today i did another boat trip on the zürich lake, after getting up pretty early. it was really nice, as the weather was great (the sun was burning, but not too bad), and it was pretty empty. i got one of the seats in the very front of the boat. listening to great music (unholy‘s really great for that, as is vintersorg’s a cosmic genesis). here are some impressions:
after five (long) years of silence, tiamat released a new album, amanethes. when i listened to a few samples around one month ago, i didn’t like it too much. i still bought it (hey, it’s a tiamat album!) and, after listening to it a few times, the ice melted, turned into fire. this album is amazing. heavy, dark, gothic. probably one of the best releases this year.
sometimes, i really hate computers. in particular, when wanting to hear music on my macbook, which runs osx. so far, i haven’t found any good music player.
the first thing i tried is itunes. it seems to be nice, but it’s support for an externally managed music library (i want to synchronize the library between several computers, whence i cannot let itunes organize the library) is sucking. there is a way to scan an existing directory with music, but it is incredibly slow. maybe one second per file? at least, this is not acceptable.
on linux, i’m using amarok, which has a lot of bugs, but runs pretty neat otherwise. (so far the best thing i found.) version 2.0 is supposed to be available on osx, too, but i’ve waiting for that one since more than a year, and it’s still not there. there’s a version which you can compile yourself, but it will compile for more than 24 hours, as it requires all the kde libraries. i don’t want to do that.
another choice is exaile, an amarok clone for gtk (gnome), which i have to try under linux. at least, under osx, i’ve not been able to run it, i have several python versions installed due to fink and darwinports, but it needs some more libraries and i don’t want to spend hours or days or weeks to find out which ones and how to install them.
well, and then, there’s xmms, a winamp 2.x clone, more or less dead for a long time. but i got it installed (via fink or darwinport, forgot which one), but my version features non-readable mp3 id3 tags and certain other quirks. but at least, it runs and plays music.
it really, really annoys me that it seems not to be able to install a decent player without spending lots of time. why on earth no one is able to provide a precompiled package for amarok? or make exaile run on osx? or any other more or less decent music player? why just itunes and xmms?!
i have even considered throwing osx away and installing something like ubuntu on my macbook, but that also sucks, as ubuntu might have problems with the wireless network, and then i have to find out how to set up an encrypted hard disk, which is possible but requires some more work than just five minutes.
when does the new age of computing begins, where one does not has so much trouble anymore?
i’m completely pissed of. seriously.
sitting there, almost asleep, killing time by listening to music on youtube, finally getting the idea to go sleeping, saying good night, playing a last song, one from anathema, called a simple mistake. starting slowly, then, after one half, exploding into a masterpiece of emotions, feelings, grabbing me, tearing me along. so intense, so powerful. this will keep me awake four hours, i guess, not allowing me to rest, to sleep. i hope they really do a tour this year, headlining it, as they promised last year…
after making a best of concerts list for this year, i decided to make a best of albums list for all albums i have bought until now. i divided this up into several categories:
note that this list reflects a snapshot of my current interest and remembrance of most of the albums. it could already be different in a few days. but feel free to comment or discuss this with me.
note that i took out the prog death/prog black (avantgarde) albums into its own category, called metal: extreme prog.
i think this is the category where i could have made the longest list. there are many really good albums missing, for example down and love and death by sentenced, the other swallow the sun albums, sunn o))) and boris‘ altar, some candlemass albums, unholy‘s the second ring of power, and some more.
this category is dominated by opeth; therefore, i decided to list the top seven instead of the top five.
