Seb's weblog

I went to the Rennes Airshow yesterday, taking two cameras and lenses in order to grow my collection of aircraft pictures (and because I’m also an aircraft buff). The weather was a bit mixed, dark clouds with small patches of Sun (and a cold wind). As usual, the result with my Sigma 55-200 got ugly most of the time when the target was moving since this lens is slow (or I don’t know how to use it correctly, maybe), even though a few shots got ok (even if a bit soft). The 105mm was a bit short most of the time, and I wished I could reach a bit farther instead of having to crop most pictures, but it saved the day, as usual. My favorite would be the Spitfire Mk XIX, although the Red arrows offered me some timing exercises.

On the music side, I was recently pleasantly surprised by both Red Sparowes with their album The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies The Answer (which is not that heavy/loud), “Russian Circles” with Geneva (heavier/louder), Keelhaul with Keelhaul’s Triumphant Return to Obscurity and Animals as Leaders. It feels like there’s a trend here…

So, let’s arrive on time, jumping a bit for the fun of it, at Bercy to discover that for people with a ticket for the pit must go around the place to find the correct queue. Well, alright. But the weird thing is that the opener almost started on time! This year, Murderdolls were the only opening band at Bercy and they had a far better reception and effect than both bands 4 years ago. Punk-rock kind of music, make-up vs spit kind of stage presence. Effective rock n’ roll, not quite unforgettable anyway, but enjoyable anyhow (and I might even consider looking up their music sometime)

They played for about 70-75 mins, it took about 30 mins to setup the stage and then began the wait. Most people around me knew about it and didn’t really expect G&R to arrive early on stage. This is the interesting thing about G&R concerts: people will gladly alternate between booing and chanting and they even broke out the “hola” (lame as it was at first). The wait music included a bit of Soundgarden and a lot of Tool (but I can’t imagine MJK playing live in those conditions nowadays, given how many people smoked freely that night). (more…)

Since I often use to tinker with guitars, I wondered how I could publish “stuff” that I would record. I didn’t want to use flash (because flash ought to die, Die, DIE!) and I didn’t want to rely on a third-party (that would most likely try to use flash to do so).
But HTML5 has been out for some time now, most browsers I use support it nowadays, so maybe it’s time to try it in public:

The bad news here, if it works (not for safari?), is that I have to encode it twice for compatibility, but it’s not like it matters really much. And also, yeah, I think (or certainly hope somehow) that it won’t work with most (all) versions of Internet Explorer (die, Die, DIE!). Not that I care about this, in fact.

Last year, I started a new quest for the perfect pick. Or something like this. With my first batch, the winners were a mix of Dunlop Jazz III and Dunlop Ultex Sharp. With the second batch, the winners were (surprise) the Dunlop Ultex Jazz III, which combined the size and form factor of the Jazz III, with the robustness of the Ultex, and (even more suprisingly, somehow), the Planet Waves Black Ice. But soon the latter lost its crown, because I only had medium gauge picks of this kind while I, not long after that, got ride of “light” (9-42) strings in favor of regular (10-46) on (almost) all my instruments, and those picks were a bit too thin with this setting.

So, I recently had the opportunity to get heavy gauge Black Ice picks and I thought they would be the clear winners, except for one thing: V-Picks. (more…)

hoping Danko Jones will open for G&R in Paris (as it has been announced for Dublin 2 weeks before and Bucharest the week after)

I have rarely seen so few people at a concert, even if the Ubu is small, it was almost scary. I thought this was only concerning the first part and people would come for the main band, but there wasn’t many more people then. It gave a somewhat more intimate effect, but I feel a bit sorry for both bands and they gave us a very nice experience in such harsh conditions.

I already talked about L’Effet Défée which had already opened for Magma in last december. No cymbals or sticks were harmed this time, but they again played a nice set.

Slug plays a pop-jazz-rock kind of music which is interesting, but I thought there wasn’t enough “high” moments in the concert to my taste. Not to dismiss the others, but I think Antoine Paganotti on drums was the most interesting on stage, even though Emmanuel Borghi was almost close to waking up at some point and that would too have been interesting.

Damn, I wonder if that’s just the use of very low sounds or if this concert wasn’t a bit over the decibels limitation; at times it was like my chest was exploding.

First first part was assumed by a guitar and bass hardcore duo. At first I was a bit non-plussed by effects on the voice (as usual, viking style) and by the over-use of a backing track, but they nevertheless hold the stage with style, fighting a really dull crowd. I’m in admiration.

Second first part was assumed by a DJ (whose name also escapes me). I’m not a specialist of this kind of music but it was quite enjoyable, with lots of BOM-BOM to resonate inside oneself.

Then came Atari Teenage Riot, and as there was a lot more people than when Alec Empire came “alone” at the same place a few years ago, and after taking off his shirt during the first two songs, he was able to do some crowd surfing without much trouble (even though he kept his wired mic— not that easy to do!). I’m not a fan of the mix, but there were a lot of sounds, it moved, it rocked and it felt good.

(there was a fourth act after that and some guy even asked me if I knew about it, but really it was already a bit late and I had some road ahead, so I didn’t even try to stay).

Anyway, one thing I keep wondering is how/why people can go to such loud concerts without any ear protections. Yeah, it may be more fun without and I’m just an old fart, but I’m thankful for my earplugs.

It has been quite some time since I last posted anything about music that I discovered: a blank music period followed by a blank posting period. There are some that are worth mentioning (The Absence, Centaurus-A, Megadeth’s Endgame), and then there are those that truly impressed me.

For example, After The Burial combines really brutal and heavy (8 strings baby!) sound with great technical and innovative syncopated guitar handling. Take for example Cursing Akenaten, it starts slowly with an oriental sounding melody, then there’s the heavy wall of guitars before the two mixes up; And then, there’s the double-time that just blows your mind. Or you could be misguided by the first seconds of Aspiration: Is that 80’s hair metal calling? But beware of the blowing heads that quickly follow. And there’s Ometh that pumps you forward so much with its melody/solo that just counterpoints the rhythm elements.

But if you want to go the old guys, there’s also Dream Theater latest opus, Black Clouds & Silver Linings. I kind of like their previous work but I wasn’t really a fan, mostly because of James LaBrie’s voice, but I was somehow amazed by the way they came full circle on this release. There are a lot of influences on this album, either from themselves, featuring themes and elements from previous albums (the most prominent for me would be The Glass Prison) but also from other bands: not exact riffs or melodies but some kind of sound and way of playing, just like discovering a good wine. When I listen to this album, I hear Pantera or Metallica and that’s without counting the covers included in extended versions. And obviously, they still excel technically.

Just before I talk about the subject of this post, I have to mention that I saw the TraLala band last month, but I didn’t post about it since even though it was a nice concert, the crowd was one of the worst in this setup. And I feel sorry for those who were fans but didn’t have ear protections and hence spent half the concert with their hands on their ears.

So, yesterday I saw Andy McKee at L‘Étage: the guy was really cool and sweet, playing instrumental songs on acoustic guitar and harp guitar, adding percussion sounds using the guitar body and using a lot of different guitar technics (harmonics, taping…) which gave an impressive result. He also used a lot of different tunings (even breaking a string while retuning — I feel less alone). Highly recommended to guitar fans.

First part was assumed by Deadcell and maybe they should have abstained. Some kind of Ministry/KMFDM sound, mostly with a (bad) recorded backtrack and strange videos in the background (I had a problem associating correctly the images of Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Religion and the USA, but that may be just me). The girls on guitars were kinda cute, but I spent maybe 5 mins trying to see if their instruments were plugged in.

Punish Yourself may be uglier, but at least they sounded far better (even if this time I had a doubt with the drummer vs the backtrack). They were screaming, painted, flaming and moving the people around and that was good. Soundwise, they’re a bit of mix between punk, rockabilly (I’m pretty sure to have clearly heard that influence in one or two songs) and hard techno. Stage-wise, it was also really nice to watch: lasers, flames and body paint.

Overall, it was just a bit short (1h and 1:25 respectively) but it felt good in the end.