The Dear Hunter’s new set of 9 EPs, The Color Spectrum, is baffingly fantastic.

Yeah, you heard it. The sheer variety present on every EP alone is astounding, but these are quality songs too. Black and Indigo are epic, highly emotional delves into electronic music, Red and Orange present some hard-hitting, straight up rock music, Green and Blue tone it down a bit and explore a mellow, folkier territory. I could ramble on about how compelling The Color Spectrum is for hours, but ultimately this may be one of the defining recordings of the decade, hell, the century thus far. The huge amount of material here means that there’s something for everyone. The Color Spectrum is about defining different colors through music, and most of the time it’s astonishing at how well the music helps me visualize the colors. Violet, Black, and Indigo are my favorite EPs, just as violet, black, and indigo are my favorite colors. These 36 songs are brimming with emotion, diversity, and musical genius at every turn. Simply put, if you miss out on The Color Spectrum, you’re missing out on one of the most compelling releases in many, many years. And amazingly enough, that’s not much of an exaggeration on my part. Listen if you will.

Final Verdict: 5 stars out of 5

See, this whole project started back in January when I decided to, just for kicks, record random noises and see how I could manipulate them with Audacity. These songs – “Infinity,” “Heatwaves,” “Phobia,” and some others – started out as some things I did to satisfy myself creatively when I was bored, and then I had the idea of assembling them into an EP or album, to release under a name other than the usual Above the Graves moniker I put on all my solo work. I decided on the name monogram, randomly, and the album was to be titled symbols. I really had no idea what I was doing at the time, how to label it musically, or anything else. So, naturally, after a while, I forgot about the whole project and instead focused on the next Above the Graves release, Days Past, which I tried to keep mostly traditional in the way of just my acoustic guitar and voice. Still, the influence from my monogram project seeped into Days Past. It started out with improvisation of my banging on my guitar and yelling random vocalizations, then mixing it in with other sounds for effect. I originally called that song “Intermission” as it was intended to be a segue between “Trouble” and “Quiet Hours,” which was called “Untitled” at the time. Days Past took three months to fully form; it originally included a (poorly done) acoustic cover of Joanna Newsom’s “Monkey & Bear,” and it was all fairly standard Above the Graves material. That is, it was terrible, poorly produced and ill-thought-out (yes, I’m very critical of my earlier work.) As work on Days Past continued, though, I got far more serious with what I was doing, and “Intermission” got reversed, slowed down, and toyed with until eventually it became “The Labrynth.” I then took more influence from the monogram project for “Intervention,” which wasn’t distorted in anyway to be made ‘electronic.’ It just kept the original ‘shock factor’ “Intermission” would have had, like “This is so awful, but this guy’s doing something all right.”

Anyway, I’m rambling at this point, so I must digress; basically, at the end of the Days Past project I went back to monogram, and I started thinking about what I could do to it to make it more suited to be called an Above the Graves album. I ultimately scrapped every song on it, though I kept one, later addition, “The Ninth Circle,” which I modified heavily to make “Entrance” on Further Into The Dark. To get a good idea of how Further Into The Dark is going to sound, think of this; take the ambient-electronic flair of “The Labrynth” and multiply it by 1000, and add backwards Panda Bear melodies, Radiohead influences and my lo-fi aesthetic. So while I doubt that anyone actually takes my work seriously or has even bothered to listen to all of it, (which I understand, because I often only take my work seriously when I’m making it, then I look back and think how much I screwed it up.) if anyone has, don’t think of Further Into The Dark as a complete change, because it isn’t. It’s merely a refining of the work I’ve made for the past five months.

I don’t even know what I’m getting at here anymore, but believe you me; Further Into The Dark is going to be challenging, varied, and awesome.

Yesterday I finally found a site where I could stream Born This Way. I’ve always been a Gaga fan to some extent (though far from a “Little Monster”), but Born This Way is for the most part an unfocused mess of an album. The opener “Marry the Night” and “Judas” are the lone standouts, and they really hint at what this album could have been. Instead, the rest of the album ranges from bland (“You and I”) to downright awful (“Government Hooker”, “Americano”).  Gaga is at the point where she’s begun to parody herself. Half of “Sheisse” features Gaga speaking in a monotone German as if she’s mocking herself, and the chorus can’t save it.  The so-called “sledge-hammering” beats can be atrocious at times, and other times everything is just uninspired (half of the album.) Although there are probably 4 good songs here, out of 14 tracks that’s not much of an accomplishment, especially considering that those 4 songs can’t stand up to anything from The Fame or The Fame Monster. Born This Way is basically a parody of The Fame Monster mashed together with Meat Loaf’s operatic ridiculousness (and none of its charm), and after a while it just becomes very tired, even if it sounded good at the beginning of the album. It was incredibly hard to sit through Born This Way‘s long 61 minutes, and as some have suggested, it seems like Gaga must have no one editing her work. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to poorly PhotoShop her head onto a motorbike, slap a shiny font over it and call it an album cover? This, my friends, is the most jokey album cover since Weezer’s Raditude, and it has none of its charm, and the album itself is very similar in that it’s an anti-masterpiece and a parody of the artists’ older work at best.

Still, I applaud Gaga for getting these “be yourself” messages to teens who really need them, and on that note, Born This Way somewhat succeeds. For anyone but the Little Monsters though, this is definitely an album that you should pass up, as it doesn’t resemble the masterwork that it was supposed to be in any way.

Final Verdict: 2 Stars out of 5

Phoenix Island: The Beginning of the game

 So right now I’m working on making a Pokemon game with RPG Maker 2000, Pokemon Jade Version. The graphics are, for the most part, taken directly from the Gameboy Color games, and the Pokemon (all new, and about 30 done so far) are all my own design. I’ve finished the catching aspect of the game, several trainer battles, the first 2 routes, and the starter town (on the left- Canton Town) as well as the first town with a gym (on the right- Comunil Town). The first dungeon of the game is Omek Cave, where you can catch Canonor, Ruffin, and Bolltorb (a senseless Diglett/Voltorb combination with arms.) The storyline so far is this; You’re Dude, a 14-year-old kid from Canton Town who’s getting his first Pokemon. Your rival is Ted (so named because of Ted Theodore Logan!), and the villainous team is Team Nega, who want to genetically combine people and Pokemon. Your mission is to stop them and become a Pokemon master, of course. So far the game is going rather smoothly, although some difficulties have surfaced in translating the well-worn Pokemon formula into the RPG Maker 2000′s system. For example, regular evolution was replaced with entirely stone-based evolution and Incubator egg-hatching at the Pokemon Breeding Center. Poke Balls are now used on the overworld map, and will give you the option to catch the Pokemon you just defeated if you happen to be standing in the right spot. It’s a little awkward, and putting in the moves and type-combinations has been insanely tedious, but so far, it’s going well. The game is almost a parody of real Pokemon games in some ways; “Suck it!” comes up twice, which would be considered too profane for a real Pokemon game, some Pokemon designs are entirely humorous, and the villainous team is intentionally over-the-top and ridiculous. There’s even a creepy hooded old man who offers ferry rides for the player, free of charge! Quite shady if you ask me. It took me a while to get a hang of what I wanted to do with it, and I’ve been putting off a lot of features such as the PC box, a lot of sprites for new Pokemon and a complete moveset. If I ever finish it, I’ll give a comprehensive summary of the game in a future post. Peace out.

• On a map of Unova, you can clearly see the landmass extend to the North and West, like Kanto, but unlike Hoenn and Sinnoh, which are basically islands.
• The player’s hometown, Nuvema Town, isn’t named after a plant (like Pallet Town in Kanto), and unlike New Bark Town, Littleroot Town, and Twinleaf Town.
• Like Kanto, Unova has the fewest water routes of any region. This would also suggest that it isn’t an island, and that there’s more to explore.
• For the first time since Generation I, the Pokemon League is accessible by land, not water. (In Generation II, you had to pass through Tohjo Falls to get to the route that led to the League, which is shared with Kanto. In Generations III and IV, the Pokemon League is on an island accessible with Surf and Waterfall.)
• Events and occurences suggest that Generation V is strongly related to Generation III, which was in turn contemperaneous with the Generation I games (which received remakes in Generation III). This would also suggest that Generation VI will be related to Generations II and IV (which contain Pokemon Gold and Silver and their remakes, respectively, the only games where two regions are accessible).

If Game Freak does make the sixth generation a sequel to the fifth like the second generation was a direct sequel to the first, it will undoubtedly draw criticism for rehashing Gold and Silver, but what Pokemon game doesn’t rehash features from previous ones? Like Red and Blue, Black and White seem to feature less replayability; that is, after about 50 hours there really isn’t anything to do but catch ‘em all. Black and White lack a Safari Zone, Game Corner, and a lot of other features that were staples of the series, which drastically decreases the amount of time I would spend on the game (right now I’ve beaten the league twice, and other than fighting the daily trainers in Nimbasa City and Black City and trying to catch and train new Pokemon, there really isn’t anything to do). This could be improved on with a direct sequel, and I’m confident that if made, it would be the best main series Pokemon game yet. That is all. Chao!

A possible new Pokemon?

Anyhow, I don’t want to spend too much time on this post, so see you later guys. Thanks for the hits, whoever is reading this!

Hatred, bullying, and phobias have become so much of a societal norm that I don’t believe that anything’s going to change because of Challenge Day. In that way, it was totally unnecessary. To know that support is there is necessary though for many people.
That’s all I have to say about Challenge Day because I’m still reeling from that terrible headache. I have several assignments due tomorrow that I haven’t finished, so this is me signing out. (That’s my kitten)

As the title of this post says, I have iTunes shuffle on right now, and this post is going to be about random crap.

What I’m currently digging: “Uncharted” video, Pokemon again (which is giving me nostalgia, happiness, yet a sugary sweet headache all at the same time and I’m not sure what to feel), other stuff, umm, can I stop now? So I got Flying Lotus, Bright Eyes, Kanye, Lecrae, Beach House, Destroyer, Can, Skyclad, and The Antlers on shuffle so far and I’m really bored. Now it’s “A/B Machines” by Sleigh Bells. Anyway, I have no idea why I’m typing this stuff because if you’d just look at my last.fm you could totally see all these plays. As soon as I get my (other) youtube account password and find the USB cord for my camcorder I’m going to make some new videos soon… and I’m psyched for Pokemon Black/White tomorrow but not so much anymore because I’ve read so much about Pokemon in the past few days that I feel like my head is going to explode. Good morning, good evening, and goodnight, and say hi to Charlie Sheen for me kthxbai.

The featured picture here is a black-and-white version of “The Red Tower” by Giorgio de Chirico, 1913. This is one of the earliest examples of surrealist art, and I’ve decided to use it as the album cover for the project I’ve been working on since January 9. You see, in the last few days, for whatever reason I’ve become obsessed with film and art, which is strange, because I’ve always been more of a music buff. I’ve been practically penniless for the last two weeks, so to account for the lack of new music I’ve been absorbing a ridiculous amount of movies and artworks via Netflix and Wikipedia. I came across David Lynch’s Eraserhead and I was instantly captivated by the dark, ambient, industrial atmosphere of the film. It’s hard to even call it a film, though; to most, it will seem like a disturbing, directionless movie made by someone with either a serious form of clinical depression, on acid, or both. (I’m not sure of the grammatical correctness of that sentence.) The meticulous sound design of the film inspired me to continue work on my project, Days Past, after a 24-day break. I made a 60-second ambient piece called “Song for Henry Spencer” inspired by Eraserhead. (http://youtube.com/watch?v=FrOMND4sWr0) I’m really not sure what I’m trying to say here, but in short, it affected me. When a work of art inspires you to emulate it in some way, you know it’s had a powerful effect on you.  

Today, first I went to church, then had a Diet Coke, fries and a cheeseburger at McDonald’s, went home, made “Song for Henry Spencer,” sat around, went to Walmart, watched Night of the Living Dead, and then ate dinner. It may not seem very productive (I could’ve been doing homework, for one), but the point is that Eraserhead and all of these things – even in their disturbing, dark, otherworldly dimensions – made me optimistic and creative today. I haven’t felt this empowered in quite sometime, so hats off to David Lynch and the radical thinkers of the world who worked to please no one and ended up pleasing many in the process. And what a coincidence that I’m listening to Radiohead’s “Optimistic” while I right this. I’ll leave you, the readers, with this striking image from the film.

But seriously. Just listen to it.