alcopop.org

23:47: Nine Inch Nails - The Slip

I would not blame the people I speak to regularly for getting some kind of fatigue regarding Nine Inch Nails. It seems like a week hasn't gone by this year without something happening: a single, an album, or tour dates.

It didn't come as much of a suprise that a new album was released in it's entirety this monday gone. ID3 tags in previously-released singles said "watch nin.com on 5th of may". It wasn't even that suprising that the whole album was free, either.

What was a suprise, to me at least, was that this album is fantastic. I'd heard two tracks prior to the album being released (although one only by a few days). Whilst I enjoyed them, they were pretty safe, lyrically and musically. They didn't push any boundaries. They also did not forshadow the album at all.

This album is the best Nine Inch Nails release this century. It's too early to tell whether it stands higher in my estimation than 1999's The Fragile. If so, it's the best release since 1994. I had not even considered this a possibility.

I also think it's the best album to present to someone who isn't familiar with their work to see if they'd like to look for more. It has a good range of tracks covering loud, aggressive, introspective, instrumental, dancable, dark and delicate.

I'm now starting a self-imposed ban on listening to the album, so as to not overdo it too much so early on. Regardless, I can still hear The four of us are dead playing over and over again in my head. This is a strong candidate for my favourite NIN song ever. It made me think of what the Cure should be writing.

Each track in this release (like each of the 36 tracks in the last album) have their own unique embedded picture in them. There is scant software in Debian that can handle these, unfortunately. I think "tagtool" can add and remove art. Amarok copes admirably. Rhythmbox doesn't, unless you apply this patch, which is stagnating in gnome's BTS, unfortunately. For the lazy (with 32bit x86), here's a tarball of a recent-ish rhythmbox rebuilt with this patch. I'd supply a Debian package but I didn't feel like building the documentation at the time.

I haven't found a single program for the n800 that can handle the artwork.

Category: /media/music

14:42: Editors, Newcastle, 2007/10/19

Last night I saw the Editors perform at the Academy in Newcastle. Tickets for the gig sold out a while ago, but I managed to pick up three for £15 on Ebay. Last minute bargain!

The touts were asking or offering £10 for tickets on the door (I'm not clear on whether they were offering that, I did ask but I think he might have confused me with a buyer). If it was £10 I could have sold both my spares for more than I paid for all three.

I thought the gig was excellent. It was the most packed I've ever seen the venue. I brought my dad along and he enjoyed himself too.

Category: /media/music

14:09: DFA

I'm well behind the curve here, but Death From Above 1979 is the coolest thing I've heard in a long time.

Category: /media/music

22:12: Jon on Radio 1

I've ranted about AFI on-and-off ever since they moved from Nitro records (here's one such example). Their last album is in much the same vein as the penultimate one: meaning bland, chart-friendly and utterly different to their older stuff.

On hearing their single on Radio 1 on the way home, I texted in a small rant to the DJ Zane Lowe. He read my text and discussed the matter on-air. Here's a sample: afi-jon-radio1.ogg, 461K. Sorry if you can't play Vorbis files, I gave up trying to encode it as something else.

Category: /media/music

16:57: Nitro records

For the last few months, Nitro Records have had a broken online shop. They seem to be outsourcing to a company called cinderblock.

The trouble is, if you click-through to the shop, you can buy clothing or accessories - but no music.

I remember mailing them about this ages ago and it's still broken.

Category: /media/music