As much as I’d want to be happy, I think happiness is depressing. I’d rather be constantly depressed for the rest of my life (or constantly happy, though at this point of my life, I don’t think that is going to happen), rather than dwelling in temporary happiness, because when it’s all gone, it felt worst than anything, and it fucks you up really bad.

It’s funny, for the past 5 years, I was one of the few who left town, carrying with me an almost unbearable feeling, that sort that holds you back, that made every step forward so heavy, but you know you had to fight it, and you know you had to because when it’s all over, everything is going to be fine, everything is going to sort itself out and go back to normal, perhaps, and I thought I’m going to be fine this time, because I’m not the one that’s leaving, I’ll be staying here, desperately hoping that time is going to fly and say “It’s going to be (insert time frame here) before you know it” to whoever that left

Honestly, I actually did thought I’m doing fine here. I really did.

I was wrong, Chinese New Year brought everyone (almost) back in town, but like I said, time flies, when I wish I’d stop, and last two days, they left again, and another one about to leave in two days – I don’t even know where to start, I’d admit, maybe I am a little jealous, maybe a little angry at myself when everyone is going out, I’m back here, back to the point where I start. But that’s not the worst part - I hate to admit this, but the past few days or even weeks were some of the happiest time of my life, which, is also the major problem because I knew it better than anything else, I’ve felt it before, and I’ve seen it before, and I know it’s going to be so hard this time. It’s like a strange feeling that creeps into me and swallow me, that made me lost my mind, that made me want to cry when I’m laughing, that made my heart swell when I am happy, and drives my mind to somewhere dark, when I thought the sun finally shine on me.

I can’t think straight anymore, my quest for happiness for the past few years have taken away the little I still had, and left me here, lost. All I know is I have no idea what to do with my life right now, and if I want to get out from all of this, I have to start doing something about it, although I am damn sure that I will regret doing whatever I am about to do.

To those of you who are leaving Miri, or those that left, or those I leave behind, or those who never left, wish y’all a great year ahead, and as usual, its going to soon before we see each other again, although I doubt the puzzle will be as close to completion as this year, but nevertheless, good luck for everything.

And really, just thanks for being there.

Ranting 101

I can't handle myself well when I'm surrounded by strangers.

MSN Prejudice

FOB: $%^&*@hotmail.com, This is my other email, you can send it here.

*sending FOB the email* 5 minutes later

Me: your email is not working, the mail keep bouncing back, have you got MSN?

FOB: I think it's the same

Me: No no, I mean do you use MSN messenger?

FOB: Yes, I know what MSN is, I mean you can add with the the address I just gave you.

Oops.

Oh well,

I mean whatever, it's shit anyway

Snake on Mount. Fuji

I've been having this dream about a black snake on the summit on Mount. Fuji for the past three nights.

It's starting to bug me.

It's something like this:

Oops I did it again.

Oh.My.God. I can't fucking believe I did it again this year. Totally forgotten about it.

I was actually going to write something extravaganza just for it, but since it's over now I don't see the point.

But anyway, your favorite blog Chronicles of Broken Beaker is officially 2 years old on 1st February 2007.

I am sure y'll will see a lot from me this year.



Your favorite blogger,

-Nigel

Look To Your Left

<<<---and you will find a brand new music player.

Currently on Playlist

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible album [2007]

Explosions In The Sky - Suddenly I Miss Everyone album [2007]

Bloc Party - Weekend In The City album [2007]

The Shins - Wincing The Night Away [2007]

My Morning Jacket - Okonokos [2006]

Official Top 20 Albums of 2006 [No. 10 - No. 1]

Formed back in 1992, Built To Spill is an American art-rockers lead by Doug Martsch and over the 13 years period of their career, they have released 6 studio album. Back in 2001 when they released Ancient Melodies of The Future, it became a big disappointment. Each track seemed blatant, and mechanical. Something wasn't right and it was confusing, for the band and the listener. Then in 2002 when Martsch released his own solo work, Now You Know, it went straight to the trash bin. And after five years of experimenting, stumbling around and contemplating, Martsch and his crew are back in perfect shape and it's perhaps one of their finest album to date, You in Reverse.

Built to Spill's earliest intention were to be a cast of musicians to serve as a reliable platform for Doug Martsch's brilliant song writing. However, in this album, it's no longer Doug Martsch's show. You in Reverse is a true collaborative effort, which each member contributing equally, creating a rather organic sound that casts off the usual meticulous guitar and studio polish in pursue of a more rugged, less refined and more spontaneous music that almost sounds like a live recording.

The album begin with the spectacular Goin’ Against Your Mind kicks off with the drum-propelled beats that gallops past the eight minute mark, delivered intuitively and effortlessly, welcomes the listener with a steady and driving rhythm, that kicks open the door and lay out the path for songs to follow. Second track, Traces is a spooky mid-tempo follow up to album opener with strong layering of brilliant guitar styling and Martsch’s warm blanket voice. Conventional Wisdom marks the point where You in Reverse starts to heat up. From it’s slick and dirty opening riff to it’s explosive guitar hook, Conventional Wisdom conveys an exuberance that graced and flourished this album. In contrast with their trademark layering of guitars, some offers a simple guitar chords that slowly builds up to a crescendo, then descends to a spooky sounding reggae beat, courtesy of Sam Coomes. The album finally peaks with Mess With Time, a fierce opening guitar that reverberate alongside Marstch’s voice that builds up the atmosphere for a mere three minutes before blasting into the shuffling ska jam session. You In Reverse end on a high notch with The Wait with country style accompanied by reversed guitar and outer space sounds. The last two minutes of melodic jamming is the most memorable, almost like an encore to their concert.

You In Reverse is easily my favorite records this year and perhaps one of the strongest non-mainstream album you’ll find this year. Five year in the making, after five years of contemplating and experimenting, You In Reverse delivers interesting and invigorating sounds that will haunt the listeners. From opening to the end, You In Reverse is skillfully produced and the sounds are flawlessly executed. Even after repeated listening, this album has not lost the surprise and the joy of first listen, and in fact this album will continue to grow on the listener.

Yes it might have taken Built to Spill 5 years with You In Reverse, but when it came, it was bigger than ever – as if Doug Martsch never left, his magical touch, his own style of guitar rock was as epic as ever.

Essential Listen: Goin’ Against Your Mind, Traces, Conventional Wisdom, Mess With Time, The Wait.



The Decemberists has always been a consistently “Good” band with several good records in their catalogue. But when they released The Crane Wife, this consistently good band is finally showing signs of true greatness. The Decemberists have achieved something rather ironic here, - indie band signing to major record labels is usually a very tricky matter – and most of the time leads to dramatic change in musical direction often to reach out a more mainstream market and resulting an potentially good album misfire, however, upon signing to Capitol, they not only manage to take control of the whole creative process, - producing their most ambitious, best album to date yet refusing to sacrifice an ounce of integrity. The Crane Wife is unlike anything out there – the incredible musicianship and its marvellous melodies throughout the duration of the album is a sign of a Masterpiece.

Essential Listen: Yankee Beyonet (I Will Be Home Then), The Perfect Crime, When The War Came, The Island, Come See, The Landlords Daughter, Summersong




A double album – recorded live. Amazing. Not many band can pull off a perfect live performance, certainly there are not a lot of bands that can put out a perfect live show, and release a full double disc album of the live recording as the unofficial best-of collection. My Morning Jacket seemed to have achieved both with Okonokos.

This album blew me away and it turned me into a fan. Honestly, I didn’t quite dig their last album ‘Z’ but after Okonokos, I started to listen to their earlier materials, and I was impressed. Apparently there’s a pre-Z My Morning Jacket and current Z My Morning Jacket. I have to say their earlier stuff is somewhat better than the current one, but no complaints, Okonokos is the perfect album to get into My Morning Jacket’s music – while it’s heavy with materials from album Z and that there might be a slight noticeable difference between Z and pre-Z tracks , the flow of the whole album is pretty good, with most of the tracks blending in seamlessly from one song to another.

Throughout the album, My Morning Jacket displays their ability to recreate the atmosphere of their studio albums in a live setting, in which something very few bands can seemed to achieve. All of the songs are just insane – the guitar and the vocals are simply amazing.

Essential Listen: One Big Holiday, Xmas Curtain



What’s the word to describe a band that has been around for 25 years and still manage to put up an amazing album while staying true to their roots – IMPRESSIVE! Sonic Youth has been around since the early eighties, and have released tons of great records from punk to hardcore to post-hardcore to new wave to alternative rock, whatever you want to call it, Sonic Youth is there to answer it and their latest studio album Rather Ripped is their most subtle and most mature record to date. In fact, over the 25 years, Sonic Youth have never put up 2 bad albums in a row. Rather Ripped resembles 2004’s brilliant Sonic Nurse sound, sophisticated and elegant, smothered with 2002’s explosive rock-arena style in Murray Street. Having said that, Rather Ripped is as good as 1984’s Daydream Nation, only mellower, more subtle and more refined.

Every few years Sonic Youth throws out a record, that’s part of the deal in their contract with Greffen Records and having one last album before the contract ends, Rather Ripped was speculated to have made just to finish up with Griffen. Whichever the case was, Rather Ripped certainly have become one of their best record ever in their catalogue. Now Rather Ripped might not have the social impact of Daydream Nation or Murray Street, it carries a rather personal and intimate statement of Sonic Youth. Rather Ripped is a graceful, elegant way to end the story. It seems to almost complete a circle, of little bit of something they have done. It’s an instant classic.

Essential Listen: Reena, Incinerate, Pink Stream



Stadium Arcadium is Red Hot Chili Peppers at their top of their game, at their state of total indulgement and freedom, almost like their California-dreams-came-true-moment. Out of 28 tracks of Stadium Arcadium, there are at least 14 stand-out singles, while more songs could possibly grow on the listener, Stadium Arcadium is the 21st century's answer to the period of Queen, Led Zeppelin and Guns 'n' Roses. Stadium Arcadium is an epic.

Essential Listen: Wet Sand, 21st Century, Charlie, Only In Michigan




This is what I call headphone music – the fact that this album has so many details that speakers, even an excellent one can’t do this justice as those aforementioned details can only be revealed upon close listen – with a decent pair of headphone of course.

Now having said that, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Sun is indeed a very complex album – because there’s just way too much elements in it up to a point it could be rather infuriating. Upon first impression, this album is full of post-rock clichés; their ridiculously long track titles – a total of 198 words used I must say, and typical guitar reverbs that build up into gorgeously layered crescendos. But what truly sets them apart from any other post-rockers out there is their level of maturity and understanding on the musical direction they are going into.

Much like their debut, Every Red Heart Shines Towards The Sun contains plenty of mystifying melodies and mountains of crescendos, only that this album seemed to go a step further with more diversified layers in the songs – and it often change pace and covered a much broader range of beats and melodies. With pure instrumentation and no words sung or spoken at all, Red Sparowes seemed to possess an ability to vividly illustrate the stories they are trying to tell by creating heavenly soundscapes and with a little help from again, their ridiculously long track titles.

Having only emerged less than two years, Red Sparowes has already had two strong solid releases – and made themselves a reputation as a major component of the post-rock circle. Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Sun reflects Red Sparowes’ quest for instrumental perfection by creating wonderfully artistic instrumental music combined with intriguing storylines that leave the listener stunned. Having said that, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Sun is an epic work of proportions looking boldly pass any restrictions and this is why it is so hard to find a word to describe the experience of this album.

Essential listen: Listen from start to finish, then you’ll know what I mean.




Just over a year and a few months after the release of the rather amazing Frances The Mute – I find it quite unbelievable that The Mars Volta is going to release yet another full-length record in such a short time span. Basically, Amputechture contain total of 8 songs – and is divided into 3 epic centrepieces - "Tetragrammaton", "Meccamputechture" and "Day of the Baphomets" with each of the songs exceeds 10 minutes mark –

Although Amputechture is not groundbreaking by any means, it is easily Mars Volta strongest release yet and is definitely one of 2006’s best. When De-loused in Comatorium was released, it was amazing, fresh and groundbreaking – a new height in guitar rock arena. It was an album that successfully showed how much potential Mars Volta have in terms of musical brilliance and creativity but then it lacks of variety in the songs. Follow up to De-loused in Comatorium was Frances The Mute that have received two very extreme kinds of reviews. That is not to say Frances The Mute was a bad album. Mars Volta has introduced several different elements in this album – one of more noticeable was the Jazz elements and a more prevalent Latin flavor. However Frances The Mute’s main problem was that Mars Volta seemed to take their prog-wank guitar a little to far – way too ambient and way too psychedelic with most of the songs just sprawl too far. And this is where Amputecture comes into the picture. Amputecture is consistent. By that, I mean from start to finish, Mars Volta delivers in Amputecture They have taken the surprise element from their debut and takes their crazy sprawling guitar works up one level with Amputechture. This, is incredibly textured music that contains a lot of different some new – music are dense and layered – utterly chaotic at the same time planned guitars particularly pulls the songs in dozens of fractured of directions but without ever really losing it.

With the release of Amputechture, Mars Volta have proved yet a again to be one of the most brilliant band in the current scene of music.

Essential Listen: Tetragrammaton, Meccamputechture, Day of the Baphomets



The only reason Justin Timberlake is always going to be lowly regarded as a mere male pop singer is the fact that he was a former N’sync. The problem with mainstream pop (keyword: mainstream) is that there isn’t really any rooms for perfection in terms of creativity and art, and other criterion for what constitutes a great record, because if you consider Britney’s album – I really can’t tell whether Baby One More Time is better of Oops I Did It Again, but I certainly think that Toxic was pretty clever. Having that said, reviewing a mainstream pop record is actually a pretty useless effort because a pop record will always be critically attacked regardless how poppy it is – and being a former boy band member won’t make things easier.

So when it comes to Futuresex/ Lovesound, I really don’t know what to make of it. All I know is this is a pretty damn good record. As silly as the title Futuresex/ Lovesound might suggest, the album itself is not at all silly. If Michael Jackson have Thriller and Dangerous under his belt as pop classic, Justin Timberlake have Futurelove / Sexsound because it is unarguably one of the pop classic in recent years. Futurelove/ Sexsound is JT’s statement – that he is more than boy band material, and that he could deliver giant pop singles and capable of defining exactly what a great pop record should sound like.

And no matter how much you hated Justin Timberlake, Sexyback and My Love will stuck in your head, although you are constantly trying to tell yourself that it sucks. And it just proved how incredibly infectious the songs could be. Nothing is to be too critically attacked on the music side, because this album is pretty consistent start to finish while some songs might stand out more than others. The only thing this album may fall short is JT’s ridiculously disposable and juvenile lyrics. But isn’t that what pop music is all about? The only reason this album stands out from any other pop albums is it’s slick production – and the timing, the packaging and even the theme. Everything about this album just seemed right for its time, and if any, Futuresex/ Lovesound sounded more 2006 than any other albums.

Essential Listen: Sexyback, My Love, What Goes Around…/Comes Around [Interlude]



It’s not often to come across material this neat; Return To Cookie Mountain, a sophomore release from TV On The Radio delivers a genre that is quite hard to file. It’s falling somewhere between tribal and post-punk, but then, it offers so much more than that. Return To Cookie Mountain is an album with soul and rhythm as well as musical beauty – but at the same time, it pushes boundaries and constantly keep the listener of the edge of their seat.

However, there is one thing this album may fall short – it is hardly accessible. While it may offer pretty rhythms, this album is dense, very dense instead. It may be a rewarding listen, but most of the time it’s disturbing. The lyrics are frequently indecipherable, up to a point where you can only enjoy the music more that the actual content of the songs. But then there is no argument here, difficult things are beautiful, and so you can say Return To Cookie Mountain is beautiful to a certain degree, just like a beautiful piece of artwork that the meaning remain mysteries.

In a nutshell, Return To Cookie Mountain is an album from a band that have grown from strength to strength, band with a combination of impressive musical talents so odd that you don’t often find in other bands. Unmistakably, Return To Cookie Mountain sounded more cohesive than their debut, they’ve pushed the boundaries a little, and sometimes it’s thought provoking.

Essential Listen: Playhouses, Province, Wolf Like Me, I Was A Lover



Any band that features classically-trained double bass player and Brazilian former death-metal guitarists, and whose frontman has the exotic name of Fyfe Dangerfield, might indeed reasonably have eccentricity expected out of them. And so it is with music quartet Guillemots. In fact, the theory of why Guillemots sounds so different is because of their multinational makeup – English, Scottish, Brazilian and Canadian.

Through The Windowpane is Guillemot’s debut album, although they have released tons of EP here and there and this album was one of the albums that has been short listed in 2006’s Mercury Prize although seriously they should’ve won instead of the God awful Arctic Who.

Back to the album, basically Through the Windowpane is a very atmospheric one with some of the most brilliantly written lyrics and amazing vocal performance (Fyfe Dangerfield ) I’ve heard in some time. Although that three aforementioned aspects are what Guillemots seemed to possess, the true greatness of this album is this marriage of interesting themes and fine execution. Through The Windowpane plays like a fairytale - each tracks intends to tell a different story, some inspired by true events some in response to true events – Train To Brazil is their finest example – written in response to the 7/7 bombings of London Underground and the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes who was shot dead in a train by police mistaken for a terrorist. Guillemots used an extensive varieties of musical instruments to go with their brilliant lyrics – forming landscapes for each songs while the record itself becomes an on-going story.

Second by second, Through The Windowpane is full of heart and craft, from incredible drumming, to the brilliant arrangements to powerful vocal works, this record shines from beginning to the end, glittering, moody and transcendent.

Essential Listen: Train To Brazil, Made Up Love Song #43, San Paolo

View bottom half of the list here

Year of 2006:
Total albums listened in 2006: 213
Released in 2006: 198
Released in 2005: 11
Released in 2004: 2
Released in 2001: 1
Released in 1996: 1