Archive for February 5th, 2008

Posted on February 5, 2008 - by jono

Metal On Demand

You know what, I try to be good to you, faithful readers. Knowing that you all share a deep and meaningful love of metal (humor me, please), I know that you want easy access to some good music. So, if you look in the sidebar of jonobacon.org, you will now see a little media player which plays my last.fm radio station.

I use the excellent Banshee as my media player, and the name of each song I listen to gets sent to last.fm, and this generates my last.fm profile. From what I can tell, last.fm looks at this list and generates a radio station – as such, this radio station is full of the kind of music I listen to, which is, naturally, a good thing for man, woman, dog and cat-kind across the world.

Posted on February 5, 2008 - by jono

Album Progress

Quick update on the album.

I have had pretty limited time recently to work on the album with being away for a week at the sprint in London, and then hectic most evenings. I was also kicked down with a cold for a while – headaches and loud, roaring guitars don’t mix! This week though I have had a little to work on some tunes, and made some good progress.

As I said previously, I am entering the second stage of the writing process – recording completed songs in their own project, with a click track and finalising various parts of the songs. I had one song completed at this stage, and this week I recorded another two, and the third one I wrote the bridge and ending to. This third song sounds pretty Pantera-like, with a nice fat (or phat, depending on your opinion and surfing experience) Hatebreed bridge and ending. All of these songs are providing oodles of creativity for vocals. Part of the reason I want to get the second-stage recordings done is so I can save them to my computer and write some lyrics on my flight to LA on Thursday. This album is going to say an awful lot about me and my life, and I want the lyrics to have as much care and devotion as the music.

Overall the music is sounding interesting; a mix of fairly accessible and rocky (not the boxer) arrangements, but with really thunderously heavy guitars and drums – its an interesting combination and difficult to pin what it sounds like. I suppose you could say it mixes Testament, Black Label Society, AC/DC, Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Mudvayne, Nevermore and a few other bands; and this is just the three songs I have written so far. If there is one thing I do know, this album is going to be pretty diverse musically and will have a palette of heavy and lighter moments.

I am hoping to get some more written tonight.

Posted on February 5, 2008 - by jono

Stephen Fry…he says Yes

I have always had a lot of respect for Stephen Fry, he is a talented, funny, intelligent British broadcaster, actor and comedian. A while back he mentioned Ubuntu in passing on his blog, and his recent blog entry has gone all-out in favour of Open Source. Good man.

I tried to see if he is free for LugRadio Live UK or USA but he is busy filming, which is a shame.