A Cuesheet for Laibach’s Macbeth

Macbeth is a wonderful soundtrack album by Laibach for a German stage production from 1987/88. But for some reason the CD has been presented with one physical track. But this is just not a good basis if you want to put the music on a portable device.

Now, if you happen to own the CD with the MusicBrainz DiscID “xylv7ouv0Xq23nPDq6Q.I_xCZ9o-” (the same as I do), here’s the cuesheet (EAC-style) so you can split the single track into the 11 music tracks of the album:

PERFORMER "Laibach"
TITLE "Macbeth"
CATALOG 5016025610709
FILE "Laibach - Macbeth.wav" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Preludium"
    ISRC GBAJH0401210
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Agnus Dei (Acropolis)"
    INDEX 01 01:04:15
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Wutach Schlucht"
    INDEX 01 05:37:31
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Die Zeit"
    INDEX 01 10:04:38
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Ohne Geld"
    INDEX 01 11:16:41
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "U.S.A."
    INDEX 01 15:10:31
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "10.5.1941"
    INDEX 01 15:59:18
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Expectans Expectavos"
    INDEX 01 16:30:43
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Coincidentia Oppositorum"
    INDEX 01 21:43:45
  TRACK 10 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Wolf"
    INDEX 01 26:04:38
  TRACK 11 AUDIO
    PERFORMER "Laibach"
    TITLE "Agnus Dei (Exil und Tod)"
    INDEX 01 27:08:02

I hope this is helpful to some of you!

My Top Albums 2017

Last year was a again a good year in music and I have listened a lot of music. Thanks to a bluetooth connection between my smartphone and my car hi-fi I can finally even scrobble my listens while driving my car. I also needed to find a good combination of Android apps to allow this scrobbling. I tried several this year from Phonograph to foobar2000 before settling on MediaMonkey with the Simple Last.fm Scrobbler in the background.

Top 10 Albums of 2017

I use Last.fm which despite its shortcomings is still my choice. One of its weaknesses are the lack of unambiguous identification of homonymous entities, especially artists. The other one is that the number of tracks counts independent of track length. It will thus put an advantage to short tracks over long tracks. So one may listen to an album of ten three-minute songs followed by an album featuring one single track running a full hour: despite the much shorter run time of the first album (half an hour instead of one hour), it will top the second album in every count as most listened artist and most listened album.

But despite this systematic error I’ll use Last.fm to give you my top ten albums of 2017.

1. Divergent

   by Pandora’s Black Book
   
   
   
   Originally released in 2012 on Raumklang Music, James Church’s industrial IDM kinda slipped into my top ten list, almost unnoticed.

2. Oil, Steel & Rhythm

   by Komor Kommando
   
   
   
   Sebastian Komor was quite ubiquitous in 2000s industrial music with Komor Kommando being his only project bearing his name. Originally released in 2001 on Alfa Matrix.

3. 3-D The Catalogue

   by Kraftwerk
   
   
   
   Technically 3D The Catalogue is a live album but the complete lack of any live sound makes this eight-CD collection rather a remix album.

4. 8:58

   by 8:58
   
   
   
   Paul Hartnoll of Orbital fame released his second solo album under the moniker 8:58. The Deluxe Edition features the whole album in instrumental glory which I definitely prefer.

5. Born in Ruins

   by Blac Kolor
   
   Released in 2016 on Basic Unit Productions, Hendrick Grothe crafts wonderful industrial IDM. Also available here.

6. New World March

   by Haujobb
   
   
   
   Haujobb, whose label brought us Born in Ruins, also appear on this list with their 2011 album.

7. RR7349

   by S U R V I V E
   
   
   
   Among the discoveries that I have made when finding the label Relapse Records thanks to Zombi was S U R V I V E. Deeply steeped in 1980s music, two of its members later became famous in their own right when they created the music to a popular Netflix series.

8. Blade Runner 2049

   by Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch
   
   
   
   Proclaiming that the music isn’t as good as the original by Vangelis is an easy thing to say but doesn’t do the music justice. Of course it is more than just a bit reminiscent but after all that was the aim. The big disadvanted of the vinyl is of course that it is difficult to leave out those tracks by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley as they disrupt the atmospheric flow of the music.

9. Mayhem

   by Steve Moore
   
   
   
   Steve Moore and Anthony Paterra of the band Zombi have easily become two of my favorite artists during the last year. Mayhem is the latest solo outing of Steve Moore.

10. Stranger Things, Vol. 1

    by Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein
    
    
    
    Stranger Things was enormously big last year on Netflix and it part also thanks to its music. While the music is perfect for the series and thus incited me to listen to it upon purchasing the album, as stand-alone music it falls a bit flat.

Gliese 614 « Saturn »

Gliese 614 is an ambient/drone/industrial electronica project. Unfortunately I couldn’t find out that much about it except that s/he also uses the name Dronespace on occasion, seems to be based in the UK and (maybe) likes pidgeon breeding.

1. Dione 2:19
2. Iapetus 10:18
3. Rhea 9:47
4. Titan 9:30

Saturn was released on 30^th of August 2010 via the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license though it was originally recorded in early 2005.

Saturn are 32 minutes of Berlin School-influenced sequencer music. Despite (or maybe because of) being somewhat repetitive in nature I find its sound flow engaging and utterly fascinating.

I’d like to say ‘Mr. Gliese, please more of the same’ (or Mrs., for all I know) but it seems Gliese 614 stopped transmitting in 2011. If anyone has any information on Gliese 614 or suggestions for alike-sounding music, please contact me!

• Free streaming and download in MP3 from the Internet Archive 
  
  

Direct download of the original version of the complete album from the Internet Archive:
DOWNLOAD

See also: Discogs | Last.fm | MusicBrainz | RateYourMusic

Saturn ℗ 2010 Gliese 614

Saturn by Gliese 614 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://archive.org/details/Saturn_733.

Mosaik « Apologies »

Mosaik is the ambient electronica project of Jakob Svanholm. Jakob was especially active in the first half of the first decade of this new century but has slowed his release schedule a bit.
Apologies was his second release for the Kahvi Collective.

1. Noa Lake 4:30
2. Cumulus 5:15
3. Pillow Dance 5:30
4. Fish Curves 4:34
5. Clover 5:06
6. Locus Fruit 4:01
7. Winternumb 7:00

Apologies was originally released on 13^th of February 2007 by the Kahvi Collective on their webpage where everything has been published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives license. On the 1^st of September the Kahvi Collective re-released the EP via their netlabel collection on the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives license. Both releases were in lossy MP3 and OggVorbis.

Jakob issued eventually (in September 2009) a lossless release via his Bandcamp page under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license.

Apologies are 35 minutes of ambient IDM.

• Free streaming and download in WAV, FLAC, MP3 or OggVorbis from the Internet Archive 
  
  

Direct download of the FLAC version of the complete album from the Internet Archive:
DOWNLOAD

See also: Discogs | Last.fm | MusicBrainz | RateYourMusic

Apologies ℗ 2007 Mosaik ℅ Jakob Svanholm

Apologies by Mosaik is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://mosaik.se/album/apologies.

Obsidian Shell « Angelic Asylum »

I have presented you so far mostly with electronic music of ambient or psychedelic varieties, only once with a bit of swing metal. So here comes some gothic metal.

Obsidian Shell was created out of the ashes of Hungarian gothic metal band Restart which split after one five-track demo in 2006. Restart’s vocalist, bassist and guitarist formed Obsidian Shell (sans drummer and keyboarder) and released their first album 2009.

1. My Arrival 1:07
2. Orphanage 4:19
3. Fear 5:00
4. Dream 4:17
5. Endsequence 3:34
6. Starfall 3:27
7. Summoner of the Wind 4:34
8. Second Birth 4:33
9. Wings of Cruelty 3:53
10. Farewell 5:49
11. Misanthropia 2: Eternal Darkness 10:10

Angelic Asylum was published on 3^rd of October 2010 via Jamendo.

Gothic metal with female vocals seems to have been quite popular and probably still is - I just did not found most of it convincing. My interest rather lies with progressive and technical death metal or - as might be expected - crossover with various electronic styles. Gothic just doesn’t fit my bill and frankly sounds quite a lot like a caricature.

Now, Obsidian Shell is classified gothic but except for the fact that it is sung by a woman I just don’t see it much. It has some electro metal and otherwise a drum set and guitar playing that I would place with industrial extreme metal but is neither. Mostly engaging and appealing. The lyrics appear to be rather of a gothic nature though…

• Free streaming and download in MP3 from the Internet Archive 
• Free streaming and download in OggVorbis from the Internet Archive 
  
  

Direct download of the OggVorbis version of the complete album from the Internet Archive:
DOWNLOAD

See also: Discogs | Last.fm | MusicBrainz | RateYourMusic

Angelic Asylum ℗ 2010 Obsidian Shell ℅ Henrik Csató

Angelic Asylum by Obsidian Shell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.jamendo.com/album/76571.

Sky Effect « Freedom Eye »

Sky Effect is still a relatively new project of psychedelic electronica created by Ukrainian musician Viktor Korchinsky.

1. Processes 8:57
2. Back in Space 6:03
3. Wayting 7:12
4. Yes & No 5:51
5. Transpher 7:04
6. Channel 7:54
7. Connected 7:30

Freedom Eye was published on 14^th of November 2013 via Jamendo and is ongoing proof that indeed new music to discover is out there. Downtempo music with ambient and psychotronic sound with lots of great ideas that I wish Viktor would have released in lossless FLAC. It would make a great release for Ektoplazm.

• Free streaming and download in MP3 or OggVorbis from Jamendo 
• Free streaming and download in WAV, FLAC, MP3 or OggVorbis from the Internet Archive 
  
  
  In this player each track is featured twice.

Direct download of the OggVorbis version of the complete album from the Internet Archive:
DOWNLOAD

See also: Discogs | Last.fm | MusicBrainz | RateYourMusic

Freedom Eye ℗ 2013 Sky Effect ℅ Віктор Корчинський

Freedom Eye by Sky Effect is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.jamendo.com/list/a128626.

EugeneKha « Tribute to Russian Space »

EugeneKha is the alias of Evgenij Haritonov (alternatively transliterated as Yevgeny Kharitonov or - in a yet another, almost ridiculous fashion - as EBrEHNÑ XapNTOHOB), a writer, poet, musician and multimedia artist from Moscow.

1. Intro 1:46
2. Space Wanderers 11:45
3. Green Heart of Earth 9:56
4. Fin 2:16

Tribute to Russian Space was recorded live on 5^th of October 2011 at the art club Shokoladnaya Fabrika and released six days later on the 11^th by Evgenij’s own label Echoes Sounds.

The original release was composed of one single file. This is a reissue with four individual track files. His Tribute to Russian Space is space ambient (as it should have been) with some uplifting elements and a notch of Berlin school-style electronics.

• Free streaming and download in FLAC or MP3 from the Internet Archive 
• Free streaming and download in WAV, FLAC, MP3 or OggVorbis from the Internet Archive 
  
  

Direct download of the FLAC version of the complete album from the Internet Archive:
DOWNLOAD

See also: Discogs | Last.fm | MusicBrainz | RateYourMusic

Tribute to Russian Space ℗ 2011 EugeneKha ℅ Евгений Харитонов

Tribute to Russian Space by EugeneKha is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://archive.org/details/Eugenekha-TributeToRussianSpaceliveAtShokoladnayaFabrika2011-10-05.