Have you grown tired of Last.fm, Pandora and the rest of the web radio services? Have a look at Musicovery. Apart from the obvious music service, it offers a nice interface for choosing music based upon emotions. Just select a genre, and then select a custom mood based upon four basic moods: Dark, Energetic, Calm and Positive. It also features a visualization of the music path.
I just got back from a Nine Inch Nails concert in Stockholm. It was so great I started to cry. But even more interesting than the concert is the marketing hype surrounding this tour. It all started with letters in concert t-shirts from the current tour, spelling out a domain name: iamtryingtobelieve.com. A visit to this odd site introduces the mystical substance “parepin”, a fictional additive supposedly added to the water in the future.
The first SAMA was held in 1998. Ten years later, the time had come to close this chapter of music history and visit the very last SAMA. All in all, it felt like the last night with the gang. Alexander Hofman was conférencier, repeating his job from the first one in 1998. Covenant won the award for Best Artist of the year, just as they did in 1998. Anyone spotting a pattern here?
Just as last year, it’s time to take a look my favorite albums released in 2006. And the winners are…
For every band there is a cover band. A lot of people hate cover versions of their beloved songs, since cover bands often manage to mess up a perfectly good song. However, there are some versions which bring forth new dimensions to a song. Here are some of my favorites.
Even though I rarely listen to Depeche these days, they’ve meant a great deal to me for over 20 years. My first experience of Depeche was the vinyl records of “Speak & Spell” and “Construction Time Again” in the early eighties. After the somewhat disappointing Exciter album they returned four years later with an album last autumn.
It has been a very dark autumn with the all-too-early demise of my favorite club Plasticity, as well as the death of Spacelab, Killing Music and Synthbar.
SAMA 2006 (Scandinavian Alternative Music Awards) just got a boost as Das Ich, VNV Nation, Iris, Spetsnaz and Seize has joined the lineup of De/Vision, Strasse and Sturm Café.
Just as last year, it’s time to take a look at the best albums released in 2005. And the winners are…
The latest issue of Bon magazine features a homage to Depeche Mode, where 15 of the world’s leading creators have been asked to interpret a song by the band, resulting in 50 pages of black fashion. Even though the 200 pages in total mostly consists of commercial advertising it’s still quite entertaining.
