Tag: music

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last.fm

I joined last.fm, a site which streams customised internet radio. The idea is that it learns what music you like (by eavesdropping on your computer, and via your recommendations and radio choices), and uses people’s choices to build up stations. If you’re a non-paying member, you can choose stations like ‘Similar music to Kylie Minogue [or whoever]’ or, via a tagging system, ’80s’, ‘dance’ or whatever. If you chuck some money at them – £1 a month, which seems pretty reasonable – you can get a personalised feed based on your own preferences.

It seems like a neat idea but so far I haven’t been impressed. The ‘similar music to’ feature throws up things like De La Soul, N*E*R*D and Willie Nelson as being similar to Marvin Gaye (but also, to be fair, Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone). The first two things that came up when I wanted music tagged with ‘dance’ were Oasis and Beck. And if I choose to listen to 80s music, it isn’t because I want to listen to Limp Bizkit or the Beach Boys.

On the positive side, it’s a nice clean site, the audio quality is good and the range of music available is fairly impressive, if not spectacular. Maybe they just haven’t got enough information yet to make the searches accurate. Maybe it works better if you have a personalised feed. But I doubt if I’ll stick around long enough to find out.

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Culture Me Other

music.

I’ve been putting all my music onto the computer. Which has been quite interesting. I’ve discovered I have an entire day’s worth of music which the computer classifies as Electronica/Dance (and I haven’t ripped all of it). Considering that, even to me, a lot of it sounds rather the same, I probably don’t need any more. Ever.

Currently playing: ‘Reniform Puls’, from an album called Draft 7.30 by Autechre.

But then the classification system is only erratically helpful. Charles Aznavour and Orchestra Super Mazembe may both be foreign – if you don’t happen to be French or Congolese – but that doesn’t seem like a good enough reason to stuff them into the same pigeonhole. And why are two of the Kraftwerk albums classified under something other than ‘Electronica’? And by what conceivable definition can Jamiroquai be called ‘rock’?

Still, there’s endless potential here for entertaining geekiness, making up obscure playlists like ‘music to cry into your gin by’.

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Culture Other

Moog dies

Dr Moog has died. I love the sound of analogue synthesisers. It’s like drum-machines – the overtly mechanical sound of them is part of the appeal. I was about to try and come up with a theoretical justification – something about their overt artificiality and how in a sense it brings you closer to the roots of music, perhaps, or how electronic instruments gave musicians the chance to revitalise popular music when rock was getting past it – but it would all be post-facto. It’s actually just because I’m a child of the 80s. There’s still a little part of me, deep down, that thinks Axel F is the coolest piece of music ever written – although the Crazy Frog is doing a pretty good job of making me hate it.

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Culture

Live 8

Hurrah for Annie Lennox! Boo for Mariah Carey!

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Culture

Orchestra Super Mazembe

Currently playing – Orchestra Super Mazembe. Who I wholeheartedly recommend. ‘Mazembe’ means bulldozer, apparently, thus putting them in the narrow category of ‘bands named after industrial equipment’ along with Kraftwerk.