Castle Bravo

Castle Bravo! hurray fireworks!! - Dr. Zoidberg

Listen to this one and you'll have a blast! (box laughs). This song I wrote the first half of the lyrics a while back. Maybe it was before the '09 summer. Anyway, it all started when Quentin (aka Acolyt #2 aka Ernie Balls of Steel), just popped a chat window at me face saying "how about Castle Bravo?".

This is the story of when a strike of genius
becomes the path of doom lurking amongst us

This story is entitled Castle Bravo!

In the ages of chaos, infamy was born
because any peace attempt was forlorn

A promess of peace made to nations of the rich
To annihilate all they need is to flip a switch

Our incompetent leaders rule the world with fear
Now only thing left to us is our bloodied tears

Those who can purchase peace will be feared forever
Those who can't build their own will leave in fear forever

Diplomatic failures, Surrogates of ambition
Conflicts of interests, Intersecting wills for power

The doomsday clock ticks at an increasing rate
Midnight is coming, time to say your last prayer

For our leaders have finally gone nuts
Warheads ready for lift off, Silos openning all around the civilized world, Red Alert - termination initiated!

(alarms set off)

Missile ballet, a dance of death
Nuclear blasts, mighty fireworks
Sterilization, of the earth's crust
Life vaporized, and will never come back

Those who could purchase peace didn't leave forever
Those who didn't build their own shared the doom of the others.

- It was something like 9am, just got logged in at work. What a hell was he talking about? -

Second chat line: a link to a wikipedia page about this Castle Bravo thing.

It started making sense, Quentin, in his own way was trying to suggest we write a song about an out of control nuclear experiment. Very Thrash Metallish, Dave Mustaine would be proud!

Then I taught about some lyrics, and I didn't feel like writing about a single nuclear blast but about -because I like doom- the whole earth being repaint by atomic fire.

Because I like writing lyrics as short stories that have a intro, development and conclusion I had to explain why oh why would the earth undergo such an horrible fate (or a healthy cure from life infestation).

The story is obvious: our leaders, who are kind of a whole bunch of psychos (you must have strong ego issues to want to be the US president, I'm just saying...) well they go nuts up another notch and start attacking each other with nukes and well we all die, the poor, the rich, the famous, the lonely, all of us, united and equal for the first and the last time.

Musically, I tried to render a growing sense of oppression, of danger until an alarm rings and all hell breaks loose.

The big four, live at last!

I just bought my tickets for what will be the festival of the century. Just look at the bands who will play during this very unique day: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax (yes this is the famous magical Big Four of thrash metal), Motorhead, Heaven & Hell (aka Black Sabbath) and Mastodon.

This will happen in Zurich, Switzerland, on June 18th 2010 at the Sonisphere Festival!!

If anyone wanna come down there with me & my pals, let me know!!

Happy Clem

Minor blog update

As you can see, today I did a minor style update that should make the blog look shinier on Firefox 3.6+, Chrome 4+ and Safari 4+, using some CSS3 magik :)
Introducing linear gradients and some more border-radius. I like it. I could make it work in IE using some shady Microsoft filters, but they are quite buggy so I'm not gonna spend some time on it!

Enjoy!

Funerals on the Moon

I know the title is weird. The lyrics of this song are weird and even the music itself is put together in a weird way, but if you're here you don't want normal, you want some Clem weirdness!

Funerals on the moon, demo download

They reached the outer limits of knowledge, Producing the unbelievable
For the parlor Humankind spread its breed through the emptiness
Spores of culture colonizing the infertile universe
Robots of artificial intelligence brought to Life
The realm of the living isn't only organic anymore

Update your mind database, there is Still one limit out there
But you CAN make it the best scene of your dream-life

Your funerals on the moon, buy your funerals on the moon.

A wire to connect you to everyone
A chip to make you think twice as fast
A friend-list that is never empty
A fridge to cook all of your favorite meals

Update your mind database, there is Still one limit out there
But you CAN make it the best scene of your dream-life

Your funerals on the moon, buy your funerals on the moon.

Yes we got pretty much all you ever need
and we even got what you'll want for your closure.
For everything is to sell, your soul, your body,
and your funerals on the moon.
Buy your funerals on the moon.

A ship to put you into orbit
To your last route we commit
Your children in the passenger seat
the last minutes of your rotting meat

We know how to reach the sun
But this ain't your destination
We're bringing you to the moon
You bought your funerals on the moon

I wrote the lyrics this summer when I was waiting in Barcelona at the airport's gate to fly back to Paris. It was 7 am and I was still a bit wasted because of a very well Mojitoed last-fiesta-before-I-go in Spain. So I was sitting there waiting for my flight. You may not know but I'm not that awesomely comfortable with the concept of getting inside a box weighting 120 tons when empty filled with hundreds of liters of highly flammable fuel with a couple of guys who sit in the front hoping to fly the thing using an incredibly complex board designed by aliens for aliens (some call this a plane). Scientists say it will fly because of the design of its wings and the power of its engines, but really it sounds crazy to me.

Then I started thinking about the future, how all of this will evolve, the airports, transportations, people. It seemed to me that the 2010 guy is much more different compared to the 1990 guy than the 2010 plane compared to the 1990 one. I mean, nowadays lots of people are obsessed with twitting their boring lives (which are getting longer thanks to science, what's the goal? longer boredom?) and hunting for crispy nasty secrets in their friend's facebook pictures. You gotta have 900 friends on Myspace or you are a looser, but hey you already are a looser because you are on MySpace and that website is so old (more that 5 years!). Of course you can build real friendships while facing life and death situations in the depths of a dungeon in World of Warcraft, the kind of friendship that if you die in front of your computer someone will eventually notice that "GonzoTheGreat" level 56 orc (what a noob!) didn't login for the last 5 days.

I'm not being original here, what I think is that we are getting physically disconnected to our fellow human beings and dependent to pieces of hardware that are closer and closer to our bodies and will at last be directly integrated in ourselves so we can be continually conscious of the updates of our followed RSS feeds and stuff.

Humanity will eventually evolve to a cyborg race just to be virtually connected with friends & work, which both will be virtual. That was my conclusion.

Then being a cyborg means being technology enhanced. It will probably mean having tons of nanorobots in our body, reorganizing our cells, optimizing our neuronal paths making us cunningly fast thinkers, and more or less immortal. What would be the effects of virtual friendships to a mind after 4 centuries of real loneliness, trapped in perfect bodies and in a society where you got it all without an effort?

Alright, no drinks for me.

Fun music

As I keep exploring the world wide web hoping to find some Über crazy metal bands that somehow didn't make it to my blessed ears yet (breathe), I came across this total craziness: The Diablo Swing Orchestra!
Oh my, that swings heavily!

If you are open to musical experiments, you should enjoy this one. It definitely made me smile, but in a good way. One last word: Refreshing!

Poll results

Dr Brisby?

It's a win for Dr Brisby! with an astonishing number of votes (4) it surpassed all of its opponents which stalled at 1 point each.

Of course the poll left only 4 choices and maybe your true favorite (if any) wasn't in the list.
But it's cool that you guys like the Brisby song! I got some more coming for you in a more or less near future :)

Clemster.

Back in Montana ... oh wait...

A map of France's départements, La Lozère is in red.
Paris is the tiny one in the center of the northern half.

Last month I went with a bunch of friends in Lozère, the least populated area of France. We stayed at Julien's farm house. His parents bought a few abandoned farm houses about 30 years ago and spent most of their holidays in Lozère to rebuild the houses.

La Lozère is a rural and mountainous area which reminded me of my Montana days (big up for my Montana friends!). The mountains in the center of France called "massif central" are really old, they used to be volcanoes. Now these volcanoes are just some nicely curved (but tall) hills due to eons of erosion.

Julien's farm house is located at about 1 kilometer high. So even though it was the end of September, which is warm in the south of France, it was quite cool.

Julien's farm house and Ruben's poncho (find it!)

We took Julien's family wagon and drove straight to the south from Paris. It took about 6 hours to get to his place. Good to know that there are places saved from the chaos of modernity this close :)

The guys started to freak out when they realized they couldn't get any 3G Internet connection with their iPhones down there. Edge only! Sounds like technological Jurassic Park. That pleased me, I work all days long on the Internet, I sure as hell wanted a break from IT stuff.

When we arrived I was a bit sick because of the mountainous roads (left , right, left , right, left , right and oh left, right... x 2346346) So I grabbed a guitar (Julien's awesome Ovation acoustic godess) and played in the garden, breathed the fresh air... But Lydie started screaming at me because I wasn't helping. The others where bringing the food from the van to the kitchen.

Sancho Panza and Rick Hunter
keepers of the farm's law

Being far from any piece of civilization, I enjoyed some good old plain natural activities like drinking beer (belgium, thanks nico!), shooting cans (while sober of course) and barbecue (the sausages down there, oh my god, the sausages, oh my god!!).

We also did some sports, we went kayaking on the Tarn river (the gorges are gorgeous) twice totaling about 24Km, I went running in the morning before breakfast (ok it was only once!) and the others did a couple of hikes while I enjoyed sleeping because of a major sun burn on me face.

Paris Clem!




How sexy a Kayak can be?

Evil Cattle, don't you try you horns on meeeeee!!!

A strange library for Dr. Brisby

One the things I like most about writing music is finding a title for a song. You should always start with a good title. I think « A strange library for Dr. Brisby » is quite a good one. It's quite verbose, a mouthful of a title it is. When you read that you expect a song that would be quite peculiar, rich in mysteries. I like that! Who's Brisby? why is he receiving a library? who gives away a library anyway? finally why the heck is this library strange? ... Or you could just give a damn and think, oh no... here it comes again, Clem is trying to be a grandiloquent as he can be.


Brisby's demo download

Grandiloquent it is! I wrote as much music as I could, and that's why I didn't write anything for the blog for a while.

One day at the beginning of this summer, I was chatting with Quentin (The Acolyts's bassist) and I got this idea for a story. It's set about a century back in time, in a western capital city, say London. A man, Doctor, named Bribsy receives a letter from his old friend from medical university. He hasn't seen him for decades. The letter urges Brisby to come because of a tragedy. The friend is dying, and seems to have aged extremely, much more than he should have. He offers Brisby the rich library he's got because he knows the Doctor has always been into books. The gift comes with a warning, that he shall not open the Red book.

For years Brisby reads all of the contents of the library, each book contains vast amounts of incredible knowledge, superb writings and poems. They are a delight to read (the contrary of my prose).

One day he finishes the last book except the Red one. Only the Red one remains, and becomes an obsession, why shouldn't he read a book, how dangerous a book can be?

You will know if you read the lyrics!! Quentin was quite excited by the idea and wrote the lyrics for the song. I like 'em, they sound mysterious, gloomy...

After Quentin sent me the lyrics I started writing the music. It took me about a month and a half! Of course I've been quite buzy so I actually just spent ... I don't know, about 6 to 10 hours on it.

The result I'm quite proud of, I know many of you guys won't like it. It's long 10 minutes and 34 seconds!! Definitely not a radio song. It has many changes of mood, some of the most aggressive riffs I ever wrote. It's still a demo and it could evolve a bit, the solos, transitions and the voice track are still perfectible. I bet rehearsing this song with the band will be quite a challenge and will bring other touches of influences from Martial (guitarist) and Anto (Drummer).
I can't wait to punch that thing in the face of a public live!

I hope you guys enjoy it. Leave me some thoughts about it!

Paris Clem: You know you like it.

Lyrics
Doctor Brisby please come to me
My life's ending, soon I won't be
Anymore

In my library you'll find wonders
Knowledge and Wisdom you'll discover
But

Don't ever under no circumstance
Open the red book and read its contents
For it is doom!

The book ruined many a man's life throughout the ages
It cannot be destroyed nor can it be harmed
It shall bring you riches should you keep it shut tight
Don't you open it, see my face and behold
The power of the book is not worth getting old

For a few years the book stayed under
A big pile of books still to be read
But one day he glanced at the red cover
And couldn't get it out of his head

His friend's warning came back to him
But that didn't make him yield
Brisby rashly took the book in his hands
And soon his fate would be sealed

Reading the first words he got in a frenzy
Filling his mind with so much knowledge
His head felt like bursting

Turning the pages at a frantic pace
By the power of the book Brisby was possessed
His hands he didn't see

For if he took even a second to stop
The poor cursed man would have seen
The skin of his hands was beginning to rot
As his hair whitened and became thin

While he was turning yet another page
The horror clenched a fist around his soul
He glanced at his reflection in a mirror
And saw how he was getting old

The book fell off his hands as he fell into despair
Shrieking “What has become of me ?”

“This book for sure is a wretched sorcery
what a bitter lesson lies in it
For the knowledge it gave me I'd have found out anyway
If I had taken the time to live
In my greed for sapience I got carried away
And now on myself I can only grieve”

Mr Brisby was in bed, feeling his last hour has come
With his last strength he took his favorite pen
And on a paper he wrote…

–back to part 1–
Sir Flaherty please come to me
My life's ending, soon I won't be
Anymore

In my library you'll find wonders
Knowledge and Wisdom you'll discover

Welcome in September!!

How is that not interesting??

Back to school Rehearsal

Kids are going back to school pretty soon after some long and hopefully sunny summer holidays. The Acolyts are back too, we have reheasaled yesterday. It's been a difficult one, we didn't get together for about two months, so we were a bit rusty plus we introduced for the first time the songs The Nameless and Bring me back to the sanitarium to our reheasing plan. For those who are totally nuts there is a 24 minutes long rehearsing video outtake:

The Acolyts - Repet 29 08 2009 sélectionné dans Musique et Metal / Punk

We are playing the new songs and Harbinger.

Paris clem: careful with this one.

In Barcelona

These are pictures from the Gracia Party. This party is about decorating the streets of Gracia's neighborhood and playing live music every night for one week. The streets were packed with people enjoying some Tapas and drinks, usually mojito or beer.

Week-end!

This afternoon I'm leaving for a long week-end in Barcelona! (spain) I'm hoping to get in touch with my old spanish friends from Helsinki (finland). Unfortunately Luis my ex-flatmate won't be in town... Another time pal!

blog update

I juste discovered a couple of features of Blogger, so welcome to the new buggy Comment thing on the right and the new vote thing under each post. Google should put a bit of time in improving the wysiwyg editor instead of adding dome wierd buggy addons.

Looks like a twitt but it ain't, it's just an uninspired blog post. (twitts could be just that?)

Dunkerque

Hello fellas! I promissed earlier some pictures of my week-end in the north (of france) so here they are!

Carole being a movie star on the beach with her brother being a surfer
The very wide shores of the north. This is where the Britts flew away from the battlefield when france was invaded in 1940
A Nazi bunker and its conqueror
Sign information FAIL, notice the "thanks for your understanding" at the bottom
Enjoying a weird smile next to a canal in Belgium
Me next to the satute of the local hero Jean Bart, the guy who got Dunkerque rid of pirates!
Yes I own this shop


Sorry for the bad quality of this post, Blogger really sucks at composing.

Paris Clem: La ouiche la ouiiiiche !!!

What's up?

The week-end was a blast! I'm currently collecting pictures from the huge party we were. It's gonna take a bit of time to filter and build you a "best of".
I've updated The Acolyts' myspace page, so if you want to listen to some Heavy/Doom Metal demos, it's there : http://www.myspace.com/theacolyts

Catch you on the flip side!

Paris Clem: Oh my guinness!

edit: invalid URL

Irish week-end

Tomorrow morning I'll leave for a 3 days week-end in Dublin! Traveling between European capitals has become incredibly cheap these days, hence the price for my plane ticket: €0.25. Of course you have to add ecological and airport taxes, so in the end the round trip Paris-Dublin is €60. Not so bad!
My friends and I constituted a large party (12 friends!) and we are ready to have some Guinness pleasures in real Irish pubs! The accomodation is quite cheap too, I made a reservation for an hostel, €17/nights.

I'm quite sure this week end will be a blast!! I hope that we'll take nice pictures so I can upload them in a future blog post. By the way I just spent two awesome week-ends, one in Dunkerque (north of france) and the other one in Brittany (not Britain !). I hope to find some time to sort the pictures and post them too :)

Have a good week-end!!

Clément.

experimenting with HTML 5

I was wondering if that worked for you guys:

I'm testing the HTML5 audio tag. As far as Firfox is concerned it only works with wav and vorbis (OGG) files. I'm curious to know if that works behind your firewalls and other procrastination exterminators.

edit:
Many thanks for your testing! I did some tests on my side and here are the results:

Firefox 3.5 => Success (even behind Natixis' firewall of death)
Chrome 3.0 => Fail (Thanks Leif!)
Edit :Chrome 4.0 => Success !
Safari 4 => Half Fail (Support the audio tag since 3.1 but doesn't support OGG)
Opera 6.24 => Fail
Opera 10 (beta) => Fail although this browser is impressively fast!
IE => Of course failed

Conclusion:

As expected the HTML5 audio tag's support is still very thin. Even if the tag was supported by all the browsers there is a codec war preparing. Apple is pushing for AAC and H.264 while Mozilla implements OGG vorbis. Of course Microsoft (if they ever plan to implement HTML5, why bother?) will want their DRM filled WMA/WMV to be the only standard on the web. Guess what, you, web develepper, will never use such things as HTML5 audio tags because your boss will tell you: "you're ****ing with 70% of our market share". So back to flash my firends! It's a weird buggy, fat and slow pluggin that somehow managed to find its way on most client's browser.
Other solution: if you only target A browser, well then just use all of its power! (you could even go ahead and use some ActiveX if you are crazy enough and if you hate anything free (and sane) in this world)

Paris Clem: nerdy enough for you?

Epicus snorticus mucus

He comes from the deep
This one, you won't be able to sweep
Unholy life, matured in you

In a sneeze, invoked by the fool

Fatal tragedy

Grotesque treatchery

Snorticus the great is here to ignit your misery

mucus golem, you don't kown what your destiny hides
mucus.. flooding the nostral ways
mucus.. at last free, got away
mucus... my life in decay

Paris Clem: fine poetry

Firefox 3.5 is released!

Click here and download it!
It's out there and it's great.
Shame on you if it's not installed on your computer today!

Galaxia

It's a song I have in my song pipeline, sometimes I give it a try, trying to find something new to play with it. I have progressed a bit on it. Tonight I had fun adding some strings and organs.




Enjoy!

Paris Clem!!

Das kungstruk zie flogosaktan

Knowing that I'm a metalhead, many are tempted to ask me if I love or love Rammstein. The answer is: no I'm not a fan of that band, even if, I admit, they have a few catchy tunes that I find okay.
Then I just found funny to write a fake Rammstein song, because, in my opinion, their music is quite simple/basic.
Here are the lyrics:

das kungstruk zie flogosaktan
da küntrrrruk !
erzi fenschälpt
harrr tesk lumük
virrr schalben kløg zwerhund
Wieztzen shrleeuuuu
fråkken wolhren perden zum
frundzenheim ! frundzenheeeiiim !
pfaßenhund das heinfrikzystch
flogo'SAKtan

And of course, the song!! :




Paris Clem: A multilangual frog

Foxy Browsin'

Hey there! Firefox 3.5 is almost out, you can find the Relase Candidate 2 version on mozilla's website. I'm already using FF3.5 at work and at home, it already has Firebug (v1.4b) which is pretty much all I need in my toolbox to do my CSS, HTML and Javascript debugging. The new version offers many improvements on speed and memory consumption, so, to my friends out there who are usualy reluctent to move to new versions (Ruben?), it pretty much is FF3 but faster and lighter so it's ok you can go on, do the upgrade and your PC won't burn. FF3.5 also offers new exciting CCS3 and HTML5 implementations and I'm willing to use them. As I can't use them where I work because wat.tv's browser market share is 60% Internet Explorer, I'm thinking about trying these new techniques on my blog. So over time this blog will have some new cool features that will only work in FF3.5 and the future versions of Safari, Google Chrome, Opera... all the other browsers that are aware of standards and willing to keep up with the innovation. Unfortunately the business website market is a decade late technology wise because of the need to degrate gracefully in IE.

Anyhow, do yourself a favor and upgrade your surfin' with Firefox (3.5)!

Paranoid

This week gets the 60th post! Wowzer, I never thought I would keep that blog alive that far, well ok I'm quite far from the initial goal of "a new song each week" but eh, I got a life too and it pretty god damn buzy right now!
Anyway, this week I give you a very personal interpretation of Black Sabbath's most popular tune: Paranoid.


Careful little fellow, it's much heavier than the original song.

Paris Clem: Keep on rollin'

Call me: Tony Glair!

Disgusting play on words. But this is how I've been feeling for about three weeks, I got a cold that won't leave me. Darn this cold is a possessive one! Because of that stuff I haven't been in the mood for blogging and music. I bought a couple of albums lately, Heaven & Hell - The devil you know and Black Label Society - Hangover Music, Volume VI. Heaven & Hell is actually Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio singing (he used to sing for Black Sabbath at the begining of the 80's when they released the famous album Heaven & Hell, hence the new band name). The album isn't as good as expected, especially since I really liked Tony Iommi's (the famous guitarist behind eveything black sabbath) 2005 release Fused which had Glenn Hughes' voice. Yes the album has some good moments, but it lacks speed, usually I like doom metal which is really a slow kind of metal. But doom metal is all about writing songs that piles up the heaviest riffs until a break-even point where speed is unleashed like a musical orgasm. In this album, there are no orgasms. Some good riffs for sure, Dio sings very well but doesn't compare with the extremly well he used to do. I guess the most dissapointing is that the album is okay but sounds like a Dio album and not a Tomy Iommi one... Oh well, I'm awfully picky.
Black Label Society's Hangover Music is a safe pick if you want some rock and a quiet moment at the same time. Usually the Zakk Wylde, Ozzy Osborne's lead guitar and Black Label Society's voice and guitar, offers us much heavier material. Here it's more emotional, well... why not? It sound pretty good to me, often you could mistake it for some Alice in Chains.

Paris Clem: Criticizing the others but unable to do anyting that sounds a bit as good as they do

Sunny days, flower's blossom

Humm the sunny and warm days of spring are arriving in Paris, everyone starts wearing the most scandalously revealing cloth, we sweat in the metro, it's hot... so hot. The sexual tension arises in the city and everyone's aroused as can be(uh uh nice poetry eh?). I give you today: Paris Porn!


The story behind that music: seriously I was just playing some random A6th chords and then I had this slow melody in my mind. It needed another chord to keep going so I added a Dmaj7. It sounded alright to me at first but way unusual compared to my usual stuff. Then it came to me as a flash: it sounds like some... porn music. So I added some Latino style percussions and deep sexual voices, et voilà!

Paris Clem: revamping the sex industry with uber hot musical content.

Hendrix babe

Some kind of perky blues that just popped in my brain. I had to output it. Here is the music:


Paris clem: Bluesin' around

Nihon 2

March 1st, 2009:

That was a tiring journey/arrival. We got up at 4pm, just like big bums. Hungry we went out for a snack at a curry joint at about 7pm. I've chosen a fried chicken scallop, cut in slices served with a Curry Level 3 sauce. The others had a level 2 but on the menu it was written that level 3 is the spiciness "like a curry should be". Humm there are 10 levels of spiciness available so level 3 sounds fair... It's burnin' Hell in my mouth!!!. I'm usually quite resistant to spicy foods, but oulalala, this stuff is violent! Thinking that a level 10 exists sounds impossible. That stuff gave me horrible hiccups, but it was good... yeaaaah.
Then we went for a piece of cake in a small café. We noticed: there are no man in Japan. Well at least not in cafés (I'm not speaking about the beverage). Walking down the streets of Shibuya we bumped into Cyril's friends, they were celebrating a birthday! So we went for some karaoke with this crazy crowd. In Japan karaoke is a big deal, they are everywhere and they fill entire buildings.

Each group of karaoke singers get their own private room where they have a TV set, some sort of encyclopedia where all the music in the world is indexed (almost but we did find this one : Moskow. Check this goodness if you don't know it) and some pads to select your music from. Many folks need a little push to sing in a karaoke so business oriented Japanese thought it was a good idea to provide beer, as much as you want, for about 8$. Because drinking without eating isn't a smart move, you also get all the greasy bar food you love... Your dear writer sang a Barry white track, My everything. Stunning ;)
After ruining the place with a classic smell like teen spirit and the pogo-stick dancin' that goes with it, we left for a small pub located at the 5th floor of a building. The place probably used to be an apartment! One table, a bar and that's it. There wasn't even windows. There I met the second Finnish guy in two days! They must be taking over japan slowly or something. Of course I had to practice a bit my Finnish (I love showing up my language skills, isn't it what I'm doing right now after all??). A couple of Mitä Kuuluu, ei paskiempa and Kitti vittusti bought me a drink ;)

French version (If you read it you either suck or you are great, depending on your mother tongue, remember: this version is just the raw note as I wrote it during the trip):

On s'est levés a 16h comme des grosses larves. On est sorti manger un curry vers 19h, j'ai pris un poulet pané frit en tranches avec une sauce au curry niveau 3 "niveau de curry comme un curry devrait être", oulala c'était violent! Ensuite on est allé prendre un dessert dans un petit resto, truc amusant les hommes n'existent pas au japon. En marchant dans la rue on croise par hasard les amis de Cyril ;) c'était l'anniversaire de l'un d'entre eux. On est allé a un karaoke finalement et on a chante et bu jusque 2h du matin! Je leur ai fait l'interprétation de Barry White ultime qui a calme tout le monde :) on est allé dans un petit bar (un bar qui se trouvait dans un immeuble au 5em étage) la je croise le deuxième finlandais en deux jours (je crois qu'ils envahissent secrètement le japon) on boit quelques bières et finalement on vas se coucher.

Rehearsal

Saturday morning, The Acolyts rehearsed. We were auditioning a new drummer, Anto, he did quite well given that we gave him a very short notice. Anto and I used to play in the same Metallica cover band, so it was a real pleasure to hear his metallish drumming again! I think the sound is a bit better than usual (still can't hear the singin' very well but it could actually be a good thing...). I guess the band was quite rusty since we didn't play together for more than a month (because our drummer was not responding) so we didn't manage to play Harbinger really well. Anyway it wasn't a real rehearsal because we were there to hear what Anto's got to say about drumming. He performed quite well, he will tell us shortly if he is definitely interested in joining the band or not... Suspence!

We played a few cover songs on this occasion since it wasn't a real rehearsal. So today I give you the Acolyts playing For Whom The Bell Tolls and Seek & Destroy from Metallica! Don't be to excited I sucked on the vocals... Unfortunately I'm no James Hetfield. We played a bit of Megadeth but that sucked much more because we don't even know the riffs ;)

after typing this to create the right links for you for f in ../../../Repes/18.04.09/*mp3 ; do ln -s "$f" "./`basename \"$f\" mp3`clem"; done
here is the music!



Paris Clem.

Bring me back to the sanitarium - Take two.

A bit of progress has been done on this song, I recorded a bass track and a second guitar track/harmonization on the thrash verses (I'm no bassist so I'm sure Q1 (the Acolyts bassist) will do a much better job!). Still I have to re-record the singing because of my annoying pronunciation of the P in the word psycho. By the way if you have any pronunciation hints I'll gladly take'em :)



Oh by the way, here are the lyrics, (still in the writing process, just like the music):


Bring me back to the sanitarium
Words by Q1 & Clem
Music by Clem

Doom intro :

An empty hall, white and gray
Silent and deserted
Some stains on the walls

A few dead lights
No one at the desk
The cold welcome (x2)

Thrash verse:

An empty man, white and wrinkled
Silent and blank-minded
Some stains on his clothes

A quite dead gaze
Sitting in a corner
Mindless geezer

Have You Ever Heard A Psycho Kid Scream ?

Chorus:

Please bring me back to the Sanitarium
Where I can find my inner peace
Please bring me back to the Sanitarium

Thrash verse:

An empty door, white and thick
Silent and still
Some words on the painting

Psycho Ward For the Kids
What’s behind
No one knows

Have You Ever Heard A Psycho Kid Scream ?

Chorus:

Please bring me back to the Sanitarium
Where I can find my inner peace
Please bring me back to the Sanitarium



Paris Clem: who said I'm whining all the time?

Bonté divine!

Last night I went to the theater (thanks to Carole) to see that play : Bonté Divine! This comedy, based on religious themes was a delight, pretty short but quite funny indeed. I guess I should go to the theater more often, it has a bit more liberty in its themes than the movies (of course there are "cinéma d'auteur" kind of movies but they usually are cerebral onanism).

Progressive Nation 2009

Dream Theater and Opeth are on tour, and they will hit Paris at the Zenith on October 4th! Count me in!! I especially want to see Opeth on stage, it's one of my favorites bands and I heard that their performances are great & fun, can't wait!

The Metal Crew

Have a look at Metallica performing Master of Puppets live at Bercy, Paris!
(it starts with the end of another song The day that never comes). This video should give you a feel of the pit. Listen how the crowd sing along. That's the metal crew baby!

My life for metal!

Meeetal! yeah that's the stuff :) Although I've been experimenting different styles, my preference will always go to metal. Why? Because it's awesome (now that's a killer statement used to support a proposition).
First, Metal speaks to me like no other music can. While it can have thunderous hammer smashing face rhythms that pounds your head until adrenaline makes your heart explode, it also has extremely melodic pieces that fills your lachrymal channels with tears of joy... Screaming guitar solos and singers giving all of their heart to the public (and a public that gives it back in the mosh-pit).
Metal is love my friends. It's the love of a brotherhood that have strong values of honor and an epic drive to push artists skills to rocket to the skies of gods music mastery (a good band that lasts over time must have incredible musical skills, it's part of the show, what the audience expects).
Metal is also a mature style that was elaborated on several styles that were already mature at that time. Yes, Metal is based on Rock and Blues, which have proved their value over time. The first Metal band was Black Sabbath. They released their first album in February 1970. Since then Metal has evolved or should I say has mutated in many many sub genres. There is almost a sub-genre per band but one could blur the lines a bit a discover some families. So metal has kind of an endless stream of discoveries waiting for you to find out, tame, and love.

Well, I just went to a Metallica show last night, and damn it kicked so much my ass that I revolved twice around the moon before ultimately crashing into my bed after more than 2 hours of ultimate thrashing.

Love you guys!

Paris Clem: The sweet metal embrace.

You were right!

Yes, the Blog shutdown was indeed an April fool's prank! Don't worry, the Clem continues to irrigate the web with his facetious posts :)

To you my dear audience: YOU ROCK!

Blog is dead

Allright, I'm fed up with writing this blog, so this is the last post. Anyway, who cares right?
Thanks for the few who have taken some time to read my English and especially forgave my usual pedantic and sarcastic tone.

Paris Clem.

CD Cover !

If you have allways fantasized about having a CD cover for my music here is what I created for you and for the album Blog Music that contains all the 2008 records.

Metal break

Time for your little metal break! I don't know what's happening to me these days but I keep writing music like "snap!". Here is what I wrote tonight: Bring me back to the sanitarium

It's some doom/thrash/prog/heavy/pop/metal. Yep I did it :P
I hope you guys like it. It could become a The Acolyts song, but the end of the song needs to be written first!

Paris Clem: Thrashing the muse

Nihon 1

February the 28th, 2009:

5am Japan time, I am still in the plane. From the window I can see the first rays of the rising sun.
We took the bus from the airport to Shibuya (Tokyo district) and I was so sleepy! Cyril arrived at the meeting point exactly on time. First thing we did: eat sushi at 10am. Those were uber good . We went to that place because there was a queue in front of the restaurant (a Japanese habit). Then we went for a digestive walk in the neighborhood, had a coffee and went back to Cyril's place to rest. As I haven't had any sleep for almost two days I crashed for 3 hours. In the evening we got prepared and went to the "combini" (convienient store) to buy some food and drinks for the party Cyril was throwing. We spent a real nice evening. Cyril's friends were really fun to hang around with. Half of them were French, the other half Japanese (Cyril works for a french bank in Tokyo). At some point during the night we tried to go to a club but it was so packed the we couldn't enter. We tried to go to a karaoke but the group splitted because it was too late (about 4 am) . So we went to an Izakaya (Japanase restaurant, kind of like Tapas style). Cyril's Taiwanese friends were really excited and they kept ordering food, which ennoyed him because he was not hungry and quite tired. Finally we went back to his place and went to bed (futon in my case) at about 5 am. Gosh... That was a tiring arrival!








Samedi 28 février 2009:
Il est 5h du mât heure du japon, je suis encore dans l'avion et de mon hublot je peux voir les premières lueurs du soleil levant.
On a pris le bus de l'aéroport vers Shivuya et j'ai très sommeil! Cyril est arrive pile poil à l'heure. On est allé manger des sushis a 10h du matin qui étaient super bons. On est allé là parce qu'il y avait la queue:) ensuite on a marché un peu dans le quartier, on a pris un café et on est rentre chez Cyril. Comme je n'avait quasiment pas dormi jeudi et dans l'avion vendredi on a dormi 3heures chez Cyril. En début de soirée on s'est préparés et on est allé acheter de quoi manger pour la soirée. On a passé une soirée super sympa avec ses amis qui sont 50%fr le reste japonnais. A un moment on a essayé d'aller en club mais c'était blindé. Ensuite on a bougé vers un karaoké mais le groupe splitte et on vas manger. Les japs commandent trop de bouffe ce qui énerve Cyril qui voulait dormir. Finalement on rentre et on se couche a 5h du matin.
Pffffiiioooouu....

Priest Fest !

This week end I went to a metallic orgy, The Priest Fest! On stage there was Two of my all times favorite bands: Megadeth and Judas Priest!!
There was also Testament to start the fest, they did a pretty good warm up even if the sound was a bit too fuzzy.
I found some pictures of the fest here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iceman75/. Aaaahhh it was soooooooo freakingly good.
By the way I used earplugs at the concert so I enjoyed the music and I can still hear annoying sounds:

Created by Train Horns

Coming soon Chez Paris Clem

I just came back from Japan, I'm currently collecting pictures and notes I've taken during the trip. I have to find out how to transfer the notes from my iPod touch to my iMac... I can't believe Apple didn't integrate this feature in iTunes or so, it just makes the note thing useless. I took the notes in French, so there is a translating job to do, it could take some time. I will post bilingual posts as I will have both versions available, it will be easier for the French fellows who don't master Shakespeare's language to read the crazy adventures of the Clem in Japan! It can also be a good exercise for those who learn French.
Also I decided to put everyday a list of album I've listened to during the day, usually I listen to at least two albums a day while commuting. I'll write the date in French so you guys will learn how to read dates in French! Crazy stuff, isn't it?

Paris Clem: a sushi eating frog.

Getting ready for Nihon!

Yes, at last, I get some holidays! I'm leaving for Japan for a two week trip with Julien and Cyril. Cyril has been living in Tokyo for a bit more than a year. It's gonna be a crazy adventure! We will travel mostly by rail and buses to visit some traditional villages, some awesome natural hot springs (Japanese Onsen), some dramatic sceneries and ultra high tech cities.
I have been preparing my apartment for a few days, because I want it to be clean when I come back. Imagine, going on some great vacation and then coming back only to discover an horrible stinky mess. That would be quite depressing.
So I repainted my closet that was tagged during my house warming party, repaired some holes in the doors and walls and mopped the floors. There is still some cleaning to do before the little exhibit/farewell party tonight. I wanted to post a video of myself painting, since many probably can't imagine how Clem painting would be possible but I haven't found yet how to export the avi files from my camera to a iMovie-supported file. All hopes aren't lost anyhow, maybe I'll find a way to do so and you'll get a good cheap laugh :)

Paris Clem: The Conquistador!

Quotes of the dead

I'm still playing around with Garage Band, discovering some new features every day.



One would probably think that I have gone nuts for good after listening to that new stuff. I'll let you guys guess who actually wrote the lyrics.

Latino Stuff

Yeah I love my iMac! It's so awesome! Oh didn't I tell you that's what I brought back from London? It's a 24" flat screen mac, with a double core 3ghz CPU. Freakin'ly strong and cool.



Here is what I did with it tonight. I used the Magic Garageband feature, which generated automatically a backing track with istruments and a style that I picked up. Then I plugged my guitar and improvised some "Santana" style solo... Quite exciting!

The sound is great, I love that software, it's the perfect scale/improvisation learning companion!

Paris Clem: a happy nerd

Crazy week-end !

It's been a busy week-end for the Clem! It started on Friday night with a farewell party for Benoit who left wat.tv to work for a Rich Internet Applications (RIA) start-up. Then Saturday morning I had a rehearsal with The Acolyts, it was a good one, we managed to settle the structure for the songs My Psycho Dinner and Zoidberg. Ruben came and took a lot of awesome pictures! You can find them on his blog: http://www.boubablog.fr/. Then I ran to the railway station to meet with my parents in London!! There we did some quick sightseeing and some shopping. Shopping indeed as we went to the Apple store on Regent Street. Pretty awesome place I tell you! I will write another post about what I bought there, which will make all of you completely jealous! Well, enjoy the music, don't hesitate to comment about it and let me know your listener experience!
NB: For those who never listened to some The Acolyts music material, I have to warn you, some of it is quite heavy indeed. However there are also some light delights!

Paris Clem: for those about to blog!

The Acolyts - Rehearsal

• Harbinger covered by System of a dawn:
  
  


• 
  The great successor:
  
  


• 
  L'anus artificiel:
  
  


• 
  Harbinger, first take:
  
  


• 
  Harbinger, second take:
  
  


• 
  My Psycho Dinner, first take:
  
  


• 
  My Psycho Dinner, second take:
  
  


• 
  Zoiberg and bonuses:
  
  


• 
  Harbinger one more time:
  
  

Edit: I realized that the mp3 player wasn't working on IE from the begining :) I found a workaround but I won't do it on the old posts.

Keeping the effort

It's important for me to keep doing this recording exercise, it pushes me to practice my guitar, improve my ability to mix and the composing process.

Last week's interpretation of Opeth Harvest was quite poor, so I decided to record it again. It's better:

I also kept writing the song I have in the pipeline, It is called "Peculiar land whispered to mind". It doesn't have lyrics yet, but a few guitar riffs and arpeggios that I like, so I've put'em all together and here is the result: I'm singing some random Finn words on top. The song is pretty far from complete but I just want to show the progress, kind of a "making-of" a song.

I hope you guys like it !

Paris Clem: a trooper!

Harvest

It's a Opeth song and damn it's good! So, well, I tried to play it and after about a whole freakin' Sunday afternoon spent recording/learing how to play the song... Here we go, a new song for Paris Clem Ze Blogue !!


Apart from that there isn't some exciting new stuff. I bought a hat lately and quite frankly it rocks. I've been writing a song during the past week but it isn't finished, I think it will take some time because it's a bit ambitious (ruuuun ruuuuuunn !!).

Bisous!

The Clem.

Edit - For those who don't know Opeth, you're really missing something! check this song : Face of melinda (live)

Revelations.

It's a maiden song that I butchered.


I've also been working on some Acolyts song, the one called "The Nameless". I wrote the intro for it in november '07 but I couldn't find something to follow it. It's been progressing a bit with a few more riffs, but still it is pretty far away from the complete thing I'd like it to be (does that make sense?).


Enjoy!

The Mule

As my list of "stuff I got to do in 2009" says, I have to record more stuff, even if it's weird! After last night's heavy partying I had a lot of sleep to catch up. So I got to bed at about 6pm (crazy!), I was falling asleep watching 1968's The Thomas Crown Affair. I usually don't hit the sack that early, so I had some weird sleep, sweating, having nightmares, my brain thinking about weird stuff at full speed. At some point I decided it was better to get up, that it was probably something like 4am or so. Well it was 10pm! So I grabbed my good old pal Harbinger (the SG guitar) and started playing. Somehow the weirdness of my dreams was still present, I could remember how it felt and I wanted to put it in a musical experiment. The music... I had to add a lot of effects on my sound, to make it blurry, chaotic. I used some harmonizer with a slow attack so the guitar sound signature becomes more like a strange violin/cello. Just a tad of a bluesy crunch. Massive echo/reverb to add texture and gloominess. Just what I was looking for. But I wanted also some kind of industrial sound, then comes the idea of inputting a drum sample in the effects. It made it sound like some evil desert caravan, with a hypnotizing rhythm pushing the listener in some horrific oriental scenery... I love it! The Lyrics talk about The Mule a mind controlling character from the book Foundation and Empire. Imagine a slow spaceship caravan, gliding in the deep silence of the universe, taking control over the planets one by one, winning battles against impossible odds... At its head, The Mule. A general who rose from nowhere, he is a legend, but no one has seen him. He inspires despair in the heart of his enemies.
Now to make it even more original I used my Doom/Crooner voice tone.
The result is some Metalish Industrial Oriental Sci-Fi Doom. And it's uber weird!
The Mule : Download

The shadow rises, upon terminus
A wave of fear, spreads on the foundation
Worlds collapses, combatants lost courage
The dark prince, will rule us all !

He controls your emotions
Raises your deep daemons
You can't resist his hold
He possesses your soul

All fear the Mule

No one will, stand in his way
His darkness, corrupts the hearts of men
The old kingdoms, have already fallen
The battle cry, roars upon terminus

He controls your emotions
Raises your deep daemons
You can't resist his hold
He possesses your soul

All fear the Mule


Well I hope someone enjoys it! :)

Paris Clem: Wishing you a happy new year!