Landfill Indie

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 ~ 8 Comments

Great article about the current state of the UK music scene.

Now, whilst I disagree that the Fratellis fall into this camp and feel it is a tad harsh to blame all of this on the Arctic Monkeys, the article mirrors my current thoughts, largely fuelled by listening to X-FM in the morning commute to work (Not a fan of Radio 2 in the mornings, nor the inane chat on Radio Scotland and Radio Clyde). There seems to be a lack of anything new and original, with band after bland band churning out the same punk-lite, faux gritty, rat-a-tat-tat style tunes.

It’s no wonder I’m reaching for some old favourites every time I fire up iTunes.

You don’t need to read the article to get a basic understanding of what is being said, and I’m sure most people who are aware of the current music scene have already moved on from all those definite article bands (The … ) and are currently enjoying bands such as Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend, but there is one quote that sticks out and I think is worth repeating:

“Scouting for Girls are like the sound of Satan’s scrotum emptying. They’re abysmal.”

Which captures what I’m trying to say perfectly.

Random notes of no importance

Friday, May 23, 2008 ~ 4 Comments

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Is it wrong that I’d really rather Ollie killed the mice rather than bring them into the house to play? It’s one thing picking up a dead mouse, quite another to spend 20 minutes chasing a live one round the living room at 3 am.

Melody Gardot & R.E.M.
After catching her appearance on Jools Holland (and as a side pondering, does anyone refer to it as “Later… with Jools Holland”? No, it’s just “Jools Holland” innit) I listened to some samples from her album and promptly purchased it.

Listening to it I can picture her onstage persona, sultry jazz singer, and I wonder if that impacts how I engage with her music?

It was the same after I saw R.E.M. a couple of years ago, their last couple of albums had largely escaped my notice (to the point that, for example, I’m still not entirely sure on which album the track “Lotus” can be found), and I was a bit non-plussed… until I heard the tracks live.

Yet after the gig, re-listening to those same tracks now is a different experience.

Yeah I know, nothing startling but it’s been on my mind.

That and the fact that R.E.M.’s new album, Accelerate is rather stonkingly good.

Power out
All of a sudden the screen went blank, the music fell silent, and the power LEDs faded. We’d had a powercut.

“Bugger” he exclaimed in annoyance.

Actually he said “ohh fucksticks” because he was rather cheesed off having spent 30 minutes carefully crafting a newsletter entry. Then hope made an appearance for he had used Google Docs and Google Docs autosaves every now and then and maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t just lost all of his work.

And then the glimmer of hope widened, the websites he’d been using for research were opened in Firefox tabs, perhaps it will have saved them as well.

Lo and behold it was true. Google Docs HAD saved all of his changes, Firefox DID remember which tabs he had open.

Ahh the joy of the righteous, I KNEW I used web apps for a reason.

Mind you, it still amazes me that GOOGLE Docs don’t allow you to send the documents by email… I’m sure they have an email client as well… right?

Financial Ponderingmentness
Between oil prices rising, and the credit crunch … er… crunching, I’ve been taking stock of our financial situation. It’s not that bad, although the looming remortgage will impact it in one way or another.

I’m tempted to go through the remortgage process myself, following the Moneysavingexpert’s guide of course, but wondered if anyone else had done the same?

Psychological Music

Thursday, May 1, 2008 ~ 5 Comments

I have a LOT of music. I buy a lot, borrow some, obtain others (hey, would you pass up a 4GB download of every “Now” album.. yeah I know, I should’ve too). The one thing I’ve always had a problem with is tracking my short-term listening habits.

I tend to buy music in spurts. I’ll purchase several albums at one time and listen to them when I get a chance, which is where my problem begins. Because I don’t ever sit down to listen to music, it’s always on in the background) then it can take a while for an album to wheedle it’s way into my affections.

I guess I should learn my lesson and cut back on my musical purchases but there is still that part of me that wonders if I’m about to miss the next big thing (when, in reality, I ALWAYS miss it.. ).

Anyway, what usually happens is that one or two albums instantly take root in my brain and remain there for some time. I generally have 5 or 6 albums on rotation but even then some albums slip through the cracks and fall into the depths of my music library (I AM trying to cut back though, I know that 106GB of music isn’t really practical to manage… ahem).

However, having recently purchased a 250GB external hard drive (a Western Digital passport) and backing up all my music there I decided to take it into work as I had a quiet couple of days ahead. Rather than copy the music to my PC, I left it on there and decided to create a new iTunes library. It took about 20 mins to scan it all and then I had a pristine library to browse.

And you know what? All of a sudden I’m actually browsing it rather than relying on various smart lists to filter the new from the old. Without any metadata bogging me down I’m suddenly free to go and find whatever music I stumble across. Yes, I know I could’ve done that before but I guess not having any way to manipulate the tracks, or at least not having my usual methods available to me (smartlists for recently added and recently played) I’ve ended up just randomly scrolling through the library and picking whatever takes my fancy.

It’s been hugely liberating. So much so I’m almost considering doing the same at home.

Almost.

Music I’ve forgotten

Thursday, February 7, 2008 ~ 4 Comments

There is one major downside to owning a lot of music. It’s not the worry of storage space, nor the concern of quality, instead it’s rather more trivial than that.

I can’t remember what I’ve got.

In any given month I’ll buy at least 2 or 3 albums (not CDs), and they’ll go into rotation at home and at work. Of course I don’t always pick up new albums, sometimes older ones grab my fancy, for example I went through a spate of purchasing old Rolling Stones albums a couple of years ago. Those months are pretty easy to handle, as the new stuff slots into rotation easily. The problems arise when I purchase multiple CDs, which I do tend to do, leaving newer albums to be bulk purchased at the one time.

With several new albums arriving in my playlist, I naturally gravitate to the ones that instantly appeal and stick to those for until I get bored, at which point I revert back to the tried and trusted (my last.fm account gives an accurate depiction of what those are). And there in lies the problem.

I don’t make a conscious effort to revisit music that falls in-between, the music that I last listened to a few months back lies dormant until I stumble across it randomly. I’ve been deliberately using iTunes Party Shuffle to try and revisit the depths of my music collection but I think I need to be smarter than that. Possibly knock up a Smart List that only lists tracks that either haven’t been played at all, or haven’t been played in the past six months. Yes, that might do it.. (the reverse of this, kinda..)

This post is brought to you by Aimee Mann (Bachelor No.2), The Divine Comedy (Fin de Siecle), Joanna Newsom (The Milk-Eyed Mender), and Chungking.

So, go on, delve deep into your music collection and drag out an old friend. And, if you feel like it, do let me know what you found.

Where do we go from here?

Friday, December 14, 2007 ~ 6 Comments

MP3, USB, JPEG, some factors of our technological life are now “standard”. If I get a new gadget and it doesn’t have a USB connection or USB power cable then.. well actually, I probably wouldn’t buy it if it didn’t so that’s a bit of a moot point.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m slowly ripping all my CDs to MP3 (the CDs are now out of the living room and piled 20 high, 3 deep on my desk, which is progress of sorts) and it wasn’t a decision I took all that lightly. Admittedly the bulk of my new music is already in that format and as MP3 is supported widely then it should be OK in the future. Right?

JPEG appears to be safe as well. Every digital camera uses it and it does what it does well enough for the masses.

Ohh and yes, before anyone points out, I KNOW that there are better formats for storing music and photos but ultimately the loss of quality between a 256kbs MP3 and any of the lossless formats is beyond anything I can really detect, and the same goes for JPEG vs RAW images for MY purposes.

Those issues aside I do worry a little about losing these things to the vagaries of time, an issue to which the Kindle from Amazon - an electronic book reader - adds another dimension. One which, for some reason, has me very concerned about where this is all heading.

For some reason, whilst I’m not happy about the prospect, I am resigned to the fact that I may lose copies of photos and tracks. I am reasonably diligent when backing up, but if the worst happens, and I lose both my main hard drive AND my backup drive, then yeah, I’m stuffed. I have considered burning the really valuable stuff onto DVD but that’s way down the “I really should but I just can’t be chuffing bothered” path (a path strewn with many other best intentions and forgotten endeavours).

I’m not entirely sure there is an answer for this. Yes I could return to buying CDs rather than MP3 tracks, but at the rate I consume music the issue of physical space trumps any notion of always having a physical copy. And I can’t do that with photos anyway so I’m still at the whim of various hard drives.

I guess I could invest in a backup for my backup but even then it’s just another thing in the chain that could and, eventually will, fail.

What does all this mean? Well, I’m not entirely sure. Advances in technology means that the vast majority of hard drives can be considered trustworthy and unlikely to fail within a few years of usage (I’ve got two from my old PC which still work quite happily, which reminds me to get an enclosure or something for them).

However, technical issues aside, I’m also wondering if we have become a society where nothing really has value. Everything is replaceable, and we are encouraged to bin the old and buy new. If I did lose all my MP3s then I COULD replace them (at cost). So what’s the big deal? I’d only replace the ones I really missed so it might be a good way to start over and avoid all the dross.

Alas the same can’t be said of photos. Losing them loses the associated memories and emotions, the thoughts and feelings experience can’t be lost but they do dim over time, not forgotten but filed away in the distant recess of my mind. Viewing old photos brings them rushing back into the light, dusted down and ready to relived.

If I lost that there is no price that would can be paid, no way back.

Bloody hell, that’s a scary thought. Guess what I’ll be doing tonight!!

Stress is a wonderful thing

Monday, December 3, 2007 ~ No Comments

Nearing the end of a project is always a stressful time. Regardless of the best plans, contingency and prayers, things always end up tight at this point. That’s when the stress kicks in.

I actually revel in this kind of work, doing my best stuff under pressure, with no time to ponder I make decisions with conviction and plough onwards. There is also a subtle effect on other areas.

I’m usually working long hours at this point, and so end up a little run-down, narky and tired. Emotions of all kinds are quick to the surface and over the years I’ve started to focus more on them than any impending doom scenarios that are building elsewhere. I should point out that I work in the software industry so, in most cases, missing a deadline is bad for business but no-one loses a life, it’s not the end of the world, so whilst I do get stressed there is a point where I realise I’m getting stressed and I just… well… stop getting stressed. Hard to explain and it took some amount of time to get it sorted in my head.

Anyway, whilst I’m in this zone I try and focus on the positives and one always comes shining through. Louise. She knows how to handle me at times like these, and it makes me appreciate her all the more.

In addition, with emotions wrought and wrangled and because I often resort to headphones to get the last minute of “do not disturb me” time out of the day, I find the oddest songs can develop a strange resonance and catapult themselves into my internally kept list of favourite tracks. Such tracks literally give me goosebumps. Whack on Nothing Else Matters by Metallica and when that guitar solo kicks in… yup, goosebumps.

Sticking with the rock theme, for I cannot lie I do like my rock music, the current song achieving similar levels is the oddly repetitive yet wonderful anthemic Come Alive from the Foo Fighters. Not only does it seem to musically hit the right notes, lyrically it brings me full circle back to the centre of my life, my darling wife. Odd that.

I just wish I could play it just a little bit louder (but I’m quite considerate when using headphones).

Anyone else get this with certain tracks? Just me?

Free is Free

Sunday, December 2, 2007 ~ 6 Comments

A few weeks back Radiohead, a fairly well-known rock band from England, released their new album via the web and in a fairly radical move, allowed people to pay whatever price they wanted for the privilege. Anything from £0.00 to £100, they said (I wonder what the top amount paid was…).

Since then… apart from a couple of press releases full of ill-thought out stats… nothing.

What happened? Where is all the noise? Where are the “told-you-so” bleatings? What happened to the “revolutionise-the-music-industry”? It’s a disappointing damp squib if you ask me.

On one side, Radiohead remain silent on the matter. Or as good as.

On the other side the press was quick to report that a large number of people grabbed the album for free. They threw stats out like sweeties; one-third of people who downloaded the album paid nothing, average price paid was £3, and so on.

What does this prove? What does this say? Everything and nothing of course, and part of me hopes that was exactly what Radiohead intended.

Offer something for free and people will take it. Offer something with only guilt as a payment mechanism and many people easily push any emotional feeling to one side and plunge onwards. Offer something which can be free, and people will take it for free. This is the society we live in, writ large and then swept under the carpet.

Reaction to all of this freeloading seems out of place, there was SO much hype, in many different quarters, about this that it seems almost out of proportion.

Other artists (most notably Prince) have given away their music for free, realising that they make the bulk of their money outside of CD sales, but part of me hopes (desperately) that the music-loving fan, when given the ability to set a price, would do the right thing and pay up. A glint of humanity and integrity is all I’m looking for…

How laughable.

What I really don’t understand is where is the backlash? There is no screaming rhetoric to be found anywhere, either bemoaning the freeloaders or angry that this experiment failed to show the music industry that it was a viable solution.

But I guess that is a good thing because this experiment could do no such thing. It couldn’t PROVE either, the freeloaders (statistically) grabbed the music in about the same percentage as they do for music released via a record label.

The music industry didn’t take much of a kicking either as Radiohead will also release the album through a record label and hey, guess what, not EVERYONE is comfortable downloading music. The majority of the music listening public like CDs, or at the very least something tangible.

Reading between various lines, I think the only thing this experiment could ever prove was whether an artist would make more money PER SALE if they distributed things themselves, or via a record label. On that front I think Radiohead, on a per sale basis, doubled their money? I’m not sure as getting accurate figures is proved difficult but they certainly didn’t lose any money.

The deafening silence that blankets this entire episode worries me more than any of the financial/industry aspects.

Are we really so quick to put such things aside? Wasn’t this supposed to herald a new wave of thinking in the music industry, or is that where the silence comes from? A million record industry executives trying to figure out how to ‘fix things’.

This kind of thing isn’t a viable business model for a semi-successful band, one who flirts just below the limelight, and whilst it may boost the standings of newcomers (mySpace in particular) at a certain point it will start to hinder them.

I’m bemused and a little disillusioned. I had hoped this would’ve kicked started… ohh I dunno… something, anything… but nothing seems to have come of this. So I’ve gone back to my usual method of purchasing music and will continue to do so with knowledge of a better way gnawing at my wallet.