Learning lyrics in Gaulish is not a simple thing. It is fun, though. And I have beets boiling on the stove for what will become face paint. Eluveitie's in Seattle tomorrow evening and I think I'll paint the horns of Cernunnos curling under each of my eyes. Now, as long as I don't blacken any more burners with overflowing beet juice, I should be set...
I'm home for break and there's a few things that need doing:
*finish first draft of novel, The Broken Earth (not actual title). It's almost done. Truly. The first draft, anyway. The last thirty, forty pages just need to be written.
*finish story-outline for that anthology...
*get double-bassing back up to snuff. Being sick is wretched. Minial practicing and writing and it was torture.
*Learn drum parts for The Silence.
*Finalize setlist.
*Vocal stuff.
*Arrange Memento Mori for marimba.
*Actually be able to play that Bach piece. Argh.
*email people.
*write about my internship...
Lessee. So, how am I accomplishing above, (not so) niggling things? Today, I'm practicing marimba at my old high school. I'd say that's productive. And will write when I get Bach-fatigue.
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aconitumband (add us!)erin_ofthe_wood , wolfbanes_song and I had a grand time driving to Canada: the border crossing was quick, the drive to Vancouver quick...waiting for the Commodore Ballroom to open its doors...not so quick. But onwards. The three of us wandered into a few shops and wandered out soon after to wait in line for many hours.The Days of Grays is blissful, torturous insanity—it’s painful, too, in the way that death is painful. I’ve been waiting months to hear the album, resisting temptation to listen when it was released first in Finland and soon after posted on youtube. When it arrived at last in the mail, I went wandering through the dusk-shaded city streets with only the album and my headphones. I specify dusk because of the very nature of the album—it’s all about the edge of life. Borderlines. Ghosts, grays. The spooky, almost merry-go-round-esque piano lines twining ‘round gut-wrenching guitars make a flawless (though in this album, a flawless corruption is probably closest to the truth) theme for the dusk.
Various things noted:
The drums have a soft sound, the cymbals feathery, though they still somehow convey the sort of sound a silken scream might. The snare blends nicely, but has depth and the kick has just enough…well, kick, but it’s not too clicky, like you’ll sometimes get with some metal albums.
Vocals are most clean, undistorted, and powerfully, painfully melodic, but occasionally they’re run a through sort of filter. Beneath the main vocals, run unrelenting (in the best, best way) aahs and oos—harmonizing and layering, layers upon layers of vocals that will be fantastic to wail back at Sonata Arctica when they’re in Seattle early next year.
The guitar solo in As if the World Wasn’t Ending is deeply haunting—something you might hear twining around Stonehenge on the darkest of rainwet and windswept of days, or filtering through cathedral-canopied forests.
At the last song, there’s this madly mixed an explosion of screams, cries—ghost sounds— that swell into an anthem that pulls the album to its end.
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erin_ofthe_wood how extremely bad it was and she gets up to see, saying ..."Bad like 'The Wolf and the Raisin?'"erin_ofthe_wood's bottom bunk is the, er, training-talon?wolfbanes_song. Well, that and learn my freaking parts. But at least they're written, more or less.erin_ofthe_wood because it's mostly just hours and hours of metal. She, wolfbanes_song and I will be heading up to Vancouver in few days for erin_ofthe_wood's sound system is a little tricksy and makes me think my left ear is bursting in and out of existence (like how I wish Dragonforce would, so Sonata could headline).erin_ofthe_wood into coming (wolfbanes_song, you should come, but I'm not sure you'd want to) and revelling in Helvetic glory or maybe I'll catch a bus/train/rickshaw/something and sleep on the streets afterwards...but somehow, I will see them, because it's like desperation that I need to be there, maybe because I've got Swiss blood in these veins, but I want to brandish the corna and scream: a blatu blande bitos biuon! / A m' atriia, a ma helvetia!...My computer can't play sextuplets.
This is extremely embarassing. Not to mention irritating.
Because for some reason Guitar Pro has no idea how to execute a proper flam, they're staying out of the written music. But never fear (oh, yes, I'm sure the non-existent people reading this are just shivering in their boots...or socks...or barefeet...whatever), they will be played.
Computers are so not froody. Or maybe it's the people who don't know how to use them.
AGH!
Where are the grace notes, where are the freaking grace notes?
What difficulty is there in giving me a flam? I NEED A FLAM. (This is Jenn-in-desperation)...
RAH.
The plan is some live blogging' as I attempt to write my drum part for The Silence.
There shall be much chanting of hei! hei! hei! to help me along, because I'm going to need all the aid I can get, since I've absolutely no idea how to use Guitar Pro. Yet. That and half of my notes about the song are currently about 80+ miles away.
Here goes.
Unfortunately, the crowd is just drab and the guitar mix leaves something to be desired, but I'm utterly infatuated with this song. It catches in my throat the same way For the Sake of Revenge does. And anyone who has yet to watch this performance needs to, badly. Brilliant and extremely amusing moments (esp. Tony's boisterous hi! during Fullmoon). Tony's vocal play-acting of Caleb (an insane and dear-to-my-heart character whose story has spanned many, many of Sonata's albums) is disturbing and hilarious and terrifying (as it should be). And it's things like this that remind me of the never-forgotten fact that this band has been the one closest to my heart since I was fifteen. As they'll always be. And ARGH that's a long time I've been listening to them...close to five years, now.
Okay, onto completely disparate things. I've been asked to do a poetry reading on September 12th at the Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse and it would be excellent if some people actually showed up. More information over here*, if you're interested. This's the setlist:
Lover's Preconception
Clarity
Fire
Space
Stone and Sea
Bastard Waxes Poetic
'Pleasant'
The Ritual
fall
Host: | Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse |
Type: | |
Network: | Global |
Price: | free! (though donations keep the starving artist starving-- as opposed to dead) |
Date: | Saturday, September 12, 2009 |
Time: | 7:00pm - 9:00pm |
Location: | Poulsbohemian Coffeehouse |
Street: | 19003 Front Street |
City/Town: | Poulsbo, WA |
aetheling rather likes the webcomic Hetalia (about the human personifications of countries). And while I don't read it, I agreed to traipse along with her to a meetup a few other fans were having in Seattle. We decided I should go in some sort of get-up, but I didn't (and still don't) know much about Hetalia. Even, so, since I know a little about music, I chose battle-metal Finland as my theme and went as a member of the band Turisas (see Warlord Nygård in my icon). This meant black and red warpaint and a rag-tag outfit that looked a bit archaic and mythical and battle-ready. I'll post more pictures as they become available.aetheling and I had to explain our couture, including one time when we got involved in an...erm...interesting conversation with these two Irish guys who stopped us as we wandered the halls beneath Pike's Place. Sadly no one recognized that Turisas was the inspiration behind the paint and clothing. Weep. Weep. Weep.darchildre mentioned it and then my uncle happened to send it to me in the mail) and The Prose Edda. A good amount of time was also devoted to devouring Heritage Os, along with splendidly fresh figgs, peaches, blueberries, nectarines and apricots so sweet and ripe it's like sipping yellow elixir. But, oh, what I wouldn't have given for another chapter of The Historian and a fig (with such moist red flesh it tasted like raspberry honey...and those tiny black seeds, popping and crunching...ye gods, what a weirdo...), but I had other things to do along the long drive: I finally finished the story-outlines/concepts for the two short tales that've been my personal torture chambers lately.
awake
busy
sore
amused
creative
sleepy