this weekend, i payed yellowknife a second visit. this time, during winter, with snow, ice, and freezing temperatures. and more aurora viewings.

here’s a first impression i got on the first day. it was taken at 14:20, and you can see that the sun was already pretty near to the horizon. the sunset is around 15:30, and goes down to 15:00 during winter’s shortest days. sunrise was around 9:30 the time i was there; it goes up to 10:00 during the shortest days.

i was staying in the narwal bed and breakfast, a small bed and breakfast located near the great slave lake, meaning i could just walk on the frozen lake and hopefully see some nice auroras during nighttime. here’s a nighttime impression, without an aurora but with clouds:

during the days, i often walked around and on the frame lake. lots of memories came up. it was often cloudy with breaks. here are some nice impressions:

finally, on the second and third night, the sky was mostly clear. and both nights featured auroras! the second night had a not very bright one, at least while i was outside, but the third and last night had some really great ones. here are a few impressions:

finally, here’s a video i recorded, consisting of 484 frames, each shot having an exposure time of one second. the movie is played back with six frames per second, i.e. you get a time lapse:

(this is a html5 video tag, so hopefully it works. otherwise, you can directly try the mpeg 4 variant and the ogg theora variant.)

the tenth video is hysteria by muse. the lyrics can be found here.

this is alternative, progressive rock. i guess you can listen to it.

i like it because… i guess this one is another earworm which just crawled into my ear and stayed there. i remember a day, or maybe a couple of days, in 2008, maybe while writing my thesis, when i would listen to hysteria and stockholm syndrome nonstop for hours. they’re both powerful songs, keeping me active, awake, making me want to jump up and dance.

the ninth video is the bright ambassadors of morning by pure reason revolution, a band which is prone to change their style every album. i encountered them while playing before blackfield. the lyrics can be found here.

this track qualifies as progressive rock. and you can listen to it.

edit: another non-embeddable one. here‘s the youtube link. and here’s a live version:

i like it because… it makes me dream. of a fantasy world, birds twittering, with me floating through a colorful forest. think of a colorful, cheerish equivalent to the dark world depicted in moonspell’s luna video.
pure reason revolution are one of the bands which i fell in love with when i saw them. unfortunately, i couldn’t buy an album when i first saw them, all the other proggers at the concert already bought up all other copies they brought with them on that tour. i haven’t seen anything like that before.

the eighth video is harvest by opeth. the lyrics can be found here.

this is accoustic. you can listen to it.

edit: another video which cannot be embedded. here‘s the video on youtube. since i didn’t found any other version which can be included here, you have to go there…

i like it because… it’s just beautiful. a wounderful accoustic piece, with an opethesque, dark story. the video, showing studio footage from recording blackwater park, in sepia tones, fall-like.

the seventh video is infra galaxia by the swiss experimental metal band samael, from one of their best albums, the experimental eternal. the lyrics can be found here.

this is very soft experimental/industrial black metal. you can give it a try, in particular when you liked radiant star.

i like it because… the first samael track i ever listened to was also contained on the dark winter nights sampler. it was a song which didn’t really fit on that sampler, but was somewhat interesting. so i seeked for more, and eventually found some other songs. some of them i didn’t like at all, and others i found pretty interesting. then, for a long time, i ignored samael, until a couple of years ago, when someone showed me their newest album at that time, solar soul. eventually i bought some other records, including eternal, which contains this song as well as radiant star. these two songs are very strange. samael combine their very dark, black metal roots with electronic music, creating a very experimental mix. where i just like the music of radiant star, i especially like the combination of the video and the music in this one. this strange object, floating in space, dissolving into a cloud of particles. reminding me of a demo. it almost feels as if the music was written for this animation. or was it the other way around? i can’t tell.

the sixth video is why so lonely by the 3rd and the mortal, from the very beautiful album tears laid in earth. it’s their only full album featuring kari rueslåtten as a singer. unfortunately, this is not a video, just a song. but a very nice one! the lyrics can be found here.

this is very slow gothic rock (metal?). i think you can listen to it.

i like it because… of kari’s great singing. well, i could have taken almost any other song from that album as well, it’s just such a great album. i listened to it in zürich’s knochenhaus, which unfortunately ceased to exist (the only good record store i know for metal and similar music – and the only store i found so far which had all albums of kari rueslåtten, which, except of tears laid in earth and a controversial storm release, have absolutely nothing to do with metal) and immediately decided to buy it, even after just hearing the first track (which is just sung, without any instruments) – i don’t know if i continued farther than the second track (why so lonely) or if i just decided to buy it and continue listening at home :)

the fifth video is creep by radiohead. i first heard this song in form of a cover by sentenced. the lyrics can be found here.

this is alternative rock. you can listen to it :) [well, the sentenced version is heavier and darker. use the youtube link if you prefer the original.]

edit: another one which cannot be embedded. if you want to see the video, click here. it looks they disabled all versions of the song for embedding. that’s why i decided to put in the video of the cover version by sentenced:

i like it because… of the sad story. (i can understand the storyteller very well…) and i also like the melody. there’s not much more to say.

today i was a second time in the fish creek provincial park. this time, it was covered in snow. here are some impressions:

the temperature in the park was really nice. i never felt cold, more like sweating under all my covers. (which changed when i left the park, somehow…)
speaking of temperatures, yesterday, apparently at 11 am, calgary was the “second coldest place on earth”, or more precisely, the second coldest place in the list of places watched by wx-now, with -33 degree celsius.
well. i was inside at that point :)

the fourth video is other people’s stories by kari rueslåtten. kari began in one of my favorite bands, the 3rd and the mortal, where she took part in the masterpiece tears laid in earth. after that album, she left the band, and eventually started to make her own albums. this is from her newest album (2005). the lyrics can be found here.

i guess this goes under pop. you can definitely listen to it.

i like it because… i just like it. a beautiful song, sang with a beautiful voice. as with most videos, i saw the video a long time after first listening to the song. and it’s one of the videos i like; it’s hard to say why though…
another of kari’s songs, which i would have put up in this place if it had a good video, would be trollferd. sung in norwegian (i think), the main part being the voice, instruments in the background growing stronger over the time, with a simple tune. just beautiful. this is one of the songs which made me decide that i should really get her solo albums.

i just stumbled over a very funny music video on youtube. someone took a black metal video by immortal (no need to watch this, it is crap, believe me…), recut it, and exchanged the music (the new one has nothing to do with black metal). the result is incredibly ridiculous: