Currently listening to Biffy Clyro’s new album, Puzzle, and I have to
say it is definitely their best album yet. It’s up there with
65daysofstatic for best album of the year so far. It’s made a change
from all the recent albums where it’s taken repeated listenings to like
the album. With the first listen I love this album. I am definitely
going to have to see them live more often. I’ve only seen them twice and
the gig a fortnight ago was possibly one of my best gigs ever.
Category Archives: music
After my last post on music players capable of Ogg Vorbis playback, I
was recommended:
- Anything by Cowan (iAudio)
- iRiver t10
- iRiver iHP 120
- Samsung’s YP-U2
- Kingston K-PEX
I can discount the iHP120 straight away as it’s a HD based player and
will be too large for what I want.
Update: I’m intentional avoiding any Apple
products.
iRiver t10
90GBP will get me a 2GB device. Several people have claimed it works
as USB mass storage, although I’ve seen someone say American versions
wouldn’t work. iRiver have a firmware updater to convert it to UMS, so I
might need to find a Windows installation. It has good battery life of
around 45-50 hours from a single AA battery, which is good. It’s got good reviews for
its sound quality and its rugged construction might make it good in the
gym.
Kingston K-PEX100
A 2GB model will set me back around 65GBP. It’s a touch larger, but
thinner than the T10. Looks like a UMS device. It can be expanded with
miniSD cards, which seems a nice feature. It only has a 17 hour battery time using the internal
rechargable, which seems a bit low, considering my CD player will do 120
hours off two AA. Reviews have mentioned that the build quality is a
little budget and a couple of firmware bugs, but hopefully these have
been fixed now.
Samsung’s YP-U2
Can only find a 1GB unit for 60GBP, although there is a 2GB unit
available. Battery life is only 14 hours from the internal rechargable
battery. It’s smaller than the iRiver T10 and is a UMS device. I’ve seen
reviews complain about the audio quality of this device. I think the
lack of battery life and audio problems will rule this one out.
Cowon iAudio U3 and T2
I wasn’t recommended any particular models, but the two I’m considering
is the T2 and U3.
The T2 is a necklace style player, which is rather unusual, but I can
pick up a 2GB model for around 100GBP. Battery is around 12 hours using
the internal rechargable battery. Looking at the reviews, the supplied
headphones make up the actual necklace part and you have to remove that
to use your own headphones, which is what I’ll be doing, having just
bought some Shure E2Cs. They also say the controls are a little
confusing.
This is the most expensive of the products I’ve looked at at 115GBP
for the 2GB model. Battery life is around 20 hours. Reviews have been
very positive. Not sure if it’s worth the extra price though.
Update: Apparently the 2GB model can only be charged
via USB, where as the 1GB model comes with a charger too, Also, I read
in a review that it has doesn’t do gapless playback, which is very annoying. Why don’t
players do gapless playback?
Summary
I think my top choice is the iRiver T10, although each of the others
have their plus points. The K-PEX is expandable, the T2 is small and the
U3 gets good reviews. I think I’ve discounted the Samsung. I will try
and find each of the players in a local shop to have a play before I go
out and buy one. If you have any comments on any of these players, or
you have another product to recommend I’d be
very interested.
Oh, and continuing my trend of discovering bands that have split up,
I’ve been getting into At The Drive-In. :S
If you use Last.fm, you may have got
around to using their events feature where you can search for events
near you and mark yourself attending those events. I was manually
entering the information into my google calendar, which was a pain.
Fortunately, being one of those hip, friendly web2.0 websites, Last.fm
allows you to get your data out in all sorts of useful ways, including
you event calendar as an iCal file. Google being useful, allow you to
display external iCal files in your calendar. Can you see where I’m
going with this? To get this up, log into you Google calendar, go to
“Manage Calendars”, then “Add Calendar”, then “Public Calendar Address”.
Finally type in the url of your last.fm iCal file, which will be http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/dpash/events.ics,
although obviously you need to change dpash to your particular last.fm
username. Now, you only need to mark yourself attending a gig to have it
show up in your Google calendar.
You can use something like this
to get it into your Evolution calendar.
Dear Lazyweb,
I’m after recommendations of a portable music player, which is small
and can play ogg vorbis files. I’m not sure I need something with a
large capacity; 2GB should be fine. Basically want something I can use
in the gym, so I don’t have to listen to the god-awful dance music they
keep playing on MTV Dance. Reasonable audio quality a bonus. Last.fm support would be amazing. I
would be tempted by something that could run Rockbox, but I suspect they
are going to be on the top end of the size scale.
Spent some time checking upcoming gigs and I’ve settled on And You
Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, The Killers,
65daysofstatic, and The Barfly’s Great Escape mini-festival, 3 days of
gigs over 20 venues. Trying to decide if I want to go to see Inspiral
Carpets and Electric Six in the world’s dirtiest club.
I logged into Last.fm
this morning to look at my recommendations and among the more obscurer
suggestions was Marmaduke
Duke, who apparently are similar to Biffy
Clyro, Hell Is For Heroes, Reuben and Million Dead, who are some of my
favourite bands. So I decided to log into Amazon to look to see how much it was,
and guess what was the music recommendation on the front page:
I think someone is trying to tell me something. I’m now looking for
some samples to listen to.
In less that 12 hours, my favourite band, Million Dead, will be no
more. They announced on the 12 September that they were splitting up at
the end of the current tour. I managed to get two tickets to their
penultimate gig at the Camden Underworld. Their last gig, tonight in
Southampton, is sold out. The best way to describe them is
socio-political punk rock. Similar in style to Hell Is For Heroes, Biffy
Clyro or Reuben but with an anti-capitalist tilt.
Willy Wonka was a capitalist confidence trickster,
a poster boy for neo-liberalism, a full-stop on revolt.
And the BFG a propagandist for an unaccountable regime,
Orwell’s vision with a wrinkled face.
Here’s to the most gorgeous girl in rock; Jules.
Thank you for your order MR PASHLEY You have booked 4 weekend (age restrictions apply) tickets for READING FESTIVAL 2005 at Richfield Avenue in Reading on 26TH-29TH AUGUST. Doors open at 11:30, show starts at 12:00 Your card will be charged £532.95 Please note - this charge will appear on your statement as EVENT TICKETS
Who wants to touch me. I said who wants to fucking touch me.
Yey, I’ve just bought tickets to go see Biffy Clyro and Hell is for
Heroes in Norwich with my friend Charlie next weekend. They are
playing in London on the 25th which would have been much easier for
me to get to than Norwich, but that is the night I will be getting
drunk in a bar in Brussels for FOSDEM. Annoyingly the same night, The
Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton is showing The Life Aquatic With
Steve Zissou and Rushmore. 🙁
I’ve just got back from the NME Awards tour at the Brighton Dome.
Fantastic line up; Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Futureheads and The
Killers. I was a little bit worried that I might bump into Dawn, but
thankfully I managed to get there early and got a place right at the
front and didn’t move. Was probably a bad idea to drink alcohol
before hand, but I wasn’t moving and my bladder managed to survive
thousands of screaming fans squashing me against the barrier. Did
mean that I didn’t have to spend the evening worrying if she was
alone or not.
I’ve not heard much by Kaiser Chiefs, but they seemed pretty good.
I’m not sure if I’d buy their album, but I might go see them again
soon with some friends. I recognised a couple of their songs, but I
can’t think where I’ve heard them. I can’t put into words how I feel
about Bloc Party. They are definitely one of my favourite bands and I
can’t wait to get their album on the 14th. Tonight was the third time
I’ve seen Bloc Party. The Futureheads is another band that I hadn’t
heard much of before the gig, but I appear to recognise a few more
that I thought. I did think I wouldn’t bother getting their album
until I heard their new single. Definately worth buying the album
for. And then we had The Killers. I can’t get enough of the Killers.
If you haven’t listened to the album, you really should. You’ll be
hooked after a few listens. Again this is the third time I’ve seen them and
definately the best time.
I’m definately looking forward to see the same line up again on
Friday in Cambridge with Nikki. Appologies to Charlie, Em and
especially Lisa, who would appear to ever so slightly jealous. This
time I’ll take my camera so you can see.
I decided to listen to my Keane album today on the way to work for
the first time in probably 3 months. I realised that as I listened to it
I couldn’t work out which songs had been singles. I could put this down
to either every song being a single or all the song sounding the same.
Annoyingly I also found myself singing along to it. God knows how I’d
managed to learn the words to the songs.
I can’t say I particularly like this album. If you like Snow Patrol
and Hope of the States, you’ll probably like it. The album is pretty
much inoffensive and I think that is my problem with it.
