Just a quick note to post the correct #ListenBrainz stats from last month. The data still had to be processed, in fact you can see that Celtic Frost dominated the chart. Also, Monolord became an obsession in the very last days. What an album!
Notes
What Are These?
These are indieweb notes. They are like tweets, toots… small thoughts, as they were supposed to be in 2006. As a general rule, they are shorter than the blog posts. They are kept here and automatically syndicated on my Fediverse instance when I deploy the website.
Nerdy? Yes. Unnecessary? Probably yes, too.
This month the #ListenBrainz stats are not up to date yet. I recently discovered some black metal from the ’80s and spent the last few days listening to it. I especially appreciated To Mega Therion. Wow!
I also found a very interesting label(?) of Italian artists: New Udine Hardcore. You can stream their full catalog both on their independent platform and BandCamp. I particularly love Fool Front’s textual adventure to promote their EP! In general the band’s style I appreciate most is Cataclasite’s. Instrumental doom, sometimes repetitive but really atmospheric.
There have been a couple of days with some fallbacks to Alice in Chains, Muse and Faith No More, but it’s been mostly dedicated to discovery 🗺️
Yesterday morning I went out to take out the trash and, in the paper, I found a dozen old books or more. Among them were these three gems: the first editions of the Italian series Urania from 1962 of some classics by Arthur C. Clarke and Richard Matheson, and the extremely famous Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein!
I was lucky for sure, but overall the books should never have been thrown away. Instead, consider donating them to a local library.
I just read James’s post on using greyscale on mobile and definitely want to try. Other than that it could help me use it less, maybe it could also be useful for increasing battery life — or maybe the opposite, if the color processing is done after…
Bah, too much thinking. Let’s just do it and see.
Finally I have realistic #ListenBrainz statistics since I managed to sync the scrobbles from iOS!
This month my most played albums were:
1. First Came the Shadow - First Came The Shadow
I found this album thanks to the Apple “related albums” to Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet, and I was pleasantly surprised! It is delicate and strong; it has it all. I quickly listened to the whole discography, but it needs more attention.
2. Pinocchio - We Stood Like Kings
Bandcamp suggested this to me, and I was shocked! Extremely powerful on a couple of tracks, and overall very evocative. Good post-rock!
3. Myra - Spurv
Another unexpected discovery! I love this. Is that a metal album? Does it have a deer on the cover and a snowy atmosphere? It must be good.
4. Mr. Beast - Mogwai
Back to the origins. This album always deserves a couple of full runs. ❤️
5. IV - Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet
I was probably the only one not to know this band, but I was flabbergasted! I’m gonna re-listen to it multiple times. It’s in fifth place only because I discovered it in the last few days.
Today we picked some elderflowers! We will try to make a jam and a flavored gin. Updates will follow!
Today the nostalgia mode is activated — the radio started it. I’m so easily influenced by music!
It’s strange to say, but I come from an era when playlists were made on cassettes, recorded from the radio or other CDs and cassettes. I made a dozen myself for my friends, and Adam’s Song playing this morning reminded me that it was a constant in those years.
Enema of the State by Blink-182 was one of my favorite CDs in middle school. I still remember when a friend of mine lent it to me.
At that time, the other album I listened to most was All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2; it was a gift from my mother’s hairdresser(!). I loved it and still do. Maybe it was with that album that I started learning the concepts of “melody” and “arrangement”.
Well, I know what to listen to today.
Quite upset because the only way I could find to scrobble listens from iOS to ListenBrainz was to buy a third-party app (Marvis Pro - €10) and then scrobbling to… Last.fm!
Then, using a Python tool, I synced the listens to the ListenBrainz account. It runs on crontab on my Raspberry.
Darn it, Apple. Why make things so complicated?
Lately, I’ve been working a lot outside. We’ve built a pergola, covered a concrete cylinder used as a well with stones and old bricks… and I’ve listened to a lot of music. Metal music. Specifically, post-metal music.
The latest Neurosis album made me (re?)discover a playlist that contains some gems. I hardly appreciate some of them, but definitely have others on loop.
Jesu is one of my favorite discoveries, and Boris were quite a surprise too!
It’s particularly juxtaposing to listen to this kind of music in earphones while birds are chirping a few meters from you, in the shadows of linden trees on these beautiful spring days… but maybe they’d appreciate it. My girlfriend does not, though. For sure.
GoToSocial is great, but until the capability of deleting old statuses goes online, I live in constant tension 😶
Today the disk space on my VPS ran out, and I almost didn’t know what I could clean up. Fingers crossed for the next releases.
I just discovered Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino, a collection of stories set in… space?! By Calvino?! I have to read it!
But I’m already tired if I think about the effort to look for it in local thrift markets.
Ok, this is my very first post note written entirely from my phone.
I’ll make another, longer, one to explain the whole setup — which I don’t know if saying I’m proud of.
It has a huge vantage, which for me is the most important: it is entirely self-hosted. Only devices and machines at my place.
I’m experimenting with POSSE and so you can read this both in my blog and my fediverse account.
I self-built a mechanism for my setup so it can get very complex to keep everything “clean”… we’ll see!
This is a test, the first indieweb note on the blog.