Chaos Iguana - Music from Maths (the logistic map in the chaotic regime)

This is what the logistic map sounds like in the chaotic regime.
Well, after you map the continuous outcomes to the chromatic scale.

A little ditty I dreamed up while I was Mr. Botak  (Guess I still am, Botak means bald in Bahasa Indonesia) for the occasion of the inauguration of a dynamical professor.

Also a tribute to a great monologue by Speed Levitch in Waking Life and a great poem by Lorca

"It looks random, but it is not"

(Edward Lorenz in the Essence of Chaos described deterministic chaos and similar phenomena as "Things that look random, but are not")

天

Music Clash: Lady Britannia vs. Lady Libertas

[caption id="attachment_430" align="alignnone" width="245" caption="Lady Britannia"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_431" align="alignright" width="190" caption="Lady Liberty"][/caption]

Ok...

(I'm just pretending there isn't a huge gap in between my last post and this one.)

...I came up with an interesting question while I was on the other side of the pond:

"Name a band (not an individual artist) from the USA that equals in terms of

(i) popularity,
(ii) impact on music history,
(iii) creative longevity (i.e. some core of the original group keeps performing for decades by reinventing itself, keeping up with/dictating trends in contemporary pop music),
(iv) legend status

with bands like Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Duran Duran, U2, Genesis."

It's a tough one. In fact, you can probably name a whole range of individual artists from the US that do meet those requirements, but no other country has produced legendary groups like the UK did... and still does! I guess Radiohead will soon be in that list, maybe Depeche Mode and some of the triphoppers that are still around, some of the younger britpop bands. What about Autechre, Orbital, Underworld.

Of course record sales do not tell you everything... but when I arrange this list so that only bands are in there you get something like this. It's a list of everything better than the Village People... (or UB40):

RANK	USA	UK (and some non-USA)
300 million or more
1		The Beatles
2		ABBA
3		Led Zeppelin
4		Queen
200 million to 299 million
5		Pink Floyd
6		AC/DC
7		The Rolling Stones
8		Bee Gees
150 million to 199 million
9		U2
10	Aerosmith
11		Genesis
120 million to 149 million
12	Backstreet Boys
13	Bon Jovi
14	Chicago
15	Eagles
16		Dire Straits
100 million to 119 million
17	The Carpenters
18		Depeche Mode
19	Fleetwood Mac	Fleetwood Mac
20	Guns ‘n Roses
21	The Jackson 5
22	Kiss
23	Metallica
24		Scorpions
25		The Who
75 million 99 million
26		Boney M.
27		B'z
28	The Doors
29
30		Eurythmics
31		Iron Maiden
32	Journey
33
50 million to 74 million
34		Ace of Base
35		A-ha
36	The Black Eyed Peas
37		Black Sabbath
38	Boyz II Men
39		Coldplay
40	Def Leppard
41	Destiny's Child
42		Dreams Come True
43		Duran Duran
44		Electric Light Orchestra
45	Green Day
46		Jethro Tull
47	Linkin Park
48	Mötley Crüe
49	Mr.Children	Mr.Children
50	New Kids on the Block
51	Nirvana
52		Oasis
53	Pearl Jam
54		Pet Shop Boys
55		The Police
56	Red Hot Chili Peppers
57	R.E.M.
58		Roxette
59		Sade
60	Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
61		UB40
62	Village People

So the US comes in at number 10 with Aerosmith...
Music sociologists eat your heart out!



天
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day 12: Origins #2 – Lost Archetypes, Fading Shamans and Unfinished Labyrinths

Part #2

Chilly Interlude

After that we changed our name to Chill.

Musically the best period.
All jammed, improvised and structured in the moment.
Sentient Chaos and Random Order indeed!

But no more additions to the Confessions trilogy.

Koen had already moved to SF.
Bjorn to LA, but you know that already.
Michiel to Joop van de Ende.

The 01/03 - Unsolved Labyrinth - version

Then Auracle happened...

Which was Mythica at first, but Epica beat us to it and so we came up with a way cooler name. They were Fortuyn-enthusiasts from Limburg, at least some of them were and probably voted Wilders in the last election, so who cares what they have to say. Write about the wise and rich Islamic culture for a change ;-) I was also enthusiastic about Fortuyn as a debater and would have loved to see him shake hands with Bush, but would never have voted for him and really wish he were here right now instead of the new guy.

And Joris created the best version of confessions yet. The lyrics which now also included part of “All in a day’s Dream” and stage two as well were changed a bit to accommodate the new music.

Eventually ex-Scrythe/Chill drummer and good friend and the one who’s girlfriend’s brother Hank.... well you know that story, Marco joined the band.
He lives in Norway now.

Amazing... when I type in “Confessions of a Demi-God” in google you get to the strangest pages. With Torrents, Rapidshare links, wow! I love it. Very good reviews as well (90/100), also of the follow up (88/100). Even to pages with full info on our demo’s that I don’t even posses anymore (certainly forgot about all the details like the year):

Mythica - Confessions of a Demi-God (2003) - Rating: 9.4 / 10
Auracle - Crystal Lies (2005) - Rating - 9.6 / 10

It says in Spanish: “Here I present you another band, they only have two demos. How I would love it if they would make an album... If you want to hear a very beautiful song by them (which is not encountered on the demos) go here... Enjoy :)” It links to a dead youtube vid.

Yes, we had a fully recorded album, just some vocals missing. It sort of disintegrated as bands so often do.

I don’t really care whether I should or shouldn’t, here’s a snapshot of something that could have been popular at least in some spanish and german speaking countries :)

[caption id="attachment_325" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Auracle"][/caption]

[audio:Confessions of a Demi-God.mp3]

Oh, right, for those of you who didn’t know...

I traded my guitar for bass-hide.

Better match.

So, press play and read.
Great performance!

Confessions of a Demi-God

And of all the voices I had ever heard,

this voice was the softest,
the deepest and the most frightening one. Then he took a piece of my brain
and as he slowly merged
with the dark surroundings
he said: "You won't be needing this." Overt and blurred
The race for time begins now!
Naked and hurt
I breathe life! Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity! -
Systems within systems
So relieved to have found the shores of reason
The burning dream I left behind
A testimony to my treason
- Wild guesses, my new vessels
Across the planes of panic
Beware of the two-faced trespassers
Their touch will leave you frantic The attempted blend with reality
Left me blind to the light of relativity
Crippled, in a way, I seek my refuge
To keep me from collapsing in continuity Systems within systems
I release the firm hold
And dive into a free-fall
Of distance through cold Reach for my land
Intangible leash
Can’t be set free! Somewhere between stimulus and response Tempt me all you like There is just one way Out of this apocalypse Strife drowns my pride Forget
Reject
Relay
The will to crave [new “lyrics”] I can see you
I can hear you
I can feel you

[formerly known as: stage two with lots of new stuff] So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure,
never claimed to be a soulless one,
I found that chaos speaks to us through order, Mastering the flow of reality
Blinded by the light of causality
Precognition?
In a way
I saw my fate re-designed and of all the places I had ever searched,
this place was the strangest,
the gravest and most mysterious one This is the evil playground,
the factory of lies,
built in the city
where truth was born. Overt and blurred
The race for time begins now!
Naked and hurt
I breathe life! Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity! Oh no!
Not again,
Not now
Recounting my years in captivity,
Twenty-one and some,
A raid of ego to bind the last to the least,
The anguish arrives!
Here it comes!
HERE I GO!

 

From Lost to Last

My guess is that the Spanish he or she is talking about the “Last Avatar” video recorded at the Mezz, which happens to be the last song lyric I wrote about 4-6 years ago. And ehh, I can’t find it. Don’t have a digital version. The lyrics actually reflect most of what I would have liked stage: free to be. Oh well.

I found some other, ancient scribblings for that part however:

Confusions of a semi-God

Stage: Free

The Lost Archetype

i - East, West, where’s my Quest?

Walking the path of virtue with no concern for the truth,
I roam the eastern hemisphere in search of a long lost (hidden) youth.
Trying to forget analysis, without losing sight for facts,
I crave for western atmosphere on the verge of an ancient arcane act.

ii - The Void (Reductio ad infinitum)

I am here, the space between matter,
I realise what I found and relapse in confusion,
So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure

Like coincidence, it is in the mind,
It’s here, even inside this void,
A hint of evolution?
Or a fragment of infinity?
Or maybe it's just me.......

iii - The Lost Archetype (Reductio ad absurdum)

To wonder "What if?", a waste of precious time,
And time is still my cage
Forever trapped inside it's invisible walls
I am a prisoner in uproar

My futile conquest of relativity
Had reduced me to an absurdity
Strengthened in a way, mind and body aligned
I saw my fate redesigned

iv - The Master will be proud (Or: Can I have that piece of brain back now?)

I was reborn from the ashes of deceit,
Hope was regrown in the gardens of sleep.
As for you, the ghost of agonies' past,
I will exorcize you, and you will not be the last.

I think parts of this have been used for the most amazing never performed or finished Auracle song called “Perpetual Requiem”

Maybe it’s not a coincidence I stopped writing lyrics after Auracle.
Back to making music...

With Hoer, Xtort and as Mr. Botak

Very nice but... not live enough for me

Now I met these two guys who have their controls set for the centre of the galaxy where the supermassive black holes reside

We are not bothered by any ambition or neatly polished songstructures



Here’s a few tastes, it’s all improv.... jamming again you know, you know mon?
ya’man... 2 mics and 1-take and 1-track mono recordings this time

tørdsåls:
[audio:tordsalsa.mp3]

d-låid:
[audio:d-laid-3.mov]

 

[gallery exclude="367,385" columns="4"]

“Hey, en als je hem kent mag je meezingen he!”

[audio:Auracle live @ popei 07 - Confessions of a demi god-6.mov]

Auracle @ POPei

Some links:

Chill: http://www.myspace.com/chillnomore

Hoer: http://www.myspace.com/hoerindustrial

Xtort: http://www.xtort.nl/ - http://www.myspace.com/xtortmusic/

Auracle: http://www.myspacecom/159920328 - http://youtu.be/d0aULOcm13c - http://youtu.be/b3ZlfEkEqRQ - http://youtu.be/jmHLfy-6aw4

Mr. Botak: http://www.myspace.com/mrbotak - http://www.youtube.com/user/MisterBotak?feature=mhsn

 

 

 

天
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day 11: Origins #1 - Lost Archetypes, Fading Shamans and Unfinished Labyrinths

[caption id="attachment_332" align="alignnone" width="427" caption="Masters of the Labyrinth - Lyrics"][/caption]

Apparently this was too much for slow connections in combination with slow iDisk servers, so I split it in two.

Part #1

A long time ago in a Netherlands far, far away...
Before I knew anything about things that look random but are not
Before I knew anything about branes, brains and automatons
Before I knew about Musashi, Lao Tse, Gödel, Escher and Bach
Before I knew about structure and systems

I wrote Confessions of a Demi-God, a song lyric

Well... “wrote” is not really the correct tense here, maybe “started to write” is better.
I didn’t write it as one piece, not in one go, but it was always meant to be a trilogy in three stages:

Confessions of a Demi-God stage one: Random Order
Confessions of a Demi-God stage two: Sentient Chaos
Confusions of a Semi-God stage free: The Lost Archetype

Always a part of it and appearing as a piece of prose was All in a Day’s Dream: An epilogical prologue

Over the years it emerged from high-school scribblings between homework assignments into an epic that has been (partially) set to music three times now by different musicians...

The 92/94 - Lost Archetype - version
The 97/99 - Fading Shaman - version
The 01/03 - Unsolved Labyrinth - version

Over the course of the years lyrics have been added, removed, changed and reintroduced again.

The 92/94 - Lost Archetype - version

The second stage was actually performed and recorded first chronologically, in the period of 1992-1994. Back then we changed our high-school band name from Nightcrowd to Scrythe (yeah, I know), as we changed our musical direction and dropped some personnel. We made a demo tape on a 4-track recorder (yes youngsters, that’s what people did in the old days)! Incidentally, Hank Heijink the owner of the 4-track, whom I didn’t know very well at the time, was the brother of the girlfriend of our drummer Marco, became my colleague at the Radboud University many years later as he got his PhD in cognitive (music) psychology @ the Music, Mind Machine Lab, after his masters degree in computer science and after he finished the Brabant Conservatory in Classical Guitar, only to continue after his PhD to get a degree in Lute and Theorbo at the famous Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Apparently he’s also writing iPhone apps now, in NY. I just knew his reputation as an extremely talented drummer and percussionist in 1992.

Oh, how people can change...

But I digress, back to the trilogy that never was:

Here is a part of the booklet (click the image to download the entire thing). All in a day’s dream is already there as prose to fill the booklet. In the last column it says: Not included but definitely part of the story... Those songs did not exist as music back then.

[caption id="attachment_334" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="Masters of the Labyrinth Booklet"][/caption]

Now about Hank’s 4-track, we did not have anything else. Just some cheap mics. The noise you hear (especially in the beginning as I play the harmonics with delay, is also because of the effects unit I had at the time for my guitar: a cheap Zoom that the entire band called zoem (hum). The distortion was of course worse than the delay as you can hear. So we used all four tracks to record the music, then down-mixed some tracks to create room for vocals... we just didn’t have a vocalist.

So I did it, in a room the mother of our bassplayer (and my neighbour) Bjorn used to cut people’s hair in. With a mic that didn’t even have a detachable cable, or an XLR plug. I don’t even remember if I had headphones....

[audio: 05 Scrythe - side b - 05 - Confessions.mp3]

Yeah it sounds terrible and so do I, but the music is still pretty ahead of its time :)

Bjorn came up with the the term Lost Archetype by the way. In a phone conversation about band names I had suggested Lost Horizon and Ancient Archetype, a simple contraction did the trick. He is the best bass player I know, I mean listen to the bass slap breaks in this song, we were 18 for God’s sake. I have NO idea how to do that. He lives in LA now.

The Lyrics to stage two at the time were as follows, maybe you should read them as the music plays:

Confessions of a Demi-God
Stage: Two

-- Sentient Chaos --

So I was wrong to believe in the absence of structure,
But I never claimed to be a soulless one,
I found that chaos speaks to us through order,
Controlling the flow of reality itself.
Precognition?
Indeed!

This is the evil playground,
Where we witness the creation of our own damnation.
This is the factory of lies,
We built in the city where truth was born.

Oh no!
Not again,
Not now.
Recounting my years in captivity,
Twenty-one and some,
A raid of ego to bind the last to the least,
The anguish arrives!
Here it comes!
HERE I GO!

The really funny funny, strange, weird -I don’t know- thing about this text is that it makes a LOT of sense to me now. I can’t imagine what I meant by it back then when I was 21. That’s actually the age I first started drinking beer. Well... there you go

The 97/99 - Fading Shaman - version

Then some years later (1997/1998) and some personnel changes later we did some proper recordings, this time of stage one and we asked my brother to sing (he added some cool lines too!). Below are the lyrics, read them as you listen. The three song demo (on CD this time!) was called “All in a Day’s Dream” and of course again featured All in a day’s dream as prose in the booklet.

About a year after the release, I met the people of Entheon in Nijmegen who translated and published Terence McKenna’s “Food of the Gods” in Dutch. We cooperated for a certain underground movement, on some stuff... that... well... eh... is not for this blog right now.

Anyway... When the translator read All in a day’s dream and Confessions stage one, she said: “Wow can I send this to Terrence? He’ll love it!” ... uhh ... hey well who am I to refuse such a great mind? Well, it turned out he had just been diagnosed with brain cancer, or glioblastoma multiforme. I am not sure he actually read it, because this thing is so aggressive he died a few months later. Since then, the subtitle in my mind has been:

For Novelty, whenever I may find her. Well, perhaps in two years :)

Ok, so here it is, in honour of a great shaman:

All in a Day's Dream
An Epilogical Prologue

The Master of the Labyrinth sighed as he knelt beside me. I saw his eyes focus on my naked brain and I guessed he was examining it for abnormalities. He then spoke to me:

"Foolish young creature, your quest continues. I will share with you the Truths you must pursue, for they are One and they are All. First, analyse the manifestations of Order, then delve for the powers of Chaos. When you are still in possession of your life after having done these things, you must begin the search for the Lost Archetype. Be everywhere, investigate nowhere."

And of all the voices I had ever heard, from the roaring of the pit-demons to the angelic high whispers of the air-spirits, this voice was the softest, the deepest and the most frightening one. Then he took a piece of my brain and as he slowly merged with the dark surroundings he said:

"You won't be needing this."

----

Confessions of a Demi-God
Stage: One

-- Random Order --

I - RES EXTENSA

Overt and blurred
The race for time begins (now!)
Naked and hurt
I breathe life!

Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity!

II - RES COGITANS

Systems within systems
So relieved to have reached the shores of reason
The burning dreams I left behind
A testimony of my treason
Wild guesses, my new vessels
Across the planes of panic
Beware of the two-faced trespassers
Their touch will leave you frantic

The attempted blend with reality
Left me blind to the light of relativity
Crippled, in a way, I seek my refuge
To keep me from collapsing in insanity

Systems within systems
While I release the firm hold
And dive into a free-fall
Of distance through cold

Overt and blurred
The race for time begins (now!)
Naked and hurt
I breathe life!

Silent, unstirred
The virgin universe cries
Forced to compel
Infinity!

III - UNITAS MULTIPLEX

Crystalline dreams
Lost in my world
Blessed and deceived
Losing the race!
Violent minds
Reach for my land
Intangible leash
Can’t be set free!

Somewhere between stimulus and response

IV - SOMEWHERE BEYOND STIMULUS AND RESPONSE

Tempt me all you like
There is just one way
Out of this apocalypse
Strife drowns my pride
Self preservation
Must delete itself
Prison deep within
Guarded by hauntings
Who appear to be
Mere fragments of me

"Lie not", they tell me
And with lies they hold me

Forget
Reject
Relay
The will to crave

<As far as I can remember the underlined words were added by my brother>

I used to have a website called Purple Brain Recordings whose index page looked like this:

[caption id="attachment_324" align="alignnone" width="380" caption="Purple Brain Recordings"][/caption]

L.A.P stood for Lost Archetype Productions

day 8-9: Here Come the Salsa Robots

[caption id="attachment_307" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Señor Coconut"][/caption]

I was on a break for the weekend
Went to a great party
Heard some great stories
Some ugly ones too

Hey, I may have told some as well

But we danced to Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto’s interpretation of Kraftwerk’s “The Robots”

El Baile Aleman means: “The German Dance”
They cover a lot of Kraftwerk songs on this one
Salsa version of course... so Sheik Yerbouti!

I don't know much about dancin' [..]
One of my legs is shorter than the other
'N both my feet's too long
'Course now right along with 'em
I got no natural rhythm

Interesting, I don't know if it is true but:
Romance languages call anything German: Al(l)eman (add some diacritics depending on the language), so do the Turks and in fact all arabic languages. In English it’s: German, in Baltic languages and Finnish it’s: Saksa, in Dutch and other Germanic languages, it’s, Deutsch / Duits / Dutsk (Frisian) / Tusk (Norwegian, Swedish), etc.

Now, in the days of the Roman Empire, there were the provinces of Germania (Inferior and Superior). So why did this turn into Allemania for all of southern Europe? The Allemannen were a Germanic tribe. They were pretty annoying for the Romans and eventually stopped the progress of the Roman Empire and conquered the Germanic provinces. So the Romans in a way were “defeated” by the Allemannen and so you name that country after that tribe, logical. For the Baltics this also holds becuse the Saxons, that other Germanic tribe were the bad guys. The Roman province of Britannia, after the fall of the Empire, was conquered by yet some other Germanic tribes (the Angles and the Saxons, hence Anglo-Saxon). So you name your language after the ones who “defeat” you.

Now, France was conquered by the Franks, yet, yet another Germanic tribe. Those guys lived in the lower Rhine delta and around the “Zuyder Zee”, yep the Dutch and Flemish... (Not the Frisians, they held their own territory for a while and had some influence on the English language later on). The Franks went on to become the Merovingian Dynasty, but that is another story that centers around the French region of Orange and the date of the 30th of April (or is it just a coincidence this date is our Koninginnedag?).

So the Franken, Allemannen and Angles and Saxons all spoke kind of the same language. It was called the language of the people and “diutisc” means “of the people” (zum Volk gehörig) in althochdeutsch. Very consistent people, Volkswagen expresses the same idea. But also, Alle Mannen of course means All Men. And then some monks fled to the New World and that’s why the language “Nederlands” is “Dutch” in English (Could this be one of the first American English influences on British English?).

But I digress, back to the robots.

Sometimes you read a scientific paper that really stuns, amazes, infuriates, or inspires you...
Sometimes you read a paper that appears to have been sent backwards in time from a distant future...

After I first came across this paper I immediately integrated it into a course I taught (now cancelled due to budget cuts), in which I predicted that soon engineers and technicians would know more about human development, human cognition, human emotion and well, basically everything psychology claims to study than psychologists would.

The reason: engineers and roboticists have long abandoned the idea that the human brain is something like a machine of the computer kind. So have I, so have philosophers of cognitive science, so have the ecological psychologists, but not mainstream psychology, behavioural science or cognitive science. Even the past proponents of the information processing approach admit it was a mistake to think that just increasing computation speed and storage of information would eventually lead to artificial intelligence. It does not, and if it ever will, it will not be an intelligence we will recognize as such.

I used to play a really cool roleplaying game hosted by my brother when I was young called TORG: the possibility wars. Situated in the Near Now, the background was that there were different Cosms or realities invading the Earth to obtain something called possibility energy. If successful they would impose their Axioms and Cosm Laws upon Earth’s reality, or Core Earth (f.i. Magic is possible). North America turned into The Living Lands (stone-age with dinosaurs), South-East Asia into Orrorsh (Horror genre), Egypt into The Nile Empire (Superhero / 1930s pulp genre), France into the Cyberpapacy (Cyber Punk genre), Great Britain / Scandinavia into Aysle (Fantasy genre) and more... Very noticeable changes for the inhabitants of those regions of course. Except for one region: Japan. Japan was invaded by the Nippon Tech cosm (Japanese SF genre). To the Japanese it just seemed that technological advances were happening more quickly than in the rest of the world. Nothing special.

Well, there may be some truth to that... just watch the video below:



The cool thing is: These roboticists build their robots based on the theories of J.J. Gibson’s ecological psychology and direct perception and affordances, on embodied embedded cognition and on a view of development from a the perspective of Complexity Science (i.e. dynamics of complex systems), all stuff that is NOT, I repeat NOT being taught at schools of psychology. I tried.

What is important to remember is that there is no “pre-programming” of movements. They are all “learned” through perception and action. They even have simulations of fetal and movements in the womb and neonatal movements after birth, where they observe “self-touching” behaviour and very eerie realistic “uncontrolled” goal directed behaviour emerge from out of nowhere. The main reason why I think they are successful is that it is scary! It looks like there is someone inside that suit! Well, there isn’t and what it actually does in terms of movements is not pre-programmed as an algorithm but has developed... much like this cockroach robot that doesn’t have a brain at all (ok a two neuron brain).

On the site of the Asada Project we can read a clear vision of what future research should focus on:

“The 21st century is known as the "Century of the Brain" and will be an era of robot habitation with humans [...] It is important for life sciences in the 21st century to regard the brain as a complete system, and to clarify how brains realize function through interactions with the external world based on its dynamics.”

That is exactly what I (want to) do!
It is kind of sad though, that this was also exactly what many great minds since the 60s have wanted to do, but never got the chance and were and are even now ridiculed or just ignored for proposing such ideas...

Well, guess again,

the Near Now... is Now

I’m sure they will eventually be able to Salsa-dance as well

day 7: New Blood vs. Rael - A continuous Sunshine in my Stomach

[caption id="attachment_303" align="alignnone" width="800" caption="Peter Gabriel"][/caption]

I’ve got tickets!

for the voice of Brittain before the Daily Express, that is

17th of september, Gelredome, he’s bringing a symphony orchestra



Thank god it’s getting better in my wardrobe
I’ve kicked out the colony of slippermen residing there

Peter Gabriel discography (studio albums as a solo artist)...

(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
us
so
up
scratch my back
The first four albums are untitled...
Actually...
I guess they aren’t called albums, but projects...
he aslo did some other stuff in between and before...
Anyway (nice effort)...

The last project consists of “just” covers with new arrangements, played by a Symphony Orchestra:
1. "Heroes"  - David Bowie
2. "The Boy in the Bubble"  - Paul Simon
3. "Mirrorball"  - Elbow
4. "Flume"  - Bon Iver
5. "Listening Wind"  - Talking Heads (David Byrne)
6. "The Power of the Heart"  - Lou Reed
7. "My Body Is a Cage"  - Arcade Fire
8. "The Book of Love"  - The Magnetic Fields
9. "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"  - Randy Newman
10. "Après moi"  - Regina Spektor
11. "Philadelphia"  - Neil Young
12. "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"  - Radiohead

It will be followed up by:
I’ll scratch yours

On which the people whose music he covered, will cover a song from him, so called: reciprocal covers
Some of them have already been released as double A-sides on Itunes

The Magnetic Fields - “Not one of us”
Bon Iver - “Come Talk To Me”
Paul Simon - “Biko”
Lou Reed - “Solsbury Hill”
Elbow - “Mercy Street”
David Byrne - “I Don’t Remember”

Well... not everyone will cover a song. Apparently Radiohead resigned from the project after they heard Gabriels recording of Street Spirit.

Guess they didn’t read this quote:

“If you’re going to reinterpret something, then really do something. Nail your colours to the mast and say: This is different, and it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.”

I really cannot imagine that talented musicians like Radiohead would respond in such a way. It’s just internet buzz of course, but it appears they have some more cages to escape from (It’s not quite the same Phil). If I listen to the way the song The Boy In The Bubble is being discussed in the video below I would be honoured even if I hated the result. you do know I’m also a fan of lyrics right? Actually, one of my favourite lyrics is “For Emily, whenever I may find her” by Paul Simon (and Garfunkel). Also covered by other great artists: if only I could do this



Anyway (again), for someone to include songs by Bowie and Simon, Reed, Young and the Heads, but at the same time Elbow and Regina Spektor (first albums 2001) and Bon Iver (first album 2008), who the fuck are you be a critic to such a an open mind?

Oh well... I still love you Radiohead.

Oh my god! I forgot how cool David Byrne is, he covered “I don’t remember”
It’s Peter Gabriels favourite reciprocal cover

Listening Wind/ I Don't Remember by RealWorldRecords

I guess there’s a difference between “talented musicians” and “legendary artists”

Most of these covers and their returns are available on Peter Gabriels site as soundcloud streams, take a moment to check them out

it will be worth your while

hmmm

heavy downpour or worth your while?

Oh!

Supper’s ready

Sigh...

I’d rather trust a country man than a you-tuber with a cam, who can not spell (theyre all pointing), film and thinks this song is about believing in god I guess the literal interpretation of the lyrics should have been a warning.... take me away!!!

Where’s a Supernatural Anaesthetist when you need one?

Contagious Affirmation - dub step / electro - thingie

Completely forgot about the last track I made (more than a year ago)...

I tried to add some dub step flavor to the Mr. Botak electro sound judge for yourself how it turned out.

Also tried a different approach to the visuals: Slowly changing, not necessarily visualizing the beat, or changes in the music... (Yes, those are pages from the Voynich manuscript )

Check it out on YouTube:

They Fuck You Up, Your Mum and Dad (or: Bennett on Writing)

Yeah, it's way too late but:

I'm watching Being Alan Bennett

(you know the playwright-guy from the Talking Heads monologues? ... No? Well he also did an adaptation of Wind in the Willows and wrote the play The madness of King George III... No? Well he also did the narration for Winnie the Pooh... aahh! )

which is amazing... 

He just made an observation about writing using Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse":

"They fuck you up your mum and dad, and if you are writing that is probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they fucked you up good and proper."

He then proceeds to sing This Be The Verse to to the theme tune to Last of the Summer Wine

Why all that is funny???
mmm... I've had years of training listening to (mostly British) symphonic rock: Let's just say Bennett, like a good sympho-band is able to translate a minor problem like getting through another rainy sunday into a multi-part 20+ minute epic rock-anthem using mostly keen observations, folk psychological reasoning and an amazing mastery of the English language.