64 minutes, 31 seconds

Lycia
Tripping Back into the Broken Days

Last day of February! Sheesh--I've been at this for two and a half months, and I'm only up to 64 minutes. There's a part of me that feels like Casey Kasem ("We're counting down the hits!") when I log in and blog each day. Um, except for the fact that Kasem had thousands of listeners, and I have zero readers. Oh, and he was an Arab, and I'm not.

Lycia: Sadly, now broken up, but at their height probably the most interesting band to grace Sam Rosenthal's Projekt label. When their debut, Ionia, came out, in 1991, I remember thinking it sounded like nothing else I'd ever heard before. Ambient goth rock backed by an insistent drum machine, the whole thing haunted by Mike Van Portfleet's hoarse, whispered vocals. They went on to even higher highs (A Day in the Stark Corner, The Burning Circle and Then Dust), but Ionia has a certain raw energy that was never reproduced on any of their later albums.

Tripping Back into the Broken Days is a more recent (2002), and wholly acoustic, effort. It's got that Lycia intensity of feeling, but its overall texture is mellow and more contemplative than the earlier work. If it's a little dull, that's only by comparison to those early albums.

OK, back to work for me. Which means it's time to stop using words like "contemplative" and "mellow" and start using "capitalize" and "revenue." Please kill me now.

Also today:

64:31 X Marks the Pedwalk, Four Fit
64:29 Von Thronstahl, E Pluribus Unum
64:27 Stellamara, The Seven Valleys
New arrival! 68:08 Keef Baker, Redeye
64:25 Dither, Urei

64 minutes, 48 seconds

Delerium
Stone Tower

The Delerium story ended for me after the release of Karma, in 1997. Subsequent albums (Poem, Chimera, etc.) had by then mutated the project's sound too far into the realm of soulful pop. They became platforms for other singers to strut their stuff (for Canadian radio?) over Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber's kinetic electronica.

Stone Tower, on the other hand, is a relic from the early, ambient industrial days of Delerium, a slow-moving slab of Middle Eastern-tinged atmospheres and thudding, ritualistic percussion. I often wonder what fans of recent Delerium must think when they explore the band's back catalog: "Horrifying! How can people actually listen to this?"

Bill and Rhys, I can relate. I get that a lot.

Also today:

64:47 In the Nursery, Man with a Movie Camera
64:47 Vas, Sunyata
64:46 Fin de Siècle, Archives, Vol. 1
64:41 Cenobita, Metamorfosis
64:39 Die Form, Archives & Documents (CD 2 of 2)
64:39 Virtual Embrace, Escape to Insane
64:36 Terence Fixmer, Silence Control
64:35 Numina, Trancension (CD 1 of 2)
64:33 Empusae, Funestus

65 minutes, 2 seconds

Detritus
Endogenous

Just got back from a weekend in Las Vegas yesterday afternoon. I'd planned to blog last night, but what with the Oscars and friends over to watch it and being completely fucking exhausted from the trip and the lack of sleep...well, best laid plans.

Vegas: If you've never been, I recommend it. It's the most fascinating and, at the same time, most appalling place in America. Fascinating because it's a great place to watch people. Because of what it offers and where it is--that is to say, nowhere--it attracts the most diverse range of people of any city in the country. All classes, races, ethnicities, people from every state and every country, all there to gamble, drink, look at naked women, and eat till they bust.

Appalling because it's a totally overwhelming and mind-numbing place. An excess of everything: food, alcohol, lights, sound, people. And of course it's also tacky. But we go to be appalled. We want to feel superior to Vegas, as though we're just there to gawk at its debauchery. It's the Anna Nicole Smith of U.S. cities.

And for the record, I lost $100 playing blackjack.

Also today:

65:02 Holocaust Theory, Proclaimed Visions
64:59 ECM, Blechreiz
64:56 Severe Illusion, Shortcut to Civilization
64:56 Sleepwalk, Door to Insomnia...
64:55 Nostalgia, Beyond Horizon
New arrival! 66:44 Mind:State, Decayed-Rebuilt (CD 1 of 2)
New arrival! 65:32 Mind:State, Decayed-Rebuilt (CD 2 of 2)
64:52 Toxic Shock Syndrome, Dead Animal Sodomy
64:49 Dark Sanctuary, Royaume Mélancolique
64:49 THD, Mechanical Advantage
64:49 Void Construct, Estramay Aleph

65 minutes, 5 seconds

Allerseelen
Cruor

Always interesting to listen to Allerseelen's early material and compare it with the more recent work. Gerhard (formerly known as Kadmon) has come a long way from the pounding, ritualistic, noisy experiments chronicled on Cruor. But as much as I enjoy the more musical qualities of later albums such as, say, Abenteuerliches Herz (with its diverse influences, from flamenco to pop to folk), there's something reassuringly raw and powerful about the early, more purely industrial music he used to make. It reminds me of why I began to enjoy industrial music in the first place.

If you've been reading this blog (and I know no one has, really, and I can't blame them), you may be aware that I've managed to post every day since the beginning, back on December 15, 2006. Well, tomorrow will mark the first day without a Total Time blog entry. I'm off to Las Vegas for a weekend of debauchery with a few friends. Assuming I survive, I'll be back Sunday, when I promise to resume my pointless documentation of what I've been listening to lately. Will you know what to do with yourself in the meantime?

Also today:

65:05 Disharmony, Collapse
65:04 Einstürzende Neubauten, Strategies Against Architecture III (CD 1 of 2)

65 minutes, 18 seconds

Klinik
Melting Close & Sabotage

Great, classic Klinik from their golden era. I was playing this in the car this morning, uncharacteristically subjecting the two women I carpool with on Thursdays to the music I listen to. I kept the volume low. Nevertheless, one of them picked up on it during a lull in the conversation and asked me what it was.

"It's from the '80s," I replied. "This old Belgian band called the Klinik."

"Are they kind of like Kraftwerk?" she asked. "Sounds like it."

"Uh, sort of, I guess," I demurred. "Maybe a little."

Later, I realized I was being defensive. I'm not really a Kraftwerk fan (yeah, I know, industrial music probably couldn't exist without them, blah blah blah), and my initial reaction was to reject the comparison. But, like it or not, most people's reference point to electronic music is Kraftwerk. And is that so bad?

Also today:

65:14 Mediæval Bæbes, The Rose
65:10 Obszön Geschöpf, Yell of Fright
65:10 Xorcist, Phantoms
65:08 Funker Vogt, Maschine Zeit
65:07 Agonoize, 999 (CD 1 of 2)
65:07 Musterion, The Black Lodge

65 minutes, 37 seconds

Jóhann Jóhannsson
Virðulegu Forsetar

Oh, Iceland: You're so small and isolated, yet you make so much interesting music. This disc is from 2003. It's got a stately, elegiac sound built around horns and keyboard atmospherics. Hovering between ambient and orchestral, gentleness and surging, it's beautiful in a quiet, restrained way.

As you can see, I had to dig out an obscure HTML character code to reproduce the Icelandic letter in the title (it's apparently called an "eth"). However, I'm not sure what the title means. "Virðulegu" seems to mean "venerable," and the definition of "forsetar" is given as "president, chairperson." Your guess is as good as mine.

Also today:

65:36 Aghast View, Carcinopest
65:36 E-Craft, Forge the Steel
65:33 In the Nursery, Electric Edwardians
65:30 God Module, Artificial (CD 2 of 2)
65:30 Project Pitchfork, Daimonion
65:28 Retractor, No Resistance
65:27 Front Line Assembly, Implode
65:24 Accessory, Forever & Beyond (CD 1 of 2)
65:24 Collection d'Arnell-Andrea, Les Marronniers
65:24 Kreuzweg Ost, Iron Avantgarde
65:19 Conscientia Peccati, Culpa Somniorum

66 minutes, 1 second

His Divine Grace
Reverse Aleph

I know virtually nothing about this mysterious band--not what the band name refers to, not what this album title refers to, and certainly not what the hell they're up to thematically, politically, religiously, or even musically. The entire CD consists of one long track of ambient drone, with the barest hints of melody and strings seeping through the haze.

I was unable to find anything edifying about them, either on their own Web site or elsewhere on the Internet. And don't look to the CD jacket for clues either. The back panel features a wheel chart of the Hebrew alphabet, and the only other snippet of information is a quote from someone named Johanna Liebhart, apparently some sort of punk/new-wave artist back in the '70s. Anyway, the quote reads, "Damals war alles besser," which translates to "Everything was better then."

Hmm.

Also today:

66:01 Mnemonic, Identifikationsstörung
66:00 Der Blutharsch, Der Sieg des Lichtes Ist das Lebens Heil!
66:00 Sarrazine, Sarrazine
66:00 X-Fusion, Dial D for Demons
65:58 Yavin 4, Otherworld Technologies
65:56 Regenerator, Disease
65:53 Front Line Assembly, Artificial Soldier
65:47 Aghast View, Vapor Eyes
65:46 Terrorfakt, Cold World Remixes
65:44 Liquid Divine, Black Box
65:43 Massiv in Mensch, Menschdefekt
65:39 Terminal Choice, Black Past

66 minutes, 21 seconds

Synaesthesia
Embody

Released in 1994, this was the first of three albums Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber (a.k.a. Front Line Assembly and countless other projects) recorded under the Synaesthesia moniker. The CD jacket lists one "R. Deckard" as the man behind the music, but of course we all know that name as Harrison Ford's character from Blade Runner. Why the cheeky anonymity? If Leeb and Fulber were worried about having their names attached to one too many side projects, well, by this time they were three too many side projects late for that.

Musically, this represents the ambient-tribal-ethno end of the spectrum for Leeb and Fulber, similar in some ways to Spheres-era Delerium or Future Primitives-era Intermix. It's not bad, but it's probably no one's favorite FLA side project.

It's good enough, though, for a Monday in which everyone else has the day off except me. Grr.

Also today:

66:20 Phelios, Images and Spheres
66:14 Dither, Neve
66:13 Potentia Animi, Das Erste Gebet
66:11 Antigen Shift, The Way of the North
66:09 Seven Pines, Le Cri
66:08 Zentriert ins Antlitz, Mutilate
66:04 Vidna Obmana & Jeff Pearce, True Stories
66:02 A Challenge of Honour, The Right Place

66 minutes, 32 seconds

Allerseelen
Flamme

People accuse Allerseelen of being one of those supposed crypto-fascist bands I wrote about last week. Gerhard, the man behind this Austrian solo project, has a fascination with the onetime pro-fascist writer Ernst Jünger, and the themes behind the Neuschwabenland album (Neuschwabenland being the Nazi-era name for the German portion of Antarctica they intended at one point to colonize) are interesting, but admittedly perhaps a bit troubling.

Regardless of what is or isn't true, Allerseelen does indeed celebrate "European-ness," and some people interpret that as nationalism, with all its attendant anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic properties. Anti-fascist watchdog groups protest at Allerseelen shows and try to get them canceled, often with success. But what proof do they have that, say, Allerseelen is a fascist band spouting Nazi ideology?

What's interesting to me about these bands is their subtlety. For example, unlike those of the more well-known and sensationalized white-power heavy-metal or punk bands, Allerseelen's lyrics are not explicitly racist or inciting to hatred of any kind. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to say they're even implicitly inflammatory. (Admittedly, I speak no German, so there might be something I'm missing.) But I understand that some of the themes might be a little dangerous to explore in a Europe still very sensitive to anything that smacks of nationalism or ambiguity about what happened in the '30s and '40s.

Truth is, I like that this music encourages thought, even doubt, about its intentions. Makes for an interesting, if unsettling, Sunday.

Also today:

66:28 Ammer Einheit, Deutsche Krieger
66:24 X Marks the Pedwalk, Air Back Trax
66:23 yelworC, Brainstorming

66 minutes, 36 seconds

Numina & Caul
Inside the Hollow Realm

I guess if you compose ambient music that sounds more or less similar to that of other artists, it's only a matter of time before you decide to collaborate on an album. Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana do it all the time, so why not Numina and Caul? Pretty soon it'll be Numina and Roach. Or Caul and Obmana. Then it'll be Ross and Rachel. Then Joey and Rachel. Then Chandler and...sorry.

Also today:

66:33 Vinterriket, 7-Zoll Kollektion 2000-2002

66 minutes, 48 seconds

Aslan Faction
Sin-Drome of Separation

This EP, from 2003, is the last thing this angry, harsh-sounding outfit released, and from the looks of it, their Web site hasn't been updated in about six months. Is that what they mean by "separation"? Has the Faction become...factionalized?

Also today:

66:46 Project Pitchfork, Kaskade
66:43 BlutEngel, Seelenschmerz
66:43 Type 001, Multi-Track Alignment
66:42 Terminal Choice, In the Shadow of Death
66:40 Leæther Strip, Serenade for the Dead
66:40 Soman, Sound Pressure
66:38 Estampie, A Chantar
66:38 Pax, High Speed Digital Spirit Processing

66 minutes, 59 seconds

Conscientia Peccati
Quinque Viae

I used to turn up my nose at CDRs. If it wasn't an official CD release, I wanted nothing to do with it. Of course, this was a ridiculous artificial "rule" I made for myself, and it prevented me from getting to hear some really great music. (For one thing, how else are you supposed to get your hands on the Andrew Szava-Kovats back catalog, much less anything from the Elsola label?)

So I relented. And lately there's been an explosion in CDR releases, which means there's been a corresponding explosion in the number of CDRs in my collection. Which means there are a lot more discs that my iMac just plain won't play. This disc by Conscientia Peccati is a good example. I loaded it into the tray, and I could hear it trying to spin, but then I got that deflating winding-down noise that tells you it's having trouble reading the disc. Spin, wind down. Spin, wind down. About 50 times. It was like listening to a terminally ill patient on a respirator. I finally had to force a shutdown.

To be fair, this happens with copy-protected CDs as well. But still, in this age of people listening to music on their PCs, artists should be mindful that CDRs, while a cheaper medium to produce for them, aren't always the best medium for their fans.

Obsessive-compulsiveness and consumer advocacy too--didn't think you'd get all that in one blog, did you?

Also today:

66:58 Equinox, Holon
66:57 S:Cage, Madness Turns to Glass
66:56 Einstürzende Neubauten, Perpetuum Mobile
66:54 Love Spirals Downwards, Temporal
66:51 Cruciform Injection, Critical
66:50 THD, Outside In
66:50 Velvet Acid Christ, Between the Eyes, Vol. 3

67 minutes, 13 seconds

Westwind & Destruction Flowers
Be Happy to Be Alive

Westwind belongs to that burgeoning fraternity of bands who dabble in fascistic imagery and whose music can best be described as "martial pop." I won't speculate here on this French band's politics--I don't truly know what they are, and any speculation would be just that: speculation--but I think this whole European neofolk phenomenon, which likely began with Death in June about 25 years ago, has been interesting to watch.

Some bands (Von Thronstahl, for example) seem to flaunt a totalitarian ideology, but it's hard to know if you can take it seriously. Other bands seem to cloak their philosophy in euphemisms: "solipsism" (Luftwaffe), "misanthropy" (Boyd Rice), "social Darwinism" (Rice again), "an interest in the history of the Second World War" (Death in June), etc. Again, it's often unclear where these artists actually stand on issues of Nazism, immigration, anti-Semitism, etc., but they clearly thrive amid the ambiguity, which makes them so fascinating on the one hand and so troubling on the other.

I like to call it "uneasy listening."

Also today:

67:08 :Wumpscut:, Music for a German Tribe
67:06 Heimatærde, Kadavergehorsam
67:02 Caul, Reliquary
67:02 Uruk-Hai, The Battle
67:01 Absurd Minds, Noumenon
67:00 Vinterriket, Landschaften Ewiger Einsamkeit
67:00 X-Fusion, Demons of Hate (CD 1 of 2)
66:59 BlutEngel, The Oxidising Angel

67 minutes, 24 seconds

Various artists
The Best of Cryogenic Studio (CD 2 of 2)

Yeah, I know. It's not exactly "various artists"--it's just Bill Leeb in all his guises: Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Noise Unit, Synaesthesia, etc. Most of these tracks appear elsewhere, but there are just enough exclusive ones to make this double-disc set worth owning.

But given the dubious provenance of this release (did Leeb even approve it, much less get paid?), it's hard to know where these extra tracks came from. Leftover studio bits? Unauthorized remixes? I guess this is what happens when you license your work to so many different labels. Let that be a lesson to you kids.

Also today:

67:20 Beefcake, Polycontrale Contra Punkte
67:19 :Wumpscut:, BloodChild (CD 1 of 2)
67:18 In Strict Confidence, Love Kills!
67:18 Terrorfakt, Deconstruction
67:17 Delerium, Spheres
67:17 Tactical Sekt, Syncope (CD 1 of 2)
67:16 Atomtrakt, Schutt & Asche
67:16 Intermix, Phaze Two
67:15 Dead Man's Hill, Lakes of Sacrifice (CD 1 of 2)

67 minutes, 39 seconds

Tamtrum
Some Atomik Songz

I don't know what "Tamtrum" means. At first I thought it might be a German word. But I couldn't find it in the online German-English dictionary I looked at. Besides, this is a French band. So I'm left to guess that it's just a misspelling of the English word "tantrum," as in "angry outburst." And it's not the only word they (intentionally?) misspell. (See also "atomik," "songz.")

Whatever their orthographic shortcomings, if indeed Tamtrum is meant to be evocative of some sort of rage, they succeed. This is an angry record.

Also today:

67:38 Allerseelen, Sturmlieder
67:38 Haujobb, Frames
67:37 Vinterriket, Landschaftsmalerische Klangwelten
67:34 Black Lung, The Disinformation Plague
67:32 Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, Die Verbannten Kinder Evas
New arrival! 75:38 Lisa Gerrard, Lisa Gerrard
67:26 THD, Watz Your Program?
67:26 Wynardtage, Waste of Time
67:25 In the Nursery, L'Esprit

67 minutes, 47 seconds

Front Line Assembly
Epitaph

Shouldn't only posthumous albums be titled Epitaph? I mean, what comes after an epitaph? Exhumation? I quibble. Truth is, I think this is a great album, and I'm normally more a fan of FLA's earlier material. (And when I say earlier, I mean State of Mind early.)

If only they were better spellers. (Track 10: "Existance"?)

Also today:

67:44 Painbastard, Overkill
67:43 Vas, Offerings
67:39 Synaesthesia, Desideratum (CD 1 of 2)

67 minutes, 52 seconds

Aïboforcen
Sons Palliatifs

I've been obsessed lately with the short commercial spots Jim Henson did for Wilkins Coffee back in the '50s. There are something like 180 of them available on YouTube--check 'em out. At first I thought they were fake, but this wiki article says otherwise. (And you know you can trust an encyclopedia written and edited by shmucks like yourself.)

Anyway, it's hard to believe these short, oddly violent clips came from the mind of Jim Henson. Jim Freakin' Henson! Creator of Elmo, Grover, Big Bird, and the letter "C." But he had a sadistic streak, my friends and faithful readers, and these videos expose it in wondrous black and white. It's definitely his voice in the ad, at least for the role of proto-Kermit, or whoever that thinner blob is supposed to be. But that friendly, upbeat voice diguises some of the cruellest intentions, and you may never look at the Muppets the same way again. Sesame Street? More like Kick Me Street.

I'm off to have a cup of Wilkins Coffee.

Also today:

67:52 Uruk-Hai & Vinterriket, Uruk-Hai & Vinterriket
67:52 X Marks the Pedwalk, Drawback

68 minutes, 2 seconds

Kapo!
Kapo!

I think a lot of Death in June fans weren't too into this album when it came out. I don't know if folks have reconsidered their opinions, but I've always enjoyed this collaboration between DIJ's Doug Pearce and Strength Through Joy's Richard Leviathan. It's got a quiet intensity, especially on tracks like "A Sad Place to Make a Shadow" and "Lullaby to a Ghetto."

Work is going better, thanks for asking. I got a glowing performance review and even a bit of a raise. What's more (well, actually less--let's just say "also"), I got my boss to acknowledge the e-mail I sent him last week. We're allegedly going to discuss it on Monday. I'll believe it when I see the meeting invitation.

Last on the agenda: I'm going bowling with my coworkers tonight--yes, it's one of those company "morale" events. I'm not a huge fan of bowling, but I do enjoy drinking and laughing at other people bowling. Can you picture Doug Pearce bowling? I can't either.

Also today:

New arrival! 69:09 Scrap.edx, Non-Linear Interfacing
68:01 Ivo Sedlacek, Mystical Violin
68:00 Combichrist, Everybody Hates You (CD 1 of 2)
68:00 X-Fusion, Beyond the Pale
68:00 X10, Semblance
67:58 Allerseelen, Stirb und Werde
67:58 Tactical Sekt, Geneticide
67:55 Ah Cama-Sotz, The Way to Heresy

68 minutes, 14 seconds

Lisa Gerrard
The Mirror Pool

Time to blog ended up being a little tight today, what with having to work (really!) and celebrate a friend's birthday tonight. So this is necessarily brief. Suffice it to say that Lisa Gerrard has turned into a phenomenon, what with the movie soundtracks and million-selling CDs. She could probably just moan softly into a microphone at this point, and the recording would go platinum. (Come to think of it, that's what it sounds like she's doing lately.)

But The Mirror Pool was her first solo album following her career with Dead Can Dance, and I think she recorded it following the death of her brother. It's a rich, emotionally resonant collection of pieces (calling them "songs" seems to cheapen them somehow) that easily matches the best of her vocal work with DCD.

Also today:

68:12 The Amp, Sirion
68:05 Bitcrush, In Distance
68:05 Massiv in Mensch, Belastendes Material
68:04 Clock DVA, Digital Soundtracks

68 minutes, 19 seconds

Feindflug
Volk und Armee

Feindflug's incendiary mix of harsh electro 'n' WWII samples was exciting and fresh when they came out with their debut album, in 1997. Ten years on, it's wearing a little thin. The heavy sampled guitar riffs, the explosive beats, the war-movie samples...we've heard it all before on each and every one of Feindflug's releases.

The cover art on the digipak seems to point to an interesting examination of propaganda during the war, but--at least to an English speaker--the connection is lost with the music. Maybe we've yet to hear their best work, but I suspect not. I think the horse was DOA, but Feindflug are making a career of beating it.

Also today:

68:17 Current 93, Earth Covers Earth
68:16 Delerium, Spiritual Archives
68:16 Void Construct, Sensory Division
68:15 Robert Davies, Sub Rosa
68:14 :Wumpscut:, Bone Peeler

68 minutes, 31 seconds

Dense Vision Shrine
In the Abode of Gloom

Still no word from my boss (see yesterday's post), so while I'm definitely in the abode of gloom, I probably should be listening to something more cheerful. But rules are rules.

Karsten Hamre is the dude behind DVS. It's one of his many projects--he also does Penitent, Arcane Art, and a bunch of other music- and art-related things. I like this particular project best. It's dark ambient instrumental music with a hint of melody hidden deep within its gloomy fog. So in other words, it's depressing Norwegian suicide music.

Now I need something that'll make me laugh. Thankfully, there's this.

Also today:

68:31 Electro Assassin, The Divine Invasion
68:30 Omnicore, Der Peaker
68:26 Iambia, Anasynthesis
68:25 Assemblage 23, Addendum
68:25 Front Line Assembly, Total Terror II
68:24 Gridlock, Trace
68:22 Dubstar, Goodbye
68:21 Anstalt, Brilliance Without Phase

68 minutes, 42 seconds

Implant
Kmputor

Monday. I was dreading the end of the weekend, both because (like everybody else) I didn't want to go back to work and because on Friday morning I'd written my boss an e-mail that, having had three days to reflect on its contents, now seems rather rash.

Worse, I haven't heard peep back from him yet.

A little background: I work for a small, struggling software company, and I write for one of their Web sites, crafting copy designed to help partners sell my company's software to businesses. Yeah. Believe me, I almost fell asleep typing that last sentence.

Anyway, I've only been on this job for a month or so, but what I've noticed is that my boss pretty much rewrites everything I give him. Now, that means either I'm not qualified to do the job (depressing, but I'm a big boy, I can handle it) or he's all about making the site conform to his voice and how he thinks things should be worded. For example, when I write "Multiple resources...," he changes it to "An array of resources..."

On Friday, after enduring multiple an array of rewrites over the past week or two, I sent him this e-mail:

Judging from the amount of copy that was rewritten, I seem to be struggling with issues of tone and style, and that troubles me. My concern is that I'm putting too much of a burden on you to essentially re-craft the copy, and that the work I'm doing isn't adding much value. Am I not "getting" the voice of the site that's needed for these pages? Is my writing style too casual or too languid? Is my judgment about what to emphasize in the copy wildly off the mark?

Comparing the rewrites to my original copy has been helpful, but I'm trying to understand in a more holistic sense what I can do to adjust my voice to suit what's needed on the site--I'm wondering if it's that I'm accustomed to writing for customers (end users) and that writing for a business audience is a new challenge that will just take me a little more time to master.

I know you've got a lot on your plate, but any insight you can provide would be helpful. I'm committed to doing a great job here, and it pains me to think that I might not be meeting expectations.

Now that I read it again, what truly pains me is how puppy-like it sounds. Am I so damn eager to please that I can't call him to task for being too much of a micro-manager? Do I have to see everything as my fault? Or am I just trying to save my job? (A job I increasingly dislike.)

I didn't think adulthood would be this complicated. Can't I just play with my CDs instead of working?

Also today:

68:40 Atrium Carceri, Kapnobatai
68:40 U-Tek, Goldene Zeit 1989-1993
68:36 Decoded Feedback, Evolution
68:35 !Bang Elektronika, Aktivierung!
68:35 Dernière Volonté, Obeir et Mourir (CD 1 of 2)
68:35 :Wumpscut:, Bunker Gate Seven
68:32 Intermix, Future Primitives
68:32 The Last Influence of Brain, Illusions and Reality

68 minutes, 56 seconds

Am'Ganesha'n
Eleftheria

Just in time for the Super Bowl: a goth supergroup! You know, just like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer or the Traveling Wilburys, but with more eyeliner. Am'Ganesha'n follows in the footsteps of past all-stars This Mortal Coil, a project slapped together by 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell that joined members of Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and other bands for three albums back in the '80s and early '90s.

Am'Ganesha'n (don't try to bring any of their CDs through airport security) is composed of band members from Rajna, Les Secrets de Morphée, and Speaking Silence. Haven't heard of any of those? Well, "supergroup" really hangs on your definition of the word "super," doesn't it? It's the junior varsity squad.

Anyway, their sound probably ends up most closely resembling Rajna's. Which is a good thing, Rajna being the strongest of the three artists. Lots of hammered dulcimer and Dead Can Dance-like atmospheres, but not as overproduced. The sounds are a bit more rough and down-to-earth. A little more human, maybe.

Pretty sure if the members of Am'Ganesha'n were hosting a Super Bowl party today, there would be mead.

Also today:

68:53 Silk Saw, Come Freely, Go Safely
68:50 Mnemonic, Konstruktive Vergangenheitsbewältigung (CD 1 of 2)
68:50 Steve Roach, New Life Dreaming
68:47 Einstürzende Neubauten, Silence Is Sexy
68:43 Decoded Feedback, Overdosing

69 minutes, 4 seconds

Negative Format
Cipher Method

When I was in high school, the computer lab used to have a vocoder hooked up to the terminals. Once you ran the program that activated it, you could instruct it to repeat whatever words or phrases you typed on your screen. It was great, if primitive, fun (this was the mid '80s, after all), and naturally the things we instructed the vocoder to say tended toward the juvenile: "This computer is a piece of shit," "Who farted?," and so on. All of which would inevitably get us kicked out of the room by Mr. Moran, the computer teacher at the time.

And yet despite the puerile attempts at humor, I think I was a little awed by the vocoder. It sounded like the voice of the future. Sure, its pronunciation was weird--you had to spell words phonetically to get the thing to sound right--but it was cold and impassive, authoritative and otherworldly. It was a poor man's Darth Vader breathing mask.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that the vocoder has a special place in my heart. Or at least my ears. Negative Format is one of the many bands that make use of it (a more updated-sounding device, of course), and yeah, it sounds retro, but to me it's still futuristic. And not just futuristic, but optimistic. It's the sound of robots, from a time when robots were going to be helpful and the future was bright and full of possibilities and we were all going to zip around on jet packs.

Blade Runner pretty much put the kibosh on all of that. Now the future looks like computer viruses, global warming, and vengeful androids. Oh, well. While we wait for dystopia, we can dance to NF's trancey, bouncy, neato-futuristic CDs.

Also today:

69:03 C-Tec, Let Your Body Die
69:01 Stereomotion, Resistance: 2012
69:00 Sleepwalk, Rapid Eye Movement
69:00 Von Thronstahl, Bellum, Sacrum Bellum!?
69:00 X-Fusion, Demons of Hate (CD 2 of 2)

69 minutes, 17 seconds

Cyclone B
Consequence of Hidden Truth

Four lies we comfort ourselves with:

1) I am competent at my job.
2) My friends all like me.
3) People seek out and respect my opinion.
4) I come from a normal, well-adjusted family.

Bad mood today. Or couldn't you tell?

Also today:

69:17 Misericordia, Passion, Pestilence and Polyphony
69:13 End of Orgy, Caramel Amer
69:11 Regenerator, Soulseeker
69:11 :Wumpscut:, The Mesner Tracks
69:10 Front Line Assembly, Total Terror
69:10 The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, A New Soldier Follows the Path of a New King
69:04 Gridlock, The Synthetic Form

69 minutes, 19 seconds

Funker Vogt
Always and Forever, Vol. 1 (CD 1 of 2)

You pretty much have to be German in order to say the word "Funker" and not snicker. I even had to stifle a giggle as I typed it. I guess it means "radio operator," or so I recall from reading an interview with them a while back. But it sounds more like it means "someone who stinks up the can."

Truth is, I have mixed feelings about Funker Vogt. On the one hand, some of the songs aren't bad. They have a minor-chord anthemic quality and are usually backed by some pretty impactful beats and occasionally demonstrate thoughtful lyrics. On the other hand, a lot of the songs sound the same. Exactly. The. Same. And the band seems to take itself awfully seriously. Maybe too seriously to have a name that begins with "Funker."

Or maybe it's all just a big act, and they're really having a laugh, as Ricky Gervais's character-within-a-character on the brilliant HBO show Extras would say.

Also today:

69:17 Cruciform Injection, Response Stimuli