Author: tunequest

Wherein I ponder all the music I could listen to in my lifetime

I did some thinking today about my library and listening to music in general. I’m 27; given the average American life expectancy, I’ve got another 50 years in me. If the size of my iTunes library remains constant (big if), I could expect to listen to every song in it a maximum of 429 times, if i were to listen to each song an equal number of times. However, that would require listening for 24 hours a day for the next 18,000+ days, so that is really not a practical measurement.

Given that on days when I’m really trying hard to listen to as much music as possible, I only clock about 3 hours of listening, it brings the number of listens down to 53 per song, roughly enough time to play each song only once per year, That’s all the more reason to clear out the less-than-stellar songs and albums from my collection, because I know I’ve got music i want to hear more than once per year.

meanwhile, here’s today’s tracks.

  • broken social scene [bee hives]
  • uakti [aguas de amazonia]
  • nautilis [are you an axolotl]
  • mouse on mars [cache coeur naif]
  • counting crows [august and everything after]
  • underworld [beaucoup fish]

No laughing at the Counting Crows. I’ve only got a handful of tracks from their first album (from before they tanked) and I don’t care what anyone says, Omaha is a damn impressive song; it’s their best. •

Honestly, today was a great day for music. Underworld’s Beaucoup Fish is a masterpiece of progressive house music that relies more on songcraft than thumping beats–though their are plenty–to create some compellingly danceable music that’s not just for dancing. It’s enjoyable as music in its own right. I’ve had the album for more than six years and it has consistently been among my favorites. It’s surprising to me that the group’s others albums haven’t broken through the clutter in my library. •

Mouse on Mars teams up with Stereolab on the Cache Coeur Naif ep. Two powerhouses of the upper echelon of indie-dom combine to create… a rather run-of-the-mill couple of tracks. It’s good; don’t get me wrong, just not very compelling. I think it suffers from “too much expectation” syndrome. •

Lastly, I was totally prepared to weed the Uakti album. Despite the fact that it’s a collaboration with Philip Glass (or perhaps because of), I was ready to write it off as a superfluous acquisition from a more experimental time in my listening habits. But it appears my perceptions of it had become corrupted over time (it had been quite a while since i last heard it). Aguas de Amazonia’s unique percussive style really makes this album a fascinating listen. Then again, I’ve always been a sucker for percussion, which is funny, ’cause Ican’t dance. at all.

March 16 – 50 songs played. 10 added.

a solid 3 hours and 40 minutes in today, which doesn’t seem long enough to have covered all the items below. but a lot of them are singles, just 2-4 songs each, plus i don’t actually list an album here until i’ve played all its songs. i had 6 songs left in the soul coughing show and only the last 2 of sigur ros’ (). so those didn’t make the list until today, despite the fact that most of the songs had been played earlier.

also, i know adding more music to my library doesn’t make this task any easier. but i’m always running into new stuff and i don’t want to become musically stagnant. thus, more music. today it was a tortoise show in san francisco 2005.

  • aarhus symphony performing vagn holmboe’s no.8
  • weezer [buddy holly]single
  • soul couging live in boston 1996
  • london symphony performing stravinsky’s "card game"
  • the breeders [cannonball] single
  • foo fighters [big me] single
  • helmut [biscuits for smut] single
  • lithops [blasmusik / intendo 7"]
  • hooverphonic [blue wonder power milk]
  • sigur ros [()]
  • lalo schifrin [bullit]

there are a few albums in a persons life that are emotive of a particular time or place, albums that, when heard, take you back to the feelings you felt when the music was fresh and new. smashing pumpkins’ mellon collie is one such album, taking me back to the winter and spring of my 11th grade year, when nearly-daily bomb threats meant being sent to hang out at the football stadium or skipping school altogether. those were fun times for over-achievers.

likewise for hooverphonic’s blue wonder power milk, and particularly the song "renaissance affair." every time i hear that song, i travel back in time to the summer after i graduated college, when i was high on my academic achievements in ad school with big dreams of landing a job a hot agency. that summer was amazing; i had few obligations, plenty of friends (old and new) and plenty of fun. i spent a good deal of time learning capoeira and exercising my creativity. it felt like a non-stop party.

while things haven’t turned out as expected (i never did get that ad job) and life has been generally good to me, when i hear that album, i can’t help but think what might have been.

Gomez – Bring It On: Brits with the blues

beware the ides of march indeed. today’s showing is a rather pitiful 16 songs. That’s just one complete album and a handful of live Soul Coughing tracks.

  • gomez [bring it on]

So it was a short day, but a quality one. One that answers the question "what do brits do when they get the blues?" the answer is "Bring It On." Sporting a trio of soulful vocalists and a basket full of catchy hooks, Gomez puts out some tight music, particularly for a debut album. This is what southern rock might sound like if it were more laid-back and british. Hat tip to Dan for the hook up on this one

bossa nova, batman and elbow

65 looks like an impressive number, but today it’s not. whereas the 66 songs from yesterday represent just over 5 hours of music, today’s 65 only amount to 3.5 hours. this is partially because the severed dreams soundtrack is only 33 minutes for its 22 songs, while mahler’s 6th from yesterday clocks in near 90 minutes but counts as only 4 songs. in any event, i did hear some worthwhile music.

  • fantastic plastic machine [beautiful]
  • elbow [alseep in the back]
  • elliot goldenthal [batman forever]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: severed dreams]
  • ultralounge bossa novaville

Ah, the bossa nova…. it, and to a lesser extent samba, are among my favorite forms of music, so it’s surprising that i don’t have more of it in my collection. nevertheless, it should be no surprise that i’m highly enthralled by bossa novaville, no.14 in the ultralounge series. nineteen super-smooth and relaxing tracks that can’t help but take the edge off whatever’s on your mind.

of course, this is ultralounge we’re talking about, a product of capitol records. it’s designed, packaged and presented to appeal to boomers and retro-culture hipsters alike without being in the slightest way offensive. despite the marketing schtick, the music is quite effective and at the very least, acts as a launching pad for further explorations into the various genres it resurrects. les baxter alone almost justifies the series’ existence.

also in today’s roundup: a somewhat disappointing score for batman forever. beyond treatments and re-workings of danny elfman’s batman theme, nothing here really jumped out at me. about half the tracks got the boot.

and a quick note about elbow: the group is from the UK (manchester, specifically) and i’ve heard them referred to as equal parts radiohead and coldplay. which is sort of true, if radiohead wrote more ballad-type songs and didn’t enjoy rocking out as hard, you might get the mellow stylings of elbow. i guess that’s where the coldplay reference comes from, but elbow is not nearly as insufferable.

Cex – Lyrically Superior, & Random iPod thoughts

I know Apple has repeatedly assured the world that both iTunes and the iPod are truly random devices. And I know that by definition, randomness is unpredictable and that when I’m surprised that my iPod chose to play both Cex’s Being Ridden and Being Ridden Instrumentals within an hour of each other, it’s because my mind is seeking to add order to a chaotic system, searching for a pattern among the data points.

I know true randomness allows for, and even anticipates, such coincidences from time to time, but that doesn’t make the phenomenon any less disconcerting. Not that I’m complaining. Both of Cex’s Being Ridden albums are true works of lyrical and musical poetry and it was a joy to listen to both his nuanced, straight-ahead, hard-charging lyrics and his well-composed music. Without the lyrics, the instrumentals take on a smooth, relaxing, almost orchestral quality, the way the best idm does.

That Kid Rjyan has got some real talent and puts on a good live show too. Mix equal parts Fresh Prince and Eminem, but take away their schtick and you’ll get something close to these albums: a singable but poignant electronic-rocky-hip-hop-hybrid that’s really not like anything you’ve ever heard.

check out these lyrics from Earth-Shaking Event, easily Cex at his finest. Now there’s an ideal I can get behind.

The “art” of the mix

London’s herbaliser brings together a masterpiece on nearly every album and 1997’s blow your headphones is no different. hip-hop-funk-rock at its finest. it’s well composed and smoothly executed; listenable on its own, or as i played it, as some fine background music for a couple rounds of pictionary. i can’t recommend this stuff enough.

Dmitri from Paris‘ A Night at the Playboy Mansion is similar, in that it is also dance-related, but it’s more what I’d term "special purpose music." You see, Dmitri from Paris is actually DJ Dmitri and this album is an example of the most dubious of musical achievements: a mix-album. the idea that someone can stitch together a bunch of somebody else’s songs and essentially laud themselves for the transitions between songs, is just peculiar. I did it in high school, back when we made "mix-tapes," and it’s not that hard. I even did it for free. in the age of the instantly-assembled iTunes playlists and do-it-yourself mixes, the goal of the commercially-released mix-album seems absurd.

That said, A Night at the Playboy Mansion works. dmitri brings back the flavor of those decadent days of disco, for about an hour. But its success is also its failing.

I call this "special purpose music" because it’s not really listenable on its own. It works great to set a party mood or get the energy pumping–anything required to turn on and tune out. Heck, I had it turned up while cleaning the house this weekend. And that ability makes this a record worth keeping, despite my inclination to dump it.

March 10 – 57 songs played.

this morning i increased the number songs on the tunequest playlist from 300 to 1000 songs. that translates to about 110 albums or so, alphabetically ranging from ‘0’ to ‘Bo.’ even though alpha-by-album method pretty much ensures a random assortment of musical styles, i decided i wanted an even larger variety to choose from. so without further ado, here are today’s entries.

  • thomas newman [american beauty]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: the face of the enemy]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: river of souls]
  • christopher franke [babylon 5: messages from earth]
  • chris isaak [baja sessions]
  • mercury rev [all is dream]

today was the first of what i’m sure will be several babylon 5 days in the coming weeks. tangerine dream member christopher franke wrote the music for every episode of the epic sci-fi series and has released the score from about 30 of the 110 episodes for a total of about 17 hours to my taste, the music is very laid back and mellow; appropriately spacey with a handful of memorable themes and catchy action cues. thelogbook has just about everything you’d want to know and more. •

i don’t know much about thomas newman or his composing style, but his unorthodox score for the 1999’s american beauty is unique and compelling. i haven’t seen the film, so i don’t know what effect the score generated on screen, but the music, based primarily on percussion, is simple, subtle and itself beautiful. •

lastly, i’ve never paid much attention to Chris Isaak, but a bunch of his albums came with my marriage, and i’ve found that i do enjoy his laid-back style. today, he took me to a little bit of mexico while channeling elvis and roy orbison with his baja sessions. Though he was trying to hard on Only the Lonely.