Category Archives: Music

Blistering Blues

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The past mornings have been extra bright. This shot was taken at 8 am, when it wasn’t too hot yet, but everybody in the bus stop was facing away from it.


White and silver cars literally glow.


This shot was taken at night. Screw my camera’s night mode; ISO 400 and +2 exposure values, pointed out the highway got this shot. No, my Canon Powershot A400 does not support manual shutter speeds, so it’s a wonder I got this shot.


I took a walk to Midvalley from the Bangsar PUTRA LRT station.


Looking over the highway, I saw this; do Malaysians have an equivalent of Smokey Bear? What would Sang Kancil say?


Along the same stretch I took this picture. Now that’s what I call a passionate fisherman! He’s not doing it for the fish.


The Guitar Collection opens at Midvalley, near the cinemaplex.


While waiting for Frus to join me at The Loft, Zouk for our fix of Twilight Action Girl, I went to Berjaya Times Square Hotel’s lounge on the 14th floor and saw this man tuning his guitar. Could it be…


Hendrix lives!!! I saw Md. Nor Hendrix in an issue of ROTTW which said he played in Berjaya Hotel. Sadly, he played Eric Clapton and Gary Moore’s Still Got The Blues, songs you would hear on the radio. I summoned the courage to go up to him and ask, “hey Joe, could you play some Hendrix?”

He fiddled around with his laptop (I suspect the drum machine was there or at the keyboards). Frus and I cheered as he said, “and now, for a blues number, on special request…”

“There’s a red house over yonder, that’s where my baby stays.”

He was feeling it, all much much more than when he was playing Eric Clapton’s licks or the famous, searing Gary Moore A-minor solo. Before this, he was a weathered lounge performer. Now, his face scrunched up, the same way Jimi did.

“Now if my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will.”

He then played Hey Joe, sadly interrupted by annoying waiter. I missed the solo and the chance to take a picture of him playing with his teeth at the end of the song! He also made like a double-locking bridge and abused his whammy bar to no end.


He came over and shook our hands. We went into guitar geek mode and he let us touch his Fender Stratocaster 1969! It was very, very different from a modern day Strat. For one, he put 5 springs in the back, and his frets were low and action looked high but it felt smooth and easy!


Heck, even the nut looked tiny. The back plate on the neck joint was V-shield-shaped instead of the regular rectangles we see. The pickups had cracks on them, but they were not changed.


The coolest thing about the neck was how thin it was. This picture does not show the scale; its super narrow neck looked like an Angus Young Gibson SG! And yet, it felt different at different points of the neck; it wasn’t flat, and it was chunky and yet felt small. No wonder Jimi loved thumbing basslines. It felt more like a C shape than a D shape to me.


Someday, I shall bring Syefri and Alda here. Sure they’re both bassists but hey Syefri has an afro (plus he’s the guy who lent me a Hendrix CD…) Yes, Md. Nor even looks like Jimi. If you can’t squint, the text says it’s every night except Monday, 8:30 pm to 12:45 am (ending at 1:45 am on Public Holidays.) No wonder he was bored. Imagine playing the same tunes day in day out! (He doesn’t play Hendrix unless requested.) I figured I did both of us a favor; for me, I could relive rock moments when I wasn’t born yet, and for him, he could go wild on the guitar!

Frus and I left for Zouk, using the monorail. While queueing up there was this group of lost ticket-buyers. The cashier was flustered, and I tried to explain that they can buy and enter on any side, and then use the bridge to cross over to the other side.

Frus and I then crossed over, thinking that was the way to Bukit Nanas monorail; alas, it was not! So we came over and told the lost ticket-buyers that we’ll be joining them on the train. They were from Bangladesh and were heading back to Corus Hotel (which was opposite Ampang Park.) They looked formal, like they were here for a business trip. They also looked very naive. Frus said one of them looked very n00bish, LOL.

We got off and I pointed leftwards in the direction of Dang Wangi PUTRA LRT, where they could take the LRT to Ampang Park. They could also take a cab rightwards to KLCC. Thank you and goodbyes were exchanged. They decided to walk. Eeep. This, at 11 pm. Of course, we were heading in the same direction, so it was awkward. On the way to Zouk, we passed a construction site, when a disturbing thought came:

What if they were here to find a desk job, only to be set up and eventually coerced into becoming construction workers?

They looked built enough for menial labor. Imagine, the evil employers could set them up to go between a hotel and a public place like Bintang Walk, knowing that on the way there would be construction sites. Imagine if they were lost, and they saw a Evil Recruiting Agent who was a fellow Bangladeshi:

Lost Bangladeshis: Hey how do we get to Hotel Corus?
Evil Recruiting Agent: Oh now it is not safe and the train will be out of service. I’m going there tomorrow, you can come in my van. In the meantime you can come chill with us and stay the night.
(Fast forward to morning…)
Evil Recruiting Agent: Hey my van is busted. Could you help me roll this trolley of bricks over there? And see that cement over there? Could you help me build this wall? I gotta send my van for repairs.
Lost Bangladeshis: Ah no problem mate, we’re strong. Besides, you let us stay the night.

I felt bad for letting them walk, instead of taking them to Corus Hotel. Their families would never hear of them again!

On the way to Zouk we saw this Chinese-indie-scene dude carrying two guitars both smashed at the neck joint! He was carrying two Strat-shape guitar bodies and two guitar necks. What the heck had just happened?

We reached Zouk to see loads of people standing outside. The Loft was very empty, strangely. Even the friends we were supposed to meet weren’t there. And so, we walked the wrong way down Jalan Sultan Ismail! Must’ve gotten the blurness from the lost Bangladeshis.


We finally met up with the friends who were stuck in Bar Savanh, Asian Heritage Row. At least I saw my dream white Mazda RX-8; same color as my Transformer Alternator, Meister. I also saw dark blue and black RX-8s. For once my attention was drawn away from the hot chicks. :O


Guess what this is.


The next day Fazri and I were in Avenue K, and we took interesting shots with our cameras, like the picture above. Here, Fazri was sitting. You’d sit too, if you were on an escalator that spanned 3 floors.

Paragraphs Went

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Went to catch Twilight Action Girl again on a Friday night, this time featuring the deejay I knew. Too bad I didn’t bring my bag and thus lost my chance at making them rockers hear the seminal rock band, Spinal Tap. Made like a moshpit with Justin Guber. I preferred this week’s more American selections, what with them ending with Rage Against The Machine – Sleep Now In The Fire! (Or rather we left after that.)

Went home to find this:

Went in and jakuned. Joy! The days of adjusting the indoor RF cable’s connection to the surge protector are gone. Yay to clear NTV7 and 8tv! And yay to free ASTRO!

Went online, and found this gem. If you’ve got Winamp5, you will appreciate this plugin. Yes, it updates MSN Messenger 7.0 as well! (It’s not a beta version anymore!) Click on my MSN to see what’s playing on Winamp. Before this, only Windows Media Player could update MSN Messenger; I prefer Winamp though, for its Global Hotkeys (which means pressing Ctrl-Shift-Home pauses the song among other shortcuts.) Yep, I don’t need to Alt-Tab to Winamp anymore!

Went to change my links in my About Me! page to add Reta (who uh, has linked me as the Xfresh dude.)

April Updates

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Thousand and two apologies for the lack of updates; things happen, like:


Albert rediscovers the Dvorak layout.

I did that to a spare keyboard lying in the office. I noticed that my productivity decreased greatly and I was even more less (more less?) likely to load MSN or reply emails in standard Albert-ic bombastic English. Hic.

I am somewhat glad that when I type on my home’s QWERTY keyboard, I type D instead of E. A sign that I’m getting used to Dvorak! Interestingly, I type words that start with S with O instead, and mash up E and O often. I still have not gotten used to locating the rarer keys.

Then when I get home I’ve a project to work on so yeah, no blog updates. 😛

Beatallica

That’s right kids; this is the band that does Beatles songs Metallica style. They play Metallica excellently; they’ve got the guitar tone, the And Justice For All era James Hetfield growl, everything… but throw in what The Beatles do (unconventional harmonies and chord progressions) and a rock and roll beat, and you get an entertaining (and funny) result. Yes there are places you can download the songs.

Sepet

I borrowed Jason‘s original Sepet VCD. My mom the usual tearjerker-movie-sucker… didn’t cry. Neither did I. I thought it was alright though; the sound was alright despite reading complaints about that. I know someone so much like Orked in mannerism (and she’s even cute like her) and yet, I did not know if I could place her character in Ipoh. Then again, I don’t know Ipoh. Her family is urban in thought but it seems the rest of town isn’t. Some people criticize the movie for being inconsistent in the potrayal of the community, but we forget that there are urbanite bigots.

And now, on to time-based narration:

On Friday I met up with YK to buy more and more Transformers.


Treadshot seriously has style.


Planes in scale. Yes, this was Photoshopped and the planes are swapped. Standing from left: Skydive (Generation 2 recolor Aerialbot), Strafe (Generation 2 Cyberjet) and Treadshot (Transformers Energon Aerialbot).

We then headed to Bintang Walk to meet Syefri and Frus. Frus and I headed to The Loft, Zouk again to catch Twilight Action Girl. This time, we stayed for the dance floor.


It’s a bad thing when you don’t think that beer tastes bad anymore.

Perhaps I missed the chance to ask them to play something from the black album before they changed to early industrial and then something which was more techno than rock. “Is it too late to play any song from the Spinal Tap album?” “Oh chill lah, we’re changing back to rock now.”


When they played Gimme Some Money, a herd of rockers left. 🙁 How can they not know Spinal Tap?!? At least there were some who appreciated the song’s poke at The Beatles’ enlightenment era. 🙂


I also bumped into Iszie, who bugged me to come the gig she was emceeing the next day. Yes you will notice that I am now talking about the next day. Yes I am using present tense which is so grammatically wrong.


Amantle The Sea. Yes! For this blog entry I shall have a theme for all gig-related pictures; they will all be taken without flash, preferably in red, and without any levels or color correction, to celebrate the beauty of a ISO400, EV -1 manual setting.



Lucy In The Loo rocked. No that’s not Lucy, and yes, I cheated by sticking on the stickers from a picture taken with flash.


Citizens Of Ice-cream was cool. Heavy soundscapes and no vocals can only come from a combination of two Chinese indie bands. They even get different colored lighting for their Floyd-ish escapes! On the right was what seemed to be a tape loop.


The Times brought their scene with them; Roots And Boots members were seen moshing frantically. The vocalist had this Britrock stance which was cool.


Telebury finished the gig. Yes again I cheated on the right-side picture, using flash to bring out the nice blue Gibson Les Paul. I mean, have you ever seen one of those in Metallic Blue?


Longdrawn 3 was the name of the gig, with the biggest turnout I had ever seen in The New Paul’s Place.


Okay I’m hungry. Let’s take a break and stare at the new KFC curry chicken. It has the zing of their Tom Yam experiment, but without the Tom Yam flavor. May this gimmick last longer.


Now teleport back to Paul’s Place, this time on a Wednesday, for Troubadours, the biggest singer-songwriter bigshot gig I’d ever seen. Pictured is a floating magnetic toy; a little invention by Paul (who used to design exhibits for the National Science Center!)


Ronnie Khoo was first, with some mellow-dy.


Izzy and guitarist Jeremy.


Warren Chan and Abigail. He had some interesting chords over more mellow stuff. Who from KLue doesn’t sing in falsetto all the time?


Ariff Akhir and Shahril the bassist. Now Ariff’s got the voice and the chords, but Shahril marginally draws more attention with his extremely fluid walking (and perhaps playing a game of Twister) basslines.


Peter Hassan Brown and Shahril the bassist.


Opie from Indonesia. She had soul, yo. It manifested in her diva-like vocals. And hey, that guitar is way too familiar.


Meor from Central Market. His aggressively-strummed blues were fun to watch.


Kartini which I suspect is also from Indonesia.


Kelvin from Singapore. Superb stuff; he shredded the blues to the intermission music. (Other bands would play the tuning song.) He then made a song on the spot about this here country. I have never seen a guy sing with more conviction; he strains, beats and dries the words that he sings.


Reza Salleh the heart-melter crooned over jazz guitar.

Sadly, I did not get to see Ben of Ben’s B***hes or Azmyl Yunor play as I had to leave. They would have been interesting.

In other news, Ed has lost it again; this time he has a 48-hour blogathon. So? 49 48 51 45, I say to him. 🙂

Metal Matters

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William and I caught Latte@8 at Sunway Pyramid’s Starbucks last Thursday.


We were pleasantly surprised to find one of the guests as Sharifah Amani, co-star of the acclaimed-by-everybody except-me-because nobody-is-able to-watch-it-with-me Sepet.


Frequency Cannon. (That’s who I was here to see.) You don’t see it, but Yuri seems to have contracted Siva’s detaching-guitar-strap syndrome!

So I may have bumped into Becky, a famous blogger, and not had the guts to say hi and make the world a better place by letting a famous blogger know that yes, a famous blogger can be recognized just like any other form of celebrity should.


I honestly like the Proton Gen 2 design (and most of the colors!) I think it’s sleek. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, someone adds to it!


I bought this second-hand from DJCS. On the left, a Sparkle GeForce 6600 GT (500/900) 128MB AGP card; on the right, my old Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro (200/400) 128MB AGP card. The Radeon 9600 Pro would replace the GeForce 2 MX I bought from Syefri on the Athlon XP 1800+ machine; the GeForce 6600 GT would sit in my Barton XP 2600+ baby. Rates? Here goes techie numbers quick: UT2004 Flyby, 165 fps; botmatch 57 fps; Doom 3 High Quality 67.6 fps; Quake 3 Max Quality 228 fps; 3D Mark 2005 3185 marks; 3D Mark 2003 7089 marks; 3D Mark 2001 13043 marks. Quick go out and buy lottery numbers. Yeah 3D Mark 2001 was disappointing; 13043 marks was something a Radeon 9700 could do! However, its performance in 3D Mark 2003 was leaps better than my Radeon’s 2589 marks.


Heavy metal guy would consider this torture. Heavy metal runs in my veins, baby! It makes for my magnetic personality!


Presenting the new Calzone, from Pizza Hut – pizza on the go. A regular-sized pizza folded into a handy taco shape. Pizza Hut is under the same stingy company that hold Ayamas Roasters and KFC, but they do not suffer from food miniaturization! Shown is a AA battery in scale. No I do not eat batteries. I am not a robot. Do not eat batteries, even if you think you are a robot. Batteries will corrode your tin can soul.


Speaking of robots, here the Autobots gang up on a Decepticon I couldn’t resist getting as it was fresh on the shelves.


Barricade, the center piece of the Transformers Energon series combiner Bruticus Maximus poses, terrified.


He is an excellent, well-articulated tribute to Onslaught (that Transformers Generation 2 yellow dude), original center piece of Bruticus.


I misplaced Onslaught’s original cannon accessory.


No, Barricade isn’t that short when his cannons are folded out.


He is also the same size as the powerlinking Transformer Energon series. Spot the Decepticon!


“Here is the armless, legless wonder of the 20th century!”
As center pieces, Onslaught and Barricade are vital. You just can’t buy the arms and legs and superglue them together.


Barricade makes a pretty totem pole.


Barricade is really my new favorite Transformer Energon figure. He’s not limited in articulation in any way compared to other Energon figures which had niggling features like legs that can’t bend at the waist, or shoulders that can’t extend… Barricade also has a solid look and feel, and every joint and flap locks into place. RAWR.

Gore Ring

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I bumped into my cousin at this gig, where he asked if I was playing. “Nah I don’t even have an electric guitar!” Fate would be that his old one was lying in a cupboard, so I borrowed his.


This is not a floating bridge. I had trouble with the 2nd string, where the ball end of the string was stuck in the back of the bridge, “a common problem with Yamaha electric guitars.”


Smokin’ pot. The volume was a tad crackly around 6-9. It works nice at 10, but we know it was meant to be turned up to 11.


Make a selection with the pickup selector. I found it best at positions two and four, in between any two pickups.


Not outback jack, output jack. Grime is not a crime.


Let’s get behind her neck. Her head was dyed purple.


Look ma, no strings attached! Of course, I got the 8-38 gauge ones. Beautiful. One-finger full-tone bends. However, the .008 string was too light and you could barely hear it when shredding with distortion, or tapping for that matter.


Fear of the dark… Fear of the dark! I like this picture because of the sticker there, and the darkness behind it.


Fret not.


I didn’t know that an electric guitar had a longer scale length than an acoustic. A cool trick to getting an acoustic tone, or at least to amplify the electric guitar without electricity, is to play the electric guitar while having its body touch the acoustic guitar’s body. Ooo how perverse. For best results, place them back to back, with the acoustic guitar facing your body. You will feel the music.

For a demo of me playing the same bad music, but amplified, invite me to a MSN Messenger audio chat. Okay so it isn’t any louder since the distortion effects on the SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 soundcard don’t come out on audio chat, but it gets higher pitched since I have no cutaway and more frets to play with.

You All Like Pictures

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A cat takes a nap near a dinky drain. Its very carpetness was hard not to picture. I mean, hard not to put in a picture.


A window of inspiration. What do you see behind your window?


Frus and I were walking to KLCC, when we saw this.


Look I’m a Force Of Nature too! (I didn’t go to many on-off complications; why do people buy tickets in odd numbers?)


We headed to The Loft in Zouk, to catch Twilight Action Girl in action. Turns out only three of the four rock deejays were there, and the one guy who was missing was the guy I could greet and thus look cool. Being attached to a record label, he would have been at the Force Of Nature concert at the exact time we were there.

They played much more British, New Age and much more alternative rock, such that I felt a bit alienated since my taste is mostly American-style rock. Still, their selection was pretty lounge-chillout and very dance-able.

We went our separate ways, and I walked along the Jalan Ampang district, when I saw two very horse-faced hookers soliciting a white guy. “Sir we give you orgy!” I saw more horse-faced hookers along the road. Scary. I wonder which was worse – horse-faced hookers or trannies. But then you know Caucasians, their women have stronger facial features.


Jerry was right – the Perodua Kenari can look nice when modified.


A&W’s Double Deluxe Burger. Check out the cheese; I had to scrape it off the cardboard box. Dudes at Amburgers & Wootbeer, the cheese goes between the buns somewhere.

I also bumped into Az‘s parents; I seem to have bumped into them as often as I bumped into their son when he was still in this country. It was like he inherited the flow from them.

On Saturday I went to Paul’s New Place to catch the final instalment of the Rock Dawg Music Fest.


Seven was their usual funky self.


The Blumps stood out as the only punk rock band in today’s lineup.


Polaris, now that was interesting; heavy progressive rock. Add organ for that Floyd-ian coolness.


I finally got to see ex-colleague Azmir in action, from his grunge days in Shoot Goat to this mathematical fretboard dance in Polaris.


Ground Xero, the all-girl band from ICOM that rocked.


SDC, hard rock all the way. Sadly I felt their set was a bit too long as it lacked dynamics – it was a hard fast song one after the other.


Outfigured; picture features an excellent screamer. (Not like death metal continuous growling, but one-off rage.) Figured out who? It’s not the dreadlocked headbanger. Sadly her vocals were drowned out.


I expected something with Seemphony, with their expensive-looking guitars. They merely did two big-hit-single covers from Incubus, but redeemed themselves with some interesting covers. The drummer was cool though; my friend said he looked stiff but I thought his hard hits looked cool. Plus the guitarist can do a House Of Pain.


It is quite scary to see Jack of Naked Breed shred with all his hair falling into the guitar. He had to keep flipping it back. Alex, the drummer tied his long hair back. Meanwhile, Justin and the bassist were bald.


Soft Touch, to me, seemed harder than their usual reggae/folk rock.

I am going to rudely end this entry… like so.

Eat Eat Eat

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The sunlamp probably made this duck’s hair expand upwards.

Frus and I met up in Low Yat to look for hard disk-based MP3 players. Since I had 19 Gigabytes of MP3s and 4 Gigabytes of pictures, I’d love to have a 40 GB MP3 player/picture viewer (and perhaps hackable to view videos). The perfect one would be the iRiver H340, but that was nowhere to be found. Its smaller 20 GB brother, the H320, was around though.

Other options?

The RM1650-costing Wealper Multimedia Viewer II (in shops it was sold under the brand Pendrive). It could view pictures and videos, plus it functioned as a card reader too! My only gripe with this was that it was 20 GB! I could transplant a 40 GB hard disk in it, but it would have to fit in a 1.8″ case. Otherwise, I’d be loading from my camera straight to this and watching re-encoded Transformers episodes.

There was also the Pendrive X’s Drive Pro; that used a 2.5″ hard disk (not included) and if I was to add a 40 GB hard disk, it would total less than RM700. Sadly, it was bulkier and did not have a color screen.

Still, all these had more features than an iPod of the same price, so eat that, brand fashionistas!


Speaking of eating, we then went to Steak & Goreng for dinner where my Teh O Ais Limau (Iced Lemon Tea) had an interesting deformation at the straw. I then realized that this was intentional! Such geniuses. Ever drank your Teh O Ais Limau slowly because you were afraid to suck up seeds? This straw crease prevents it!


We also found the black album – the soundtrack to This Is Spinal Tap! I didn’t even know it existed. Now I’ve gotta get speakers that go to 11. Unlike Metallica’s black album, which had a snake, this was really black. How much more black can it get? None more black.

I’m going on a search to locate the other albums (in the bottom-right inlay). Sadly, no lyrics were included.

If you are a rocker and do not know of this legendary rock band and their rockumentary, you should swap your leather pants for baggy jeans.

Side trivia: I didn’t know that double-bass-playing (it’s a double-neck bass with the exact same neck… geddit?) Derek Smalls also did many voices in The Simpsons!

Of Sugar And Spice

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I can cut down on my Teh Tarik to lower my sugar levels, but what can I do about a broken heart?

It was about time Davina joined the blogging bandwagon. Yes, that hippie vegetarian who is always on the cartooniest sugar high. The funky never-looks-the-same Jamiroquai and Beatles fan, about 6 years before I discovered them. The one who will undoubtedly win the Albert’s Funkiest Friend award. And so, I’ve updated my links in my About Me! page.

Friday: Starbucks Mont Kiara

I went for the second half of the KLue Starbucks Music Series.


Ronnie Khoo, of the band formerly known as RUSH and now known as Furniture, Wednesday and also Ciplaq (or however they spell it.) I missed most of his set waiting for my food.


Bedsheet Wonders, two guys on acoustic guitar, had arrangements so obviously electric. They were more on the British sound, which made me notice that this Music Series was more… focused around the tastes of KLue writers. They all seem to like British self-slitting melancholia and alternative indie. I, on the other hand, only properly like Black Sabbath of all those that come from the UK!


Her Reverie had a more American indie sound to them. Three guitars, no disappointment; Sui Lin was backed up with the percussionist’s elaborate arranged vocals, and the guitarists took turns to solo.


I haven’t seen a guitarist use a guitar slide live much, so this was cool. The other guitarist also played a harmonica, but they weren’t playing the blues.


I think that owners of Volkswagen Beetles have a sense of collectiveness. I bet it wasn’t even a Beetles gathering. If I had a Beetle, I’d park next to a Beetle for the fun of it. And so, a chain of Beetles would form, as everyone knows that classic Beetles attract attention.


Even mannequins love a little tease.

I’d love to blog about the hitz.fm Birthday Bash, but it seems that I have lost all capability to blog without the aid of pictures to distract you from my uncreative prose. Despite my camera being in a locker where we were always one buck short, enough pictures were taken that I was certain I was going to crash my Mercedes in a tunnel.