14 posts tagged “emusic”

Here's July's Emusic downloads.

My favorites from this list? Definitely these two:

It's a Bit Complicated

Art Brut

It took me quite a long time to get past the overtly dance-punk meets The Fall sound of Art Brut's first record. But once I let my guard down, I had a blast. This second helping doesn't quite attack the whole idea of being in a rock band like the first one did. But much of the frenetic guitar playing is blow-away beautiful. I might be in the minority, but I think the second one's better.

Ears Like Golden Bats

My Teenage Stride

I didn't post my Emusic downloads from May, and now June is almost over. I'm sure you've been wondering about the long delay. I know you're frustrated and upset. But I'm not making you wait any more. Here's what I grabbed from Emusic over the last couple of months.

One of my favorite E-music discoveries has been Ambulance LTD, a NYC band that gets a lot of shoegazer comparisons but which is really just a solid indie rock band capable of consistently good great songwriting. Their obviously-titled LP and New English EP are must downloads.

Well, I've been wondering what's up with them, and it turns out that everyone in the band BUT the singer, Marcus Congleton, quit the band and formed a new group called The Red Romance. As the RR's Myspace page reveals, they're currently unsigned and touring with The Killers. Sadly, the Red Romance sounds just like a band that would want to tour with the Killers. They've retained much of the Ambulance sound, but whoever's taken over singing and songwriting lacks Congleton's compelling vocals and his absolutely sick ear for hooks. The Red Romance are an ordinary band trying desperately to get famous. I don't think they'll get there.

As for Congleton, he's keeping the Ambulance name and working with producer John Cale on the next LTD record. And yes, that's John Cale from the The Velvet Underground. NME has an article here on the unlikely partnership:

The Velvet Underground man has been recording in Los Angeles with vocalist Marcus Congleton since September, thus far producing 18 tracks and providing keyboards for the band's second album.

"There were so many records he produced I really liked. Nico, The Stooges, but it was a long shot." explained Congleton, noting Cale had produced few outside artists in recent years.

However he agreed to work with Ambulance Ltd based on the strength of the singer's demos, which Congleton admitted "was huge and really flattering".

That should about catch you up with what's going on. Oh, here's a couple of videos of their singles from the LP, in case you have no idea who I'm talking about.

17dots, a blog authored by Emusic employees, spent this week counting down the 20 best Pavement songs ever (NOTE: I had provided links to their separate lists, but they've since aggregated their week-long countdown into a single post).

Naturally, I've started thinking about my own list. Just thinking about it turns my brain to mush. Even without taking any tracks from Brighten the Corners or Terror Twilight (I'm not a fan of either record), I'd have a hard time winnowing down my love for Pavement into just 20 songs. That's because their first three records, and just about all their singles, are flawless to my flawed ears. I mean, Wowee Zowee alone has 18 tracks, all of them genius. It's probably my favorite record EVAR. Add in their first two records and their innumerable singles and EPs, and there's an embarrassment of riches.

Wowee Zowee: Sordid Sentinels Edition

Pavement

Really, I think 17dots is a pretty good proxy for my own list. Like me, Yancey (the 17dots guy) doesn't much dig on those last two records. And he seems to draw the most material from Wowee Zowee. So our take on SM, Spiral Stairs, and Co. seems to meld pretty well. A few obvious changes I'd make:

• Grounded would be #1, not #4. That's a quibble, but as hard as it is to make a list of 20, making a list of one is pretty easy. Grounded is the best song that band ever did. Period.
• I'd remove Shady Lane. Don't get me wrong, that song is probably the prettiest, catchiest melody SM ever wrote. But he poisoned it with vacuous lyrics. Can't stand it.
  
• In the place where Shady Lane was, I'd insert Father to a Sister of a Thought.
  

Hmm. Now that I'm thinking of it, I'd probably make some other changes too. I feel a mix comin' on cuz. I feel a mix comin' on cuz...

My pal Jac asked me to put together a list of my 25 favorite/most useful Web sites.* Of course, I agreed, being the Internet dork that I am. I had planned to put together a list of each site along with a short blurb describing the sites and explaining why I liked each one. Very quickly, I realized my planned post was quite a chore and would take me much longer than I anticipated.

In the interest of time, I've posted a quick reference list below. The sites aren't in any particular order, but I have grouped them together in a few rough categories.  In the future, I'll write about each of these sites in more detail. These posts will be tagged top sites on my Vox blog (and the sites below are tagged on Del.icio.us), so you can find them easily. Some of these services I've already written about, and I'll update the tags accordingly. I've written little or nothing about most of these, but I encourage you to check them out anyway.

Please, if you have a question, or you think there's a site better than the one I've listed, let me know. I'm interested to see what you think.

1. Google Reader
2. Netvibes
3. Yahoo! Pipes
4. Flickr
5. Snipshot
6. Meebo
7. Twitter
8. Del.icio.us
9. Scrapbook
10. Google Docs and Spreadsheets
11. Scribd
12. Digg
13. Metafilter
14. Google Calendar
15. Remember The Milk
16. Virb
17. Facebook
18. Vox
19. MeeVee
20. Emusic
21. Allmusic & Allmovie
22. Metacritic
23. Pandora
24. Last.fm
25. MediaFire

Coming Soon

These sites aren't open to the public yet, but both are pretty compelling. To see why, click on the links and view the demo videos.

• Zoho Notebook
• iScrybe

Duh

These are Web sites you should already know about. If you're smart, you're already using them.

• Gmail. The most storage, POP3 access (for both Gmail and other accounts), integrated chat, lightning fast search, filters and labels that are easy to set up. It's the best e-mail you can buy. Only it's free, even the "premium features" Yahoo! and Hotmail make you pay extra for.
• Netflix. There is no other way to rent movies. True, my account is on pause, but that's only because I don't have time to watch movies. If I did, I'd be using Netflix.
• Craigslist. Before I'd buy or sell anything on Ebay, I'd look here. I check the musical instruments listings EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
• YouTube. They're getting attacked from all sides, but this is still the best place to find online videos. Viewers who want a reliable place to find Comedy Central & VH1 clips are better served by using iFilm (Be aware that the site may soon be rebranded as the online home of Spike TV).
• Wikipedia. Andrew Morgan alerted me to the a swell Wikipedia feature the other day. Set your homepage to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random, then every time you open your browser, you'll be treated to a randomly generated entry on Wikipedia.

Lots of people already know about Pandora. This Web casting service from the Music Genome Project lets you choose a song or artist as a starting point. Then, it plays a stream of similar music, much of which you've never heard before. I've been a big fan for quite some time, and I don't think there's a better way to discover new music that you'll actually enjoy.

Except maybe now there is.

I'll explain. Pandora's open API has given developers an opportunity to mix and match music services. For example, Pandora.fm is a mash-up of Last.fm and Pandora. You can listen to Pandora as you normally would, but if you input your Last.fm account information, the songs you hear are submitted to your Last.fm playlist. You can also "tag"  the songs as you submit them. Unfortunately, my experience with the site has been mixed. More often than not, my songs don't actually submit to Last.fm. Since that's kinda the point, it's tough to recommend the site. But try it out. It might work a little better for you than it did for me.

A Pandora mash-up I've had better luck with is the Emusic/Pandora hybrid. Again, Pandora works as it normally does: pick a song or band, and you hear similar tunes. In addition, Emusic runs a search for the artist, album, or song that's currently playing and finds it on Emusic. This is pretty useful if you find an unknown artist you like and they turn out to be on Emusic. It doesn't always work. Sometimes, there isn't a match. This is usually because the artist isn't on Emusic. But sometimes, the Artist is on Emusic and the search turns up something completely unrelated. For example, when Pandora played Sonic Youth, I got an album called "Dumbdown" by Idiotchild. That didn't make much sense because there's plenty of Sonic Youth on Emusic. Normally, though, it pulls up the appropriate artist.

Emusicpandora

Finally, Pandora has added some personal features that allow you to bookmark your favorite songs and artists as they play. You can even add your friends and see what radio stations, songs, and artists they've been listening to. It's not the fanciest thing you've ever seen, but it's supremely useful given Pandora's core purpose You can find my Pandora profile here. But don't get too attached. Royalty rates for Webcasters are going up dramatically, and Pandora is signaling that the new rates may be too much for the service to bear.

Pandora

Emusic Downloads: March 2007

This month I'm including links to the recordings on Emusic. And some of my choices deserve a little explanation.

• Palace Brothers / Days in the Wake: This was the second Palace CD I ever owned. It's still my favorite of theirs, and it's definitely one of my desert island discs. At least it would be if I hadn't loaned it out long ago, never to be returned. I can't remember who I gave it to but if you're reading this, GIVE IT BACK.
• Crystal Skulls / Blocked Numbers: I saw this band at SXSW last year and was incredibly impressed. Then I forgot about them. This month I remembered, and it's been on constant repeat. If you like Sondre Lerche, this record will hit you in much the same way. It's a flawless album, and I can't recommend it enough if you like sophisticated guitar pop.
• Mary Weiss / Dangerous Game: Weiss was a member of the 60s girl group, The Shangri-Las. She's returned here with freaking Reigning Sound as her back-up band. Needless to say, it slays.
• The National / Cherry Tree
• Arcade Fire / Neon Bible: A lot of people really like this band. I think they're good, but definitely not essential.  I am intrigued by the strong influence of Bruce Springsteen on this record.
• M. Ward / To Go Home EP
  
• All Girl Summer Fun Band / 2: A Non-Alignment Pact post by Ramon Medina reminded me of them, and I realized I didn't have this one. Girl-group semi-twee at its finest.
• Bad Livers / Delusions of Banjer: Saw this band live several times in the 90s, but never got around to buying one of their records. This is the debut album for this deranged bluegrass band from Austin.
• John Cage / Indeterminacy (Disc 1 & Disc 2): I downloaded this solely on a pal's recommendation. I haven't listened to it yet, but here's what he had to say...

12:52 PM Matt: dude

  emusic recommendation for you

 me: yes?

12:53 PM Matt: john cage's indeterminacy

  4 tracks, about 25 minutes each

  it's him and a pianist

12:54 PM he tells about 100 stories from his life, or vignettes, or jokes, or whatever

  each lasting 1 minute, so sometimes he has to speak really quickly or really slowly

12:55 PM while david tudor accompanies on prepared piano (which makes all sorts of bizarre noises)

 me: huh.

  wow.

 Matt: but

  they're in separate rooms, and the stories are in different orders for each

  so there's usually no correlation between the two

12:56 PM which is all crazy and john cage-y, but it's a really charming listen

 me: certainly sounds more interesting than foreigner.

 Matt: ha

  you won't listen to it all the time, but it's a lot of fun

 me: and only 4 downloads.

  that's entertainment.

12:57 PM my downloads are about to refresh, so i'll check it out.

 Matt: word

For once, I've also duplicated this list on Emusic. Here's the link. I'm not sure, but I think you can use it to add me to your Emusic friend list.

Until next time. :)

The amusingly named Swindleeeee!!!!! is a blog that tracks "Emusic and the digital music industry."  If you dig on Emusic, it's well worth a trip over there. There's a great post there about how Emusic might consider leveraging their free download program to encourage more utilization of the service. Apparently, the average Emusic user fails to use about half their number of subscription downloads. I commented on the post, because I was just flat amazed that underutilization could be a problem. My 90 downloads are usually gone in about the first week.

The blog isn't updated very often anymore, but there's a wealth of information to be gleaned from reading the old posts. In the sidebar, you'll find links to a number of interviews with David Pakman (President and CEO of eMusic) along with links to Emusic employee blogs and a few other useful resources.

Frank Hecker is the author of Swindleeeee!!!! (find the story behind the name here, it's funny). He was nice enough to sign up for a Vox account to respond to my earlier post on the future of Emusic. You can find him on Vox here. But I wouldn't count on him being a regular, since he's pretty busy being the Executive Director of Mozilla Foundation.