Music

Music is such a wonderful thing. I'll offer a guess that just about everyone will agree with that. But I've noticed an interesting thing with myself. I don't even know what the current top-40 list looks like. Haven't known for quite a while. It seems that I'm stuck in the 90ies. But being stuck in some decade or some specific genre doesn't mean that you're stuck in a one single thing (like the people who wear through their favorite CDs). It's unbelievable how much music has been written. And the network that is created by just following one artist to another keeps on growing and growing. I was recently writing how brilliant Craig Armstrong's stuff is. Well, I just recently stumbled upon E.S. Posthumus, and it's sort of craigarmstrong-esque, but still have their own sound. Granted, they started in the early '00s, but still. I'm guessing that over 80% of the stuff I listen to and continue to find is from the 90ies, although the balance is beginning to shift a bit more to "contemporary" music now that I've been attracted to Amie Street and the like.

Escape

Craig Armstrong is an amazing bloke. The guy does incredible stuff. Just came across Escape from some movie he'd scored. Amazing song. Mixes these heavy drums with slow and dragging strings and tops it with a choir. The feeling and the atmosphere is unbelievable. When the choir kicks in, it's like the feeling after a long and dark storm when the first rays of light penetrate the clouds and the heavens open up the fight with the darkness. These clichés don't do it justice, although perhaps the song itself is quite full of clichés itself, too... But yet it's so fresh that I could just listen to it non-stop.

Online music

For a while I held the opinion that online music business won't just work thanks to idiotic DRM-limitations and too high a price tag. And other annoying stuff. My opinion started to slowly change when I tried out Apple's iTMS. Of course it still had DRM. And it was decently expensive considering that you didn't even get the physical CD. And then you had to rip the DRM away so you could actually listen to it. No wait, I'm in Finland, I can't talk about overriding DRM protection. Silly me.

But the point remained, the Apple user interface, again, was done brilliantly. Without even noticing I had spent somewhere around 30 euros there. But it was still sort of annoying. Enter Amie Street. I'd actually been aware of Amie Street since the end of summer, 2006. I'd even plugged it and the idea in some conversations with people, but never actually got around to spending any more than 10 minutes with it myself. Until tonight. I paid them 10 bucks and was essentially expecting to get a couple of albums for that money. And mostly crap. But instead I bought the couple (three) albums and lo and behold, they were actually fairly decent. And I still have somewhere around nine bucks to spend! I can see how this service would, in the long run, be actually able to make a dent in my wallet. At least a larger dent than iTMS, not to mention the people selling physical CDs. I can just click-click-click and download a new album. And it'll cost something like 20 cents. Do that ten times and it's still just two bucks. Do that on 90 days a year and it's already 180 bucks...

Oh, and a shameless plug (I'm entitled to these because a) it's my blog and b) I don't even know the person who I'm plugging, this time). Go listen to Manic's stuff on Amie Street and possibly buy something if you like it. Brilliant stuff.

Happy New Year 2007!

The year just changed, and I - unlike so many other Finns - was able to celebrate the change of the year while being entirely sober. And it was rather fun. Saw some old friends, then came home to shoot some rockets and met some neighbors and so on.

And right now I'm listening to Theodore Shapiro's Suite from the Devil Wears Prada. The part from about 03:20 to 03:50 is just brilliant. It starts with a transition via strings to drums and guiter, which are subtle and in the background, but move the entire thing forward. Along in the background is a woman humming, which gives it an eery and airy atmosphere. But the thing I'm absolutely in love with is the piano, which complements the background in an unbelievably elegant but yet so simple way. The humming and piano alternate short periods of time. One can't do justice to it by attempting to complement it verbally. The segment moves on at a decent pace, but is by no means aggressive. I feel like this could be a good tune to set the overall theme of the year. Opportunity. Achievement. Movement. Comfort from solitude. Freedom.