Lair of the Asp

Here's Wetwire's interview with Hate Dept. . Their song Release It was one of my favorite songs from the last couple of years. And I especially like his answer to this question: What do you think of the current synthpop craze? Hate Dept.: Hmm. What Synthpop craze? To me, a craze is when a movement gets marketed to mainstream consumers who then accept it and embrace it. The Faint and Ladytron seem to be at the top of the heap. However the tops of the heap are miles behind Interpol and even further behind White Stripes, who can't touch Incubus that only sell a fraction of what Eminem can do. As for the music that gets classified as 'Sythpop', I like some of it. I've always liked dance music that is song based, so the better the song, the more I like it. I still play my Tears For Fears and early Duran Duran records.

I've been checking out a NYC-based and self proclaimed Gothtonic duo called Neikka RPM , I guess mainly to see if I want to take the time to do a remix of one of their new songs. Lo and behold the 1 minute samples they have of some of their older songs are quite impressive.

Zoya , a DJ at KVCU Radio AM 1190 , hosts a Gothic/Industrial/Dark Music show called "Remission" on Friday evenings 11:00 PM-1:00 AM, it is definitely worth checking out.

Wrapped in Wire industrial/goth ezine, it has tons of CD reviews and some interesting news items, it looks like it's updated about once a month, only slightly more than I write in my blog these days, but worth a look none the less.

A Sisters of Mercy tablature site , now that's a novel concept, it's kind of interesting to see how others would play these songs on the guitar, for example I play Lucretia my Reflection with the the first 8 notes of the bass/guitar riff on the open A string rather than the 5th fret of the E string, same note, but my way rings better and I'm pretty confident that I'm playing it the way that it is recorded. Anyway, fun stuff...

I got my new CD of Critical Mass 4 from Metropolis Records , an Industrial Electro compilation CD, in the mail today. I'm listening to it loudly on headphones, it sort of restores my faith that there is new music coming out that is worth listening to out there still. Mostly really strong songs, my main issue with a couple of the songs is the singing, it's way too fey sounding for my tastes, not that everything needs to sound like cookie monster death metal vocals, but some manliness is a good thing, but hey you can't please everyone with everything. Overall the CD gets harder as it progresses which is a nice thing, sort of easing you into the scene of sonic assault.

Wired has an interesting article about how the laptop has changed the way music is recorded and how it is effecting recording studios. Most of this seems pretty obvious to me, but it is increadible to see what you can do with portable computer that only 10 years ago would have cost 100,000s of dollars to achieve.