OK someone help me beat level six, I found this stupid game that someone posted on one of my rss feeds and now its driving me crazy, I cant spend anymore time messing with it so I figured I would ask my readers to help me out! I have always been a sucker for interesting puzzles.

With the new iZilla you can even rip vinyl with its built in slot loading record drive! Nice!

ThinkGeek.com has some great april fools day products up on their site. I'm not sure how long they will be there so check them out while they are around.

Link

After listening to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Planet Japan I checked out their featured blog of the week and it just happened to be a really amazing site full of photos and commentary from Japan. The photos really are pretty amazing work and I am happy to share this link with you here so take a minute and check out whats happening over on SushiCam.com!

Link

Today I was out working at a show and I had my camera sitting around on stage, I had my jacket laying over top the camera to hide it. I forgot that it was under there and as I pulled my jacket down off the stage my camera came rolling along behind it and took a sudden leap to the floor about 5 feet below. The sound as it hit the concrete was nothing short of hair raising. The camera seemed a little freaked out and it crapped its pants as it hit the ground, well almost. The battery came spilling out and the little spring that holds it in does not hold it in there as well anymore but lucky for me that is the extent of the damage. It could have fallen onto the lens and crushed it as I have experienced in the past with camera drops but it fell onto the corner of the camera body.

If anything, this is pretty reassuring to me as a camera owner knowing that it can survive such a fall. I am generally pretty rough with the things I own and I expect them to hold up under pressure. Ah, and for those of you wondering what kind of camera I use it is currently a Canon 20D which is simply an amazing little gem of a camera. I love Canon cameras, especially their digital offerings, in my opinion they have the best digital cameras around so anyone in the market for a new digital camera. I would suggest Canon.

This thing is no joke! Midas went alllllll the way and then a little more. Makes all the others look kind of... puny.



link

I recently found that a dig.com story that made it up to the front page contained a link to this site and through that I have had a pretty large spike in traffic as of late. Luckily the servers are purring right along and I have plenty of bandwidth to go around. The post has also seemed to have spread out among quite a few other blogs as well including the great software blog, Download Squad. So to all you new faces around here, I hope you enjoy the site.

Original story (thanks to joeyinteractive for the link)
Digg Story

Those of you who have had trouble with the feeds around twistedsun.net can rejoice because I think I have ended the feed woes once and for all.

The weblog should have photos and all links in other feeds should now start to work correctly. Why oh why did I not figure this out until now?

What a great shirt....



link (via boing boing)

Well if these little spy photos are any indication at all the ps3 appears to be quite a monster when it comes to graphics. But in light of these amazing looking snaps lets remember that the gaming industry is on a repeat cycle when it comes to originality in gaming and I can only hope that in the end it comes to innovation and entertainment more so than pretty graphics and shock value. Rant off...

(by the way these are supposedly form Ratchet and Clank)

Well, thanks for asking! Spring hit my life like running head on into a brick wall and my calendar has filled up faster than an Apple store during a "buy one get one free" sale. No need to worry though, I will have some great new desktops up in the friends section in the coming days as well as at least one music review and I have enough bootlegs collected to get another podcast episode out early next week.

In the mean time have a peak into a show I mixed recently featuring bands 'The Drift' and 'Man Man'. It was a really great show and I had a chance to try out my favorite new mic the ev/blue Raven as a vocal mic and ill tell you they make amazing live vocal mics! Really rich sounding vocals and I barley had to touch the eq at all as far as feedback is concerned. I will have a hard time deciding between using them for guitar amps or vocal mics at future shows! I also had the chance to see what EV's new ZX1 speakers can do which are these cute little 8" speakers. I paired them with a powered 15" sub and man did they sound great! They really put out a lot of volume for such a small speaker, I was amazed that they could compete with the band because they had a really loud stage presence. I remember before the show cranking them up and one of the band members couldn't believe that they got so incredibly loud and still sounded as good as they did. I remember him saying something along the lines of " Damn! where are you hiding the rest of the speakers! Those things are Loud as ____" Ha, Oh how I love the things I get myself into. I just love the feeling I get when I hear a great sounding mix from a simple rig at a live show. So anyways, on with some photos form the show.











Oh and here is one extra image from a night ago when I set up a make shift photo studio to shoot a publicity shot for this mexican group called kstigo that I have done a few odds and ends of design work for in the past. It was pretty fun to shoot them, they all dressed up in matching clothes for the shot and got in some great poses for me to shoot. Really nice guys! The lighting was some really bright stage lighting that was shining onto some partitions that had some reflective tarps draped over them. Thanks must be given to my dad for that idea, it worked out really well.



See you again soon with some new content.

I had the chance to run the sound for a really cool show this past sunday. It was the closing night of a film festival and they had a group called the Alloy Orchestra play a show. What makes the group unique is the type of performance they give. There was a huge movie screen set up in the auditorium they played in from the previous showings in the film festival and what the band did was play the soundtrack to an old silent film. From what I can tell on their website they have quite a few films that they can perform with. The film that was used the night I saw them was a pirate film and it was really amazing! The film is called The Black Pirate and is considered to be the first great pirate movie and after seeing it I can see why. It seemed to lay out the groundwork for other pirate films such as that disney film the pirates of the whatever. I would suggest you check them out if you ever see them playing a show in your area.

This visitor highlighted above sure found the site in an interesting way.

This has to beone of t he funniest search strings that I have ever seen in my stats. Someone came here looking for "desktops you can shoot and catch on fire and blow up" and somewow ended up here on twistedsun.net. Hope you found what you were looking for!

so tell me visitors... how did you discover twistedsun.net?

Here is a lovely story about a basketball player that had his eye pop out of its socket. The article goes into talking about what you should do if this happens. I think its an entertaining read, odd, but entertaining none the less.

link

Yes, literally cool. If you read back in the weblog you will find a post about someone in Japan with a personal site that linked to twistedsun.net. I had discovered this through my web stats and as I looked through his website I found some really great photos. Thanks to google translator I sent him an email asking for permission to use one of his photos as a desktop in the friends area of this site and he understood the translation enough to give me permission to use the photo as well as a description for the post!

I am happy to post this beautiful shot of fresh snow from Tokyo. The photo makes me feel nice and cool and I love the contrast and lighting in this shot. ありがとう Kazuma!

I would also like to take a second here and thank everyone who has submitted desktops for my friends section! The recent Support of this section has been wonderful and I look forward to seeing it grow in the future! I have had the opportunity to post some great photography from all around the world so to the friends of twistedsun.net, Thank You!

There are four new desktops in the friends section of the desktop area. They were shot by Fabian Gehweiler of Munich, Germany. Two of the images were taken in Thailand and one of them was taken in Laos while on a two month trip to these countries. They are really nice images and I am happy to present them to you here on twistedsun.net. Head over to the desktops area and check them out!

There is a new soundscape in the podcast. A description of the show can be found on the podcast page or in the show discription within the podcast. A new music episode will be posted later this week.

I recently found this Japanese site linking to mine and I found this text surrounding the link:

2006.3.3
ここのサイトで公開されている写真がどれも最高！で、大好きなサイト。カッチリした絵の中に暖かさもあり、それぞれに意味のある感じ。デッカくして美術館で見たい感じ。写真を撮る時のお手本としているサイトの一つこちらです。沢山見れるし、ダウンロードも出来るので、パソコンの背景にどうぞ。

Thanks to the miracle of modern translation pages this is all I know about the post:

2006.3.3
Is open with the sight here which photograph which the highest! So, favorite sight. The feeling which is also the warmth in the picture which cutch Lee is done respectively has mind taste. You saw at the decker paragraph て fine arts museum to be, feeling. When taking the photograph, one this way of the sight which has been made model it is. The Sawayama seeing れ る to do, because also download is possible, please in the background of the personal computer.

So this little writing about my desktops seems really nice at least!

I am sure there is a better translation to be heard so is there anyone out there who speaks/ reads Japanese that may be able to shed some more light on this mysterious link to my site? It's a language I would love to learn but I'm a long way off from that so in the mean time any help beyond what I have here would be greatly appreciated!

Link

I recently re-discovered this gem of an album. This has got to be one of my favorite alt-rock albums to come out of the 90's. Not unlike Nirvana, Local H, The Gin Blossoms, and other 90's rock artists that were big in the heyday of grunge rock Failure was one of the best bands to be born of that era and Fantastic Planet was their best album in my opinion. They were not to big over in the US which was most likely due to the fact that they were a British group (I think). This album is such a solid collection of songs I would say that this is a must for anyone into the 90's rock scene and for any fan of good music in general. It's a classic in my mind and I highly recommend you check this one out!

Note on the link: Unfortunately this album is not available on iTunes but two other albums of theirs is available and you should check them out to get the general idea of what they sound like. The other albums of theirs are great too but I would keep an eye out for Fantastic Planet at your local cd shop. It's not one you will want to miss!

iTunes Link:

Desktops are up in both the desktops section and the friends section so be sure to check them out! There is also a new review and a podcast is on its way sometime soon.

By the way you should see a lot more activity in the friends desktop section soon so look out for that! I have some good stuff lined up starting with what is there now so thanks to Val and Dave for kicking that section off right. I will set up an rss feed for the friends page as well if you are interested and most importantly if you would like a photo of yours posted on twistedsun.net please let me know!

One last bit of news, I know there is an issue with images showing up in this rss feed so to try and fix this I might be renaming the feed so please come back in the next day or two to update your feed links!

Thats all for now!

On a recent trip to an apple store I had the chance to hear an Apple Hi-Fi and I now think that everyone is crazy that said that the Hi-Fi is a big speaker system. I thought it was relatively small. Not to much bigger than any other ipod stereo of that size and much much smaller than most small stereo systems. I could see there being more overall functionality to the device like rca inputs or video outs of some sort as well as a built in airport option for streaming music! why didn't they add that anyways?

So the most important thing really is the sound which I thought was good but not great. I thought that adding the treble boost in the EQ settings helped the overall sound quite a bit. The overall sound is on par with other systems on that high end level. I found that a lot of people complained that there was not a lot of high end response but I would beg to differ, although its not super crisp I found it more than adequate. One thing that i thought pretty drastically improved the hi end of things was to remove the front grill from the speakers which let it shine! The fabric they used was a bit to thick I suppose.

So what I think about the pricing. I think they aimed a big high on the price but I also think that they wanted to enter the market on that end. This way the other speaker makers couldnt complain to much because they still probably sell tons of systems to the people who don't want to shell out $350. It is a really solid feeling device though and I think worth the money if you are in the market for a new stereo and you have an ipod already.

Well at least thats my two cents anyways!

"This was superficially just a nice-sounding early Yamaha analogue monosynth...Then we turned it over and saw the beautifully-done inscription for an Aphex Twin record release... A little more research, and we found that these were the sleeve notes Richard inscribed and then photographed for one of his major releases ever, if not his biggest ever release: Selected Ambient Works Volume II. As well as the main inscription, there is... a false start on the main inscription, in the gulley at the back right of the bottom of the synth, which reads 'Written and prod'.

Wow! I saw this on Music -Thing. Link.

OK kids, heres what we are going to do this time around. Dig through your records and find some old acid, you know, classic sounds of the genera and body moving beats. Now dig up a bit of modern day IDM, maybe a little dancehall and ambient to spice things up. Now head out into the yard and get a bucket of mud. Take these ingredients and head on into the kitchen. Get out your blender or food processor of choice, today I will be using the VitaMix Professional Series. Take the records and cram them in, don't worry to much about them, trust me here. Once you have the records in the blender go ahead and set it to high and turn it on. Let them get nice and silky smooth, and then turn the blender down to a medium speed. Now that the mixture is thoroughly blended take your mud and measure out 3 full cups. Slowly add the mud and grime and let this blend for a full 20 minutes.

The result should be the delicious mixture of an ep called Throttle Furniture. OK, so if you don't feel like destroying your old records to get the album I would suggest you head over to bleep.com and check out the store bought variety of this delicacy.

Clark, aka. Chris Clark, has been releasing music on Warp records for a while now and I have been a fan since his first album on warp years ago. With this new EP you can see that he is evolving and he is taking his unique gritty sound to the dance floor but he still leaves in plenty of off kilter moments to try and throw the groove that he put you in. I believe this was a limited run of mini cds that was also released on bleep just to give people a taste of what's to come and I can tell you now, I can't wait.

If you are ready to hear one of the most original sounds in electronic music today then head over to bleep and get pick up Clark's newest EP. You can preview the album and link to it on bleep below. (check out track 3 or 4, my favorites at the moment.)

Well I'm not quite sure if I'm reading my stats right but it would appear as though my 15 minute soundscape podcast has been pretty popular. Seeing that there is in fact this interest in the idea I am planning on recording another one in the coming days with a proper stereo mic setup as well as a new bootleg podcast sometime soon as well. When I started the podcast I was not really sure what I was going to do with it, I was just looking to play with some microphones and share some music but it has certainly found a direction with the live recordings and now the soundscape idea. I hope that I don't run into any insecure musicians that don't like that I am sharing these but I don't see that happening anytime soon so we are in good shape for now. Starting with the next podcast featuring these live recordings I plan on adding links to the artists pages so those of you interesting in knowing more are just one quick click away.

So at any rate, i just wanted to jump in here and thank everyone who has shown support of the podcast and the site in general. I have plenty of plans for its future and I can only hope to see it continue to grow over time So to the readers and listeners, Thank You!

I found this while looking through a few imixes on the itunes store. There was a couple of the songs from this album that really stood out in my mind and when I heard the whole album I found so much more to it. This is a beautifully written record with melodies and singing that would best fit into the folk genera but it has a nice indie rock feel that smoothes it out. There is both a male and a female singer (Deb Talan, and Steve Tannen) in this duo and they trade off from song to song both lending their voice to the overall feel of the music which all falls together almost effortlessly.

The Weepies seem to take a simple approach to recording which I think helps give the song writing the attention it deserves. This album has some really obvious stand outs in my mind. The great opener to this album, 'Take it From Me' starts everything off leaning more towards the indie rock side of things but it has a beautiful pop melody and layered vocals that accent points in the song and thicken the overall mix. The album rolls right on into one of my favorite tracks of the album, the brilliant folk kissed story that is 'Gotta Have You.' This song gets stuck in my head and seems to hang on there all day long. It's lyrics speak of life and love and although this might sound a bit mushy for some I can safely say it is one of my favorite tracks to surface in the sea that is the music scene today. The album does not let up there though and falls right onto the third track of the album where Steve settles into the scheme of things and sings a beautiful ballad of time and its grip on all of us. It's another recent favorite and really shows the groups ability to write a damn fine song.

The album spins on and holds a number of stand out tracks that all hold on their own among the album as a whole. I could go into detail about every track on here but I dont want to drone on, I think that the music will easily speak for itself. I do wan't to point out one other of my favorites though which is the amazing song that speaks of a finding hope within being alone in life at times.

So for fans of indie modern folk of any kind or those of you who aren't afraid to let music have some real feeling sometimes I would highly recommend this gem of an album!

P.S. - Check out their website and read the about page for some history on the duo.

iTunes Link:

Man did this album pop up out of no where. While browsing a local used cd store full of just about everything but electronic music I came across this little gem of an album. I have heard cylob in the past but not like this. The only music I have heard from him was a couple of songs that were brilliant pop/electro songs with computer voices singing lyrics to the songs. This time around he still brings a healthy dose of electro to the table but really mixes it all up with his apparently self programmed instruments and bits of inspiration from all over the electronic music spectrum. There are all sorts of off key wobbly melodies and a wide variety of beat crafting. If you come across this album at any point don't miss the chance to pick it up.

The label it was released on is called Rephlex records which is run by Richard James aka. Aphex Twin and they don't appear to have much in the way of digital released I could like you to but check out their site to get more info.

This is a window display for the new Hi-Fi speaker system at an apple store, brilliant!

...where I can get my hand one one of these? Anyone?



UPDATE: answered my own question... link and link

Ghostly International, as part of a monthly series, has released this EP by Cepia called Peal EP. I find that I prefer a solid EP over a full album at times and this is no exception. In my mind an album has the tendency to drag along sometimes and it feels as though artists sometimes stick a lot of filler in albums to round them out just for the sake of having a full albums worth of songs. Don't get me wrong here I love a good full length as much as the next guy but recently I have really liked having these little mini albums around. It always seems like they are just the right length. OK, I think I've rambled on long enough about that...

The Pearl EP is the best that I have heard out of this artist yet, its full of some really tightly produced IDM that I can't get enough of recently. I have really been into this minimal clean electronic music as of late. Well, there are the times that I prefer something a bit more lively but for whatever reason I never get around to reviewing them here. It's always hard to pinpoint a good way to describe electronic music releases without getting into mindless comparisons to other artists and name dropping every trendy sub genera that has popped up recently. This album at times feels like a more organic sounding Autechre if you could imagine such a thing. It has enough of a rhythm in the beat so you wont get lost in the sounds which is good for those looking for something danceable.

So thats all on this album. Hopefully I didnt ramble on to much. Please leave a comment should you feel compelled to do so. Your feedback it what helps fuel the future of this site. In the mean time check out this EP! It is only available through a digital download so check it out! If you are a Ghostly fan then don't let this one pass you by.

iTunes link:

There is a new podcast up with a slight twist. No music this time around, just a soundscape. check the podcast page to read about the episode. I love this one and I hope everyone else does as well.

So here we have it, Apple has taken a bit of a jump again and landed in the iPod accessory market and this time in a bigger way. The apple Hi-Fi is a speaker system that takes simplicity and pushes it to a new level. There has been many speaker systems come out to house the ipod music player, the first of which was by Altec-Lansing if I'm remembering correctly and who would have thought that the market for powered speaker systems based around the ipod would take off the way it did and end up with apple making their own.

At first look I thought to myself, eesh, what an ugly white box that thing is! It seemed so strange to see apple release something like this. As I had the chance to dig around a little and get some more info on the system I have found that it has grown on me. After I thought about it for a minute or two I came to remember this reaction to most of apples products in the past few years. The first time you see one you kind of stare at it trying to figure out what it is you are looking at but once you see them around in use or in person they suddenly make a lot more sense. If you think about it, this simplistic approach fits in perfectly with the recent popularity in minimalist interior design. Its a slick, un-intrusive box that does not distract from your living space. This first hit me when I saw some photos of the various little rooms that apple had set up to show the system off to the press. That was a brilliant move on there end. Take a look at these photos from iLounge. (they should really look into learning how to set the white balance on their camera!)


Although, placing the speaker like this goes against what they recommend as ideal placement, it does look nice there on a shelf, no?


Again, here you can see it set up along side a mac mini hooked up to a TV. It was this set up that gave me that envy in the back of my head and is starting to make me want one.


Im thinking that it's really not as big as it looks in the studio shots...

The deciding factor of course will be how this thing sounds. Many have said that they cant imagine why they are charging so much for it. The way I see it, the Hi-Fi has bigger drivers on the speakers than anything I have seen on these other speaker systems and the design of it does look pretty tight. I am anxious to see how well the high end of the frequency spectrum carries out without a dedicated horn of some sort to handle the job. Honestly I think that it is going to sound pretty damn good and I'm excited to see one for myself and see how far it can be pushed. I typically want a system that can be pushed really loud and hard without breaking up or loosing detail and we will just have to wait and see how the HI-Fi stacks up against other things that I am used to.

You simply must check out this joy of tech comic. I think I might weigh in on the whole new apple product debate later on today. well see... until then, read this comic!

LINK