[digital:meditation]

Sometimes music just doesn’t work out immediately… It was back in early 2008 when I stumbled across “The Thread” initially, listened to the album quite a few times, but didn’t manage to really get something off the sounds featured on this album by Star Of Ash, one of the projects of Norwegian musician / singer Ihriel. By now, came across this album a second time in early autumn days somehow managed to leave a different impression, for some reasons:

Overally, listening to it once again having some time passed, the music on “The Thread” appears to be rather ambitious to say the very least. Extending the limited definition of the term “ambient music” usually (for whichever reasons) applied to mainly electronic downtempo music, Star Of Ash manages to create a versatile acoustic experience, making use of a wide range of instruments, arrangements and melody lines resembling early Mike Oldfield releases (“Amarok”, “Hergest Ridge”), more melancholic art/indie rock rooted music (a bit of Sophia maybe) or the moody, bizarre, mind-bending soundtracks Angelo Badalamenti contributed to a set of David Lynch movies, all along. This way of not being limited to a given genre or instrumental appearance in itself is what makes this album rather interesting.

On the other side, all musical ideas and creativity aside, the record itself mainly seems about painting pictures, creating ambience rather than “just” songs. And thus, “The Thread” surely does well being a soundtrack to some (imaginary?) movie, taken in black and white, coarse-grained pictures, or the dark sepia / earth tones of autumn, calm in some moments, intense and thoughtful in others, travelling up and down an emotional wave creating pictures in ones mind just the same – given you take the time, of course. And so, in the end, “The Thread” of course works out rather well, as an album best to be listened to using a pair of modest headphones and the right time and mood to be able and willing to really dive into the music. Rather inspiring indeed, the only thing I eventually would like to see as an improvement in Star Of Ash releases to follow is an increase of the vocal parts: The few songs on “The Thread” actually containing sung lyrics surely show it would be worth it, no matter whether using (male/female) guest vocals or featuring the pretty strong vocals of Ihriel herself. Strongly recommended anyhow.

web:

• starofash.com – official website
• starofashmusic – myspace
• Star Of Ash – last.fm

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„Am Anfang liegt ’ne Leiche rum, dann kommt ein Ermittler und kriegt im Lauf des Films heraus, wer sie auf dem Gewissen hat.“ So einfach erklärte mir ein ARD-Redakteur vor 25 Jahren, wie ein „Tatort“ funktioniert. Tatsächlich funktionieren die meisten so. Auch meine. Der Kommissar ist der Held. Aber ist er auch die Hauptfigur?
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Felix Huby schreibt auf tagesspiegel.de dem Untertitel “Täterfilme, Fahnderfilme: Warum Fernsehkrimis das Drama der Opfer bevorzugt ausblenden” folgend eine interessante Abhandlung zu TV-Krimis und deren, nun, “Eigenarten”, die ich als durchweg lesenswert empfinde und die an sich nur bestätigt, was sich mir wieder und wieder, teilweise bei den “Tatort”en, bevorzugt aber bei nahezu allen Krimis im Zweiten, als Schlußfolgerung aufdrängt: Abschalten. Jetzt. Und die Fernbedienung weit weit weg vergraben….

Whoever has heen reading this blog more or less regularly probably couldn’t help noticing the appearance of posts related to NetBeans IDE/platform along with “related” technology, an environment which I switched to after working with Eclipse for quite a while and for reasons outlined in some more detail here. Wanting not just to take things as granted however but to also provide something in return no matter how little this contribution eventually would be, I started helping writing documentation for the NetBeans Community Docs program as time allows doing so, mainly trying of course to focus on German documentation as I consider native-language documentation a crucial aspect of helping new users dealing with and eventually adopting a (new?) tool for their everyday use. Asides (and because of?) this I just recently have been invited to both join the NetBeansDreamTeam and act as NetBeans Community Docs Evangelist. Well… so far I still am not perfectly sure how I got to deserve being in there… Nevertheless I feel rather honoured about both of it, and I am for absolutely sure about doing all I eventually could do to make the best out of the both of these opportunities, trying just to contribute my small $0.02 to help NetBeans grow, as a development environment or working platform or developer community or whatever. By now, just thanks to all of you for your trust, much appreciated indeed. :)