sunnuntai 6. helmikuuta 2011
Amount of Snow is Amazing!
Today I participated in huge snow shoveling job (three hours) and almost forgot how nice the winter made the environment look like earlier. Here is some pictures I took from my surroundings:
torstai 3. helmikuuta 2011
Cornelius Tacitus - Histories
Roman history has always been one of my areas of interest. "The Histories" written by famous Roman writer Cornelius Tacitus is the latest book I have read about the classic age of Roman Empire (it was a Finnish translation from the original latin source).
This book concentrates in the period of 69-70 ad, the year when four emperors ruled and the empire was driven into civil war. All begins when Emperor Galba (ruler who was risen to power when the emperor Nero was defieted) was getting old and there were discomfort among legions about who should be his successor. Galba had noticed the turmoil and was trying to call his protege to be the next emperor. However this was the final straw for some of the army groups and they shouted Otho to be their ruler and when Otho arrived with his legions to Rome all hell broke lose.
After Otho´s men killed Galba the actual civil war was eventually going to expand since most of the german, gallic and british groups were not going to stand for such a decision. They gave Vitellius their commanderhood and started campaign against Otho´s newly formed regime. And so on until after some misfortuned battles Otho committed suicide. Tacitus describes Vitellius as a lazy person who was more fond of debauchery than actually benefiting the nation. This was also the reason why Vitellius regime was not in unison trough out the empire and soon the southern legions commander Vespasianus decided to take part on the race and challenge Vitellius´s groups.
I shouldn´t go further with the actual events except noticing that in the end Vitellius was defeated and several things followed. The Book ends with a chapter about the Great Jewish Revolt but this has not been preserved. However I want to make some notions about the life and roughness of the ordinary people and military during those times. First of all you have to keep in mind that Romans were at their peak about their Empire´s success then and it is this fact that brings strange light to actual living and prosperity in the empire.
What really buggers me is that the Military troops were so unpredictable about their decisions and the discipline was so hard to maintain. Minor revolts were everyday events and the leaders were all the time in a situation where they were forced to persuade troops to be loyal to their closest leaders and even for the emperor. There seemed to be lots of rumors always circulating about other peoples loyalty and deceit. People were also very superstitious and everything that happened could be interpreted as an omen (ominous or fortunate). These events could in a sudden moment mean that the troops would stand against their commander and even killing of leaders happened.
One of the main motivation behind military troops seemed to be looting instead of securing the empire´s peace. This lead to situations where a legion was relocating and manoeuvering forward the combat zone in their own territory (inside the empire) where they completely destroyed and robbed unfortunate and innocent cities that were on their way. And when they had a battle within a city that was inside the empire some of them were completely burned down, all the inhabitants were killed and raped.
Realising how huge the empire was (even todays standards) it´s also very impressive how they managed to keep up maintenance for such a huge force. The military had at best over a million soldiers (though most of the times the amount of troops was around 400 000). A single legion had about 5000 soldiers and lots of hangaround people (merchants, slaves, etc.) and all of them had to be kept fead and armed.
Rome itself was a city of over a million people and the surrounding areas couldn´t offer enough grain to feed the inhabitants. That´s why they had to ship food from northern Africa! The logistics were really impressive!
Finally I recommend this book very much to read if you have even a little interest about the real life during antique times! It gives a nice overlook about times and describes the turmoil of Roman Empire quite well. It also gives some advice why the Roman Empire was finally divided and demolished a few hundred years later.
This book concentrates in the period of 69-70 ad, the year when four emperors ruled and the empire was driven into civil war. All begins when Emperor Galba (ruler who was risen to power when the emperor Nero was defieted) was getting old and there were discomfort among legions about who should be his successor. Galba had noticed the turmoil and was trying to call his protege to be the next emperor. However this was the final straw for some of the army groups and they shouted Otho to be their ruler and when Otho arrived with his legions to Rome all hell broke lose.
After Otho´s men killed Galba the actual civil war was eventually going to expand since most of the german, gallic and british groups were not going to stand for such a decision. They gave Vitellius their commanderhood and started campaign against Otho´s newly formed regime. And so on until after some misfortuned battles Otho committed suicide. Tacitus describes Vitellius as a lazy person who was more fond of debauchery than actually benefiting the nation. This was also the reason why Vitellius regime was not in unison trough out the empire and soon the southern legions commander Vespasianus decided to take part on the race and challenge Vitellius´s groups.
I shouldn´t go further with the actual events except noticing that in the end Vitellius was defeated and several things followed. The Book ends with a chapter about the Great Jewish Revolt but this has not been preserved. However I want to make some notions about the life and roughness of the ordinary people and military during those times. First of all you have to keep in mind that Romans were at their peak about their Empire´s success then and it is this fact that brings strange light to actual living and prosperity in the empire.
What really buggers me is that the Military troops were so unpredictable about their decisions and the discipline was so hard to maintain. Minor revolts were everyday events and the leaders were all the time in a situation where they were forced to persuade troops to be loyal to their closest leaders and even for the emperor. There seemed to be lots of rumors always circulating about other peoples loyalty and deceit. People were also very superstitious and everything that happened could be interpreted as an omen (ominous or fortunate). These events could in a sudden moment mean that the troops would stand against their commander and even killing of leaders happened.
One of the main motivation behind military troops seemed to be looting instead of securing the empire´s peace. This lead to situations where a legion was relocating and manoeuvering forward the combat zone in their own territory (inside the empire) where they completely destroyed and robbed unfortunate and innocent cities that were on their way. And when they had a battle within a city that was inside the empire some of them were completely burned down, all the inhabitants were killed and raped.
Realising how huge the empire was (even todays standards) it´s also very impressive how they managed to keep up maintenance for such a huge force. The military had at best over a million soldiers (though most of the times the amount of troops was around 400 000). A single legion had about 5000 soldiers and lots of hangaround people (merchants, slaves, etc.) and all of them had to be kept fead and armed.
Rome itself was a city of over a million people and the surrounding areas couldn´t offer enough grain to feed the inhabitants. That´s why they had to ship food from northern Africa! The logistics were really impressive!
Finally I recommend this book very much to read if you have even a little interest about the real life during antique times! It gives a nice overlook about times and describes the turmoil of Roman Empire quite well. It also gives some advice why the Roman Empire was finally divided and demolished a few hundred years later.
maanantai 31. tammikuuta 2011
Practice, practice, practice
Last couple of weeks I have been very busy practicing my turntable skills (as I have mentioned earlier). This is due to my new equipment which seems to work quite well. Yesterday I dug some old hard techno records from the vaults and gave them a spin. Boy was that fun!!!
It´s funny how I now notice the big difference playing different styles of music. When spinning house or trance you have to try to find suitable moments to enter and use the intros and outros to create a constant flow. You also have take care of the harmonies, check out the places where there is breaks and remember if any vocals have been used. It´s very usefull if you are aware about the composition of the full track and know for example where the bass drops for the first time. I have now got used to make the transitions using individual channel sliders and using the EQ knobs only to drop certain levels down. This seems work particularly well at the moment.
Overall you have to try to make wholescale compositions with the tracks and it´s usefull to plan the setup in advance. The whole thing turns upside down when the style changes to techno. Now this is real improvisation, all I have to know is that the tracks are basically in the same tempo range. The rest is just picking basslines and percussions from one track and embedding them to the next! And now the EQ turns into a playstation! I can keep two tracks playing at the same time and let the drums fuse into a different sounding mutant of driving monster dancetune! Yesterday was the first time that I thought it would be nice to own third turntable to make transitions easier and still keeping the playfullness alive! I believe that I would be able to learn to use this kind of setup to create nice oldskool techno experience.
Offcourse I´m aware that this is nothing new to anyone deep in the game, but I wanted to share the revelation I got from these recent sessions!
It´s funny how I now notice the big difference playing different styles of music. When spinning house or trance you have to try to find suitable moments to enter and use the intros and outros to create a constant flow. You also have take care of the harmonies, check out the places where there is breaks and remember if any vocals have been used. It´s very usefull if you are aware about the composition of the full track and know for example where the bass drops for the first time. I have now got used to make the transitions using individual channel sliders and using the EQ knobs only to drop certain levels down. This seems work particularly well at the moment.
Overall you have to try to make wholescale compositions with the tracks and it´s usefull to plan the setup in advance. The whole thing turns upside down when the style changes to techno. Now this is real improvisation, all I have to know is that the tracks are basically in the same tempo range. The rest is just picking basslines and percussions from one track and embedding them to the next! And now the EQ turns into a playstation! I can keep two tracks playing at the same time and let the drums fuse into a different sounding mutant of driving monster dancetune! Yesterday was the first time that I thought it would be nice to own third turntable to make transitions easier and still keeping the playfullness alive! I believe that I would be able to learn to use this kind of setup to create nice oldskool techno experience.
Offcourse I´m aware that this is nothing new to anyone deep in the game, but I wanted to share the revelation I got from these recent sessions!
torstai 27. tammikuuta 2011
Superstitious Technomix
Here we go again! This time it´s all about rave and hard trance from the 90´s! I must admit that this mix was all but easy to make and there are lots of bad shifts from track to another (I will listen this few times and if it sounds horrible I will record it again). Fortunately all the songs are excellent! And this is yet again 100% vinyl and 0% Digital bullshit !-D (yeah yeah, really wish I could afford to buy cd-players!).
During those times producers used to create very hard, strange and often long atmospheric intros and outros. They sound wonderfull if listened separately but make the continuous mix very complicated to create. The tempo was often pretty hard. I started this mix with negative pitch but still ended up having problems with some tracks that I had chosen. Few songs had also several excellent and actually quite different remixes and I had to make some compromises to manage to create good flow (for example, I would have wanted to use Mijk van Dijk remix of the Hypnotist´s song, but it was way too hard to mix in that point of set). I also had to change the first track to Future. I would have wanted to use Velocity - Lust from the other side of the 12" but it had REALLY weird last half and was virtually impossible to mix into anything with my current skills.
Anyway here is the tracklist:
01 Velocity - Future (Superstition)
02 Jens - Loops & Tings (Remix) (Superstition)
03 Marmion - Schöneberg (Marmion Remix) (Superstition)
04 Paragliders - Paraglide (Blue Sky Mix) (Superstition)
05 Steve Maison Experience Movement - Let There Be Rhythm (Mix To Heaven) (Think Green)
06 Three´n One - Reflect (Misjah Remix) (Low Spirit)
07 Lords of Octagon - Open da House (DMD)
08 Virus - Sun (Jam El Mar Remix) (Perfecto)
09 Quench - Dreams (Sirius Music)
10 The Hypnotists - House is Mine ´96 (Baby Doc Remix) (Rising High)
11 Lunatic Asylum - Meltdown 2000 (Hitch Hiker & Dumontdt´s "Love" Mix (Nebula)
TEKKNO LINK
- edit -
Just listened this once trough and there is some slighly irritating mistakes but nothing too horrible. Bigger problem seems to be that I recorded this a bit too loud. Therefore some clipping occurs and the levels wander little.
During those times producers used to create very hard, strange and often long atmospheric intros and outros. They sound wonderfull if listened separately but make the continuous mix very complicated to create. The tempo was often pretty hard. I started this mix with negative pitch but still ended up having problems with some tracks that I had chosen. Few songs had also several excellent and actually quite different remixes and I had to make some compromises to manage to create good flow (for example, I would have wanted to use Mijk van Dijk remix of the Hypnotist´s song, but it was way too hard to mix in that point of set). I also had to change the first track to Future. I would have wanted to use Velocity - Lust from the other side of the 12" but it had REALLY weird last half and was virtually impossible to mix into anything with my current skills.
Anyway here is the tracklist:
01 Velocity - Future (Superstition)
02 Jens - Loops & Tings (Remix) (Superstition)
03 Marmion - Schöneberg (Marmion Remix) (Superstition)
04 Paragliders - Paraglide (Blue Sky Mix) (Superstition)
05 Steve Maison Experience Movement - Let There Be Rhythm (Mix To Heaven) (Think Green)
06 Three´n One - Reflect (Misjah Remix) (Low Spirit)
07 Lords of Octagon - Open da House (DMD)
08 Virus - Sun (Jam El Mar Remix) (Perfecto)
09 Quench - Dreams (Sirius Music)
10 The Hypnotists - House is Mine ´96 (Baby Doc Remix) (Rising High)
11 Lunatic Asylum - Meltdown 2000 (Hitch Hiker & Dumontdt´s "Love" Mix (Nebula)
TEKKNO LINK
- edit -
Just listened this once trough and there is some slighly irritating mistakes but nothing too horrible. Bigger problem seems to be that I recorded this a bit too loud. Therefore some clipping occurs and the levels wander little.
sunnuntai 23. tammikuuta 2011
Recent activities
It´s all gone, Pete Tong
A co-worker gave this movie for me to watch. I was happy because I have been thinking of checking this out some time already. It was bit of a disappointment though. I´m a huge fan of clubbing movies such as Human Traffic, 24 Hour Party People and Studio 54 and I was expecting something in the similar vein. In a way I got it but the big problem there was that I personally see clubbing as a exceptionally good way to express your self by dancing and trough music and this film was from the beginning only the debauchery of disgusting people in the dirty side of the game. The main character does not change into good person by logic transition. The evolving goes a bit imblausible ways. The best thing however is the producer who has all the really bad and really good qualities tied together. Overall it was ok entertainment but was lacking the credibility for actual change of the characters.
Tuulamon tortut (or Mokkapalat)
I got these pastries for my birthday present and I´m not able to describe how much I love the taste of them! Everyone seems to have their own name for the square pastries topped with cacao and butter cream and nonpareils. This time the nonpareils were citrus flavored to give them a slightly different edge. I could just munch hundreds of these! The big secret here is that you should put the fresh baked things into fridgerator and keep them there for two days. Taste multiplies in this time and the sweetness goes straight to the base.
Mystery videos
Can´t describe what this video is about. It´s way too deep into some insane businesses. The only important thing is that it has music made by Error vs Toshiba (though the videos says that it is solely made by Error which is wrong or even error).
A co-worker gave this movie for me to watch. I was happy because I have been thinking of checking this out some time already. It was bit of a disappointment though. I´m a huge fan of clubbing movies such as Human Traffic, 24 Hour Party People and Studio 54 and I was expecting something in the similar vein. In a way I got it but the big problem there was that I personally see clubbing as a exceptionally good way to express your self by dancing and trough music and this film was from the beginning only the debauchery of disgusting people in the dirty side of the game. The main character does not change into good person by logic transition. The evolving goes a bit imblausible ways. The best thing however is the producer who has all the really bad and really good qualities tied together. Overall it was ok entertainment but was lacking the credibility for actual change of the characters.
Tuulamon tortut (or Mokkapalat)
I got these pastries for my birthday present and I´m not able to describe how much I love the taste of them! Everyone seems to have their own name for the square pastries topped with cacao and butter cream and nonpareils. This time the nonpareils were citrus flavored to give them a slightly different edge. I could just munch hundreds of these! The big secret here is that you should put the fresh baked things into fridgerator and keep them there for two days. Taste multiplies in this time and the sweetness goes straight to the base.
Mystery videos
Can´t describe what this video is about. It´s way too deep into some insane businesses. The only important thing is that it has music made by Error vs Toshiba (though the videos says that it is solely made by Error which is wrong or even error).
perjantai 21. tammikuuta 2011
Error vs Toshiba - Green / Purple (Video)
This one is a rare Error vs Toshiba video. Heavily influenced by some german hardcore techno, Green / Purple is part of the more aggressive side of this semi-legendary boy band´s material!
Lego animation has always been big favourite of the ever experimenting posses repertuare. Following short video is also embedded in one of the guys music videos. I will upload that too if I can find it...
Lego animation has always been big favourite of the ever experimenting posses repertuare. Following short video is also embedded in one of the guys music videos. I will upload that too if I can find it...
keskiviikko 19. tammikuuta 2011
Nightmare Helsinki Records
I used to make music with trackers years ago (alone and with some friends). When I did things solo, I decided to create a "record label" to release the results. back then I lived in Helsinki, hence the name. The nightmare part comes from my favourite band C-Tank. Unfortunately most of my trax are now gone since my previous computer broke down and I couldn´t save the songs. I may have some of these backed up in some obscure cdr somewhere and if I happen to find them I will most definately put them available here. Anyway here´s the first seven covers of these releases (I know these are pretty amateurish but I don´t really care).
Actually about the not caring part, a little bit of philosophy: I personally think that it is more important to do things than worry about the quality of the output. If someone doesn´t like the stuff they are always allowed to ignore it. Perhaps I should write a separate essay about this thing and particularly from the music point of view.
I also have to admit that I was more concerned about inventing funny song titles and photoshopping covers than actually producing music. Therefore only part of the releases ever were finalized. I used to get music done only when I was producing it with my friends.
I will write more about the software and equipment we used later if I find at least some of the lost tapes....
Actually about the not caring part, a little bit of philosophy: I personally think that it is more important to do things than worry about the quality of the output. If someone doesn´t like the stuff they are always allowed to ignore it. Perhaps I should write a separate essay about this thing and particularly from the music point of view.
I also have to admit that I was more concerned about inventing funny song titles and photoshopping covers than actually producing music. Therefore only part of the releases ever were finalized. I used to get music done only when I was producing it with my friends.
I will write more about the software and equipment we used later if I find at least some of the lost tapes....
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