Queens of the Stone Age début new song in Brazil

Queens of the Stone Age were one of the headlining acts at this years Lollapalooza Brazil event, which took place in São Paulo on 29-31 March. On Saturday night QoTSA played My god is the sun live for the first time. The track comes off the new record, which has been earmarked for a June release, and will be titled, ...Like Clockwork.

...Like Clockwork will feature the talent of former band members Nick Oliveri, Mark Lanegan, and Joey Castillo, as well as see the return of past collaborators Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters), Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys), and Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails, How to Destroy Angels), and even features an appearance by Sir Elton John, which I am particularly looking forward to hearing.

After listening to My god is the sun, as well as some of the music clips mentioned last week, this album sounds as though it shouldn't disappoint.

South African flag featured in Rob Zombie video

A recent still from Rob Zombie's next music video for the single Dead city radio and the new gods of supertown has been posted on Facebook. The black and white image shows a belly dancer, balancing a kilij or Mameluke sword on her head, with the word "Radio" tattooed above her navel. A bicycle can be seen, leaning against a wall papered with the flags of the United States, South Africa, and what appears to be Namibia the Democratic Republic of Congo. I'm not so sure about the identification of the Namibian flag though, as the flags in the still feature a five-pointed star, while a correct Namibian flag should bear a twelve-pointed.

From left to right: National flags of South Africa, United States of America, and the Democratic Republic of Congo

I'm not sure what the significance of these three flags appearing together is, but I'm sure it will all make sense once the full video has been released. While some are speculating that it could hint towards Zombie touring southern Africa, this is quite unlikely especially with regard to the DRC. My interpretation is that local South African radio stations represent  the "dead city radio," as they all play the same horrible, over-commercialised music every opportunity they get. It would be much more exciting if the explanation for using the South African flag is the latter one though.

--Updated 02 April 2013--

Initially I was't certain about the identification of the third flag, but I assumed it was Namibia since it shares a border with South Africa. This morning it suddenly occurred to me that the flag of DRC had a star in the upper left canton, and was cut diagonally by a stripe, just like the Namibian flag. A quick consultation with Wikipedia confirmed my suspicion, and now all three flags have been positively identified.

Free single from Haezer

Local noise-maker, Haezer, has released his newest single for free via Trashbags. You can download Shango here.

Haezer is well for his bass-heavy, groovy electro, and this single will not disappoint fans of the electro genre. Shango has a slightly more commercial feel and sound to it than some of Haezer's previous offerings, but if you're unfamiliar to the man, then this is a great introductory track.

You can download and listen to some of Haezer's earlier work and remixes over at his Soundcloud page.

I'm now the proud owner of a PS3

My girlfriend's DVD player stopped reading discs a few weeks back. We thought that buying and using one of those lens cleaning discs would have done the trick. Problem is that since then, the tray of the DVD player has stopped opening when the eject button is pushed, so we are unable to load the lens cleaning disc. This means makes the problem a little more complicated.

Since we'd been talking of upgrading the DVD player to a Blu-ray player for some time, I decided to spoil Em, and buy her a PlayStation 3 to replace her decrepit DVD player. OK, that's a bit of a lie. I bought a PS3 as an upgrade to a Blu-ray player, and so that I could play games.

A local supermarket chain had a discount of R1000* off the price for the 160GB PS3 bundle that included a second DualShock 3 controller, and the following three games; Gran Turismo 5: Academy Edition, God of War III, and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction.

So far I've only played GT5 for a couple of hours, unlocking four cars, and reaching level 5 in the A-spec mode. I think I'll wait until I've played GoW I & II before starting GoW III. In the meantime I'm already looking for some deals to purchase in order to expand my library of games. I'm considering purchasing Borderlands 2, Need for Speed: Most Wanted and possibly Batman: Arkham City. Given the price of games, and that I may not spend that much time playing, we'll have to see how many of these titles I end up acquiring.

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* R1000 is roughly equivalent to USD107, or EUR83.

New Queens of the Stone Age in June!

Queens of the Stone Age have updated their website to reveal the "Q" logo for the new record. Entering the site, and clicking on the logo plays a short snippet of one of the new tracks. So far, each time I've refreshed the site I've been able to hear a slightly different snippet.

While all these snippets are nothing more than a marketing tease, it's a damn good one, and a clever way to generate some hype for the upcoming record, which the site hints at being released in June.

Download Bloc Party's "Truth" live from Earl's Court

XFm are offering a free download of Bloc Party's performance of Truth from their sold out performance on 22 February at Earl's Court, London.

The recording is of excellent quality, although it sounds almost too clean to be a concert performance as there is very little crowd noise. You can watch the official music video for Truth below.

Listen to the Sound City Soundtrack

The full soundtrack for Dave Grohl's rockumentary Sound City is can be streamed by clicking this link. So far I've only gotten as far as the track three, which features the unmistakable voice of Stevie Nicks, but I can already confidently say that this is my album of the year.

I can't wait to receive my copies of the Sound City DVD and CD.

February poll results

Last month I ran a poll to see what visitors wanted to see more of on the blog. It ran from 14 February, until the end of the month. During that period of time Here be Porpoises received approximately 273 hits. Of those 273 hits, only one person completed the poll, meaning that 0.36% of the site's visitors voted.

This is what 0.36% of 273 looks like

Fortunately I had allowed voters to choose multiple options, as the sole person who took the time to vote selected two of the five categories; they wanted to see more posts about reviews and downloads.

No love for the sea animals

With that information, I wrote a brief review of the new How to Destroy Angels album (that post has had 13 views since 19 February). As for the addressing the downloads part, all I can say is that of the 96 posts I've written so far, just over 20% of those have included links to download free music. I will try post a few more download links in the future, but I like to first listen to the music before I share it on this blog, just in case I think it's rubbish, and undeserving of the promotion.

On the topic of free downloads, if you're interested in free image processing software I suggest you check out GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). So far I have been able to use it to do everything I'd previously used Photoshop for, except automatically stitch together photos to make a panorama. That said, a quick Google search for "creating panoramas in GIMP" returns links to several GIMP plug-ins and how-to tutorials.