Last.fm and their notion of “similar artists” somehow leaves a thing or two to be desired, so it seems:
Nodepet on last.fm
(The corpus delicti is the box to the left)

How on earth is my music similar to big bands, blues or some yodling bozo from the 40ies? I really feel sorry for those who unsuspiciously click “play similar artists” and will be amazed by this interesting selection (or not). Vice versa, someone not knowing my music and catching sight of the similar artists block will most likely turn away in disgust. Last.fm state this list would be compiled based on listening habit. Maybe those who listened to my music did happen to have a rather eclectic music taste, but I somehow doubt that. Other musicians do not seem to be affected by this feature, so it is not that this automation would not work at all.

An alternative conspiracy theory would be someone is willfully “polluting” the list by exploiting a “feature” (some call it sloppy programming). But where is the benefit? Featuring some obscure music? Or just seeing that my music never gets heard by an appropriate audience? Whatever, I have to look for a way to manually clean up the list, so similar artists actually means what it promises.

Last night my latest release on Petcord called Decay went live on air. Decay is one composition consisting of four movements, the last one with reoccuring themes of the previous ones put together to a contrastive final. What the liner notes did not mention, is how the titles came into being and not without a reason: People may be tempted to misinterpret these titles as authoritative instruction about what to think of when listening to the work. I personally feel strong aversions towards degrading music to a mere transport means for some kind of message and only add these explanations “for the records”.

My enemy insight
This title is a pun and refers to being one’s own worst enemy (as in “enemy inside”) and being aware of the problem (hence “insight”). It matches to the rapid swing between agressive feedback, friendly ninth chords and menacing drones, similar to a confused state of mind where moods change from one extreme to another within minutes. Of course this is a subjective and distorted perception as this enemy is part of oneself. An enemy that once escaped our control and now seems to live a life of its own despite its irrational nature.

Behind the mask
In order to become an accepted member of society one is required to wear a mask of conformity. Picking up what is deemed most popular and advantageous rather than following one’s unique gifts. Or judging attitudes by their degree of popular acceptance rather than necessity or validity. As most people are trained at an early age to play this game successfully they may not be aware of it and consider it as natural as eating and sleeping. Some people are afraid of silence and solitude, because that may force them to discover the void behind the mask.

Wall of fear
This is another pun referring to the phrase “wall of silence”. It is meant to go one step further by not just stating an inconvenience as a result of something embarrassing or someone unresponsive to inquiries, but the mere prospect of getting into such a situation. The wall is not just a defence someone else has built up, but could refer to limitations defined by one’s own fears. Some may only have a funny feeling inside their stomach and move on, whilst others will stagger and tumble into a psychotic state of apathy.

last possible lie
Judging from the previous definitions one may conclude that life is lie. Lie in itself is considered inacceptable in most civilisations, yet our plastic fantastic age does force us to posture as someone who we not really are. In reference to the overall character to the music, this “last possible lie” appears as a resolution at first. But as the relief is the result of an escape, the actual issue still persists. The moment someone comes to realise this may mark the beginning of the collapse. This could be anything from insanity to suicide.

As written before, please be advised that this is only an attempt at explaining the history of the titles, not the music itself. Whilst working on them there did not exist any kind of concept or “story board” the music tried to follow and the titles where the last thing I added as a description of the sound characteristics. Hence you can associate with the music all you want and it will be a personal and correct way of utilising it. The music itself does not contain any other message other than itself.

I really do not know what this bot is trying to accomplish, but it looks rather pointless:

66.167.105.59 - - [10/Mar/2008:04:47:50 +0100]
"POST / HTTP/1.1" 403 210 "-" "BioSearch"
66.167.105.59 - - [10/Mar/2008:04:47:51 +0100]
"POST /robots.txt HTTP/1.1" 403 220 "-" "BioSearch"

You would only use POST for submitting form data, but not retrieving data. Apart from that, the request order is wrong: A bot should first ask for robots.txt and then, depending on the outcome, either go away or start indexing.

Unfortunately the netblock, where this brainless wonder resides, does not reveal any details about the bot’s owner:

[rwhois.covad.net]
%rwhois V-1.5:003fff:00 rwhois.covad.com (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-you-guess)
network:Class-Name:network
network:Auth-Area:66.167.0.0/16
network:ID:NETBLK-NONE-66-167-0-0.66.167.0.0/16
network:Network-Name:NONE-66-167-0-0
network:IP-Network:66.167.0.0/16
network:In-Addr-Server;I:ns3.covad.com
network:In-Addr-Server;I:ns4.covad.com
network:IP-Network-Block:66.167.0.0 - 66.167.255.255
network:Org-Name:Covad Communications
network:Street-Address:110 Rio Robles
network:City:San Jose
network:State:CA
network:Postal-Code:95134
network:Country-Code:US
network:Tech-Contact;I:ipadmin covad.com
network:Admin-Contact;I:ipadmin covad.com
network:Created:20030508150409000
network:Updated:20041506165200000

The rDNS of the offending ip address is not more talkative either:
h-66-167-105-99.lsanca54.dynamic.covad.net
This reads to me like Los Angeles/California.

Although there is a company in California called Biosearch Technologies, they are unrelated to the bot, as they are only offering products derived from their biological research and are based in the San Francisco area. So it seems to be just a broken anonymous bot which is safe to block.

I spent some time not writing knowing that I was supposed to do so, because otherwise the value of my blog would be questionable. But what do you do if there is nothing you can write about? Citing “news” which in fact are not really relevant to one’s life? There is a limit to what I can write about in a blog, personal things for example. You would not really want to give anyone the chance of using search engines to learn about your weak spots, especially your enemies and competition. This is paradox somehow, because I can never really use a blog in its original sense, but on the other hand by allowing these sites to be indexed, I do want to be read by the public.

Perception without exhibition. Cowardness? Or careful consideration of the impacts of one’s behaviour? You are held accountable for the way you are describing events, what seems to be important and what is omitted by you. There is no way around it. So essentially my silence over the past weeks was fueled by the feeling of not having anything appropriate to say. I did feel like writing about a great deal of things, but they were not suitable for the public eye. There is no such thing as privacy unless you cease publishing on the Internet by pulling the plug.

My musical creativity is at a record low: Since January I have accumulated nine fragments that do not make much sense. On the other hand I created some good graphical artwork as compensation (used as covers for netlabel releases). I was even fortunate enough to publish an artist on the netlabel who even became part of the latter. I should resume my writing and hope for the best, but much like Antoine Roquentin, I loathe listening to other’s music and review it. Why would I want to play an useful idiot for them and help them promote their releases? How many of them would bother to listen to my music? What are my motives? Am I doing this because I want to do it?