october ordeal ... GOSSIP

[rachmiel]

taking my lead from barnadine's feedback template:

knockman - joie de plate-reverbed horror movie cheese! (with a bit of wagner, dark shadows, and folk guitar thrown in for evil measure.) kitschlightful.

mystahr - truly disturbing, like nails on an electrified chalkboard ... sent through a blasphemous resonator. music for an electrocution?

wopelka - a group of dead musicians, once quite brilliant on their instruments, joins for an apres-life improv and makes joyful grim reaper music rising to an epiphanal high C (for corpse).

patrick9 - gooey scifi/horror soundtrack in search of a movie. (where's the theremin?) is the alvin ending vocal a cry for help, pain, or joy?

emdotambient - lambient jazz gone very very wrong ... manages to be lyrical, quite beautiful, and truly demented all at the same time.

fucanay - sparkly dance number for tim burton's next grimly funny animated film. do i detect the influence of zombie klezmer?

scoops - tells a story in :43, no small achievement. fun, funny, but quite frightening also. some primally evil sounds in the brew.

watttyler - hit single taken from the soundtrack to disney's first splatter movie: Attack of the Ululating HyperZombie Pre-Adolescents from Beyond Green Hell!

artgillespie - a luscious spectral wind (with bagpipe drone accompaniment) meets a typewriter drum line (ah, but what is he typing?). dig the happy major chord ending!

barnadine - close your eyes to see the movie: a ghoul in iron leggings lurches marchlike across the dank dungeon floor, hesitates, continues, and falls in ghoul love.

farlukar - another electro hyper-march ... (are monsters prone to military deportment?) the first 10 seconds are my favorite: nice morbid groove.

utm - grinch meets gorey. clever, fun, funny, and satisfying. (ahmet would be proud!) you should write mortuary top 40. (no fair cheating on the wxyz! )

rachMiel

[Barnadine]

Beedogs is a nice touch.

Beedogs. Haha. The mere existence of the site is somehow heartwarming/terrifying, but the funniest touch for me was that helpful little bit in brackets under the main title. For some reason, that had me laughing for about 4 hours. There's a touch of genius in redundancy like that.

Wopelka, I had hoped to cover the European schisms but frankly, my maths isn't up to the task. Still, I've always felt the European schools provided a useful corrective to the binary fruitism of the English-speaking world. And are you following the new research coming out of Russia? If Tokarev's vegetable findings are reproducible, it could change the way we listen to music. Revolutionary stuff.

(edit) Did I thank Wopelka, mystahr and rachMiel for the reviews? No? Remind me to do that at some point.

[WattTyler]

. the penny just dropped - that cretinous fat Barney dinosaur thing knocked off 'This Old Man' for its theme song, didn't it?

There’s something rather creepy about leaving your kids in the care of an eight-foot tall Godzilla-like purple raptor. I got to thinking, what would happen on his day off? Would some evil monster emerge, V-like, from his skin to go stalking and slashing?.
Or would he team up with his evil partner Mr Blobbykenstien to wreak havoc through the streets of Whitechapel? (Cue the fog, gaslight and bad cockney accent)

Of course truth is always stranger than fiction….





Thanks for all the great tunes this month; I have really enjoyed listening to them. It is always inspiring to here what such talented musicians come up with.

[knockman]

barnadine! that's fantastic, beyond words, simply great. the beedogs is worryingly not so surprising - here in japan, dog apparel is beyond belief.

anyway, i'm saving it all for future smiles.

thanks also to rachmiel & mystahr for the review

regards

[Hanglow]

Hi guys, meinman.com removed the free hosting after it was abused so my song is now at
http://www.strangebrew.pwp.blueyonder.c ... nd_mix.ogg

Cheers to barnadine for the (now unneeded) offer of hosting it.

[rachmiel]

could one of you veterans explain to the newbie why the kvr competition submissions are limited to (relatively) low-quality mp3s/oggs?

for me, electronic music is, more than any other type of music, a vehicle for *sound* ... in all its subtle glory. 128 kbps mp3s (or ogg equivalents) lose a significant part of this subtlety. i found myself trying to imagine what the halloween submissions really sounded like ...

is the rationale to limit bandwidth so that even people with slow connections can listen to everything? if so ... why not let people submit two versions: a lowish and a high quality one?

newbie-ly,

rachMiel

[rachmiel]

hanglowskank - sounds like my submission strained sensually (and successfully) through a chill arabic groove modulator. love the vocal glisses.

barnadine: career as nonvibrato singer in your future? (think: male julee cruise.)

rachMiel

[emdot_ambient]

could one of you veterans explain to the newbie why the kvr competition submissions are limited to (relatively) low-quality mp3s/oggs?

It's strictly a matter of file size. In order to not exclude people still on dial-up, the size of the song entry files has to be limited. Usually the song length is set at 2 min maximum size and there have typically been over 60 entries per month. That means there are usually over 2 hours of music per month to download. If the files were larger, you'd effectively cut out of the competitions everyone on dial-up. It's hard to see people downloading even 2 hours of music via dial-up . . . but it is done.

[emdot_ambient]

emdotambient - lambient jazz gone very very wrong ... manages to be lyrical, quite beautiful, and truly demented all at the same time.

"lambient jazz gone very very wrong."
Ah. My work is done.
Thanks!

[xander]

Damn -- after reading all the fine reviews, I really need to spend some time listening!

I just HAVE to know what "lambient jazz gone very very wrong." means...

[rachmiel]

> If the files were larger, you'd effectively cut out of the competitions everyone on dial-up.

makes sense.

and the reason you don't let people offer a second, larger (higher-quality) mp3/ogg for those who have the ability to download it is that you feel this is unfair to dialup users?

rachMiel

[Scoops]

could one of you veterans explain to the newbie why the kvr competition submissions are limited to (relatively) low-quality mp3s/oggs?

It's strictly a matter of file size. In order to not exclude people still on dial-up, the size of the song entry files has to be limited. Usually the song length is set at 2 min maximum size and there have typically been over 60 entries per month. That means there are usually over 2 hours of music per month to download. If the files were larger, you'd effectively cut out of the competitions everyone on dial-up. It's hard to see people downloading even 2 hours of music via dial-up . . . but it is done.

FWIW
There are other possible alternatives. WMA, FLAC, and APE are but a few. I prefer WMA because in my tests (and tests results that I have read others do) it come closest to being a truly lossless conversion. In addition, when I look at the stats on my website, 90% of all OP's are windoze. So the issue with WMA becomes small. The problem with WMA is that it is usually 20% to 30% larger than an mp3.

Scoops

[You™]

I'm not interested in encoding my songs twice. I'm not even that interested in high quality sound - for most of my music, it wouldn't make much difference. For bandwidth, I wouldn't even mind having a .mid or 16 kbps month, but I don't have a problem with the way things are right now.

I download all the entries. If I'm going to take the time to pull down, listen and critique 2.2 hours/124 MBs (09/05), 1.7 hours/99MBs (08/05) or the 2.1 hours/124 MBs (07/05), you can be darn sure I don't want to fool around with codecs or third-party plug-ins. I just want something that plays in my MP3 player and doesn't make me have to work around it. As part of the 10% minority that prefers not to primarily work in Windows, I'm not keen on downgrading to WMA either - even if it does sound better. Notice I'm not mentioning AAC or RealAudio either.

I think sticking with the most easily accessible standard encoded format is the best option for these things. Warts and all, that appears to be MP3.

@Scoops: APE is lossless, isn't it? There should be no difference in sound quality between it and the uncompressed source. Lossless doesn't mean the sound quality suffers - it just means that the encoding offers a more efficient bit-for-bit data transfer.

[Scoops]

@Scoops: APE is lossless, isn't it? There should be no difference in sound quality between it and the uncompressed source. Lossless doesn't mean the sound quality suffers - it just means that the encoding offers a more efficient bit-for-bit data transfer.

Ape is lossless from what I can tell. The rest of what you say is pretty much in agreement with my limited understanding.

Scoops

[Scoops]

Chronicles of Frank Scoops,
The story of one mans journey and life in the world of the macabre at KVR monsterfest.

Art Gillespie (bitshift) – UTM’s covers.
Log: TimeDate:251854D2
As I pass thru the void, I notice that there are some remnants of horrors gone by. Luckily, the beast never reared its ugly head.

Farluker – Stitched
Log: TimeDate:251340D3
The evil effectiveness of the machine dictates we keep our distance. If we are seen, we are doomed for sure.

Wopelka – Don’t Talk to Walking Deadman Mary
Log: TimeDate:224540D1
The team made use of the time machine to go back to investigate the Black Plague. I had to constantly remind Mary, “Don’t talk to the walking Deadmen”. She said. “Don’t worry, I like the avante”.

mystahr – scaryzombionisphere
Log: TimeDate:224540D26
While taking a shower today, something odd happened. As I washed the soap from my face, I noticed that ionized zombie goo started to come out of the shower head. Fortunately for me, I had my ionosphere turned on.

Barnadine – Legs (I abbreviated the title because it go so damn long I didn’t think it would fit on the entire page, if you know what I mean)
Log: TimeDate:214540X3
I got a call from maintainence today. They asked if I could come down and take a look at the programming on the leg placement machine. Well, I powered it down a couple times. Everything seemed to work fine. I did find that the bin holding the legs were stocked with the wrong ones.

Patrick9 – DeathMarch
Log: TimeDate: 214540X3a
Some of the younger members of our society have been getting a little sloppy lately. The High Court asked me to try to get them back in line. I went to the archives and pulled up DeathMarch.
I played it for them….Well, that sobered em right up.

Hanglowshank – Pick and Mix
Log: TimeDate: 213240X647
Sam, Unit 7 and myself went out for some music. We took in some eastern style and were having a good time when all of a sudden, the evil monsters took over the stage. Dam I hate that when that happens.

You – Drop Dead
Log: TimeDate: 213240X647a
Thank god there was another group that came on stage after the evil monsters. “Drop Dead” , I think was the song. Unit 7 got so drunkenly unruley durring that song that the MP’s kicked us out.
The MP’s told us we have to abide by the rules of the club.

Fucanay – Monsterromper
Log: TimeDate: 20000737z
The exercise center called and asked if there is anything they could use for their goolish workouts. I said “Fucanay’s Monsterromper, definitely Fucanay’s Monsterromper”!

Knockman – Frankinnonsense
Log: TimeDate: 19853F332.
I got another call from matainence today. The Leg machine was on the fritz again. This time we hooked up the voice module to make sure it was in working order.

WattTyler – Frankenbarney must die
Log: TimeDate: 19853F332a.
Second call from maintainece today. The slicer dicer has lost it main tasking mission and is slicing and dicing everything in sight. As we got there, it sliced Unit 7 in half. It wasn’t a pretty sight! We did get it turned off right after that incident. Poor 7.

Emdot ambient – Cries and whispers
Log: TimeDate: 198846482
When to Unit 7’s wake today. Everybody started crying when “Cries and Whispers” started playing. They knew that was 7’s favorite tune.

Beardedone – Grave Fruit
Log: TimeDate: 198846482a
As a pallbearer for Unit 7, I had to chuckle a bit. I remember him working on his casket, Many time he’d exclaim “This isn’t what I want” and started over. I think he had 10 caskets made before he had one he liked.


rachmiel
Log: TimeDate: 7134701
I ordered a new leg machine today. When I heard that the voice module was wacked, I decided that I have had enough.