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.

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.

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.

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.

So, I wanted to do something with it. Building a google maps stye application would have been easy but I tried for something different. I first started by building a script that would collect and store the data (number of bikes and slots available for each station) using RRD. Graphs are nice, but it wasn’t helping much seeing the whole picture. So instead, using a background image generated from OpenStreetMap I built a time-lapse animation of the stations’ usage.

All the code I wrote is available on my Github repository, except for the animation bit, were I currently used iMovie.

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.

Would I buy one? Not yet. Although I’m a good target, I think that this is still a bit expensive (not even speaking of the cash cow represented by the various storage capacities, and what about the OS updates?) for what it can do and my pocket are not that deep. I would rather keep a laptop instead, at the time being, for home usage. Hopefully, in one or two years, it will get better feature-wise. Would it get more “open” to other apps? Not sure Apple would let go.

However, I think this represents a kick in the nuts for the eReader market. Many of those compete on the features and in the end are expensive old-fashioned (b&w) devices. If I had to choose between an Apple iPad and any 10” eReader, at the same price, I think the LCD screen would win this time. I don’t know if they could compete directly with the iPad. Build a cross-over device with ePaper and touch capabilities at the same time? Not likely to win. My guess is that they would better try to go against the touch/iphone, with simple/cheap 6” devices, where they can’t be reached by glossy and battery-hungry gadgets.

About a week and a half ago, I was seeing Magma in concert for the second time. The first part was filled by L’Effet Défée which provided us with a strange mix of sounds: Vocals (and samples), Harp (yes, harp!), Bass (with a bow) and noise/hardcored drums (the guy lost a cymbal and broke a stick, it can’t be much hardcore). In the end, it gave a powerful and refreshing mix, with a kind of Björk-meets-Magma result.

Next came Magma. They played a powerful set, although I was a bit disappointed because compared to the previous performance I saw, I thought that the bass and guitar were less overwhelming in their sound and presence. I think the guitar was a bit low in the mix and there was only one real solo. But I still love watching Christian Vander play the drums with ease and at the same time a lot of power (he too lost a cymbal, that wasn’t the night for the drums techs).