But first: I wish you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I’ll be back with new posts, new nonsense and many MANY links to click on! First new entry tomorrow!

Her musical style is basically Jazz of course, but what I like about Tolstoy is the mix of traditional Jazz and Blues elements with Pop and even Rock. The first albums were classical Jazz Albums, later on more Pop was mixed into her songs. In addition to her very strong, lightly maidenly voice some great songs made there way into the music business. Her best albums are My Swedish Heart and White Russian in my opinion.

In September this year she released her seventh Album Pictures of Me which is a cover album. 13 songs with different kind of styles sang and interpreted by Viktoria Tolstoy. Songs from Prince, Peter Gabriel, Seal and more…

I know there are several good Jazz and Blues Voices out there but Viktoria Tolstoy is my favorite. Torun Erikson, Lisa Bassenge, Diana Krall or Norah Jones are all fantastic singers but none of them has the variance of Tolstoy. Every woman great in her style, her arrangement but what fascinates me about Viktoria Tolstoy is here much bigger influence of other genres. Erikson and Bassenge have some Pop and Country Songs but it is Tolstoy who gives the songs a new style, a new face, a new direction, especially with “Pictures of Me”. So my recommendation is: Listen and feel!

I uploaded three 30 seconds clips to my site of her newest album “Pictures of Me” to convince everyone of this wonderful voice. I hope nobody will sue me ^^’.

Source of Picture: http://www.viktoriatolstoy.com/

Lik-Sang closed down
Yep, it’s true! Our beloved Lik-Sang has closed its doors. The number one contact point for all people to get their Asia imports of Games or Consoles in Hong-Kong discontinues its work. I do not want to take positions here but probably because of Sony. Sony sued Lik-Sang to stop exporting PSPs to Great-Britain and Europe. After several months and years Sony has won the legal proceeding in Great-Britain. The court marks the import to Europe of PSPs (and probably PS3 later on) illegal. Basically private import is everybody’s right in Europe. But if the platform suddenly shuts down there is no place to buy Games that never get released in Europe or Consoles that are released about 4 Month later than in other regions. OK, Lik-Sang had their problems with copy stations and it is ok to sue for that but an import stop is paternalism. I got my Nintendo DS from Lik-Sang month before the European release and cheaper even with shipment costs. Runs fine, no problems! I did so with games too. But to say they sued Lik-Sang to protect the customer because of uncertified power supplies is far beyond common sense. So until another brand of Pacific Game Technology Limited opens its doors we’ll stay with Play-Asia.

C64 Orchestra
I am a big fan of chiptunes. I love it when some freakin’ n3Rd5 in bunny costumes make music with a GameBoy and a three line synthesizer. It’s just awesome! So what is this about? I tripped over the C64 Orchestra. The Dutch Micromusic community plays C64 chiptunes LIVE. Not really chiptunes but as an orchestra. I understand if somebody says chiptunes suck but those old tunes rearranged on classic instruments is just fabulous and can compare with nowadays game music. *Tscha* Chris Huelsbeck was a genius back then and still is. So for everyone who is as dumb as I am (at least with musical taste) here are some links you might like:

Nanozoa
Chiptunes are bound to the Demoscene. Demos had and have chiptune music. Even today with MP3s and Ogg a lot of Demos still use oldskool ModTracker sounds to give you the right feeling (and save beautiful bytes ^^). So if you know the Kewlers and the demos Protozoa or Asterozoa you may find the name Nanozoa suspicious. Nanozoa is a small game by Raist from the Marshals. The Asteroid like game sends you into a human body to fight all the germs. It combines an Asteroid like control with an R-Type weapon system. It’s nothing special but still better than playing Solitair or Minesweeper ^^. It is just fun to play! The game is about 10MB big and can be downloaded from here. The whole game is black and white so do not adjust your monitor. It’s supposed to look like that with its beautiful greytones.

That’s it for this week. Let’s see what will come next. Another week at the University, more legal proceedings, more stuff to not care about and much more nonsense from the Internet.

Source of Pictures: Nanozoa, Lik-Sang