As part of my new tunes regime, I’m dabbling in places I’d normally leave well alone: like the new Mary J Blige album. Can I recommend one track: Gonna Breakthrough (iTunes) as a bit of contrast to all those noise young boys with guitars. I recognise the sample on it, but can’t name it for the life of me: clearly a sign of my age.
Anything from the Brendon Benson/ Jack White band, The Raconteurs? Hasnt’ someone stolen their demos and leaked them onto the net or something?
This year is going to be all about tunes for me. Or ‘tracks’ as the NME calls them. I’m getting slightly bored of buying/ downloading albums - I never quite get round to listening to them. From now on, it’s tracks first - and albums only if I really love it; or if I think the band needs the support (very magnanimous of me, I know)
Yes, I’m buying the NME again: a dead cert sign of a mid-life crisis if ever there was one. Actually, they’re more geared up to the whole ‘tracks/tunes’ thing than most. I like the way they do a ‘10 tracks from this weeks albums’ thing (which is similar to the way the Obs Music Magazine does ‘download tracks’ from each album they review.
That said, they do have an annoying habit of reviewing stuff before it’s released, or available on download anywhere, saying: ‘Now on Radio 1′. What? Tune into Radio1? I’m having a middle age crisis - but not a complete meltdown.
Anyway, some stuff I like from my latest NME-fuelled tune mining. All in all it’s a complete new wave frenzy at the moment. Everything sounds like it’s straight out of 1979/80. And no, that’s not a complaint. If the label Britpop hadn’t been pinched, someone would be inventing it right now.
Black Cab Casino: Sweets and Lead this is a demo on myspace, and it’s really quite nice power pop. Remarkably easy to listen to - which probably means they’ll go nowhere.
DirtyPrettyThings: Bang Bang Your Dead a video of the new single from Carl Barat’s new band. Not completely dissimilar to Brendon Benson, actually, which is probably sacrilege, but intended as praise. Punchy power pop - and thankfully less of an aural mess than babyshambles.
The Kooks: You don’t love me. I’d never heard of them, this fits completely into the new wave thing. Jaunty, choppy stuff. They had a single out called Eddies Gun that you can get on iTunes this is only on vinyl (why?) and maxi cd (why?).
Arctic Monkeys: When The Sun Goes Down: The new single from this year’s sweethearts, not out yet, but you can hear it on MySpace. Pretty much head and shoulders above everything else. Actually, I don’t think it’s quite as smart/ brilliant as some of their other stuff. And, as it’s clear that this is going to be played on the very rare occassions that I go out: could someone please tell me how to dance to it? Again, I quite like the b-side - which, i think it dancing shoes.
Bromheads jacket: What if’s maybe : I mentioned this before, but only just got round to listening to it. It’s like the arctic monkey after four double expressos. I can’t quite work out whether that’s a good thing, or just fast noisy nonsense.
The Long Blondes: Separated by Motorways (iTunes) actually - I’m not completely in love with this, but I thought I’d put it in as they’re very cool at the moment and I don’t want to look like I’m falling behind. I like the b-side: Big infatuation.
Brain food from Dan Hill over at City of Sound. To be honest, I’ve only just skimmed it - but it looks well worth a read (or at least a re-skim). [via Tom]
Alexis Petridis reviews Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine and rather likes it (in a four star kind of way). Personally, I’m not convinced it was quite worth all the bother (it was neither bad enough to scrap, or good enough to fight for, IMHO)- but it’s nice to have her back.
My laptop harddrive was nearly full up with music. I want to keep some on there, but I also want to have an external hard drive with my full music collection on.
How can I possibly do this? Libra to the rescue - a lovely bit of software (Mac and PC) that lets you have more than one iTunes Library and switch between them with remarkable ease. Why didn’t someone tell me about this earlier?
Oh - and for Mac/ iPod Users, this might come in handy as well.
iPod gloves, of course…phew thought I was going to have to go through the whole winter having to take my gloves off in order to skip a track on my Nano.
Apparently loud music has made Pete Townshend go deaf
Chris Anderson has been crunching some numbers on The decade the blockbuster died. I have no idea what they are/were as I was in a club at the time listening to things that go bleep. In fact, 1991 - 95 was in fact the golden period for big sellers. You would have thought it was the late 70s wouldn’t you?