Feng's Distorted World : 鋒言鋒語

Temple City is the intercontinental and Internet collaboration of Dietmar Quistorf and Christoph Kolodziej. They produce mostly downtempo and ambient stuff.

Shady stuff, that is.

Working over a 6,000-mile wire between L.A, California, and Frankfurt, Germany,
Kolodziej and Quistorf pass songs back and forth until they reach the sound that's
Temple City's own a unique cross of Kraftwerk and Mother Nature, with a dash of sci-fi.



The track begins with a dark voiceover intro of a spaceship arriving at Europa, one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter and then continues with an eerie intermission of the synths. Not much variation in the entire mood and rhythm of the track but it produces a calm and chilled out feeling with the seamless interwining of the synths and drum beats. It's pretty much chilled out that some of my friends say that this is good music for smoking weed.

Temple City - Europa [yur-ROH-pah] (mp3)

Do check out their official page on Download.com for more of their good stuff.

The soundtrack for the cult movie "Requiem for a Dream" was composed by reknowned composer Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet.

The trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers used a remixed version of the track "Lux Aeterna", re-recorded with a full orchestra and choir. The song, named "Requiem for a Tower", was made just for the trailer (it was not featured in either Requiem for a Dream or The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) and was composed by Simone Benyacar, Dan Nielsen, and Veigar Margeirsson.



The track "Lux Aeterna" has been remixed numerous times by notable artists such as Paul Oakenfold, Josh Wink, Delerium, and even a psytrance mix by trancemaster GMS (Growling Mad Scientists). The track "The Last Stand" from The Myth OST by Nathan Wang was also clearly influenced by Lux Aeterna.

Download previews of the tracks below from Clint Mansell's official site here.

Requiem for a Dream OST

1. Summer Overture (mp3)
2. Party
3. Coney Island Dreaming
4. Party
5. Chocolate Charms
6. Ghosts Of Things To Come
7. Dreams
8. Tense
9. Dr Pill
10. High On Life (mp3)
11. Ghosts
12. Crimin' And Dealin'
13. Hope Overture (mp3)
14. Tense
15. Bialy And Lux Conga
16. Cleaning Apartment
17. Ghosts - Falling
18. Dreams
19. Arnold
20. Marion Barfs
21. Supermarket Sweep
22. Dreams
23. Sara Goldfarb Has Left The Building
24. Bugs Got A Devilish Grin Conga
25. Winter Overture (mp3)
26. Southern Hospitality
27. Fear (mp3)
28. Full Tense
29. Beginning Of The End
30. Ghosts Of A Future Lost
31. Meltdown
32. Lux Aeterna (mp3)
33. Coney Island Low

A common problem that have been troubling cantonese-speaking Windows users is the inability to input special cantonese-only characters in their systems. Characters such as "乜","喺" and "冇" cannot be typed used Microsoft's Chinese IME and also using other euqivalent software such as NJSTAR and Chinese Star. These software can display most of the fonts with GB encoding but there's simply no easy way to input them. Furthermore, written Cantonese contains many characters not used in standard written Chinese in order to transcribe words not present in the standard lexicon. In 1990 the Hong Kong Government introduced the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) in use for electronic communication as an attempt to standardize written cantonese. The HKSCS is a prerequisite for many of the softwares and IMEs featured below so download and install HKSCS before install the IMEs.

Download the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set (HKSCS) from Microsoft.

To solve this problem of typing cantonese on the computer, a wide plethora of software and IMEs have been developed. Most people today use ChangJie, Jyutping or handwritting recognition pads.

I've tried and tested many alternatives to allow me to have the ability to type Cantonese on my computer. Many of these software are commercial but I didn't want to pay anything for it, so I decided to do a bit of googling for the proper tools and after a bit of testing, I've come up with a list of some of the best and free software for this purpose.


1. ISO 10646 version of HKSCS-2001 reference font and input software (ISO 10646 版本輸入法軟件)

This is the official software for typing cantonese with is developed by the Hong Kong Government. It uses the ChangJie input method, Quick Input method and Stroke Input method. Its pretty decent but only downside is that ChangJie is the main input method. The learning curve for the Changjie input method is pretty steep and if you don't know Changjie then its better to use other easier methods such as cantonese romanization (e.g Jyutping or Yale). Check out the official site here.



Download ISO 10646 version of HKSCS-2001 reference font and input software


2. Red Dragonfly Chinese Input Method (紅蜻蜓粵語拼音詞語輸入法)

This nifty piece of software is developed by Dr. K.K. Luke, Department of Linguistics, University of Hong Kong.This Input Method can thus be used to type characters from the HKSCS. It uses the cantonese pronounciation method for the input of the characters. This software is pretty good, except that it is limited to run on native Chinese version of Windows. If you run an English version of Windows XP, you can download Applocale from Microsoft and display this software in Traditional Chinese (GB) encoding. Check out more info for this software on their official site from The University of Hong Kong.



Download Red Dragonfly Chinese Input Method


3. Cantonese Input IME (廣東/粵語拼音輸入法)

This is the best piece of software I've come by so far. It uses the Jyutping (粵拼) method for input. This software is installed as an IME and is highly cuztomizable as you could change the pronounciation of the characters to suit your own typing habits as well as also add new characters to the list. You can find a step by step tutorial to setting up and customizing the software on their official site here.



Download Cantonese Input IME


4. CantoInput

This software is developed by Jim Burket and is a Unicode-based cantonese input IME. Both the Yale and Jyutping methods are supported. A Mandarin Pinyin mode is also available. CantoInput will run on any operating system with a relatively recent Java runtime environment. You could run it on Windows, Linux and even on Macs. I haven't had much time to try out this piece of software but by the looks of it it seems pretty fine. Check out CantoInput from their official site.



Download CantoInput

The term "Disco Volante" actually means "flying disc" or in some cases, "flying saucer" but the band featured today is far from being "saucy".

Disco Volante is Oliver Achatz, Marko Pelaic, Janis Guckes, Paul W. Taylor and Soeren Frickenschmidt. The band is from Frankfurt, German and produces electronic styled post rock and progressive rock. Their music is extremely experimental and is influenced heavily by post rock and laced with electronic sounds that seems to blend seamlessly in each of their tracks.




I don't listen much to rock, but heck, I guess this track is one of my fewer exceptions. They may not be really famous, but they do sound similiar to the likes of Jaga Jazzist and Sigur Ros though. They are GOOD.

Download one of their tracks here:
Disco Volante - Golden Psycho Flower(Layout) (mp3)

You can get more of their tracks and photos from their official site below:
discovolante.de

Gaim is a popular multi-platform instant messaging client that supports many popular protocols. Gaim is open source and is released under the GNU General Public Licence. It runs on UNIX/Linux systems, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD and Mac OSX as well. It is currently used on many distributions of Linux such as Knoppix, Ubuntu and others.

Here are some of the protocols that Gaim supports:
Jabber (XMPP)
MSN Messenger
Google Talk (Through XMPP)
IRC
AIM
ICQ
Yahoo! Messenger
QQ
SILC



The best part about Gaim is its ability to allow users to log in to several IM accounts simultaneously. For instance, I could be chatting with someone using MSN and with a second person using ICQ and chat with a third person using Google Talk! Although there are some other multi-protocol clients such a Trillian that offer similiar functionality, I find that Gaim is the best in terms of ease of use and also due to the fact that its FREE!

In my opinion, Gaim is an extremely well-written piece of software. It is lightweight and ad-free. Gaim is also highly customizable through the use of downloadable plugins that add loads of functionality to this nifty piece of software. Only downside about Gaim is the file transfer function in MSN gives you really slow speed as Gaim cannot establish a direct connection between the 2 peers as of now. As of now, all connections are routed through Microsoft's servers.

I got to know about this software through using Linux systems and I've been using it on all of my machines ever since, even on my Windows boxes!

Download the Gaim instant messenger client complete with GTK+ from their project page at Sourceforge here:

Gaim Downloads (All Packages)
Gaim Downloads (Version 2.0.0 Beta 5)

Rhapsody is a Malaysian band I've listened to for a couple of years now and I've gotta say I really like their style. They play mostly jazz and instrumental sounds. The duo, Ywenna Carolin & Nicole Foo who makes up Rhapsody, met in a dusty piano room when they were still clad in high school uniforms, Nicole was mesmerized when Ywenna started tinkling Chopin's 'Nocturne in E Flat". After 7 years of dreaming, Ywenna and Nicole have finally got off their asses to start making their dreams come true.

Rhapsody is a frequenter of the Malaysian Jazz scene and have been featured on events such as Starbucks Music Series, Moonshine, Penang Island Jazz Festival, the Xmas Sofa Party @ FrangiPani, which is really popular bar in KL. Their quite well-known among the underground music community in Malaysia as many of my friends in KL have attended their gigs.



With Ywenna playing the piano and Nicole as the vocalist, the duo sound like a match made in music heaven. Their music is very calm and soothing. The gentle sounds of Ywenna playing on the piano blends perfectly with Nicole's voice which tailor-made for singing jazz. One of my favourite tracks by them is "So Scared". I've been puting the track on loop the entire time I'm writing this article. ~Sweet

Download the track here:
Rhapsody - So Scared (mp3)

Do visit their page on i-bands.net for more info and downloads and visit their blog here for their latest events and gigs.

岩岩聽My Little Airport既新歌《我愛官恩娜，都不及愛你的哨牙》，覺得好搞笑，成個FEEL好cute好唔同，不過聽落又幾好聽bor。歌中有段用法文來唱，感覺有D似UTADA HIKARU首《ぼくはくま》- Boku wa Kuma



《我愛官恩娜，都不及愛你的哨牙》
唱: nicole
曲/詞/編/casio: 阿p
法文詩作+讀: 阿雪

咦，乜你鍾意官恩娜架？

難道你已經不再喜歡我
碰見面也都不嗌下我
難道你已經不再關心我
看見亦要直行直過

其實我已經算很喜歡你
對住第二個都冇咁好氣
其實我已經算很欣賞你
看住電視亦會想起你

我就算喜愛官恩娜
都不及愛你的哨牙
我就算喜愛何韻詩
她都不及你的法文詩

如若你真的這麼喜歡我
到最後你不應該放棄我
難道你也見一個鍾意一個
每個月看中數十個

On partage la musique
Dans la rue, sur le lit
On n’a besoin de parler
et la main dans la main
comme ca, juste toi et moi
Ensemble, toujours

我就算喜愛薛凱琪
都不及愛你的皺眉
我就算喜愛張柏芝
她都不及你咁得意
我就算喜愛官恩娜
都不及愛你的哨牙
我就算喜愛何韻詩
她都不及你的法文詩
她都不及你咁得意
她都不及你咁真摰

You can download the track here from their site:
My Little Airport - 我愛官恩娜，都不及愛你的哨牙 (mp3)

My Little Airport is one of Hong Kong's music scene's best-kept secrets. The indie band, consisting of a female vocalist, Nicole, and a male songwriter, P produces some of the most special sounds in the Hong Kong music scene today. Their music style is casual and comfortable to the average listener, similiar in style to some of Tsuji Ayano's tracks. The lyrics the write about are both witty and light-hearted. Their adventurous spirit and playfulness can been observed through their selection of song titles and lyrics. Definitely a much welcomed change to the songs you hear on radio everyday.

My Little Airport 呢個indie band俾到人一份好輕鬆，好好玩既感覺。My Little Airport的音樂、歌聲和歌詞互構成一種特有的清新氣質，編織出一個單純的世界，迷人可愛。歌詞中寫既係一段段美麗而朦朧的青春烙印。MLA第一張專輯《在動物園散步才是正經事》於2004年8月出街，就登上叱吒樂壇流行榜第10位。新歌《我愛官恩娜，都不及愛你的哨牙》都真係幾好聽！！




在動物園散步才是正經事
01. Coka，I’m Fine
02. 在动物园散步才是正经事 (mp3)
03. Victor，Fly Me To Stafford (mp3)
04. Edward，Had You Ever Thought That the End Of The World
05. 柯德莉，关于风景
06. My Little Banana
07. Josephine’s Shop
08. 王菲，关于你的眉
09. You Don’t Wanna Be My Girlfriend Phoebe
10. Dee，It May All End Tomorrow



只因當時太緊張
01. Gi Gi Leung Is Dead
02. I Don’t Know How To Download Good Av Like Iris Does
03. 只因当时太紧张
04. 失落沮丧歌 (mp3)
05. 就当我是张如城
06. 白田购物中心
07. Leo，Are You Still Jumping Out Of Windows In Expensive Clothes？
08. 你的微笑像朵花 (mp3)
09. 春天在车厢里
10. My Little Fish

Do visit their official site below for more info on them:
mylittleairport.com

Finally its here!! This is the piano score for the track Endless Love "美麗的神話" which is the OST for Jackie Chan's 2005 movie The Myth. The OST was written by Nathan Wang & Gary Chase. Two versions of the song have been produced. One version is in Chinese and Korean and the other version entirely in Chinese. The 1st version was a duet between Jackie Chan and Korean actress Kim Hee Seon who also starred in the movie as the Korean princess. The 2nd version was sung by reknowned Chinese artists Sun Nan and Nan Hong. These are not the official scores and are compiled by the great guys at popiano.net. I haven't really had time to try playing out the scores but they don't seem too sophisticated at first glance. Maybe later this week.



Here you go:

Endless Love Piano Score
[Page 1] [Page 2] [Page 3] [Page 4]

Credits to popiano.net for the piano scores above.

In case you're searching for it, here's the lyrics for the song:

Endless Love I Lyrics
Endless Love II Lyrics

You can read more about The Myth here and here.

Sandy Lam's latest Mandarin album "Breath Me" which was released on the 29th of August 2006 was simply superb! The album features a Mandarin cover version of UK band New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle". She titled her rendition of the classic hit "One Person" and recorded it in two different versions (Track 1 and 14). Her voice is angelical, crisp and smooth to your ears.

This album is so good that I cannot stop playing it over and over again on in my car and my computer, whether I'm studying for my exams, finishing my assignments, or just reading email. In my opinion, this album is better than her last Cantonese album entitled "True Colours" released in 2005.



01. 一個人
02. 面對面 [歌詞 Lyrics] [Video]
03. 日子
04. 詞不達意 [歌詞 Lyrics]
05. 南方的風
06. 放開手 [歌詞 Lyrics]
07. 箴言
08. 要不要
09. 日子
10. 呼吸 (Q Mix)
11. 斷線
12. 相信
13. 玩伴
14. 一個人 (不安份 Mix)

林憶蓮這張醞釀三年的國語專輯《呼吸》，從收歌、錄音到整張專輯的概念形成，Sandy都一如以往一樣親身參與。我非常喜歡的歌曲包括「面對面」，「詞不達意」和「放開手」。

主打「一個人」是改編自英國樂團"New Order"的熱播作品，新詞由周耀輝填上，編曲充滿懷舊復古的電子音樂氛圍，顯然又是一首會在迪斯可熱播的歌曲。「詞不達意」旋律譜得好，有一份聽完後仍叫人未能抽離的魔力，小寒的歌詞也填得相當細膩。許哲佩的「放開手」是首佳作，整首歌有一份強烈的生活感，歌詞寫出走出陰霾後的自由自在，憶蓮把那種感受成功演繹出來。點題歌「呼吸」詞曲編俱不錯，更吸 引的是整首歌的氣氛。「相信」是林夕填詞的作品，內容讓人感動，情懷很細致，與曲調也相當配合。這首歌在新加坡的音樂排行榜上取得相當好的成績。其他歌曲方面，「面對面」和「日子」亦值得一聽。

很遺憾的，前幾天在新加坡舉行的《夜色無邊世界巡迴演唱會 2006》我沒辦法參加。上個星期在馬來西亞的演唱會，我也錯過了。關於演唱會的圖片和音樂片段可以在以下的網址觀賞：

林憶蓮新加坡演唱會06.12.09 Fans Sharing

Foobar 2000 is one of my favourite audio players. It's known to be light on system resources and easily customizable and configurable with the use of third-party components. Best of all, its free!

Download the latest version of the foobar player from the official site.

Here are some of the foobar components I've tried and used for my own foobar player. All the plugins featured below are recommended for use in foobar 2000 version 0.9 .

How to install the plugins:
1. Download the plugins and unzip them
2. Copy the dll files into your default foobar component folder (i.e C:/Program Files/foobar2000/components)
3. Restart the foobar player and you're ready to go!

1. Columns UI

Columns UI is an alternative user interface for the foobar player. It allows interchangeable elements through the use of panel and toolbar components. It is a prerequisite of many other foobar components such as albumart_ui and track info mod.



Download - Columns UI from musicmusic's foobar stuff


2. Album Art Panel

Another example of customizing your foobar player is to enable it to display a song's album art. Using the component foo_uie_albumart, you can easily modify the desired image's source, height and even configure it to cycle through several images.




Download - foo_uie_albumart v0.045

3. Track info panel mod

Track Info Panel Mod is a modification to the Foobar2000:0.9 Track Info Panel (foo uie trackinfo) panel by Terrestrial. It allows you to display a track's data such as length, artist, album, and year.



Download - Track info panel mod from Hydrogenaudio wiki

4. Quick Search Toolbar

Derived from foo_uie_search and ported to foobar2000 0.9, foo_uie_quicksearch provides the ability to include a search panel in your Columns UI layout, displaying results in a chosen playlist. The search parameters can be customized according to your own needs. I just left to for default.



Download - foo_uie_quicksearch

5. Audioscrobbler

This is a plugin that allows submission of data of the tracks you've listened to last.fm. It employs audioscrobbler technology to retrieve your listening data. Last.fm's client is good as well, but I just prefer using foobar and this audiosrobbler plugin rather than last.fm's official client.

Download - foo_audioscrobbler

6. Crossfader

This is a simple dsp plugin that adds crossfading functionality into the foobar player. I don't really bother with crossfading but listening to ambient and instrumental tracks with this feature will take your entire listening experience to a whole new level. Do try it!!

Download - foo_dsp_crossfader at Acropolis' Blog

7. ProjectM

ProjectM Visualisation is a visualisation based on the ProjectM project, which is a reimplementation of Milkdrop under OpenGL. The version available here is a modification of bleh's ProjectM Visualisation for Foobar2000 0.8. The forum thread for both the original version and the modification available here can be found here.



Download - ProjectM Visualisation

8. Whitecap

Whitecap is another visualisation plugin for foobar. It features 190 effects, a morphing slideshow, savable and scriptable effects, video file export capabilities, and control over specific effects. WhiteCap is designed to be visually engaging and extremely dynamic, yet flexible enough to allow for customization, control, and scripting. I don't really use this plugin much.



Download - foo_whitecap from soundspectrum

9. Lyricsdb

This plugin allows you to search and upload lyrics basing on song's artist title and sometimes album. Lyrics are download from a database and saved to the %lyrics% tag.



Download - foo_lyricsdb

10. Queuemanager

This plugin provides a panel which shows the queue's contents and allows you to remove tracks from the queue. It also allows you to have playback automatically starting when you create a queue.

Requires .Net 2.0 framework. If you don't have it you can get it here.

Download - foo_uie_queuemanager

It's been a while since I visited Tsuji Ayano's blog...She changed her hairstyle!

Recently heard some tracks from this electronic music project "Enduser" - the brainchild of Lynn Standafer. Bearing in mind that he is influenced by several genres such as hip-hop and jungle, the music he produces under the alter-ego of Enduser are somewhat industrial strength drum and bass with a good dose of breaks and rap.



The first time I listened to it I felt that it was too hard on my ears but gradually I got used to it. It's really quite interesting.

Enduser has been collaborating with other notable electronic artists such as Panacea and NYC hardcore band Terror. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York and frequently performs around the US and around the world. You can find more about Enduser at his official site here.

Enduser - Things to Do in the Queen City (mp3)

Currently in its 13th installment, the Mercedes Benz Mixed Tape series has gained widespread notoriety among the internet community and avid music fans since its release in 2004. The mixtape features many talented but little known musicians and includes various genres such as downtempo, chillout, RnB, hiphop, house, techno, electronic, nujazz, breakbeat and ambient as well. Every six to eight weeks, Mercedes Benz (yes, the car maker) releases a new Mixed Tape.

Was recently listening to the old Mercedes Benz Mixed Tape 02 yesterday night and discovered this track "What a Day" by Audiomatix that I really liked. Little is known about the artist except that he/she could be German. Very much downtempo, the track features some really soothing female vocals coupled with a chilling background. Perfect way to end a long day at work.

Audiomatix - What a Day

The Mercedes Benz Mixed Tape 13 is available for free download at www.mixed-tape.com and will be available till 25/09/2006. The next Mixed Tape is due for release on the next day.

Some interesting essay I found the other day while going through some forums. Apparently it was taken out of some tuition centre and then scanned. Laughed my ass off this:




Kids today...