Almost 18 years in the making.
18 years is a long time: you could have a kid and send him/her to college, make a pretty good wine, or you could develop an album.
Big Blue Ball is just that: an album that began recording in 1991 and was released just a week ago. It is a compilation of recording sessions in ’91, ’92, and ’95 at Real World Studios, started by Peter Gabriel and Karl Wallinger. The album is comprised of tracks with credits so long it would take its own blog post to list them all. Some of the highlights are Joseph Arthur, Sinead O’Connor, Deep Forest, and of course, Karl Wallinger and Peter Gabriel.
To be clear, this is not a Peter Gabriel album. Although you can find it under his name in most retail/online outlets, and he does sing/provide keyboards/bass on many of the songs, it is a creation which crosses a lot of boundaries. Quite a few of the albums are sung partially or completely in other languages than English, so if that’s not your thing you may want to just select the tracks individually off of the online outlets. However, if you’re looking for a true World genre experience, then you have found it.
The seventeen or so years of production show on this album, and it emphasizes why musicians are called artists. This is not a repeat of Gabriel’s previous albums, such as So or Security (AKA Peter Gabriel 4) which have earned him such great success on the radio. This is not to say some of the songs are not radio-friendly, it merely states the fact that the songs on this album delve beyond the usual radio-fare. Tracks such as ‘altus silva’ and ‘Jijy’ are wonderfully methodical and enveloping. ‘Burn You Up, Burn You Down’, which was previously featured in the Online Action Game URU, based on the MYST franchise, is here as well, although further developed from its 2004 incarnation. The lead single, ‘Whole Thing’ has been featured on a few radio stations, but failed to gain traction nationwide.
It’s hard to pick a best song off of this disc, as they are all so varied, and it definitely depends on your mood at the time, but if you can only sample a few songs off the album, I recommend ‘Altus Silva’, ‘Exit Through You’, and ‘Whole Thing’. But you won’t be remiss if you purchase the whole album.
When you think of Finland, you probably think of a Nordic lifestyle: Fishing, Snow, and Ice Palaces. You may not think of music. Yet recently two bands have come out of Finland with a lot of presence. The first is HIM, the first Finnish band to have an album certified Gold in the United States. The second is 
For many gamers, they may have been exposed to Poets and not even known it. Poets of the Fall’s first track, ‘Late Goodbye,’ was the theme (and only) song in the sequel to the bestselling PC Game Max Payne. Max Payne 2 featured ‘Late Goodbye’ a few times, most notably playing the entire track through the credits. The song became so popular tools were developed to extract the track from the credits, as it did not exist for purchase at the time.
The Happening, the newest movie by Shyamalan, is supposed to be his return to glory. One of his best films. Please, that’s like saying the Mariners played one of their best games ever last night: when everything else you’ve done looks like shit, it’s not hard to look good sometimes. But even The Happening doesn’t look good. Not even if you consider it as a B-movie going in.
