Be Not Idle In Preparation Of Thy Doom

A little update

2012-02-08T16:02:00.002Z

This image is part of the work I am doing just now for the EoB. Today I have finished the audio track that is kin to the concepts embedded in the image. It's frustrating for me just now as it is probably the heaviest track I have ever recorded and I won't be revealing it any time soon. I have another 7 to do beyond this one, which is the 8th of the series.

First of 2012

2012-01-07T10:35:00.004Z

Been a while since I've said anything on here. I'm doing some very personal work at the moment as part of my Initiation within the Temple of Set, which will bare some kind of visual and later audible fruit in the not so distant future. I've sort of been plotting out some points of personal interest that have led me to where I am now, and where I'm going which has been both fun and interesting to do. More about that nearer completion.

TRANQVILLITAS MARIS - The Longing

2011-12-04T14:19:00.001Z

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://tranqvillitasmaris.bandcamp.com/album/the-longing"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The Longing by Tranqvillitas Maris&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

There are times when I am in dire need of something to listen to that is just utterly miserable. And I occasionally search bandcamp for that. I found some absolute treasure a couple of days ago, and it really does feel like I've robbed some ancient tomb of it's fortune, because this album is completely free to download.

I am utterly in love with the first track in particular, although the whole of the album has been on repeat more than a few times since I downloaded it.

Daniel Paiva is responsible for just about everything in this project, with the exception of the unclean vocals which are handled well by Mike Bertemes. Daniel's clean vocals are truly hopeless, reminding me of Aaron from My Dying Bride in some places, and Malfeitor Fabban from early Void of Silence albums.

So go and download this album, and let those responsible know of your enjoyment of it.

Quiet

2011-12-02T18:54:00.001Z

Yeah, so I've been busy. The good news is I have now finished my SVQ for work. At some point in the near future I'll get my certificates for that. Whilst October is ready and available also on Amazon right now, some other vendors are taking their sweet time in making it available.

I'm doing a lot of research for the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt 1697 project these days, but at the back of my mind there are some musical things brewing. Not BNIIPOTD, by the way. Something older.

On Google Plus Pages

2011-11-08T11:02:00.000Z

Yesterday I made a google plus page for BNIIPOTD, and I wasn't impressed at all. There isn't any way to implement features that would make such a page any different from my own personal page.

So today I had a look at some other blogs to see what the main differences are between a google page and a personal profile.

They're just not as good for my purposes as my personal profile is, and seem to be quite limited. It's sad to say, but I also recently made a facebook page and it appears to me to have more use.

Asmodeus X - The Bright Ones

2011-11-03T10:23:00.001Z

Alright, so I let this spill over into November. Big deal, right?Asmodeus X has always been a name I'd heard, often mentioned in the same sentence as words like "awesome", but not really listened to myself. A couple of months ago I decided to have a look into this EBM/Industrial outfit after quite a few recommendations.

At that time, they were on the verge of getting ready to release "The Bright Ones", and had posted the title track from the album for listening.Pardon the intrusion of Myspazz player

The Bright Ones

I think I might have listened to the track once or twice and I remember liking it, so I resolved to somehow acquire "The Bright Ones" in the future. I downloaded the album from AmazonMP3 two or three days ago, as I haven't so far been able to find a CD version of the album.

And I've listened to it repeatedly since then.The album is furiously catchy, and tracks like Fallen Angel, Seasons End and The Bright Ones in particular have plagued my mind at work with hindsightly sage wisdom "Next time, charge your mp3 player...those half hour breaks at work are too dull". I'm not overly exposed to EBM, I'll confess. I've got a couple of VNV nation albums, and beyond that my only other exposure has been through a monthly event at Glasgow's Queen Margaret Union, "Bedlam".

An event and venue that would not find Asmodeus X out of place at all, and in fact better to my ears than what I could make out during those occasions where I had went to "Bedlam".I particularly like the vocal style in the album, something not quite human sounding...humans-impersonating-cyborgs-impersonating-humans. But on the last couple of tracks, there is a different vocal style used that I think channels industrial style rather well. This is an album you can't help but find yourself move to, arms, legs, feet and other appendages may become entranced and march to the beat of Asmodeus.

I had read somewhere that this would be the final Asmodeus X album, which if correct is a shame because after hearing this album I would definitely like to see what would come next. That said, if it is the last then it's definitely a final work to be proud of.

And now for some LBM folks I'd gladly buy this again in CD format, or something other than MP3 as I'd love to hear this album at its best quality. MP3s are good, but I've become somewhat of a snob for digital downloads as of late. So CD or FLAC please! Now, if Asmodeus X were so inclined to do that in the future, WHERE ON EARTH MIGHT I FIND IT ON SALE?!!?

Renfrewshire Witches Project

2011-10-27T20:50:00.005+01:00

So tonight I was able to attend my first meeting with the organizers of the project. It's early yet, and there's plenty of room for others come along and join in. At the moment I've got a couple of tasks. One is to read the book I ordered, and get to grips with the lore. And the other is to put a spell on the person who does the rota at work so that I have every Thursday where I'm working, as an early shift. It was quite a fun meeting, with some discussion about the background and what we'll be doing in the weeks ahead. Tonight I did some role-play as John Shaw, getting into some serious shit from his wife for leaving her and their daughter Christian at home while going off to work and stay overnight in Greenock.

Eric Kauschen - Exile in the Sunset

2011-10-18T11:55:00.001+01:00

&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://saundhaus.bandcamp.com/album/exile-in-the-sunset"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Exile In The Sunset by Eric Kauschen&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

Let's be clear about one thing first. Eric Kauschen is a guitarist. I mean a guitarist. Not somebody who plays a guitar, not somebody that picks up a guitar and plays a couple of songs and claims to be a guitarist, but a GENUINE guitarist.

Eric takes a somewhat different approach to dealing with the Season than I do in my music.

"I came up with the name for this album after a suggestion of an old friend of mine, Derrold Purifoy. Exile in the Sunset is a take off on Exile on Main Street, but while many people think of a Sunset as a nice thing, it refers to the Sunset District of San Francisco that on some days can seem as inhospitable as parts of Antarctica. It is a place of fog and gloom and rarely sees the sunlight except in our Indian summer in September and October. Even though it can be a gloomy place for some, I’ve tried to bring some light and happiness to it through my music."

The tracks on the album are mostly under 5 minutes in length, and so much is going on in each track that they feel like condensed epics. They are the kind of tracks that would not be out of place in any of the Guilty Gear games. Fast, intricately played rock music.

That said, the track "All alone" seems to have the most breathing space (those other 'guitarists' might manage to do a cover of it), and at nearly 6 minutes in length is also the longest track. It appeals to my mood more than the others, so I think I could call it my favourite and possibly a stand-out track.

Overall this is an album that would be great for going fast in a car down a long, deserted highway. Some people might have it in their ipods, (yeah it's on Itunes too) and go out jogging. Salut! Joggers of unappealing weather, this may not just spur you on but inspire others to cheerfully join you (if you've got a speaker dock that is small enough to wear) like in the montages of Rocky films.

Enough talking. Go listen. Go buy.

Fresh fish...or something just as smelly.

2011-10-17T00:22:00.001+01:00

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://music.bniipotd.com/album/october"&amp;amp;gt;October by Be Not Idle In Preparation Of Thy Doom&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

Here's the first track of the October EP. The EP itself will be released on Hallow e'en, but you can pre-order now for £1 and get the first track, and when it's released you'll get an updated link to download the whole thing.

Enjoy

Positive Paisley Day

2011-10-12T12:49:00.002+01:00

http://www.paisley.org.uk/2011/10/positive-paisley-day-2/

Well I suppose I could keep the complaints to zero for just a day. I'm certainly positive that I'll be releasing an EP on Hallow e'en, and that it'll cost just £1, and that Robert Tannahill will once again be invoked for a suitable track.

More info about that next Monday.

Hexen II Soundtrack - Blackmarsh

2011-10-06T14:35:00.000+01:00

I've been rather unwell as of late. But who cares, right? Who remembers Heretic and Hexen etc? The guy who did the soundtracks for those games always impressed me back in my teens. I loved playing those games, and I'm kinda sad that I can't find them even to run in dosbox now. Ach well. Anyway. This is one of my favourites.

If you've been watching my plus stream recently, you might have caught a hint or two that I'm working on something. I'll talk about that here nearer the time, or for those on my DOOMED list and circle in plus, I'll say something about that next week.

Syndicate Announce Trailer HD

2011-09-30T10:52:00.000+01:00

Alright, having seen the trailer I confess to affording the game some potential. And it's certainly amusing hearing the original Syndicate's music getting some attention from Skrillex.

The Ruins Of Beverast - Moselle Enigma

2011-09-21T14:12:00.001+01:00

Oh lord...So here's a track from the latest CD of Ruins of Beverast "Enchanted By Gravemould". It's not a new album, but a collection of rare tracks. I don't have these tracks, and the presence of a my dying bride cover has me really intrigued. Damn payday not till next week. But I'll be sure to be picking it upThe Ruins Of Beverast - Moselle Enigma by Ván Records

Syndicate Wars - Cityscape (1996)

2011-09-19T22:35:00.000+01:00

Today I found out that Syndicate is to be remade into some kind of FPS. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm for yet another entry to that genre. In place of mourning what could have been, I've resolved to offer up a piece of nostalgia in the form of this track from Syndicate Wars. The soundtrack to that game heavily impressed me in my highschool days, and perhaps that's evident in some of the awful noise I've made since then.

Mild Moans

2011-09-14T10:44:00.000+01:00

I did it again. I bought one of Ubisoft's games on steam. I didn't pay enough attention. This time it was From Dust. And I was starting to enjoy it, as I had bought it after the fiasco about the DRM which has since been removed. But the port is shabby. It's not full screen, it just puts the borders of the window just a little off the sides. And the controls are such that you can easily click out of the window by accident, and it screws the game up when you click back in.

Damn shame too, I thought. If only it would be on PSN....and then I notice in Steam a mention that it actually will be available from PSN today. Damn...

I'm consoling myself that I've also got Puzzle Quest and Civilization 5 to amuse myself with, and they actually work like they are meant to.

Something else that caught my eye was that tomorrow is the Feast of St. Mirin. The Patron Saint of Paisley. I wonder what he'd make of the town if he could see it now. I suspect he'll be on the receiving end of a multitude of pleas and petitions tomorrow, so much for resting in peace.

Shut up (if you want to learn something)

2011-09-09T22:29:00.000+01:00

I spent some time with my parents and grandmother today. My grandfather is going into respite care for a week whilst their bathroom is destroyed utterly and remade next week. This would be his second time away from home this year, and I suspect the care home staff will recognise some significant advance in his dementia since last time.

My grandmother is amazed and pleased that I'm in this line of work, and is always forcing money into my hand for every time I visit her, or every time I pass on some advice when I can't go round because I'm at work. Today she gave me money again, and also gave money to my mother and insisted that she take myself and my father out for a meal somewhere.

We ended up at a pub in Hillington, The Harvester. I'm not actually that talkative anyway, but less so this past week as I'm in a lot of pain from a urinary tract infection I seem to have acquired from somewhere on Monday. And it was in this window of time that my mother recalled many stories about her father from her childhood, good ones as well as bad.

I can relate to the good ones and bad ones, as my grandparents lived with us for about 10 years. But she said that for a while, there were mostly good memories, and then as her other siblings were born they became mostly bad memories. My grandparents got married in their early twenties, and I suppose they just had too many kids too quickly and with the times of unemployment, the stress of too many kids, that life was just damn hard for him to deal with a lot of the time.

On the one hand he was a really nice guy who enjoyed making toys for his kids, and taking them all across Glasgow to all the different parks. But on the other, didn't think anything of terrifying his kids with chilling ghost stories. And I suppose typically for the times, when you have mostly daughters and then a son, all your anger and frustration with life gets taken out on him in beatings.

So he was really described as a Jekyl and Hyde today. I'm not so sure he has it in him any more to be able to consiously switch from one to the other, maybe he never did. But the last thing my mum said struck me as profoundly sad, although it was said quite matter of factly, was that for all the good he ever was, he is now paying heavily for all the bad he was.

I knew I'd be stating the obvious, and I also didn't think it would be appropriate to say given how long she talked about it, but in my mind I could only think that if Dementia was some kind of divine retribution then the selector of the criteria must only be looking for a pulse.

The Jix - Live at Ivory Blacks 30/09/11

2011-09-04T12:46:00.000+01:00

If anybody has heard of them, they're probably fans. If they're fans, then why haven't they bitched and moaned sufficiently to The Jix to fix their online presence?The Jix on Myspace ( I should kill them all for using myspace)The Jix on Reverbnation (I'll forgive them of this one)The Jix on Bebo (hasn't been used in some time)The Jix on Facebook(this also hasn't been used in some time)The Jix UK website (Seems just the index page is working)The Jix.com(looks like the Jix UK but actually working)Their website at least has a decent forum that allows users to either register or post via google, facebook and whatever. It was used not that long ago. You can Follow The Jix on twitter (but they're not saying anything yet..they've never tweeted)Why would I go to the hassle to point out all of this? Because these guys are family, and I would like to see them pick something to use and use it well rather than spreading so thin. A note to Colin, Lachlan and John who perhaps may have encountered this thread by way of googling: I'll be watching and listening

Fergal Fitzpatrick

2011-08-30T18:37:00.000+01:00

Have a look at the fine works of this gentleman at his website. Of particular interest are the works in his 'personal' section. Each piece has a great description from the artist himself.

Another one on the horizon.

2011-08-24T10:33:00.000+01:00

It seems all we're hearing about these days are Cloud based music services. Today though, I'm talking specifically about one called Boinc. It remains to be seen whether or not their model will apply to independent artists, but for those on major labels it goes something like this: If a Boinc user has your track, regardless of where they got it, anytime they play it through Boinc then they will send some kind of payment to the label.Which will probably make the labels a bit happier, right? They can't cry about illegal downloads removing revenue from them if they get paid every time somebody plays such a file through Boinc, right? Sounds good. But it's even better for the Boinc user. Let's say I download a crappy rip of the latest My Dying Bride album, I sync it with boinc. I can delete it from my local media library, and Boinc will let me download a higher quality version than I ever had from their storage. My Dying Bridge may have lost out initially in the album sale, but they will gain incrementally every time I play the tracks in Boinc.I'm watching this one, and have signed up for the beta to get a feel for how it is for the user. Maybe in time, Independent music will be on there.

Some things never change

2011-08-18T11:44:00.000+01:00

10 years ago I bought Grand Theft Auto 3. As much as I liked the game, I was more happy with the KJAH radio station. And so some time later I bought Scientist's "scientist rids the world of the evil curse of the vampires", and eventually found "Scientist Wins the World Cup" some time later.

About 10 years later, and a few after some friends tell me to check out DNB and Dubstep I stumble across Scientist "Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space". The album is intriguing for me since it was one of my first Dubstep listening experiences, it includes original tracks on one disc and on the other are remixed by the Scientist himself.

Anyway, today I've been trawling youtube for other examples of this Dubstep genre and I'm looking at the comments in this video.

It seems every genre has its fan base arguing over what defines the genre, whether it can evolve, whether it should evolve, whether stuff that sounds different from the pioners can even share the same genre name.

Sure it's nice to have some kind of frame of reference, but I think the first and most important question is "Do I love the music?". Nothing else matters beyond that, unless you particularly enjoy the mundane arguments.

Do I love the Scientist "Launches Dubstep Into Outer Space" album? Hell yeah!

How much do music artists earn online?

2011-08-12T11:01:00.001+01:00

This blog post has a nice graphical representation of the data found on this spreadsheet.

Have a look and see how services like spotify and lastfm are effectively screwing artists. It certainly explains why Century Media has left Spotify.

But what about those of us who use Bandcamp? Well, I'd say the artists and fans get a much better deal than offered even by CDBABY since we can control how we sell the music, what to include in packages, and how much to charge.

KHPR 011: Yogic Self Transformation

2011-08-11T18:37:00.001+01:00

KHPR 011: Yogic Self Transformation How can one use the practice of Yoga as means for personal Initiation? Listen and find out!

The Black Merkin

2011-08-10T22:36:00.000+01:00

Remember a few months ago I said I was taking part in the bad romance project? Well I got a mail today saying it is finished.

Dear Bad Romance authors,

Just a quick message to say thank you very much for contributing to the Bad Romance project.
The resulting novel—entitled THE BLACK MERKIN—has now been published in a variety of formats
and will launch at the Collective gallery in Edinburgh on Saturday 20th August, 6-8 pm.

I've been sent a pdf version which I'll read and pass comment on sooner or later, I won't be able to attend the launch of the book itself but don't let that stop anyone else.

Sender of Nightmares - The Awakening of That Which Has Dreamt Us

2011-08-04T11:48:00.000+01:00

The Awakening of That Which Has Dreamt Us by Sender of Nightmares

A distant relative of Saturnine Sektor and Misdreamt, Sender of Nightmares showcases some of TC's metal talents. Enlisting the services of Doug Pridgen for drums and lyrics, we are granted a listening experience of around half an hour's length. Sender of Nightmares play some great death metal with influences of an occult nature.

The lyrics are well written, and could have some practical use for a practitioner of the Black Arts. Baal Who Strikes as Set, for example could be used as a potent curse against your foes, or just those that serve only as obstacles to your progress. Go ahead and have a look at the rest, you'll be given a shovel and a hint or two of where to dig.

What is striking for me personally are the vocals, as I had met TC in Sweden a couple of years ago where we talked about music, composition, equipment and other things like audio sigilisation. Hearing his vocals on this set of recordings, I find myself asking how he got through each track without hurting his throat? Every vocalist has their own technique for getting the kind of delivery they want, and it's not always easy to put that into words.

The bulk of the music is written by TC with the exception of track 6, Empowered by Darkness which is by Doug Pridgen. This sort of makes that track stand out a bit from the rest, but that is not to say that there is a decrease in quality of musicianship. Given how tight the tracks are played, it's evident that this album is something that has been brewing for quite a while and that both TC and Pridgen are on the same page with their approach to songwriting and playing.

Enough talking! Go listen and buy if you like.

Beginnings and Endings

2011-07-29T19:54:00.000+01:00

Today is a special day. I am celebrating the birthday of the God against Gods by retracing my steps back to the first album I made, Sermons From the Unwelcome. Today I am uploading it to The Sixty One as a means to shake off some of the dust I've accumulated. The service streams music, and also also provides a large background to look at. This means for completionism, I will have to spend time creating some artwork for a fair few tracks that were done since Sermons, as I only have artwork for those first 7. In time, the rest of my music will be on there too.

I've also downloaded Sender of Nightmares album "The Awakening of That Which Has Dreamt Us". This is an album that I've heard some talk about for quite a long time before its release. It's the work of Toby Chappell, (a name I first mentioned back in January when talking about his Misdreamt project) and Doug Pridgen. I'll be reviewing this one in a couple of days time when I've got my head round it.

Something else I'm looking forward to is Asmodeus X's "The Bright Ones" album. I'll admit now that I've been massively slow in checking those guys out, and in fact when the Bright Ones is released that will apparently be the 5th and final Asmodeus X album.

But for the remainder of the evening, it's looking at how my music is placed online and else I've been too lazy to do, what I should do and what else to avoid making use of. I'm still quite averse to services like reverbnation and myspace. I can't quite put my finger on it. Since I've also got a new black tea pot, and plenty of chocolate chai tea I think I'll be having a pleasant evening.

Pain Inflicted, Suffering Endured, Injustice Done

2011-07-20T14:36:00.000+01:00

Renfrewshire Witch Hunt 1697. I have offered to support with whatever kind of assistance they would have me do for this. I wonder just what Paisley's finest, black ambient hellscaper could be capable of given the chance.

This made me smile

2011-07-13T21:19:00.000+01:00

I get the feeling that Be Not Idle In Preparation Of Thy Doom aren’t so concerned with punchy brevity. I’m not sure exactly what gave me that feeling first: the hour-long static buzz of Die Elektrischen Vorspiele or the… wait, it was just that. Like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music played at half-speed: excellent.

from JOE SPARROW at A new band a day.

Chaos injection

2011-07-09T22:44:00.001+01:00

As of about now, you will be able to actually find a legal torrent of the first two BNIIPOTD albums at indietorrent.org. It appears to be a young service, not a lot of users, and crucially not a lot of artists. In fact, there isn't even at present a dark ambient genre, so I've requested them set that up...for now find it in the ambient section. I'll probably stick the bulk of my stuff on there in due course, but without any extras that I might put up here...and not quite as cheaply. Still, it's a means of distribution that I otherwise hadn't used or tried. Lets see what comes out of it.

Payday next week

2011-06-30T11:45:00.000+01:00

This time I will be putting my fiddle in for repairs at the violin shop, which is certainly overdue for a service. I'm looking forward to picking that up and finding a new tutor. I find myself being pestered as of late by that nagging voice that says "hey! make some music!". There's an idea or two floating around as to what to do next but I'm not in a rush to start.

The time between albums is what I use for mucking around, and learning. Sometimes recordings yield results that I like enough to take with me to the next album after some more work, and others just serve as a scratch for the itch to do something.

But I find there's something else as well, the Music For Rituals tracks I think will be a mixture of both. Experiments with their own purpose, as well as an exercise in learning.

Summer really is gone

2011-06-11T13:54:00.000+01:00

So I was on a trip out with the dogs. On the way back, heading along the road from Faslane naval base towards and beyond Helensburgh, I noticed something strange.

I had been joking with people at work that I experienced summer during my road trip, and that was all that Scotland was going to get this year. But having a look at how quickly the leaves on the trees are turning brown and falling off this year...makes me wonder just how correct I may be.

I'll say this once and for all

2011-05-30T13:41:00.002+01:00

My Dying Bride - Evinta. Buy that album now.

Free Die Elektrischen Vorspiele Music for download

2011-05-20T18:53:00.000+01:00

I'm making the music I made for a DEV working, performed on the 6th of May this year, available now for download. I'm awaiting feedback from some of my associates about the document I intend to include with the download. So if you download the music and like it, leave me a note of your email address and when that document is ready I'll send that along to you.

This is not a small track. It's about an hour long. I recommend playing it in the dark at night, or full blast in your car on the way to somewhere important.

Yeah it says name your price, you can put in zero if you like but I'd like to at least give some opportunity for those that really like it to pay a penny or more if they'd like.

Die Elektrischen Vorspiele by Be Not Idle In Preparation Of Thy Doom

Heading out tomorrow

2011-04-28T11:41:00.000+01:00

Yeah, I'll be going on a road trip with a bunch of friends all across Scotland. I've recently got a new phone, and noticed that it has synched with my google account so I'll probably be able to upload some pics while I'm out. It's going to be great.

In an earlier post I made a note of a url that will be of some significance. Have a gander at that, and on the 30th of April feel free to tune in to that current.

I have some plans to do a "black label series" of recordings that are specifically for or inspired by Black Magic workings. These will be free to download, although there will be an option for donating if people want to do that, and will contain a pdf on the subject. The first of these will be available some time after the 30th of April.

Buain na rainich

2011-04-23T22:51:00.000+01:00

Today at work I was attending a party for the residents. There was a guy singing various songs from times before I was born. Food and drink and such. And so I danced with the two residents who speak Gaelic, and managed to blunder my way through some greetings enough to their amusement. One of the ladies still retains a lot of Gaelic and remembers some songs her father used to sing to her. And so she sang Buain na rainich to me.

Tha mi sgìth 's mi leam fhìn,
Buain na rainich, buain na rainich
Tha mi sgìth 's mi leam fhìn,
Buain na rainich daonnan

'S tric a bha mi fhìn 's mo leannan
Anns a' ghleannan cheothar
'G èisteachd còisir bhinn an doire
Seinn sa choille chòmhail;

'S bochd nach robh mi leat a-rithist
Sinn a bhitheadh ceòlmhor,
Rachainn leat gu cùl na cruinne,
Air bhàrr tuinne a' seòladh.

Ciod am feum dhomh bhi ri tuireadh?
Dè ni tuireadh dhomhsa
'S mi cho fada o gach duine
B' urrainn tighinn gam chòmhnadh?

I am weary all alone,
The whole day,
Cutting the bracken

Often I was with my sweetheart in the misty glens
Listening to the sweet choir of the grove
Singing in the dense wood

It's a pity that I am not with you again,
We would be tuneful
I would go with you to the ends of the earth
Sailing on the crest of the waves

What is the point of me being mournful
What will a lament do for me
And am I so far from any man
Who could come to my aid.

I was impressed enough with her singing and able to listen and recognise the words sufficiently as to be able to find some lyrics for the song, as well as a nice rendition of it in the video below on youtube. Enjoy

Improving search results - cancelling myspace

2011-04-19T18:22:00.000+01:00

It seems Myspace has changed a little since last attempt to cancel the page. Where previously they were requiring photographs and signed statements and all sorts of rubbish, I logged in again today and found that is now as simple as them sending a validation email, and then clicking the link in that and clicking the next 'cancel account' button.

I was then prompted with a little box that said the account would be scheduled for deletion within 24 hours. This is great. I hate myspace, and the best I could do last year was delete all the content from it. But this didn't get rid of the page.

Where does the time go?

2011-04-17T22:16:00.000+01:00

This is me about 10 hours into today's 14 hour shift at work. And although I'm perhaps not looking anything close to delighted, at that point I was more bored than anything else. The trouble with such a long shift is the regular occurrence of breaks. And this would have been my 4th break that day....a half hour one. And the usual haunts at that time are a bit free of people to talk to, and although it is sunny it's not as warm as it was 5 hours prior.

But I'm posting the pic to see if I look any better next Sunday, when I'll be doing much the same shift again.

The trouble with my shift patterns leading up to my forthcoming holiday, is that even on my days off I have to do work related stuff. On two of them coming up, I will be attending college for work related training, and on the other one I will be working on my vocational qualification...and somehow in that time trying to squeeze in enough time to relax, and plan what to take with me on the road trip I'll be going on.

I'm also trying to squeeze in time to find zines/blogs/anybody who would like to review Faileasn, and find additional ways of drawing attention to it. It's tricky...and slow.

Sam and Max

2011-04-10T09:42:00.000+01:00

When I was about 15, I was acutely aware that Fox Kids had this cartoon. I had already played and completed Hit the Road several times by then, and I never seemed to be home when this was on. Recently I got the TellTale collection of games. And a few days ago the entire cartoon series arrived.

I think the above is probably my favourite, if for nothing else the line "We are Sam and Max! Champions of Justice! Tormentors of Roman-featured bearded guys in loose-fitting jammies!"

Faileasan CD version is live

2011-04-07T12:34:00.000+01:00

Get it from Amazon. Of course, if you've already got the downloaded version from here, the audio content is the same, so sticking a review on there would be a great help.

Site Update

2011-04-07T10:47:00.000+01:00

Just been tinkering with the layout. I think there's still a discrepancy of a pixel in width between the bandcamp music page and this one. Ach well..better than it was. But you may notice a rather large gap between the top of this post and the header image. Anybody know how to reduce that?

Proof Approved

2011-04-05T15:45:00.002+01:00

So the proof arrived. And I'm quite happy with how the CD, booklet, case etc look and sound. It'll be about 5-7 days before the listings show up in Amazon. Stay tuned.

The Proof is in the Post

2011-03-30T11:32:00.000+01:00

Createspace have approved the files I submitted, and they are sending me a proof of the CD version of Faileasan. It shouldn't be long before I receive that and give them the go ahead to list the thing on Amazon.

CDBABY have also approved the files I submitted, and are beginning to distribute Faileasan through the various digital channels they work with.

I'm taking it easier than I have in the past week, I've got a couple of days off work and will be spending that getting ready for some much needed time off around the end of April. Some of that includes checking out places to visit, and making some noise for particular places and times.

For Health, Wealth, Wisdom, Recognition and Peers

2011-03-28T13:41:00.000+01:00

http://alleeshadowtradition.com/elektrischen.html

Hmm...something to keep a note of

Site Update: Faileasan complete

2011-03-24T15:35:00.000Z

As you can see I've gave the site an update to reflect the colours of the new album's artwork. Said album, Faileasan is now complete and available at the moment to download. I've stuck in a couple of bandcamp/cd only bonus tracks in the album download, of course if you'd rather just buy whatever of the 6 non-secret ones you like then that's cool too.

I'm working with createspace to get a physical cd version done. This will be available from Amazon, and from myself with some kind of personalisation in the near future.

If you do buy the album in whatever format, please don't be afraid to review it and post about it somewhere. Send me the link and I'll mention it here.

Cheers

Work life

2011-03-16T16:57:00.000Z

I'm not getting a lot of time to spend doing the little things I used to take for granted these days. Things like wasting an afternoon messing about with different equalisation, time signatures and other musical stuff. This is because I've been doing quite a large amount of overtime. Some of this has been to support my finances for the next couple of months which will be taking quite a hit as I'll be doing some travelling around the end of April and beginning of May, but mostly it's because I'm doing 2 Vocational qualifications at work.

These are a level 2 SVQ in Health and Care. And a level 3 in Providing meaningful activities for adults with dementia...or words to that effect. The level 2 is mandatory, and must be completed so that I can be registered as a qualified carer in time for the register coming out in 2013. It shouldn't take me more than 6 months to do this, and I'm fairly confident I can do it in about 4.

The only good news about this is that some of what I'm doing in one qualification can also be used for parts of another. But still having 2 on the go, and a very limited amount of time to complete them is both draining and time consuming.

The trouble most people seem to have with these qualifications is that they are not used to breaking down every little task they do on a day to day basis, and describing what it is and why they are doing it. Writing in the first person also seems to be particularly difficult for most people I've talked to who are also doing this. Not something I'm particularly worried about.

Despite this though, yesterday I spend the day doing nothing work related at all on my day off. This would be my first day off in quite a while where I haven't been either writing something down, or planning what I will need to write out in future, who I can arrange to meet with, what kind of things I can do in the workplace to meet certain performance criteria for these qualifications. I played a lot of Red Dead Redemption, and watched a couple of Clint Eastwood films.

Black Muse Element

2011-03-06T19:15:00.000Z

Black Muse Element now has a blog. Check it out, subscribe, post comments to it etc.

Members of the BME will be posting on there to share what they're learning, and also talk about what sort of musical projects they might be undertaking and the things they've encountered along the way.

BME doesn't have a website yet. If you think this is a good idea, be sure to tell them there!

Playing catch-up

2011-02-28T11:42:00.000Z

So last year Telltale games released Sam and Max series 3 on PS3. I've been waiting since then for them to do the same with the first 2 seasons. And this weekend I remembered my computer is decent, and so I bought those from their website and downloaded them. It's strange to admit that it's been about 18 years since Hit the Road came out, and I loved that game.

That's pretty much what I've been up to this weekend. Did I mention I only get 17 weekends off work a year? Other than that I've also been doing some homework for a vocational qualification I'm doing in work.

Getting Physical

2011-02-17T09:37:00.000Z

A feature that I'd up until now been too lazy to use is the physical packages option in bandcamp. I had already sent my cds to various distributors over the years, and then ignored sending the rest to any more. At that time I thought I'd be as well to sell them myself. And that has had some mixed success.

Sermons From the Unwelcome for instance is still available from most of the places I sent it, and I have quite a few left of my own stock. I only did a run of 250 at the time, as that was all I could afford.

And I did the same with Slow Acting Poison, which seems to have sold significantly more cds. I really can't stress enough how rare this is. There's only 6 of 250 left.

In honour of those times where I really did have to spend a lot more than I would come make from selling music, I've set the price on bandcamp for these physical discs at £2.50 each. That's less than you'll find on amazon, ebay, or anywhere else they've ended up being sold or traded. And you'll also get to download the music included in the price, in whatever audio format you like whilst you wait for me to post it to you.

I'm testing the water with this method. If it works well, I might go beyond a CD release for Faileasan and do a run of vinyl. Either way, if you want a copy of either of the earlier albums, I'd say now is the time to order them since there's not that many left and I will not be releasing them on CD again.

Busy busy.

2011-02-11T12:58:00.000Z

I've got a few things in the pipeline. One of which is an interview with James Kirby of Wulvzwerx. He's the gentleman in the video of my last post and has created something rather special for me. Pics of that are down below.

Something else I'm working on is reconstructing a track I recorded about 2 years ago. A bit of backstory for that. Sometime around May in 2008, members of the Black Muse Element were tasked with creating a track that would be inspired by thoughts and feelings of the North Solstice. And that's what that track was called. Every member had to submit a piece as per the usual guidelines. I submitted a bass part for that track. That can be heard below

Anyway, the part I submitted seemed to beg more of me. And whilst in Desecrative Phoneticism I expanded on it, and my partner in audial terrorism, Chris McNicholl added guitar and drums for the track that would be called Invokation to Helith. That was recorded for what was to be an album. But DP disbanded and the track and some other scraps were laid to waste. I'm disappointed that happened, but it gives me time to go back and look at the parts that I did, and with what I've learned since then, what I can do with them now. I might include the original Invokation to Helith as a bonus somewhere down the line.

The other thing I'm doing at the moment is for The New Society of Dilettanti. They seem to take a similar approach to Black Muse Element, but with fiction. I've been given about 250 words from the Bad Romance project to spread my doomed gloss on. I think they may still have some vacancies for interested parties, so get in there.

What's going on here then?

2011-02-07T10:23:00.000Z

One of my friends is making something quite cool for me. I'll update more info about that in the not so distant future.

No good deed goes unpunished

2011-02-01T13:24:00.000Z

So a couple of nights ago I decided to take my fiddle into work again to play for the residents. It wasn't until I had got there that I realised that I had left my chromatic tuner at home, so I had to steal the keyboard from the function room. This actually belongs to a minister and his wife who come in every few Sundays to give a church service. So I took this and my fiddle to a resident that I was encouraging to get back into playing keyboard, as she is really quite good. So I had her play the notes on the keyboard and I tuned the strings accordingly. That was until I got to the A string which was seriously flat and wouldn't tune up. The pegs wouldn't stay stuck either, so I tried to hold them in for a bit whilst turning and the string snapped.

It's lucky then that the only track I had intended to use it on has already been recorded. But I suspect between this and needing to replace leads, and either trade in my bass guitar or get it reset, it'll be a while before I record anything. Still, I at least have this weekend off work so I might manage to replace something then.

If not then it'll be just the composition that I can work on.

DC Universe Online

2011-01-25T20:36:00.000Z

So I picked up this game at the weekend and have been playing it off and on after work. My enjoyment at first was not that great as it seemed littered with glitches and freezing issues. Those seem to have been resolved better in the past couple of days, but the user interface lags a couple of seconds after pressing the buttons to navigate it. I'm also not having any trouble with lag, which is refreshing for an online game. I remember reading somewhere that you could save screenshots, but that doesn't seem to be working at the moment. So my villain is basically just a bald guy in plain trousers, shoes and business gloves with a tanktop and a military style hat. He's a hand-to-hand specialist with a penchant for fear and intimidation and moves acrobatically.

I've seen clones of most superheros and villains. It's always funny when a game offers you so much customization and people all model their characters after already existing ones. Since I did start in Gotham City, having just recently moved to the Metropolis, I was mildly amused by all the batman lookalikes. It reminded me of the opening scenes of The Dark Knight where Batman confronts a bunch of wannabes.

And since I enjoy killing in these games, I play PvP.

Misdreamt - The Motion Demon

2011-01-18T20:21:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've made a post about somebody else's music. Somebody else in this case being Toby Chappell. He's a busy bee and as well as being involved in the Black Muse Element, he's also done some great work in Eyes of Ligeia and Saturnine Sektor.

Now, there's a couple of things I really like about this album. It's ambient. And it's hypnotic. This is the kind of music that you could have on late at night whilst reading, or lazing around, or whilst deep in thought. It's also something that would be great during meditation.

I was tempted at first to compare this to something like Silhouette in Splinters by Leviathan, but as I continued to listen it became obvious just how wrong a comparison that would have been. The atmosphere in The Motion Demon is not one of despair. The tracks are quite busy, and at times I would describe this as suffocating as there does not often seem to be a break or change in tempo. One might also develop ear fatigue if not used to listening to this kind of music, if not for the other strange sounds that make their way from the background to the foreground every so often.

The different layers of music glide under,over, past and through each other with ease, displaying a very intricate and methodical approach to mixing that has been laboured over for who knows how long. I may be tempted to believe that the tracks were composed originally as a single 40 something minute track. Throughout the album there is a consistency that commands attention and recognition as being the very deliberate work of a skilled and patient musician.

Patience is definitely something this album demands of the listener. And that is something that I respect, as there are not a lot of musicians willing to make music that sounds so repetitive to those without patience. I can certainly think of a few people who would find this music boring and would be quick to dismiss and ignore it.

But those people are not reading this. And wouldn't think to either. For those of you that are, be sure to check it out and if you like it, buy it. It's $5, which is damn good.

Inspiration from strange places

2011-01-15T22:20:00.000Z

I bought myself a Kindle with my last wage. And so I've been reading a bunch of stuff recently. Before this arrived though, there was New Year to contend with. At midnight the street erupted predictably with terrible renditions of Auld Lang Syne. But at 4am I was delighted to be woken up by a stabbing attack and a battle royale just outside my window. It was getting noisy so I stuck my ps3 camera out my window and captured the audio, which you can hear below

But getting back to the books. I finished the first of two books by a friend of mine.

Which you can get here and see my review (the_demon_loki) on the same page. It's always great to be able to see and indulge in the fruits of the labours of friends.

Ooops

2010-12-22T14:00:00.000Z

This review pretty much sums up my experience

That's basically what I get for not checking to see if the game has online DRM. I can actually play the single player campaign most of the time, but a massive chunk of the game is unavailable. I can't play multiplayer, I can't do much of the customisation. And the game will just freeze as it attempts to connect to Ubisoft's servers every now and then.

Well, how tragic. I wasted some money there on a game that I can only play whenever Ubisoft's servers aren't fucking up.

Time to pirate Settlers 2 10th anniversary edition. oh well.

Cold and dark

2010-12-21T11:56:00.000Z

Anybody enjoy the lunar eclipse last night? I took this time to decide that I am utterly finished with a track that I've been working on for about 2 years. The first version of the track was started while working with Chris McNicholl in Desecrative Phoneticism, and the second version was done as part of a working for the Black Muse Element. I've taken the elements I like from each and fused them together for an even more morose, albeit stripped the fuck back version. I might include one of the other versions as bonus for a physical release. Or maybe not.

I'm also taking some time to be nostalgic. I'm just now downloading Settlers 7 from Steam. I remember back when I was 13 or 14 I had played the first Settlers game, and myself and a significant other of that time played its sequel obsessively. Customising maps, and making joke maps with next to no raw materials and 3 competing tribes for fun. But I've not spoken to this guy for about 10 years now, as time went on we had less and less in common with each other and our interests took us further apart than ever.

With the new year approaching, and the chaos of house renovation finally over, I've had some time also to look at what equipment needs replaced.

Audio leads
Microphone
Bass Guitar
USB Midi controller

So, its going to be an expensive new year. But an exciting one.

Building the Living Temple - A Manual for Freemasons

2010-12-07T11:08:00.000Z

A friend of mine, Mr Edward Pittman is getting ready to publish a book.

Link to the project

"Building the Living Temple" is the working title of a nearly-completed book on the symbolism of the Masonic Working Tools. My aim with this work is to show other Masons some ways that we can really put those Tools to work in our lives, our Lodges and our communities. Each of these Working Tools bridges the divide between philosophical principles and practical, everyday actions.

I am using Kickstarter to raise the funds to independently publish this book. Again, the writing is nearly finished. The money raised will go toward formatting, art and other publishing expenses so as to get "Building the Living Temple" out as early as possible in the new year."

So in doing this, Edward has made me aware of Kickstarter as a potential tool to assist in planning and gathering support for any my own future endeavours. I had to register to contribute, but if you have a facebook ID and an amazon account, the registration is quite painless. To what end I use Kickstarter in future, I'm not sure. I think it'll probably for the funding of some shiny/rare/difficult for the independent musician to procure kind of merchandise. What I like about it, is that you can set different tiers for people to choose to contribute. And set some incentives to contribute more, if they feel like it.

Black Magic updated and published publically

2010-11-26T10:48:00.000Z

For anybody who has had a fleeting interest in the Temple of Set or the Left Hand Path, they may have come across the pirated and rather out of date pdfs of the Crystal Tablet and other documents of varying quality/accuracy. Michael Aquino has now publicly posted his Black Magic introductory text from the Crystal Tablet online.

"The introductory section of the Crystal Tablet of Set (the volume of theJeweled Tablets of Set provided to Setians I° of the Temple of Set). This is a summary of the history, principles, and philosophy of the Temple and its initiatory system. While Black Magic was originally intended for Setians only, so many incomplete, inaccurate, and obsolete versions of it have been pirated on the Internet that public disclosure of the complete, accurate, and current text is appropriate. Included with this file is the Temple of Set Reading List (several of whose publications are referenced in the Black Magic text)." ~ Michael Aquino

Have a look if you like at his webpage for links to this and his other publicly available writings.

Site update

2010-11-21T19:21:00.002Z

You may have noticed I've added the facebook like button. If you 'like' anything you see on the site, it becomes easily searchable on facebook. Kinda useful tool.

Ruiner finally available to download

2010-11-21T13:46:00.000Z

As quoted from ruiner.atomicarmadillo.com

"The 2010 beta for Ruiner has been released! This build includes 5 levels and around 1 to 1 ½ hours of game play. The mod is compatible with the PC retail or PC Steam install of Doom 3 with the 1.3.1 patch. Make sure you check the README file inside the documents sub folder for information on how to install the mod, it's advanced controls and new system options.

We would like to thank everybody for their support over the years. Feel free to post any constructive comments, bug reports, and general feedback on our ModDB site."

Download the mod at Moddb

I've downloaded the mod and played some of it yesterday, and it has definitely been worth the wait for me. Be sure to check that out.

Also, since the mod is now released, I can finally reveal the soundtrack in its entirety, this is free to download so please do. It gives a nice glimpse of what I was doing between the first two BNIIPOTD albums, and some of the tracks make great accompaniments to black magic rituals, or so I've been told.

In terms of the new album, work on that has stalled at the moment as my house is being rewired and I've had to store away the bulk of my instruments so they don't get damaged. I'm hoping to pick up where I left off in the coming weeks.

Piracy or Promotion

2010-10-13T10:54:00.000+01:00

I've been reading this article about Piracy, and also the comments that follow it. It's something I've had to think about from time to time, but I'm not immediately concerned by that argument.

I used to think it was important to have artist profiles on anything and everything that allowed you to have one. As they became less about the artist and music, and more like Pokemon with the 'friends' and 'fans' I decided that was crap.

Nowadays I'm finding it suits me best to have one profile, which is my website. And for 'getting out there' there's digitial distribution. And for physical stuff, there's 'made to order'.

Of course, if I find an online retailer is giving the option to include a bit more information about me in the form of an 'artist store', I make sure to put what I want known on there.

My time online for all the non-music side of what I do is managed relatively easily by google letting me know whenever some new link or page relating to my stuff appears online, then I check it out and see what needs added to it if anything. I only have to do this every couple of months or so.

So with regards to piracy, I can't say that I care that somebody has managed to get some of my stuff from a torrent or whatever, as long as they know it IS definitely MY stuff. On the otherhand....

Shortly before Dimmu Borgir released Abrahadabra, a Torrent appeared. It only had one actual Dimmu Borgir song included in the file. The rest were titled as if they were from the album, but they actually comprised in their entirety, with the exception of Dimmu's Gateways single, of The Eternal Suffering's 'Miasma' album.

Now that caused an interesting thing to happen. Dimmu fans who hadn't heard of Eternal Suffering either

A) Loved this 'new' Dimmu album
B) Hated this 'new' Dimmu album

Now for the people in group A, when they invevitably discovered this was in fact another artist altogether, they either

A) Became fans of Eternal Suffering
B) Got pissed off and waited for Abrahadabra to leak properly.

Whatever the case, Eternal Suffering couldn't have asked for such a great level of exposure.

Interesting times

2010-09-22T09:03:00.001+01:00

Any casual readers may be wondering what's been going on. I've recently started a new job, working as a Social Care Assistant in a residential care home for the elderly. This has been fine, but I'm now doing shift work and my rota has 3-week patterns. The only thing I can be sure of in terms of my work is what days off I have.

Naturally this has placed some challenge ahead of me with regards to working on music, although I have been finding the time to work on bits and pieces. I'm also enrolled for the 3rd and final part of my Gaelic course, which will probably finish around February.

What's coming up on the horizon is a trip to Skye in early November, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. I've been thinking about things like that a lot recently, I have list of things that I have been meaning to get to and some previous entries have taken years to even get to the point where I can start them. Still, at least it's good to have a backlog of stuff that's interesting to me to plough through rather than a load of crap I can't be bothered with.

Also, according to the moddb site Ruiner will be coming out next month. Which I have been looking forward to since finishing the soundtrack for that back in 2007.

It's pretty safe to say that my previous project with Chris McNicholl, Desecrative Phoneticism, is dead. I haven't updated that website in over a year, and I've no real interest in doing anything more in that style. So the url redirects here, and after December or so that url will be dead.

So anybody who wants to hear what sort of thing I was doing musically between the Sermons From the Unwelcome album and Slow Acting Poison Album, do by all means check out the Ruiner Mod, and the Z-Hunter Mod for Doom3. You can download the Z-Hunter Mod soundtrack from Moddb, and I imagine the Ruiner team will do the same with that soundtrack.

Spreadshirt Free Shipping 30/7/10 - 1/8/10 and other stuff relating to the new album

2010-07-29T09:40:00.001+01:00

Yeah, no shipping charges for standard delivery this weekend. Buy t-shirts here.

The upcoming album is to be called 'Faileasan'. Rather than waiting for the whole thing to be recorded, I'm releasing tracks individually on bandcamp first as and when they are finished. So, you can hear those for free and if you like you can even download for a small fee. Whenever there's what I'd consider to be an album length of music, then I'll think about how to release that physically. The first track is 'Sinnsreachd'.

I'll not necessarily update this blog with each and every track I put up, so either keep an eye on the music page or you can follow me by twtter. This is quite a good way of keeping up to date, because I've synched the blog, bandcamp and youtube profiles with it.

.

Forgot to mention

2010-07-22T09:01:00.000+01:00

There's a few new T-shirt designs over at the BNIIPOTD spreadshirt store. I may put a few more on there in the coming weeks. Have a look.

The Joy of Mixing

2010-07-15T21:50:00.000+01:00

I mix as I go, and then I remix later. It's a time consuming process, but I'm never satisfied until I've spent a long time trying out various combinations with each track.

Sonic Necromancy

2010-07-14T11:13:00.000+01:00

A year away from the music I recorded last year as an unreleased and undistributed demo has definitely helped. There's a track in the middle of those recordings that I've always quite liked. I'm currently working on a newer, more mature version of that one. I can already tell I'm liking how its coming along, even though it'll be a distant relative of its progenitor by the time I'm done.

I've been thinking about how to reward those of you who have stuck it out over the years, and the ones that even now are finding out about my stuff and giving it a listen. I mentioned before that I wanted to do something a bit more special than just a Jewel Case for this album, and that will ultimately depend on what I can afford at the time. One thing I can definitely afford, is for those of you who have downloaded my albums on bandcamp and supplied your email address, I will be in touch and send you all out an extremely fucking limited version of this album. No 2 packages will be entirely alike in their presentation, although they will all contain identical audio and have common specifications for the packaging.

You guys will be the first to have an actual copy of the album, and so I trust you'll be honorable and not spread it everywhere until I have something worked out for the not-so-ltd version, and its distribution.

Oh Imagine

2010-07-05T11:57:00.000+01:00

By this point, I was too depressed to take pictures of the rest. Imagine your new department store. Imagine your new toy shop. Imagine your new bar/diner.

Imagine Paisley had a soul.

Something desolate

2010-07-03T16:02:00.000+01:00

It just felt like a good time to start. I don't have all the equipment I wanted for this one, in fact I've actually misplaced some. Like a working microphone, chromatic tuner and probably some other stuff. I don't have a name for this track yet, and I don't have a name for the album it will be a part of. As usual I will be letting them develop naturally, and their names will become apparrent. Taking it as it comes.

What could be more DOOOOOM

2010-06-13T10:51:00.000+01:00

Than a black recorder? While I'm not at the stage of having new material ready, I am assembling some unusual things that I might be using in the near future. Too early to say what the next album will sound like other than 'different'. I have some ideas about how I'd like to present the next album as well, it's time I do something a little more special than jewel cases.

Is the 'Temple of Set' Satanic?

2010-06-11T13:29:00.000+01:00

This is one of those questions that come up from time to time from a variety of people from different backgrounds and agendas. It's not a question I'm often asked, because the majority of people I know have no interest in the Temple of Set, or anything Left Hand Path related at all. But just incase anybody reading this might be, have a look at how Lilith Aquino tackles the question and see what you think.

Wolfpack gets new recruit

2010-06-04T21:38:00.000+01:00

This is Theo, or the dog formerly known as Trio. His previous owner was homeless and called my sister's place of work last week as he had fallen out of the window and broke his legs. She just happened to pop in to get details of her friend's wedding, and they told her about him. He'd either get rehomed by myself or her or my cousin, or he would be put to sleep. Since my sister has two dogs already, and my cousin has an 8 month old pup, he came to be in my posession today. This was after many attempts to contact the previous owner.

Poor guy is at the mercy of my cats, so he's in the cage for his own protection. Although as I type, he is protesting. He's got painkillers to take every day, and has 3 separate operations coming up. Two for his legs, and one for some other appendage. Remember Marla Singer? She said something like 'yeah they'll love you enough to take you home, but they'll still castrate you'.

It'll probably be around 3 months before he's ready to join the pack on their epic adventures in the vast expanses we take them. He can actually walk in his bandages, although it's a bit like watching a Nazi goose stepping at this stage.

Japanese Spider Man

2010-05-29T11:47:00.000+01:00

There are times when I find myself scowering the net for unusual things to inspire me. Not entirely sure what manner of noise I'd create that I could blame this for. But if I do, it'll be mentioned in the liner notes somewhere.

Slow Acting Poison Preparation

2010-05-25T10:32:00.003+01:00

Having noticed that one of the key searches that brings traffic to my site, as well as the bandcamp page is "slow acting poison preparation", usually from India or Canada, I've decided to try an experiment and have made a new blog entry with that title.

Somebody out there is determined to put in the work necessary to murder somebody. Whilst I neither encourage nor discourage such aspirations, I would consider it a blessing if they listened to my music first. So murderers, be sure to let me know. Are you more or less likely to continue that search for the perfect slow acting poison for your most malevolent of tasks after hearing my music?

Rip PS3

2010-05-21T15:44:00.000+01:00

There may be a mutiny ahead. As I mentioned some time ago, I use my ps3 not just for games but I download videos and play them from a usb drive. Quite handy. Well, I was about to play uncharted 2 today again, and decided to update so I could play online. No sooner than I go and get a drink and come back up to see the progress do I find the machine had switched itself to standbye. Not good, and then the ylod upon turning on. The game is stuck in the machine.

Ach well, it just means some stuff that I recorded with the eyecreate program are out of reach. I might get another one, but it'll not be for quite a while.

Site Update

2010-05-14T18:09:00.000+01:00

Having had a rethink over the past couple of days, I've decided to make better use of my twitter account. I've linked this blog to it, so that anybody following twitter will get tweets of the blog entries. Something else that is linked to twitter is the youtube channel. which will let anybody know when I've been foolish enough to put something on there.

At some point over the next week, I might actually redo the navbar at the top to allow for these additions. In the meantime, you can find my twitter button on the contact page.

Curiously, this also comes at a time when my mobile contractor has decided to suddenly let me use twitter for free. Such dark powers must be used wisely or not at all. Time will tell how I cope with such awesome power.

Ruiner

2010-05-12T16:09:00.002+01:00

So it's been a few years now since I recorded the Ruiner soundtrack. And in that time, work has been done on and off for the mod. I forgot about it for a while, and checked before January and there hadn't been any recent updates.

Well it turns out that work is resuming on the mod, and they've included a new trailer. This defininitely looks a lot closer to complete than it did back in 2007 or 2008.

Frankly I can't wait for it to be released because I've finally got a machine capable of running it.

Making shit

2010-05-12T12:06:00.001+01:00

This is one of a series of pictures I'll be making over the next week or so to include with the metadata for mp3s on bandcamp. Something extra than the album art for people to look at. I'll probably also upload the lot there in pdf format. These are pretty huge files.

It's my sister's birthday next month, and my friend's birthday was last month..but I didn't know. So I've ordered a couple of A1 prints of this image from zip posters.

Also, since I was talking about uploading a video of the recording I'll do with the fiddle in the near future, I've made a youtube channel for that. In the meantime, I'll just upload artwork and music. But maybe in the future I'll use it to show just what kind of stupidity is involved in recording the music I make.

Rust

2010-05-10T15:07:00.000+01:00

I'm a better composer than performer, that's definitely correct when it comes to my fiddle. I took the thing out its case for the first time in a couple of months today and had some difficulty in getting it to stay in tune. If I keep practicing then the strings will hopefully settle.

I'm intending to use it the for next contributory piece for the black muse element. Which is a mild fear of mine, it's not an instrument I'm particularly comfortable with. Since my gaelic lessons clash with the tutoring times for the glasgow fiddle workshop I've had to pick which to focus on this year.

Also since my microphone has gone missing, I'll be using my ps3 eye camera to record the fiddle with. I'll rip the audio from the mpg and send that, but i'll probably also post the video online for people to laugh at.

And there was great joy

2010-05-07T18:01:00.000+01:00

That's my highscore, although really I don't care as much about the numbers as I do the wiping humanity from earth. I'm pleased enough with that.

Crazy people

2010-05-06T09:32:00.000+01:00

My family is made up of a bunch of nutters. Mostly harmless nutters though. Although yesterday, my cousin's dad slipped into the twilight zone and became rather abusive and violent towards him. It was like I wasn't even there. As we were leaving, my cousin was already out the front door and I was only halfway down the stairs. My uncle slammed the door in a rage after a heated exchange, and went away into another room. I made my way out into the street, and then he followed us out there screaming insults and abuse at my cousin and trying to provoke him into a fight, becoming more aggressive about it the more we walked away.

So, my cousin mentions contacting the police if he dared attack. This somewhat calms the situation enough for us to leave unhindered. And we pass some time here, I have my Gaelic lesson at 8pm and my cousin leaves at 9. I think things have settled down, and within half an hour I find out that my uncle has attacked him. Trying to choke him out or something, digging his nails into my cousin's neck. So he manages to get away, and is undecided about police or diplomacy through my uncle's brother.

Anyway, he ends up spending the night at my place and my uncle keeps calling and texting him, threatening him with what he'll do to the dog if he doesn't get his way. After one of these calls, my cousin is too upset to want to speak to him and he hangs up. But uncle calls back, and this time I answer it. He didn't acknowledge his raging earlier, he didn't even acknowledge that I was there except to use me to corroborate that my cousin had called him psychotic. Yes he did, and under the circumstances it was little wonder. But he wouldn't listen to what I was saying, that if he did decide to dump the dog somewhere then his wife and daughter would not be pleased. They're in Spain just now, were meant to be home yesterday but flight was cancelled because of volcanic ash.

And he didn't give a flying fuck what they think. So then I mention that he should probably go to bed and calm down, this was getting late, and the way he behaved made me feel quite uncomfortable. No acknowledgement of that.

So he allocates us half an hour for my cousin to surrender his keys, or the dog gets put in a dog rescue service. This is the same dog that he wanted, he spent £500 on, he drove from Paisley to somewhere in the south of Wales to collect during blizzard conditions in January. But we call his bluff, and time goes by and he sends text messages saying that he'd 'taken advice' and that there would be repercussions. My cousin switches his phone off.

Upon turning his phone on this morning, there were more text messages about the dog. And my cousin called and said he was prepared to look after the dog, but not in the house as he didn't want to be around his dad anymore. Uncle offered to have a chat with him tonight at 11pm, so long as there were no witnesses there. Not really sounding that safe, so my cousin declined and hung up. And he kept calling back and back, and eventually gave up trying after 7 missed calls. My cousin doesn't have his clothes or medication or anything with him, so naturally is not that great today. But regardless he's headed in to work.

It's utterly surreal to me to see and hear how somebody could behave in the way my uncle did, and still be clueless as to why my cousin doesn't want to be around him, and worse still expect favors from him. I don't think he even remembers that he did something similar around January or February of last year, where he attacked my cousin just before he went to work. I found out about that on the same day, and got a half day to meet him. His work had sent him away because he was too upset to be there.

As I type, I've just found out that my cousin's team leader has acknowledge the marks on his neck as being quite bad, and has given him the day off to try and get his medication, clothes and dog somewhere safe. So I'm off out to meet him, as his dad still is keeping up with the phonecalls.

Beltane 2010

2010-05-02T17:32:00.000+01:00

Amazon artist central

2010-04-23T11:21:00.002+01:00

This is pretty important and cool for the independant artist who sells music on amazon. Point your browser to artistcentral.amazon.com and you can begin the steps necessary to claim your artist's page.

Why the hell would you want to do that? Well here's a handy faq that will explain what it does, and the benefits etc. I'm not sure that every domain amazon owns has this feature, certainly amazon.com does. And amazon.co.uk is slowly following suite. The bad news is, that you have to repeat the process for each domain. Which really doesn't make much sense.

On the brightside once it's done, you end up with something that looks like this.

Assimilation

2010-04-21T01:51:00.000+01:00

The DNS guys have come through. So I've updated the design to include an image map to tie the blog, other pages and bandcamp profile together. It's almost the way I'd like it, there's a slight difference with position of the header between the site and bandcamp, but at the moment everything at least works.

The previous listen page has been replaced with a music section, and there is now a merchandise section for people who want physical stuff.

It's always a struggle for me trying to get the web stuff done right, and it's an important part of making my presence online known. I'll probably write about that in more depth in the near future though.

A pleasant weekend

2010-04-16T21:53:00.000+01:00

And at the time of posting, nobody can see this post or my blog for that matter. I'm still waiting on my domain guys to ammend the DNS so that this blog will redirect properly. No matter.

This is a photo taken around the corner and down the valley from 'Rest and be thankful'. Myself, my sis and cousin Graeme gathered our hounds and took them out for another epic dog adventure. This is something we do fairly regularly, whenever the weather is hospitable.

We more or less grew up together, and Graeme has been around us just about all of his life. So little wonder that we're more akin to best friends than family. Not surprising to us at least. Other people don't share that view, some of them are family also. To some, that we hang around together at all, let alone as often as we do is strange.

I feel sorry for those people who think that way. I feel sorry that this viewpoint prevents them from wanting to hang around with us. And I am bitter about it. Some of those people, for about 20 years I never had the chance to hang around with because our parents were too busy bullshitting about with family politics following a bereavement. They didn't just lose a dad, but they lost out on the opportunity to see, understand and perhaps become a part of the friendship we share.

So we're no great loss to them when this difference of opinion, and the bullshit resulting from it and the actions of other people who I consider only family by association, come together to create a great miasma of suckage.

And I've been bitter about it for close to 6 months now. I put it to the back of my mind, and the sadness still lingers below the surface. But at this age, I'm past the stage of having the capacity for anger where my family is concerned. I have only disappointment.

21 days to go

2010-04-09T13:32:00.002+01:00

Dear Mr MacKinnon,

Thank you for booking with Hub Tickets online.
Your booking details are as follows, please retain a copy of these details in case of any query:

Hub Tickets Client Number:

Client Name: Mr Christopher MacKinnon

Booking Details:
Order number: 343240

Tickets

Event: Beltane Fire Festival On: Fri 30-Apr-10 21:30 at: Calton Hill

Area	Ticket Type	Price
General Admission	Full Price inc. 50p booking fee	£6.50

Commission

Commission	Total
Postage Fee - Internet	£0.60

Aokigahara

2010-04-04T13:26:00.000+01:00

I've always associated forests with suicides. I can't really remember when that association came to be, but still the allure of forests in their own right is also something I've pretty much been attracted to.

It turns out that there is a forest in Japan near Mt. Fuji that is pretty famous for suicides called Aokigahara. There's some interesting stuff written on the wikipedia article about the place, including that it was also known as an area full of demonic activity.

But if you want to have a look at the extent of its popularity, I'd suggest checking out this blog entry, which contains pictures of bones and corpses and suicide paraphernalia that are found throughout the forest.

Not getting bogged down too much on whether or not suicide takes guts or cowardice, it can at least be said that death is mankind's doom, and those people certainly knew how to prepare themselves for it.

Fruit of a different labour

2010-03-31T21:36:00.000+01:00

I mentioned earlier, that I was working on a new track for the Black Muse Element. This being the first full length track, rather than me submitting a piece to become a part of a track. Well, there is a new myspace page for this set.

Black Muse Element - Music of the Self Working

Clicking the link above will take you to it. The track I submitted is called 'Dè do chor fhein, a Chrìsdein?' but has been abreviated for the myspace I think. Title translates to "How are you yourself, Christopher?" which is a question I find myself asking internally from time to time. I generally spend more time concerned with and focussing on the problems of those close to me, getting wrapped up in tangled webs of difficult and irritating social situations that make me want to scream to the world at large 'Gonnae just get a grip!?!?!?'

So, it's a reminder to myself that it is okay to shut everyone and everything else out sometimes if I feel it necessary.

It was also a response to a nagging feeling that I need to do more to develop musically, and this track offered me such a chance. I deliberate focussed on areas that I typically don't use. Like programmed drums. You'll find if you listen to most of my music that there is no percussion. This has been because I was never really confident that I would have the patience or ear for it. I'd like to think that I've at least scratched the surface of the basics now.

I also didn't use my bass guitar, guitar, or vocals on this track so that I would spend more time developing a clear structure, something else the bulk of my music does not have. Not because I can't do that, but because I'd never considered working in that way for the stuff I do alone.

Anyway, for now you can hear that track and the other brilliant submissions by other members of the Black Muse Element on that page. Whether or not they'll become available to download or access some other way later, is still up in the air.

Lyrics

2010-03-31T13:08:00.000+01:00

From time to time, when checking to see how my page rankings sit in on google I see there are a few lyrics websites have created pages for BNIIPOTD and not surprisingly they are all empty. There's 2 very good reasons for this.

1) I've never published them

2) They're mostly not in English anyway

There's a couple of tracks where I've used lyrics in English, and they are minimal. But there is one track that probably does warrant its lyrics more widely known. Anyone who picked up the Slow Acting Poison cd will know from the liner notes where those come from. But for the online downloaders, I'll let you in on the secret.

A Departed Friend

by Robert Tannahill

STOP, passenger-here muse awhile:
Think on his darksome, lone abode,
Who late, like thee, did jocund smile,
Now lies beneath this cold green sod.

Art thou to vicious ways inclin'd,
Pursuing pleasure's flow'ry road?
Know -- fell remorse shall rack thy mind,
When tott’ring to thy cold green sod.

If thou a friend to Virtue art,
Oft pitying burthen'd Mis'ry's load;
Like thee, he had a feeling heart
Who lies beneath this cold green sod.

With studious, philosophic eye,
He look'd thro Nature up to God --
His future hope, his greatest joy,
Who lies beneath this cold green sod.

Go, passenger -- revere this truth:
A life well spent in doing good
Soothes joyless age, and sprightly youth,
When drooping o'er the cold green sod.

The lyrics were originally written in pencil on a gravestone belonging to a friend of Mr Tannahill, and were later published in a collection of his works 'Songs and Poems' 1875 edition, some 65 years after he himself died.

Keep that shit to yourself

2010-03-27T21:50:00.001Z

I think a lot of people who make music/horrible noise record a lot more than they release. Some bands posthumously release more cds than they did while they were alive. I don't think I'll ever be in that scenario, but if I ever stopped making what I do, I don't think I'd have a compulsion to release all the bits and pieces that I didn't before.

Sometimes the stuff I make is a lot more important to myself, and recorded just on the fly. That's not typically how I record anything for BNIIPOTD. I can go a long while without touching anything musically, and then in a few days I've somehow got enough for an album. But there are times when I just feel like I have to record something, with no set plan of what or for how long. It's sort of like an exorcism. Sometimes its just to evoke a feeling, fully experience it and move on. Other times its to try and break away from some of the habits I've picked up along the way.

I recorded 3 tracks a few months ago, which amount to somehere near 20 mins of sound. And from time to time I listen to them again. I found them recently, and whilst I like them I really don't think it'd be useful to release them. Even as a free download.

The conclusion I've reached is that I have not developed enough beyond the last release. It's a step forward, but not a big enough step. Which is why I'm quite grateful that I have a few people that I can mess about with, and do stuff differently. To grow in strange places and bring back the fruits of that growth I think is of great value. How they merge with BNIIPOTD remains to be seen, if at all. Does the project evolve, or is a new project born? It's too early to say.

So...paying a whore for non-sex?

2010-03-23T16:48:00.001Z

If this is anything to go by, then apparrently there may be a market for that. I don't have an Xbox360, I totally grudge paying to play games online. But it seems enough people don't mind just doing that, but would pay more so they have a pretty face to look at while they do it. So those vibrating controllers will come in handy after all.

Kinda makes me wonder how they'd price that, since everybody's different perceptions of 'value' for money may differ significantly. And what about candidate selection? Christ, if they let people from Paisley sign up for that, they might get a couple of gems amongst the filth. But I'd wager that it'd be mostly filth that would want to sign up for that in the first place.

And thinking about it that way, it may not be so bad. If it keeps the scum off the streets for a bit longer than usual, that can only be a good thing..however warped that may be.

It's taken a while

2010-03-18T12:12:00.000Z

But I think Hope is probably the character that I always keep in my party. I've got past that wonderfully long chunk of linearity that the internet is complaining about, and have been having fun getting my ass kicked by the various beasts in the areas I'm not supposed to be exploring yet. I had a look at the stats for the characters as they are leveled so far, and this guy is a better black mage than any of my other characters are at their own main roles.

The structure of my weekends changed recently. It used to be that I'd have TNA IMPACT downloaded and stuck on a usb stick on a friday. This would then either be taken to my cousin's house, or he and my sister would come here and that would get watched. The remainder of the weekend would be spent drinking too damn many energy drinks, and watching dvds. But the TNA stuff happens on a Tuesday now instead. What this means is that we tend to get the dvds started on Friday nights, and some weekends we have EPIC DOG WALK in which all our respective hounds are assembled, and transported to some remote location and set loose. The photo below isn't a recent one, this was taken about an hour before the snow came in december. And features my dog, my sister and her dogs and her friend and her dogs.

It's quite funny, because my dog is the eldest at around 12 years old and the worst behaved in the car. My sisters dogs are excellent in the car, but terrible everywhere else, and my cousin's pup is good most places except he loves to eat shit, whether its horse, deer, dog variety doesn't seem to matter.

Stuff

2010-03-17T17:15:00.001Z

I finished work on a track this week for the Black Muse Element. The Working theme of this track was to create a track that 'speaks' of mySelf. And since this year I decided that I didn't want to keep doing the same thing, I met the challenge of staying within the confines of the soft-synth. No guitars, bass, vocals or anything like that. Pure electronic instrumentation and programmed percussion.

At some point in the near future, that track will be presented along with others that fellow Musai have submitted.

I also passed my first Gaelic exam, scoring 82% overall. The studies continue, however and I really need to get myself into a better routine for studying. It's always too tempting to mess about with music or play final fantasy 13 or go out somewhere instead.

Apparrel

2010-03-08T10:44:00.000Z

In the transition to the new design, I forgot to include a link to the spreadshirt shop. The designs are from the Saturnine era. I've still to come up with something I like for the Poison era, in the meantime if anybody has any ideas for that or other designs by all means do let me know. I'll add the above link to the listen page under the store links.

I don't care if it's late.

2010-03-05T23:38:00.000Z

Robot Unicorn Attack is too awesome and addictive not to mention here.

Dubh - Ogronios

2010-03-03T11:42:00.001Z

Tracklisting

1. Door to the Otherworld

2. Hammer of the Sky

3. Winter Maelstrom

4. Caverns of Bile

5. Through the Blackthorn Forests

6. Hibernation

7. By the Will of the Dark Mother...

8. ...And the Grace of the Sky Father

9. Land of Endless Rain

10. Dirge for the Earth

I downloaded this album yesterday and have listened to it 3 times since then. I'm listening to it again now. What strikes me about this album is the variety present throughout the tracklist. There's also a bit of variation in the overall sound of the production from track to track, but that's not a bad thing. One thing that does seem to be quite deliberate is an emphasis on the distinction between loud and quiet.

Dubh makes a fine mixture of accoustic, drone, folk and black metal sounds throughout this set of recordings and will often change style and tempo in a track. Vocals vary from morose and clean to distorted, throat tearing screams. It's hard to say what I like best overall in this album, whether its the melancholic use of piano, the emotional lead guitar, the raw heaviness, or the folk elements which shine through, and are really quite beautiful.

Caverns of Bile is a track that does stand out to me though, mostly because it just seems so different from the other tracks on the album. It's still dark, and has all the atmosphere you would have come to expect by the end of Winter Maelstron (which despite it's Immortalesque title, is again different from what you might expect), there's an almost electronic element to this track.

Listen for yourself and make your own thoughts, but those without an open mind may feel disappointed. Even if one doesn't like the music/production it can certainly be said that its composition is interesting. I've got a feeling I'll be playing this fairly regularly.

KHPR 002: Music and Magic

2010-03-01T21:39:00.003Z

I'm posting a link to a podcast. It's the KHPR podcast, which is concerned with all things LHP and particularly pertaining to the Temple of Set.

This episode is about Music and Magic, and the Black Muse Element is discussed. The Black Muse Element is a project that I regularly contribute bits and pieces towards the greater whole. Definitely worth a listen.

Hell March 3

2010-02-28T19:13:00.001Z

I used to love playing the command and conquer games. I still do from time to time. But I always loved the Red Alert versions best. Not entirely sure what it is about them, but there was something kinda sexy about taking control of the Red Army and utterly demolishing the Alliance. In other command and conquers, I would always play as NOD. What does that say about me?

Whatever the case, I think C&C fans can at least agree the guy that's done the music for so long has consistently provided an excellent soundtrack each time.

I'm ashamed to admit that I've still to pick up Red Alert 3, and I was doing a search on youtube to see if I could find some trailers. What I found first was a live performance of Hell March 3. Considering how much I loved Hell March 1 and 2, I just had to see and hear this.

Loved it. But for anybody who hasn't already checked out Red Alert, you can now get it for free
as well as some of the other classic command and conquer games.

BNIIPOTD and social networking

2010-02-27T11:46:00.000Z

Previously, BNIIPOTD had a presence on myspace, reverbnation and facebook. Indeed, the project started out with just the myspace page and was started just to do something a bit different from what I was doing before.

As time has went on, I've found the usefulness of these sites to be rather lacking. I hated the myspace music player, I hated that I couldn't upload most of my tracks. So I opted for reverbnation, and used their widgets. But even they would only allow so many. I created a facebook page just because it seemed like an alright idea at the time.

The trouble with these pages for me was that they were a pain in the arse to update frequently. So along came twitter. Which also seemed a good idea, as I could post a widget on each page and have them all updated at once, until I realised they only allowed updates of a small amount of characters.

Another problem I had with these sites, is that I had no control over what content was visible on the page. They would become littered with ads for crap I wouldn't want to buy, and had nothing to do with what I was making. Honestly, it's massively disheartening to spend the time and effort creating a decent page layout only to have it blemished with mugshots of whoever the most recent XFACTOR/POP IDOL/ WHATEVER person everybody won't shut up about.

I also became rather lazy with having to accept requests from 'friends', who are more interested in peddling their own wares than spending time on mine.

So as it stands, I am exceptionally pleased with the current format for the site. There are no ads anywhere. I can update this blog rather easily, the page with my music on it has it ALL available to listen and download/buy. And that comes from bandcamp.com. Even if you look at my page there http://benotidle.bandcamp.com you'll find no ads of any kind, no comments or friends. Just the music.

Much in the same way record labels are showing their age, and yet outlasting their usefulness, so too are places like myspace.

None Shall Pass

2010-02-26T23:56:00.000Z

This is Scruff. Although the doorway he's guarding looks quite dark, there is sufficient light in there from the small lights that are on the base unit of the computer. In total darkness, being in that room is like being outside when the moon is out. The walls are black, and so is just about every piece of furniture and equipment therein. That's where I record stuff.

I've had Scruff for just over 10 years now, and he's exceptionally protective. If I'm busy working on something, he won't eat anything even if its within reach. He'll just sit there and wait for me. He won't go to bed unless I do. And if I'm not home, he'll wait up for me. He also defended my cousin and brother in law from a maniac wielding a hammer one day a couple of years ago.

But he's not alone, there are three cats who he occasionally acts as peacekeeper for. They sometimes bring in their individual friends, who may or may not get along with the others.

Scruff also keeps my sister's dogs in line when they come over. They're like hyperactive kids around a wise man.

Site update again

2010-02-26T16:37:00.001Z

Changed the site's layout and implemented a new blog via blogspot so I can allow for better interaction than previously.