Archive for the 'music' Category

Regina Spektor – Far (+misc)

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Piano-pop music (a bit similar to Ben Folds). Really like the album, but the incessant repetition of some of the lyrics goes on my nerves, as do the Hallelujahs.
Stand-outs: Dance Anthem of the 80’s, Eet, The Calculation.

Other music I’ve recently picked up:
65daysofstatic – The Fall of Math
The Tings Tings – We Started Nothing
Anna Ternheim – Seperation Road
Laura Marling – Alas I Cannot Swim

Music for 2007

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

While coding during the last month I’ve been listening to a lot of music via Pandora (a music recommendation service / internet radio station). I’m listing some of the stand-out tracks / artists I’ve enjoyed here

  • Röyksopp - The Understanding (Norwegian, kinda groovy, kinda poppy)
  • Amos Lee - Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight (relaxed)
  • UNKLE - Reign (electronic strings + big beats)
  • Crooked Fingers - Dignity and Shame (piano with slightly odd vocals)
  • Cat Power - I Found a Reason (via V for Vendetta)
  • The Prodigy - Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix) (more aggressive and faster than the original)
  • Kasabian - Club Foot (from Tony Hawk’s Project 8 trailer)
  • Frou Frou - Details (pop-rock with nice female vocals, now part of Imogen Heap)
  • M83 - Teen Angst (from the A Scanner Darkly trailer)
  • Alpinestars - Carbon Kid (from the Test Drive Unlimited soundtrack, sounds like guest vocals from Placebo)
  • Rosie Thomas - When We Were Small (Farewell, Wedding Day, Bicycle Tricycle)
  • Ryan Star - Songs from the Eye of an Elephant (piano ballads)
  • Beazley Phillips Band - Shooting Ghosts (see above)
  • Camera Obscura - Pen and Notebook (female vocals + piano)
  • Apparat - Komponent (supposedly intelligent dance music (IDM), reminded me a lot of The Notwist)
  • Apparat & Ellen Allien - Orchestra of Bubbles (this actually is IDM, song tip: Rotary)
  • Statistics - Leave Your Name & Often Lie (alternative rock with some electronica, try A Number, Not a Name or Nobody Knows Your Name)

Pandora (and other music)

Wednesday, October 19th, 2005

I’ve accidentally stumbled onto Pandora, a twisted combination of a subscription-paid custom-playlist radio station and music discovery service. You enter an artist or song name and it starts playing “similar” music; you can have several of these stations to which you can add more and more interests. The first 10 hours are free, and after that it’s either $12/quarter or $36/year, which IMO is rather fair. You can pause and skip tracks (skipping is limited to a certain number of songs per hour). On the technical side, it just needs flash player 7 and streams in 128kpbs.
Onto a few recommendations. For a few songs I’ve bothered adding iTunes Music Store links simply for convenience:

What’s new…

Monday, April 25th, 2005

A bit of product placement:
The new Ben Folds album “Songs for Silverman” is out (in the iTunes Music Store as well — I honestly cannot remember the last time I bought a physical CD), the same goes for Trackmania Sunrise (at least in the UK, Germany is due this Friday, US some-when in May), a fast-paced puzzle/racing game only available for PC; well worth it in any case (EuroGamer review).
Also out this Friday is Apple’s new iteration of MacOS X, Tiger; whether that’s worth paying for is up to each individual; I plan on trying out the overhauled developer tools to finally port my wavelet-toolkit…

Long due Update

Wednesday, November 24th, 2004
  • Hooverphonic — Out of Sight
  • Johnny Cash — The Man Comes Around
  • Ben Folds — Ben Folds Live
  • Lambchop — Aw C’mon / No You C’mon

TaQ - Electro Tuned

Thursday, September 16th, 2004

Over the past few days I’ve taken a liking to TaQ - Electro Tuned in Dancing Stage Unleashed (on Easy ;) ). It’s a song I had positively hated before, but now that I “get” squeaky bits (3 notes / steps in a slightly off-beat fashion), it has become immensely enjoyable. It also does not hurt that the song reminds me of the P.N.03 soundtrack. :D

iTunes Music Store

Tuesday, June 15th, 2004

I had an extended romp through the newly opened (in England, France and Germany that is — not really an “European” launch) iTunes music store. It is now obvious to me why there is quite a bit of buzz about it. The prices (and more importantly the terms of use) are fair, the selection is decent (by far not perfect — especially the omission of independent labels hurts. Also some artists only seem to feature a subsets of their albums); but what is IMO most important is the ease of use and the excellent integration with iTunes: It is actually fun to buy music. To proove the point, I ended up buying Natalie Merchant’s “Ophelia” album (which I found via the “Thick as Thieves” track in my library)…

Tonspion

Monday, April 19th, 2004
  • Team Blender — Sterne sowie Oxygen
  • Her Space Holiday — The Young Machines
  • Wir sind Helden — Du erkennst mich nicht wieder
  • Rachel’s — Last Things Last

Pop

Friday, December 26th, 2003
  • Yoko Kanno — Be Human (Stand Alone Complex 2nd OST)
  • Nitin Sawhney — Human
  • Nelly Furtado — Powerless
  • Seal — Love’s Divine

He’ll be my Hero

Monday, November 17th, 2003

Nintendo / Sega ought to get their asses in gear and publish an F-Zero GX soundtrack, the music is awesome! Until that happens, you can get some very nice game-rips here. FilePlanet needed a bit of convincing to give me all the files, but after circumventing their subscription / bandwidth-limitation system (which blatantly tells you that the requested files cannot be found although they are there!) with a bit of URL-fiddling, all is good.

Sometimes Radio pays off.

Friday, June 13th, 2003
  • Elton John — Levon
  • Natalie Merchant — Thick as Thieves
  • Yoko Kanno — Stand Alone Complex OST (Ghost in the Shell TV)

Shivers of Joy

Thursday, February 6th, 2003

My copy of Yoko Kanno’s “Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex O.S.T.” arrived, and it is too good to be true… ;)
It contains whole range of styles, one track in particular owes a lot to Björk’s “Hyperballad”, but they all stand very well on their own. The 2nd part of Track 12 - “Silent Cruise” is my absolute favourite though; it mixes strings from the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra with electronic sounds and beats. It’s so good I get a shiver down my spine everytime I listen to it… <sigh>
There are quite a few tracks with English lyrics (even printed in English in the booklet) which are dangerously catchy, so you’ll have to be careful not to get caught singing nonsense-lyrics… ;)
Absolutely recommended!