The News Review:

- pen Your Eyes (Video Track)
- Dark Quiet Bebop and Folkish Metal
- What’s music to some is a racket to others

pen Your Eyes (Video Track)
TheCelebrityCafe.com – Sep 23, 2007
This album is actually quite diverse in its soundsfrom the typical goth-rock sounds of ‘open your eyes’ which is an obvious track for a singleand should appeal fairly broadly to more celtic sort of sounds that suit the cover art and its new age sort of look and title. I find ‘forsaken’ and ‘open your eyes’ are quite goodand I really like ‘dreaming all of you’ with its layered vocals in the chorus which are nice soundingthen the harsher music and vocals that stop it sounding too nice and pop like also ‘slay your dragons’ is excellentas is the more electronic sounding bonus track ‘die hoffnung’. I dont love every trackyet enjoyed the sound of all as a new experience something different to listen to. This band sounds similar to gothic metal bandsabout as heavy as epica or within temptation yet without the classical influences its decent heavy guitar but with more electronic influences and a bit of I’m not sure whatbut I like its sound as it fills a gap I didnt know existed before hearing it.

Dark Quiet Bebop and Folkish Metal
New York Times – Sep 23, 2007
Lynnn its latest album the metal band High on Fire below has made some changes to its sound. Live recordings of the mid-’60s Miles Davis Quintet are easy to find even those made just within the yearlong span when the saxophonist George Coleman was in the band. But “Live at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival” one of a series of live recordings released by the organization’s own label Monterey Jazz Festival Records to commemorate its 50th anniversary this year is killer nonetheless familiar set list and all. (Anyone who knows even the band’s officially released material has heard many other versions of “Stella by Starlight” “Walkin’ ” and “Autumn Leaves. “) It’s still the beginning stages here for this band one of jazz’s prime catalysts… n “Sungbird” (Sunnyside) she has found a way to make those two sides produce a beneficial tension. The line running through the record is “Espa?p. 16″ a beautiful six-part suite for solo piano written in 1890 by the Spanish composer Isaac Alb?z that draws on rhythms and phrases from Andalusian folk music. She alternates parts of the suite with adaptations of the same parts for jazz quartet varying hugely in their strategies. It’s a little like a homework assignment but her skill as a pianist and the beauty of her source material make it appealing. High on Fire High on Fire valorizes metal as pounding medium-tempo drones and trances. n “Death Is This Communion” (Relapse) the riffs work their way through long-form songs as the rhythms change underneath and Matt Pike the guitarist and vocalist sings in a scoured voice that has grown more and more similar to that of Lemmy from Motorhead.

What’s music to some is a racket to others
Jakarta Post – Sep 23, 2007
***** But moving swiftly along this fine holy month may I crave your indulgence this week whilst I discuss an urban problem that has no doubt caused many reading this to tear their hair out in frustration. I’m referring here to the issue of noise pollution a problem that admittedly some are more sensitive to than others. Noise is a highly subjective thing of course; one man’s music (often mine) is another man’s racket. In addition noise does not directly poison the planet. It is transient and unlike chemical pollutants once the noise stops the environment is free of it. In human terms though noise can definitely be considered a form of pollution. The roar of a Bajaj (motorized pedicab) engine for example may be as damaging in human terms as the plumes of black soot that billow from its exhaust… Sleep is lost and migraines flourish. Noise causes stress and stress as any doctor will tell you kills. Getting down to specific cases though the Batavian noise assault (good name for a metal band that) breaks down into several specific causes. If noise pollution is a modern disease then Jakarta is most definitely PA positive. Indonesia’s enduring love affair with the PA system will be a familiar nuisance to many of you. It seems that where this country is concerned one can paraphrase the motto of the American National Rifle Association: “”They’ll get my microphone when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. “” During any public gathering of more than say two people the use of an 8 kW sound rig a microphone and a graphic equalizer set to accentuate the harshest timbres of the human voice is absolutely de rigueur even if your audience is only sitting one meter away from you.