Tag: zene

Hearing Loss Park 2023

I’ve been to Loud Park twice before, in 2012 (got a shirt but no blogpost) and 2016, so I was pretty happy to hear it was coming back after years of covid-forced absence. The lineup caught my eye because of Pantera—I thought they’d never tour again since the Abbott brothers died, so this was a chance I wasn’t willing to let go (even though I’m not that much of a Pantera fan).


LUPINUS 2023

ライブはライブにつながる。KNOTFESTの情報を知ってオープニングの魔法少女になり隊は見に行けないとわかったから、そのバンドの他の日程調べて下北沢のLUPINUSフェスを見つけた。下北の多数の会場で同時に開催される一日まるごとライブのイベントで、思った以上に楽しかった。

Bamboo

Addictions

Observing my own behavior I realize that I tend to get “addicted” to things. For example last year it was League in the early months and interior design after getting back from Pakistan. Of course it’s on top of my generic routine of going to the gym and hiking, climbing and/or snowboarding, but it also means that it takes a huge amount of effort to focus on anything else. Even if I want to code up some of my ideas, I’d end up playing ranked for hours or looking up reversible interior hacks for my tiny flat.

For the past few weeks the ongoing addiction has been playing the bass. I don’t know why it suddenly clicked so hard (since I’ve owned a bass for over a decade now and practiced some riffs on and off) but it did. It’s been since I graduated (and thus stopped playing actively) that I had calluses on my fingers. My sense of rhythm is still trash, but even when I was in the music club it took two years to develop that, so no rush there.

This time though I picked up an audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2) so that I can hear and record better. I’ve often seen Youtube musicians joke about “the first time you hear yourself recorded” and damn it’s true. The bad is real. But I guess that’s what makes the progress of learning new stuff so enjoyable.


Discovery weekly

I appreciate Spotify’s regularly changing playlists. I have trouble keeping my daily playlists in any shape (they tend to converge on way too similar music), but I like the Discovery Weekly and the Release Radar a lot.


侵攻アップグレード

Reolははじめて夏のRock in Japanで生でみた。その時も迫力すごかったけど、やっぱり短く感じてしまったよね… 秋はワンマンやると知ったらもうそれは行くしかないねと思った。抽選も運良くあたったので行ってきた。最高だった。


Ocean @ Tokyo

The Ocean was one of the first “djent bands” in my library, so I was really happy when I heard that they will be playing live in Tokyo. It was also my first time visiting the famous Shimo-Kitazawa area and also ages since the last time I’d been to such a small venue.

I didn’t realize there would be four (!) other bands playing too, The Ocean had all my attention. Some of them were more experimental (reminding me of Deafhaven) while others less so, but to be honest after a while they just felt long.

But the wait was worth it, as The Ocean delivered magnificently. It was also fun to see the community culture centered around the venue. Reminded me a lot of the university music club.


Rock in Japan 2019

今年もまたロックイン行ってきた。3日の土曜でメインの目当てはReol。とはいえラインアップが豪華で朝からほぼ最後まで楽しめた。


Covers

Sometimes I hear a song, and I don’t even realize it’s a cover. Then when I do, I often check out the original too. I kinda trust the artists I listen to, so if they thought a song worthy of covering, then I might like the original too.

There are a few songs like that, that led me to discover older artists I hadn’t known about. One of the first such cover I remember is Helloween’s Fast as a shark. It’s originally a song by the likewise German, and even more ancient metal band Accept. They’ve been around since ’68! Nonetheless, I only found out about them when I heard Helloween’s cover. After that, I had some of their albums in my library for a good while.

Even bigger a success (at least from my point of view) is HammerFall’s cover of Ravenlord. It’s originally a Stormwitch song. Much like Accept, Stormwitch is an older band from the German metal scene that I didn’t know about. When I realized Ravenlord’s a cover, they were actually enjoying some renewed attention, possibly thanks to that very cover. At this point I’m listening to Stormwitch about as much as HammerFall – admittedly not as much as I used to, but they’re still present!


Download Japan 2019

To sum up Download’s experiment with expanding to Japan: good artists, meh sound. The lineup was truly, truly outrageous: Amaranthe, Man with a Mission, Halestorm, Arch Enemy – just to name those who brought me to Makuhari. The headliner Judas Priest are legends (if aged) and some may consider Slayer music too (I have trouble in that regard).


Sync to my phone

I originally planned to make a Rust program that would fix the broken encodings in my music files. Luckily, I could solve that without Rust. Luckily, because from what I’ve experienced since then, it would’ve been a horrible pain in the ass to do.

I still wanted to give Rust a try. Contributing Servo is pretty much out of question – it’s just too high level to jump into as a complete beginner. (And honestly, I don’t think I’ll get past “complete beginner” with Rust anytime soon if ever.) It wasn’t hard to find another issue.