sigur ros

April 1-3 – 39 songs played. 35 removed.

my string of lackluster weekends continues. sigh. though to be honest i was a bit distracted by massive data loss brought on by severe incompetence.

yes, i accidentally erased my imac’s hard drive while attempting to install tiger on my old g3 powerbook. i was going to wipe the drive in a week anyway, after my new intel imac arrived and i’d copied my files to it. i guess i was just a little to eager. enthusiasm never hurts, right?

but it figures; it seems like every year, like clockwork, i suffer some kind of glitch or error that results in the vaporization of billions of my bits.

so i’ve learned the hard way to backup backup backup. there’s not much lost that is not, in some way, recoverable and i’m thankful for that. as far as tunequest is concerned, all the music files already reside on an external drive unaffected by this incident and the iTunes library file itself has already been recovered from my .mac backup, so, the journey continues:

  • royal concertgebouw performing tchaikovsky’s suite for orchestra no.4
  • yoko kanno [cowboy bebop: knockin on heaven’s door]
  • scandinavian brass ensemble performing holmboe’s concerto for brass
  • philip glass [dancepieces]
  • air [casanova 70]single
  • the faint [danse macabre]

the music of cowboy bebop has been in my regular rotation for nearly 6 years now. it’s such a wide range and diverse collection of influences and styles that it’s hard not to admire it just for its ambition. it works great on the series, but it’s even better by itself. for the past 6 years, i’ve been fascinated by how western the music sounds, even though the composer and most of the performers are japanese. especially the jazz. i’m sure i’ll continue to be fascinated for at least another 6 years. •

notable removals today: sigur ros‘ agætis byrjun and the score to being john malkovich, which is actually pretty good artistically, it just failed to make that click with me that would make me want to listen to it more. as for sigur ros, i just couldn’t get into that one, even after 3 years of trying.

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.