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Pedals

KT Tunstall has a little gadget, which she calls the ‘wee bastard pedal’ because it has a tendency to misbehave. She even has a drawing of it somewhere. It allows her to loop her performance whilst playing live.

Whilst wandering around Last.fm today I found this TV clip of KT playing.

I’m sorry it’s Des & Mel, but it’s fascinating to watch the whole way through. Especially for the novel placement and use of her tambourine.

No Comments | Permalink | Music of 2005
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Donations

Back in the early days of broadband internet radio, i.e. 2001, I made a one-off donation to Digitally Imported. At that time it was a not-for-profit organisation using donated bandwidth to stream music to a couple of thousand people worldwide. I listened and donated to it since it was the only place to hear decent dance music. Digitally Imported used the donations to build their services and pay for their equipment. Forget Radio 1 and all that. This was the real deal.

di.fm is still going today. It is now a ‘for profit’ organisation, and they now have a number of premium rate listening packages starting with their Silver package at under $4 a month, commercial-free. The number of channels playing has increased to 17, and typically they have 19,000 listeners at any one time. It is in my opinion one of the best reasons for having broadband.

Now we have AudioScrobbler and it’s sister organisation Last.fm, run by a couple of guys in London. Last.fm is another great idea. Used with AudioScrobbler it keeps track of all the music you listen to, and makes musical connections to other members. It creates virtual playlists of music gathered from these other connections and for a small donation plays them to you: Last.fm Radio.

So, I’m donating to them, ‘cos one day all new artists will be heard this way.

No Comments | Permalink | General Musings | Music
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Tori Amos Day

This’ll screw up my nascent AudioScrobbler page no doubt. Tough. In light of the glowing review in today’s Herald of her new album The Beekeeper out next week, it’s Tori Amos Day at my house.

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Nabbed Namlook

Pete Namlook is a legendary prolific electro-ambient-experimental-arty musician. In the mid to late 90s I bought a few albums by him or his many collaborations. Notably parts 1 and 3 of the From Within series (with Richie Hawtin). I could never get hold of part 2, they were all notoriously difficult to get hold of. Air I and II were also fabulous trippy albums.

Imagine the surprise I felt to discover that there are now dozens of his albums on the iTunes Music Store. Including From Within 2, Air III, Air IV, Sequential and all the 4 Voice stuff, the list goes on.. and on.

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Saturday Night

All nicely settled down at about 7pm for my Mac mini music system test drive, now with added touchscreen monitor (which is a little superfluous until Tiger comes out and I can write a groovy iTunes controller for it).

First up was KT Tunstall’s new album Eye to the Telescope. It’s always worthwhile finding out about a new artist before taking the plunge. This is a good starting point. Good signs: Plays piano, guitars, percussion and a few other instruments; Writes songs obsessively. Bad signs: Appeared on Jools Holland’s BBC2 thingy. So we’re dangerously close to Radio 2 territory. Visions of another Katie make my heart sink. Cheered up by the video to Black Horse & The Cherry Tree which is kind of (s)punky. See it twice before I decide to buy the album.

The album is great. Damn fine actually. Spent the whole duration listening to her voice, rather than appreciating the musicianship and the spacey-ness of the arrangements. That said, the songwriting is very accomplished and her backing vocals are perfect. Universe and U is a mind-blowing song, but boy, do I love her voice.

Next up was Kristin Hersh’s Sunny Border Blue. Why? Because it would feel right at home next to KT’s album (which curiously it is in my iTunes library) and at that time I was horribly chilled out and didn’t fancy changing the mood. Now I could write (and probably have written) pages about this album, so just a few highlights: The couplet in Flipside “How dare you save my life / then try to break my heart”, Listerine and it’s heartbreaking lyrics. And her cover of Cat Stevens’ Trouble seems to get more astonishing every time I hear it.

So that was it. Time to watch Pi. What a peculiar film. Sssspooky in places and unsettling. Great soundtrack and visuals. Complete bollocks, mind.

No Comments | Permalink | Music | Music of 2005
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Highly rated

The local authorities announced their new council tax rates yesterday, with the average increase being 3.9%. In the Highlands, it’s a whopping 4.5%. The Scottish Executive’s guideline was 2.5%.

Opposition parties attacked the increases, but the executive stated that these would still be “consistently lower than England”.

So what? I don’t live in England.

No Comments | Permalink | General Musings
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4 April 2005

“So, go, little songs, go.”

No Comments | Permalink | Music of 2005
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Spy in the Lounge

That’s a Dusty Trails track by the way.

Mimi is now in the lounge in her final position and wirelessly communicating with my Mac upstairs.

Bluetooth is good enough to be able to remotely control from upstairs – so AirTunes in my kitchen will be a go too! Mimi sleeps if she’s not been used for an hour. Given that Wake on LAN only works for an Ethernet connection, bluetooth is the only other way of waking her up via Sailing Clicker. So this is a distinct advantage.

No Comments | Permalink | General Musings | All things Apple
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