For those of you that know me, or have stumbled across my blog and taken an interest in it, thanks for reading. I feel obligated to inform you that while I am by no means abandoning this blog, the frequency of my posts will decrease drastically for the foreseeable future. On Saturday (Feb 21st), I’m boarding a 747 and flying to China, where I will live for the next five months. I’m doing a semester abroad at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, studying intensive Chinese language and culture. I’m maintaining a multi-writer travel blog while I’m there Continue reading →
This piece was first published on Independent Clauses. You can find the original article here.
Nothing More
Nothing More’s new release The Few Not Fleeting is coming out this upcoming Saturday. I had a chance to visit with lead singer Jonny Hawkins about the album and the processes behind it. The physical interview is below. I also compiled a video, which can be seen here.
Nothing More has had a lot of changes in lineup. Can you tell me a little about the band’s history?
We didn’t quite get it right the first six times around, so seventh or eighth time’s the charm for us. The core of the band was always Mark Vollelunga, Josh Kercheville, and me, Jonny Hawkins. We went through bass players and singers like fast food, basically.
We finally teamed up with Daniel Oliver a little after Josh Klaus parted ways with the band. That really formed I think the real core of the band right there. Then we got Travis as our singer and released Madhatter’s Bliss, and after that, we got Trey Graham as our singer when he got off tour with Kelly Clarkson, and released Save You/Save Me. And I think Save You/Save Me was our first big push, in regards to touring, and playing with 30 Seconds to Mars, and Burden Brothers, and on the Warped Tour – stuff like that. Then things went south with our singer Trey. The whole time through all these people we never really quite felt like it was there yet, like it had sunk in and… I don’t really know how to describe it; it just didn’t have that peace.
Josh Kercheville ended up leaving the band, which was a big blow too, so that left it to Mark and Dan and I. I can honestly say I don’t think we’ve ever been happier creatively, through the writing process, playing live… I play all the drums on the album, but we hire a drummer for shows. He’s on contract for now, I don’t think I’m ready to give up all the drumming right yet, but I can say I’ve never been with somebody that I’ve been as open to the idea about potentially joining the band. He’s an amazing guitar player, drummer, writer, artist, so he brings a lot to the table.
How did you go from being the drummer to being lead singer?
I got kind of into a depression in the last year. I had a lot of stuff going on in my life with my mom and cancer, and Trey – we parted ways and it felt like the band wasn’t going to go anywhere. And I had this revelation that I told Mark one night. I was like, “I want to sing for the band.” Let me say this: first of all, my biggest fear has always been speaking in front of people. I would lose sleep in high school if I had to speak in front of the class the next day. I wouldn’t sleep the whole night! So the idea of getting in front of hundreds of people and singing was enormous. Second of all, I couldn’t sing. I was not a singer, I’d been a drummer my whole life.
I was like, I’m afraid to be in front of people and I can’t sing. That’s not a good combination for a lead singer, right? But I felt very passionate about music.
So the last year all the guys were like, “All right. Jonny, we believe in you, even though it sucks right now and you sound like crap.” I’m lucky to be with guys that… we know each other well, we believe in each other to the point of, even if it doesn’t make sense now, we support each other. And they supported me and believed in me, and I never could’ve done it if they hadn’t been there and believed in me. Continue reading →
I don’t generally repost the music reviews I write for Independent Clauses on here, but this is a special case. I’ve been watching Nothing More perform for about five years now. This Saturday, they’re releasing their sixth album, entitled The Few Not Fleeting. Below is my review.
Upcoming 2009 album The Few Not Fleeting by Nothing More pulls you in, and it pulls you in fast. It has great continuity over the course of the album; the whole thing is a stunning emotional journey. For the uninitiated, Nothing More plays progressive/alternative rock; their sound is equal parts 30 Seconds to Mars, Coheed & Cambria, Dredg, and Fair To Midland. This San Antonio-based rock band has been around since 2000, and they’ve been busy the whole time, mostly playing across Texas and Louisiana, including performances in the Taste of Chaos tour in 2007 and Warped Tour in 2008. The Few Not Fleeting is their sixth release.
Consistent across the songs on the album are a thick, richly blended sound from guitarist Mark Vollelunga and bassist Daniel Oliver, strong lead vocals by Jonny Hawkins and excellently harmonized backups, and perfectly matched drums, also by Jonny Hawkins (interestingly, Jonny transitioned from drummer to the role of lead singer over the past year; a temp drummer fills in at live shows). Production value on this CD is quite good, especially for an independent band. Despite all this, what I found most striking about the album are the lyrics; they are all inspired by things the band has gone through. It lends a genuine quality to their performance.
“Gone” is my favorite track for the album. It opens with an ethereal electronic effect, and quickly transitions to Nothing More’s more typical guitar riffs and pounding drums. Over everything else, Jonny sings about the pain of his mother’s death; “I wish I’d never seen cancer / I’d die just to find that answer.” The emotional impact is practically overwhelming.
Rock anthem “Fat Kid” gives the album a helpful mood swing to the positive. Its tongue-in-cheek nature and rebellious nature are great fun, and when the chorus rolls around, you’ve just got to cheer. Lyrics proclaim, “I’m gonna rule the world, steal your girl / Not bad, not bad for a fat kid.” It’s an energetic song, celebrating the triumph of the underdog. Who doesn’t like that? I’ve had this album for a couple weeks now, and every time I hear the song I start singing along. If I’m alone, I might even dance. Continue reading →
This is a video I threw together to complement a CD review + interview that I wrote for Independent Clauses. After the pieces have been published on IC, I’ll repost them here. If you’re into prog/alt rock, Nothing More is worth a listen. Their latest album, titled The Few Not Fleeting, drops in five days on February 21st.
This piece was first published on Blogcritics. You can view the original article here.
I’m a sucker for percussion ensembles. They’re classical, jazz, and avant garde all rolled into one. More often than not, they’re experimental, and eager to push the envelope. Mainstream examples include such productions as Stomp and Blue Man Group, but trust me, there’s way more to percussion ensembles than push brooms and painted men banging on tubes. That being said, when the University of Houston Percussion Ensemble released Not Here, But There, an album that has been in the works for some time now, I jumped at the chance to hear it.
Not Here, But There
The album opens with a bit of a bang – “Sprint” is a fun and energetic piece that features a strong marimba section, accented with the use of tambourine, snare, and bass drum, among others. It sets the tone for the rest of the work.
The title track, “Not Here, But There” is an incredibly dramatic piece. Starting off soft and almost haunting, it methodically gains energy and increasingly complex instrumentation as the song progresses. As with all songs on the album, marimba forms the backbone of this arrangement. Above that, use of wood blocks, chimes, and timpani provide powerful accompaniment and tone. A sequence of powerful crescendos and decrescendos solidified my opinion of the song.
Later, Not Here, But There gains some levity with “Circus Plenus Clamor Ingens Ianuae Tensae,” a lighthearted piece with amusing bits of technique sprinkled throughout. “Hohner,” a tribute to percussionist Robert Hohner, takes a completely different direction. It opens in pure chaos – cymbals, noisemakers, and gongs explode for a good twenty
five seconds and then disappear, only to forcefully reappear again and again. Over the course of the song (weighing in at over 14 minutes), the tones varies drastically, from the chaotic beginning, to a portion at 4:03 that was described to me by one of the members of the ensemble as “the pirate part,” to a section of interacting timpani and marimba that alternates between sounding joyous and frantic. Continue reading →
Zach (from Akinotsuki) and I were discussing various blogging concepts earlier tonight. You’d be surprised how much of our interaction concerns blogs, in one form or another (I promise we actually know each other outside of the internet). Anyway, we were talking about different sorts of blogging formats, the benefits multiple-writer blogs versus those of single-writer sites, and it got me thinking about the future of blogging. Admittedly, it’s still a relatively new phenomenon, and really didn’t get going until perhaps ten years ago – technically, I’m sure someone out there was blogging prior to that, but it probably wasn’t known as such. Besides, ten years ago would the average member of the public have any clue what a blog was? I doubt it, but I digress.
There’s been great growth already, going from simple text to adding photos, video, audio, etc. You’ve got open-ended posts that ask a simple question and rely on readers to create responses (and hence, meaningful content), angry rants about everything under the sun, commentary on any form of news imaginable, traditional “dear diary” type posts, and base attempts at gossip and/or journalism. Beyond that, there are media-only posts, from video blogs, to podcasts, to photographer and artist-oriented formats that feature a single photograph as a post. Continue reading →
Traditionally, net neutrality has been a sticky topic that boils down to internet service providers declaring themselves information demigods. On several occasions, they’ve fought for the right to dole out portions of their bandwidth based on who can pay for it, which would essentially reduce access to anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay what they demand.
AMD Exec 1: Members of the board, I have good news. We’re on schedule to deliver five new processors for our Phenom II line next week!
Board Member 1: That’s great news! What are the specs on them?
AMD Exec 2: First, we’ve got the the X4 910, which is essentially an X4 920 that’s been underclocked by .2 GHz. Then there’s the X4 810, which is the same speed as the X4 910, but it has 4MB of L3 cache instead of the 6 MB that’s standard on everything above it. Next is the X4 805, which has the 4 MB L3 cache like the 810, only it’s got a speed of 2.5 GHz. After that we’ve got two X3 models, which are X4s but with a core disabled. The X3 720 is clocked at 2.8 GHz, and it’s got the 6 MB L3 cache that the 900-series processors do, but 1.5 MB for the L2 cache instead of 2 MB like the others. The X3 710 has the same cache sizes as the 720, but it’s sitting at 2.6 GHz instead of 2.8. Finally, all the new processors are-
Board Member 1: That’s… confusing. Why do they vary in cache size and clock speed, but without any sort of logic to it? The 900 series should be the highest-spec’ed, followed by the 800 series, and finally the 700 series. That just makes sense.
AMD Exec 1: We would totally do that-
AMD Exec 2: -Totally do it.
AMD Exec 1: But we can’t.
Board Member 2: And why not?
AMD Exec 2: Well, here’s the thing: we can’t afford the R&D to actually design other processors.
AMD Exec 1: So we’re taking all the Phenom II chips with defects and then renaming them based on what’s wrong with them. The 800 series has jacked-up cache, but all the cores are fine, and the 700 series has cache that’s fine, but a core that doesn’t work.
Board Member 2: So we’re doing this to avoid wasting any chips, right?
As I’ve previously mentioned, I love tower defense games. Can’t get enough of the suckers. In celebration of my love, I’m reviewing two of the best games in the genre that I’ve played recently. First is Defense Grid: The Awakening, a great indie title on PC that’s been a sleeper hit. Next is Fieldrunners for iPhone/iPod Touch, arguably the best mobile variant of this game style. Both are relatively easy on your wallet – Defense Grid retails for $19.99, and Fieldrunners can be had for $4.99.
I know what some of you are thinking. At least I think I do. “Tower defense games? Aren’t those just casual games for people that can’t get their heads around meaty titles like Fallout 3 or F.E.A.R. 2 or Sins of a Solar Empire? For the love of all that’s holy, Fallout 3 was so good a cinematic masterpiece was made based on it!”
*end sarcasm*
Sure, tower defense games aren’t as complicated or deep as a really good RTS or RPG, but that’s the point. The tower defense genre (or hybrid sub-genre, really) is to real-time strategy what checkers is to chess. Is it as hard? No. Does it take as long to master? Heck no. It’s accessible without being brainless, easy to play in ten or fifteen-minute increments without devolving into a “press this button as hard and fast as you can” monstrosity. At the same time, it’s decidedly more complicated than something like Bejeweled or Scrabulous.
Allow me to get off my soap box. There. I’m off. Without further ado, here are my mini-reviews for Defense Grid and Fieldrunners. Continue reading →
My name is Brian Murff, and Tech + Lifestyle is my blog. I’m a freelance writer / tech blogger, and I spend altogether way too much time on my computer. This is a product of that time. Tech+ Lifestyle may or may not cater to nerds, geeks, gamers, techies, hipsters, hippies, treehuggers, headbangers, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
If you’ve got any questions, or want to rant about how much I suck, or say how wonderful everything is that I write, contact me at techpluslifestyle@gmail.com