Euphoric

Remember kids when you jump on a bandwagon don't forget to wear your seat belt as falling off usually hurts.

With that warning in mind...






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Ok now with that advertising out of the way I'd just like to let everyone know that I have created my own blog at blogger.com. I will be making most of my blogging posts over there from now on. Expect to see new music from up and coming artists, new photography and interesting stories. Also plenty of personal musings and thoughts. I encourage you all to check it out at empireunderthesun.blogspot

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So I decided to finally create myself an account over at deviantART to try and share some of my photography with the community of artists over there. My profile is aeon-B89.


I'm currently working with a FujiFilm J10. It's a very basic point-and-shoot digital camera I picked up in airport duty free. It did the job for me while I was overseas to get a few interesting and memorable snaps. The plan is though to upgrade to something a bit more formidable once I can afford the hefty price tag that decent cameras come with.


You can find unedited versions of all the shots I've submitted so far in my Neo Gallery. If you are interested in checking them out though I would recommend heading over to deviantART as the quality of the shots is miles better.


I appreciate any constructive criticism if you wish to share, whether over there or here is irrelevant. If you're also at deviantART leave a link to you profile here. It's always good to see the work of other artists out there; it's how we improve.



I'll leave you with a couple of samples to whet your appetites.







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The age old saying "A picture's worth a thousand words" can never be more true than when said picture is a key method of identifying with someones personality. What am I getting at? Avatars and banners online is what. Whether you choose to admit it or not these little pixel pallets are representing you online in the way that your clothing and the way you carry yourself does in the real world.

Most of you will have experienced when someone you know from the net makes some form of change to their avatar, or other representation of themselves. It can be kind of strange when the image that you associated, consciously or unconsciously, with that person is all of a sudden something completely different.

Going further down the lines of representation the avatar is a serious tool for people to portray certain aspects of their personalities. Most people will pick avatars of bands they like, a sporting hero or an icon that in some way relates to themselves. In that way others can draw conclusions about that person in a similar way to reading a persons actions.

Now that I've established this ground work I can get to the heart of what this post is all about. Why do people take no pride in making sure that their representations of themselves online are of a decent quality. I see way too many avatars and banners made in Paint and stretched beyond comprehension. It's really quite irritating that people seem to have no pride in themselves.

I realise this all sounds a tad extreme, and a lot of you will think, "Oh te internetz Rn't s3riuz buziness," but just think about it for a second. Would you wear a moth eaten old shirt to a job interview? Would you wear football shorts and singlet to a first date? I would hope that most of you replied no. If that's the case then why don't all of you take the same pride in your 'appearance' online? It's not that hard.

So this morning I found these awesome examples of what you can do with a camera and some artistic license. These photo manipulations, called Wee Planets, are the work of Frenchman Alexandre Duret-Lutz. He is a software engineer and uses his professional skills in conjunction with his hobby, photography, to produce these interesting pieces of digital art.

By combining many photos of a particular area and then using software he wrote himself he creates what he dubs as Wee Planets. After simply creating them for his own personal interest he has now attracted the attention of marketing and advertising firms who are keen to utilise his creations due to their uniqueness and aesthetic appeal.











To see more of these Wee Planets click here.

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Future Music Festival '09

First up we (myself and a few mates and girls) arrived at the Doomben Racecourse at about 2pm. Yes this was 2 hours after the start of the festival but the rush at the start is always shit and the good artists aren't on for a few hours anyway.

So we got in and headed straight off to the Met tent to kick off with Joachim Garraud. He didn't disappoint. He provided some solid tracks with great electro synthed basslines to kick off the day. The Met tent also had the best light set up of any of the stages due to being enclosed. The shade meant serious laser, strobe and colour action all the time.

Next up was a trip to the main Future Music stage to see the Swedish Mafia, Steve Angello and Sebastien Ingrosso. The Swedish duo didn't disappoint and me and two mates left the others chilling in the shade to go and make some shapes. These guys were definitely the highlight of the festival for me.

Everyone knows that moment when a really great song starts and everyone yells and gets excited. Well that happened for literally every track these guys spun. It was a two hour long orgasm. It was that good we didn't even care about their shameless advertising.

We next got to see UK legend Paul Oakenfold do his thing up on the Future Music stage. We didn't stay for long as we also wanted to catch some of Ian Carey at a different stage. We did get enough of a sample though to verify in our minds the genius of this industry stalwart.

So at this point we made a quick dash across the festival grounds to the Ten Pound Club stage where we managed to catch the last 15 minutes of Ian Carey. Luckily he saved his amazing Get Shakey track for his finale. That was another cream moment for everyone there. The look on the face of one of the girls with us was priceless. She looked literally in the middle of an orgasm.

Still at Ten Pound Club we stayed for Tocadisco. The Spanish spinster put on a decent show. His tracks and mixing were awesome but he ruined it a bit with some shitty MC'ing. He was trying so hard to sound cool but his broken English and attempts to raise the crowd were pretty lame.

By this point the sun was well and truly down and people were heading to one of two stages. At the Future Music main stage N.E.R.D. and Basement Jaxx were going to get a massive crowd; while the more club-going, dance types were heading for the Met tent to catch Etienne de Crecy and his big Rubik's cube booth. We decided on both.

However, when we got to the main stage for N.E.R.D. the crowd wasn't really the sort that we all wanted to be around at that point in time and the beats coming form the guys on stage were ridiculously slow and hard to dance to. So we made a group migration to the Met tent to see Richie Hawton before Etienne de Crecy brought his box out.

Richie did an admirable job, although I was on another planet at the time so maybe it's exaggerated a little in my mind. No matter how good, or not so good, he was, he was never going to equal the awesomeness of Etienne de Crecy.

After a 10 minute spell after Richie while the stage was set for Etienne the whole tent came alive and throbbed, bumped, shook and spun the night away. Etienne's set was one of the most memorable sets I've experienced live and I will definitely never forget the man in the giant glowing Rubik's cube. His deep and synthed sound was a unique experience of the day and I hope to someday see him live again.

All up it was a great day/night that I won't be forgetting anytime soon. Let's hope next year can live up to the same standards. Maybe I'll find some time to get to the Silent Disco tent next time as well. I'm psyched already.

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Ever had that feeling of nostalgia while listening to a particular song where you feel as if you've been transported back to some earlier time in your life? I know I have. Whether it's because you went through a phase listening to a song a lot and associate that song with that time in your life, or even if you just relate to the lyrics because of something that has happened to you, I have no doubt that for everyone there is at least one song that brings back memories of some sort.

Why am I posting this? Well I was reading this article and it just got me to thinking on some songs the bring back memories for me. A major one that stands out is Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. Whenever I hear it I remember a particular ex-girlfriend (still friends) of mine as we both loved and listened to that song.

Another one for me would be All the Small Things by Blink 182. One of my mates and I, who used to live just down the road from each other, used to play ping pong in my backyard, while listening to music, almost everyday for about 4 months straight. We got ridiculously good at it and obviously had great fun mucking around with tricks and stuff. Whenever I hear that song it reminds me of those fun times I had with him and means I'll always have something to remember him by in the future.

A final big one for me is Around the World by Daft Punk. It got played as the final song at the going away party for me and my mate before we went on our 6 month global travels. I also listened to it as I was getting on the plane for the first flight of the trip. Every time I listen to the song now I just get memories of my trip. It seems to be a door into the part of my mind where those memories are stored and whenever it's played I go back to all the wonderful places I visited.



Feel free to leave any stories of your own about nostalgic songs or memories, good and bad, that seem to come to the fore to certain music.




other musingsthoughts music songs nostalgia memories

Ok so I was on the computer at uni today trying to fill in a couple of hours between lectures when I stumbled upon and awesome site for electronic music. The site is analogik.com and it covers everything from industry news to, new hardware to upcoming album releases and must watch up and coming artists. It is truly amazing and I'll definitely be visiting the site plenty more times in the future.

I bring this to your attention for one key reason. A particular article I read on the site had information pertaining to new technology regarding the file size of music. Currently the average 7 minute dance track will take from 4mb to 10mb. Apparently some science types have been working in the problem of running out of space on your mp3 by working on ways to decrease the size of audio files while keeping the same levels of quality. The really amazing thing is that they got a clarinet solo down to the size of 1kb! That's bloody mind blowing. Soon enough the statement in this posts title will not be such an outlandish claim. I'm psyched. Are you?



Excerpt:

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Researchers at the University of Rochester have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file. The music, a 20-second clarinet solo, is encoded in less than a single kilobyte, and is made possible by two innovations: recreating in a computer both the real-world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.

The achievement, announced today at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing held in Las Vegas, is not yet a flawless reproduction of an original performance, but the researchers say it's getting close.

"This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music," says Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the technology. "Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn't really have to measure the music many thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music."

In replaying the music, a computer literally reproduces the original performance based on everything it knows about clarinets and clarinet playing. Two of Bocko's doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling, worked with Bocko to measure every aspect of a clarinet that affects its soundfrom the backpressure in the mouthpiece for every different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument. They then built a computer model of the clarinet, and the result is a virtual instrument built entirely from the real-world acoustical measurements.

Source




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Scandinavian electronic artists Royksopp have recently released the video for their latest track, "Happy Up Here". The song is typical Royksopp with uplifting, high notes littered through with sexy feminine voiced lyrics.

The video itself is the masterful creation of Reuben Sutherland. The video is an artistic production that interestingly includes motifs from Space Invaders. Gamers should appreciate this tribute to the title as it brings the classic into the modern in an ingenious way. In fact I'm sure it would be hard to find anyone who can't at least appreciate this video for it's quality.



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In my previous blog post I mentioned that I was going to be going out to the Family last Saturday to experience the awesomeness that is deadmau5. I feel the need now to tell you all that it is now tied for the single best night out in my life. The other was of course Daft Punk's Alive tour at Nevereverland in 2008. Tiesto at family is also up there with one of the better nights I've ever had, but not even the trance legend can top the pure ecstasy that was deadmau5 live.

I was a little disappointed when he came out not wearing his headgear but I excused him that little fact as he had just arrived from doing a 2 hour set on the Gold Coast in the glaring heat at Good Vibrations. Thankfully he was still up for doing a 4 hour set for all of us devoted clubbers who packed into the Family to hear him spin some tracks.

While I didn't catch his mix of Tiny Dancer, which is one of the best mixes I've ever been given the privilege of listening too, he did play all of his other major tracks and also a few that I hadn't heard before and am still trying to hunt down the names of. The pick of the evening however was definitely Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. I mean when that came on the whole club just went ballistic. It was amazing. I wasn't on the dance floor at the start as my mate and I were taking a well earned break and tripping balls on some seats slightly away from the main speakers. Needless to say though as soon as I heard the familiar beat I b-lined it for the dance floor.

To top the night off some amazing girl picked me up and bought me drinks for the rest of the night. Added bonus she was wearing a silk shirt for those who know how fantastic that is at times like that.

I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to go and see this guy live as he is a highly gifted artist and the experience is something that, like me, you will never ever forget.



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Ok so I start University this coming Monday and as such have been out book shopping and organizing my payment plan, which in Australia is a HECS debt student loan from the government. With all this activity one thing has stood out to me about university. It's bloody expensive. I don't mean slightly pricey. I mean they are robbing us of every cent we own plus more for the immediate future upon our graduation. I paid $100 each for 4 textbooks alone that I'll probably use once in class and could have used in the library for the rest of the time. Not to mention we pay however many grand a semester to attend class.

Now that's all well and good I hear some people say. Education is a business. Don't stress, I completely agree. Education is one of the biggest businesses on the planet for my mind. My gripe is that it shouldn't be. Back in the day education was a privilege for the older generations. They could pass down all their knowledge to the next generation to keep the world cycling and to look really smart doing it. When the hell did that change? I want to go back to the days of the great philosophers and just sit down for a debate in the street. That's the way education should be. People still taking responsibility for their own learning but not having to trade the early years of their lives post-school to do it.


But that's enough on that subject as it just frustrates me. On a happy and awesome note, I'm going to see deadmau5 perform at Family tonight. Now the Family is rated as the number one club in Australia and I'm telling you it deserves that title. 4 stories of the best speaker systems, light displays, laser shows and smog dispensers on the market. It's a shame that generally the club attracts a less fashionable and more grungy crowd normally or else I would be there every weekend. However, when a DJ of deadmau5's calibre is playing my kind of people all snap up the early tickets and raid the place making for a really awesome atmosphere in a really awesome club. I really can't wait to hear his set. It's going to be amazing. Not too mention it's my first night out clubbing since I got back to Brissie from my trip.

Here's a few tracks to sample of what I'll be dancing to this evening.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (deadmau5 edit)
The Reward is Cheese (vs Jelo)
Faxing Berlin
Arguru (Original Mix)

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I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life.
Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and *bleep* with the stars.
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.

Ok so I had a moment recently where I had an epiphany on what life means to me. I was sitting at the top of the Eiffel Tower with my iPod just have a chilled thinking session. I put on the song Time to Pretend by MGMT and it really made me think about my lifestyle and how I want to live the rest of my life.


This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.

I basically realised that my lifestyle in recent years has been what most people would describe as a party lifestyle. Before my recent travels I was on a gap year and going out every weekend and usually a weeknight or two also. The whole wine, women and rock'&'roll thing applies to me perfectly, changing the wine for spirits and what-not. To me that just seems like a whole lot of fun in comparison to those guys who were going to uni or work 5 days a week, 9 to 5. Surely you all agree on that fact at least.


There's really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we'll get a divorce
We'll find some more models, everything must run it's course.

We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end
We were fated to pretend

But now I come to the point of this post. Listening to Time to Pretendmade me think about the consequences of what I had been doing. I realise now that all stages of life have to come to an end and that facing the music and moving on to the next stage of life is an essential part of the process we go through as human beings. Now I'm still very young in the grand scale of things and I'm not saying I'm ready to settle down and have kids or anything like that. In fact far from that. I've simply realised that everything runs its course and when the time comes to put aside the clubbing and partying I'll be ready to get on with life.


I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.




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So I'm sure everyones noticed the latest trend that is sweeping the globe. Gaming, comics and 'geek-chic' are taking over the world of fashion. Now I know this isn't a new concept; It has been building steadily for a few years. But recent films like the Dark Knight and Iron Man have hugely popularized that which used to be the sole realm of geeks and nerds.

Go back a decade or two and if you wore a Batman or Hulk t-shirt with a cardigan and a pair of think black rimmed glasses down to the shops you would have run a high risk of being labelled as a geek and socially inept. So why now is it considered trendy and cool to wear these same articles of clothing?

Now in no way am I saying that this trend is a bad thing. In fact of all the shirts I own I would say at least half have some reference to Batman or Mario etc on them. I think this revolution of comic book superheroes and game characters from a nerds best friend into the trendiest kid in school is definately a good thing. My point boils down to the question of "Why?"

Why all of a sudden are people turning to these characters as icons? Is it that the human race is getting nerdier? Or is it that maybe the marketing guys at DC, Marvel, EA etc are getting smarter at advertising these characters in new and interesting ways? Or even more simple it could be that in the ever present need for something new to have a fad about people have turned to this area of culture that they previously spurned.

Old school being fashionable? I thought we are supposed to laugh at all the fashions from our parents' era. With that in mind maybe it is the simplest explanation that explains the reasoning behind the newly crowned fashion trend of geek-chic. Maybe we just like old stuff. I mean in our modern world of such fast paced progression in technology, maybe this use of old school nerd fashion is simply a way of holding onto something familiar from our past.

Whatever the reason for it's creation I think 'Geek-Chic' is here to stay. And you know what? I'm glad.

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As some may know I am a frequent traveller and have lived in a few countries around the globe throughout my life. What most won't know however, is the opinions and views of the world and its people that this childhood and lifestyle has gifted me. Now I say 'gifted' for a distinct reason which is essentially the point I'm going to try and make in this post. Basically it boils down to the fact that those people who travel at a young age and/or have lived overseas for parts of their lives are privy to a view on the world closed off to those who havn't.

Ever taken notice of how some people are just so closed minded it makes you want to tear your brains out. Or how some people just seem to understand what's out there. If you have then it's most likely that you are a traveller. As a traveller you see things that are outside of your usual box of normal. All this new information goes into your head and starts to add up against your world view. As more and more varying experiences occur in your life you can start to deal with future situations in differing, more mature, ways.

Just to be clear by travelling I don't mean driving a few hours into the country to see your grandparents in the country or taking a weekend drive to the next state/county/territory for a camp. I'm talking going from a first world country to a place like Peru where poor people are the majority and people's welfare is so much lower than western culture. Or even if it's going from a place like Australia or America with a very short history to Europe to see where our cultures really grew and developed.

It's these eye opening experiences that every human deserves but most are denied. Unfortunately for those who can't afford or can't find the time to travel you can never fully understand the world we live in. No matter how many TV documentaries you've watched you just won't get it.

But that's enough for now. Hopefully these generalized musings will seed the travel bug in some of you and encourage you to go and truly experience the world and what life has to offer. Believe me. It'll open your eyes.


Further and more detailed thoughts on this topic to come...

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