Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Mauritius

The Blue Penny is a good Mauritian movie

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Just finished watching “The Blue Penny”, a Mauritian movie by Jon Rabaud and with a Mauritian group of actors. I really liked the movie. It’s very well made. Bravo to everyone involved.

I’ve been following Mauritian movie makers and actors for a few years now and I’m impressed by what Mauritians can create. We can dream big now.

Looking forward to many more Mauritian creations in the future. And, of course, a proper movie making industry emerging.

Ale Moris :-)

So many saturation and “mangling” plugins…

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I have a lot of saturation plugins and I need to properly evaluate them:

  • Baby Audio Parallel Aggressor
  • Black Box Analog Design HG-2
  • Black Box Analog Design HG-2MS
  • Elysia Karacter
  • Elysia Phil’s Cascade
  • Fuse Audio Labs Flywheel
  • NEOLD BIG AL
  • Softube Saturation Knob
  • Solid State Logic SSL Native X-Saturator
  • SPL Vitalizer MK2-T
  • United Plugins Autoformer
  • Vertigo VSM-3
  • Waves Abbey Road Saturator
  • Waves BB Tubes
  • Waves J37 Tape
  • Waves Lil Tube

I have also a lot of plugins to completely transform the audio into something completely different:

  • Cableguys DriveShaper (ShaperBox 2)
  • Cherry Audio Voltage Modular Ignite 2 FX
  • DS Audio Tantra 2
  • iZotope Stutter Edit 2
  • iZotope Trash 2
  • iZotope Vinyl
  • Klevgrand DAW Cassette
  • Softube Dirty Tape
  • Unfiltered Audio BYOME
  • Unfiltered Audio Dent 2
  • Unfiltered Audio Fault (Pitch and Time)
  • Unfiltered Audio Indent 2
  • Unfiltered Audio Needlepoint
  • Unfiltered Audio SpecOps (Spectral Effects)
  • Waves Berzerk Distortion
  • Waves MetaFilter
  • Waves MultiMod Rack
  • Waves OneKnob Filter
  • Waves Retro Fi
  • Waves Scheps Parallel Particles
  • XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color

I wonder how I am going to choose which ones to use on a regular basis…

Memento Mori by Depeche Mode

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Depeche Mode released its latest album, Memento Mori, on Friday 24 March. During the day, I started listening to the songs on my way to work and I was quite happy. Happier than with some of the previous albums to be honest. Interestingly, I felt that the second half of the album was stronger than the first half but, because I was commuting, I knew I needed to give the album a proper listen before deciding.

The next day, after lunch on Saturday 25 March 2023 at 14:00, Christina, Kyan and I properly listened to Momento Mori from the first song to the last. We got the album on TIDAL (FLAC 48KHz 24bit, MQA 96KHz) and listened on our dream Hi-Fi setup.

During the 50 minutes, I took some notes and rated the songs:

  • “My Cosmos Is Mine”: Industrial. Lots of reverb. Atmospheric. Good way to start a concept album. 7/10.
  • “Wagging Tongue”: Organic. Arpeggiated. Simple lyrics. Not too profound. 6/10.
  • “Ghosts Again”: Anthemic Depeche Mode song. Good singing. Nice bridge. 8/10.
  • “Don’t Say You Love Me”: A much slower It’s No Good. Orchestral. “I’ll be the punchline of course.” 7/10.
  • “My Favourite Stranger”. Another anthemic DM song. Recognizable baseline (Fade to grey?). Slow electro. Heavy distortion. 8/10.
  • “Soul with Me”: Generic DM ballad. Martin Gore singing. Good chorus. 7/10.
  • “Caroline’s Monkey”: Starts like Dream On. Chorus could be better. Sometimes… and chord. 7/10.
  • “Before We Drown”: Fantastic song, music and lyrics. Restrained voice. Beautiful electro. Fantastic strings. 9/10.
  • “People Are Good”: Kraftwerk / DM symbiosis. Crooner-kind of singing. Effective electro. 8/10.
  • “Always You”: Nice Grahan ballad. Very electronic and organic. Recognizable. Repetitive. 7/10.
  • “Never Let Me Go”: Dark Depeche Mode. Great music and lyrics. Orchestration good. Guitar distortion. 8/10.
  • “Speak to Me”: Tranquil outro. Easy way to end the album. Very predictable. 6/10.

Overall, I gave the album 7.5/10. In fact, I like the album very much as it is sounds much more electronic than previous albums (which were too rock-oriented for my own taste). One criticism is that some of the songs use way too much saturation and distortion but this looks like to be fashionable these days. I wonder what would happen if the next album (if made…) was produced by someone like Deadmau5? Will Depeche Mode then have a Violator 2 album? Who knows?

Here are my favourite five songs as reflected in the ratings I gave:

  • Ghosts Again
  • My Favourite Stranger
  • Before We Drown
  • People Are Good
  • Never Let Me Go

At some point, I will have to restrict this to the three songs I like most to add to my Top 50 Depeche Mode songs (which will then have 53 songs). Give me a few days to make up my mind.