General

That they’re printed on. I’ve never got the point of page long, or longer, reviews of music. What’s the point of reading about somebody else’s take on a particular album or track. If they like it it doesn’t mean that you will. if they hate it it doesn’t mean that you won’t like it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I read in a music album review that a certain track was the “worst” on the album, only to discover that they are referring to my favourite track. What music you like is very subjective. It doesn’t matter at all what others, like reviewers, think of it. Music reviews should consist of the following:

1) X has a new album/song out.
2) Here are the details. Title, label, etc.
3) I like it/don’t like it. But so what. YMMV.
4) Go listen yourself. Here’s where you can hear samples.

The chances of this happening are about the same as the chances of a whelk in a supernova. Most music critics seem to be full of themselves.

I’ve been listening to Aerial almost continuously since I got it yesterday. For about 80% of the time I’ve been playing the 2nd disk, A Sky of Honey. It’s brilliant. The singling is incredible. I’ve said it before, but what a voice. The instrumentation and arrangements are good as well. Who said concept albums were dead? good to hear Rolf Harris on there as well. Still have to get into the A Sea of Honey disk but that’s okay. It’ll be like getting another new Kate Bush album next week when I listen to that in detail.

I’m really happy. After 12 years this could have been a disaster, but it’s not. It’s bloody marvelous 🙂

Well. It’s finally here. Aerial from Kate Bush. Picked up a copy in Tesco at lunchtime. When I was going through the express checkouts one of the till operators and few checkouts away saw my copy and said to one of her colleagues, “That new Kate Bush CD has sold loads this morning”. So thats all good then. I haven’t really had a chance to listen to it from start to finish yet.

It’s split over two CDs. The first is called A Sea of Honey and the second is called A Sky of Honey. I have listened to the second disk more, both in the car and at home tonight. I really like it. There is a track called Sunset that is very, very good indeed. And Nocturn is also excellent. I’m sure I’ll be posting more about this over the next while, but first impressions are good 🙂

I came across KT Tunstall’s Black Horse and the Cherry Tree when browsing the video section of the iTMS. I’d never heard any of her material before. I really like this song. It has a really upbeat tempo and thumping beat. She plays most of the instruments on her music herself apparently. I bought the album. It’s good, but the Black Horse… track is my favourite.

After a 12 year wait. The new Kate Bush single “King of the Mountain” was released to radio today. It got its international debut on Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2 show. It’s very, very good indeed.

I got my radioShark to record the show when I was at work. I then used Audio Hijack Pro to cut out the track from the rest of the radio show and save it as an AAC file. I’ve been playing it a lot this evening. What a voice. I stand by my statement from 2003.

Really looking forward to the new album.

Update: The new Kate Bush web site now has a snippet of the new track. And it is now available from the iTMS.

Recently I’ve added quite a few new artists and albums to iTunes. Almost all of these have been via the iTMS. Some notable additions are listed below.

The Killers – Hot Fuss. I love this album. One of the best I’ve heard in a long time.

Kaiser Chiefs – Employment. I bought this because somebody I know said it was good and I’d probably like it. They were right 🙂

Aimee Mann – Lost in Space. Came to this via a weird route. Was checking out the HD video examples at the Apple QuickTime site. One of the examples was Aimee Mann performing The Moth. Liked it so much I got the album.

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand. Was loaned a copy of this as I’m going to TVital05 in Belfast in August and they are playing. Scissor Sistors are also playing and it was them I wanted to see. I’m actually looking forward to seeing FF more now. Really good album.

Patrick and Eugene – Postcard from Summerisle. Bought this after The Birds and The Bees was the free single of the week on the UK iTMS. Excellent stuff. Includes a ska/reggae cover of Can’t Get You Out Of My Mind.

Brilliant new album from Tori Amos. Back to the quality of the early material. Much happiness!

I didn’t know this new album was out until I saw it in a banner advertisement on the UK iTMS. Tori Amos’s early albums were very, very good indeed. Her debut album, Little Earthquakes, was stunning with tracks like Crucify, Precious Things, Happy Phantom and Winter especially good. The next album, Under the Pink, was better than the previous one. Nearly all the tracks on this album were, and still are, brilliant. After this there were a few albums that were different! There were a few good tracks inter-spaced on the albums Boys for Pele, From the Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and Back. Venus did have a 2nd live disk with stuff from the early albums on it. Which was good. Some people loved those albums. I didn’t.

The album Scarlet’s Walk, which was released in 2002, was a step back towards the good material. The track Wednesday was very, very good indeed and a few others as well. The new album, The Beekeeper, is brilliant. I’ve listened to it about 15 times over the last few days. There isn’t a track on it I feel like skipping. Toast is my favourite. Closely followed by Witness, Parasol and Ireland. It’s all good though. You can listen to 30 second snippets at the album home page on the iTMS. There is a track on the album called Sweet the Sting that sounds very like it’s Alisha’s Attic performing it. Which is no bad thing.

Took the urge to listen to the song Stay from the Hormonally Yours album from Shakespeare’s Sister tonight. So I pressed the trusty iPod into service. I ended up listening to the whole album. Bloody marvellous stuff. Pity they are not together anymore. Since their split however there have been a few brilliant solo albums from Marcy Detroit.

The iPod really changes the way you listen to music. It’s incredible having 2600 tracks available instantly no matter where you happen to be. No need to find the CD and mount it to hear a track from your collection. Want to hear a track? It’s playing in seconds.

Also the AAC encoding system that you can use in iTunes to encode your CD’s for the iPod produces files that sound incredible. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating. If you want a digital music player get an iPod or one of the new iPod mini devices. You won’t be disappointed.

Just got the new album (well new for he UK anyway) from The Knife. It’s called Deep Cuts. Not sure if I like it as much as their last album but it has some really good tracks. It’s growing on me.

I really like Pass this on and You take my breath away. Other good ones are Heartbeats, Girls night out, One for you, Rock classics, Is it medicine and Got 2 let u. Actually I seem to have listed most of the tracks there so I must like the album as whole. it comes with a DVD that contains videos for 5 tracks.

Brilliant!!! Went to see The Darkness at the Belfast Vital04 festival in Belfast Botanic Gardens on Monday. They were excellent.

All the hype is true. These guys are the real deal. They are tight as a unit, can actually play their instruments well, have good rapport with the crowd and bash out the songs with gusto. All in all they put on a show which is, lets face it, what you want at a bloody concert.

They played most of the songs from their debut album and those from the EP available on the Apple iTunes store. Love on the Rocks with no Ice was the last one played and it went on for ages! They also played one new song. “This is the awkward moment bit” as Justin Hawkins put it 🙂 Another few albums worth of material will fill out the live set nicely. If you get a chance to go see them then take it.

Got the self titled album from the Swedish band The Knife recently. I heard them first on the Jonathan Ross radio show on BBC Radio 2. He played a song that I was sure was by Björk. It sounded very like her style. When it had finished however he and Andy Davies (The Ultimate Sidekick) said it was actually a song called Parade by The Knife. It took a few weeks to track down a copy of the album but I finally got it from Amazon UK.

I love it. There are some excellent tracks. Apart from Parade I especially like Kino, I Just Had To Die, I Take Time, Bird and Neon. You can listen to track samples at the iTMS.

Well worth a listen if you like Björk. In fact, well worth a listen even if you don’t.