So after countless xbox360vsPs3 comparison videos this pops up and makes me think they fake most of them. That they are in fact bought off by microsoft as I suspected a long time ago. To hell with microsoft and gametrailers. It’s a shame i rely on them for video clips.

Sequencer Sequencer Stalker Figurehead Phoenix Slow Motion Tabula-rasa Storm Luminal Flux

Of all the bands I have been label mates with over the years, this is the one who has captivated me the longest. I am still a true fan to this day, and love most all of their cds. Unlike the scene that picks other lps and songs to adore covenant by. I stand by this cd. To me, it is simply their best. From start to finish, not one bad song, every song is gold. There is a dark core to these songs that I love, and so much emotion in the vocals. One of my favorite cds of all time. Below is a fan video I made for my favorite song of this LP, in fact my favorite song by Covenant, Tabula-Rasa.

I remember hanging out with these guys in 2000. So much fun. Those guys even out drank me back in those days. LOL. Eskil and Joakim were always great to talk to. In fact Joakim even confessed up that he sampled my strings from the start of decypher from fun with knives and used it in one of their tracks :) No problems here. I was so flattered. I remember arguing with Joakim over what synth is better, the jupiter 8 or the xpander. Funny, they got an expander and hardly used it he told me LOL. I what I love about this cd is the roland acid sound. I think they used some old roland SH mono synth, one of the weird ones like a sh-1000 or something(don’t quote me, he told me, but it’s hard to remember) and sampled riffs into their yamaha sampler. They worked lo tech like me back in those days. Below is a FAN video made for the figurehead, there was another version of this video on youtube but the sound was so bad you could not even make out what it was, so I fixed it and re=uploaded it.

My favorite tracks are: Sequencer(this dark foreboding electronic grinding rythmic sound, then this rubber band “ROLAND” synth sound drive the track, with awesome arpeggios and strange vocals and amazing lyrics), Stalker(This is a very cool ebm anthem track), Figurehead(Pure industrial ebm heaven, one of the best club tracks ever, I love the intermittent stuttering string lines, genius), Phoenix(can tell they tipped their hat to old front 242 here), Slow Motion(This is the song that reminds me of the sisters of mercy, well just because towards the end he really freaks out while screaming the vocals, and it reminds me of when andrew eldridge does it, I love the melody during the chorus), Storm(I want to get struck by lightning), Flux(I love the roland rubbery synth sounds on the arpeggios). Below is the video for the Stalker.

This is a must own for anyone who dares say they like EBM. To me this is better than most of the old front 242 stuff that i know and love, better than most nitzer ebb. Not only that, this band has evolved and stayed very relevant in the scene still. I give this a 10 out of 5. Buy now! Click Here to download Sequencer by Covenant DRM FREE 256 mp3. Or Click Here buy Sequencer by Covenant on Audio CD.

I really love this guys style. It’s like a hybrid of anime and tolken style fused together. Dig It. Check out http://kometani.deviantart.com/. Below are some of the other cool images I like.

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So what is my favorite thing about gta4? The laughs. The humor. The tv. But The thing I love the most is when you get grenades. Yes. Go draw a bunch of cops to you, then get in a car with your grenade selected. Once a lot of cop cars are around and cops start coming up to the car, throw a grenade out the window but just sit in the car, don’t drive off, sure this kills you, but you get to watch lots of people get launched into the air in slow motion while you die. This is so fucking hilarious to me. I’m a fan of violent entertainment(yes, movies, games, sports like ufc). I have played all the GTA games. I love mob movies, scarface, donnie brasco, godfather, you name it. GTA, and I mean all of them are mob games. You play a thug climbing your way up the mob ladder. NOW, let’s talk about what is good. The aiming system is improved big time. Now, you can either lock on by holding L2 all the way, or free aim by holding down L2 only a little bit. There is now a cover system ala Uncharted or Rainbow 6 Vegas. This adds a whole new dimension to the game play. The gunplay is amazing, especially when people are up close. The screen kind of blurs and its frantic and loud and when you shoot people the animation of them being shot is simply amazing. This game is so intensely overbearing, It stirs up emotion in me. Especially the close combat gunplay. The over all feel of the game is so much better than previous games. Sure the graphics are a lot better, but the biggest difference is in all the small details in the world. From the random people on the streets, to the physics of the cars, to the animations of everything, this is a huge leap up from GTA3: SAN ANDREAS.

Ok, ok, Rockstar seems to be the only company that can really pull off an open world type of game and do it well. What sets this above all the clones and copies? The characters, the music, the humor, the story, the writing, the acting, the physics, the gun play, the cars, the driving, the look and feel, the game mechanics, and the missions. This world breathes and lives. There is a ton of sarcasm. I love how it picks on reality. I love how it portrays politicians, and authority figures. This is closer to reality in many ways than what the real media shows us(especially the stuff on the rich and powerful). One of the shows on the TV is this series called Republican Space Rangers. This had me on the floor laughing. This is so damn spot on! SO HILAROUS! The fake radio commercials are hilarious as well. So much work went into this game to really make you feel like you are living in this world. Sure the relationship aspects(dating and bromance) of this are kind of shallow and boring once the driving drunk(btw, you can call a cab instead of getting in a car while drunk), bowling, darts, and pool gets boring, I did not find this part of the game that fulfilling and ended up blowing most of it off, and it does effect the game. If you don’t keep up with your friends and girlfriends, they wont help you out as much in some of the missions. So yes, there is dating, the internet, and cell phone texts in this game. Whoo, like in real life but much funnier. You can have insinuated sex in the game after a date, it doesn’t show anything, but you can hear it as a camera pans around the house. No hot coffee this time I bet. I love being able to play as the bad guy, another thing that the GTA series always seems to do well. I like anti heros. I like dark art. This game has a black sense of humor, one that I can really identify with.

The graphics are pretty impressive. Well, at first I was not that impressed, I was like wow, a new paint job on an old game. Then I went back and looked at vice city. This is a huge improvement over the past games. When I compare the visuals of GTA4 to something like Uncharted, Heavenly Sword, or even Call Of Duty 4, I felt a little underwhelmed by the visuals. However, as I played on and noticed all the details in the city as more and more of it was unlocked to me, I realized that this looks amazingly detailed. The explosions are amazing. There is so much going on in this game. How the different people walk, talk, fight, die. So much polish went into this game and this is really obvious once you go back and play one of the older GTA games. The world is seamless. Not many loading screens at all once it boots. the initial load in (when you start the game) is a little long, but I can live with it. The driving mechanics are a lot more finicky this time around. The cars will spin out and you will lose control a lot more often than you used to from the previous incarnations of the game. I found this new sense of driving realism(no nothing like a simulation racing game or anything) to actually help the game play. You really can tell the difference between the different makes of cars in how they drive and turn. Car wrecks are much more fantastic now. Not to mention that people will be thrown from their cars in really bad wrecks(through the windshield). If this happens to you, you can lose major health. Another thing that has improved is the common people in the streets. Some will fight you, some will cower. When you shoot people and wound them, they will hung over and crawl off or gimp off, sometimes only making it a few feet then falling over, then getting back up after a minute and trying again to fall again. What detail.

The multiplayer is PHAT! So many modes. It plays well. Lag is not really an issue from what I can tell. My personal favorite types are Helicopter Race, and Cops and Robbers, only because I have not really played much else. Getting online with a bunch of friends and having 4 people in a car shooting at other people is so much fun. This is serious fun. I mean I will play this for years type of fun, or until the next installment of GTA comes out. My only real complaint about this game would be that when a lot of stuff starts happening on the screen, the frame rate can slow to a crawl and really have a negative effect on the game mechanics. Back to what is good. In one of the missions you have to run down some people fleeing from a drug deal gone sour. I put the driving view mode into first person cockpit view. Let me tell you, running over people like this is amazing. The way their bodies curl over the front of the car and how their bodies go limp and flail and slide off. The detail is amazing, and it is never the same twice it seems. Sometimes its so hilarious. I also love when you spook a crowd of people, and they go running into a busy street and get hit by cars and go flying. Man. This game makes me laugh in so many ways. From the artistic satire found in the media in the world, from the web pages, radio, and tv, to the many senseless ways you can find funny ways to kill people. Niko the character you take control of in the single player game is by far my favorite character of all the GTA series. I really like the single player story. Its a great mob movie in the form of a video game. In fact better than a lot of the more recent mob movies that hollywood has barfed up recently. It’s not just Nike I like though. I like a lot of the bad guys in the game, they are very entertaining to say the least. The story and the characters really make me want to beat the game and do all there is to do. The music in this game is pretty cool as well, in fact, for me, some of the best because they put in Nitzer Ebb, Aphex Twin, Killing Joke, Sisters of Mercy, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, Smashing Pumpkins, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre all of which i really listen to. I do still like all the fake music in the original gta3 the most especially the techno. But this one comes in second. Although I really did like the Vice City sound track as well. Just a warning, this game is hard. Towards the end you will have to try missions over and over before you can beat them. This really puts a lot of people off. I just wait a couple of days once i get burnt out and try again. This works well for me. I have beat every GTA game. I would say this game is a little harder than all the others.

10.0 Presentation
The way the story is told, the menus, the look and feel of everything, the radio stations, the tv, all of it looks and feels alive. TOP NOTCH.

8.5 Visuals
I do not agree with the rest of the press on this. I know the ps3 can do better graphics than this. I was kind of miffed to find out the game ran at 630p, not 720p like the 360(even though the game still runs and looks better on the ps3)(so what, call of duty 4 on ps3 and 360 is 600p, so what, that looks amazing still too). Still, the ps3 should be able to do better. Hopefully the next GTA game will improve on the visuals and the frame rate slow downs when lots of things happen. The frame rate is pretty high and stable most of the time though.

9.9 Audio
The kick ass music sound track! The sound FX, The Voice Acting, the background music, all of it is spot on!

8.8 Game Mechanics
I still think the game could be more responsive like Uncharted. I will say that it is a huge, and I mean BIG step up from it’s predecessors.

5.0 Replay
100 hours of game play if you explore everything. The story is about 40 hours. So there is a lot of game here. Finally a game that is actually worth 65 dollars. Its worth beating he single player game a couple of times to tinker with the relationship aspect of the game. The multiplayer is simply great. This world is so fun to play in. The modes are great as well. Nothing else like this on the market. UPDATE: It was fun, till i got into it hard core, now the frame rate issues in multiplayer make it unplayable. Big thumbs down on multiplayer.

9.2 Total Score.
(out of 10 / not an average)

If you do not like grand theft auto from previous versions of the game, this one will not win you over, the core is still the same. There is just a lot more detail. Even with the duck and cover system, it does not change the game that much. So If you hate gta, you wont like this one either. I happen to love them all. I love the big free world, how you can ignore the story and just spend hours being a hooligan destroying things, killing people and running from the cops. If there was no story, I would still buy this game to just be a hooligan in this world. That is so much fun all by itself. So far, this is the best game of this year so far. Wonder if MGS4, Little Big Planet, or Killzone 2 or Resistance Fall of man 2 will topple this. I doubt it. One last thing: To all you fear mongering jerk off conservative media fucks who say that games, tv, music, and movies lead to violent behavior, excuse me, go read some history. Long before there was tv, electricity, and guns people were killing each other. With knives, Spears and arrows. War after war after war. People did not kill because of fictional art in those days and people do not kill because of fictional art in these days. Violence and murder pre date all of this entertainment my friends, so stop spewing forth your un-scientific idiotic religious fear monger claims. Art is a reflection of life with a twist. Art is a result of life. Art is not instruction. It is entertainment, it is fantasy. Dumb people do Dumb things. People should take responsibility for their own actions. These games never tell you to kill anyone in real life. They are fiction. They are entertainment. Just because a small handful of idiots do stupid things, don’t blame the rest of us. This is a game made by adults for adults. This is not for children. The box clearly states this. GO BUY THIS GAME: Click Here to buy Grand Theft Auto 4 for Sony PS3.

PS: Now you know why my blog has been so stale this week. This game is like 100 hours of game play in it. I cannot get enough of it.

The moog freqbox, a versatile fx pedal unit that can be used as an oscillator in a modular synth setup. When I first plugged them in, I noticed how huge they sounded. How alive. They reminded me of the older moog stuff, like tarus pedals and model d minimoog. With two, the oscillators would beat and sound pretty vintage. These things are FAT. The biggest. The sync sounds were so mean and huge, it would make my whole house shake. I ran these into my doepfer custom eurorack filled with rare boutique modules. I loves how the moog oscillators sounded through the polivoks filter the most. I prefered these oscillators for BASS duties. There is this warm beef that you get in the 60 to 200hz range on the low end of the frequency spectrum. No other synths and oscillators can pump this style of sound out. These pedals really did sound more vintage to me than the little phatty and the new minimoog voyagers. They had plenty of high end frequencies which I think are lacking a tad on the newer moog synths.

As far as the tracking goes? Well I ran into a little trouble. But once they warmed up I could get about 3 octaves of stable tracking no problem. Amos Gaynes, one of the techs who works at moog saw my initial comments on the tracking that I posted a while back, and offered to modify them so they would track better. After the mod, they did better. This is how great the customer support is over at moog music. A couple of things that I think would make these better would be a fine tuning knob for the osc, and if they could be put into doepfer format and make them track a tiny bit better they would put the competition in the modular synth world out of business when it comes to fat big bass oscillators. That would be so awesome. I kind of did not like having two wall warts. I also was not fond of having them on the floor with long cables to my modular, but that is something I could of fixed If i bought a rack mount for the pedals. For synth oscillators, these are the best for modular bass lines. Better than any other modular doepfer eurorack oscillator that I have used in the bass dept. for sure. I still like other things for leads more though.

We did run our guitar through this pedal, and we could get some really strange sounds with it. Something new and different for sure. The sound quality of this pedal is top notch and will enhance any guitar or modular synth rig with ease. You really cannot go wrong here. I give this a 4 out of 5.

This is a link to a video I did that shows off the moog in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_wAH_Z6R3Q …

Let me start by saying I love my polivoks filter and my malgorithm bit crusher. The Harvestman makes really unique analog and digital modules for the doepfer eurorack modular format. I could not live with out either of these, In fact when I was freaking out over the unstable tracking on my oscillators, I was going to sell my modular system, But I kept going, what would I do with out my custom faceplated Malgorithm and the brutal resonance of the Polivoks filter? Die I think. The Harvestman gave me the real reason to keep my modular, so I could make mean evil sounds, and skin peeling resonant acid sounds(Not to mention he is a totally cool guy to talk to, and yeah, I think he will get his guitar pedals out before Gun’s and Roses gets their new LP out). LOL. I really appreciate that Scott took the time to answer my silly questions.

BE: What is the modus operandi of your company?

Harvestman: Pretending like semiconductor technology advanced along the same timeline where Biff Tannen owns a casino. Recognizing the total disaster of raising a generation of programmers to worship high-level language instead of the silicon that makes it real. Designing electronic music devices with these awarenesses in mind.

BE: What got you interested in making modules?

Harvestman: I wanted a nice bitcrusher module for my modular system but there wasn’t one in active development when I first started playing with patchcords. Around this time I fortunately forgot most of what I knew about software development, starting over with a focus on embedded DSP. I’ve been writing exclusively in assembly for the last two years and my brain is ruined in the best way possible.

BE: Before you did harvestman, did you do anything else with electronics, and what age did you start tinkering?

Harvestman: I circuit bent (casio sk1s exclusively) starting in high school, and years later my work started incorporating patchable external control and explorations into a more fluent reverse-engineering of the instrument. Around this time I stopped the bending and started thinking about standalone devices to continue my work. At the time I was heavily studying music technology in an academic setting, but I wasn’t able to take engineering classes for credit. Now that I look back on it, those two years were sort of like buying time to teach myself enough discipline to produce working circuits, seasoned with some awesomely informative high-level signal processing lectures.

BE: What do you think separates you from the other boutique module manufacturers?

Harvestman: A focus on digital techniques and a healthy dose of iconoclasm? I think all of the designers have something resembling a common goal in that we work to bring new capabilities to a decades-old performance interface. And what awesome work it is. My modular setup that I use for composition and performance contains devices from a half-dozen designers and all those different design laws combine to form a really flexible instrument. There’s no better time to be a modular synthesist, I think.

BE: What void are you filling in with your products?

Harvestman: If there was ever a need for modular devices purpose-built for garbage audio manipulation, I guess I’ve got my slurry nozzle wedged in the void. I’m a discrete-time sleaze vendor.

BE: What is your favorite old school synth?

Harvestman: Probably the ARP 2600, everything you really needed in that decade except for the tape machine. The ultimate suitcase weapon for space jazz freakout. I’d love to try a black and orange one someday, I’ve only had the chance to play with a really beat up grey one. My favorite 80s synth (not counting the SK-1) is the MC-202… it’s like a calculator with a curtis chip inside… amazing industrial design with a good cv/gate interface that’s the perfect companion to a Eurorack system. I don’t have too much experience with vintage gear… too much awesome new boutique stuff out there these days keeps my attention. I’d say that the Buchla 200 series is among my favorites, but the new 200e is really where it’s at.

BE: What was your favorite video game console sound chip?

Harvestman: It’s a tough choice between the Atari POKEY and the Nintendo’s 2A03. I like the former for its unique shift register-based tone generation (the Harvestman Zorlon Cannon uses this technique as well), but the 2A03 has a ton of character packed into its five channels. The pitch glide, 4-bit triangle, “looped noise” mode, and delta-modulation sampling have a very unique sound compared to other game chips, and “real” synthesizers too. Check out the TIA (atari 2600 chip), it’s pretty fun. Like the POKEY’s hydrocephalic little brother. 5 bit frequency register (can’t even get an octave of pitches in tune), and the rest of the chip wrangles a single line of video at a time. Programming the thing to get post-Activision style results is kind of like trying to pull off the solo at the end of “Five Magics”.

BE: What do you think of the psp and nitendo DS music program things?

Harvestman: I have no experience with them, but I think they’re a great ideas (especially the korg thing). I’ve only ever played around with the old music sequencer on the game boy camera cartridge years ago. Klangstabil did a good 12″ using only that.

BE: Most of your modules are indeed digital, however, the polivoks is pure analog, and I must say it is my favorite thing from your company, don’t get me wrong, I love the Malgorithm bit crusher. But honestly what is your attraction to the lofi digital sound?

Harvestman: It’s a unique class of sounds that can’t really be reached through purely analog techniques. I’m a big fan of distortion and other means of severely corrupting a signal, and simple digital processing methods have produced some of the most savage noises I have ever heard. It’s also a really straightforward way to get aggressive and offensive sounds that are at home in outlaw electronic styles like power electronics, the second wave of rhythmic noise, and low-art identity enforcement, all traditionally achieving their ugliness though misapplications of analog amplification. Throwing some digital sacrilege into the mix just makes the ears hurt more and I’m happy to work to put these devices into such hands.

BE: What gave you the idea to turn digital strangeness into CV controllable Frankenstein monsters?

Harvestman: Two things: when I started incorporating gate inputs on some of my bent SK-1s, and also watching an engineer friend work on a project that turned a 2A03 chip into a MIDI sound module. While observing him I learned a bit about microprocessor programming, and how inexpensive ADCs can be used to give digital processors smooth, analog-like control behavior with the correct user interface. Once I acquired some engineering skills I was able to start designing modules that filled large functional holes in my personal system (bitcrusher, loop sampler, etc). Since going into business in fall 2007, my engineering chops have improved but my taste has not.

BE: What are you planning for the future?

Harvestman: Next month I’m moving to Seattle and hiring some help so I can deliver more modules on time. That gives me more time to design new devices, and get these guitar pedals out the door… the second half of the year will be very busy for me. At least 5 new modules coming out this year!

BE: Any new modules you can give us a heads up on?

Harvestman: First of all I’m doing a fully-featured bitcrusher pedal sort of like the Malgorithm. Then, a 4-channel guitar pedal adaptor module (to incorporate pedals into a modular system) with the ability to easily make feedback loops. I’ve also had a neat digital oscillator design near completion for a while, I need to spend a weekend writing some better code for it. I am working with more advanced DSPs for really weird effects you’ve never seen in a hardware modular before. The cooperation with Vladimir Kuzmin will also continue, with interesting Russian synth modules released that defy vintage Western circuit design conventions.

If you want products that mangle sound and get mean and have edge and get really filthy dirty check out just about anything by The Harvestman: http://www.theharvestman.org/. If you want to buy any of this stuff, head over to http://www.analoguehaven.com. In particular the the Harvestman section of AH. AND PLEASE, Tell Analog Haven that you found out about it from Velvet Acid Christ and make him feel guilty for not giving me better deals on stuff, JUST KIDDING. LOL.
Below is the video that got me to buy the malgorithm: