Tag: music

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My Review Of The Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB

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I really did my research. I looked at several other MP3 players on the market, read reviews and really agonised over my choice.

The X-Fi was one of the first players I looked at and read reviews on. The reviews by and large were positive and it was becoming a clear choice for me initially, until it became obvious that the software provided with it was for Windows only. The player then was beginning to sound very Windows centric, which worried me, being a Mac and Linux user.

I then dabbled with the notion of getting an iPod. Despite being a Mac fan, I have always had reservations about getting an iPod. The price tag being the first turn off. Then the stories I’ve heard of poor battery life, cracked screens, poor sound quality, etc, really didn’t have me enthused over the choice. Especially when even iPod FANS were recommending buying replacement headphones for a nano that at base price was £100. To not be provided with high quality headphones on something with such a price tag sounded criminal to me!
Another thing that put me off buying an iPod was expandability. Once you choose the iPod you want, there’s no expansion slot, you are stuck with that fixed size of space.

I then in light of that, considered the Classic iPod. With 120GB of space, I’d be able to put my WHOLE iTunes library on it and STILL have loads of room to spare. And although my player was being purchased not for it’s portability to be taken outdoors, I was worried about the Classics potential fragility. Especially given the 120GB of space comes in the form of an actual hard drive rather than flash memory.
I still felt myself drawn to the X-Fi. The final element that swayed it for me was a company selling the 16GB version of the X-Fi for £106 – compared to it’s RRP of £140. It was the clincher.

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I’m glad I jumped at it! I’ve had the player for a week now, and it has been fab!

The positives:

Despite being provided with Windows software and having a program called “Creative Centrale” that only runs on a Windows machine, my Mac can see it. I use a program called XNJB which gives you an MTP user interface to upload/download MP3’s with relative ease. It’s not the MOST compatible way to do it, but if, like me you are a Mac user and were reticent to buy Zen products due to incompatibility, rest assured.

The storage space. Mine is the 16GB version, but there is also a 32GB version as well. There is an 8GB version on the market too, but it doesn’t have the Wireless LAN feature and has (as far as I am aware) inferior quality headphones.

Along with the fixed storage it has an SD memory expansion slot, which means you can expand the memory by anything from minimal mega-bites right up to 32GB – and in HC format too. Plenty of room for expansion!

Video playback is good and high quality. So far I’ve only done a little playback via an SD card. I haven’t put any video on the fixed storage of the player. But from what I’ve played from SD, the video has smooth and fluid playback and is quite good to view despite it being on a 2 inch screen. The resolution is sharp and certainly makes video watchable.

The sound quality is excellent. And of course, the better bit rate of MP3, the better quality of sound. I try as much as possible, to have an absolute MINIMUM bit rate for my MP3’s be to 192kbps. The headphones are superior quality to my previous Creative headphones which were of good quality themselves. No need to folk out for replacement headphones with THIS player (sorry Apple!). Be warned, this only applies to the 16 and 32GB versions though, from what I’ve read on other reviews, the 8GB version comes with a different set of headphones and I can’t comment on those.

Battery life. I’ve had the player just over a week now and I haven’t flatten the battery. This is due mostly from me still loading songs on the machine and it being charged via the USB port when linked to the Mac. Battery life for MP3 playback through the headphones is quoted as being 25 hours. Through the built-in speaker on the unit, 15 hours, and for video playback, 5 hours. I would expect that headphone MP3 playback would see you get pretty close to the battery life quoted. The most I’ve used it for in one period was about 3 hours and it came nowhere NEAR depleting the battery life.

Wireless LAN feature. As a Mac user, I didn’t think the Wireless feature was going to be of ANY use to me at all. But I have signed up to a chat account and have Yahoo on. I haven’t chatted to anyone yet, but could imagine the “keyboard” interface could be problematic. The other aspect to the Wireless is the Creative Media Centre. It’s not FULLY open to me as a Mac user, but it does let me listen to various podcasts, including, bizarrely, some Australian content like the Kyle and Jackie O show and some Triple J stuff.

The Negatives:

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Yes, there are some, albeit minimal (to me anyway)…

AAC playback. It WILL play AAC’s as stated, but I find for me it only recognises the tracks ID3 tags when loaded onto an SD card. If I load AAC’s directly onto the player, the ID3 tags don’t show properly and the songs get loaded but unidentified and all get bundled into an album by “Unknown artist” under “Unknown album”. This probably is only a Mac/Linux users problem as us users cannot access the “Creative Centrale”.

Video conversions needed for playback. So far, from what I can tell, it will only play “.avi” format video for me. And you need to convert video to 320 x 240 resolution. That isn’t so much the pain. One of the sell points for me was the larger range of video formats the X-Fi was meant to take compared to the regular Zen.

The X-Fi feature. This was the BIG feature, the “muts nuts” aspect of this player. I find it a bit like a chocolate fireplace, IE: quite useless. Unless you have appalling quality MP3’s (and quite frankly, why would you?), this feature will actually LESSEN the quality of your MP3’s. If you upload MP3’s of a minimum of 160kbps or higher, I seriously doubt you’d ever need to switch the X-Fi feature on.

The USB cable supplied is frankly an absurd size. It’s a 2 inch long cable!! I had to sit it behind my Mac and couldn’t confirm downloads and that the thing was charging unless I looked at the XNJB software. Or got up out of my computer chair and walked around to the back of the Mac. I wanted to have the unit in front of me. We had an existing cable that is 36 inches long. Well ample enough to have the X-Fi in front of me. It didn’t need to be a 36 inch cable, but why the hell make it only a 2 inch one?! I really think the cable should be at least 10 inches long.

On this topic, the fact that you have to fork out extra money for a mains adapter charger is a little rich. But Creative aren’t the only ones. For iPods come with no mains adapter either. Honestly. What is it with these companies. They make systems with in-built battery packs. You’d think that they could at least provide an alternative to only being able to charge the gadget via a USB port. Okay, they provide the mains adapters, but at extra cost. Why not just include them in the kit and charge a slightly higher price? I don’t understand why they think people wouldn’t want a mains adapter as standard?

For a person with my nails (I bite them), I find it hard to insert an SD card as it takes an effort to push the card into the slot fully, and takes nails, or having a small, thin gadget to hand (say, the back of another SD card, or a pen, or similar, or even someone with nails – for me it’s my partner).

ONLY IN REFERENCE TO MAC/LINUX USERS:-

The organiser. Obviously it needs to “sync” with your PC, erm, which I haven’t got. This renders the organiser for Mac/Linux users useless. Not that I’m really bothered by that myself. I’ve got a mobile phone after all.

I think that’s about all really. I’d give it 4.5 stars out of 5. It’s not 100% perfect, but it is as near enough to perfection as I think you could get. It’s in the high 90’s for me! I’m really, really pleased with it.

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Music I was Listening To Yesterday.

I was clearing away the kitchenware out of the dishwasher yesterday when I was thinking my usual thought (that is: that I don’t really listen to half as much music as I’d like to). Then suddenly a wave hit me. Our mac mini doubles up as a “media centre” with a little remote control that means you can control it without sitting in front of it. So once I was finished with the dish washing, I fired up iTunes, got the remote for the mac mini, brought up the media centre interface and sat on the lounge to listen to some TOONS!

I’d been going to sleep the previous few nights with Bowie songs in my head, so first off I listened to a few tracks from the Low album…

Sound and Vision
Always Crashing In The Same Car
Be My Wife
A New Career In A New Town

Then went to a few tracks from “Heroes”…

Beauty and The Beast
Joe The Lion
“Heroes”
Sons of The Silent Age
Blackout
The Secret Life of Arabia

Then more recent Bowie, from Heathen…

Cactus
I Would Be Your Slave
5.15 The Angels Have Gone
A Better Future
Heathen (The Rays)

Then it got a bit melancholy.

Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of The Broken Hearted
The Carpenters – Superstar

Then Em came home…luckily…’cos I think I’d have ended up in the fetal position on the floor had I kept going with what I was listening to!

Still, it was lovely to listen to some stuff and I am determined to do it more often.

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Random Musings.

Going through the list of Scottish music I like had me hunting down stuff I hadn’t listened to for a long time. I have completely rekindled my passion for Simple Minds and Big Country. I was listening to their stuff last night. There’s such colour in Simple Minds’ stuff. They can so easily and fluidly travel from new wave synth super pop to thumping rock anthems like no other band I’ve heard. And in a lot of songs, have both elements sitting side by side.

 

It’s strange, because I keep coming back to their stuff in stages. Unintentionally. Last time I was really into them was around the early Naughties. Before that, probably sometime in the mid 90s. Before that, right at their 80s peak, when they brought out “Once Upon A Time” – which I owned.

 

I think I’ve started a new stage. I forget really until I come back to the music, just how much I love them. And I really should own albums instead of “best of”‘s.

 

And as for Big Country, I’m not sure if I can stretch to familiarizing myself with the full back catalogue of Big Country music, but I cannot get ENOUGH of one of their songs in particular.

 

 

It’s permanently stuck in my head!!!

 

I watched Blades of Glory on DVD the other night. I didn’t think I could ever laugh so hard at a Will Ferrell film! They way they have filmed it to make it look like both he and John Heder are competent skaters is brilliant.

 

DVDs coming in the post are, Magicians – with David Mitchell and Robert Webb (of That Mitchell and Webb Look and Peep Show fame). Not really sure what the movie is about, other than it being about magicians, obviously. I love David Mitchell. There’s this thing about him being middle class which he seems to get stick for, plus he’s just sort of geeky. You also see him on panel quiz shows sometimes. He’s a regular on a BBC show called Would I Lie To You? in which teams have to work out whether a statement read out by a member of the opposing team is true or a lie. One of my faves was David Mitchell declaring that his first word was “Hoover”. As soon as he read the card out I thought “Oh, he’s so ANAL, it HAS to be true! PLEASE, let it be true!”

It was…

 

Other discs coming are “The Runaway Bride”, the 2006 Doctor Who Xmas special with Mr T and Catherine Tate. I didn’t watch it at the time. I think I was sick that Xmas and I went to watch it, but fell asleep within the first 10 mins or something. I don’t remember it AT ALL. It’ll be good to see anyway. I’m just intrigued as to how Catherine Tate played Donna back then.

 

The other is This Is England. I’d heard it being talked about, winning awards, etc. Then I saw a preview of it on one of the other discs I rented and it DOES look good, so I’m looking forward to seeing that.

 

I’m spending more time on the Internet than is probably healthy due to the Acer Netbook, but at least I can do it in comfort (surf the ‘net/use a computer). And it’s like a little media machine too, ‘cos it takes SD cards, so I can listen to MP3’s and watch MP4 movies and stuff.

 

Yesterday I busied myself creating a list of favourite comedians in an email to my friend Kelly. I watched SO many little stand-up clips from YouTube yesterday. It was fun though.

 

Here is a little list of some of my all-time Oz faves.

 

Firstly, Bob Downe. We’ve seen him twice. Once in Sydney, moons ago, and more recently at High Wycombe around 2002/2003. He is FAB live.

I love The Kransky Sisters too.

Doug Anthony All Stars (now no longer together, but Paul McDermott still gets around, as does Tim Ferguson as far as I’m aware).

Another quirky gem is Flacco.

And finally, even though there is so much more I could add, The Umbilical Brothers.

Search YouTube for them all and knock yourselves out 😉

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Hoots Man! Scottish Music.

It’s no secret I love my music. But it’s come to my attention recently that I do have a healthy love of music of bands and artists from Scotland. The size of this list might grow as I remember more acts, but at the moment I’ve got several acts to discuss.

It started off with Simple Minds. I don’t think I was aware RIGHT at the beginning about them being Scottish. And no – I was NEVER going to start this list with Bay City Rollers – are you kidding?! I remember seeing “Promised You A Miracle” way, way back in 1981 or whenever it was. But it wasn’t really until the mid 80’s when they had the bulk of their success that I got into them. I’ll be hard-pressed to name a favourite song, but if I can name five songs, I’ll manage that better:

Glittering Prize
Someone Somewhere in Summertime
Waterfront
Love Song
All The Things She Said

Next up is Eurythmics. Must add them due to Annie Lennox, even though Dave Stewart is a Geordie (from Newcastle). I loved them right from the time of Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This). I bought the Touch album and even had the remixed Touch Dance album. I’ve been playing these albums again recently, with my second favourite Eurythmics album, Revenge. I thought my top five for them was going to be a breeze, but because I love SO much of Touch, it might be harder than I expected.

Love Is A Stranger
No Fear, No Hate, No Pain, No Broken Hearts (off the Touch album)
Aqua (also off Touch)
It’s Alright (Baby’s Coming Back)
The Miracle Of Love

Next is Big Country. Oh my God! I loved them! I suppose they were sort of the 80’s equivalent of the Bay City Rollers, ‘cos they were just SO in-your-face Scottish! It was all check shirts (okay, not so Scottish, but on Scot guys check looks like tartan) and guitars that sound like bagpipes. I adored Big Country and thought Stuart Adamson (R.I.P) was a bit alright to boot. But I remember thinking it strange they had a black man in the band (I know!). Now for my fave five. Ooh, it’s hard. I had to go back through the Big Country catalogue. I haven’t heard any of their stuff for so long, I was worried I wouldn’t get to five, but here they are:

Look Away
Fields of Fire
Chance
East of Eden
Wonderland

The next are The Proclaimers. David Tennant’s favourite act. I never really bought any Proclaimers stuff, but you can’t help but love them. When I first saw them, I thought they were the epitome of Scottishness. Ginger, bespectacled, pasty. How could they only come 5th in a list of the “most Scottish” people?! But they make anthems. Everyone sings along to I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) and I’m On My Way. A top five isn’t really possible for me here (sorry Proclaimers fans), so a top three will have to suffice:

I’m On My Way
I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
King Of The Road (or is that Rood?)

Another person I HAVE to mention, predominantly known for only one hit (but what a hit it was) is Edwyn Collins. Had to mention him for A Girl Like You. That was just EVERYWHERE in 1994. What a killer anthem it was. He hasn’t been in the best of health in recent years, and he deserves much praise.

Travis is next. I loved The Man Who. They have a kind of MOTR sound that I like. Soft harmonies and I love the tone of Fran Healy’s voice. I should really give them more attention than I have ‘cos they are great. An easy top five:

Writing To Reach You
Driftwood
Turn
Sing
Closer

Texas now. I remember I Don’t Want A Lover in 1989, but it was a bit of a one-hit wonder and they fell off my radar until the late 90’s. Then they seemed to have hit after hit for a few years. I loved the new, poppier direction their music went. Anyway, on to the top five:

Black-Eyed Boy
Summer Son
Inner Smile
Sleep
Say What You Want

Okay, now we get to Franz Ferdinand. Probably one of my favourite acts of all time. Ooh, a top five is going to be SSSOOO hard as I love all their stuff SO much. I might even have to come and update this when the new album gets released early next year! Oh, they are just arty and rocky and indie and poppy. I love Alex Kapranos’s voice and he is quite easy on the eye to boot. Shame about poor Paul though! Those teeth! Here’s my top five (today):

The Dark of The Matinee
Michael
Outsiders
I’m Your Villain
What You Meant

That was so friggin’ hard, and I could’ve added more. I should have just added the album titles and have done with it!

Snow Patrol now. Mixed in that some members are Northern Irish, but they were formed in Scotland, so I’m sure Scots would claim them. I don’t really have a collection of their stuff, but I do love their music. I think they make fantastic modern-day power ballads. Here is my top five:

Chasing Cars
Run
Chocolate
You’re All I Have
Spitting Games

Lastly, KT Tunstall. She’s a feisty little thing! Don’t really own her stuff, but love her stuff. There are not many female Scottish artists around, so it’s good she’s there. My top five:

Black Horse and The Cherry Tree
Under The Weather
Suddenly I See
Hold On
If Only

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Personal (and general) Musical Pinnacles.

I wanted to write a post about what, for ME, are/were the pinnacle points in music. But not just generalized, but in my life, my musical taste.

I’ll start with 1972, the height of Glam rock. Glam is a genre of music I still love to this day. One of my favourite albums of all time is The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, released in 1972. I suppose Glam rock really started in around 1970 with Marc Bolan and T-Rex of which there are songs I do like. I like Cosmic Dancer, Metal Guru, Children of the Revolution, among others. Most of the songs and groups I love though for me, Glam rock peaked around 1972. If it hadn’t been for Glam, we probably would not have had David Bowie. He’d been around for several years already and had a modicum of success with Space Oddity, but it was very much a one-hit wonder thing for him until Ziggy. So for me the first pinnacle year is 1972. It gave us Glam and it gave us Bowie.

The next pinnacle year – 1977. The height of new, electronic music. It gave us Kraftwerk and a newly directed Bowie, giving us in that one year two of his three Berlin Trilogy albums, Low and “Heroes”, whilst also producing and co-writing on Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and Lust For Life. A very prolific period for him indeed and gave us electronic gems like A New Career In A New Town (Low) and Sense of Doubt (“Heroes”). This sound would pave the way for New Wave and later, dance music in general. Many groups point to Kraftwerk and 1977 Bowie as inspiration.

From there, we go to 1981. Two musical genres collide here to make a very exciting time musically. New Wave and New Romanticism clash to make one of the best periods of modern pop music history. The acts are just rich! The songs as well. Human League’s Don’t You Want Me, Soft Cell’s cover of Tainted Love, Ultravox’s Vienna, Duran Duran’s Planet Earth are just some of the songs and acts swilling around. Basically, from this point until 1984 is probably my most loved era of music. It probably mostly coincides with my being a young teen and getting my own defining taste of music, but I just love this period of music. I don’t love ALL 80’s music, I don’t love ALL of the 80’s! There is a marked, audible decline in music by 1985 as far as I’m concerned, which has lead to the predominance of the over-manufactured pop we get now. I lay the blame solely at the hands of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. These men should be hung, drawn and quartered for their “contribution” to music. We do have things to thank them for, Kylie Minogue, Mel and Kim and Rick Astley. But also they gave us The Reynolds Sisters, Sonia, and changed Bananarama’s career for the worse as far as I’m concerned. There was amazing music from 1981 to 1984. It was if not the best period of modern musical history, then it’s definitely in the top three!

I must mention in this gap, there was the break-up of The Smiths. A group that sadly escaped my attention until the late 80’s at the earliest. I was definitely into them by the early 90’s though. Just had to mention them.

Next, a little detour around 1991. We get the first wave of dance music with things like Dee-lite’s Groove Is In The Heart. And we also get…Nirvana! And grunge. But no-one ever thinks of grunge without Nirvana. But of course there were other pioneers. Sonic Youth, Beck, The Breeders, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, and even a few “harder than grunge” acts like Alice In Chains and Soundgarden. A good little beginning for what is now probably labeled EMO music.

Next, 1995 – the second Brit invasion with Britpop. LOVED this period too. Before the invasion though, and me discussing it, I have to make a mention of Bjork. She came in the wave of the rave scene of the early 1990’s with her Debut album in 1993. A pinnacle album for me. Just had to mention it as it’s sort of between timelines. Anyway, on to 1995. A Brit wave began. It must have been odd for some groups as they’d been around for some time before really breaking, like Pulp. They had formed way back in 1978, but didn’t really make mainstream impact until Common People and the Different Class album. Blur had been around a few years, had a minor hit with There’s No Other Way in 1991, but it wasn’t until 1994’s Park Life did they really come into prominence. Other acts of note were of course, Oasis, Supergrass, Suede and The Verve. Loved, LOVED Britpop. Being such a musical Anglophile, I found it fab.

Penultimate of the musical pinnacles for me is around 1999 when I moved to the UK and found myself in a resurgence of dance music and chill-out stuff. I bought several “chill-out” albums in the early Naughties. Mostly all Ministry of Sound produced. There was stuff like Alice DJ, DJ Spiller, Armend Van Helden, Groove Armada, Basement Jaxx, Avalanches, The Chemical Brothers (although around for some time), Goldfrapp, Royksopp, Air, William Orbit, all making an impact on my listening taste. I very much enjoy this genre of music.

Last of the pinnacles is 2005. Lots of new indie bands make their way to the mainstream. Two of my current faves, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers come to prominence then. As well as the Kaiser Chiefs and groups like The Futureheads. Also to come on the scene a little later was The Feeling.

Well, that’s it. My musical pinnacles. Let me know what you think.

My next topic for music will be my list of Scottish acts I like.

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Musical Personalities and Being Gay.

I saw a story on the BBC News web site yesterday about a study that a professor of Heriot-Watt University in Scotland carried out. The research found that people could have their personality defined by their musical tastes. Here’s the results:

Blues: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

Jazz: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing and at ease

Classical: High self-esteem, creative, introvert and at ease

Rap: High self-esteem, outgoing

Opera: High self-esteem, creative, gentle

Country and Western: Hardworking, outgoing

Reggae: High self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, outgoing gentle and at ease

Dance: Creative, outgoing, not gentle

Indie: Low self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, not gentle

Bollywood: Creative, outgoing

Rock/Heavy Metal: Low self-esteem, creative, not hardworking, not outgoing, gentle and at ease

Chart Pop: High self-esteem, not creative, hardworking, outgoing, gentle, not at ease

Soul: High self-esteem, creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Interesting, but what if you like several genres like I do? And how the hell do they come up with people who like classical music are introverted, and people who like rock are gentle? What if, like me, you like chart music as well as indie and dance? Can I be both creative and NOT creative, hardworking yet NOT hardworking, and have both a high AND low self-esteem at the same time? Am I bi-polar? All fair and good if you only like one genre of music and stick to it, but it’s hardly rule of thumb. It suppose it compounds that EMO’s are misery-guts’?

Another interesting little finding are the top ten GAY albums! Number one on the list is Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. There’s a high proportion of albums on the list that I either own or want to own. I’ll mark the ones in brackets. The top ten reads like this:

1. David Bowie – The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (own it)
2. The Smiths – The Smiths (don’t own it, but have Smiths songs)
3. Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman (owned it)
4. Indigo Girls – Indigo Girls
5. Judy Garland – Judy At Carnegie Hall
6. The Smiths – The Queen Is Dead (see other Smiths entry)
7. Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (like to own it)
8. Madonna – The Immaculate Collection (owned it)
9. Cyndi Lauper – She’s So Unusual (owned it)
10. Antony And The Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now (own it)

I’m SSSSSOOOOOO gay! There’s actually a list of 100 albums in the “gay” chart. Click here for the full list of albums.

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Sh!t a Brick!

I’m in mourning. The BBC News has reported this morning that the new, highly anticipated U2 album, rumoured to be released in November, won’t be released until the New Year. Hellfire! I was SSSOOO looking forward to that. Now it seems all the new albums from artists I love are all coming out in 2009, goddamit!

That puts U2, Franz Ferdinand and Antony and The Johnson’s albums all into next year.

It doesn’t make a U2 tour kicking off in 2009 very plausible either. I only really have had two “before you die” events that I wanted to strike off in my life. One was seeing David Bowie live, which I did in 2002 at the Manchester Move music festival. The other is to see U2 live. Something which looks unlikely to happen until 2010 at the earliest now.

Sometimes being a music fan sucks!

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DVD’s and movies.

Been filling my time with watching some DVD’s and listening to music. I’ve been watching the first series of Medium. It’s a bit arse about face, but I watched some of the last series (the 3rd/4th series?) on the BBC and it just got me hooked, so thought I’d start from the start. Only problem is, the DVD rental service I use, they have series one and series three, but NOT series two?! WTF??? So, I’ve had to be “naughty” in getting series two.

 

Speaking of being “naughty”. I got a film Mr T did in 1998 called “L.A. Without A Map” from a friend of a friend of a friend…

 

Has a moderate length of cameo appearance by Johnny Depp who crops up in several scenes. Mmmmm, 2 for the price of 1. Wipes up drool on floor with paper towel.

 

It weren’t a bad film. A shame really that Mr T hasn’t had much of a film career, but there’s time, I suppose. Still, we get to see far more of him as The Doctor anyway.

 

There are repeats of the 2nd series of the new Doctor Who now on BBC Three, so I’m not having to suffer from too many withdrawals until Xmas. I’d still love to get to see Hamlet in London, but not sure if I can stretch to it.

 

I’ve been listening to music via headphones on Em’s phone. I don’t know HOW many mp3 players I’ve tried in the last few years, to finally find that Em’s phone is the best player of the lot!! On rotation have been U2, Split Enz, Antony and The Johnsons, The Killers and The Ting Tings, with this song in particular on concurrent rotation in my brain.

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Split Enz – I Hope I Never

 

I do love my music. Well, that’s about it for now. Short and sweet.
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Do They Have a “The” In Their Name?

If they do, then I probably like them!

It’s now Reading festival weekend, and the BBC are doing their regular coverage. Last night it was time for The Killers to headline. I still absolutely love them to bits, and it helps that Brandon Flowers is a bit morish! They did some new material. I think we were showed one song, but they wanted to be a bit protective of the rest. Not that it stops people with mobile phones and the like capturing footage.

I am SSOO loving The Ting Tings too at the moment. They were very good last night. Great sound for a two-piece group and far more melodic than The White Stripes (which they have been compared to).

Loving Editors too. I love the singers voice, nice and deep. A bit reminiscent of Ian Curtis (Joy Division) or the guy from Interpol.

It’s heavy metal themed today, so we have Metallica headlining. Not sure about that, but Tenacious D could be fun.

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New Music From The Faves.

There is a number of groups I’m into releasing new material over the next few months, which I’m looking forward to.

The first is the highly anticipated new Verve album for 10 years. It’s released in two weeks time. I’m sure we’ll hear more about it then. I hope it can capture what they had when they split. I think there is still quite a bit of discord in the camp, but let’s hope it doesn’t detract from them making great music.

The next two to release new stuff are Kaiser Chiefs and Keane.

The Kaiser’s seem quite prolific with their stuff. This is their 3rd album in as many years. I hope it stands up, as sometimes I think bands can rush material. I think there needs to be a balance between the length of absence with someone like The Verve (okay, they had officially split, granted), to an act like the Kaiser’s that can produce albums within 12-18 months.

Keane have had a longer absence due to Tom Chaplin’s rehab stint, etc. They sound like they’ve worked very hard on this album. I was a little disappointed in Under The Iron Sea. I could appreciate what they were trying to do, but some if it got a little lost. Let’s see if they “move on” or take a retrograde step and try and recreate Hopes and Fears.

Both Kaiser’s Off With Their Heads and Keane’s Perfect Symmetry albums are released October 13th in the UK.

The next on the card, towards the end of the year (no official release date yet) is the hotly anticipated new U2 album. Said to sound very retrograde by all accounts. Going back as far as supposedly recapturing the sounds of Achtung Baby. Bono has said to have described it as sounding very Moroccan influenced. Bono goes on to say “it’s not like anything we’ve done before” but it’s all sounding a little Achtung Baby meets Pop to me. But we’ll see I suppose. I don’t mind if it recaptures those sounds. I tuned out during ATYCLB and HTDAAB (the last two albums) sadly. There are a few tracks I like on both, but on the whole I was disappointed with them. I’m holding out a lot of hope with this new one.

The last two, expected to be due early in the New Year are Franz Ferdinand and Antony and The Johnsons. Franz say their new album is more disco influenced. I’m not sure if that’s a bit of a retrograde step. Not that the first self-titled album was disco-based, but You Could Have It So Much Better was such a mature continuation of their sound, I’m worried the new one will sound a little backward. It’s not that I’m not wanting a disco sound from them, I just don’t want it at the expense of them compromising the maturity they gained in their sound with YCHISMB.

I’m not sure what we’ll get with Antony. He’s quoted on Wiki as saying the new album is about “landscape and the future” and said the previous album’s theme was “sort of sad and redemptive”. Sounds like he’s going for a more “upbeat” sound, although he says the new album will be more one of “contrasts”, with a blend of uplifting and redemptive songs. If the musicality of it is anything like I Am A Bird Now, I’ll love it.