Ever had the feeling you’re witnessing the start of something huge? Cause for the last few months, that’s what I’ve been feeling, and it’s filled me up with hope and enthusiasm for a scene which I considered dead, and strengthened my resolve to do my own thing. (once I get over how good they are)

I’ve been meaning to write about Lights Out, a young band from Cluj-Napoca for some time now, but I’m glad I waited until after they officially released their first EP on Saturday, April 7th, cause that concert confirmed everything I’ve come to believe about them and then set even greater expectations, and is so far the best concert I’ve seen this year.

When they started out, they were singing pretty generic indie but which was (surprinsingly!) in tone with what was happening on other, bigger scenes, with covers from Florence and the Machine (Teo, the lead singer’s voice will remind you of Florence when you first hear her, and may well be in the same league as her) and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but even then they had something that set them apart from most other bands in the local scene (I think it’s spelled talent). Since then, they’ve quickly explored other venues and now they have a sound which is modern and kinda timeless at the same time.

The EP, called Patience, is a tightrope walk between youthful exuberance and mature contemplation, and passing over the not-perfect (but not bad) production, it is a very very solid first record.

Braille contains their best lyrics to date:

And when the lights go blind,
Would you be my braille?

and is the perfect mood setter for an uneasy album; Origin has an awesome synth intro and 80s U2 guitars that would make The Edge proud; Syllabus is the catchiest, pop-iest, teenage-rebellion-est of them all, with a hooliganic and adorable at the same time chorus. IMHO, it should have been the lead single. EOD is the weakest of the bunch, but still catchy and danceable, Mirror is their darkest track so far, ending with a chaotic spiral out of control, in contrast with what came before or what comes after; Paws is a fitting end, not really shining on its own, but a pretty good synthesis of what they’re about.

Constant all throughout the album are the hard to decipher (both phonetically and symbolically), but oh so beautiful lyrics, great vocals(!!), intricate guitar work and rhythms which know when to complement and when to take charge.

The show on Saturday was pretty special; everything was set as it should be: impressive stage lights, well thought out decor, with prints of their most memorable lyrics on backdrops of cosmic beauty (which I wanted to buy at the end of the show, but was denied ), black light, perfect sound. With all this, the band managed to make the EP sound better, sang some new songs which I believe might be better than what’s on Patience (especially liked Unframed), and managed the impossible: they covered Pink Floyd (Set the controls for the Heart of the Sun) and made it sound as good as the original, while adding their own flavour. They also covered Radiohead (Reckoner), and it sounded awesome as well, but had it not been for a friend, I wouldn’t have known it was a cover.

Also, a huge shoutout to Dan Vamanu, their Brian Epstein, and to Quantum Drive, the opening band, who covered BRMC (Awake) and reminded me of Solar Powered People and Tame Impala, and even though they were at their first concert, with a backup tambourine and keyboard player (who seemed to me was doing an impression of Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Joel Gion, not that that’s a bad thing) pretty much rocked it.

Lights Out are:

• Teo Retegan – voice/keyboards;
• Andrei Bobis – bass/guitar;
• Andrei Sancraian – bass/guitar (they switch);
• Oana Pop – drums;

The stamp-ticket on my hand is finally fading away, but I really wish it didn’t.

Lights Out, keep awesoming.

Maybe that person doesn’t like living it’s life in public, or maybe it has other mediums of online expression or maybe it just doesn’t give a shit about all that crap. Maybe they don’t get a thrill from sharing what they’ve read, saw or listened to to semi-strangers on the webz. And that’s totally fine. Quite possibly for the better.

But somewhere in the back of my head, the equality between an interesting profile and an interesting person took hold. Is it just me? I can’t be the only one thinking like that. Since when has sharing become the social norm? Is this a trend?

Fuck.

Something Fierce

I’m thinking post-punk, or maybe riot grrrl.

UPDATE – there’s already two bands called like this

The Double Entendres

On September 22nd, Facebook announced Timeline, which is the closest thing to the idea below which actually has an implementation. It’s kind of close to what I envisioned, in a way, even if less ambitious, but it may be just the beginning of what they’re doing. Anyway, made me wonder.

Writing this down before I forget all about it.

This is the kind of idea that can define a life. With it, the crippling fear of work, a bad implementation, wasting my life.

When the time is right, the whole world will see it. Until then, just jolt it down.

The idea came to me while watching my last.fm profile, specifically, the “most listened track” per month part of my profile. That section brings back a lot of memories. Looking at the most listened track for a month can make me remember what I was mostly listening to, in general, what was the general mood, a specific moment when I was listening to the track, etc.

Starting from this, one can become lost in reverie pretty soon. But this is just a data-point, even in relation to what my last.fm profile holds. But then, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to all the data my online profiles have on me.

Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Chat archives. These are just some of the other data sources which might contribute to my memory lane. But that’s just me – Flickr, Foursquare, Goodreads, Shelfari, Amazon, whatever-the-last.fm-for-movies-equivalent-is (Mubi?), blogs, from all these data points one could almost recreate what happened to a person in a certain period.

But gathering all the data in one place, this is just the first step. A very important one at that, as even just getting these data points together can be a good place for a user to recreate his memories, if it’s presented in a memory-juggling way. But what I want to create is a step over that. I want to create a system that will not just gather all this data, but, uhm, understand is probably a word which would make me look like a mad-scientist/singularity-nut. So, not understand what happened, bu at any rate, create certain correlations. Some photos posted to Flickr have meta-data which say that they were taken in another city than the “Current City” listed on FB or Google+? twitter update locations confirm a location chage? Someone’s been on a trip!

In the end, the system would accumulate enough data on the user to create his narrative. Feed it enough writing samples, and that narrative is written in the user’s own style and words. Re-creating the user’s memories, with the user’s voice, from his online data in all the siloes he has data in.

Ana, bless her heart, said I’m trying to do what Caden tried to do in Synecdoche New York, in a digital medium. I hadn’t thought about it, but she is, if I think about it, annoyingly obviously right.

This is not a business idea. I could/would never monetize this, were it to be built. But this is the kind of idea one can dedicate his life to, and that’s fucking scary. The sheer amount of things I’d have to learn in order to create something of this magnitude scares THE SHIT out of me.

The ultimate mash-up awaits.

Don’t want to smother you
Just want you to be the mother of my children

So, yeah, I was on the can today when my phone rang. Sitting there, listening to my ringtone in the distance (which is the chorus of the song above) the same thing happened which always happens when I hear it repeatedly:  as soon as I can, I listen to the entire album.

Fuck. It’s 7 years old, I’ve listened to it hundreds of times (literally, all songs have at least 80 plays on last.fm and that doesn’t count the plays on my old, trusty, now defunct CD-Player God, I loved that player. RIP) and it still AMAZES me. I got bored of it at one point, because, y’know, hundreds of listens, but it’s all good again.

Honest to god, for all I’ve listened to it, I don’t know what to say, so I’m just gonna enumerate semi-random things about it:

Radio-worthy singles (Lazarus, a gateway song with, uhm, nonsensical lyrics, probably tied to the script the album was based on), müsli-like crunchy riffs, 12 minute epics, mellotrons, MIKAEL FUCKING AKERFELDT (barely audible, but that makes it even cooler), a song about the oh-so-dreaded friend-zone (Start of Something Beautiful), groovy bass lines (Halo), lyrics which along these 7 years have repeatedly made me say “Oh, now I know what this is about/how this feels” and again and again redefining what they mean and how they feel.

Wilson really knew also how to order the songs. I’d never thought before about this aspect, but yeah, the album just flows the right way (except in the southern hemisphere).

It’s also a lesson for music producers. Everything is exactly as it should be, sound wise. I would’ve done things differently, but only because I suck, compared to Wilson.

This is my favourite album of all time, period. I’m not saying it’s the best album ever or that it will never change, but it’s undoubtedly the album which has had the biggest influence on my music taste and future development (okay, except maybe Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here or DSoTM) and on my first album*.

Excuse me if this sounds all so fanboi-ish. But if I’m anyone’s fanboi, that someone is Steven Wilson. And maybe Beck.

* coming Q4 2012. Probably.

PS – the album contains on a bonus CD a track called Mother and Child Divided, but which I like to call “The Car Chase Song”. Aka, if I’d ever be the music consultant for an action movie, I’d put this song in the car chase scene. Pew pew.