ACTA: Do You Know What It Means? (Battlemouth)

ACTA: Do You Know What It Means?In 2007, a select number of countries announced they were about to begin negotiating the US-proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). At first glance, the aim of the proposed treaty was to tackle the international issue of counterfeit physical goods (such as medicines). Since then, leaks from the secret negotiations, and some public announcements, have revealed that the treaty will have a far broader scope and will have a section targeting “Internet distribution and information technology”. But what does this mean? [...]

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Five Live Albums to Check Out (Battlemouth)

Five Live Albums to Check OuWhat is it that defines a good live album? It may the intensity of a stadium concert, or the intimacy of a ballroom acoustic set. Perhaps it’s the artists interacting with the audience and obviously having fun. It could even be a reminder of concerts that a person has gone to in the past, or wanted to. For this article, in place of the usual album review, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and present one of those ubiquitous lists you see on the Internet - this list being five great live albums. These isn’t a list of the top five live albums as I haven’t heard a number of the “great” albums and wouldn’t presume to rank things outside of my ken. Instead, these are five albums that I recommend as being worthy of checking out. [...]

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Possible Transference Issues for Spoon (Battlemouth)

Possible Transference Issues for SpoonSpoon for me has always been one of those bands that you often see mentioned in various places and mean to check out, but never actually get around to doing it. When Mike asked me to have a listen to Spoon’s new album, Transference, I was certainly keen to check them out. What I discovered was that this album is a bit of a mixed bag. [...]

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The Flaming Lips vs Pink Floyd: The Kiss of Death or a Breath of Life? (Battlemouth)

The Flaming Lips vs Pink Floyd: The Kiss of Death or a Breath of Life?Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon is generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest albums of all time, and a key influence on a number of modern musical artists. It is one of the albums I grew up listening to and have carried through into my adulthood as one of my favourites. The album’s notable use of musique concrète and conceptual, philosophical lyrics resonate strongly with myself and its other listeners, and is truly something that needs to be explored in its entirety, rather than its parts. [...]

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Music Preview (Battlemouth): Heligoland from Massive Attack

Seven years after the release of Massive Attack’s last studio album, 100th Window, DJs 3D and Daddy G have returned to bring us their new offering, Heligoland.  A pioneering and highly influential institution of the Bristol scene, the UK duo follow their usual model of collaborating with guest artists to bring their listeners on a new journey into the surreal trip-hop genre. […]

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What's All This Battlemouth Malarkey Then?

As some may have noticed, it's been a bit quiet on my site recently. Between holidays, reading the Wheel of Time series, and gaming, I haven't really been up to updating the site with anything. I also seem to have hit a spot somewhere between "can't be arsed" and "a dry spell" with doing anything graphical, so that hasn't helped here either.

One thing I have been doing though is thinking over ideas for stories and articles on various things, and the best way I could present them. I could have put them on here, but I wasn't really sure how they fit with my general site theme (if, in fact, I actually have one).

A week or so ago, Mike from Battlemouth put a call out for new contributors for his site. As I had been interacting (read: trash talking) with a few of the Battlemouth guys for a while on Twitter, and had contributed a guest game review in the past, I indicated my interest and promptly sent off an article on the social inadequacy of Sony's PS3 console. Skip forward to now, and I have several articles up on Battlemouth and have been welcomed into the team.



I'm quite enthusiatic about this opportunity, and look forward to contributing to Battlemouth. It's not that I have any pretensions about my writing ability, but more about being a member of a like-minded community developing a quality magazine-style site. I certainly feel that Battlemouth is the best place for the articles I'm thinking of, and I hope the rest of the team feel the same way.

I will be posting links (with some text) to my Battlemouth articles on this site for the foreseeable future, but this may change if I think it doesn't feel right. I also hope to get back into the fold of posting my more regular stuff (photos, drawings, etc.) so this site stays alive.

Going forward, please feel free to offer any suggestions or ideas for changes in this site, or articles for Battlemouth.

Battlemouth articles to date:

Going to the Zoo

Some of the animals seen on our recent trip to Wellington Zoo.








Photos originally uploaded by Bathtime with Cthulhu