Rise Against – Make It Stop (September’s Children)

Rise Against teamed up with the It Gets Better Project and picked up the theme of bullying, homophobia and suicides. The video includes snippets of multiple YouTube submissions provided by the It Gets Better Project, in which individuals share their stories and let others know that “it gets better”.

Their lead singer Tim said the inspiration behind the song was “When the month of September rolled around, and the wave of gay-teen suicides happened, I realised there needed to be a song about this, and also because the rock scene in general kind of fails to comment about this stuff – it sort of doesn’t comment about this stuff; it largely ignores this kind of thing.”

“And rock being a male-dominated, testosterone-driven place that I’ve been in the eye of the hurricane now for several years, I realised that it can be a place that can perpetuate homophobic behaviour unless it’s addressed by bands like us,” he said. “The message is: It can get better, it does get better, give it a chance to get better, don’t end your life prematurely. And don’t give credence to all these bullies that would give you all this crap and try to make your adolescence something that’s hard to deal with.”

Bang bang go the coffin nails,
Like a breath exhaled,
Then gone forever.
It seems like just yesterday,
How did I miss the red flags raise?

Think back to the days we laughed
We braved these bitter storms together.
Brought to his knees he cried,
But on his feet he died.

What God would damn a heart?
And what God drove us apart?
What God could

Make it stop
Let this end
Eighteen years pushed to the ledge.
It’s come to this,
A weightless step.
On the way down singing,
Woah, woah.

With communication lines being a bit delayed due to us not knowing she had a working phone, we turned up a little unannounced, apart from our letter a month or so earlier, and gave her a bit of a fright, she wasn’t quite sure exactly who we were at first, she thought that I was there to read the gas meter! Once we got over the initial shock we had a lovely cup of tea and a good chat, she was a little overwhelmed still but we managed a few shortbread biccies and headed back to the hotel, we had planned to catch up again the next day with Anita’s uncle and Auntie as well.

The next day we took a bit of a tour around the Colchester Castle museum which used to be a Roman Keep back in AD60 when the Roman’s had control of the United Kingdom. Since then it’s been through quite a few hands, it was used as a prison for a while, and is now a history museum for the area. It was nice wandering around and learning a bit about the area, a bit of education on holiday is always welcome, just not any homework!

We spent the most of the next day and night touring around various parts of Colchester with Anita’s Uncle, Auntie and Gran and checked out the Wimpy (a burger joint I remembered from back in Rotorua, New Zealand when I was a kid) for a bite to eat.

It was a really awesome experience and something that no-one could ever take away from us, an important chapter in Anita’s life and i’m just glad that I could be there to share the moments with her.

Off to Paris next!

A recent check of my iTunes library had just over 30,000 tracks which equated to 82 days of music, unfortunately too much to fit onto my iPod Classic now though so i’ve had to get a bit smarter with the playlists that I use to manage my music. 30,000 tracks can be a little overwhelming to just have on shuffle as I usually find a lot of b-sides, rarities, live tracks and other random music either from clients or for party playlists popping into my ears throughout the day. While I listed to my music through iTunes daily I like to listen to the music that keeps me inspired and gets me through the day rather than some of the music that makes up my library, and the only way i’ve found to effectively manage that was to be completely anal about how my music is organised.

I’ve now got most of my ripped CD collection complete with album artwork, correct track names and genre’s (it’s this sort of stuff that makes my OCD happy!) all that’s left to do is to give them proper ratings and re-organise some of my smart playlists to better sort through the tunes. If any of you are looking to clean up your iTunes then I can recommend Tagalicious by the Little App Factory, as well as SongGenie & CoverScout by Equinux which will help getting your iTunes Library under control. For those PC users out there Tagalicious is coming soon or you could try TuneUp.

A little aside, I did get a bit excited by Steve Jobs latest Keynote for WWDC as I think iCloud is really going to bring some positives for accessing your music across multiple devices in multiple locations, not to mention iOS5 and Lion 10.7 look pretty tasty too! But why did I pay for MobileMe for all those years…

And now for some new music!

Faker – Dangerous

Faker have been fave Sydney band of mine since their debut album ‘Addicted Romantic’, and it’s nice to see that Nathan is writing and recording good tracks again, I wasn’t a fan of their last album ‘Be The Twilight’ but the electro feel of this new track has really grabbed me today, so I thought i’d share. ‘Dangerous’ is taken from Faker’s forthcoming album due for release later this year through EMI.

Faker – Dangerous (radio edit) by theinsound

Looks like there is the usual record industry ‘exclusive’ going on here with Pedestrian.tv, so head on over to their site to check out the track.

Cavalera Conspiracy – Blunt Force Trauma

It’s awesome to see that Max and Igor are together again and recording kick ass tunes. I was pissed in Sydney when they cancelled their Judas Priest support Sydney show in 2008 as I was really looking forward to seeing Max and Igor do their stuff on stage, unfortunately it was not to be… Maybe they might tour through Singapore supporting this new album Blunt Force Trauma? I highly doubt it though.

Here is the new video for their first ‘single’ Killing Inside, it reminds me a little of the early Sepultura videos.

In Flames – Deliver Us

The last In Flames album was one of my favourite albums of 2008, coincidentally released around the same time as the last Cavalera Conspiracy album. I really liked the In Flames and Pendulum track Self vs. Self which came out on the last Pendulum album, although it wasn’t truly metal, or drum & bass I thought the mix went really well together so naturally I was looking forward to seeing what they would do on their latest ‘Sounds Of A Playground Fading’ and I was not disappointed. Take a look at the vid and then buy the album, you won’t be disappointed! Buy now: http://bit.ly/leyuXy or from iTunes.

On a lighter note…

On a lighter note, I’ve been really getting into the new City & Colour, Frank Turner & Eddie Vedder albums, ‘Little Hell’, ‘England Keep My Bones’ & ‘Ukelele Songs’ respectively. They have all made quite an impact on me as I’m currently going through the process of choosing some music for our wedding ceremony and reception in August. We’ve chosen a couple of tracks from the City & Colour and Eddie Vedder albums which really seem to speak to us and what we want our day to be about.

While these tracks aren’t ones we’ve chosen for the wedding, I think they are both really great tracks, so have a quick listen to them and let me know your thoughts.

City and Colour – Fragile Bird

Eddie Vedder – Can’t Keep

To be honest I could keep on going as it seems that the last few months have really brought some fantastic music to me, including new Sepultura album which has some really standout tracks on it and rocks harder than the last couple of albums anyway. The 2nd album by Drapht has been getting a lot of rotation on my iTunes lately as well as the new Jebediah album.

It doesn’t look like Singapore will be getting any decent shows in the next few months with promoters only bringing in Neon Trees, so it looks like I’ll be stuck to my iTunes collection for another few months, at least until the 20th of August when we get back to Sydney for 10 days!

Scratch that! Every Time I Die are touring Singapore on the 6th of October @ The Substation

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Trailer

Synopsis

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first film in Columbia Pictures’ three-picture adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s literary blockbuster The Millennium Trilogy. Directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, the film is based on the first novel in the trilogy, which altogether have sold 50 million copies in 46 countries and become a worldwide phenomenon. The screenplay is by Steven Zaillian.

Official Site: http://dragontattoo.com

Our Holiday to London

In total, I think we took over 500 photos and will have to find some time soon to edit those and put together a nice coffee table book using iPhoto, so for the moment i’ve just put a few of the photos I took using my iPhone and Camera+.

Big Ben & Westminster

I took these couple of shots while on the upper deck of a Big Bus Company hop on, hop off tour we went on. The day was a scorcher and we toured around London and saw all the famous landmarks, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral and The Tower of London

Buckingham Palace

We went and checked out the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, as you do, there were a good number of people there too, it was bloody packed! Americans, Kiwis, Israeli as well as a large number of French students who seemed to invade most places we were in London. We saw and old lady walk from the palace while all the shenanigans were going on, Anita turned to me and asked if it was the Queen, wish we got a photo of it, she did look very similar, but unfortunately it was someone else.

I took this shot outside Buckingham Palace after the Changing of the Guards and gave it a couple of nostalgic effects to try and convey the sombre expression that Queen Victoria has on her face in the statue.

Other Bits & Pieces

This was taken a couple of days after a London Men’s Convention, we were there on the day of the convention and were surprised to see thousands of men all streaming for the hall, we found out later that it was a Christian thing.

We ended up seeing St Paul’s about 3 times on the trip for some strange reason, maybe it was because of Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe which was just down the road.

This was taken at a London Underground station while we were on our way to Hammersmith Station to then walk to Barnes and see Jon & Ronnie for a couple of nights.

We had lunch at this pub in Tottenham when we were staying with Jon & Ronnie in Barnes, Neetles loved her Fish & Chips and my Bangers & Mash were awesome too, washed down with a couple of bottles of Bulmers Cider and all was good with the world!

We had the most amazing time in London staying in and around Kensington, the food was to die for, a few trips to Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s was a nice change after being stuck in Singapore with their limited product range at Cold Storage. Unfortunately we ran out of time to see everyone that we had planned on seeing, especially Sis but thing’s just didn’t work out as easy as first planned. That said I do think we will be back to London before we leave Singapore, we just had too much of a good time not to!

And that was it, next stop Colchester, Essex to meet Anita’s Grandma

Live music in Singapore… finally!

This year has started well with an Iron Maiden show and then a Deftones show the next night. On friday night we are off to see Stone Temple Pilots and I Am Giant which should be pretty awesome. I’ve just bought the I Am Giant – City Limits / Neon Sunrise EP off iTunes and have been listening to it most of today, check out their latest video for Neon Sunrise

I Am Giant – Neon Sunrise

I’ve also got a couple of albums on pre-order from iTunes at the moment, namely the new one from Jebs, and the new Rise Against album featuring Architects

Rise Against – Architects

Rise Against – Architects

We’ve missed a good deal of shows from not being back in Australia but thankfully things are starting to move in the right direction with live music in Singapore, so hopefully we might get to see some more tours later this year, Aphex Twin are playing next weekend also but probably going to give that one a rest and have a quiet weekend.

I’ve really been getting into the new tunes from Drapht, Girl Talk, A Day to Remember, Bring Me the Horizon, and Against Me lately, but there are some really cracking albums out and about at the moment.

Ok, i’m outa here to fix up what WordPress 3.1 did to my blog design and then head out and celebrate Anita’s birthday!

Lost My Nerve by Jebediah

You can also get a new Jebediah track, released today from the lovely folks at Dew Process, just hit up the link below, throw in your email address and get ‘Under Your Bed’ in a 320k mp3 file delivered to your inbox!

Download – http://dewprocess.bandcamp.com/track/jebediah-under-your-bed

Download here: gotye.bandcamp.com.

Tiger is doing well, sleeping lots…

I can’t exactly remember too many fascinating things that Anita and I have gotten up to lately which is why i’ve not updated and put anything here… We’ve just been working and saving for our trip back to Australia at Christmas, which is all booked and ready to go. We’ve gonna fly into Brisbane on the 12th of December and catch up some friends on a 3 day drive down to Sydney, will give us a chance to look at some property on the Gold Coast and see what’s out there for when we buy our house. We’ve got a few things to do for the wedding in Sydney and lots of catching up to be done with everyone too, plus a few family things and Christmas, we’re leaving Sydney on the 28th of December with hopefully a good deal of work done for the wedding next year…

Anita and I have been really busy with our work and trying to get things organised for the wedding (28th August 2011), we now have a venue, photographer, and celebrant organised, the invites and save the date cards have been partially designed too, Anita just needs to get onto getting her dress, and that’s most of the big stuff done. Hopefully we can sort most of it out this year cause there are going to be some major expenses next year…

Weather here as been really shit too, can’t remember the last string days we had of over 30+, been pretty unusually wet for this time of year, guess it beats winter!

We’ve just had a visit from Anita’s friends Mark and Laura who took some time out of their Thailand trip to come and say hi to us in Singapore. It was good to play tourist guide for a couple of days, and I managed to do a couple of things that I’d not done in Singapore, so that was pretty cool. We took them around the marina area mainly and checked out the Merlion, Clarke & Boat Quays as well as taking a riverboat trip along the Singapore River (first of the thing’s i’d never done). We then took them up to the new Sands Sky Park at the Marina Bay Sands hotel which has just opened, it’s a pretty awesome hotel and shopping complex, will have to head back soon and check out the casino… Anyway, here are some pics

Lastly, here are some pics I took of some Singapore Orchids that we had laying around the house the other day. I was testing a couple of things with some aperture settings and they turned out ok in the end.

Workers look on as their dormitories go up in flames

I heard a loud explosion sitting at my desk and hopped up to see the start of quite a large blaze engulf eight 40ft containers, which were being used as living quarters for the workers on the site. It was quite a blaze and after looking at the timestamps on the photos I took, it seemed to take at least 40 minutes for The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) to get a decent amount of water onto the fire. The first red rhino that arrived ran out of water very quickly and the SCDF couldn’t find the nearest fire hydrant quickly and had to ask the maintenance staff at Ridgewood Condominium where the nearest fire hydrant was. Eventually they managed to get a high pressure hose onto the blast and had it under control in around 15 minutes from then.

A worker stands above the fire at the Trizon condominium

It was a scary reminder of how quickly a little fire can get out of control, but thankfully no-one was hurt or injured in the fire, given some of the work practises that we have glimpsed of the construction site over the past year, evidenced by the photo above with the worker standing directly over the blaze. The Straits Times have an article on their website which contains more information.