Tag Archives: music

iSulk

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Compare and contrast:

Marketing blurb for the 160gb ipod:

Decisions, decisions. Who needs ’em? Why should you have to choose what to put on your iPod? With up to 160GB of storage, iPod classic lets you carry everything in your collection — up to 40,000 songs or up to 200 hours of video — everywhere you go. In a completely new, even thinner, all-metal design, this iPod is a modern classic.

And now for the 120gb ipod:
(freshly announced and replacing both the 80gb and 160gb models)

With 120GB of storage, iPod classic can hold up to 30,000 songs, 150 hours of video, or 25,000 photos. That’s more than enough room for a day’s — or a lifetime’s — worth of entertainment.

Yes folks, I was quite looking forward to Apple’s announcement this week. See, I think now that my Rio Karma seems to be unable to play a song without skipping, keep the battery going for more than 4 or 5 hours and crashes every so often that it could be on the way out. Now, those of you who know me well know I’ve had a large mp3 collection for some time, indeed for so long as I’ve had one it’s always been larger than the biggest mp3 player on the market by a factor of about two:

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(some figures estimated, I’m not that anal!)

Now, I’m sure I could get by with 120gb, but it looks to me like when looking at capacity it’s going to take a few more years for flash based players to get to where we are now with disk based players. I do approve of many of the strides that Apple are making in becoming a bit more environmentally friendly after a crap start. But it does drive me a bit mental that they still think that making a piece of technology as thin as possible is more important than making it long term sustainable by having user replaceable parts.

Even the iPhone makes replacing the battery on a mobile phone feel like commiting a minor crime against the Cult Of Jobs. I’d probably overlook the reduction to 120gb if I knew I could replace the battery easily. I mean, come on, surely ipods are so standard by now that having user replaceable parts available on the market could acutally make Apple more money _and_ help save the environment at the same time. Hands up, who’d carry two batteries? In the meantime, you might just find me carrying not one iPod, but two in the near future. Unless the Zune tempts me to continue being an accidental Microsoft nerd.

And yes, I could just go and get a 160GB model, but given the low reviews on amazon and talk of low reliability I’m willing to guess Apple have decided that particular model was too unreliable to stick by, fortunately Toshiba’s 240gb HD is meant to be somewhat lower in power usage and heat dissipation than it’s 160gb predecessor, so maybe it could be in a nice shiny new player before Christmas when the prospect of long train journeys will finally make me crack and buy something. For now, I’ll content myself with the 3000 songs I’ve stuffed into my N95, though AAC HE has some artefacts, there’s not so many that it annoys me when listening for short periods.

Daphne Oram's Oramics

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Absolutely brilliant documentary on the Radiophonic Workshop last weekend, which I missed (well, it was on Radio 3) and have therefore just listened to on the iplayer, Wee Also Have Sound Houses. Focusing on Daphne Oram, one of the founders of the Workshop there’s lot of interesting tales of the early days mixed with appreciation for these pioneers from Mira Calix and a few others. Her primary interest, from as far back as the ’30s, was in converting images to sound, something she achieved using her Oramics machine.

You’ll have to hurry to listen to it, though, because our beloved BBC takes it off the iplayer at 10:32pm on Sunday 10th August exactly. Is a week really long enough to keep this stuff up for a public service broadcaster I wonder… anyway, do hurry and listen. In the longer term, the BBC Programmes page should list any future broadcasts, shame you can’t sign up for an e-mail alert for future broadcasts… or even request.

Now to order a copy of her album, though I’m not sure why HMV makes a lewd suggestion when I search for it there (though amazon is similarly clueless)…

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…so it appears to be only really availabile online via Boomkat in mp3 or CD.

There is a bit of Oram on Late Junction from Wednesday as well, skip to 57:40 or so – youve got longer to listen to this, until 1:02am on Thursday 14th August. And if you want to read up even more on her work there’s a lengthy article from Hugh Davies on sonic arts network in the internet archive.

If you're wondering about the name change…

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Astute, observant or just plain obsessed readers may well have noticed that after many years of calling this Alex’s Blog I’ve finally decided to change name to nutty’s nuggets. I’d love to claim that this change was precipitated by weeks of research or even some discussion. But no, instead it’s me ignoring what made this happen:

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Above is a chart of my views by week, as you can see 2007 was barely scraping along fed in part thanks to my total lack of blogging at times. Then I made my annual blog about music of the year a month early. As of today that post has had 1,078 views on the site here, more than 10 times the next most popular post which is merely a couple of linked Gondry youtube clips. Now I think some of what caused that success was calling the blog Alex’s Blog which made it float up to the top of largeheartedboy‘s roundup which fed me nearly 1,000 of those 1,078 views! However, I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’m going to get linked elsewhere I should have a snappier name hence nutty’s nuggets, which at least is as endearingly rubbish as my site design.

On an interesting side note, I was also linked from and had my data scraped for Hype Machine’s 2007 roundup, which includes their rather nice visual version of my top 10 albums of 2007, which they explain a bit in their own blog.

Anyone who’s been following the blog since then, don’t panic!, musical content here will ramp up as I get off my arse to go to gigs and as the new albums by Devotchka, Misty’s Big Adventure and Madness turn up…

2007: now I know…

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In web comics I learnt that xkcd rocks (and is worryingly accurate).
Google Reader made my internet addiction quicker and more fulfilling.
Facebook contains most of humanity (and some folk I went to school with)
Planning systems bear no relation to democracy, logic or a useful method of improving your neighbourhood.
Going to gigs a lot is great for the mind and soul but less so for the ears.
English countryside is muddy.
Web video is the way to review video games properly
People are more wonderful than even machines
Good ideas need squared paper
They Might Be Giants invented myspace (sez me)
My time is worth less than a car driver’s
Posting my emusic top 10 got me more readers than anything ever (1500 hits and counting!?)
I should have got cracking on my cack Amiga music project about four years ago

and I realised I love London

Music of 2007 – My emusic Top 10

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emusic is doing it’s annual poll of users favourite albums of 2007.
I figured it might be nice to share my picks with y’all so here we are.

1 Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer
Full of energy and earnest confessional lyrics, Kevin Barnes takes some outstandingly bleak and poor times and creates possibly the greatest manic album of all time. So many tracks to love, but I think it’s the balls behind having the full twelve minutes of The Past Is A Grotesque Animal sat in the middle of the album as the both it and the band emerge from a chrysalis as the greatest funk band ever. And it has duelling guitars.
2 Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon + Horns = Supreme. That’s the formula for The Underdog and You Got Yr Cherry Bomb anyway. As ever with Spoon the album is a mix of styles with some really amazing experiments included such as The Ghost Of You Lingers which combines an apparent musical minimalism with their usual lyrical economy.
3 Napoleon IIIrd – In Debt To
Easily both the debut and British album of the year. Caught him first live supporting Fog and I simply can’t fault a lyric like Average is not the best you can do or We’ve got bored of the democratic scene and handed control to celebrities. And all with somewhat oddball instrumentation as well. And yes those lyrics do sound far better sung, naturally.
4 Jens Lekman -Night Falls Over Kortedala
Cor, apparently Jens is now cool with the likes of The Guardian finally lauding him as a minor genius. It’s a brave man who opens his album with a sample popularised by The Avalanches, and it is the continuing enchanting use of samples that makes the album and lets him segue between so many different styles. Also, Sipping On The Sweet Nectar makes me think he should just do an all disco album.
5 Misty s Big Adventure – Funny Times
Someone somewhere reviewed this and said you can’t make songs about requited love using a tuba. Aside from being quite definitively wrong, they need to go and listen to Devotchka and maybe some Mahler. Misty’s have produced a third album of amazing pop, which won’t be popular though they could play up their ska angle and become hip, maybe.
6 A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble – A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble
We all make mistakes every now and then, mine was to fail to and see A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble when they played five minutes walk from my house. Still, I saw them later in the year with Ungar at the helm of his cimbalom. I think Jeremy Barnes takes the folk gypsy music angle and runs with it far better than Beirut, perhaps due to less singing.
7 Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus
To be honest it felt almost like piracy to download SFA from emusic and I’m tempted to pick up the CD in due course. A complete return to form for the Welshmen here, and something that could almost be my favourite album of theirs.
8 They Might Be Giants – The Else
From the moment the Dust Brothers were announced as producing tracks on this album I was looking forward to it, because their remix of Snail Shell – Snail Dust is one of my favourite songs ever. The bass heavy mix was therefore no surprise and I think it’s a great album. And there’s some awesome songs like The Cap’m on here.
9 Peter Bjorn And John – Writer’s Block
Every so often I have a weak moment where I’m in a record store and just end up buying something cos I’ve heard it there, like this. I think Objects Of My Affection is much better than Young Folks though.
10 Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
More lovely Beirut stuff, it’s not as much of bolt from the blue as the first album, naturally. However I can’t get enough of some of his more croony songs like Nantes especially with the thin 70s organ sounds on it.

Channel M For Misty's Big Adventure

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I’m sure I’ve described Misty’s Big Adventure live a number of times, including the wonders of their dancer Erotic Volvo (who has apparently been named Worst Mascot 2007 by The NME[1]). But anyway thanks to Channel M (for Manchester) bringing us Birmingham’s finest band led by a man named Gareth here’s Misty’s playing Crumpled Up Guy, I Can’t Take The Time Back, The Kids Are Radio Active and The Wising Up Song. If you don’t get Crumpled Up Guy skip to 1:05 and enjoy I Can’t Take The Time Back, possibly the best song to combine talk of time and love since the original version of They Might Be Giants First Kiss.


And if the embed don’t show, click here to see it.

[1] fools, I think I feel old to remember when the NME was worth reading for me.

"Let's go to bed at 9 o'clock in the evening so we will be fresh to serve"

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You may recall me mentioning Napoleon IIIrd in my Fog gig post, well the album is due out next week and there’s a video now! (though I’ve had the album and been listenning to it on and off for months because it was released on emusic months ago[1])


I am full of love for both the song and the video for Napoleon IIIrd – Hit Schmooze For Me and nudge you all henceforth to consider downloading it or buying it or at the very least listening to more of his stuff on myspace.

[1] and yet I’m still buying the CD, not least because I still feel obliged to buy physical copies of any music I like particularly.

The day Stylus dies

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is tomorrow, ‘sniff.

As a fan of the site, I think it’s only right that I point you at a number of their articles to encourage you to fall in love with the site just before they stop putting up new content.

Why White Town – Your Woman was a one-off moment of pop genius

The audacity, not to mention ludicrous improbability, of “Your Woman” is astounding in retrospect

The non-stop nastiness of “Gotta Get Thru This”: Dom Passantino’s Survey of the New Millenium’s UK #1 Singles – Article – Stylus Magazine:

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Madonna- American Pie
[03/05/2000; 1 week]

It takes a bad, bad song to make a man feel sorry for Don McLean, but this is that song. Don’s version, for all its faults, was at least a cryptic crossword that gave dullards something to decode before their next CAMRA meeting. This, on the other hand, is more like The Sun’s coffee break crossword, with the official first appearance of “SHOCKING LESBIAN OVERTONES” in a #1 song (more will follow) of the millennium. Whatever last vestiges of “not-horrid” this song has are wiped out by the backing vocals, deep in the mix, sounding eerily like Terence Trent D’Arby speaking at you through a medium. In the chronology of Madge #1’s, this comes between “Frozen” and “Music.” It’s a trough between those two moderate peaks.
[1/10]


(which runs all the way from the start of 2000 right up to Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy and reminds you of the terror)

A very nasty dig at Jarvis Cocker, which I don’t agree with but still love, if only for comparing him to the singer from Baby D.

Where record collections go when their owners go where they cannot.

And the ultimate and scary triumph of the fanboy.

Also, naturally, they mainly reviewed albums so it seems only right to link to their right-headed review of Caribou’s Andorra, which unlike most annoying reviews managed to pay attention to the last two tracks, Irene and Niobe which I think are easily the most important and interesting on the album.

‘sniff, at least there’s still Popmatters.