Repurpose is a great doucmentary about hardware hacking and hackerspaces. The video focuses on the Montreal hardware hacking community, and Foulab in particular.

Well, back once again from a long, long break from reviews. Sorry for the wait.

This week we have a very under-rated artist by the name of Boom Bip.

Artist: Boom Bip
Album: Seed to Sun
Release Date: 17 September 2002
Label: Warp/Lex Records
Tracks: 13

A little background on Boom Bip. Bryan Hollon was originally from Ohio, but moved to L.A. to start his career as a DJ, in a few months after this Hollon began to collaborate his efforts with a few local Djs to create an EP called the “The Low End Sequence EP”. Since then Boom bip has gone to record three (four?) studio albums, one of them being with cLOUDDEAD’s Doseone. Seed to Sun is Boom Bips second studio album, and transcends several genres while still keeping a common theme of Hip-hop-esque beats and electronic synths.

[audio:http://blog.explodingwumpus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/03-closed-shoulders.mp3]
Boom Bip – Closed Shoulders

Hollon starts the album off with a guitar riff that sounds like it was taken from the B-sides of Thom Yorke’s Eraser album, then slowly turns into a joyous melodic pulsating experience that sets the mood for the the album. The rest of the thirteen tracks changes between creepy with “The Unthinkable” and calming, yet inspiring i.e., “Pulse All Over”. Its downfall is its melodies in some songs… Let me explain, Autechre gets away with having no melody because that’s the type of music they write, math electronica shit… Boom Bip on the other hand writes Hip-hop straight forward electronica, so they having a very repetitive bass line with little or no melody can make the songs boring, and seem to drag on forever. This is a shame because most of the times this only happens at the beginning of the song and the ending is usually a stroke of sheer genius.

Now, let’s talk about the mood of this album, well… the first half is incredibly happy, inspiring, hopeful and fun… while the last half, everything after “Pulse All Over”, is quiet, foreboding and well kind of a downer. This is one of those albums that when you listen in whole contrasts itself and leaves you feeling empty. It makes you think, which is the best quality of any music. So, once again like EVERY ALBUM EVER, this one deserves to be listened to front to back.

[audio:http://blog.explodingwumpus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/11-me_-the-new-you.mp3]
Boom Bip – Me: The New You

Boom Bip is one of those artists that are extremely under-rated. You won’t find any of his albums in any record store and if you try and torrent this shit? Good luck, it’s not there either, try iTunes? Anyway, Hollon once released an album called Corymb and it’s a remix album of Seed to Sun, featuring remixes by; Four tet, Boards of Canada, cLOUDDEAD, Venetian Snares, and Lila Puna, all artists I know and respect. So from that I can tell that the Electronica community doesn’t neglect Boom Bip, it might be just that Lex records doesn’t distribute their music very well? Who knows? But I do know that this album is hard to find, and in all honesty should be one of the best electronica albums of the decade.

Here’s Hailing to Seed to Sun
Spittal

According to Fudzilla, Xbox reaction to the new economic state might be recalling xbox 360 elite’s from market and only sell it in limited edition packages such as Resident Evil 5 themed special edition of the console, since the ps3 prices are to be cut and will most likely fall below those of xbox, which hardware configuration is considered to be “weaker”.  Elite appears to be the slowest sold model and the majority of people who wants it, ask specifically for it. Therefore Microsoft is deciding that fewer retailers, if any, should have the model.

Those limited editions though are rumored to have a bigger hard drives and possibly few stat increases.

According to the sources, the rumor will be investigated further, as at the moment there are no definite details. But then again, other things like pegging the announcement of DirectX 11 and cutbacks were said by Microsoft to be “exaggerated”.

  I suppose we shall see.      

left 4 dead DLC “the survival pack” has a new “survival” mode and a new map “lighthouse” that will supposedly be the most difficult map in l4d (as if things weren’t hard enough).

apparently the average survival time for this map is 4~5 minutes for average gamers. I can already smell rage quits from here.

and here are some vids

and well this one is just funny and reminds me of my close friend of mine *cough* fenix *cough*

“Watchmen is truly amazing. A comic to movie translation that doesn’t suck.”
-Moyer

“No movie will ever be the same again. Every movie in comparison will suck.”
-Fenix

“Shut the fuck up Fenix”
-Mr Asian

“This movie has enlightened me more than any religious text or church could ever enlighten me. This movie is so good that it has driven to the point of insanity. I hugged a gay-metal head as a result”
-Christopholo

“Me no speak English, but me likey. But really, it was good. I crave some minute maid after it.”
-Mr.Asian

“Watchmen created such a sensation of emotion within me, that I shed, tears of both happiness and sorrow. So much was wrong, yet all of it was so right. As a movie, amazing, As a translation from a graphic novel to a film, it was still pretty decent. Worth the watch”
-BadGuy

“Well the rest of the rest of the Wumpus may be fawning over Watchmen like horny school girls, i was no where near as impressed as the rest of them. As a transition from Graphic Novel to Movie this was extremely well down. It was extremely faithful to the original and it’s up there with V for Vendetta and Sin City as my favorite Graphic Novel to Movie translations. But as a movie, it wasn’t that good at all. It is plagued by a lot of large issues that i can’t just ignore because i love the original Graphic Novel(which yes, i have read, more then once). I believe the problem has a lot to do with the fact that my hopes for this movie were way too high. All of the trailers for this movie were so well done and perfectly cut. Then the opening introduction in the movie was absolutely perfect. After that, everything just tumbled down a very steep hill. So i guess i should point out what is probably the largest issue in this film: The Music. This really surprised me because the music in the trailers was amazing. Flawless. It made me drool. And then in the movie they are playing Nena’s 99 Luftballons, which really didn’t fit at all. Some of the acting wasn’t very good, such as both the first and second Silk Spectre (Played by Malin Akerman and Carla Gugino). Also, Doctor Manhattan’s (aka Billy Crudup’s) voice just didn’t fit at all. Yes, he did get the lack of attachment and caring in their, but his voice was so high that it reminded me of Luke in A New Hope. Just a lot less whiny. I’m going to end this with some of the things that i absolutely loved in this film. A bunch of the actors were cast absolutely perfectly, specifically Rorschach(Jackie Earle Haley), Nite Owl II(Patrick Wilson), Ozymandias(Matthew Goode) and The Comedian(Jeffrey Dean Morgan). The gratuitous amounts of violence where also done extremely well, and may have been too gory for some, but i found it to be perfect. I know that i will probably take a lot of shit for this view, but so be it. I would definitely recommend seeing Watchmen, but only after you have read the Graphic Novel.”
-Nowned

“To begin, I was late to post. Sorry, I suppose. Basically though, the other Wumpus should know that before I could could post I had to fix the post, you cocked up all the spacing, some views didn’t have quotation marks at the end. Goddammit you guys didn’t even label each response the same! And it was a mess! Matt, did you write this in code? Maybe that’s more professional but the sentences lined up as well as Pachinko balls… doing, well, anything.

Now, for my actual opinion. This movie was great! To quote Fenix up there, “The book ruined the movie.”. The only bad parts of this movie were when you noticed that it deviated from the tome of infinite awesome, Watchmen. If I was to watch this movie as a virgin to the story, it would easily have become my favourite movie ever. Ever. Now, don’t get me wrong I actually really like the book a lot more, It’s just that the movie is not so much an adaptation, it was a separate experience that was similar in the emotions and ideals it expressed. I expected Silk Specter 2 to be an AWFUL actress, but it turns out she did perfectly fine, elicited the same feelings of disgust for that wretched whore, the movie did, as the book before it. Ozymandias is my only problem with the movie, his actor did not look the part at all, his costume was too dark and not nearly the golden representation of goodness it was suppose to be. I think the actor really stuck his dick in the mashed-potatoes with this one. He acted sinister the whole time, like a total cock head to be precise. Ozy from the book was supposed to be the nicest-fucking-man in the world. And you NEVER suspect that he does a “bad thing” at the end. But this actor played his character so sinister and evil (the costume change actually enhanced this crap) that when he did a bad thing, it was not surprising at all. Sometimes I feel bad for the Watchmen virgins who won’t get quite the same surprise as the rest of us did when this “shit went down”.

Lastly, the new ending. I didn’t mind it. Everything cut out of the movie to make time was stitched back together just perfectly. I understand the need and reasoning for the new ending. And I enjoyed it. I just want all the Watchmen virgins to know: That is not how it happened, the story may have come to the same outcome in the very end, but that was NOT how it HAPPENED.

All in all, 8/10, very very good. Go watch the Watchmen.”
-Mr. Wumpus

“Yeah, I saw Watchmen opening night, I’m not a huge comic book fan (I’m gonna get killed for not calling it a Graphic Novel) but I have known about Watchmen for a long time, going into it I knew how it was probably one of the best pieces of literature of our century. And that’s fucking cool, so the bar is set high.

Right, the movie. I really liked it, a lot actually. I don’t see movies all that much cause I think that all original ideas ate shit about ten years ago and that all movies are taking after the whole “Grey’s Anatomy” tactics for evoking emotion. It’s nice to see that there are at least some original movies out there even though Alan Moore the writer of the Watchmen rather shoot himself than watch his Watchmen (Which I guess is ironic, and no it’s not a fucking super-hero movie in the traditional sense of the word, so yeah it’s still original).  The emotion in this movie was outstanding, I can’t remember the last time I had sweat running down my back due to… some… thing… It was when Rorschach was remembering his past… that scene was brilliant. As for Doctor Manhattan yeah, maybe he could’ve been cast better but before the accident he looked like Bill Nye the science guy, so all you guys can all fuck right off because that fact trumps everything bad you could possibly say about that actor.

Okay, I will agree with what was said before about Ozy, he totally was wwaayyy too sinister for his role, it was like a scooby-doo ending where you totally knew who the bad guy was right from the beginning.

Lastly, Nightowl II = Andrew Noakes.

Brilliant Movie, in my top three (as of right now)”

-Spittal

A few days ago at work we were talking about the best albums of 2008… The year we all sat on the edges of our seats hoping Boards of Canada would stop tweaking that one high hat sound for three years, the year that Beck finally made up for that awful album he shoved before, and of course the year that Radiohead made their epic comeback (well that was ’07 close enough).

2008 was a rather dull year for my taste in music so let’s see how far down this list I go before getting bored and trying once again to get wordpress to not be a dick.

1. Autechre – Quaristice… So don’t think too much about this one, but it’s my most listened to album of ’08 for sure, even if it fucks you up hard-core.

2. Radiohead – In Rainbows… So the “Official Release” was in ’07 but the physical one was in ’08 so there you go.

3. Chad VanGaalen – Soft Airplane… This one takes number three for being one, Calgarian and two, because it’s a bloody good album.

4. Koushik – Out My Window… A fun mix of hip-hop styled beats and cheesy samples.

5. Four Tet – Ringer EP… Yes, it’s dancey, and I hated it at first… but after a few listens you can tell… it’s still fucking Four Tet and it’s great.

6. Born Ruffians – Red, Yellow & Blue… This is one of those albums that are so unique and indy (I hate that word) at the same time. Its shameful lyrics and “this is kinda a joke” style makes this album numba five.

7. Beck – Modern Guilt… Dirty Electronic Beck… ’nuff said.

8. Of Montreal – Skeletal Lamping… I dunno, it’s Of Montreal, and it’s great… number seven.

9. Islands – Arms Way… This album is nothing compared to the wonders of their older album but flanked by some awful tracks are brilliant tracks including The Arm, and Creeper. (Apparently it blows your mind live).

10. Deerhoof – Offend Maggie… This is an album that I only started to listen to but it’s phenomenal, everyone keeps on talking my ear off about Deerhoof, glad I actually took the time to listen to it… AND it’s an ’08 release.

God, What a pathetic lookin’ list… Well that’s ’08 for you I almost had 11… But I figured that The Notwist deserved another listen or two before I gave it a number… stupid numbers…

Well, if I missed anything that you liked feel free to comment, I’m always interested to see what people are listenin’ too these days.