Archive:
January 2008

How to quadruple the price of an album and get away with it

If there is a musical act I like more than Radiohead, it is Autechre. The release of Autechre’s new album, Quaristice, bears some resemblance to Radiohead’s attention-grabbing In Rainbows release. It also bears a lot of the hallmarks of my predictions / observations about the apparent future of the music industry which I wrote about […]

I don’t understand this song

The music? Yes, okay. The lyrics? A few bad lines — some dodgy rhyming and one particular line which is in a mixture of the past and present tenses. But over all it is fine fine. But those lyrics with that music? Is it not a slight clash of tone? Maybe it’s just me. I […]

Get set for another year of politics in F1

A lot of people are scratching their heads about the FIA’s latest plan when it comes to race stewards. One of the most common complaints you will hear an F1 fan make is that the decisions made by the stewards are not consistent enough. For the past couple of years there has been a permanent […]

This is the news Jim, but not as we know (or want) it

So “Sir Trevor McDonald” (it is illegal to say ‘Trevor McDonald’ without putting ‘Sir’ in front of it) has just completed his second gruelling week back at the helm of the resurrected News at Ten. It doesn’t seem to have worked for ITV. They’ve made a big fuss about how they are bringing back an […]

Music became cheaper today

There is some exciting news from Last.fm. I have been in love with that website ever since I signed up back in 2004, and there is now yet another reason to love it. As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website. Something we’ve wanted for years—for […]

Music not of 2007: three reissues

Well, last year I looked at some reissues as well, so I thought I’d do that this year as well. I wasn’t joking when I said I might not get this list finished until February. This is in alphabetical order. Seefeel — Quique (Redux Edition) This is nice. This forgotten shoegaze / techno crossover classic […]

New comments policy

Recently I have noticed a disturbing trend that is making the battle against spam harder. Normally the way you tell a legitimate commenter from a spammer is to check that the comment is on-topic and free of bad links. Increasingly, I am finding more and more spam commenters whose writing is certainly on-topic. It doesn’t […]

The future of music: pretty boxes

There are only two things in the world that give us absolute total happiness. One is seeing other people fail. The other is unwrapping a newly-bought CD. –Armando Iannucci In the wake of all the upheaval that the recorded music industry is facing, a lot of people have been predicting the death of the CD. […]

Something new in the sidebar

If you look in the sidebar (just above the ‘blog info’ stuff that no-one cares about) you will see a little widget. It is the audio version of Matt Wardman’s Daily Roundup. It’s a bit like a paper review. For a trial period he is testing it out on blog sidebars for a few weeks […]