That's definitely true. However, my annual samplers aren't specifically about music that was released in that year; rather, I focus on important new artists I have discovered, songs that are associated with specific memories, music that has left a deep impression on me, emotional or otherwise. It's something like a personal, autobiographical end-of-year review by means of music. But the fact that there were indeed quite a number of great releases across genres last year didn't make it easier to restrict myself, of course. Four CDs; nobody is ever going to listen to all that stuff, I guess, but at least I've documented it for the record. I usually send those CDs (plus some sheets of paper with explanations about the choice of tracks and some selected lyrics) to my closest friends after they're done, but with four CDs, that'd be quite a piece of work for everyone involved...

I'd be happy to get one of those compilations , if you don't mind ;)

Thanks for the interest! Why not, I can send them over, but it'll take a while - at the moment I don't have any money to spare neither for postage nor for CD-Rs, so I can't even burn them for myself yet. The explanations will only be in German, I'm afraid; I can still send them along so you can train your skills a bit, of course. Be warned, though: there's some stuff on those compilations that you'll find intolerable.

I'm not having one...

Dropbox is your friend here...

Well, I rip all the tracks in WAV format so I can burn samplers in lossless quality (apart from those tracks I only have in digital format, of course). It would demand quite a shitload of webspace to upload all the files, not to mention the time it'd take. Still, I've considered that I might just upload the CD image files... But I believe Mediafire - my file sharing site of choice - only supports uploads of up to 200 MB at a time for free users.

WAV...?
Surely if you want lossless, FLAC is the way to go: same quality, but up to 50 percent compression. Although there's a pretty good case that most people can't spot the difference between high-end mp3 (256 Kbps and above) and lossless played on the same equipment.

If you burn the CDs to iso on your machine, you've only got a single file to upload for each. There are plenty of ways to split isos to sub-200MB chunks, if you don't mind uploading 3-4 files for each image, which would allow you to use Mediafire. Or the free version of Dropbox gives you 2GB+, which should just about accomodate your needs.

Thanks, I might try Dropbox, then! Sounds like the most convenient solution. As for FLAC, I still haven't had the need to start using it... I don't even know whether it's possible to burn regular audio CDs from FLAC files, perhaps it depends on the burning program or perhaps it's not a problem at all. And I would have to find another ripping software, of course. But you're probably right, it's more efficient space-wise, so perhaps I shouldn't be this lazy about a change...

Writing a fancy self-description for a rather promising new social networking site for individualistic people.

Not the Doom-Metal Dating Site, at last?

No, we'd have to set that one up ourselves, I'm afraid. It would be an interesting experiment, though - are dating sites more popular than discussion forums? Probably. The Boobie Doom-thread shows that there must be quite a number of doomy girls out there; I wonder where they're burying themselves.

Hey, have you ever considered making a "best of", "essential albums / artists" or "introduction to metal" compilation? 'Cause every now and then I play with the idea of making something like that for my friends. But then again I honestly don't know whether they would actually listen through it and whether it would make them like metal. So I stop bothering myself and quit before I even start . And it's not like I'm some sort of authority on metal anyways.

But some of you guys here seem to be quite the experts and also very active online, surely some of you know a blog or something like that where you could post such compilations for other metalheads and metalheads-to-be.

And whatever happened to the overview of the doom metal subgenres and their development being added to the main page?

Yeah, we've got like a dozen a stuff to do/complete/achieve. We're kind of lazy and desperate at the same time...

I've made such compilations on occasion, but they were always personalised for the person who would receive them, taking their preferences and level of knowledge into account. The most basic ones were two rather big samplers I created for a mail friend of mine who didn't have any previous knowledge in the respective fields; one was about unusual atmospheric and/or progressive Metal bands (I've mentioned that project before), the other was a systematic approach to Trance with three CDs covering three different stylistic focal points. I've also considered making such compilations just for myself and for the fun of it, always choosing a specific heading. Something along the lines of 'Introduction to Metal' would be far too broad for my taste, especially since there are many fields of Metal I don't care about at all. I've been thinking about trying to make DJ mixes with some free DJ'ing software, too, but all in good time...


What bapho said... There are so many interesting projects one can pursue in connection with this site and Doom in general, but sometimes we're too lazy, more often we're too busy, or both... After all, we're all grown-up people with a life outside of doom-metal.com and the day only has so many hours.

You could check out detox's personal stab at it: http://www.doom-metal.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6534...all available online (along with some very terrible nu-metal stuff that he sometimes tries to cast in a positive light ).


As bapho says, desperately lazy, that's us...

Finally ordering from Endless Winter. I ended up with a batch of 11 CDs. I'll await them in about 6-8 weeks, knowing the slowness of the Russian postal service...

I see you didn't manage to whittle the list down by much, in the end! Worth waiting for, though...

Just breaking in my replacement Sennheiser wireless headphones: the old pair finally gave up the ghost at the weekend. The only good thing you could say about them, at the end, was that the earpieces had worn perfectly to fit my ears. Something you couldn't yet say about these new ones.

^^ I just found a part of Sennheiser headphones on the street about two weeks ago. Don't really know what to do with it, as it doesn't fit my headphones set.




Well, I think it`s just another thing all ex-iron-curtain-countries have in common.


Anyway, atm I'm eating Merci chocolates and translating something for my job. Can't wait to go to bed. Why? 'Cause I can't wait to have my morning coffee tomorrow morning. One thing I always look forward to.

Yep - 2 weeks and still waiting for my last order from Solitude to arrive. Not their fault, of course - they sent it off the same day. Still, it is a suitably doomy pace.
To be fair, it could also have something to do with half the UK being underwater right now. There's been a lot of disruption to transport, thankfully not in my direct vicinity.

Well, the parcel I sent to the US two weeks ago only arrived yesterday. I know there's been tough snowfalls these last weeks on the east coast. Maybe that's the reason why.