gorillaz – tunequest

last week was a good week for tunequest. not only is 381 songs a new weekly best, but i achieved a new daily best on april 10. this is precisely the pace i need to keep, but in retrospect it seems i spent all my free time working on this project last week and i hope not to burn out on it. as a bit of a bonus, i had a more productive than usual weekend contributing to this week’s gains.

and while i’m on the subject of progress, i made some new calculations that take into account the rate at which i’m weeding songs from my library, not just the rate at which i’m listening. so far, i’ve had a net decline of 5 songs per day. i’m fine with that; i know i’ve had detritus accumulating for years now and it needs to be cleared out. when those numbers are taken into account, it looks like i would be able to get though an additional 13,000 songs before the end of the year, a 1500 song surplus, which is certainly more optimistic than what the graphs are saying.

and while i’m on the subject of calculations (take that, segue!), i discovered that after 2 months of listening, the top 10% of songs are now responsible for 46% of the total playcounts, a 3% decline from when i started. this has lead me thinking about the iTunes library as a metaphor for economics and society. i imagine the total number of songs to be the population of a society and the number of plays a song has represents its "wealth." heck, this model even takes into account governmental directives; by listening to the lower-played songs, i’m "aiding the poor." this would be a fascinating essay to write. i may just do some research on it.

but enough meta, onward tunequest:

add n to (x) [avant hard]
michael andrews [donnie darko]
dennis mccarthy [deep space nine: the visitor]
dave grohl/foo fighters [dave grohl demos]
gorillaz [demon days]
glitter mini 9 [break up at the rock show]
philip glass [dracula]
golden shower GS [digital 2600]
four tet [dialogue]
nine inch nails [the fragile – left]
cibo matto [stereo type a]
howard shore [lord of the rings: the two towers]

Derided as self-indulgent by many, the fact of the matter remains that nine inch nails‘ the fragile contains some of trent’s best songwriting, just mixed in with more filler. ‘the day the world went away,’ ‘even deeper,’ and ‘the wretched’ (especially that one) are among the finest in the entire nails catalog. most of the fragile’s strength is on the ‘left’ disc, though ‘right’ starts off well but quickly meanders, but that’s a topic for another post. •

the dave grohl demos bootleg i picked up in paris (at fnac, maybe) 10 years ago, when foo fighters were still very new and still "dave grohl’s new solo side project." it’s an interesting collection of mostly pre-nirvana material, much of which would be reworked for inclusion on foo fighters self-titled and the colour and the shape. there’s even a live performance of ‘down in the park’ (official version appears on songs in the key of x) where dave doesn’t quite know the words and a solo acoustic version of ‘marigold’ (titled ‘color pictures of a marigold’), the ‘heart-shaped box’ b-side and only nirvana song that dave gets sole writer’s credit for. •

quickies:
miho and yuka, please stop appearing on everyone else’s records and put together a new cibo matto record, stereo type a is brilliant and we want some more, dammit. and don’t give me any of that ‘"we’ve broken up" business. you’re good on your own, but you’re great together.
speaking of miho, gorillaz’s demon days is an ok record, though somewhat disappointing. ‘feel good inc’ and ‘fire coming out of a monkey’s head’ are superlative.
and finally, i have heard the soundtrack to the end of the world, and it is ‘revenge of the black regent’ by add n to (x).