Tag Archives: Music

A New Voice

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You’ve heard me rant and go on about copyright law. Now listen to the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.

Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names. We oppose any copyright reforms that would make it easier for record companies to do this. The government should repeal provisions of the Copyright Act that allow labels to unfairly punish fans who share music for non-commercial purposes with statutory damages of $500 to $20,000 per song.

Artists do not support using digital locks to increase the labels’ control over the distribution, use and enjoyment of music or laws that prohibit circumvention of such technological measures. The government should not blindly implement decade-old treaties designed to give control to major labels and take choices away from artists and consumers. Laws should protect artists and consumers, not restrictive technologies. Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice.

The Canadian Music Creators Coalition is comprised of such notables as the Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (Co-founder Blue Rodeo).

Passion

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I remember a long time ago, when everyone found out that FFVIII was going to have a vocal theme by Faye Wong, thinking to myself that it would never work. Video games and vocal themes done by famous people? Never. And in the end it worked out, even though FFVIII had a battle system that bugged the hell out of me.

And I remember the skepticism at the announcement of what Kingdom Hearts was: Final Fantasy crossed with Disney characters. Our beloved RPG series churned with those cartoons from our childhood. That will never work, we all said. And again, it proved to be a surprisingly good RPG with a really good story.

The other thing Kingdom Hearts had was a really good vocal theme, Hikari (or Simple and Clean for those of you who don’t follow Japanese music or games) by Utada Hikaru. It was a really good song. It got me into downloading all of that J-pop and I know a few people who aren’t music people at all who like it a lot.

When I found out that there was another theme for Kingdom Hearts 2, I was disappointed. I mean, Hikari was the only song for KH. Over here, Utada Hikaru and Kingdom Hearts go together. And then I didn’t hear anything about KH until just now.

I was listening to some of Utada Hikaru’s stuff again, just for variety and switching it up once in a while. Apparently, KH has been out for a few months now, so the new theme, Passion, has been released as a single in Japan. I decided to give it a whirl.

Passion is something completely different. Watching the music video for it, it has this really cool sounding atmospheric, ethereal background behind the main vocals. And it has this awesome drumline that, really drives it along. And the main vocals are just sweeping and really grand. All of this is combined and the result really screams high fantasy.

It is really different from any of Utada Hikaru’s other songs. After watching the KH2 opening FMV, I was just blown away by how well Passion matches it. I guess I was proven wrong again. Passion fits in with KH2 just like Hikari fitted in with KH.

Passion is now my favourite Utada Hikaru song.

Flying Into Daybreak

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I don’t know how it happened, but one day, I started listening to Charlie Hall. It’s not like I hadn’t heard of him before or heard any of his songs. A few well known are written by him, like “Give Us Clean Hands”. But he was never a worship leader with CDs that I would go and try and find like I would for, say, Chris Tomlin. Continue reading →