Relationship of Command is an album by a band called At the Drive-In. Their music isn't the kind of thing I would normally come across, but Dalfino Madrigal Keyte asked me to review this album on here and so that is what today's entry is. I haven't reviewed an album before, but what I shall do is give my thoughts on each song individually.

1. Arcarsenal
This is a short, but very loud and intense piece of music which is sung in a shouty voice. It's not bad, but, I don't think it quite has the emotional engagement to make it particularly noteworthy. Rating: 6/10

2. Pattern Against User
This track is a little calmer than the last, and I think the instrumental side of it was very good. Sadly though, I didn't think that the shouty voiced matched with this piece quite as well, and brought the quality of the track down a little. Still, just a touch above the first track. Rating: 7/10

3. One Armed Scissor
I think this song has something that the other two don't; it's quite catchy and you begin to remember the tune as it's going along. I liked that. It has a very weird ending though, and while I did very much like this when I listened to it just now for the first time, I can imagine that being annoying if you're just listening to several songs on your iPod or something like that. Rating: 7.5/10

4. Sleepwalk Capsules
While the other songs did all have a loud shouty voice, it was always at least slightly comprehensible. This time I could barely understand it, and this track was, for me, just an angry voice with loud music so I didn't particularly enjoy it. Rating: 3/10

5. Invalid Litter Dept.
Instrumentally, this one is quite fine, it was an easy listen. But the lyrics for this song are very strange and morbid ('dancing on the corpse's ashes') and while this isn't always an issue with songs I felt that it was in this case as I kept wondering what on Earth the singer was talking about. Still, it's probably best to ignore the lyrics while listening to this song and you'll still probably enjoy it. Rating: 7.5/10

6. Mannequin Republic
I found this song to be rather generic. I really can't think of anything else to say. Rating: 5/10

7. Enfilade
The opening to this song is very unusual and seems to be a bit of a homage to the Saw series of films. On the whole it was a rather atypical sounding piece of music, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I did, in fact, find it to be quite a curious listen. Rating: 7/10

8. Rolodex Propaganda
Nothing particularly special or enjoyable about this one. Rating: 4/10

9. Quarantined
This song features the lovely sound of a rainy storm, which is very nice, but sadly it ends quite close to the start. I must admit, the lead singer's voice isn't that appealing to me; there's a fair bit of music before the lyrics start and I was a little disappointed when I realised there was no chance of it being an instrumental piece. A bit of an odd ending too. Rating: 7/10

10. Cosmonaut
This was another song which was just pretty generic and pretty forgettable. Rating: 5/10

11. Non-Zero Possibility
Finally, some variation! Even the weirder songs before this one sounded kind of samey, but this song is quite distinguishable from the rest. This album's main problem is a lack of variety; it's pretty much the same until this one, which is very different and very nice. Definitely the best on the album. Rating: 8.5/10

12. Extracurricular
A step down after the last song, but it's not bad, especially when compared to some of the other tracks on this CD. There's a certain despairing quality to this song which puts it just above most of the rest. Rating 7.6/10

13. Catacombs
Sadly the ending of this is nothing spectacular. It ends with a blip, rather than a bang, and the very ending has some very weird sounds. Rating: 6/10

In conclusion, it was alright. The kind of music that could be playing quietly in the background of a shop and I wouldn't mind, but not really anything I'd choose to listen to and certainly not anything I'd pay for. The biggest flaws, for me, were the musician's singing voice and the lack of variety. Average rating: 6.2/10

(The whole album is available for free here.)

(This week on my blog I am posting an entry every day, and each entry will be written by somebody other than me. Today's entry is by musician Chris Hunter who's song 'Rich!' is available on iTunes, other songs by him can be found on his SoundCloud page.)

There are some questions I don’t mind being asked. With my close girl friends we end up talking about our personal lives without even realizing and when I’m with my Uni course-mates we end up asking each other about our opinions of new music or our assignments. But when I am asked the question “What is your favourite song?” I end up freezing, unable to think.
    I am a big lover of music. I get that from my family and I really thank them for that, but having such an eclectic music taste, listening to many different genres of music and finding enjoyment from many forms of music, I found myself not being able to answer the question simply.
    I find music to be an extension of emotion, a metaphor or memory for a certain time in a person’s life, a distraction from important times and bad experiences, but being a producer of my own music, I primarily find music as inspiration. I listen to a song or an album and listen to each element: bass line, melody, drum beat and vocal and take emotion into consideration after I have found parts of the song, if not the whole song inspirational or enjoyable. It is rare to find a track or an album that combines great production with clever and emotional writing, but the ones that do, I personally feel, end up going on to have high sales and successful songwriting careers. This doesn’t necessarily mean the artist themselves, as many stars have songs written for them to record for their album by songwriters away from the spotlight. This subtlety is something I find humbling. Though they will gain credit for it through royalties and will be given thanks on the album artwork, giving away something as personal as a song is something I would find hard to do, unless the price was right…
    I love a big production, but I also love simplicity. Just a singer and a piano or a guitar can make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up just as much as a symphony orchestra or a dirty dubstep drop. I know I have found a song I really like when I am either weeping as I find the message connects with me on a personal level or I am jumping around the kitchen like a lunatic with his arse has on fire.
    But the one thing that makes music special is that it brings people together. Music is universal. You may never have met somebody before or just passed them by in the street, but finding a connection through music can often bring about friendship, relationships and even love. That, for me, is seen as why so many songs are written about love. Because music helps you to forget the good, the bad and the ugly, but it can also help you to remember them too. Emotion is what makes music so raw, so heart-felt and joyous.
    Going back to the original question, I can have a favourite ‘modern’ song for a period of time then it generally ends up being something else very quickly. I love a song that is inspiring to young people to be themselves and love who they are, so that is why songs such as  ‘Jessie J – Who You Are’ and ‘Christina Aguilera – Beautiful’ have always stuck out in my mind as saying:
“Hey, I am me, and I am happy with that.”
    But they aren’t favourites of mine. They’re bloody good songs, but not an all time favourite. You have band like ‘The Beatles’, ‘Queen’ and ‘The Rolling Stones’ that revolutionized how the world sees British music. You have modern equivalents such as ‘Coldplay’ and ‘Muse’ plus artists like ‘Adele’ and ‘Emeli Sande’ who have conquered America and the rest of the world showing how dominant British artists are on the world’s stage. (Don’t get me started on ‘One Direction’, but they’re good-looking lads and are successful, so hats off to them.) Their songwriting is clever, catchy, recognizable and relatable, but neither of these artists have written my favourite song.
    To conclude, it has taken me a long time to work out what my favourite song actually is. I know many of my friends may ask: “What the hell is this?” but this song has such simple electronic production, which I found captivating. It gives a sense of atmosphere and presence, which I find exciting, but this was a song I found when I went through a tough time that helped me to realize I wasn’t alone. Now when I am asked the question ‘what is your favourite song?’, I don’t have to bore people with my top 100.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9WdUgn0XkU

I have mentioned before that my good friend Chris Hunter is a young and upcoming musician. In order to help him get a few more listeners, I have decided to write an entry on, what I consider to be, the best five songs recorded by him so far. I'll also include links to them on his SoundCloud page so that you can all listen and make your own decisions! All of these songs are entirely original, I have decided not to include any covers, but he has covers too.

5. Intense Whispering
Now, this is pure speculation, but this song seems to me to be about the negative effects of spreading rumours. I may be entirely wrong, but then again musical enjoyment is partly down to your own interpretations and I certainly enjoy the message of the song, even if it may only be there in my imagination! Quite a sad song too, like much of Chris's work.

4. Break It Down
One of Chris's most recent songs, and it's quite happy and upbeat too! As I said, most of Chris's songs are quite sad, so this is a refreshing change. This is very catchy and just generally enjoyable and there's not much more I can add to that.

3. Addicted
This song is both quite sad, and also quite catchy which is, in my oppinion, a rather nice combination! In the song, the singer is quite down on himself, and it's a feeling that I'm sure everybody has had at some point and so will be able to relate to. I find it quite hard to explain why it is that I like this, but there's a certain quality that this song has which makes it a very nice listen.

2. Heart of the Storm
This is a pretty sad song, probably Chris's saddest, and I think it's been done very well. I find that, sometimes, you'll listen to a song and you'll know that it's supposed to be a sad song, but you won't really feel anything, because it's not being sucessfully emotionally engaging,

1. Rich!
This song is also on iTunes, so, if you want to support Chris, go there and download it! This is far from his most serious song (a light hearted, upbeat song about how the singer wants to be rich) but it's so catchy and fun, that I can't help but like it. As Chris described it to me, it's a parody of modern pop music, and a very good one at that too. I find myself listening to this on many a bus ride.

I hope you've enjoyed reading/listening through this countdown :)

I expect that this joke is lost on a lot of people. There is a Japanese band called One OK Rock, here is a song by them if you'd like to try their music. Other than that, I guess there's really nothing to explain. And if I do say so myself, I think this was one okay joke :)

Finger puppets can be bought here.

For Christmas, my brother bought me the game Pokémon White. This is an excellent game, and I've been spending a lot of time playing it lately, as soon as I'm finished I'll most probably post a review on here. Just the other day, I got to an area in the game called Driftveil Drawbridge, and I realised that the music there sounds a lot like the music from the Waterfall area in Super Castlevania IV (a game I'll review if I ever manage to beat the really hard levels at the end of the game!). They're so similar, that I wonder if it might be intentional. But, I'll let you decided for yourself.

Here is Super Castlevania IV's Waterfall music:

Here is the music from Driftveil Drawbridge:

So what does everybody think? Do they sound the same to you? Could it be intentional? Coincidence? I'll leave you to decide.

Have you ever found yourself with nothing to do from 4pm to 6pm on a Tuesday? Well, by golly, I do believe I've found the thing for you: The Rush Hour Show. What is it, you ask? Well, basically it's a radio show which plays a lot of modern music as well as any requests from audience members. But, while the music is nice enough (although, they do play the song Gangnam Style a lot, and I've never really enjoyed that) the main appeal for me, is the conversation between my good friend Ben Wood and his co-host Daniel Young, it's always very entertaining, and even interactive if you use their Facebook page.
Click here for their Facebook page, and here for the place to go when you want to listen. Enjoy!

Also, by writing this entry, I realise that it has been a long time since I wrote any silly tongue-in-cheek entries about my friends. If anybody would like one about them, please let me know! I am more than happy to write them :D

EDIT: This is now called Monday Night Dinner and aires on Mondays from 6 pm to 8 pm.

I recently bought myself a little set of panpipes. I can pretty much do nothing with them, but I have made up a very short (fifteen seconds actually) little tune of my own. I wanted to preserve it, and a friend of mine told me to upload it, so here it is:

You may remember that, several months ago, I made a blog entry called Music Suggestions, where I gave ten suggestions of good songs. Today I'm going to suggest ten more for you! I hope you'll enjoy at least one of them.

Of course, as should be quite clear, I do not own the copyright to any of these songs. I have tried to use their official YouTube videos, but it seems that some of them either don't have an official upload, or have an official upload which is very hard to find. Hopefully these unofficial videos will stay up for a long time so that anybody looking at this entry in the future won't be looking at videos that won't play due to having been taken down!

This is a game which, I imagine, would be enjoyed by any fan of The Beatles. Basically, what you do, is you play their songs on a guitar or drum controller, or sing them into a microphone like karaoke. This is very fun, though there is the slight downside that these controllers are quite costy.
    Anyway, you can play the game in two ways: you can either go through the story mode, which basically takes you through The Beatles career in chronological order and giving you unlockable photographs accompanied with interesting facts for each song you perform well. Also, while you play the songs, you're given nice animated videos of The Beatles performing the songs too. These videos are particularly interesting when you play the more peculiar songs, such as I Am The Walrus, which feature dream-like montages of odd and interesting things.
    The other mode of playing, basically just allows you to choose which song you play, the difficulty level and whether or not you want to play alone with friends. This is the place where you'll try and beat your highscores and do well on the super hard difficulties. You'll also be playing in this mode after you finish the story, which won't take too long (not that it's too short).
    What I think is a little disappointing, is the fact that there are only forty-five songs built into the disk. There are lots of classic Beatles songs included amongst the forty-five, but it's inevitable that any Beatles fan will have at least one favourite missing. You can increase the number of songs, by visiting the game's virtual shop (where you spend real money), it's somewhat annoying that you have to pay even more to get the songs though. Plus, even buying every song in the shop won't give you the full Beatles catalogue. A further downside, for you Rock Band fans, is that this game is not compatible with the other games in the series, unlike others, which can play the songs of other games, and vice versa.
    Nonetheless, this is a very fun standalone game. I'd rate it at 8.3/10

(I do not own the copyright of the screenshot.)

So, that was nice wasn't it? The title may give the impression that I hate this song, but actually I quite like it. Adele has a nice voice, the instruments sound nice and it's just generally not bad. However, if you think about it, the lyrics seem to be quite immoral in a way.
    "Never mind," she says, "I'll find someone like you."
    And then "I wish nothing but the best for you."
    That sounds nice, but really, it seems she's only thinking about herself and her ex and not the future someone like [them]. That someone is very unlucky really: let’s say he meets Adele they get on really well and eventually get married etc. He thinks it's because she loves him and thinks he's a good person, but actually it's because he reminds her of somebody she met years ago… So either his self-esteem is going to take quite a blow when he finds out, or he'll spend his life living a lie. Of course, maybe he'd be fine about it, and then there'd be no problem, but I don't think it's likely. The desire to find someone just like your ex as your next partner really seems like rather unhealthy behaviour, the kind of thing that leads to you buying them the same clothes your ex wore and asking them to style their hair similarly. Surely, it'd be much better to find somebody very different, because people love different people in different ways, then it won't be able to be weighed up against her ex-partner so easily and there'll be less of that moral ambiguity. And surely someone like them would just leave her as well anyway?