Nice picture found on flickr.

Finding nice music can occur in the most awkward of circumstances – in the taxi, on the street, on the slope or on a plane. The latter happened some days ago when I was reading in that “complimentary copy” magazine an artist with quite a strange name – Rebekka Bakken.

She is a Norvegian artist and composer playing some relaxing and mostly vocal jazz, which sounds quite nice. The voice is not amazing, but a more relaxing and mature one. What is more pleasant maybe might be the instrumentation of her songs, very nicely put together.

Another strange thing is that I think most of the new jazz female players I come across lately are extremely good looking, and Rebekka is exactly the case. Check out her pictures on www.rebekkabakken.com. Also, on her website you can listen to her songs for free – no downloading though.

Just finished watching the “First Descent” movie – something I’ve been really looking forward some days now, after seeing the trailer. Of course, the movie just amplified my already-high appetite for snowboarding as soon as possible.

I could not say it is an excellent movie per se – pretty dull as a movie if you are not a big snowboard fan, but it is good that it shows both some amazing scenes of snowboard in Alaska and it also takes you through the entire snowboarding history.

Definitely the best moment of the movie was Terje‘s first descent of the 7601 peak – an excellent accomplishment by the world’s best snowboarder. Truly amazing !

Therefore, also the track for today – Foo Fighters – Hell – the soundtrack song for that descent.

Looks like I have an obsession these days with finding snowboard tracks everywhere around – probably this is because I can hardly wait for the first snow and the first snowboard ride !

Today, over the radio, a quite-old tune came up, one you surely know – Sono – 2000 Guns. Excellent electro sound, should sound just fine for a nice clean ride on the slope.

[download Sono - 2000 Guns]

Via Dragos I found out about Flipsyde – a US band who is combining Hip-Hop with Rock for a really nice sound overall. They sound great – specially in the not-so-hip-hop songs – and the Someday track sounds excellent for snowboard ! :)

“Buricul Pamantului” (could be translated as “The Hub of the Universe” for the non-Romanian speakers) – sounds pretty strange for a band name, right? At least this is what I thought when I first heard of them. Later found out that the name comes from a place in Sibiu city.

But as the name might sound strange, their music actually sounds quite fine. It is a “balcanic alternative” rock, as the guys are defining it, with up-front vocals, nice instrumentals in the back and some interesting lyrics. I listened so far to their albums, the second one is a clear improvement from the first one and it seems their are on the right track. Too bad I didn’t attend their Stufstock concert, so I cannot realy give my impresion on their live performances.

While Elena was first impressed with their “beculete” song – namely “Ce Tara Frumoasa Avem“, I am quite fond of the “Underground” track – one of the more rockish on the album. But as I am not able to put up a download link for that song, you should get a first taste of their sound by this track – “Salut” – an interesting one, specially with a nice guitar solo, which could definetely go much further in live performances. Also, this is the song that probably some of you might know from the radio.

Overall, Buricul Pamantului – I always smile when thinking of this name – is a band which managed to put together an excellent album - “Suflet Flamand“ – and who is promising to deliver more in the future. The guys seem so sing an honest music, with passion and professionalism. Keep it going !

download link via softrecords.ro, their record label. More about Buricul Pamantului on their website – www.buricul.com.

As the summer is officially finished – and so are the every-week escapes to the seaside -, a new target is set: the first snow and the snowboard on my feet.

Thus, the new category, “Snowboard” featuring mostly music to listen on the board. There are 2 articles so far in this category, one of them containing my snowboard playlist from last winter. This year, along with a new board, new music is going to come.

To get it off for a quick start, here are 2 snowboard tracks:

- Me and the Gimme Gimmes – All your lovin’ – a punk band which only singes covers. They sound quite nice and it’s interesting to listen to blues tracks remixed in a punk version. Goes along fine with some speed on the board.

- Authority Zero – One More Minute – a track which I first discovered in a motorcycles video, it combines a rock-punk attitude with some ska sounds. Also a nice thing to listen to for the more relaxed rides and jumping on kickers on the refrain.

I’ve been following blogs for quite some years now – both personal and business / tematic oriented blogs. Each of them with the individual “personality”, style and subjects to write about.

Still, I cannot help to notice how some trends just appear in this communities and are quickly followed up by everybody. Why is that? Most likely, noticing a subject that might generate some popularity will quickly inspire fellow bloggers to write about it, in the same quest for more readers, more comments and more appreciation.

For example, some of the trends which are or have been present in blogs (i will reffer mostly to Romanian blogs or Music blogs):

- indie – All the music blogs suddently started posting about indie bands, indie culture and such since about half a year ago. Now they kind of stopped, they are turning back to the old school.

- emo -  If you look carefully, in most of the Romanian blogs you will find the “emo” word mentioned at least once every 5 posts. What the hell is emo after all and why is it important ??

- uber – this was a trend some 6 months ago or such in Romanian blogs – everybody was using “uber” instead of “super” of “very”. Damn, this was weird. Good that they stopped now.

Also, another thing which annoys me is the type of people who tend to post about anything that happens to them on their blog, in search of sympathy or whatever. I think this started somewhere with Scoble’s style of blogging and just spread out – why on earth would people like to read about everything which happens to someone most of the times they never ever met ??
Maybe it’s just me not understanding much of this blogging culture, or maybe some of these things are really being weird….

Back to the old purpose of this blog, some of the constant trend-fighters were Rage Against the Machine. Being one of the first bands to combine rock sound with rapped lyrics, they carried on a constant fight against politics and various social issues.

Even though they did not last very long as a band – from 1996 till 2000 -, they managed to produce some excelent tracks. One of them, featuring an awesome guitar solo, is “Bulls of Parade” – [mp3] or [video].

Edwin (or Edvin) Marton is one of the top Hungarian violonists, mostly known for his performances for the skaing championships.

The guy sounds trully amazing, he is playing a Stradivarius and looks very proud of it :) And even better, he is comming in Romania, the concert is tommorow, 28.09, at Polivalenta. Hopefully I can make it !

Listening to him reminded me of one of the best concert experience I ever had – going to a violin concert of one of my friends, while he was playing Khatchaturian. While I am not a great fan of classical music, that was trully an amazing performance and that kind of music is definetely worth attending to.

Some samples of Edwin Marton here and here.

I recently heard the new single of Robbie Williams – Lovelight. I must say he did a much better impression with his usual / natural voice, not with this too balladesque one. I don’t know why, it just doesn’t sound like his real him.

I tend to like his performances a lot, I think his a great artist, specialy on live. But this single….well, maybe for the most romantic of his fans would go fine, but I think I’ll pass.

The video is here.