Keeping with the zero-budget theme, here’s the music video to ‘Images Of Bliss’, from ‘Battletech’ - which is now available on iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, etc as well as on radioovermoscow.com.

Let me know what you think…

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

Radio Over Moscow - ‘Anti-Human Nous’. First single from the upcoming album ‘Battletech 1′, out later in the year. The video’s a no-budget fuckaround, as you’ll see, but was something to do, nonetheless.

You can download the song (and others, in proper quality) from: http://radioovermoscow.com

I promise the next one won’t look as if it was shat out the back of an Atari in half an hour.

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

…perhaps the funniest two and a half minutes ever broadcast on TV. Enjoy!

Mirrored from Radio Over Moscow.

My second go at using MIDI instruments outside of Songsmith. Bon Jovi - Dead or Alive.

Anything Metallica = massive hits on Youtube. So let's see how this goes.

Too much fun. I'm getting shiatloads of views on Youtube too - there are others I've made (some with videos, some without due to copyright/syncing problems) here.

Queen - We Will Rock You, salsa style.



Muse - Supermassive Black Hole, big band style.



Metallica - Ride the Lightning, electro style (couldn't do a video for this one, as I had to mess around with the vocals just to get them in time with the music. Songsmith gave up composing halfway through and just stayed on D and G for three minutes, so I had to quite a bit of post editing on it too).

I call it 'The Ballad of El Scorcho'. I had to slightly speed up and slow parts of the backing track to keep it in time - I couldn't touch the vocals (apart from the frantic middle section that just didn't fit) or they'd go out with the video. I think I've done it pretty seamlessly though!

This next one was my first attempt. Enjoy...or something,
And one last one - Muse. I've had a very productive day!

If you only click one random link this year, make it this one. Then go to Youtube and find more. I'm in tears. This is a new era in music.

I'm on my fourth day of being sick, but I went into work yesterday anyway to look after our internet coverage of Obama kicking John McCain's ass. Was pretty sweet, then my illness kicked in again and I spent the night coughing, which wasn't so great.

I've been surfing through YouTube watching clips of plagiarised/similar sounding song comparisons, and came across this hilarious piece: The Pachelbel Rant. It looks like it might have been around a while, but is pretty damn funny - especially once I listened to the classical piece he's singing about, and realised I've written a song or two based around that melody myself without even realising it. Freaky.

But not as freaky as seeing will.i.am becoming one with the Force on CNN. WTF?

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE LAST FORTNIGHT!

1. Ryan Adams - Cardinology
2. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
3. Kings of Leon - Only By The Night
4. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
5. Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul
6. Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Their Heads
7. Scars on Broadway - Scars on Broadway
8. The Stills - Oceans Will Rise
9. Portishead - Third
10. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

As hard as I try, I could never write something as awesome as this commercial.



Nor this song by Suede - I think this clip has to rate in the all-time live things I've come across on YouTube ever.


Yep. I'd love to have that gig on DVD, if it exists. What the hell happened (apart from the cocaine, heroin and crack) to his voice in the past ten years? Because as much as people talk and write about the epicness of old-school Floyd and Zep live material, this is up there.

I felt the baby kick tonight for the first time. Bebe's been kicking for ages now, but always refused when I placed my hand on Tariqa's belly. But tonight, I managed to get one! Wooo. I no longer believe this is some kind of elaborate pizza-based hoax.

We're going to Armageddon tomorrow, Tariqa has a free day pass. I don't really know what to expect, even after watching The 40 Year Old Virgin tonight.

EDIT: I've put the correct video for Suede on now. No, they never sang about mini malls - though at least 25% of their songs referenced carparks, I'm sure.

John Cleese has demoted Michael Palin to #2 on his list of funniest Palins. No prizes for guessing who's now #1.

I just found out this guy from A Clockwork Orange is Darth Vader. The guy inside the voice, not the voice, of course.

Maybe it's my dad genes kicking in, but this is pretty funny. 

And now that I've just spent an hour and a half or so translating what I think of the new Oasis and Keane albums into 240 words or so for a review, I have to say almost the whole time, I've been listening to fucking Be Here Now, and I'm still not even half way through it; and it rocks. Yes, I've fully ingested Perfect Symmetry and Dig Out Your Soul, but Be Here Now is a part of my adolescent musical education I can't deny. Yeah, it's loud as hell, which in some ways places it 10 years ahead of its time, but there's so much random shit going on, and the 'modern' loudness is being applied to a '90s cocaine-fuelled mix, and yeah.

I should re-do my 128k mp4s into 192 though. When I got my first iPod,  it was hard to imagine that within four years my monthly data allowance would be as large as my hard drive ( at the time).

My landlord was supposed to be doing a flat inspection today, but never showed. And I'd totally taken down all the posters and removed the Star Wars displays and vacuumed. And shit.

I can't wait to introduce new Dan (not his actual name) to Sesame St. And I can't believe 'Chickens in the Trees' is EXACTLY how I remember it. Normally these things become more awesome over time, and turn out to be lame in reality, but not this clip. It's as awesome as it was the day it aired.

The idiot who almost blinded me at the KittyHawk gig earlier this year gave in and pleaded guilty, but to a lesser charge of common assault, as opposed to with a weapon. The cops didn't tell me this, so I was standing around the Auckland District Court twiddling my thumbs for an hour nearly before I got someone to look into it for me.

But it doesn't sound like he'll get diversion - maybe - but it'll probably be attend an anger management course and get convicted without a sentence.

Now here's a video of Noel Gallagher getting attacked on stage last night, from behind, and Liam getting in a punch before security dragged him away. I bet you this guy won't be getting off lightly (happens around the 1.30 mark).

First off, in order to win the war on pollution its waging before the Olympics, Beijing has declared war on the sky. Yes, in order to clear the thick smog that blankets the city, they are going to make it rain by firing chemically-coated artillery shells into the clouds. This ticks so many 'evil genius/axis of evil' boxes - chemical weapons, weather control, misguided science to name but a few.

Viceland.com sent me a message asking if they could link to and do an entry on Ice McGunface, and I told them no. Firstly, Vice, the magazine sucks. I hate Vice. Secondly, I'd imagine their website to be only worse, and there's no telling what crap people might post. Besides, since when did blogs ask people for permission to link to stuff?

Last weekend we had the Star Wars ultramarathon - it's kind of shameful it's taken this long for me write about it! Rob, Jennah and Simon came over during the early parts of The Phantom Menace, which showed commitment, and yeah. Even Tariqa passed on heading out into what was the coldest day of the year and made it to the end! We passed on watching Family Guy's Blue Harvest immediately afterward though, haha.

My sleeping has gotten better, I think the virus I had at the time must've been a lot harsher than I thought - I didn't even know I had one till the doctor said, and now it's gone I'm not so tired yet awake. I'm getting by on six or seven hours a night, which isn't bad.

I had so much I was going to write about, and now I can't remember any of it. If my phone had a camera I could show you the smashed up bus stop on the way to work which used to have a life-size portrait of Ali Williams on it, and now doesn't, but it doesn't have a camera.

Tariqa's written about the neighbours' big fight with the smashed windows and all that last week, but she made it friends only so I suppose I'll have to say something! They were having a domestic long after I'd meant to have gone to sleep. I heard some pretty heavy banging, so called the police - then while I'm on the phone to the operator, there are three loud smashes, none of which sound like bottles.

Come to think of it, sounds of smashing bottles might've signalled even worse trouble to come!

But anyway, I fell asleep once they quietened down (except the baby, which cried long and hard), which must've been when the cops arrived. Today the windows were suddenly all fixed, large boxes on the lawn their kids ended up playing in (before relocating to our lawn, hence my previous post!). I doubt they called the landlord - I was considering doing that myself to be honest, but never got to it. It seems loud guy (who I'm sure I've complained about before) has moved out now though, so maybe things will be fine from here on in.

Damn, it seems Ice McGunface has raped the battery on this laptop. I've been here half of Viva La Vida and it's already down to 50%.

I'm sure I'll remember everything I was going to write about once the battery hits 5% and the computer shuts itself down...

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

It it really a rick-roll if I tell you what you're in for?

The Herald hasn't given up on its retard stock photo story, but at least the vast majority of their readers, who can't usually be trusted for good judgment, have told them just how stupid they're acting. As probably the day's biggest politics story, somehow, we had to cover it but at least I tried to be a bit more neutral in my headline.

Yeah, our new site looks pretty, doesn't it? There were a few teething problems, completely normal I suppose but then again, not every website has to deal with a John Campbell on-air-plug sending thousands to it all at once!

Check this out. It's pretty much the coolest, oddest but most creative remix, ever.


Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

Takes a while to get started, but pretty awesome.

I installed a cleaning/housework regime on the weekend, but have been terrible in sticking to it myself this week... must... do... dishes...

I saw a comment on the NZ Herald's website that said something along the lines of, "we all get drug tested when we start a new job and regularly while on the job and if we fail we lose our jobs, so why don't people on the benefit/dole have to undergo drug tests?"

Firstly, I've never been drug tested at any workplace of mine, and I don't think I know anyone else who has either, so that's the first part of that argument shot down. Secondly, people on the dole generally aren't required to be doing anything all that important, so if their judgement is impaired, more often than not it's not going to matter as much as if say, an air traffic controller or a forklift driver was out of his mind. Thirdly, what are you going to do if someone unemployed fails a drug test? Let them resort to crime in order to stay alive, lock them up and cost the taxpayer four or five times more than what it would to leave them on the dole? Think, people, think. Fourthly, maybe some people on the dole drink and do drugs BECAUSE they're on the dole, not the other way around as is often assumed. It can be pretty boring and depressing for many, not being able to find work.

Grrr.

Next thing: we get a lot of emails from high school students complaining about schools enforcing dress codes strictly - a few a day, minimum, from all across the country. All of them read as if they're written by 13-year-olds, at the oldest, but anyway, none of them describe anything my school didn't pull on us back in the mid-90s... yet we never thought of asking the news media to investigate! Then again, it was so much harder to write a letter back then... in my day...

Next next thing: the new Weezer video is awesome, perhaps the nerdiest three minutes in music history.

Next next next thing: perhaps the last Kittyhawk practise for me is tonight, for our last gig (I think) this weekend.

Writing the Hits with Stupid from Ryan Adams on Vimeo.