Frequency: Drown

Check out Frequency's Drown on their MySpace page. Lalit Mehta's vocals on the track are among the better guttaral voices I've heard.

Cellular Snakes!

So I went out and got me a N Series Nokia recently (N73). I had not really planned this, but what else does a guy do when he accidentally drop his phone into the shit-pot?? No really ... I aint talking shit!! Luckily enough, I had flushed the bowl clean before it all happened. So my good old Nokia gave up and I couldnt transmit voice anymore. So I thought I should buy me a "cool" phone this time round. The N73 is a pretty neat instrument. Apart from being a music player (I know ... iPod still rulz!!), a camera, an office assistant, a web browser/email/blogger client, it also makes phone calls and sends SMS. So when I was considering a purchase, I had to go through about 2 millions different types of phone. And then I gave up and just bought something "popular". Of course, there were some other things that drew me to it. Guido's comments on the Python For Series 60 effort at MobiLenin.

First foray into Python on Symbian. And boy, is that a treat! Install the S60 Platform on the PC, write and test your Python scripts using an emulator, move them to the phone via Bluetooth/Data Cable, and the thing is a snake-pit!! Haven't done much in this yet. Just looking for some goodies that Ill need to start working with this. Here's some resources and screen-shots...

Resources:
1. Nokia Forums (Tools and SDKs)
2. A nice comparison between Python and other tools for Series 60.
3. Jurgen Scheible's tutorial for PyS60.
4. PED - A full-featured Python IDE for Nokia S60 platform.
Screen-shots taken from AllAboutSymbian.com and other resources ...

Python interpreter on Series 60 device ...




Snake (coincidence!) python script at werk!




PED - Neat python script editor built for editing python scripts on device directly ...





So finally, I did end up buying a *cool* phone. Now where do I buy the ideas from??

My god!! There's snakes everywhere!!!

Blog updated

I updated a few things on the blog today. A summary of the changes:

• Replaced the black background from the 'Minimal Black' template by Douglas Bowman with a shade of gray. Also changed color of a few other text elements.
  
• Removed two links to external blogs - Indian Band Stand and Heavy Rock Spectacular, either because they have been taken down (former) or have been turned into an invite-only blog (latter).
  

This of course is not the last of the changes. Riff has been working on changing the theme for the home site itself, and some of this may reflect in the blog as well or the other way round. Comments/feedback of course welcome!

The Car Test

In the movie Once, the music producer at the studio where Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova's characters record their album takes the band for car ride once the recording is over to listen to the demo CD on the car's speakers. He calls that the "car test". I don't know much about the process of recording and producing an album, but I figure the "car test" or something similar is an important element in ensuring that the production is of good quality. And recently I got to experience the impact that even a decent pair of a car speakers can have on the overall sound quality of a track. I was listening to a song called My House by the Mumbai based Alternative band Split. The vocalist on the track (I think) is Garreth D’Mello, who's been called the "Indian Chris Cornell" [1]. Garreth does have an amazing voice and his skills are on full display in the song My House. I'd been listening to the track (in a loop :-) on a pair of computer speakers and then on the iPod with head phones, and both places the track sounded great. But then I played the song on my car speakers, with the song playing on an iPod connected via an FM transmitter. And now I couldn't hear the vocalist at all, his voice was drowned by the sound of the instrumental tracks. I thought it must have been bass settings on the car music system, which I usually keep at a high level, but then the next song on the playlist - Pig Society, also by Split - sounded just fine, vocals included. If I reduced the bass levels to a minimum and increased the treble to the maximum, the vocals could be heard better, but only barely - no where close to the levels it could be heard at on a pair of headphones. I'm not sure if this is a problem with the mixing of the song, or my car speakers or both. If you get a chance to try this experiment out, please let me know. The track can be download from the bands media page.


References:

1. http://split-magazine.com/2006/05/24/split-of-imaginary-donuts-and-real-tantriks/

Naagin the Lady Cobra

Here's a really cool metallic version of Tan dole mera mann dole - the famous song from the 1954 classic Bollywood movie Nagin by the Delhi based Progressive Metal band Decibel:



You can read more about this cover on the band's blog Decibel Diary.

Split Magazine launches Split Radio

Split Magazine, one of the more polished websites covering the Independent music scene in India has spun of its splitradio section into a new site called Split Radio, complete with its own logo and design. The new site like it's parent site will cover music "exclusive to bands from the Indian subcontinent" [1].

Whenever I've thought of Split magazine, I've always thought of a site that provided well produced content. Although not a frequently updated site, articles in split-magazine have always had a personal feel to it, devoid of any cliched journalistic values and written by people who were first and foremost ardent music fans. And the site covered bands (national as well as International) and topics that you wouldn't know about unless you frequented Gigpad or RSJ forums. In addition the webzine has always maintained its site well and the articles it carries are always accompanied by polished graphics and artwork. While I haven't heard the splitradio section while it was part of the main Split magazine site, I have downloaded several tracks from their Download section, which was a godsend for people like me who don't really get to attend concerts of Indian bands, but want to hear more of their music anyways. Recently the magazine also started a video section that currently has a small collection of music videos.

Split Radio is not the first streaming service covering the Indian Indie music scene, RadioVerve has been doing the same since June 2006. Having just started listening to Split Radio, I don't have much information to compare the two sites, but RadioVerve has a big and diverse collection that is is going to be hard to match. But I doubt Split Radio is trying to compete with RadioVerve. That said, the first song that played when I launched the player was Maya by Motherjane from their Insane Biography album (which by the way is available for free download from the band's site). So that was a great start. Split Radio has a Shows section that may end up being the site's USP. It has what appears from the listings to be a nice collection of band interviews and shows providing an overview of topics related to the music scene in India. Some of them don't seem to work. Hopefully those links will be fixed soon.

Update: The link that was broken have now been fixed. It's great to see such a quick response by the people who run the site!


References

[1] http://split-magazine.com/2008/04/06/splitradioin-split-radio-new-and-improved/

Megadeth's Wanderlust and Fleetwood Mac's The Chain

I was listening to Wanderlust from Megadeth's Risk album and a guitar riff with a heavy bass pedal in the background from that song sounded very familiar, but couldn't really make out where I'd heard it before. But a little latter in the same track, there was another section that I felt I had heard before. And this second section has a drum crescendo (if I may use 'crescendo' to describe a section where the drum tempo picks up gradually). Now I know one band that I like a lot for its percussion - Fleetwood Mac. And it's drummer makes use of bass pedals too. And turns out that both the sections I recognized are from the same song - The Chain, which is one of my favorite Fleetwood Mac track. Doing a search on google indicates that this link has been noticed by others too.