The Upbeats - Werewolf

HEAVY LIKE HELEPHANT.

So who was insinuating dance music was fassyhole music again?? 

P.S.: NOT DANCEABLE. 

Pandora - http://www.pandora.com/

Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?
Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.

...

To start things off, we'll play a song that exemplifies Local H's hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, minor key tonality, repetitive melodic phrasing and extensive vamping.

LOL. But a cool site. I might subscribe after the free 10 hours expire. 

Or noise, if you prefer.

Thanks to the increasing bleak and wintery season, I've been getting back into dark amb and related noises.

Recent purchases have included:

Beneath The Lake - Silent Uprising (Glass Throat Recordings)
Biosphere - Autour De La Lune (Touch Records)
Ex.Order - War Within Breath (Malignant Records)
Herbst9 - Buried Under Time And Sand (Loki Foundation)
Kriegsfall-U - Kriefsfall-U (ColdSpring)
PH2 - Resource (Dark Vinyl)
Profane Grace - Cast In The Mold Of The Ancients (Memento Mori)

Out of that lot, my favourites are the throbbing noise of Ex.Order, and the ambient drones of PHD2. Most of them are good though.

Also, in a rare outing from the pit, I travelled down to the big city to go to Coldspring's 15th Anniversary party. Quite entertaining seeing some of this stuff live, and an amusing atmosphere ;). Bands were: Kriegsfall-U (good performance of tribal industrial drumming with nihilistic vocals and approach), H.E.R.R. (entertaining and varied performance of stirring military and industrial music), and Von Thronstahl (a bit disappointing, frontman has good stage presence, but too heavy metal compared to their CDs, and sound problems too).

Got some more stuff on order as well. The dark amb / noise scene is brain-achingly bewildering at times. But there's some gems to be found I think ;). 

Check out Biosphere & Dethprod - Nordheim Transformed -- very wintery dark ambient album 

First, some nearly beatless ambient - I go for the drifting, psychedelic end of the genre more than the creepy dark stuff - though I can agree that Biosphere's an absolute master.

Ishq - Orchid
Ishvara - Magik Square of the Sun
Brian Eno and Robert Fripp - The Equatorial Stars
Delerium - Spheres
Pete Namlook and Mixmaster Morris - Dreamfish (on the FAX label, home of more ambient, synth, and dub than l'll ever fully explore)
Robert Rich - Below Zero / Calling Down the Sky
Maitreya - Telluric Waves
Global Communication - 76:14
Ornament - Bleu
H.U.V.A. Network - Distances
Aphex Twin - Select Ambient Works Vol. II


Then, some not-quite-pure-ambient. Trance, dub, and downtempo with heavy ambient stylings:

Carbon Based Lifeforms - Hydroponic Garden / The Path (download here: http://carbonbasedlifeforms.net/transfer/CBL_the_path.rar )
Solar Fields - Blue Moon Station / Leaving Home
Amorphous Androgynous - Tales of Ephidrina
Electric Skychurch - Sonic Diary
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms
Hesius Dome - Farewell Waltz
Mystery of the Yeti compilation
Infinity Project - Mystical Experiences
Shulman - In Search of a Meaningful Moment
Shpongle - Are You Shpongled?
Nodens Ictus - Spacelines
Saafi Brothers - Mystic Cigarettes / Midnight's Children
Spacetime Continuum - Sea Biscuit
Gus Till - Electric Oceans
Dub Trees - Nature Never Did Betray The Heart That Loved Her

That was fun to compile. 

don't forget "hallucinogen - in dub" then! 

Propagandhi - Potemkin City Limits
http://www.propagandhi.com
Political thrash-punk at it's most anti-American.
http://www.g7welcomingcommittee.net/mp3/motorleague.mp3
http://www.g7welcomingcommittee.net/mp3/history.mp3

Jesse Dangerously - Inter Alia
http://www.dangerously.ca
Fresh and creative hip-hop exists, Halifax's best MC proves it.
http://www.dangerously.ca/tracks/jessedangerously-damagedsenses.mp3
http://www.dangerously.ca/tracks/outfoxd.mp3 

Nice Grahf, seems like we have almost the same music taste :)
I'll try to add some more great albums to this list later. Meanwhile I can already say that I own and love almost everything from the Ultimae label!
http://www.ultimae.com 

is pretty good

really weird, but in a good way 

...are the last bastion of creativity in hip-hop.

MC Frontalot
http://www.frontalot.com/

MC Chris
http://www.mcchris.com/

Jesse Dangerously
http://www.dangerously.ca/

Optimus Rhyme
http://www.optimusrhyme.com/

Baddd Spellah
http://badddspellah.em411.com/

MC Hawking
http://www.mchawking.com/ 

Anyone like the Trip-hop by Tricky? 

On the other hand, I do like Tip-Hop by Tipper, which is top notch instrumental hip-hop with some beats so phat they make yo mom look anorexic. W3rd. 

An incredible rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" by a dude on a ukelele. About eight million times better than it sounds like it would be. I think I may have shed a tear about halfway through.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6896725274049507867&q=guitar 

As a person who had been playing guitar from the age of 6 to the age of 13 I found that video to be OHMYFUCKINGGODAMAZING :o Damn, the hair on my hands and my back rose when listening to that. 

Fuck I hate guitar music. Fuck you. 

Damn you. I just watched it again and it reminded me what a ridiculously stupid teenager I was at the age of 13, dropping out of GUITAR SCHOOL (after 6 years of playing) due to some stupid anti-parent-authority rebellion period I was going throw at the time 

Join up again if you feel that strongly about it. It's not too late unless you're dead.

Hi czg, fuck you too man! :) /me waves merrily 

Son Doobie - Doobie Deluxe (Battle Axe) - phatass hip-hop with a slight gangsta feel. Solid beats and some class tracks.

Rob The Viking - Beats To Pillage And Conquer By (Battle Axe) - instrumentals from various Battle Axe releases, top quality stuff, real dope beats with nice melodies and stuff.

Hardcell and Grindvik - Gainlane (Drumcode) - proper banging dancefloor techno for a bit of change, Fric you'll like this.

P.S. TipHop is still excellent FFS everyone get it. 

...I've been listening to:

- Studio solo recordings of Tim Skold (bass player from Marilyn Manson). Seems like a very talented guy, tracks "I Hate" and "The Point" are exceptionally good.

- "The Starwheel" from Kammarheit. Dark Ambient awesomeness.

- The debut album of a finnish act Turmion K�til�t called "Hoitovirhe". Industrial, very Rammstein-like and overall very decent stuff.

- "Karma" from Delerium helps me relax. 

That I've done
http://hosting.alanwake.net/tcf/

"a rare warmth" and "mohabbat"

Also does anyone listen to Massive Attack, Tricky, Martina Topley-Bird (trip-hop) ? 

you have nice production going there. Not quite enough happens for my taste, but then this type of music isn't my area of expertise. I liked the end of 'a rare warmth'; it builds convincingly and goes somewhere.

overall, nice mood; especially in mohabbat. I think the 'sounds of the sea' effect you used in 'a rare warmth' needs to be changed to something else though: seems kind of tacky... they've got that effect on little casio keyboards but you've got a sexy Fantom.

Cool backstory on your great-grandfather by the way. Nice thing to be able to write songs about. I'd do the same but my great-grandad ran a mill. What a shoddy concept-album that'd be. 

I'm from Bristol, which is pretty much the place where Trip-Hop started, so I've been exposed to quite a lot of it. I like it but I'm not really an expert to be honest. The only related thing I've heard recently is Beth Gibbons' (the singer for Portishead) solo album. That's not even really trip-hop anymore, but if you like Portishead, you'll like that. 

Thanks for your insightful critique - I look forward to that more than "it was cool!" :)

To clarify a few things. The ocean-waves sound is something I contemplated for quite some time. Unfortunately I cannot remove them, as I no longer have the source WAV's - from a rather frustrated fit of deletion (although it did solve my issue of having 4 GB of raw files to backup :P)

Also, not sure what you mean by Cool backstory on your great-grandfather by the way. Nice thing to be able to write songs about -- I just felt I had to name what I've got, so I named it after him. The songs, if you can call them that (I consider them more like soundscapes) are just typical, sonic manifestations of life experiences and moods :)

A lot of movie scores influence me, sometimes I write with a scene in my head. Thanks for listening. 

By saying I just felt I had to name what I've got, I meant naming the humble studio after him. (I thought you might've mentioned 'studio' in your post and seem to have confused it all with the concept of an album)