Friday, November 18, 2005

Podcast: more Metal

MSRCast
This is recommended by The Entropy League, which I menitoned last time. The list of bands look impressive, right? Contrary to what the name stands for, Mainstream Resistance, it actually features some mainstream (in the metal circle) bands, i.e., the ones you might hear on metal TV shows like Metal Asylum or Headbanger's Ball, but of course it still beats mainstream radio. (BTW, if you visit www.msrcast.com instead of the above link, it might appear they have 5 episodes and no more new ones but that's not the case. )

Curt Shaw's Metal Show
It features some awesome unsigned local bands that you might have never heard of elsewhere.

The Entropy League
Yes, I have already recommended them before. The above links to their latest episode, which I find extremely interesting, as it played all covers. You'll hear lots of old school metal (or non-metal) being reinterpreted by the new generation.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Podcast: Jazz, classical and more

In my previous post I've recommended a podcast for metal.

For jazz, I enjoyed Red Raspus Radio, mainly about the Seattle jazz scene. It's a pleasant surprise that they've got some really good musicians up there.

For classical, the king of budget recordings, Naxos, has done a great job in promoting classical music once again. Check out Naxos Classical Music Spotlight

You could find both of the above podcasts at Yahoo! Podcast as well as Apple's iTunes Podcast Directory if that's how you subscribe to podcasts.

While I'm on the topic of podcast, I gotta admit I have a tendency to downplay or underestimate the usefulness of new internet paradigm. I've done it to Webmail (when Hotmail first appeared) and I did it to podcast again :P I blame it on the ineffectiveness of Podcast client/directory in sorting out the good stuff from the massive sea of podcasts. A lot of clichés about podcast still applies: like many people are still over-using sound effects (we don't need that much ECHO-ECho-echo or left-to-right panning) and most still sound like the podcaster was rambling on and on to no one but himself (or herself) Anyway, podcasting is ideal for enthusiasts of non-mainstream interests (in the case of music: jazz, metal and classical) to "spread the gospel" since the narrow audience cannot justify the use of more expensive technologies.

That said, we still need better organization/classification of Podcast, i.e., the equivalent of what Yahoo did to the early days of WWW. Podcast Alley and Yahoo! Podcast are in the right direction but still have long ways to go. For example, when I use the keywords "jazz music," I'm still getting a ton of irrelevant links.

Finally, I should probably answer the 1st question newbies would ask: "How do you listen to Podcast?" The minimal requirement is a computer that connects to the internet, preferably with broadband. Most of the Podcasts I recommend links to their website, which further link to mp3 files. You could simply right-click on your browser, download the files and listen in your favourite MP3 player. Or you could "subscribe" to the podcast so that you'll get the latest episode when it is published through podcast client software of your choice. Personally, I've tried the open source Juice Receiver before (formerly known as iPodder. BTW, the name changed because Apple didn't like the iPod part in it. I wonder why Apple has to alienate people who makes their products more popular. Maybe it has to do with the fact that your trademark will be weaken if you don't actively defend it all the time?) and I use iTunes now, just because I have iTunes installed for sync-ing with iPod already. Not that I prefer proprietary software over open source ones. For iTunes, you either find the podcast in their directory and subscribe or open the .pcast file with it. For other clients, you could specify the URL of the RSS feed of the podcast.

Now you should start enjoying the shows I recommended!

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Genre: Metal (State of Metal Pt III: MOL)

Talking about Metal On-Line here.

In the old days my preferred way to read about metal was USENET newsgroups. With the ever declining signal-to-noise ratio, it's of course no longer desirable. It's ironic that the fall of metal's popularity coincided with the rise of WWW. That explains why there wasn't many must-visit websites for metal fans in the 90s, at least that's my experience. A lot of metal sites were created by amateurs/fans/students who eventually quit maintaining the sites, with the exception of BNR Metal, which is still going strong and serves as one of my favorite metal encyclopedia (BTW, I know it's kinda surprising but Wikipedia is also a good source of metal band info.)

RSS
With a resurgence in its popularity and the advent of RSS (a mechanism that make updates to websites appear on subscribers' client software automatically,) I've finally got back in touch with the world of metal again. For example, Death Metal News on Topix.net provides RSS feed (if you don't wanna install any RSS client, you could always use my.yahoo.com) Most of their feeds come from Blabbermouth.net, a metal news site provided by one of the most prolific metal label, Roadrunner records. The nice thing about it is that it also covers bands other than their own!

Online radio
You won't hear a lot of 24x7 heavy metal only radio station on the air. There's none, even in a "metal-active" area like the San Francisco bay area. Fortunately, thanks to internet, now metal fans have many choices.

First of all, major internet radio providers like AOL Radio and Yahoo Music all have 1 or more metal channels. While Yahoo Music delivers higher quality sound, AOL provides more channels, each dedicated to a sub-genre like Death Metal, Black Metal, even one for "hair"/glam/pop metal bands of the 80s! You could skip to the next songs if you don't like the current one on Yahoo though. And Yahoo do have 2 sub-genre station: Emo and Metalcore, but they're available to subscriber of Launchcast Plus only (If you use SBC Yahoo DSL, it's free)

If you wanna listen to less mainstream produced metal radio, you could find plenty of them on ShoutCast under the metal genre, for example, ChroniX Aggression, BrainGell, The Edge.

Finally, this is not free, but XM subscribers could listen to XM's Liquid Metal channel online (in fact, it's only available online but not thru satellite anymore.)

Podcast
I consider Shoutcast as the first step in the direction of liberation of radio from corporate conglomerates, giving normal people like you and me power to broadcast. All you need is setting up your PC as a Shoutcast server and play some music (or talk non-stop like a "real DJ".) Of course, you still need a high bandwidth upstream internet connection. With Podcasting, even this requirement is gone. You record your show as MP3, write an RSS XML enclosure for it, then upload to your webhost and you're done! So it's not surprising to see that lots of "niche topics", including heavy metal, get healthy podcast coverage, since it's very low cost.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of podcasts made it difficult to pick out relevant ones, let alone good ones. Podcast directories help to a certain degree but it's still a lot of trial-and-error. Or you could rely on word-of-mouth, like my recommendation of The Entropy League. Also, don't miss the accompanying blog: Be Metal

Hope you enjoy this 3 part series about the current state of Metal!

[Update: I just heard Metallica's "Damage Case" played on Yahoo! LaunchCast Radio and they bleeped out the swearing by Hetfield. Lame Lame Lame. Thumbs down from me.]

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Genre: Metal (State of Metal Pt II: MTV)

Well, that's Metal TV I'm talking about.

All metal fans from the 80's in the States should remember "Headbanger's Ball," the all metal video show aired on MTV every Saturday night. And of course they remembered when the show was cancelled: after grunge "took over the world" (Hey, even the VJ Ricki Rachtman played the videos of "Smell Like Teen Spirit" and "Alive" during the dying days of the show!)

For the longest time there were next to zero coverage of metal on TV, let alone shows dedicated to metal. But slowly metal found its way back to the spotlight. First, Uranium, a 30-minute metal show hosted by charismatic VJ Juliya, appeared on MuchMusic (now Fuse TV) channel. Fuse TV also has a daily metal show named "Metal Asylum." If there's anything MTV knows how to do well, it's jumping on bandwagon. They brought back "Headbanger's Ball" on MTV2 at Saturday night, started May 10 2003. Many saw that move symbolized that "metal is back," officially! In addition, MTV's sister channel VH1 Classic has Metal Mania, which focus on mostly 80s and early 90s "old school" stuff.

These shows have become one of my major source of discovering new metal acts. That's how I learned about exciting bands like Arch Enemy and Shadows Fall. What are my other sources? Stay tuned and read the next and final episode of this State of Metal series.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Genre: Metal (State of Metal Pt I: Trends and bands)

For those who said metal was dead: you couldn't be more wrong. Not only it's alive and kicking ass, I'd say it's healthier than ever. A lot of fans restarted listening again. That's what my bandmate in HK and I chatted about the other day. The first band I mentioned was of course System of a Down (see my previous post)

Other bands I wanna recommend are:
- Trivium: a promising young band with a sound that reminds me of the great tradition of 90's thrash metal, i.e., Metallica and Testament.
- Children of Bodom: they have been around but unlike most bands started around the same time, their guitarists know how to play the instrument. And their keyboard doesn't sound lame either.
- Lamb of God: arguably the "leader" of the current thrash/death metal generation.
- Arch Enemy: gotta root for a real metal band fronted by a lady (Angela Gossow)

As far as trends are concerned, metal is cyclical just like any other art form. Nu metal doesn't seem as popular lately. Linkin Park hasn't release any new stuff for some time. Even Limp Bizkit doesn't generate lots of headlines anymore. However, Korn
and Slipknot still have a heavy presence in my playlists. The former has released a greatest hits while the latter has a live double album. Both serve as good introductions to their best stuff.

On the other hand, lots of late 80 early 90 thrash/death metal bands are making comeback, like Obituary, Death Angel, Exodus, and Nuclear Assault. All of them haven't release any new stuff in years! Their new stuff may not be as good as their old one but I'd still be glad to listen to them.