All the signs are that we’ll be seeing another avalanche of material from Ryan Adams in the new year.
Adams is incredibly prolific. But unlike the steady flow of releases from, say Van Morrison (1 or 2 every year for the last 10+ years), or Tangerine Dream (120 releases if you include all their soundtrack)., Adams’ release pattern has shifted towards releasing albums as a known series of albums to multiple albums at once. Last year, we saw Chris, FM, Devolver, and Romeo and Juliet come out at once. Then, later two cover albums very close together (Nebraska, Blood on the Tracks). This year, we’ve had the Return to Carnegie Hall box set and Morning Glory.
This shift has really kicked in since Adams resurfaced after being investigated for possible criminal sexual behavior, messy divorce, and other such accusations. Which may well be linked to changes in his record label relationships. I’m not going to suggest Adams is an angel; it’s clear he is a flawed individual. But being flawed doesn’t mean he isn’t talented. Just look at Prince or Michael Jackson to see that
Despite the number of albums being released, the quality is remarkable. But I can’t help wondering if he was working within the constraints of a more conventional record company, whether we would see fewer official albums, but at a standard that equals or surpasses that of Gold or Cold Roses – considered as possibly his best work. Plus, a lot of bootleg releases with the rest of the material.
It’s been about twenty years since we’ve had any new original songs from Peter Gabriel. Now, for the last year, he has been teasing us by releasing a new track every month with two mixes called The Bright Side and The Dark Side. which sort of makes sense, given you could see I/O as a rather abstract representation of Ying and Yang.
With a track, each month has created an interesting experience, as it has given us time to absorb each track, rather than a big audio feast of an album, where the singles leap out at you, and then you start to appreciate the other tracks. If there is a downside, it is probably the fact it is no longer easy to say – these tracks are the singles. But to be honest I don’t think it matters to Peter Gabriel. There may be fan favorites, but that’s it certainly as far as it goes since Us.
However, even knowing which tracks are becoming fan favorites has been tough as Peter toured the album, and depending upon where you are in the world, you’ll have only heard some of the new songs, even though the core of the live show has been I/O.
The musical core of the band remains largely unchanged, with David Rhodes and Tony Levin with Manu Katche back on drums for most of the tracks. John Metcalfe is back, having also contributed so wonderfully with New Blood and the tours over the last ten years where Gabriel has used orchestral arrangement.
With this team, we have a real mix of style and sounds. From the very reflective Playing For Time, which opens with the muted horn reminiscent of tracks like Father Son on Ovo. Then there are tracks that are rhythm-heavy, like The Court, that would have fit in on the Up album.
As with all the two-letter-titled albums, there is a loose theme to the album. For I/O that is input and output, whether that is input from observation as suggested by Panopticom to the title track about how to absorb and contribute to the environment.
What the album shows and the tour demonstrated is that unlike some of his peers, Peter’s voice has changed, but the songs fit what sounds like a more weathered voice. The older songs, which may have been pitched higher, still have the energy and dynamics but perhaps pitched a little differently. So none of the challenges faced like Jim Kerr, who leans more of backing vocalists live, or Sting and Bono, who you can hear have to really work to hit some of the notes.
Peter has continued the idea that each song gets its own artwork associated with it, which came to prominence on the Us album (you can see more with Art From US). Some videos of this work can be seen here.
I/OPanopticom (artist Davif Spriggs)The CourtPlaying For TimeOlive Tree (artist Barthélémy Toguo)Love Can Heal (Artist Antony Micallef)This Is Home (artist David Moreno)And Still (Artist Megan Rooney)Road To Joy (Artist Ai Weiwei)Four Kinds of Horses (artist Cornelia Parker)
Along with the artwork, there have been some amazing videos. This is not big news, and the use of technology – particularly the application of some Generative AI. Check out these:
I’ve always had a fascination for pirate radio. A chance to hear non-mainstream playlisted music – that Peelsque subversiveness. My inner DJ may not be John Peel, probably closer to Lauren Laverne and Jo Whiley with the geekiness of Paul Gambaccini, but here are some suggested playlists …
I don’t often write about music, but this demented idea came to mind largely because Mrs Monster is more of a visual person whereas I prefer to have music on. The obvious intersection is music videos, so why can’t Spotify keep the metadata for videos on you tube. If you play a song on Spotify with a video, then YouTube is told to stream it to you if you have a session active.
The hardest bit for this would be linking the media together with the metadata but I’m sure artists and fans a like would crowd source that metadata quickly enough. Should You Tube actually pay artists for streams then it helps bolster the musician’s streaming income.
It would be interesting to see what it did to the music video interest if such as an idea took off as there would be incentive to get videos for every track. Perhaps with a little luck it would encourage artists to support grass roots film makers.
Some might say why not just stream video playlists, well how many people’s TV speakers get anywhere near the fidelity of a good hifi? Audio streams within many You Tube videos are often inferior because the key element is the visual not the audio.
The other thing is music on You Tube is entire album or just the tracks with videos recorded. But artists often have incredible b-sides or remixes – they currently don’t get loaded onto You Tube.
An Unkle performance is always going to be a little unusual given James Lavelle is very eclectic crossing many genres such as the groundbreaking Psyence Fiction album.
The first half of the performance was very much DJ lead by James at a desk and decks, live drums, keyboard/guitarist and Cello. This instrumentation alone really shows the diversity of the musical styling.
No live locals, as a result, the staging certainly didn’t have a central focus, everyone was with their instruments. Even Moby who crosses genres, as a live artist is in front of the other musicians or moving around the stage when not using a singer. Like any rock concert, the performance ebbed and flowed with raising and lowering of the tempo. With the slower pieces being the more cinematic pieces like Heaven.
Unlike a conventional performance the lighting didn’t pick out any of the performers, and like a club made more use of strobing light effects, but in contrast, a lot of videos were used as well including the amazing Spike Jonze directed skateboarders for Heaven.
Part 2 …
An intermission or perhaps a very long encore? Not what you’d expect halfway through a performance of this nature. But the change gave emphasis to the use of 5 different vocalists.
This changed the dynamic but also gave the second half a bit of a stuttering feel as the different singers can on stage and left.
Added to the fact that the delivery of performances originally by the likes of Ian Brown and Richard Ashcroft had the timbre of a female voice. But things got going and then just built to a thumping finale.
Interestingly even with the use of live vocalists, they weren’t lit up.
All said and done, Unkle doesn’t perform live very often and it’s great hearing the music performed live. I would love to have caught James Lavelle working with the Orchestra as he did with the Heritage Orchestra.
Whilst Sonos might be great for convenience, and Spotify for freedom and trying music out you still can’t beat well produced physical media (those round silver or black things) on some separates HiFi. I don’t have an extravagant setup, but what I can do with Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks Anniversary Edition makes the hairs on your arms standup.
Take On The Nature Of Daylight and the violins float over the Cellos and eventually resolve together. It sounds so elegiac and so sad it can take you to tears. Then Iconography sounds almost other worldly with a base notes so deep that you physically feel as much as hear them.
The piano of Vladimir’s Blues each note is distinct and you can hear the decay of each and every note, so very blue.
Old Song comes on incredibly cinematic, as if you are sat listening to someone in another room playing the piano with your window open. You hear ambient background of a plane flying past and a train in the distance, a wood pigeon in the garden cooing.
The Trees brings together strings and piano, a wonderfully written and performed piece as the melody seems to move between the different instruments he other parts take terms to propel the music along or provide notes emphasising the melody. As the piece progresses the momentum gains and the the dynamic range expands with greater deeper notes and the experience becomes ever more physical as an experience.
The album closes with Written In The Sky, which whilst still in a minor key, seems to evoke a small sense of hope. When it comes to an end, you sit wanting more, but routed to your seat not wanting to move away from centre of an amazing performance.
If you go to a proper separates HiFi shop, which has listening rooms to try out audio setups, I think this would apart from the musical beauty would help show you see if the kit being tried magic of the kit being tried.
I track a lot of podcasts as I find that they can be can be a great way to catch up with news and ideas or listen to interesting discussions. This is great when travelling (if you can block out the ambient noise with some good earphones) when sitting and working isn’t so easy (standing on a commuter train for example).
My podcasts come in a couple of categories, tech related, business / thought leadership – think Freakonomics, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Harvard Business Review, BBC Radio 4 documentaries and so on, and then music. The music podcasts are great fun because you can relate to what is being said in so many ways, the insight into the music you love, discovery of artists you’d not heard or considered, and a reminder of a song or album you’d not listened to for a while and get that jolt of ‘oh, yes I remember how wonderful that song is’ and you you end up roaming through (your) music from a different perspective.
I thought this would be something to share. Some of these are well known to any music fan, other less obvious …
Sound of Cinema – one of a couple of BBC programmes about music for film, this is the more ‘high brow’
Classic Album Sundays – Primarily recordings of the introductions to Classic Album Sunday events where an album is introduced. The ones I’ve heard are well researched and provide some interesting insights. Worth listening to then, playing the album afterwards
Life of a Song – A Financial Times podcast (yes FT does cover the arts). The presentation comes across as an attempt to be rather academic and high brow (which for me can irritate), but the content can be pretty interesting. This are fairly short podcasts
Mastertapes – An intermittent podcast, but really good. This takes the musician and really gets into the details of an album, the context in which it was recorded as a conversation. ~You could think of this as Radio version of the Classic Albums programmes.
Radio 4 on Music – A grouping for documentaries that Radio 4 make available. As a result the subject matter can be very diverse. But as you would expect from the BBC, production quality is very high and typically well researched.
Sound Opinions – A couple of well known music journals chat about news of the day, maybe recent releases and then a segment of the show focusing on a theme, such as the top 50 albums of the year.
Deezer Trailblazers – Interview with people that have had strong influence in the dance music scene from the founder of Mute Daniel Miller to Gary Numan. If you know about the artist already, you’re not going to get nuggets of gold in terms of new insights, but the love of music and references to songs will get you spinning off into your collection at interesting tangents. The podcasts made available so far I think where first recorded about 2 years ago.
Cover Stories – this pod cast is relatively short and kind of takes its idea from a 7″ single (remember the vinyl 45?). Two halves with each half a chat about a song and the various cover versions. There is a cleverness in the simplicity of this podcast as this feels like you’re sat hanging out with friends chatting about a song.
Twenty Thousand Hertz – Not so much music in the conventional sense, more about sound. The two parts of the THX Deep Note is fascinating (yes film again, but it is an iconic sound)
In addition to these some artists such as Counting Crows have their own podcasts. Perhaps another story for another day.
With Christmas we get some time off with the family and slowdown abit. Even indulge in things less technical. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on the subject of music. I’ve been meaning to share the following TEDx presentation. I wish I could say that it reflects my personal manifesto…
Sadly very few people manage to devote the time and make and adequate living to keep a family to pursue this level of commitment. But we can wish, and take the suggestion to exploiting the ‘diggers’ recommendations. Want to know more, checkout ….
It has been a while since I have written about music or gadgets, so I thought I would hit both in one go. So I have a trusty 64GB iPod classic for a fair few years, and loved it, the ability to take a sensible chunk of my music with me – what’s not to like? Although of recent, I’ve not used it as much as the iPod does feel somewhat bulky, I don’t have a handy charger these days as my other devices are all using lightning or micro USB connectors.
So time for an update. Should I go forward with just my iPhone which tends to get changed regularly and pay a hefty premium for a decent chunk of storage every time we upgrade (currently £80 extra to go from 16 to 64GB)? We’d be down to 1 device, but will the battery on the phone have enough juice to cover both the calls I make as well as play music when I’m commuting on the train? Then there is the problem of iTunes. I love that I can load my iPod without iTunes, but as I have never found an alternate app for loading music. What is wrong with iTunes – well you try getting it to handle the MP3s from my massive CD collection. Perhaps I should consider an iPod Touch which costs less than 1/2 the price for extra storage and benefit from separating the battery charge question, although I don’t escape iTunes.
Well, I think I have found a good alternate solution, with a cool gadget called a Leef iAccess – it takes a micro SD card and plugs into the Lightning socket. When combined with the leef app, can play music or videos etc straight from the device. So we get one device to carry – my phone; music capacity isn’t a challenge with 64GB storage costing very little in micro SD card terms, and if that isn’t enough then just swap cards. No premium on phone upgrades, no iTunes to load the micro SD card with music. As to the question of power consumption, I think the Leef consumes a bit more power than using phone storage. But can probably be overcome with a power pack case that provides pass through on the Lightening connector – although I’ve yet to prove this. The iAccess is shaped to support the idea, as it doesn’t to hug the phone’s casing shape wise – so cases aren’t an issue (unlike some of the camera gadgets).
I should warn there is one little trip up to be aware of. Once the SD card has been accessed by the phone it changes the exFAT some how – presumably so that once it has indexed you music it can create a file and can detect if things change. As a result when you plug back into your PC, you can’t just drag files back across. But if you let Windows fix the file system first, then everything is sorted and adding more to the storage is no different to another SD storage.
Faithless performed at Alexandria Palace last night in support of their new remix compilation album.
When they performed the big hits the place was pulsing, but in the chilled numbers the audience seemed to lose attention – shame really as it took the edge off a good performance.
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