Lair of the Asp

"The Greater Wrong of the Right" by Skinny Puppy is one of my favorite albums of 2004. Here's an summery of Skinny Puppy's writing philosophy from an article in href="http://remixmag.com/artists/remix_dark_arts/">Remix magazine that I think says it all... “We never sit down to write anything commercial, to write anything that really caters to any trend in music or any particular direction,” Key concludes. “We let ourselves be ourselves and just go back and try and discover why we make music to begin with. So in the end, I think there is a vibe that comes when you're not trying to fit in with a certain genre. We're not hip-hop. We're not house. We're not jungle. We're not a certain type of labeled vibe. People would like to call us industrial. But I think that's maybe a term that has come since. We just continue to do what we do because of the big question mark in the sky.”

New Order news and no one has died or been hurt. See I knew good news would surface at some point... New Order have revealed the title of their next album: "Sugarcane". The album, due for release in February 2005, was produced by Tore Johansson who previously has worked with Saint Etienne. The release will be the follow-up to the successful "Get Ready", which was released in 2001. No live dates have been announced so far however Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner have been scheduled for a DJ set at the Arc Club, in Brighton UK on New Year's Eve.

Interesting. It's always a good trick to rerelease things remastered and/or in a new format to make more money off of them for very little extra investment... Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" will be released as a deluxe edition hybrid CD through Universal on November 22nd. This two disc package features redesigned artwork / packaging, plus a hybrid CD / SACD with the original album in stereo, high resolution stereo and high resolution 5.1 digital surround sound. Additionally the second bonus disc features a brand new compilation of remixes, B-Sides, demos and non album tracks including previously unreleased material. Please note, this release will play on both regular CD players and SACD players too. Also expected is "The Downward Spiral" as a Dual Disc. Dual Disc is a new two-sided disc format combining a CD on one side with a DVD on the other. This CD / DVD Dual Disc includes the entire 1994 album remastered in CD stereo, plus videos, image gall...

John Peel is a pretty big name it's a great sorrow to see him pass, he definitely loomed large in my musical upbringing since I have been into underground British music as long as I have been into to music. I don't want to have this become only a blog for bad news, but this sort of thing seems to happen in bunches. From the NYTimes.com: John Peel, BBC Radio Disk Jockey, Dies at 65 By BEN SISARIO Published: October 26, 2004 John Peel, the BBC radio disc jockey who was a champion of innovative and independent music for nearly four decades, died on Monday night in Cuzco, Peru. He was 65 and was a longtime resident of Great Finborough, a village in Suffolk. The BBC reported that he suffered a heart attack while on holiday with his wife, Sheila. A broadcasting icon in Britain and perhaps the only British D.J. known by name to American rock fans, Mr. Peel had been on the BBC's Radio 1 since its inception in 1967 and had a reputation for playing cutting-edge...

This seems like a good way to go about doing things, if people bootleg your shows, put out your own of better quality and make it an non-issue. This is taken from Gary Numan's website Nuworld.co.uk While I have no wish to stir up that bootleg debate again I do need to tell you about our plan to film all future Numan gigs. As some of you may have seen recently an investigation has revealed that many of the more serious bootleggers are highly successful businesses turning over multi millions in revenue each year from illegal recordings, DVD becoming a major part of that business. So, our attempts to thwart such endeavours but still give the fans what they want is to film all future Numan shows ourselves and make them availale to fans, primarily via the web site. These DVD 'bootleg' releases will be completely legal and will have all the required clearances and licences to press that are necessary. They will, however, be filmed with a minimum of three cameras, sometim...

This is a pretty funny but long article. And people wonder why politicians and bureaucrats have a bad name... In the winter of 2002, with the federal budget stretched thin, President George W. Bush asked Congress to give back money that lawmakers had earmarked for local projects so it could be used instead to fund the Pell grant program, which helps needy students pay for college. One of the local projects that had drawn particularly harsh scrutiny was a $273,000 federal grant that U.S. Rep. Sam Graves had procured to study goth culture in Blue Springs, Missouri. "It's one of those priorities that my constituents asked me to fight for," Graves told an Associated Press reporter at the time. Congress refused to return the money, and that spring the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste singled out the goth grant as one of the worst examples of pork-barrel spending its staff had encountered as it filtered through thousands for its 2002 Pig Book. Soon,...

Good news for some, hideous news for others. Either way it's going to happen and we'll be up to our eyeballs and ears in "wildboys" just in time for Xmas... NEW YORK (Billboard) - It may have taken 21 years to get a new album from Duran Duran's original lineup, but it took the five members only 24 hours to decide to get back together. Duran Duran's new album, ``Astronaut,'' which Epic Records/Sony Music will release Oct. 12 in North America and Oct. 11 in other territories, is the first studio album from the original lineup since 1983's ``Seven and the Ragged Tiger.'' ``Astronaut'' reunites lead singer Simon LeBon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, guitarist Andy Taylor, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor.Roger and Andy Taylor quit the band in the mid-1980s; John Taylor exited in 1997. Although LeBon and Rhodes continued Duran Duran with various lineups, the question always remained: Would the original members ever get ...