- Still very much enjoying on a regular basis Neon Neon (Stainless Style, a rather lovely 80s-influenced concept album about John deLorean by Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip), M83 (Saturdays=Youth, now with more vocals and yet much better than Before The Dawn Heals Us) and Nine Inch Nails (The Slip, a new Nine Inch Nails album). If you haven’t downloaded The Slip yet, now is the time to do so.
- The new Ladytron (Velocifero) is pretty decent. Not Witching Hour quality, but well worth your time. There was a crap-quality Myspace stream, but not any more. Album’s officially out at the beginning of June and I shall be buying.
- The Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip album features a hilarious and unexpected Dizzee Rascal backhand and a tribute to Tommy Cooper but an inferior – less spontaneous, I feel – rerecorded version of Thou Shalt Always Kill, which is a shame. It also sounds really odd on my PC, so I need to work out over the next few days if it’s my system (I’m playing most of my music ReplayGained with foobar2000, files encoded as lame 3.97 -V2, to a pair of Sennheiser open-backed headphones plugged into the high-quality stereo output port of my Envy24-chipset sound card; must try on Xbox->hi-fi and original CD->hi-fi) or if it’s just bad production. Still, good stuff on there.
- Edit after listening to the CD in my separates system: Nah, it’s just really bad mastering compression – Scroobius’s vocal clips obviously through the spoken word intro and it gets worse from there. You can make “loud” albums that don’t sound wrong – Primal Scream XTRMNTR, for example, an exhilarating rush of an album – but it’s just bad for this album.
- I’m still getting used to Portishead’s Third. But it’s really growing on me. (Machine Gun really was an odd choice for a first single, wasn’t it? Damn good though.)
- Went to the last Triptych gig a few weeks ago – Mogwai and pals in the Tramway in Glasgow. Mogwai left my ears ringing for pretty much the next day. The new album material they played is, well, new Mogwai material and that’s always fine by me. Malcolm Middleton really surprised me; absolutely fantastic set. Only one completely duff act, which out of nine bands is pretty good going. Nice Rock Action sampler CD, too.
- All this good music out there, even some with tunes and poppy and glorious, and none of it’s selling that much (although Portishead’s chart position is pleasingly steady.) Meanwhile, Scooter are #1 in the albums chart based on some shitty advertisements on music TV and an audience of idiots. There’s a lesson there, but I don’t think I like it.
Tag: marketing
My interests, according to Ticketmaster
Considering that I’ve only ever bought one thing from Ticketmaster, and that was some very sold out elsewhere Nine Inch Nails tickets, you might think that this might not match my interests at all. You would be right too; I use them for ticket alerts for bands I actually like (before finding any other ticket site to buy the actual tickets from), and there’s no Pop Idol/X-Factor/Max Martin Identikit Machine alumni amongst them. Hey, at least it’s funny.
In Rainbows update
The email I’ve just received says that the files for the album download will be 160Kbit MP3s. Depends on whether it’s 160 ABR or CBR, of course, but still not that shabby. Should be tomorrow morning (along of course with Portal and HL2 Episode Two), so stay tuned for a review then.
Edit at noon: The zip has just downloaded really, really quickly off the distribution server – Radiohead have obviously got their act together with regards to bandwidth. The files are 160CBR, but sound pretty good though. First stage review soon (and rest assured, I won’t be with that guy on the BBC site who thinks Pablo Honey is their best album.)
F L I C K E R I N G / F R A M E 