I thought this was quite interesting.
The ‘Amen Break’ as i found out today, is an excerpt from a drum solo lasting approximatly 5.2 seconds. The solo originally came from an uptempo 60’s funk b-side version of a gospal classic called ‘Amen Brother’ performed by Gregory Sylvester “G.C.” Coleman of ‘The Winstons’.

Although the drummer himself has never benefited from it, this 6 second sample (and modified versions of it) formed the back bone of hundreds, if not thousands of drum and bass/jungle and hip hop tracks. It’s influence was so wide spread it’s not completly unfair to say that drum and bass (not to mention a few other genres) probably wouldn’t have come about without it, at least not as we know it.

Whether you like this kind of music or not, it’s instantly recognisable.
Heres the original sample
And heres a selection of 60 differnt variations.

It wouldn’t be such a stretch to improvise along (or play some ambiguous groove you know at the right tempo) with one of these tracks looped, if your good at bass. Hey presto, a squarepusher is you!

I hope this guy didn’t get court marshelled

(requires sound)

I learned a new dance.

One of the talks i attended at Environ 2008 (which i later found out was the largest scientific conference in the country) presented by another UL postgrad, on the current trends of emission planning in ireland highlighted some interesting points i wasn’t aware of.
The are a number of factors that limit the growth of renewable power in ireland. First of all we’ve more or less reached saturation point when it comes to hydropower and secondly there are certain intrinsic problems with the use of wind power. The wind only blows sufficiantly to generate power a minority of the time, so whenever wind power is incorporated to meet growing energy demands; it has to be offset by an increase in a consistant power source, practically this means fossil fuels. So the promotion of wind power still facilitates a relativly large increase in fossil fuel production.
It seems the only way to meet emission guidelines in the Kyoto protocol was to offset this intrinsic growth of oil/gas/coal (primarily gas) with biofuels, regardless of the suggested disadvantages involved in their usage

I would assume the same disadvantages would apply to the use of other inconsistant power sources such as tidal power.

I survived the conference anyway, i enjoyed the first 2 days at least. The hotel was really nice.
I stayed in the Court Plaza Hotel in dundalk, literally at the other side of the carpark to DkIT, where the conference was held. My king size room was well decorated and equiped. Had a view of the dublin road out of my 7th floor window, a flat screen TV and a minibar where every tiny overpriced bottle or can was rigged to a sensor.
The TV came with a keyboard and interbutts access, however 7.50 europeans an hour seemed to be a bit excessive.
It also came with a selection of movies dubbed hollywood classics. For 5.50 per viewing you could watch Topgun, Aeroplane or the unmissable Uncle Buck.

Here what my room looked like (except most the red elements where green in my room). In the morning i got a voice mail on the desk phone. When i called up, it was 1 word “WELCOME”. Now why would they waste their guests time like that?

The food on the 13th floor restaurant was fantastic. Had dinner there twice (haddock and dover sole) and breakfast thrice. The breakfast buffet also incuded a breakfast chef who would cook up fried/poached eggs, omlettes, crepes and even smoked kippers on the spot, so you didn’t have to pick up greesey rubbery ones out from under a heat lamp. Also awesome quantities of coffee.

On the friday i had most the day off and walked into town to explore dundalk, it was mostly for sale. There where several shopping malls, but they where mostly empty. Many shops and a great deal of housing where closed or for sale, it definetly seemed like it had seen better days, one of the bigger shops in town was a pawn shop. Also if limericks cafe culture is “embryonic” then dundalk’s is practically geriatric.

If there was an anthem for dundalk it would be the 7inch version of ‘Chinook’ from the Aquarius single by boards of canada. It fits in perfectly with the chop of the looming wind turbine and the mobile phone masts that jut out of the place. The road into dundalk was filled with signs of urban decay, i looked over the side of a bridge to see literaly thousands of cans of harp larger scattered about the place.
The most tragically ironic scene was a billboard with giant golden letters on a purple background saying “LUXURY FOR ALL”, it was on the side of a ruined looking warehouse like gym, at the end of a wasteland.

I was very nervous before my presentation, and couldn’t sleep a wink the night before. I think it went ok though. I left straight afterwards, i’m certainly glad it’s over with.

News here

U2 must be so impoverished by illeagal downloads, especially since they had to send their business abroad to avoid taxes and can only afford to live on the top floor of a giant skyscraper named after them. Oh shame. Why if i see them on the street begging for alms i will dig deep into my pockets. At least i may give their manager some slightly less tenuous metaphores “You see an ISP is alot like a window, everytime you look through it, you are using part of the service you payed the glazier and the window company for. But if you use it to look into your next door neighbours patio and read his paper, then the glazier is responsible and should send part of his paycheck to the daily mail.”.

I’ve listend to alot of music in the past few months of sporadic posting, and rather then making a thread on all of them good and bad, i’ll make short list of a few good ones. Starting with:

Fragile - Yes (1971)

Despite the gaudy “Cans and Brahms” on track 2 this album could well be one of the best of all time. Fragile comes right smack in the middle of the 70’s prog rock legends hayday. It covers so many differnt styles from jazz, classic rock, acoustic, acapella, heavy metal and pure prog. You’d be hard pressed to find this kind of apptitude on such a wide range of techniques, even on a compilation album.
Infact my first positive experience of this album was at a jazz session in limerick. They played an instrumental adaptation of ‘Long Distance Run Around’, and it never seemed out of place. Of course i had know idea what it was then, but it says alot about a track when you can remember it for that long with no title, lyrics or artist to tie it down.
My favorite track is the 1st, ‘Roundabout’. Although it would lose in a close competition with ‘close to the edge’ from there next album.

At this time every member of yes was a master: Jon Anderson on vocals, Rick Wakeman on keyboard, Chris Squire on Bass, guitar showboat - Steve Howe … and i suppose the drummer as well. Soon afterwards however most of them had dissapeared, in a manner of speaking Yes didn’t really exist after the mid 70’s. The music of the fake band that followed, was showing a genuine decline as a result of the severe existance deficit.

This morning in a blind effort to turn my deliberatly detuned radio alarm clock from a state of unholy static to the temporary silence of ’snooze mode’; i punched a pint glass of water and spilt it on top of it. Not an intended nor effective method really, the alarm clock continued to buzz but now was impossible to turn off. After i unplugged it i went back to sleep for longer then i intended.

While waiting for the bus in town i popped into HMV to see if the New ‘The Mars Volta‘ album was out (the ‘the’ is important as otherwise latin american prog rock becomes german techno) which just came out yesterday.

I’m currently almost all the way through it, and first impressions are poor. Usually TMV’s albums take a bit of getting used too, but i gotta feeling this isn’t gonna be the case. The production seems to be poorer, it seems to close to the jam session chaos of there live performances. The new drummer appears to be much worse (too much cymbal amongst other things), they seem to have some irritating new fuzzbox on the guitars, the lyrics seem to be squashed into the music and Cedric the lead singer seems to use the most inappropriate effects at the the most inappropriate times. Alot of the latin influence seems to be traded in for some middle eastern/north african vibe, which although pulled off sometimes doesn’t work as well. All in all it sounds strangely reminicent of my alarm clock this morning.

The best song on the album is ‘Goliath’ which is essentially a faster version of the track ‘Rapid Fire Tollbooth’ from Omar Rodriguez Lopez’ solo album released last year (which was much better FYI).

TMV albums are usually derived from real life (or at least slightly embelished) stories. ‘Frances the Mute’ was based on a diary found down the side of a seat in a repossed car, ‘Deloused in the Comatorium’ was based on the interpretation of the dream like experience of a man who immediatly commited suicide after he woke up from a coma, and ‘Amputechture’ was derived from a number of bizzare newspaper articles.
‘The Bedlam in Goliath’ was apparently based on the demands and strange occurances brought about by a Ouiji like board that Omar the lead guitarist bought in Jereselum. The bad luck it apprently gave them eventually forced them to bury it and keep the location a secret. I could have sworn i heard in an interview that they originally aquired the board by trading it for a tab of acid, which may provide some insight into the validity of their claims.

It seems that the bad luck hasn’t ended for them, as this album is less then i expected from a usually very impressive band and one of my favorites.

Edit: Heres an interview on ‘The Sauce’ where they describe there own sound as “Like a donkey choking a waffle’

I have a presentation to perform at the upcoming Environ 2008 conference next sunday. It’ll be on my work to date and the rest of my upcoming research. I’d advise anyone not to attend, even if it’s only my particular presentation. The smaller my audience the better, especially since it’s my first presentation to the scientific community.
Needless to say, i’d rather not be doing it.

The title of this post is a reference to the section of the Turkish penal code, which essentially prevents someone from talking negativly about turkey. The rather vague law, despite only coming into existance in 2005 uses the term ‘denigrates’ which although usually interpreted as ‘insult’, means to blacken. This to me sounds like an even broader ranging term.
The most astounding thing about this law (which has been throughly used in up to 60 cases) is that it was introduced as part of a constitutional reform in order to bring turkey inline with EU standards for integration.
Essentially as i understand it, the article only brings the constitution in line with the nationalist sentiment with regards to turkish identity, the blank slate approach towards Ottoman history (notably the seldom mentioned and never accepted armenian massacre, the suspicians of which led to the league of nations coining the word ‘genocide’) and especially the idolisation of the national hero and undeniably the farther of modern turkey - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

How turkey thought making this defacto censorship rule into consititutional law, would allow them to join the EU is beyond me. Nothing seems to denigrate the world view of turkey more.

I just saw ‘i am legend’. If your looking for something slightly closer to the novel then the charlton heston movie ‘omega man’ then you’ll only be marginally appeased.

The first half of the film was fine and good. Lavishly detailed sceens of apocalypse + 3years newyork, no narration, a tantalising trickle of plot, an unseen lurking horrer. The film actually appears silently clever, not over explaining, letting the detail and a splatter of chatter explain will smiths (i foget the characters name) every day predicament.

Mild Spoliers
The turning point was the first tense moment. The situation was definently unsettling, too much so for the child behind me who i later discovered had just vomited. But then they broke the cardinal rules of monster movies and showed the enemy in broad daylight. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if it was convincing, but no. It was a completly CG creature almost identical to the CG scenes of Imhotep, the primary villain from the 1999 remake of ‘the mummy’. Honestly if they’d used some makeup and maybe some CG tweaking on a guy it would have been scarier.
I thought it wouldn’t be frightening again and was hoping for some considerable recovery in the plot to help the film out, however there was a saving grace yet to come. The scariest thing in the movie was… a mannequin. I think his name was Jerry. The most heart in mouth unsettling scene involving a shop window dummy since Kim Cattral’s movie career ended.
The old yeller moment was kinda sad too
end of spoliers

Overall it was an ok movie, lost in the end, but not bad. It is the third film version of the 50’s novel, but i’m not sure if it’s the best overall, certainly in some respects.