Soma (song)

"Soma", originally called "Coma", is a track on the album Siamese Dream by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Overview

The song-writing credits list James Iha and Billy Corgan as co-authors, but Corgan claims that Iha only wrote the chord structure for the beginning of the song, and that Corgan himself wrote the rest. One of the longest songs to appear on a Smashing Pumpkins album, it is said to have included up to 40 guitar tracks over the course of the song. Corgan says the song "is based on the idea that a love relationship is almost the same as opium: it slowly puts you to sleep, it soothes you, and gives you the illusion of sureness and security." It was also acknowledged that song was inspired by Corgan's break-up with his ex-wife, Chris Fabian. The song also contains references to a hallucinogenic drug which was featured in Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World and features a prominent piano figure by Mike Mills of R.E.M.

Reception

The song received positive reviews. Ned Raggett of Allmusic especially praised the song's guitar solo, while spotting elements from gothic rock and psychedelic rock. The song was also likened to Prince's "The Beautiful Ones". The critically acclaimed guitar solo was rated as the 24th in Rolling Stone's "The 25 Coolest Guitar Solos" list. The guitar solo was placed as 41st in NME's "50 Greatest Guitar Solos" list.

Is This It

Is This It is the debut studio album by American rock band The Strokes. Recorded at Transporterraum in New York City with producer Gordon Raphael, the album was first released on July 30, 2001, in Australia, with RCA Records as the primary label. The record entered the UK Albums Chart at number two and peaked at number 33 on the U.S. Billboard 200, going on to achieve platinum status in several markets. "Hard to Explain", "Last Nite", and "Someday" were released as singles.

For the album, The Strokes strived to capture a simple rock sound that was not significantly enhanced in the studio. Building on the work of their 2001 debut EP, The Modern Age, the band members molded compositions largely through live takes during the recording sessions, while songwriter Julian Casablancas continued to detail the lives and relationships of urban youth. Following the completion of Is This It, The Strokes embarked on a promotional world tour before its release. The album's cover photograph courted controversy for being too sexually explicit and was replaced for the U.S. market. The American track listing was also amended in light of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Soma (Steve Roach & Robert Rich album)

Soma (1992, sometimes spelled SoMa) was the second collaborative album by the U.S. ambient musicians Steve Roach and Robert Rich, following their 1990 album Strata.

Overview

The liner notes explain that the word soma can be found in the ancient Vedic texts describing a drink made from plants to help commune with the gods (a botanical hallucinogen), and that the same word meant "body" in Ancient Greek.

The music on the album is "tribal ambient" (a mix of tribal house and ambient music) with dark hallucinatory overtones. The album ends with a gentle, serene piece for electric guitar titled "Touch".

Track listing

All compositions by Steve Roach and Robert Rich.

Personnel

Anubis (genus)

Anubis is a genus of longhorn beetles belonging to the family Cerambycidae.

Species

References

Anubis (cipher)

Anubis is a block cipher designed by Vincent Rijmen and Paulo S. L. M. Barreto as an entrant in the NESSIE project, a former research program initiated by the European Commission in 2000 for the identification of new cryptographic algorithms. Although the cipher has not been included in the final NESSIE portfolio, its design is considered very strong, and no attacks have been found by 2004 after the project had been concluded. The cipher is not patented and has been released by the designers for free public use.

Anubis operates on data blocks of 128 bits, accepting keys of length 32N bits (N = 4, ..., 10). It is designed as a substitution-permutation network, which bears large similarity to Rijndael. Like KHAZAD, designed by the same authors and also submitted to NESSIE, it uses involutions for the various operations. An involution is an operation whose inverse is the same as the forward operation. In other words, when an involution is run twice, it is the same as performing no operation. This allows low-cost hardware and compact software implementations to use the same operations for both encryption and decryption. Both the S-box and the mix columns operations are involutions. Although many involutional components can make a cipher more susceptible to distinguishing attacks exploiting the cycle structure of permutations within the cipher, no attack strategy for the Anubis cipher has been presented.

List of Black Cat characters

The Black Cat manga series features characters created by Kentaro Yabuki. The story follows a young man named Train Heartnet who withdrew from an elite group of assassins called the Chronos Numbers two years earlier and is now a Sweeper, or bounty hunter. Many of the characters are humans with superhuman strength, speed and/or supernatural abilities. Black Cat's anime adaptation features some characters not created by Yabuki, as well as many plot differences.

Main characters

Train Heartnet

Train Heartnet (トレイン ハートネット, Torein Hātonetto), also known as Black Cat (黒猫, Kuro Neko), is the protagonist and a Sweeper partnered with Sven. Train is a lighthearted, courageous man who is highly skilled with a gun. The 23 years old's distinguishing features are a choker with a tiny bell attached to it and the XIII tattoo he has on the left side of his chest. Two years earlier Train was a Chronos Number, a ruthless assassin and Number XIII of the group. He has a large amount of killing intent that he honed from his days as a Chronos member, and as a result he often has sudden mood swings, going from carefree to serious in an instant, especially when Creed is mentioned. This personality stems from being orphaned at 10 years old after the assassin Zagine Axeloake kills his parents, takes Train in and teaches him how to kill with efficiency.^[ch. 68] Zagine eventually dies and tells Train that he needs to be the strongest in order to survive. After that, Karl took Train in and he became an assassin for Chronos. Having been killing and exposed to death since early childhood, Train becomes very bleak and unsmiling until he leaves Chronos. He eventually meets Saya, a carefree sweeper, who slowly changes Train into a "stray cat" that does not blindly follow orders. He decides not to kill anymore, and after Creed kills Saya, he leaves to become a Sweeper and searches after him.