It doesn’t matter how many rules there are, because there’ll come a point when the rules don’t count and collectively they don’t work.
The rules really are: there are no rules. It’s really quite easy to accept.
Charlotte Martin passed my ears many months ago, but that was before Veins appeared in iTunes. Steel is a track from her major label debut album, On Your Shore, sweeping up the musical ideas and traditions of her peers and predecessors, particularly Tori Amos, but melds them together more expertly than one might expect.
Steel frankly annihilates most other songs, and illustrates how deeply embedded, internalised, her faith is, without sounding patronising or obvious, whilst retaining the expressive freedom that’s permitted in contemporary music. Gifted.
One day, Hybrid’s third album, I Choose Noise, will be released on CD. Until then, it’s up to download stores to satisfy one’s desires. This third album sees the Swansea trio move away from the darkness of Morning Sci-Fi, further developing their unique mix of film-score obsessed orchestral breakbeat.
Until Tomorrow, co-written by Quivver’s John Graham is perhaps the pinnacle of the album. Starting bleakly, the song evolves (and revolves) for around five minutes until the sunlight pours in.
“No need for words, your heartbeats and the breeze was all I heard
Your hopes and fears, how trivial they seem from up here
I breathe you in as the sunlight breaks the haze to touch your skin
Beneath the glow of a different kind of Sunday morning”
[iTunes]
[Distinctive Records] (320kbps)
There’s a lot of interest in whether YouTube is for sale and how much it will sell for. Rightly, the answer is ‘yes’ to the first question, and ‘lots’ to the second question. But how long will YouTube dominate the free-to-net video market? Probably for as long as it is free. As soon as it becomes and if it becomes a paid service it will start to lose.
Nor will people want to watch advertisements in order to view video. Experience with adverts and trailers on DVDs has proven that to be correct.
And in other non-news, mere speculation on my part based on hints, hype and other rumours, two words: Apple, Google. It’s gonna happen. Soon. Watch out YouTube.
Yes everyone, meet Portals 2.0: all these Ajax-y applications that bring together multiple data sources and bung them together on your own ‘start page’. It’s a little different from Portals 1.0 (which appeared in the late 1990s), in that these include your own data, not just stuff from other places.
Mmm.. Weather.
Whatever happened to Portals 1.0? They disappeared for two reasons: they were a stupid idea (although I’ll admit I thought they were incredibly cool and useful at the time for the purposes of making a site sticky), and there was no sensible way of monetizing them.
Now Salesforce has joined the hype and announced Business Web Desktop. But I wouldn’t classify this a ‘start page’. Is the Basecamp Dashboard a ‘start page’? Of course not, it’s just one View from a particular application. Don’t believe the hype.
What about ad-hoc aggregation of data from different sources? Well, yes, I concede this might be useful if you don’t have your computer to hand. But in any case, over the next couple of years we’ll all be carrying products that either replace desk-bound computers, or seamlessly link with them. Which will end the requirement for Portals 2.0.
From the Green Album [iTunes], their 1991 debut. This track bridges the piano-house genre of the time, taking it back to acid-house.
Emm Gryner:
I used to be contagious
Like the blue waves on my wall
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