Woke up realized how much homework I got and started to play WoW for about 8 hours to repent for all the time Ii've lost (4 days worth of HOLIDAY playing) then I ate lunch. Went out to get shit from cold storage for my mum and at the same time I dumped my girlfriend on the phone then shes been all QQ on me I say get a fucking grip etc. Been plannign to to hw all day and its 10pm now and I haven't even started so I guess ill just double c heck my redraft of english coursework.

Busy day eh.

Today was average. Good thing is, the spanish test I was going to have tomorrow has been postponed to Tuesday, my English essay due tomorrow is now due tuesday, and my history work due tomorrow is now due Monday.

Watching Dan lurk away in his little corner.

I'll have to start my TOK presentation soon...

Since it is my birthday today (oh the irony...), i'll probably install the Drumkit from Hell - EZ Drummer - multi layer drum sampler all the way from Germany later on and play around on it. I think i'll try some recording in a while.

Today sucked.

Did my math hw woke up early, played a bit of wow, now going ot make a start on english coursework and hopefully when I get home in the evening with going out with the lads I'll be able to finish that...

Been working on extended essay a lot. I've now got a question for the essay and a very rough outline for what I need to do.

Tomorrow I'm going to go for a long walk. I need it.

Listening to Cannibal Corpse's Kill on the bus really wakes you up in the morning. Great album.

School was crap.

Last week was good, holidays, went out every night, etc etc etc.

This week has been alright.

Today was quite good. Did an assembly for the arts festival, and because i was wearing all blacks i was able to slip in amongst my mates in IB unnoticed, allowing me to miss the cumbersome wet weather fire drill. That was good.

Feel a little sick, but not as bad as earlier. Not sure why.

We had a Fire Drill??

Today was boring. First Geography, strange I actually participated and made contributions. Then English, we had a lame substitute but all me and this other guy drew these sick pictures of chicks getting raped by donkeys( We were bored as fuck). Then came Science which bored the fuck out of me and then ITok which was death.

I just found out Iron maiden is playing in Bangalore on March 17th. Fuck i wish i could go.

Boring day. School was pretty shit. I was able to sleep in since i don't have a class in the morning, but for some reason my phone couldn't switch for the alarm, so i was woken by my mum. Shit thing was that i was still dreaming when i was woken up, and going from deep sleep to awake in a second or less doesn't do you well for the rest of the day. I was in the middle of an awesome dream too. It started as being in like an old american/desert cowboy town like in the movies with some bad outlaws, to the same situation but in counter-strike form with me playing at the computer, to me being the IN the game and shooting the fuck out of the bad guys.
Being in cowboy town, i remember going past a little church(maybe we were the outlaws, trying to take over the town) with a priest and nuns jumping around on the roof, and so i threw a grenade at them, but woke before it exploded :(
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Things are starting to get less hectic for me. I'm still stressing over project week (deadline for all the info sheets are tomorrow), but home work levels aren't too high since it's the arts festival (well, next week). Which is cool, since i, Krys and Anupam (not all in the same band) will be performing at the Rockfffestival...

Today was awful.

Tomorrow is going to be worse. My extended essay first draft is due in two days and I haven't written a single sentence yet.

French was shit as usual. After french i went to give in the production notes for the rock show to mr. garrett, and he acted like a dick as usual.
TOK was boring. Instead of doing presentations he told us to go to the library to work on them, and since i had finished mine i had nothing to do.

I guess the good thing about today was audio engineering, but all we did was learn to mic up a drum kit.

Saw Masada and Cecil Taylor last night.

Fucking amazing performance.

Masada were first and they played through an absolutely ripping set, which included Katzatz and Beeroth (featuring Joey Baron drum solo... fucking talented). Dave Douglas was on fire too... absolutely the best I've heard him play. It was also fascinating to see the way Zorn directed the band with various hand signals...

So Masada finished and there was a small break while their instruments were taken off stage, and a piano, drum set, and amplifiers for violin and string bass were brought on stage. I had my doubts as to how well Cecil Taylor's AHA 3 would seem after such an alive performance by Masada.

Initially, my doubts were proved to be true. I don't know why, but for some reason the ensemble's first two pieces were two of the most hard to comprehend, dense, stifling pieces of free improv I've ever heard. After the 2nd piece even I was a little overwhelmed and thinking "can I put up with another hour of this?". Being rather proud of my ability to enjoy some of the most bizarre, abstract, noisy music around, I accurately predicted a large percentage of the audience leaving. After each consecutive piece they played a segment of the audience broke away and left.

Shame really, because instantly from the beginning of the 3rd piece the trio took it up to the next level. The first two pieces had lacked any variation in medium... not that Cecil Taylor is known for subtle "orchestration", but those first two were brutally mundane if you're unprepared, and it takes a while to get mentally prepared for Cecil Taylor.

The rest of the set was incredibly impressive, I'd even go as far as to say it was more impressive than Masada. It was all incredibly dense and suffocating, but once I'd got a grasp on what I was hearing it all became highly enjoyable. The drummer only got better and better, increasing in responsiveness every minute, so that by the end Cecil really had the entire ensemble under his control. The bassist/violinist was fucking SHITE in the beginning, just played weedling high notes without ANY BREAK... but by the last piece he too was responsive and completely under Cecil's control.

Cecil was just magic on piano. Although quite often the percussive, ferocious style of playing prevented any real tone colour from coming through, there were the odd moments of quiet clarity where the beautiful complexity of the colours of his tone clusters really shone. Fantastic harmony.

At the end of their last piece they got a rather lengthy standing ovation from what was left of the audience, and they deserved it. They then went on to play an encore for another 20 minutes.

One thing that did fascinate me was that Cecil actually seemed to have written "music" for each piece. No more than a single piece of paper for each one, and FUCK I'd KILL to see them. I can only guess at what was written on them. Perhaps various musical ideas in notation that Cecil Taylor uses to direct the rest of the ensemble. Perhaps written concepts or ideas that Cecil then tries to portray and conduct through his own playing? Or, as my dad suggested, perhaps he has a fanatical obsession with sudoku's...

I plan on writing a more coherent review of the concert tomorrow... I might post it if I get it done.