Emil Bulls – The Life Acoustic (2006)

When a former nu metal and now kind of metal band goes acoustic things can get sideways pretty quick.

But 2006 (freakin 15 years ago 🤪) brought us The Life Acoustic from Emil Bulls and it was and still is a masterpiece. Pretty much every song is a singalone without being corny. That it was recorded live at a concert in Pullach / Germany really helps the songs to burn in. And while the acoustic songs are alltogether covers of their electrified originals (despite Green Machine, which is a cover of the famous Kyuss song) you may have a hard time guessing the song if you only hear the music. But you‘ll definitely recognize the song when the chorus starts.

iOS Music Player App without iTunes – app advise: iDownloads+

Update

I did a video for my other YouTube Channel where you can see what the app can do:

If you don´t want to use iTunes for copying and playing music on your iOS device (in my case an iPhone 5) you don´t have a lot of alternatives. Most of the apps that also work with not jailbroken iOS devices are crap.

For a very long time I used Phone Drive. It´s a pretty good app, allowing you to copy files via wifi to your device using simple webpage uploader or via ftp. Especially the ftp feature is great if you want to copy directories or a lot of music. Sadly the app doesn´t support UTF-8 unicode which leads to some strange characters and can cause upload problems when using ftp. But the BIGGEST FLAW was that it frequently stopped music playback when you locked your device. I reported this bug to the developers but a) got no answer and b) it wasn´t resolved though the app got updated regularly.

So I went on to search for a replacement and the one I found looked pretty crappy too. At least in the beginning.

idownloads The replacement is called iDownloads+ and was mainly designed for downloading files from webpages to your iOS device. Therefore it features an internal browser with ad-block support and several features helping you download the web easily. But it can also play music and for me the most important part – you can copy music to your iOS device without using iTunes. There a 2 ways to do that:  first you can use a browser which I really can´t recommend because you can only upload one file per upload and you can´t create folders. Second you can use WebDav and I highly recommend that. WebDav is a bit like ftp so it allows you to create, delete, rename and move files & folders, upload several files & folders at once and a lot more. Most operating systems have a build in WebDav support but if you´re a Windows user like me I recommend to use a third party tool (because the WebDav integration even in Windows 8.1 is crap). I use CarotDAV. It´s free, it´s small, it can be portable and does the job. Sadly the WebDav feature isn´t available in the free version. You have to pay 0,99 EUR (around 1.20 $) to unlock it and I highly recommend that you also spend a bit more to remove all ads from the app. Otherwise it´s flooded with ads.

iDownloads+ features (not a complete list, just those important for me):

– plays music even in background / when your iOS device is locked

– copy music onto your iOS device using WebDav

– copy other files (e.g. PDF, DOCS) to your iOS device

– web uploader for a browser (though ugly and not very feature rich)

– does much more fancy stuff

– cheap (free + 0,99 EUR / 1.20 $ WebDav unlock + 1,99 EUR / 2.20 $ for removing all the ads)

Downloads:

iDownloads+ on the App Store

CarotDAV

Screenshot from the iDownloads+ files view:

IMG_3729

New album “REASON” from my band “Grey Room” out now

GreyRoom_FRONTAs some of you might know, I play guitars in a band called “Grey Room”. And these days our new album “REASON” is finally out.

After 5 years this is our second album and we are very proud that it is finally done.

It is available as “PAY WHAT YOU WANT” download and as a digipack CD here:

http://greyroom.bandcamp.com

You can also buy it at:

Amazon – http://www.amazon.de/Reason-Grey-Room/dp/B00BZUN4L6/

CD Baby – http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/greyroom1

iTunes – https://itunes.apple.com/de/album/reason/id625745166

Cool Edit Pro / Adobe Audition M4A / AAC / MP4 / AC3 / FLACC / MOD / OGG / QT / WMA plugins

Update 3:

Fixed the download links again. Now downloading over secure connection :-).

Update 2:

The download link was broken. I fixed it now. Thx to Reini for the hint.

Update:

I´ve decided to put all the Cool Edit Pro plugins I own into an archive and distribute it here => Download

These plugins are included:

  • M4A
  • AAC
  • MP4
  • AC3
  • FLAC
  • MOD
  • OGG
  • QT (Quicktime Audio)
  • WMA

The plugins work with Cool Edit Pro 2.0 and Adobe Audition.

Download: cool_edit_pro_codecs.rar

If you´re still a convinced user of Cool Edit Pro or Adobe Audition you may want to convert some m4a files to another format. I found this nice plugin at RareWares and mirrored it here for you.

It uses FAAC 1.28 and FAAD2 2.7.

Happy converting and thanks to the people at RareWares !

Download: cool_faac-1.28-2.7.zip

Splash 2010

 

Splash 2010 has been a blast !

Situated in the beautiful landscape of FERROPOLIS – a renaturalised mining area surrounded  by the Gremminer Sea in the east of Germany between Leipzig and the capital Berlin – it is one of the biggest hiphop festivals in Europe. The line-up was quite promising with US superstar Missy Elliot, dancehall mastermind Mr Vegas and german rap superstar Samy Deluxe along with aspiring artists like US rapper Fashawn.

We – my photographer and I – arrived on early friday morning. Check-in and press registration was fast, easy and comfortable. The tent (yes, no hotel) was set up fast and we used the very practical but sometimes overcrowded shuttle to the festival site. Entering the site was easy too, slick security, no nagging. With one main stage and short walks between the 2 smaller stages (one directly on the gritty shore of the sea) and a mere dozen of beverage and food stations the festival site was well designed and ready to be rocked.

We tried to see and hear as many acts as possible but got a bit distracted by the skateboard, freestyle and dance contest.

The best performance delivered the following acts:

+ Missy Elliot (the lady at its best)

+ Blumentopf (likely intelligent hiphop, everbody was there and everybody was jumping)

+ Exile (with Fashawn who´s still aspiring, but this time his DJ rocked the crowd)

+ Kool Savas (evil and bad guy attitude, everybody was there and jumping too)

+ Casper (the emo rapper with band, quite aggressive but intense)

Worst performance:

– Nas & Damian Marley (Nas was bored, me too)

Conclusion – the Splash was definitely worth a travel and hopefully I´ll get the chance to be back in 2011. My photographer did a whole bunch of pictures. Due to stipulation I can´t show you all, but I´ve added some of them to the gallery. Enjoy !

(This article is an edited and shortened excerpt. The full story was published in the september edition of the American HipHop Magazine.)

Max Herre @ Stadtgarten, Erfurt

I’ve added some photos from the Max Herre concert in Erfurt to the photo gallery. It was a nice show and Clueso showed up too. He performed 2 songs with Max.

The annoying fact of the evening was that digital cameras weren’t allowed by the local presenter Zughafen. They couldn’t provide the legal terms for the show but refused to let us in with Steffs digital camera. I’m still mad about it because it’s big ass presenter behaviour on the one hand (no cams and stuff) and on the other hand they should at least be able to provide the legal terms or print a notice on the tickets. So the security guys had a strange definition of how “big” a digital camera can be. Steff’s obviously was too big and so we had to take it back to the car. As a result of that the quality is not too good…only iPhone picz.

But check them out at the gallery.

youtube channel updated

Hey folks,

I did an update on my youtube channel and added the following :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR8ey9KkzyI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms_C2b8URrw

The beginning and the end of Carmina Burana.

Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, Domstufenfestspiele 2009 – Erfurt, Germany

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owzUrBigLYI

A crazy metronome with the eye in the pyramid. All conspiracy fans will love that. I found it in Madrid at the Reina Sofia museum. Enjoy !