It should only take a single listen for you to identify this music as something unique and interesting. That said, it may very well take several more listens for you to decide whether or not you actually like it. At least that was the case for me… but I’m pretty sure I do in fact like much of it now. I’m not gonna bullshit you - this band gets into some strange shit sometimes. Then again, it’s about as strange as one might expect for an Avant-garde metal group from Jakarta, Indonesia. But the great thing is there’s really no gamble for you since several of their albums are available for free [legal] download!

The three albums you can download from their website for free are: Audible Minority, 1000 Thoughts of Violence, and Acidity. Unfortunately, my favorite of their albums - The Habit of Fire - isn’t currently available for free. But I did include two audio clips from this one to try to entice you to buy it. This album has more of a “normal” progressive metal feel when compared to the other albums (although I’ve used the word “normal” in a very liberal sense; it definitely still has its weird moments). I guess a simpler and more accurate way of saying this is that it is a more melodic album. Audible Minority has a stronger experimental industrial/electronic flavor and honestly I find it a bit difficult to listen to. 1000 Thoughts and Acidity both have a melodic death metal vibe much of the time, but it’s clearly Kekal’s special brand.

I wouldn’t personally classify any of these albums as “amazing” or “excellent”, but there’s definitely some great music to be had here. And again, most of it is free. I should also mention that the singer’s voice does leave more to be desired in my opinion, then again maybe I’m just not accustomed to the Indonesian accent. Anyway, I suggest starting off by downloading 1000 Thoughts. If you like what you hear and want more then check out Acidity. Or, if you’re intrigued but want something a little different, purchase The Habit of Fire. You might even download Audible Minority if you’re feeling brave and adventurous, but don’t say I didn’t give you a fair warning.

And what exactly is the difference between lossy and lossless compression? Well it’s quite simple. When an audio track is compressed to a format such as MP3 or AAC, data is lost - forever. There’s no turning back once it’s been compressed. Sure, you can convert it back to the original format if you want but there’s still no way to retrieve the data that was thrown out. On the other hand, lossless compression (e.g. FLAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey’s Audio) manages to compress the data in such a way as to not lose any information. It’s like Zipping a file - you’ve saved space but you can still unzip it to return the original file. My beef here isn’t with lossless compression; it’s with lossy compression. So to avoid confusion, from hereon whenever I say “compression” it’s meant in the lossy manner.

To me, compressing a musician’s audio track is roughly analogous to adding a little bit of white to every color in a painter’s palette, causing them to fade. The picture (or sounds) aren’t as bright or clear as before. This doesn’t have as noticeable of an effect on some types of music as it does on others. The more acoustically simple a song is, the more likely it can be compressed without a noticeable audible effect. What I mean by acoustically simple is that not a lot is going on at the same time - for instance a singer/songwriter like Jack Johnson. He just happened to pop in my mind, and I’ve got no problem with him, but most of his music I’ve heard is just him singing over his guitar with some percussion and subtle bass in the background. This is more compression-friendly than (again, first artist to pop into my head) Opeth - with their very wide dynamic range and complex layers that fill out the audible spectrum.

It turns out that 256kbps AAC compression (the iTunes standard) is actually pretty good at preserving the original fidelity of most songs, and it also helps if the original track to be compressed is a high quality recording. But I don’t think this nullifies anything I’ve said thus far.

If you have a digital music player with a limited amount of space and you want to fit your entire library on it, then understandably you’ll have a need for compressing your music - at least for that digital music player. But it just doesn’t make much sense to me to compress one’s entire music collection on their hard drive to accommodate for this in an age where computer storage space is so cheap (hell, my iPod has 120Gb, and it seems it’s hard to find a computer these days with less than 200Gb… even Terabyte storage is hardly a rarity). I always try to buy physical CD’s whenever possible, this way I can rip them to my hard drive in Apple lossless format, thus preserving the original quality of the recording.

Here’s a couple links I like that I think you should check out:

Analysis: Metallica’s Death Magnetic Sounds Better in Guitar Hero - A case study on how post-production compression can completely ruin an album.

SoundExpert.info - Cool site that compares the quality of different audio codecs at different bit rates.

I think the only thing regarding Porcupine Tree that amazes me more than meeting supposed rock/metal music aficionados that have never even heard of Porcupine Tree is how many albums they’ve released and have yet to bore me. This is a band that is constantly growing and led by someone with a very clear passion for music. Whether you’ve never heard Porcupine Tree before or you’re a long time fan, their latest release will not disappoint.

The Incident (2009) somehow offered few surprises to me, but at the same time, I feel like I haven’t listened to it enough. I’ve listened to this album easily 20 times and I just bought it less than a week ago (I know, It came out three weeks ago… shame on me), and I know I’ll actually keep that pace for some time. The biggest change on this album for the band is that The Incident is practically one song… or something loosely defined as a song for the first disc. I’m always a big fan of albums with a strong sense of continuity. However, many times bands assume leaving little to no silence between tracks is all they need to achieve a fully cohesive album. While there is indeed little to no silence between the tracks, there’s never any filler sequences. Rather than calling the first disc of The Incident one extended song, I’d rather label is a collection of movements similar to that of classical compositions. Each track is distinct, but they flow as seamlessly as you’d expect a transition from a verse to a chorus in a simpler composition. In fact, if you’re not looking at your stereo or media player, you’ll have a difficult time letting the music tell you when you’ve changed tracks. On the other hand, if you study it closely, the distinction between the movements make sense after the fact.

The musicianship on this album is top notch, as expected, and the recording is well above par compared to the rest of the progressive rock community. This is no In Absentia (2002) with respect to recording and production, but it’s honestly not far from it. I love the band’s exploration into using more sequences and synthesizer effects, particularly on the title track, The Incident, and Drawing the Line. It expresses the band’s varying influences with out departing too far from their comfort zone. I also noticed more prominent similarities to Radiohead (particularly the guitar tone in the lead for Great Expectations) and Pink Floyd (Time Flies strikes me being along the lines of Animals (1977), but with heavier tendencies at times).

I can’t say enough good things about Porcupine Tree. While The Incident isn’t ground breaking, it’s still an extremely good album with some new and unique ideas not found in previous releases. It’s roughly what I’d expect from a band like Porcupine Tree and it keeps my interest. Somehow they’ve managed to get me to buy 9 of their releases, and I still want more. The only other bands with more releases that I own is Opeth and Pink Floyd, but that’s by a small margin. Any lesser band would have lost their touch or split up long before releasing as many albums as Porcupine Tree. Furthermore, Steven Wilson has had several side projects in the mean time. Even if you’re not into progressive rock, it’s hard not to find that impressive. All in all, The Incident verges on the cohesiveness and production of In Absentia while bringing something new to the table. This is a no-brainer for progressive rock fans looking for new music… buy it already.

This post just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how much you try to submerse yourself into the search for new music, there is always someone else out there that’s been right under your nose. While the casual listener likely has no idea who Devin Townsend is, I may very well be chastised by my Obnoxious counter-parts for admitting I never knowingly heard any of his music until this past Monday.

Devin Townsend actually has a rather extensive music résumé, and while I encourage you to check it out, I’d just be regurgitating Wikipedia if I tried to summarize it. On the other hand, I have been listening his latest album, Ki (2009), practically non-stop since Monday night. I’ve gone from worrying I may have finally bought an album based on instinct that I would end up not liking, to thinking this isn’t so bad, and finally to realizing… holy shit, this album is brilliant! Hopefully, I can help you skip the first few steps.

Keep in mind that I’m unfamiliar with his previous work, and I believe this project is a departure, so you may need to keep an open mind as I inherently already had… sort of. I was not entirely sure what to expect, but from the quick sound clips I gathered the album was generally mellow and focused around the guitar. It turns out mellow isn’t really best choice to describe Ki, but it’s also not too far off. The best way to succinctly describe Ki is an eloquently executed diversity of rock from the ’50’s all the way until trends over just the past couple years. While some bands like Estradasphere or Between the Buried and Me incorporate extreme genre flips, they almost do it for shock value. Devin Townsend has managed to combine styles similar to those found in artists/bands like Lunatic Soul, Jerry Cantrell, Frank Zappa, Eric Johnson, Richie Sambora, Jane’s Addiction, Mike Patton, Isis, and Elvis. That may sound like an absurd collection of styles to merge… and in a way it is, but Devin Townsend somehow made some sense out of it.

My favorite track is called Trainfire. It starts out like something you might here from Elvis back in the ’50’s and before you realize it you’d swear you were listening something along the lines of post-metal. AND IT FITS SEAMLESSLY!!! Trainfire has the most diverse styles in a single track, but the album as a whole has this trend. When I was picking out short clips before buying the album, I definitely got the sense that each track was probably very different and perhaps the goal of the album to express Townsend’s diversity of influences. After giving myself time to absorb it all and process what I heard, I realized Ki isn’t necessarily about diversity for sake of diversity. It’s about actually connecting the dots between the various styles. His transitions are by no means non sequiturs.

Ki is not the typical progressive rock album. You won’t hear flashy solos or even technically difficult pieces in terms of their performance. The beauty of this album is the simplicity of its performance and intricacies in the writing and production.  On top of that, this album incorporates the largest span of rock eras I’ve ever heard, and does it eloquently. The bulk of the diversity is in the tone of the guitar and Devin’s voice, and he does both very well. I’d also like to add that I love the female vocals used in a few tracks. This album is very unpredictable. So much so that expecting it to be unpredictable would be misguided. All of the tracks are unique and don’t sound like they came out of some factory cranking out odd combinations of rock. I believe this album has helped unify the ever widening spectrum of rock and roll. By the way, Ki is the first of a four part album series (the second of which is due to be released in November) by Devin Townsend and I certainly look forward to hearing what’s to come!