Limbo

Cela fait des lustres que je n’ai touché à un jeu de puzzles/plates-formes aussi bien concoté, les derniers en date étaient Heart of Darkness et Oddworld. Pourtant j’étais familier avec le titre auquel j’ai joué récemment car  j’écoutais assez souvent son OST composée par Martin Stig Andersen.

Limbo ou Limbes (lieu de séjour des enfants morts avant d’être baptisés selon certains théologiens) est un opus très sombre et hilarant à la fois. Edité par PlayDead, le jeu est entièrement en noir et blanc, évoluant dans des décors macabres et étranges en 2-D afin de résoudre des énigmes de difficulté croissante et où les réflexes se mêlent à une imagination filandreuse pour pouvoir avancer hors des antres et loin des tarentules.

Les arachnophobes seront bien servis

La prise en main est aisée vu le nombre réduit de commandes, ainsi, la ruse est la seule arme dans des scènes morbides mais loin d’être terrifiantes.

Au fur et à mesure que l’aventure progresse, les chapitres mêlent ruines, vastes forêts et structures industrielles, où l’on est confronté à des pièges, bestioles en tous genres mais surtout à une hostilité injustifiée de la part de gamins rencontrés en route.

Le seul bémol reste la longévité réduite du jeu mais en gros, j’ai beaucoup admiré l’ingéniosité et la simplicité de Limbo ainsi que les énigmes extrêmement bien faites. En matière de gameplay, Arnt Jensen a fait un excellent travail. A ne pas rater!

Trailer:

Liens:

http://limbogame.org

Gentoo Linux: ModemManager-0.6.0.0

Okay I’ve been banging my head against a wall for a week now (the wall is fine, thanks for worrying) but I couldn’t get ModemManager-0.6.0.0 to work. I’ve intially posted the problem here.

This issue occurred on my two laptops and on three different operating systems: Gentoo, Funtoo and Slackware -current.

I had to downgrade to v 0.5.2.0 , on Gentoo Linux (and Funtoo) here’s how I did since the ebuilds have been removed from Portage.

First of all, we’ll create a local overlay; we need three things: a directory to host our custom tree, a profile directory and a repository name

 #mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/profiles 

when you’ll  run emerge, it will complain about a missing repo name so we”ll go ahead and create it (area51 in my example)

# echo "area51" >> /usr/local/portage/profiles/repo_name 

Finally add your directory to make.conf:

 PORT_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" 

Okay, now that we’re set, we’ll create the modemmanager ebuild directory in our local overlay:

 #mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/net-misc/modemmanager/ 

Copy over the files directory from the main portage ebuild tree (we need these two files 01-org.freedesktop.ModemManager.pkla   01-org.freedesktop.ModemManager.rules) :

 #cp -pr /usr/portage/net-misc/modemmanager/files /usr/local/portage/net-misc/modemmanager 

No patches are available for v 0.5.2 so we’ll just go ahead and download the ebuild and create the manifest:

 # cd /usr/local/portage/net-misc/modemmanager/ 

Download the ebuild from here and place it in the aforementioned directory.

 # ebuild modemmanager-0.5.2.0-r3.ebuild manifest 

use eix to update the package tree:

 # eix-update 

I’ve masked modemmanager-0.6

 echo  "=net-misc/modemmanager-0.6.0.0" >> /etc/portage/package.mask 

Finally emerge v 0.5.2 from local overlay:

 emerge -av =net-misc/modemmanager-0.5.2.0-r3 

You’re good to go!

Präparat

Press play and dive into a sinkhole of bereavement, seep through the heavy sound of the skull-crushing drums, thanks to Atsuo, and the distorted sludgy guitars of Wata, get sucked into the ever-increasing glare of drone and doom.

Ahemm, well ok, I’m really pleased to see Boris musically overactive, they are masters of their own art, a level unreachable by the claw-like hand of cheesy music. Their back catalog is increasing pretty fast with a release per year or so, the sound is metastatic; from j-pop to free jazz but they are quite known for their drone hypnotic soundscapes a la Sunn o))) , Sleep and Melvins.

The Japanese trio is quite obscure and judging by the band photos, I don’t think that they’re willing to step into the limelight anytime soon.

My favorite tune off “Praparat” is a sweet wicked lullaby called “Elegy“. Enjoy

Welcome to Sky Valley

Long long time ago, somewhere in our galaxy, the Tetris super villain created planet earth and then Kyuss! A great band with super powers, just like Popeye but they used weed instead of spinach.

In fact, I always tell my imaginary best friend that the only flaw to Kyuss was Josh Homme‘s horrible haircut, aside from it, everything was pretty much stellar.

I’ve decided to review this album for no apparent reason other than it’s right before their final offering “…And the circus leaves town” and after their huge “Blues for The Red Sun” which makes for a solid argument, I guess!

The music is, well as you would expect from Kyuss; gritty, fuzzy and heavy guitars delivered  either by Josh Homme or his identical hologram. As for the vox; John Garcia is in a league of his own, killer unmatched vocals, he’s by far my favorite vocalist from the Desert Rock scene, he has a wild range and a set of pipes specially designed by the gods to suit Kyuss‘s style.

Welcome to Sky Valley reminds me of an era where men were men and recorded their music with no autotune bullshit. The music is vintage, raw and organic. It flows naturally be it an acoustic ballad like “Space Cadet” or down-tuned devastating stoner madness as in “Odyssey“.

The bass and drums are just astonishing, Brant Bjork and Scott Reeder are very skilled musicians and pair together very well! You’d get a natural shot in the arm just by listening to the bass lines in “Gardenia“.

This album is a cheap fare to outer space, a session-long cosmic jam and a guaranteed soar into a new hazy level where the sun is a bloody pulp and people are mushrooms, it’s pure perfection! But to put it in a more sober and delicate way; it’s just like that electric slap you get when you touch a girl’s itty bitty rear!

Lately, I’ve read that 3/4 of Kyuss is getting back together, minus Josh Homme, who’s obviously busy with QoTSA and Them Crooked Vultures, the project sprang after the demise of “Kyuss Lives!” due to a nasty legal battle with Josh Homme and Scott Reeder, and now it rolls under the cool label of “Vista Chino“, I’ll be looking forward to hearing what these guys have to offer.

Kyuss – Space Cadet 

Savages

 

There’s no better feeling than a jaw-dropping audio flavored surprise. Savages caught me off guard and it’s too damn good.

The mean bass lines and the fat beats moving along with the soul-slitting violins are blending together gracefully. The vox are voluptuous and sexy. I can hear many artists there from Gotan Project to Koop and Blue States.

I googled a bit and I found out about the mastermind behind Savages; he is a producer from Hungary named Nándor Kürtössy . Kudos to him for making the “Five Finger Discount” album a very pleasant down-tempo ride.

Enjoy!

††† Crosses

I’ve had this in mind for some time now and I happen to have a break to talk about it; Crosses is the brainchild of Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and Far‘s guitarist Shaun Lopez.

The project was born in 2011 and has 2 EPs under its belt as we speak, and I like what I’m hearing so far! Chino‘s clearly riding on the softer and laid back side with this one (as he did with the great yet underrated project Team Sleep ) and draws from Depeche Mode which is a good thing but it still has some heavy bass lines and eargasm-inducing synth.

Don’t get me wrong though, it’s not that as mellow as you’d think. Check out †hholyghs† and †elepa†hy :

Des Lyres

Les songes du coeur naissent d’élixir de ballote

Plantés, ils poussent sur les champs de batailles désertés

Fières bannières de guerre qui flottent

Telles des bardes et rixes muselées

 

Ces moments d’incertitude glacent le sang

Les instants figés qui s’écroulent lentement

Se nouent et sculptent autour de la nuque une chevelure qui pend

Une main glacée qui se tend, dans l’implacable attente, étrangle la raison

 

On voit alors défiler les nuances agitées,

Sur le givre d’un crépuscule médusé,

telles de rouges rapaces, par mille brasses, plongent

Et peinent toujours à se noyer

 

Les engins s’éteignent, leur son s’évapore d’un mugissement amer

Nous y sommes à temps et le rêve commence les  yeux grands ouverts

Indélébiles et éternels, le tableau est enfin clair

Châteaux de sable et sillages sur la mer

King Animal

                                       

When Soundgarden called it a day back in the mid 90′s, everybody thought that it was a premature demise of a very successful Band amid a highly acclaimed career.  I still to this day, and out of the Seattle movement, don’t consider them Grunge.

In fact, albums like “Badmotorfinger” or “Superunknown” are clearly on the heavy and sludgy side with a very pronounced Metal affiliation. But let the past and its legacy rest in peace, for now, fast forward to 2012; the tides turned and rumors about a new album started swirling, I was skeptical due to Cameron’s latest album with Pearl Jam being a sub-par release and with, you know, Cornell’s solo drivel, hopes shriveled and  hecklers were yelling :”Stick a fork in it!”, I know for a fact cause I was in the front row of the naysayers.

The first single “Been Away Too Long” was a positive sign and a step in the right direction after the dull and flat “Live To Rise“.

But when the final product; the first collection of all new material in nearly 16 years titled “King Animal” came out, it took me by a storm, and I think that many others were electrocuted as well. It was exciting to hear Thayil‘s weird fills and leads, Cameron’s precise and clinical drumming along with Cornell’s soaring signature vocals again, you can’t help but think: Soundgarden is back with a vengeance and a heavy kick-ass album.

Songs like “Blood on the valley floor” and “By Crooked Steps” sound like unreleased material off “Superunknown“, I would have hoped that more songs were in that vein but it’s still a very solid record nonetheless. Other tunes like “Bones of Birds“, which by the way reminds oddly of “Black Hole Sun“, are on the softer side with a laid-back feel.

Oh I nearly forgot to mention one of my favorites on the album; Worse Dreams, this is straight alt hard-rock with a versatile verse à la Faith No More.

So let me sum it up here; You’ve got an edgy release by Soundgarden, a fantastic new album by the Deftones and Celebration Day by Led Zeppelin, this will certainly leave hordes of fans pleased and make naysayers eat theirs words.

“By Crooked Steps” official video

Slackware 14: JACK Installation Notes

I was trying to set up a digital audio workstation using Ardour on Slackware Linux and the professional sound server JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), the latter will  basically allow us to manipulate streams between audio applications in a pattern that would redirect the output of App 1 to the input of App 2 ( a bit  à la ReWire under Windows if you’ve ever used Ableton or Reason).

A more thorough definition would be (snatched off jackaudio.org)

JACK is system for handling real-time, low latency audio (and MIDI). It runs on GNU/Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OS X and Windows (and can be ported to other POSIX-conformant platforms). It can connect a number of different applications to an audio device, as well as allowing them to share audio between themselves. Its clients can run in their own processes (ie. as normal applications), or can they can run within the JACK server (ie. as a “plugin”). JACK also has support for distributing audio processing across a network, both fast & reliable LANs as well as slower, less reliable WANs.

Here are some useful tips, hope someone will benefit from them!

First of all I’ve grabbed  jack-audio-connection and its Qt front-end qjackctl then I had to create limits.conf and write the following lines:

vim /etc/security/limits.conf
@audio          -  rtprio                   99
@audio          -  nice                    -10
@audio          -  memlock             unlimited

(The “unlimited” allocated memory could be replaced by half the RAM size)

Next, and since JACK needs real time privileges, on Slackware a workaround is available by executing the following command:

setcap cap_ipc_lock,cap_sys_nice=ep /usr/bin/jackd

or

setcap cap_ipc_lock,cap_sys_nice=ep /usr/bin/qjackctl

It depends whether you run jackd or qjackctl

Add your normal user to the “audio” group by executing

usermod -G -a audio “yourusename”

 

Adjust your kernel (from the Gentoo wiki:)

* General setup  --->
      Control Group Support --->
            [ ] Group CPU scheduler

* Processor types and features  --->
      Preemption Model (Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop))  
      Timer frequency (1000Hz)

Log out and log back in, should work fine.
Links:

Real-time audio workstation on Slackware

恋の予感 (Koi no Yokan)

I believe that when music reaches that intimate level where you can relate to it, it shifts from a form of art to become a living, breathing entity.

Much more than a stereo stream; Deftones has always been a myriad of textures, colors and energy.

And as peculiar as this might sound, they manage to sharpen their sound with every release. I’m stoked, cause that’s what happened recently with Koi No Yokan, which merely translates but not exactly to ; “love at first sight”, and I wouldn’t beg to differ here, because that’s what I felt for this album.

Deftones struck really hard with the first single “Leathers“; the angst of the music pierces right through the lyrics, it falls right within a quote by Khalil Gibran: “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”  and it was a fair premonition that a promising follow-up to 2010′s Diamond Eyes was being on the way.

It’s indeed a very good offering, a natural progression, I sure didn’t want another “Adrenaline” or “Around The Fur“. Koi No Yokan has songs that suit every mood, the range has been expanded and the tracks have a spaced feel, a very gentle yet strong character,  a trip right through a world of fantasy, it’s almost as if you were half-awake in a dream.

This  album is definitely a grower that stands up there in  my top 5 this year, gracious and well crafted, a shot in the arm that will make you feel exactly as stated in “What Happened To You?” “We’re Alive somewhere else/ far ahead of our time…”

Highly recommended for slackers and day-dreamers.