I‘ve had the lucky opportunity to having been able to listen to a lot of new music albums over the past year. This was due to two primary reasons: (a) I have to ride 2 hours by train each time I‘m heading for work, which results in lots of free time where I can listen to music. (b) While I‘ve previously owned several iPods, I never really carried them with me all the time. There were often situations where I‘d forgot the iPod or not expected to need it. Not so with my iPhone. I always have it on, thus resulting in a boosted music experience.

As a consequence of this, I could listen to a lot of interesting and new music during the past months. And I‘d like to write short reviews for those which really really impressed me. Beginning with ‚Maxïmo Park‘ – ‚A Certain Trigger‘.

I‘m not your typical guitar rock buff. I like it, if music a pure distorted guitar gives the track a „rough“ feeling, and I do have a lot of favorites which can clearly be considered rocking. However I wouldn‘t select music this way. Instead I‘m rather opt for splendid melodies, interesting changes, valuable lyrics. Music has to surprise me, and most doesn‘t. Most music just implements well-known pop / rock music structures, feels repetetive or downright boring. That‘s why ‚A Certain Trigger‘ was such a welcome exception.

Clearly building upon the shoulders of giants, Maxïmo Park manage to create a finegrained mix of different musical elements while clearly centering around the core value of rough guitars – much like in the early punk days, just enhanced and elaborate.

Instruments alone don‘t make good tracks though, and here‘s where Maxïmo Park really shine: Fantastic multilayered melodies, where sometimes even four varying alternations define the structure of a track, sudden breaks, tempo changes and more. In addition to that, the band employs a marvellous piano which adds an important note to each track as it enhances the melodies in many ways. While this description sounds highly experimental, the end result just somehow isn‘t. Maxïmo Park manage to write fresh and diverse tracks which don‘t sound experimental but as one solid piece of sound history instead. 

I love this album, the tracks are highly emotional, the lyrics tend to be easily adoptable to one‘s own problems. My iTunes says that I listened to it 37 times by now. Those interested in fresh guitar rock should not wait but try this album. It‘s hard to recommend specific tracks as almost all of them are jewels. „Postcard of a painting“, „The Coast is always changing“ and „Apply Some Pressure“ can be considered my favourites though.

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Update Take a look at this nice Leopard DVD Picture

The Keynote was awesome! More on this later.

Bei den Bildern ist es übrigens Bild 15, das einen Teil aus meinem Verantwortungsbereich  zeigt: Der sog. Medienring, 48 Videos die Synchron in einem Ring laufen und so ein gewaltiges Videopanorama bieten. Umrahmt wird das ganze von einer riesigen LED-Wand, ebenfalls von unserer Software gespeist. Der Spiegel schreibt dazu:

Der Ausstellungsraum “Gegenwart” wird umrahmt von 48 Monitoren, auf denen in 16 Ländern Mercedes-Autos fahren. Eine Video-Installation, die 24 Stunden in jeweils zwölf Minuten zusammenschnurren lässt. Während in Shanghai Nacht ist, tuckert ein alter Mercedes durch die grelle Sonne Syriens, inklusive Geräuschkulisse: Tüt-tüt, Brrrrumm. Allein vor diesem Kunstwerk, für das ein Kamerateam ein Dreivierteljahr quer über den Globus unterwegs war, könnte man eine Stunde verbringen.

Und an dieser Stelle, zwischen Brummen und Tüten, tief im Bauch des futuristischen Museums-Kolosses, lässt es sich nicht mehr leugnen: Ein bisschen Mythos steckt tatsächlich in diesen Mauern.

* I’ll stop smoking. This one is important. I’ve actually never been a
real smoker.. I’m more someone who smokes from time to time when at a
party. But I need to adress this issue now before it starts getting
worse. This will be a tough one as I only smoke when I’m drunk, and
when I’m drunk I hardly have the will to refuse a cigarette, but I’ll
try my best.

* I’ve to lose weight. Adiposity has been in a strong battle with me
over the years. And won. My current job leaves little to no time for
sport, and the fact that I’m almost living in a hotel isn’t good for
nutrition either. So I have to force me to eat good healthy food
everytime I can, and do sports everytime schedule allows it. Only a
combined attack with strong will can help me here.

* Spanish. Yes again, I’m still eager to enhance my basic spanish
skillset onto a conversation-friendly level which would allow me to
talk with my argentinian friends without frequently having to dig
through tons of gestures. I bought spanish books recently and reading
them is not that bad, I need to learn some many words, but at least I
can work around the language for now. For the next year I’ll hope to be
able to greatly enhance my vocabulary so I finally can start writing
blog posts in spanish which make sense in the one or other way.

* Dutch. Everything in life has a dual nature, and since I need to
learn dutch due to some requirements I enforced upon myself, I thought
I might very well try to do it next to learning spanish. My brain
should be in the right mode when I’m busy learning spanish, so learning
dutch in addition to it can only make it easier.

* Set goals. This one is important. I, as described above, lack goals.
I have plans, ideas and whatnot, but no goals. I’ve read some
interersting books regarding this topic now (for example David Allen’s
‘Getting Things Done’) but I didn’t adapt that knowledge yet.
With the events and results of what I currently plan for 2006, a first real set of goals should be possible.

* Blog more. Yeah just that.

Ok, that’s it. These are my new years resolutions. If you see me not adhering to them, feel free to allude me.
Thanks for reading.

Have a Happy New Years.
Best wishes for 2006
Benedikt Terhechte

You can download the track here

I’d be happy about some comments, criticism and stuff.