Sleep Interrupted

A couple of weeks ago I came to the realisation that Louise and I don’t use our CDs any more. We have a big old glass cabinet hanging on the wall, half full of CDs and half full of DVDs. The former are almost never taken out. The only music we tend to listen to is on the radio or on our MP3 players, typically in the car. So why are we wasting space on storing these CDs when there were piles of DVDs stacked up around the TV?

Thus started my Ripathon, wherein I ripped every CD in the house, including all the weird and wonderful discs previously banished to the loft. After several weeks of fitful work I am finished; I am the proud owner of 1400 tracks and Louise has a more impressive 2400. Or in time terms, it would take me four and a half days of continuous play to listen to my collection, or six continuous days for Louise.

I now have the largest playlist of my life to listen to. I’m about 220 tracks in, rating the tracks as they go by. For a long time I resisted the urge to get into the whole “star rating” idea. Being a bit obsessive, I worry about issues such as the difference between two stars and three. And you mean I have to decide this 1400 times?! Why can’t the machine learn what I want to listen to? Oh well, better a half-good playlist today than a magically learning system next year.

Jayne asked me if this all meant that I’d start downloading tracks instead of buying CDs. I’m not entirely sold, mainly because you don’t get entirely the same quality of sound (theoretically) from an MP3 as you do a CD. In addition, I prefer to use Vorbis in place of MP3, which gives you better sound quality compared to an MP3 of the same file size. That said, with the death of DRM, I’m a lot more prepared to court the idea.

All this, of course, doesn’t help me get at the boxes of vinyl stuck up in the loft. Given that I’ve touched these, I think, on one occassion in the last ten years, I’m also wondering if it’s time to sell my 1210s. I’ve held off doing this (if it’s not stating the obvious at this stage) for a long time. For much of this time I’ve considered teaching some of my old skills to Ben or Jessica in a few years from now but the more time passes the more I wonder if the world has moved on…

Update: My postings seem to be exhibiting a certain synchronicity with the news at the moment: Napster is launching a music download service without DRM.

I was just ploughing through my Google Reader backlog when Ben walked up and asked, “How do you make it go up and down?” He was referring to the page on screen.

“I use the mouse wheel, you know, on the mouse. The little wheel you use to make things go up and down.”

“Can you use the arrow keys?”

Without waiting he reached out and sent the page flying across the screen. Laughing he said, “Why does it go up when you press down?”

I had to stop for a moment and suddenly I was thrown back to the mid-eighties and the first time I used an AMX mouse with AMX Pagemaker on our BBC Master. The problem is, to go down the page you press the down button but in doing so the page appears to move up the screen.

Clearly our brains are wired the same way.

While writing this post I had music on random play and it produced a surprisingly good track transition: From Hemp by Living Colour into Into Temptation by Crowded House with a three second crossfade. Not perfect but not bad for a random selection!

Louise and I are really enjoying Flight Of The Conchords on BBC4. I was going to try and describe the program but I think I’ll use the power of YouTube to do my work for me.

• You’re So Beautiful
• The Humans Are Dead
• She’s So Hot — Boom
• Inner City Pressure
• Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros
• Think About It

So, to round off my triptych of pointers to cool websites this month I’m going to suggest you check out last.fm. It’s an internet based radio station that you can listen to through your web browser or through dedicated software. You start by entering the name of an artist you like and then it plays tracks by similar artists.

The real coolness starts when you create an account — everything you listen to is recorded in your profile. You can skip over or even permanently ban tracks you don’t like. In this way the system learns what you like. Over time it starts coming up with recommendations for you and finds other “neighbour” users on the site who share your tastes. Then you can tune in and listen to what they’re listening to. What a great way to discover new music!

I’m really only scratching the surface here, too. You can download plug-ins for your “normal” music player (e.g. iTunes, WinAmp, Songbird or even your iPod) so that what you listen to “normally” is recorded in your last.fm profile. You can create groups. You can see when your favourite artists are playing nearby. You can add your recently played tracks to your blog. You can make recommendations to your friends. You can clear out your profile and “start again”. You can even listen to my very own radio station.

I have long been opposed to DRM on music downloads, which is why I’ve never bought music online (and yes, I am aware of options such as eMusic). So I was thrilled to read today that EMI has agreed to release every song in its online catalogue without DRM. This means that tracks I download can be copied as many times to as many places as I like — just the same freedoms I enjoy with a good old CD and without being prejudged as a criminal by the record label.

The new album by The Cooper Temple Clause, Make This Your Own, was released on Monday. You can listen to Damage, Homo Sapiens and Waiting Game — along with their entire back catalogue, it would seem — on their web site. You can also watch the videos for Homo Sapiens and Waiting Game on the ubiquitous YouTube. I’ll even make it easy and point you to the right place at Amazon and Play.

If you like the new artwork on the album and their web site you might be interested to look at some more of Richard Sweeney’s work. The “sliceforms” are particularly cool!

A piece of trivia for you: The Cooper’s track 555-4823 is named after a telephone number in Back To The Future. Now you just know you’re going to have to watch it again to find out who it belongs to…

In a recent email conversation, Tim W asked me what I thought of the latest Zero 7 album, The Garden. Well, if ever there was some blog fodder…

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been listening to this album a lot and really like it, but to do a proper job I took the time to listen to the previous albums, Simple Things and When It Falls. I’ve stayed clear of other reviews on the web, so not to colour my take on things.

Personally, I think each album builds on the last, so my favourite now is The Garden. Simple Things is a good album in its own right, definitely leading the way in (for want of a better term I’ll call) chill out. It’s a wonderful mix of vocalists and soft, natural and (mostly) layed back sounds.

When It Falls, by comparison, feels more focused but still keeps all the winning elements. Consequently it has some genuinely beautiful, stand-out tracks like Home and Look Up, which is why I rate it higher.

Where When It Falls feels like a progression, The Garden is more of an evolution. From its opening bars, harder edged synths come in to play. I like this, however, as it acts as a great compliment to the normal palette of more fuzzy sounds. It’s also more energetic, again a good thing from my perspective. Sia Furler returns for a third time, so Zero 7 fans will still feel at home, but this album also sees Jose Gonzales on a number of tracks. You’ll know him from That Bravia Advert With All The Bouncy Balls. Top track: Seeing Things; seems simple at first but works into your head like you can’t believe.

So, my advice would be if you have one of the albums and like it, go pick up either of the others. Tim said that he liked Simple Things so much he was affraid of spoiling it if the other albums weren’t so good. I know that feeling. Tim, no need to worry.

The Cooper’s new single is available for purhcase. As previously stated, you can take a look at the video on YouTube. My sources tell me they’re in a mid-to-low chart position currently, so if you like what they do it’s time to reprazent. Sorry, came over all Westwood there. Here endeth the plug.

The strange thing about blogging is that the more busy and interesting your life gets and the more you have topics to blog on, the less time you have for blogging. Well, that’s my rather obvious excuse.

So what have I been so busy doing, exactly? Let’s think… I was going to write about the brewery tour at the Rebellion Brewery I went on with Mark but I can’t remember that much about it. Funny.

And then the DIY season started; it seems to be that October and November are when the weather turns and we find time to do all the home improvements we’ve been planning for the last nine months. We’re now about 80% complete on the laminate flooring project and next comes the whole kitchen re-fit. I’m planning to take a couple of days off. Expect another long break in the blogging while that’s on.

Oh! And the music! I’ve been listening to Supernature by Goldfrapp and The Garden by Zero 7. Both third albums and both really good; far better that I was expecting. Good in the wake up humming the tunes and have them featuring in your dreams kind of way. Perhaps more on that later.

We received a mysterious package yesterday, which turned out to be a limited edition CD entitled “Disaurning Ernience”. The postmark was Wallingford, so I knew I had Ed to blame.

Putting it on while the family sat down to dinner was something of a timewarp to 1994, where remembering the way to the pub was the closest thing I had to responsibility and drinking and listening to live music with friends was what Sunday evenings were made for.

Sitting in her highchair, Jessica started to dance spontaneously to Ain’t No Sunshine with a big grin on her face — she’s about ten times more dancy than Ben. Lady Madonna got the same treatment. Girl’s got taste, it would appear.

Good times… Thanks Ed!