2008 is over, welcome 2009

2008 is over. It's peak, for me, was obviously the 27th of December, the day of my marriage. Being a married man is... not that different. I have a ring on my finger now, and that's a difference, but the really nice thing about being married is actually living with Paula, something that could happen without the ring :-) Anyway, the wedding went really well (and I even did something I wasn't expecting, and acted like a crying baby for a couple of minutes), and our honeymoon was excelent. Now that I'm back to "real life", working again, there are things that change. Living with Paula is awesome, but the adaptation has quite a few funny episodes. For instance, who gets to control the waking alarm and choose at what time it should be set to fire up, in which side of the bed is its place, or - most importantly - if it will wake us up by playing CD (my choice) or radio (Paula's choice). Or, for that matter, what CD should we be listening to at this very moment: I just had to change CDs! O:-) Oh, and where will we get space to store those tons of excelent books Paula have? She argues that we should use the space reserved to my tons of excelent CDs, but that's obviously not the right answer :-D

Another news from me is that I have now, as a birthday/Yule gift from her, a Stylophone. It's a cute little musical instrument, and a quite addictive one. I wonder how much time will it take to "suddenly disappear", as I tend to play it quite annoyingly for hours. Don't worry, I only plan to release stylophone-played tracks that were previously approved by her :-)

2008 was an intense year for Merankorii: two albums released ("A Viagem" and "Split") and participation in a few compilations: "Anti-Nuclear Music Compilation", "Killing In The Name of Reverend Murder ...Is Our Business (Vol. 1)", "Evocation", "The World Of All Evil" and "Okkulth Magick I". In this year I kept the "one track per month" iniciative, meaning that each month I published one new mp3 of Merankorii into the wild. One real interesting thing about this experiment is that, even if all my music is licensed with a Creative Commons license, there are a few Merankorii fans that, while liking the music enough to want to listen to them, don't actually want to pay for it. Thus, I'm pleased to make them happy by releasing one track per month. It's great to have the feedback I got from this: both from people telling me "thanks" for the iniciative, and from those telling me "hey, when is this month's track? Will I have to wait for the last day of the month to get it?" :-) 2009 will surely bring you more Merankorii news: I can tell you that Merankorii's 7th album is going to be released really soon now!

Speaking of music, and because people tend to do lists every time an year ends, here's my "top 10 2008 albums" list, that exclude everything with the hand of Merankorii or Noori Records. Here is it (without any relevance to the order, they're ordered by "when did I buy it"):

• Caprice - Kywitt ! Kywitt !
• ThanatoSchizO - Zoom Code
• Edo Notarloberti - Silent Prayers
• V/A - Fairy World IV
• Ashram - Ashram (2008's re-edition)
• Les Fragments de la Nuit - Musique du Crépuscule
• Sol Invictus - Lex Talionis (2008's re-edition)
• Marilyn Manson - The Early Years, Volume 2
• Cranes - Cranes
• V/A - La Nuit des Feés 2

Actually, this is the best time to revise my list of "best from 2007":

• Dismal - Miele Dal Salice
• Antimatter - Leaving Eden
• Tenhi - Folk Aesthetic 1996-2006
• V/A - Fairy World 3
• Ambience - As Dez Esperas
• Corde Oblique - Volontà d'Arte
• Knox Om Pax - Laudanum
• (r) - In Pink
• V/A - La Nuit des Feés
• Sol Invictus - The Killing Tide (re-edition box)

I guess someday I'll take some time and do the same for 2006... But not today.