punk band who rediscovered his Mongolian roots. If I interpreted correctly, they are the most successful Mongolian band outside Asia.

Hanggai make quite an appearance! See this video which is a live performance at the Midi festival in Beijing of the song “Xig Xile” from their 2010 album “He Who Travels Far”:

A studio take of the same song can be seen here:

The unique aspect of these bands is how their music successfully fuses their own cultural roots with the world they live in today. In China, that is certainly an achievement. To me, this was a worthwhile addition to my musical library.

Enjoy! Eric

Those initial years of fame were followed by decades of silence, and the interview explains why – he “just did not care” anymore. Now, he is back, performing live… looking older and frailer because of a past heroin habit, but still the energy and wit is there!

Here is a youtube video of an old performance – “Health Fanatic”. I love it!

Unfortunately Youtube “beeps” away lots of the rougher text parts, otherwise I would have linked you to the superb “Twat”. Also recommendable is “Beasly Street” which in the 1980s was regarded by many as a sign of the time. It is a pamphlet against Margeret Thatcher – the Prime Minister whose politics caused massive unemployment in the UK at the time.

OK let’s add it anyway. This one backed by the band.

I hope you will have a good time John. Rattle those sticks a bit.

Eric

R.I.P. Lux Interior

On wednesday february 4th 2009, we lost another icon of the music scene. Lux Interior, co-founder and singer of The Cramps, died at the age of 62. The old bastard!

The Cramps were a major influence on the development of my musical taste in the early 80′s (yeah, previous century… I am old). Pure raw energy and mean guitar sounds provided by Lux’s wife and Cramps co-founder Poison Ivy. I saw them playing live in Ahoy, Rotterdam, sometime between ’85 and ’88, can’t exactly remember. The Ahoy is a brick hall with terrible acoustics but the audience crowded in front of the small stage and that gave the concert an intimacy and vibrance that made us all forget about the crappy surroundings. Steamy show, fantastic performance.

I can’t tell you which of their songs is my favourite track… there is so much! Human Fly is high on the list, as is Garbage Man. Their cover of Fever is something you should have heard at least once.

There is lots of video footage to be found on youtube, definitely worth having a look at. Like this one:

The picture at the start of this post is the front cover of The Cramps’ “Off the bone” album. I actually have this as a vinyl record with the cover in red-and-green. The record came with red-and-green 3D-glasses. You look through these glasses at the cover and the scene will spring to “full 3D” life. Nice trick!

Sad to see you go Lux. Your music will haunt us forever, may you rest in peace.

Sure, you can install Video Downloadhelper for Firefox if you want an easy way to download your favourite YouTube videos.

However, these will be downloaded in “FLV” format (Flash video). Nowadays, many videos on YouTube are available in High-Definition (HD) format and you may want to retrieve the higher quality (MP4) movies instead.

Here is a bit of JavaScript which checks if the movie you selected is available as HD 720p. If a HD format is available it will be the preferred download type (fmt24) instead of the usual “high” (fmt18) or
“regular”quality.

I got the javascript code from this page, which I found after my original javascript code stopped working (I guess Google removed the javascript functions to block folks like us):  http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/download-youtube-videos-as-mp4-files.html . The new code is a lot uglier than the initial javascript, but it works. That page also has the same code available, nicely reformatted, as a GreaseMonkey script if you have that firefox extension already installed.

Define the following text as a bookmark and you are only a click away from downloading HD YouTube videos (in Firefox, right-click the link below and select “bookmark this link“):

javascript:var%20video_id=null;var%20video_hash=null;var%20video_player=document.getElementById(‘movie_player’);if(video_player){var%20flash_variables=video_player.attributes.getNamedItem(‘flashvars’);if(flash_variables){var%20flash_values=flash_variables.value;if(flash_values){var%20video_id_match=flash_values.match(/[^a-z]video_id=([^(\&|$)]*)/);if(video_id_match!=null)video_id=video_id_match[1];var%20video_hash_match=flash_values.match(/[^a-z]t=([^(\&|$)]*)/);if(video_hash_match!=null)video_hash=video_hash_match[1]}}}if(video_id==null||video_hash==null){var%20args=null;try{args=yt.getConfig(‘SWF_ARGS’)}catch(e){}if(args){video_id=args['video_id'];video_hash=args['t']}}if(video_id!=null&&video_hash!=null){var%20fmt=’18′;try{if(yt.getConfig(‘IS_HD_AVAILABLE’))fmt=’22′}catch(e){}if(!document.getElementById(‘download-youtube-video’)){var%20yt_mp4_path=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=’+fmt+’&video_id=’+video_id+’&t=’+video_hash;var%20div_embed=document.getElementById(‘watch-embed-div’);if(div_embed){var%20div_download=document.createElement(‘div’);div_download.innerHTML=’%3Cbr%20/%3E%20%3Cspan%20id=\’download-youtube-video\’%3E%20%3Ca%20href=\”+yt_mp4_path+’\'%20onclick=\’blur(this);\’%3EDownload%20as%20MP4%3C/a%3E%3C/span%3E’;div_embed.appendChild(div_download);}if(navigator.appName!=’Microsoft%20Internet%20Explorer’){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=’+fmt+’&video_id=’+video_id+’&t=’+video_hash}}}void(0);

Note: this was the old code which now will no longer work:

javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href=’http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=’+(isHDAvailable?’22′:’18′)+’&video_id=’+swfArgs['video_id']+’&t=’+swfArgs['t']}

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Select a YouTube video, click on “pause” if you do not want to play it in the embedded video frame. Then, click on the bookmark you created and the video will start downloading. It will (always) be saved with the name “video.mp4″ so you will have to rename it after the download finishes.

Have fun! Eric

Simple: I never know in advance.

At home I run a Slackware Linux server on which I have installed Icecast. Icecast is a Shoutcast-compatible (and Open Source) multimedia streaming server. In other words, my server outputs a continuous stream of music (exactly like Internet Radio stations work), which I can tune into with my desktop computer.

I have digitized a great deal of my music collection and Icecast enables me to listen to these songs – any mediaplayer that understands ShoutCast streams is able to tune in. On Linux I use XMMS, sometimes Audacious, but Amarok and even mpg123 work just as well. On the Windows computer in the living room I like WinAmp most.

Now, Icecast is nothing special, but I added a playlist manager which randomly selects songs from my collection (unless I select songs from the database myself). Every new song that plays over the speakers is a surprise

And how does that playlist look in the management console?

…

I hope you find inspiration in this shortlist. Surely it shows my age

Cheers, Eric

O yeah… about the title for this post. Me and my flatmates once held a big party in our student flat, and my choice of music was somewhat “off-beat”. We had covered part of the corridor wall with paper so that the guests had something to leave their comments on, and somebody wrote “Beter herrie dan kutmuziek“. Which translates to “Better to endure this freaking noise than having to listen to lousy music”. Not all of those present agreed but I owned the stereo! I still use the phrase as a slogan to describe my record collection.

I always liked the Nintendo DS for the innovation it brought to the console market. Nintendo has a unique grasp of what makes a game really good and enjoyable, and they continue to invent hardware which is a match to their games. Here at home we own a Gameboy Advance as well as a Wii console, but until now a DS-Lite has been lacking.

I was tempted to buy one, way back then, for the Linux that you can hack onto it. But Slackware development took enough of my time already, so the idea never became reality. And it never hurts to dream.

Now though, I came across this video:

It demonstrates a software synthesizer, the Korg DS-10, which has recently been released for the Nintendo DS. It is simply amazing what this program is able to do. I watched – and watched again (there is more video footage on YouTube) and found a positive review of the DS-10 on Ars Technica which confirmed the gut feeling I had after watching the demo.

Something that makes me want to buy the DS after all that time…

Eric

It has nothing to do with Slackware – or computers – at all. It is about my past as a musical “junkie”. Before computers became the rage, and when there was no Internet, I spent a lot of time and money on my main hobby which was music.

My musical taste was definitely not mainstream, and I should really write some more about it someday. But for the purpose of this post, it suffices to say that I visited the local “pop temple” a lot. Eindhoven’s Effenaar was well-known in the indie circuit (and still is, although it’s targeted audience has changed quite a bit). I have seen so many bands there in the 80′s and 90′s that I lost count of them (not to mention it was less than healthy for the condition of my hearing). One of the bands I saw there, early 1988, was Slab! I was used to a lot but their concert blew me off my shoes. The sound was vicious and the bass guitar sounded simply amazing. I had bought a vinyl album before the show (Descension) and was fascinated by it. But the live experience was so much better!

After the concert, it appeared to me like no new material was released by the band. I assumed they had dissolved and I kept playing that old album from time to time (when no one else was in the room – the Slab! sound is quite dominating). Now that we have arrived in the age of computers I started looking for more information on the Internet about Slab! at irregular intervals, and I was very surprised to actually see some signs of life.

A blog site (Unfit for Print) wrote an article on Slab! in mid-2007, some of the former band members found out about it, a lively discussion started and the result was that two of the Slab! band members actually dug up their unfinished recordings and took these into the studio to work on a new album. This was 19 years after they sort of decided to discontinue the Slab! adventure. The new Slab! homepage has more information about what they are up to. The blog as well as the Slab! homepage made it clear that the Slab! discography was larger than I had originally thought. Some of it can be found on the internet in mp3 format now (even the Slab! members no longer had possession of some of their old material), like the Peel Session they recorded and their “Music from the iron lung” and”Sanity allergy” albums. I am afraid I will have to digitize the crackling Descension vinyl myself, because there is no digital version of this to be found. I think it is the best album they made and really need to have a digital version now that my old turntable is no longer hooked up to the stereo.

Somebody was friendly enough to digitize old tapes of Slab! live recordings and posted them to YouTube. Here is one – keep in mind that this was 20 years ago:

I am in anticipation of what they are cooking up in 2008!

Eric