Their songs are brilliantly composed and brilliantly performed. They have a soft sound, the singer's voice is heavenly and their melodies and harmonies are catchy and intelligent at the same time. They never go wrong. Just put a Belle&Sebastian-record on, and you'll feel all cosy and satisfied!

Many people seem to share the opinion that everyone can listen to Belle&Sebastian. Rockers, punkers, ravers, hippies, cyborgs.. everybody that allows Belle&Sebastian to come near gets hit by the Belle&Sebastian-spell. Beautiful!

They don't give interviews and I've never seen a picture of them (as far as I know). They stay with their small label, and don't sell out. I like their attitude! The fact that they don't give interviews gives me the freedom to think whatever I want about them. And I say: they rule the world!

First of all, perhaps I should explain what chipmusic is. Hmm, it's not easy. Say that you have a sampled bassdrum which is 2048 bytes of size. If you loop this sound (from 0000 to 2048), your bassdrum will repeat itself on and on. Now, if you shorten this loop to 0000-0080, you will get a tone. It probably won't sound too wonderful, but now it's up to you - make something out of it! Err, did that make sense? Well, now you should ask: why the hell do you want to do this?

Small historylesson: in the early years of the amiga, people didn't use samples - they made synthesized sounds (just like on the C64) in programs such as Future Composer. They didn't use much memory, but on the other hand - they didn't use much of the amigapower. When the trackers (sound/noisetracker) became more or less standard, you only used samples that naturally used loads of memory. Bad! Then suddenly 4mat thought of the idea to use extremely short loops to minimize memory usage. I wonder if 4mat knew what he had started...

Right. So chipmusic for me, is amigamusic in 4 channels not taking many kilobytes at all. According to Dalezy, today's chipmusicians use far more channels, which I think is silly. I don't really understand PC-musicians who make chipmusic at all - chipmusic sounds shit on PC (compared to the amiga, anyway). Not until very recently I've found players that can play my amigamodules almost correctly.

Dalezy also states that arpeggios is out of style. What the f**k?? I'm speechless. I'll leave that uncommented. Maybe it's just my being conservative, but come on - chipmusic in 16 channels made on a PC? BRRRR!

It's interesting how everyone I've ever met always want what they don't have. If you are a musician, you want to become a programmer and vice versa. If you're the kind of person (like me), who seldom is honest and rather tell people what they want to hear to avoid annoying conflicts, you want to become intolerant and evil instead.

People constantly strive for what they don't have, and never acknowledge their own skills (that's boasting). How many times haven't you heard a talented human being go on and on about how bad he/she is and how wonderful and awesome "that other person" is? It seems to be some cultural must to strive for something you don't have. Atleast in my part of the world. Afterall, that is the driving force behind the thoughts of capitalism, right?

No matter how great our lives are, we can't appreciate it one bit. We take what we have for granted and seek what we haven't got or can't do.

I can explain many things by using this "theory". Nostalgia, for example, is nothing but shit. You take the best pieces of the past and forget about the bad things and ZWOSCH - there you have your dreamworld. You can complain about the present all you want, because "oh, the good ol' days were wonderful". These kind of things are for people who can't face the fact that they are living NOW. The same people wouldn't like the present no matter when they lived - that's what I think. Unfortunately, I'm also partly stuck in the nostaliga-business aswell.

There is a wonderful chinese story about this, which wasn't written by Lao-Tse that I said before. I've translated it from swedish to english, so read it boy!

Once upon a time there was a stonecutter who was displeased with himself and his position in life.

One day he walked past a wealthy tradesman's house, and through the open gate he saw many beautiful possessions and important guests. "That tradesman must be very powerful!" the stonecutter thought. He was very envious and wished that he himself could be like that. Then he wouldn't have to live the life of an ordinary stonecutter.

To his big surprise he suddenly became the tradesman and enjoyed more luxury and power than he'd ever dreamed of. He was envied and despised by those poorer than him. But after a short while there was a government official being carried past him, followed by servants and escorted by soldiers. Everyone, nomatter their wealth, had to bow deeply to him. "That man is so powerful!" he thought. "I wish I could become a government official!"

And so he became one, and he was carried around everywhere in his fancy sedan-chair. He was feared and hated by all the people around him, who had to bow deeply to him when he passed by. It was a hot summerday, and the government official had a sweaty time inside the sedan-chair. He looked up to the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, not botherred the least by his presence. "How mighty the sun is!" he thought. "I wish I could become the sun!"

And so he became the sun shining down at the people, and he dried out the fields and was despised by farmers and workers. But a huge, dark cloud turned up between him and the earth, so that he couldn't shine on everything below. "How mighty that cloud is!" he thought. "I wish I could become a cloud!"

And so he became a cloud, and he flooded villages and everybody yelled at him. But soon he soon he discoverred that he was being blown away by some mighty force, and he realized that it was the wind. "How mighty it is!" he thought. "I wish I could become the wind!"

So he became the wind and blew of roofing tiles, destroyed trees and was hated and feared by everyone down there. But after a while he flew into something that wouldn't move, no matter his efforts - a huge rock. "How mighty that rock is!" he thought. "I wish I could become a rock!"

And so he became a rock, mightier than anything else on this earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer, banging a chisel into the solid rock. He felt himself transforming. "What could be mightier than me, the rock?" he thought. He looked down and saw the shape of a stonecutter.

So do the taoists have the answer to this riddle? Shouldn't we have any goals - shouldn't we strive for ANYTHING? I don't really know what the taoists would say, but I seriously doubt that kind of thinking would work for me, in my work-a-holic country. But listen here: the grass is NOT greener on the other side. (ofcourse it sometimes is, but this is a very bad way of thinking, in my opinion) Go on and feel happy with the way things are NOW, or you'll never feel free. This goes out to myself aswell, Anders.

U-Ziq was, just as I figured, the highlight. Eventhough I was disappointed at first, when he played straight on hiphopbeats with some u-ziq harmonies, I got extatic when he started hammering 200 bpm beats in full effect! Awesome, but not 10 out of 10, though.
Junior Delgado and DJ Martin Moralez were two positive surprises. Delgado did a very fresh reggae act and Moralez served us some funky latin/techno/drum&bass pieces.
Jello Biafra did a spokenword-thing and said some good stuff. Personally I thought the whole thing was a contradiction in the sense that he wanted people to think for themselves by listening to him. But in general, he was okay.
DJ Rap, Dazee and Clair Pulton were three female DJ's who were quite good. We were totally amazed by the fact that they were both talented and good looking :)
Cornelius, The Roots, Chemical Brothers and The Residents were all a bit of a disappointment. Cornelius and The Roots was just boring, Chemical Brothers were just as predictable and boring as the few minutes I heard at Hultsfred and The Residents wasn't as bizarre as I thought.
Boulevard Connection played the usual bongabong heavybeats hiphop, which I'm not very fond of except for DJ Noize, who was fucking great - even better than at Hultsfred!
B 12 was not where I thought they would be. Actually, I never found them. Who knows, maybe they did one hell of a show in some obscure tent?
Coldcut did their (very predictable) thing with a great video on the bigscreen. It was perfectly synchronized with the music and they did political (anti-nuclear..) aswell as "cool" (kung fu..) stuff.
Apoptygma Bezerk sucked ass. EBM in the 1990's = hard eurodisco with male singer. Yeuarljgunw!
Fabio & Grooverider and The Lords of Svek played on Sunday and despite my feeling sloppy, I enjoyed them.
Mouse On Mars were awesome, but I had to run after 30 minutes to catch Orbital who played some old hits. That's good, since I like their older work infront of their new.

Besides going to concerts I didn't do much, really. I'm not the megaboozer who walks around talking to people about things they don't care about. But I always have time to trash, sweat and slack. Eh... yeeh.

- Which animal is the worst walker of the jungle? It's ofcourse the gorilla!

- The birchtree asked the other birchtree: Do you love me? Never, the other one replied.