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I won’t bore you with any kind of account of my year, but here are some photos I took during it. I guess I didn’t take all of them since I’m in some of them, but I don’t remember so good about those ones. I’ve been working my way through Said the Gramophone’s 75 tracks of the year with an odd cocktail of revulsion and delight. Among the delight, this wonderful song by Vic Chesnutt. Often songs that aren’t about what they seem to be about never let you in on the twist – it was years before I realised Belle & Sebastian’s Century of Elvis was about a cat. Vic’s is from the school of “Two minutes in, just come out and say it.” Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. I approve. It’d be a shame for anyone to hear a couplet so painfully double-edged as “When you touched a friend of mine / I thought I would lose my mind” and miss the grim joke. Oh yeah, good news: I’m working on a really long post about a really esoteric subject that involves lots of strong opinions about game design ideas I have no experience working with. 
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Crilly: Man. I haven't even heard of this person till now, and cried after reading that page. CURSE YOU TOM!
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The silence here lately has been down to a dangerous daily routine of falling asleep in front of Star Trek: The Next Generation, waking up at 5am and playing Prototype until work. Dangerous, but not unpleasant. Prototype has caused me to break a mouse, and Star Trek has my brain quietly working on a master formula to generate Star Trek plots for Star Trek Online quests, and ways they could interact with a player-chosen crew.  Meanwhile, The Sounds have a new album. It’s nudged them back into the lead as my most-listened artist on last.fm, partly because their songs have a tight neatness to them that allows me to listen to them almost indefinitely without irritation, and partly because until this album, they were unique in never having produced a worthless song. That’s the last one on Crossing the Rubicon, but it’s their best album despite it. Two reasons, one of them is this: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Do you find that some bands just sound like two guitars and some drums? When No-One Sleeps When I’m Awake kicks in, it reminds me that The Sounds are one of the few that don’t. They produce a thick ribbon of undulating noise that your speakers seem happy to belt out, as if they’ve finally got something to sink their drivers’ teeth into. The other reason is Home Is Where Your Heart Is, but it’s possible I’m just being a big sap about that one.  I see now why most swords extend in only one direction.
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I Like That You Can Slow Down, by Tom Francis: [...] I only just got this, but Yeah Yeah Yeah is an instant favourite. The Sounds are usually pretty straightforward rock, but here they’re going a little more electronic – some tracks feel more about rhythms and samples than the conventional structure they’ve stuck to before. On Yeah Yeah Yeah it’s excitingly new, but the rest of the album isn’t standing up to Rubicon yet (see I’ve Got Confessions To Make). [...]
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I knew BeBot – a beatific tuxedo’d robot for the iPhone who sings at your touch – was awesome. I didn’t realise he was awesome. Via, of course, Waxy. | ||
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Flowerpot Wang: I just picked this up after visiting your site (weeks of no updates and then we get three at once? You're like the bus service...) Anyway, Bebot surprisingly easy to play once you get the configuration right. I've fallen in love with the theramin mode with C at one end of the screen and C up an octave on the other end, and then changing octave with the helpful little buttons on the side.
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A regular feature in which I ask you to listen to a sound file with no idea what it’s going to be. Sometimes it’s voice, sometimes music, once it was just a noise. This one’s not super-obscure, but it’s ages since I actually listened to it, and to this day I find myself humming it when someone says the word ‘online’. It is dorky in the extreme. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Update! It’s not supposed to be all crackly and fucked up. But it’s sounding that way for some. See the comments for a link to the video. | ||
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Rev. Name Withheld: Awww, I thought it sounded real good with all the fuzz - like a low-grade WAV file. Realy early internet style.
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I’ve been wondering when and how best to post something of Florence and the Machine‘s for a while, pretty much since I first heard them on Adam & Joe. I didn’t doubt it would be Dog Days, the exhaustingly energetic rollercoaster of a song I heard first, I was just waiting till they had something out for it to promote. I forgot that what they released could theoretically be better. They still don’t have an album, but this is Dog’s B-side: You’ve Got The Love. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. It’s tumultuous music, melodic but booming and insistent, the vocal a few shades more fierce and assured than a new artist is allowed to be. I like a lot of gentle stuff, but it takes something bold and sharp to grip me this firmly. Like Dog Days, every listen ends with my heart-rate just slightly higher than when it started, and my mood a little warmer. Anyone else care to recommend something they’ve been getting into lately? The great joy of Spotify is that I can investigate tips when I get them, rather than forgetting about them for six years.
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Little Green Man: Its okay on the physical album, which is labelled correctly, but then the actual title along the side sleeve of the album is upside down. So when put upright with other albums you have to turn your head the other way around to read that particular album. It is quite odd.
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A regular feature in which I ask you to listen to a sound file with no idea what it’s going to be. It’s an attempt to share the strange experience of rummaging through my old download folders, listening to forgotten MP3s with uninformative filenames. All I know about them is that I must have liked them at some point. Volume Four was the shortest I’ve ever posted, this one is the longest – don’t click play if you’re in a hurry. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. | ||
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Andrew: Well, he sounds like an interesting guy :) You should do a post on it and put up some links :)
I'm sure you could put the files in a large archive.org batch if the original site is defunct for hosting. | ||||
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A regular feature in which I ask you to listen to a sound file with no idea what it’s going to be. A very, very short one this time, and hopefully mysterious. I’ll reveal its identity and why it’s interesting in the comments tomorrow, but beat me to it if you can. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. | ||
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Roadrunner: You know, You should change the name of "Trust me with your ears" to "lend me your ears."
It sounds more intellectual. Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! I hate shakespeare, but Julius Caesar could be the only thing he's ever written which I like. And Hamlet. | ||||
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 A few things to say about this:
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Thomas "Padre" Lawrence: Man, this stuff is going to be awesome to Audiosurf, especially stuff like "Tumbler" which utterly changes tempo several times through.
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