sleepmakeswaves - In today already walks tomorrow

Finding good music is always a pleasant experience. Finding good music for free is even more awesome. Recently, I got lucky and stumbled upon a fabulous record, "In today already walks tomorrow", by the band sleepmakeswaves, distributed on the net by the Lost Children netlabel.

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, the four guys play a very cinematic kind of post-rock, including sweeping strings and ambient electronic elements as well as very heavy guitars. And whereas many newer post-rock bands simply recycle ideas from the genre's big names (think MONO, Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ...), sleepmakeswaves manages to create something very original. With a strong emphasis on melody, the tracks never seem to drag on for too long, waiting for a climax that comes too late. Instead, with relatively short songs - the longest on the E.P. is only 8 minutes long -, the band keeps things fresh and interesting, and strike an excellent balance between pure beauty, epic sections, and heavy rhythms. That said, sleepmakeswaves never finds themselves on the aggressive side of things, even during the most intense parts of their songs.

Anyway, I don't think I can really do them justice only by speaking of their music, so I'll let you taste it for yourselves. Don't hesitate to tell me what you think of it in the comments !

sleepmakeswaves Myspace
Download the E.P. here.

A month, a game #1 : Sonic Rush

What the hell ?

Out of all the games I'm currently playing, I managed to finish that one first ? Ah well, guess it was the nostalgia factor. I was a fan of Sonic once, especially of Sonic Chaos on the Sega Master System. That said, I only managed to complete the main mode once, with Sonic, without any Chaos Emerald. And I'm not going to try and get them, it would be too hard, and the game isn't THAT good. It's fun, but nothing more. Fun and fast, to be fair.

So I won't praise it using a plethora of superlatives like I'll probably do with Persona 4 which I should complete soon. That one is going to be a much longer post...

Well then, farewell for now !

6 things.

Another post, another list of sorts. This is becoming a trend I entend to fight soon. Mainly because I tend to think too many lists can quickly become tiring to read. And there's so many MANY lists out there. Maybe I should make a list of posts about lists to show just how many there are.

...

Anyway, tangents about lists aside, I was "tagged" last month, not in the metadata and Web2.0 sense of the word, but rather as in children's games (yet it's still a little Web2.0-like). You know, like...

"Let's play tag !"
*Children running around*
"Tag, you're it!"
*More joy and laughter and running around until one of them stumbles and FALLS HEAD-FIRST ON THE AXE LYING AROUND INADVERTENTLY WITH ITS BLADE FACING UPWARDS !!!*

...

Anyway, tangents about painful children mutilation aside, I was "tagged" last month by my sister with/for a blog meme consisting of finding six things that make you happy, in no particular order. That means the following list is going to be made with bullets, not numbers. Isn't that a clever way to imply that the list is unordered ? Yeah, I know.

• Playing music live : I really don't do that enough, but grabbing a guitar and playing songs is a thrill when done on a stage, however small it may be. Especially when it's along with some other friends and sisters.
• Reading an awesome book/playing an awesome video game/watching an awesome anime/watching an awesome movie : The important word here is... No, it's not awesome. It's "story". Regardless of the medium it is told on, a good story that makes me forget the passing of time, make me laugh or cry, or provoke thought is worth knowing. It's a whole new universe for each one, and the ability to visit all those worlds is... Well, it's awesome !
  
• Walking around in an urban landscape while listening to some good music : The bigger the city, the better. Ah, the joy of walking around in a cold morning while your ears are comfortably put inside your headphones which are pouring some soothing melodies or heavy rythms into them...
  
• DC++ : No, really, I'm not kidding. I only frequent a couple of hubs, but in those I've met many people who I now consider my friends. Even though it's designed to be a file-sharing system, I only go there to chat, nowadays. I'll probably write a proper article about Direct Connect at some point in the future, it deserves it.
  
• Being who I am : Ho, ho, ho. Doesn't that sound pretentious ? Before you label me a narcissist, let me explain. I mean that in a very broad way, more than in a "I think I'm awesome" way. For example, I include "knowing the persons I know because they're great" in it. Or "my family", or more material things like "playing the guitar". Or even "my taste in music". So it sounds pretentious, but it's just very general. And of course it doesn't mean I consider myself "perfect" in any way. There's so much I have to work on >_>
  
• Having a nicely organised music library : Even though this list is supposed to be an unordered one, I chose to put this last. Because I figured that if I was to leave you with a quite bad impression, the best way was to sound pathetic right at the end. So there you go, I love having a perfectly-tagged, consistent, well-sorted music library on my computer. My life is SO full of exciting things...

So, that's it. Now, I won't go and tag other people, partly because these blog memes feels a little too much like many chains of mails I receive and am not fond of, and partly because I don't think I follow enough blogs I could consider tagging. So this ends here !

Here comes the obligatory...

2009 challenges !

Have you noticed ? Nowadays, you don't say you've got New Year's resolves anymore. The term seems to less used, and is quietly replaced by a more down-to-earth trend : the challenge ! I don't know why that is, but I don't want to fall behind, and so to start this new year with a bang, I've decided to hop on the challenge bandwagon and set a few goals for myself this year.

Some of them will hopefully be quite easy to accomplish, some will require some hard work, but I guess it should be possible in a year. Not to mention not all items are unrelated, so that makes the whole meta-challenge a tad bit easier, if you will.

So here are my 6 challenges for the new year (yeah, 6, because it's 2009, and 9 is 3², and in turn, when you take 3 and 2 and take their product, you get... 6 ! It's really not because I didn't find 9 different goals, I swear !) :

1 - A month, a book

Logically enough, I'll try to read a book each month. I love to read, but unfortunately my pace slowed to a crawl last year, so that'll help me pick up a book and read regularly. The whole idea being to really read a book each month, not read two in one and none in the next.

2 - A month, a game

Unlogically enough, this is about playing twelve games over the year, but not necessarily one each month. Why name it exactly like the previous challenge if it's different ? Because I can, I guess.

3 - A year, 12 animes

No. Don't even try. I will not be bound by mere logic. But you guessed it, the big idea is to watch at least twelve animes, be it series or movies, to have something to say when the next Christmas season comes...

4 - The road to 15.000

If there's one thing I'm borderly obcessive compulsive disorder about, it's the tagging of the files of my music library. I won't go into much details here, but believe me, it's ugly. Thus, I have yet to go through a huge number of files (33.530 as I'm writing this, to be precise), and I want that to change. Thus, I'll try to shrink that number down to 15.000. That's still 1544 files per month, or 51 files per day, more or less. Doesn't seem like it, but it'll probably be one of the hardest challenge...

5 - Exploiting my other challenges (a.k.a. "Update your blog, slacker !")

I started to post here in June, then stopped until December. That's not good. So as we're in 2009, I've decided to try and update this humble blog 9 times each month ! Hopefully, I'll have at least a post about a book I've read, one about an anime I watched and another about a game I played, hence the name of the challenge. It'll require a little dedication, but I feel I can make it !

6 - The Aprentice Game Maker

One day, I hope I'll be able to work as a game designer. That being said, I've yet to prove myself I've really got what it takes. And thus, the biggest goal of this year will be for me to make an original game from scratch (okay, maybe using some third parties librairies, but still). This one is going to be hard, but I really want to get it done. So hopefully blogging about my progress regularly (hey, another clever way to make some "free" posts) will help me see this through.

So there, now I only need to make it happen ! It's with a strong resolve that I enter this new year, and once again I wish everyone a happy new year, and good luck with your own goals !