Lately, I’ve been listening to and really enjoying Pendulum’s second LP, In Silico. When I first heard their singles Granite and Propane Nightmares on the radio, I was worried they’d changed their sound to “Hardcore Drum & Bass Ultimate Heavy to the Max!” After listening to the whole album, this is true to some extent but it seems confined to individual tracks which is a relief. I like a bit of heavy, but it just wouldn’t be Pendulum if the whole album was like that. Don’t be put off by the heavier sounding singles. Overall, this sequel to their debut album Hold Your Colour has a good balance between heavy drum & bass and chillout breakbeat. It’s classic Pendulum and that’s why I love ‘em.

I first heard Pendulum a few years ago on Triple J when Hold Your Colour was a feature album. Their single Fasten Your Seatbelt was the first I heard and I was immediately intrigued by a sound seemed unfamiliar to me. I’ve always been sucker for power synth, and had recently become an avid fan of breakbeat through bands like Hybrid. Then Pendulum appeared out of the blue, serving up a unique combination of these two styles. I dug a little deeper into the Pendulum universe and it was a revelation. Some years later I listened to a drum & bass station on streaming radio and realised this sound was not so unique to Pendulum. I listened sporadically for about a week but none of the music I heard could come close to being as good as Pendulum. So their unique sound could be summed up as being “Drum & bass that doesn’t suck”.

For over 12 months Hold Your Colour was easily my favourite album. The title track really blew me away with its pure, emotive vocals and impossibly complex chorus. The vocoded lyrics as best as I can discern are “Push in the knive, gauge open your eye.” The album art also alludes to this. Another stand-out track is Girl in the Fire with its acoustic core and catchy bass riff topped off with a good helping of formant shift. In my opinion it’s the first song I’ve heard to use formant shift effectively but with restraint as to avoid becoming abusive. You imagine the song without it and it just wouldn’t be the same. Slam is another favourite and is the most “Pendulumy” song on the album. It’s one of a few tracks which create an atmosphere that I can only describe as “Fun House Sound”, conjuring up images of scary clowns, silly mirrors, haunted houses and other cliches. With the most memorable lead melody, Slam is a perfectly structured song in the way it builds and releases tension. The first full-length track after the introductory Prelude, it’s a great way to open the album. Still Grey, Streamline and Plasticworld are all excellent but much lighter “chillout” tracks, and these are what gives the album its perfect balance between heavy and light. I must admit I prefer the lighter tracks as I find listening to them really quite relaxing.

In Silico maintains this balance if veering slightly toward the heavy side. This is not due to there being more heavy tracks, but rather that the heavier tracks really are quite heavy compared to their earlier stuff. Some could be mistaken for alternative rock. When I first listened to the album, I was a little disappointed by the heavier tracks. But then I had a reality check and realised “Hang on a second. You like alternative rock. You can like these songs because they succeed at being really great alternative rock.” After listening to the whole album I realised that In Silico had the same perfect balance that was present in Hold Your Colour, and like its predecessor it became an instant favourite.

With most albums by my favourite artists, I usually don’t have to think very hard to pick a favourite track. Normally, one stands out from all others after the first run through, and this case was no exception. I can easily say 9000 Miles is one of the best songs I have ever heard. The song, with its limited lyrics is still able to conjure up vivid imagery of one separated from his lover by a vast distance. The electronic nature of the music leads me to imagine the distance has something to do with space. It could be the distance between two ships in space, but more probable (9000 miles is not very far if you have a decent spaceship) is the distance between Earth and an orbiting satellite. I have, like, already filmed the music video in my head. It’s not often that music evokes such imagery, so when it does I’m always impressed.

Another awesome track is Midnight Runner, whose title is an obvious reference to the stimulant Dextroamphetamine either as a recreational drug, or as the pill given to U.S. Air Force pilots to combat fatigue (either seems appropriate given the futuristic theme of the album). I notice that there is a Cut Copy song with the same title, so maybe all these musicians are just rampant pill-poppers!

I’ve run out of things to say, so I’ll sum up by saying that Pendulum still rock out and if you liked their first album you should check out their latest one. Oh and here’s a video. It’s a pretty cool video and I think it redeems the song from the autotune abuse.

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Lighter Menus has given me back some of that wasted space that appeared in version 2.6. Compare these two screenshots before and after installing it. You can’t see it with a screenshot but mouseing over those menus at the top produces drop-down menus containing the child menu items. The layout is still far from optimal, but its a huge improvement. If I had the time (and patience) I’d write my own plugin to clean it up even more. Maybe one day. This plugin also reduces the number of clicks required to get to any section of the admin interface from 2 to 1.

Dashboard: Draft Posts lists your draft posts on the WP dashboard. Assuming you start from the dashboard page, this reduces the number of clicks needed to edit a draft from 3 to 1, which is significant especially when you consider loading time. As editing drafts is something I do quite regularly, this is an absolute godsend. However, the dashboard is still filled with much bloat which pushes the Draft Posts widget down the page, requiring scrolling.

Dashboard Widget Manager lets you easily add, remove and reorder the dashboard widgets. I got rid of everything except Draft Posts, Recent Comments and Incoming Links. The relentless WordPress propaganda, I do not need.

If you’re a regular WordPress user I highly recommend these plugins.

While we’re on the subject, if you’ve tried unsuccessfully to use the WordPress plugin auto update feature and get the error “Could not create temporary file” you need to set the permissions on your wp-content folder to 777. Not a very “best practice” solution, I know. But it beats the old tedium of downloading over FTP then uploading.

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Thanks for that prediction. Thunderstorms? *pokes head outside* Nope, no sign of them. *checks radar* Nope, not likely given the only rain is some light patches around Charlton and Bendigo.

Excuse me while I neglect to buy a pair of snow shoes and also neglect to trade in my Corolla for some Huskies and a sled………

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The Australian entertainment industry wants internet service providers to act as file-sharing police and caution people who download illegal copies of films, TV shows and music via peer-to-peer networks.

If this went mainstream I would seriously consider moving countries. It’s not like I download movies or anything… It’s the PRINCIPLE of the thing. This would just be the first step to Australia becoming China v2.0 with our own Great Firewall (Dividing Range?). For starters, push ups hurt. And then there’s the whole privacy issue. Maybe I could just install TOR and be done with it. Actually, if it does happen, I bet it won’t be long before someone invents the next Bittorrent, except this time with native traffic encryption.

Forgetting all that for a minute, the best argument against such filtering/monitoring is being put forward by the Internet Industry Association:

… the proposal is asking [ISPs] to become law enforcers. Executive director Peter Coroneos says it is akin to holding Australia Post liable for what people send in the mail.

And this is a valid comparison. What is the mail except a relatively slow and predominately non-digital conduit through which information is sent? Why is the Internet as a medium being targeted? Is it because flicking a couple of switches inside ISPs is more convenient than physically inspecting everyone’s mail? Or is it because of the sheer volume of illegal file sharing that is occurring?

To end, I will just say this: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Post-Pak full of DVDs.”

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I’m normally really not a fan of old films. But after watching this, I’m starting to reconsider that point of view. The film wasn’t great but it was really watchable. For some reason, old films usually just irritate me or  bore me to tears. An unfair generalisation? Perhaps. I’d define an “old film” as anything made before 1980 and experience just tells me, if it’s that old I probably won’t like it. Now I loved Mary Poppins when I was a kid, but got over it. With Breakfast At Tiffany’s the characters were pretty non-offensive, and some of them were even quite hilarious, Hepburn’s character included. The Japanese neighbour Mr. Yunioshi was also a crack up. It turns out he was played by Mickey Rooney would you believe it!? I did wonder at one point that Yunioshi was so shamefully stereotyped (let’s face it, just plain racist) that they’d have a hard time finding a Japanese actor willing to play the part. And I guess they did! For me the amusement comes not from laughing at “funny Japanese man” but from looking back with disbelief that such blatant racism was given a platform back then.

Spoiler Alert! More ramblings after the jump.

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If anything, E3 made me realise how very very small Australia is compared to the rest of the world.  I guess this is why we have to pay a bit more than the  US .. and suffer some awful pings… but our industry is growing, and the types of people turning into gamers is changing… . more ages and genders of humans are becoming gamers… this can only be a good thing in helping our industry grow here.  If there was one thing that more developers at E3 said to us more than anything else, is that NOW is a good time to get into the games industry – it’s strong, it’s growing, it’s changing and finding it’s feet through chaos, commercial pressures and the artistic needs of some great minds who just want to make great games.

I don’t care how small we are, it still doesn’t justify the price fixing on Wii points.

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