|
||||||
![]() |
|
Posts in de categorie « In english»:
nov
3
2006
Joanna Newsom – Ys![]() They don’t come stranger than this, folks. If you want to give the truly bizarre a spin, look no further this year than harpist Joanna Newsom’s second album “Ys”. I saw her for the first time a few years ago on the ever-impressive “Late Night With Jools Holland” show. (Youtube to the rescue: here’s her performance that night of the song “the book of right-on” from her debut album “The Milk-Eyed Mender”). Hearing that this little elve was about to release an album with production and arrangements-assistance of people like Van Dyke Parks, Jim O’Rourke and Steve Albini, my musical curiosity was of course aroused. Ys is an album that is both very simple and incredibly complex. 15-minute song structures are of course complicated. Yet they’re at the same time quite repetitive, thus simple. Her voice at first sounds like a manierism, with the girl-ish tweak of Björk combining the intonation of Kate Bush, but it strangely enough never “quite” gets on my nerves. It’s an album that has “hubris” written all over it, yet it still manages to not sound pompous or arrogant. Here’s a few notes from my notebook from reviews around the web:
BBC – collective – Joanna Newsom – Ys
WOEBOT: Joanna Newsom “Ys”
Harmonium � Archive � �Monkey & Bear� – Joanna Newsom [Ys]
Rolling Stone : Joanna Newsom: Ys : Music Reviews
Gentlemen, Hats Off!: Joanna Newsom – Ys
The Muso � Curiouser and Curiouser – Joanna Newsom
The Mondo Project � Blog Archive � Music Review: Joanna Newsom – Ys
Feldheim: the Big Red Box of Ivy League Music
nov
3
2006
iTunes 7 – still slow as a snailI had become a big fan of the ease of use and features of iTunes, but Apple is losing credit by the minute: since updating to iTunes 7, the program has become completely unusable! The audio output is chopped up, and the program is totally unresponsive when trying to browse the library. Remedies found on the internet don’t bring solace (like disabling scrobbling with Last.fm, or disabling the automatic downloading of cover art), and the two updates that have been issued right after release ( itunes 7.0.1 and itunes 7.0.2) did nothing to relieve the pain. My library has 3.330 songs in it for the moment (18 Gb), would that be the problem? Or that some of my songs are on a networked hard-disk, others my notebook’s hard-drive? Both things should be possible, no? My hunch is that they have to implement a “disable coverflow” in the options (coverflow being one of the novelties in itunes 7.0 which allows you to browse your library by album cover. It was a stand-alone program for Mac that Apple bought and implemented .. poorly). I hope they come out with a working fix real quick now!
nov
1
2006
Midlake![]() Musical discovery of the week (my week that is, it’s been out a couple of months), and definitely on of my favourite albums of the year so far: Midlake’s “The Trials of Van Occupanther”. This is one album that will grow on you like ivy on a wall, engulfing you with it’s warm sound, 70’s feel and gorgeous songs. Give ‘em a try on MySpace, download opening track “Roscoe” or read a few reviews: |
![]() |