"2112: The Musical!" ... Anybody? No? I hate you guys.

The cover of Rush's 1976 album 2112

So, during my long commute to work today, I had a thought. The thought was brought about by the fact that for the last two days, I’ve been listening to Rush’s 2112, A Farewell to Kings, and Hemispheres all in sequence on my ipod (It was free! I won it! I can’t just not use it! proceeds went to AIDS!).

Anywho, the thought was this: why hasn’t anyone tried to jump on the “let’s write a poorly scripted musical based on popular music by a band that everyone loves” bandwagon using the music of multi-platinum Canadian prog-rock power-trio Rush?

Well, I saw “We will Rock You,” the poorly scripted musical based on popular music by Queen about a year ago and was struck by how easily a musical can become a hit by coming up with a pointless plot in order to loosely string together popular songs.

I am inspired by the fact that Rush’s epic songs actually have a plot of their own, courtesy of Neil Pert’s lyrics. I realized that it wouldn’t be too hard to connect the 20 minute “2112″ with the approximately 30 minute “Cyngus X-1″ duology. that’s almost an hour of music right there. Throw in some dialogue, and a couple of other songs and you’ve got yourself a decent musical. So, here, for your pretend-enjoyment, is a mock-up plot synopsis of a hypothetical “2112: the Musical.”

Act I:

The not-so-distant future: Man is on the technological verge of intergalactic space-travel, but no life outside of earth has been discovered as yet. The black hole of Cygnus X-1 in the constellation of Cygnus is found to be sending X-rays through the galaxy. One of the scientists who discovers the rays becomes obsessed with the possibilities of a black hole emitting anything at all, and endeavours to travel to the black hole and investigate. When he gets within distance of the black hole, he is sucked inside, and compressed by the gravity of the vaccuum.

Back on earth, the technological advancement of certain countries has  lead to a space-race, spurring international warfare. As the death-toll rises, the world’s artists and visionaries attempt to destroy all advanced technology, fleeing into outerspace in hopes of finding their own private Xanadu (as prophesied by Coleridge?).

Thus ends act one, as the survivors on the planet earth are left without technology, barbarous and chaotic.

Act II:

The year is 2112, and the people of earth have taken what little technology they could salvage and recreated a civilization under the totalitarian rule of the priests of Syrinx, who have built temples everywhere, and eliminated all forms of expression but those they deem acceptable to their plan. One man working in an assembly line escapes his factory and takes refuge in a cave, where he discovers a guitar. Unaware of what it is, he teaches himself to play it, and discovering the power of emotion through music, he realizes that the people of earth (and the solar federation) are missing emotion from their lives. So, he presents his guitar to the Priests, thinking that they will welcome the uniting force of music, but they unexpectedly destroy it, and send him on his way. 

He returns to the cave, and in a dream meets an oracle, who shows him a vision of the past, in which an elder race lived happily after travelling to Xanadu, where they’ve continued to explore open-minded behaviours for generations. The oracle says that one day, they will return to destroy the temples of Syrinx. On awaking, the man is so depressed by the state of affairs, believing his dream to be an illusion, that he kills himself. However, as civil wars break out in the solar federation, the elder race returns from Xanadu, alerted by the sound of the guitar, and assumes control of the Solar federation.

The act ends with the outbreak of a war between the passionate elder race, or the Dionysians, and the logical, emotionless people of the Solar Federation, or the Apollineans.

Act III:

As the Apollineans and Dionysians fight, the spirit of the scientist from Act I is sent through the blackhole and through time, back to earth where the people are warring. Seeing the chaos, he cries out for them to stop, and they suddenly realize that they require balance to co-exist. They christen the spirit Cygnus, god of balance, and he teaches them that a balance of heart and mind will mold a new society that is closer to the heart…

The End.

Yep. It’d kick ass.

You get a full cast recording of “Closer to the Heart” as a finale. 

Tell me that wouldn’t kick ass. 

Yeah, it’d kick ass.

Now, who wants to help me ask the members of Rush to produce?

Where my Au20 gold discs at, fuggah?!

I've come to the conclusion (it was not hard to come to) that I am an audiophile.

Quoth wikipedia: "An audiophile, from Latin audire "to hear" and Greek philos 'loving,' can be generally defined as a person dedicated to achieving high fidelity in the recording and playback of music."

To be clear (for clarity is prized), I have a greater appreciation for music that sounds as close to the original source material as possible.

Human ears are a highly sensitive stereo system.

Quoth some random university's website:"A reasonably standard definition of audible sound is that it is a pressure wave with frequency between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz and with an intensity above the standard threshold of hearing."

I'm not sure whether that refers to the perceived loudness, or the actual frequency at which the waves wobble (the difference being that higher frequency wobbling means a more "treble" oriented sound, while a lower frequency wobbling means a more "bass" oriented sound... Pretty much anyone who listens to music with more than a passing interest knows this stuff).

The important thing to take from what I'm saying is that an audio recording which has higher or lower frequencies cut out or misrepresented, will sound less like it did when it was actually being played by instruments. This kind of thing can be detected because anything that would normally fall within a certain range of frequencies, normally detectable to the human ear which is heard in a recording with misrepresented frequencies is going to sound thinner, tinnier, muffled, or muddy (these are words that smart people actually use to describe sound).

Now, an audiophile, being concerned with hi-fi recordings is going to want to hear a recording that can represent the entire range of frequencies that were originally being produced by say, a four piece band. This doesn't sound like it should be that hard. If you're like me, you listen to CDs and mp3s all the time thinking "this is pretty darn great." If you're also like me, though, you can certainly tell when someone's sent you a shitty-quality mp3, with a subpar bitrate (128 is considered normal... but is it?), and a lower frequency than your device or file was meant to be heard at.

Here's the problem: CDs as we know them are not normally capable of representing the full range of frequencies, and a vile thing known as "compression" has caused many a recording's range of frequencies to be "compressed" by shaving off the higher and lower frequencies (which admittedly, does not usually result in unsatisfactory listening) with two purposes: to fit audio onto a CD, and to decrease dynamic range to avoid clipping.

Why compress?

Quoth wikipedia (again): "The trade-off of slightly reduced audio quality is clearly outweighed for most practical audio applications where users cannot perceive any difference and space requirements are substantially reduced. For example, on one CD, one can fit an hour of high fidelity music, less than 2 hours of music compressed losslessly, or 7 hours of music compressed in MP3 format."

For the sake of useful redundancy: The standard CD can hold only 800MB (at best). This means that in some cases, a lossless recording of an album won't fit. This doesn't apply to the usual pop-album, which contains between thirty and fifty minutes of material (a rip-off considering the potential 80 minutes of writeable surface). Other albums, though, that take full advantage of the CD space, require compression*. However, the result is something unnatural. The result does not actually sound the way the recording sounded before it was recorded.

Over the years, mastering engineers and producers have figured out how to use compression to reasonable effect without causing noticeable losses to quality, through the use of computer algorithms which encode a lossless recording (typically a .wav format) into a coded lossy format like mp3, or even a lower quality wav.

Now, there's a whole other kind of compression which causes even more trouble. I mentioned that compression is used to modify the frequencies of a sound. Frequently, in remasters of releases that were originally vynil releases, loudness is an issue. We have grown accustomed to a certain level of loudness, which is much louder than what was common during the age of vynil. The process of digitally compressing say, a drum track allows for the drums to seem louder, without having an amplitude that would cause clipping. Clipping is what happens when audio becomes so loud as to be distorted. Compression avoids clipping, but at the cost of dynamic range - which means that the difference in volume between the sounds in a recording is smaller. The result of using too much compression for this purpose is that the brain has more trouble distinguishing between sounds, and some frequencies end up being lost in the mix - so you don't hear everything that was recorded.

So, for audiophiles (who tend not to enjoy pop albums anyway), we encounter problems when we listen to modern CDs that have compression (and for some, all CDs), and when we listen to CDs that were mastered before engineers had quite figured out how to do it best.

The solution? vynil.

The gramaphone or phonograph record is the solution. Somehow, through the miracle of analogue recordingsound wave is etched into the vynil disc. We see this in the form of the groove, which we put the needle into. If we could zoom in super-close, we'd see a wiggly sound wave (they look like this!). The groove, though tiny, can represent the full dynamic range of frequencies in the actual sound to the recording. So, why don't we always listen to vynil? After all, the capacity of vynil is actually limited to the amount of space on the disc. The spiral can only go around so many times before you run out of room. How much room does a record have? About 45 minutes in total. How many minutes is the average pop-album? About 45 minutes. the quality of the original recording is maintained. Here's how: when records are pressed, the actual

Well, vynil is fragile. It can warp, deteriorate and scratch. Worst of all, if anything manages to make the tiniest dent in the groove, then the sound wave at that point is permanently affected by whatever has happened to it. A piece of dust can get in the groove, and you get a pop or a click. Any thing that the needle of your record touches will be picked up by the amplifier. Any abnormal bend in the sound wave is going to be heard, and there's nothing you can do to fix it. Not to mention the fact that flipping the damn thing over is a bit of a chore...

That said, I think we need a bit of an example to show how vynil is/can be superior. In the early days of the CD, audio compression was a new and complicated thing. For one thing, computers were ASS. We're talking early/mid 80s, here. Tech-savvy artists were trying to convert their standard vynil releases to the new and exciting CD medium, which was smaller, didn't scratch as easily (no clicks or pops!) and you didn't even have to flip it over.

One such artist was Frank Zappa. Zappa fans (who are almost exclusively audiophiles for some reason), know that there were several albums that ended up getting mixed very badly for the CD reissue of their vynil favourites. Specifically, Shiek Yerbouti, Tinseltown Rebellion, and You Are What You Is. The masters for these albums were revisited and compressed for the CD releases. The result was horrible. The worst offender was You Are What You Is, which had so many problems that a guitar solo ended up being cut out, there were random volume spikes, and other issues that could cause average listeners headaches.

Later on, the album was re-remastered using the original master tapes, and everything was fine again... but in the end, the real audiophiles all went back and searched out the vinyl.

Unfortunately, audiophiles (and shitty DJs and hipsters) seem to be the only people keeping the vynil industry alive. Very few artists release their albums on vynil these days (more on this later). What alternative is there to vynil for those of us who don't want to send our valuable energy off into the entropic void by flipping the record over?

Solution: Lossless audio codecs.

Like I said before, there are lossless digital formats, like PCM (.wav). For computer users, if they have the capabilities, it is possible to rip lossless recordings from CDs (if those CDs are lossless themselves, otherwise, you're just encoding a lossy file without any further loss). Furthermore, if you don't mind having cables all over your floor, you can run a vynil turntable through your line-in (basically an all-purpose input) port in the back of your soundcard. Using audio programs, you can record the entire album in a lossless format.

But, what do we do about compressed CDs when vynil isn't available? Well, there's a bit of a movement going on that could be of some help.

With the dawn of the digital release, music artists are able to distribute the high-quality media files directly to you. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has partially pioneered this method of album release, letting his listeners download 320kbps mp3s (that's better than CDs), FLAC (almost lossless, but not quite), and wav (all lossless).

Not to mention the fact that SACDs, DVD-A, and Blu Rays have the kind of space you'd need to not only present the highest quality stereo version (which is the normal way to hear things with your ears), but also in surround sound! Yes, surround sound! the ridiculously unnecessary audio experience that lets you hear the music from anywhere between 3 and in some cases 10 (but usually 5.1) different locations. If you've got it set up right, it's supposed to sound like you're there with the band. I'm a fan of surround, but the lengths to which I will go to hear the band as if I was there are limited.

Anyway, with the increasing capacity of portable music devices, and the fact that you CAN burn lossless audio to CDs, even if the commercial CD release wasn't released in a lossless format, it seems that there will be (and are) audiophiles wandering around listening to hi-fi recordings on mp3 players.

However, in my view, vynil will always be the best choice.

*this is worded a bit incorrectly. It's not the case that 80 minutes of music is available to be written, but based on standard wav encoding and filesizes, 80 minutes is the standard for a lossless PCM format.

Guitars make noises, and then ladies make panty-mess.

I’m a guitarist of sorts (as evidenced by the nifty video down at the bottom of this post). I’ve been playing since I was 16. I’m completely self-taught. In most circumstances, that would mean that I’m terrible at the guitar. If I may blow my own trumpet, however (pluck my own guitar?), I’m at least above average.

It interests me though, that now, after years of playing it by ear, I can pick out five of my main influences in guitar playing. Most people will cite Ywngie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani, one of those insane people from Dragonforce, or Eddie Van Halen. I suppose that my apparent inability to ‘shred’ and my half-assed ‘tapping’ is probably what keeps those folks off of my list.

So, here’s my top five most influential guitarists, with respect to my own personal style.

1. Frank Zappa
This man’s guitar prowess was relatively overlooked by guitar fans. This is probably because of his tendency for the angular, polyrhythmic, dissonant, and unstructured. Having been influenced largely by both the blues guitar and german avant-garde classical music, the fusion of the two would no doubt be somewhat jarring for most listeners, particularly those who had grown used to Jimmy Page in the 70s.
Anyhoo, Zappa had this way of playing guitar that was described (by himself, I think) as building a sound-sculpture. He improvised a lot, and it wasn’t standard riffs he pulled off, it was oddly melodic and never repetitive. I take a large part of my influence from Frank Zappa. His solos were some of the first I heard, and his improvisation style is something I’ve been working on for quite some time. Also, his use of the whammy bar is pretty crazy. Check out: “drowning witch,” “watermelon in easter hay” and the solo in “Zomby Woof.”

2. Adam Jones
I like tool. I like tool a lot. Apart from the polyrhythms and non-standard time-signatures, one of the main intrigues for me is Adam Jones’ playing. The main thing about it is that, when I first started out on the electric guitar, I wanted to play along with tool. At some point (I wasn’t even playing tool at the time) I managed to learn how to make pinch-harmonics. Pinch harmonics are a somewhat complicated technique (particularly if you don’t play with a pick) which involves brushing the string with your thumb as its being plucked.
Jones uses pinch harmonics in some of his best solos. If you’re looking to hear some good examples, I would suggest either “Lateralus”, or “Parabola” from the album Lateralus. Both of those songs feature some pretty awesome pinch-harmonics, and I’ve been influenced strongly by their style.

3. Trent Reznor
Not many would consider Trent Reznor to be a great guitarist (least of all himself), but there’s a certain raw “all over the place” style that always blows my mind when I hear it. There are a great few Reznor guitar solos recorded, but my favourites appear in the following songs: Nine inch nails’ “Deep,” “We’re in this together now,” and Jakalope’s “Feel it” (Actually, I don’t know if that’s him playing that solo, but I like it anyway). For the most part, I find it hard to play along with Reznor solos (and often his standard rythm riffs) because they’re just so elsewhere.

4. Johnny Greenwood
Radiohead’s lead guitarist Johnny Greenwood is an interesting guitarist, to say the least. He’s a classical composer, and a spokesperson for the little-known electronic instrument the Ondes Martinot. His playing style is characterized by a sense of strain. Speaking of which, I hear he has this special wrist-support dealie that he wears in order to continue playing with such a strain. His guitar tends to come in a gentle flow, which is followed by bursts of intense energy. Some of his best solos are in the radiohead songs “Paranoid Android,” “Just,” and “there there.” I don’t sound much like him when I play, but in some of my more caffeinated moments, I’ve been known to get close.

5. Larry Lalonde
Ler’s a bit of an odd choice for me. I’ve always loved Les Claypool’s bass-playing, but over and under that was always Larry Lalonde’s dissonant, noisey whine. Since Zappa is one of Lalonde’s main influences as well, it’s no surprise that I would enjoy his work as well. As always, whammy bar, angularity, and lack of structure are a main influence of mine from this guy. Some of my favourite Larry tracks from Primus: “Profesor Nut Butter’s House of Treats,” “Bob’s Party Time (Live… from Rhinoplasty),” and “Tommy the Cat” (Those are all awesome claypool tracks too, by the way).

Anyway, those are my top five favourite and most influential guitarists, and a few standout tracks.
I encourage you to give them a listen…

And here's a video for you, so you can give me a listen (for comparative purposes... maybe).

Practising the Janey Solo from Rab Townsend on Vimeo.

And now, a message from the future: at some point, I made a videoblog regarding this subject with most of the bands here having audio examples. Post on that will come soon.

Album Review: Ashes Divide – “Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright”

Ashes Divide - Keep Telling Myself It's Alright

Billy Howerdel began as a guitar tech for tool, which led to his association with Maynard James Keenan, and the formation of A Perfect Circle, a supergroup with music composed by Howerdel, and lyrics and vocals by Keenan. 

 Together, they produced two albums, and one (somewhat mediocre) cover-album of anti-war songs, released to coincide with the 2004 election. With the immanent release of tool’s 10,000 Days MJK had to return to his original band, leaving Billy with the time to write new music for his own solo project called ASHES dIVIDE.

Fans of A Perfect Circle will find more common ground between Ashes Divide’s Keep Telling Myself It’s Alright and APC’s first album Mer de Noms than with their later material. For those who like their alt-metal harder than it is progressive, this will be a positive attribute.

KTMiA (as I shall now refer to it) is strong first solo effort, which is to be expected from the composer behind such classics as the APC tunes “Judith” and “Weak and Powerless.” It is clear that Howerdel’s composition and arrangement are the backbone of all of his musical efforts.

That said, having grown accustomed to MJK’s powerful voice, it is somewhat jarring to be confronted with Howerdel’s somewhat more mainstream style of singing. His dynamics are less apparent, and he leans toward the more awkward tones of popular punk-rock, on what may seem a few too many occasions. This shouldn't be a problem for newcomers, or for those who are willing to take the time to grow into Howerdel’s new musical voice.

Standout Tracks: Defamed, Enemies, The Stone

The album’s opener “Stripped Away” drags a little. Its pace is powerful but slow, and in that sense, it does not immediately grab one's attention. It isn’t until the bridge that the energy of the song is truly conveyed to the extent that it ought to be. The heavy guitars drop out, and Howerdel’s voice wavers with the strength of his vocal performance, recalling Freddie Mercury, in a faint sort of way. Unfortunately, this demonstration of ability is only a brief respite from what is an otherwise drab song.

“Denial Waits” begins in a plaintive lyrical moan by Howerdel, over a quick beat by super-drummer Josh Freese. Before long, the emotional rawness we should have been hearing in the previous track appears somewhat abruptly, but welcome nevertheless amid a powerful blast of music.

“Too Late” is another heavy slow-mover, but its melancholy verses don’t feel draggy like they did in “Stripped Away.” Musically, it's an appropriate mish-mash of the styles found on APC's first two albums. However, in this song, we see a first example of where Howerdel’s composition exceeds his vocal prowess to a detrimental effect. After a typically good Howerdel guitar solo, a great musical bridge emerges, but it's dragged down by poor lyricism and  just as poor singing by Howerdel

“Forever Can Be” is another melancholy slow-mover (there appear to be a lot of these). Its chorus is given some grounding by a piano melody that matches the melancholy tone. As if to make up for the icky bridge in “Too Late” the lyrics of the chorus are more interesting: “Forever can be something to believe in. This was one of those times.” It suggests disappointment, and failure, despite optimism. Interspersed throughout is an intriguing little guitar melody which has east-asian hints, or perhaps medieval elements, which add some flavour to the first real ear-catching track on the album.

“Defamed” almost sounds like a rock cover of The Postal Service. The chord progression is light and minor, but hopeful. The lyrics are a little silly considering the weight of the previous songs’ content. Despite this, the song is cohesive, and catchy. Its upbeat tempo and strong drum-work by Freese make it danceable and contribute to what is ostensibly a great rock song.

When the allmusicguide refers to “Enemies” as overeager, one can see why, given its introductory guitar riffs. However, heavy punk drums and the return of that style of emotion-laden power-vocals mean that “Enemies” is going to be a fast-paced ass-kicker of a song. The key-change in the latter half of the song is particularly engaging.

“A Wish” seems noodly at first, with a simple piano melody and sporadic drums, which build into a cohesive roll. Billy’s close-mic’d vocals are low and wispy. The lyrics are simple and personal, without collapsing too far into purple prose. The groove maintained by the drums, and the piano melody hold the song together for its short duration.

“Ritual” takes a similar approach, vocally, to “A Wish.” A mysterious set of counter-melodies gives this one a little more to chew on for listeners. Without much difference between this and the previous song, musically, it maintains the melancholy mood with some more good music.

At last, the single “The Stone” follows, with a somewhat clichéd intro that bursts into yet more clichéd, but faster riffs (cool dissonance notwithstanding). Freese’s driving beat helps build anticipation of the chorus, which is a dramatic burst of swelling guitars that borrow (if only subconsciously) from film scores. Unfortunately, after hearing the chorus, the following verses make one impatient at having to wade through them before the chorus returns. Despite that, the chorus of "The Stone" carries the song (and perhaps even the the whole album) by it’s sheer might. Yes, might.

“The Prey” feels more electronic than any other track on the album, borrowing some of its melodic style from the mainstream. An interesting feature of the track is a slightly detuned, high-pitched guitar line which plays intriguing little melodic riffs over top of the rhythm tracks and vocals. It works as a strong counter-point to Billy’s vocals. The mood of the song is more of joyous than any of the other tracks.

The final track “Sword” has a dissonant piano melody as its intro, with a subtle cello (which grows to become less subtle) just underneath. The cello switches to the top of the mix, sounding vaguely offkey over the piano’s dissonant tones. The intro gives way to a driving, throbbing bassline which recalls the Tapeworm toss-away “Passive” that was released on APC’s cover-album eMotive. The entire song takes this approach, and hits hard, throbbing and driving until it all drops away about five minutes in revealing a gentle vocal line over top of the same introductory piano melody, which sounds more beautiful the second time around.

Bottom line: This album will require some uncomfortable adjustments for fans of A Perfect Circle, but if given a chance, it will show itself to be the same great song-writing that we have come to expect from Billy Howerdel, despite the lack of MJK’s strong lyrics and vocals. It’s a solid album, with the last eight of its eleven tracks being quite strong (having three mediocre tracks open the album seems to be a tactical error). Still, with one transitional album under his belt, perhaps Mr. Howerdel's future efforts will be more confident vocally and musically.

Album Review: Architecture in Helsinki – “Fingers Crossed”

Fingers Crossed by Architecture in Helsinki

Here’s the first of (probably many) reviews I plan on writing, based on my extensive CD collection. I wanted to pick something I wasn’t especially attached to, but something I liked. Architecture in Helsinki’s Fingers Crossed is just that. It’s an enjoyable listen with a few stand out tracks, but nothing to write home to mom over.

I remember I first heard of this band through Amazon’s “You might also like…” pages. I downloaded 3 tracks, just to see what they were like. The songs were, “Imaginary Ordinary,” “Like a Call,” and “Do the Whirlwind.” Two of those songs are on “Fingers Crossed,” and I immediately liked them because they had a childlike playfulness hidden behind their instrumentation and their vocals that was very compelling. (I've since learned that this style is referred to as "twee pop" in some circles).

The first song on the album is an instrumental called “One Heavy February” and as soon as it begins, you can tell you’re going to be in for some short, carefree pieces of music with a sweetness that you can’t help but love. That's just what you get with the entrance of the female vocals on the following track “Souvenirs” coming in with some childlike “lalala” action before segueing into some poetic lyrics that speak nostalgia.

The knuckle-drag of “Scissor Paper Rock” and “To and Fro” are a bit of a let down, after such an upbeat beginning, but the fun returns with the prophetic “Spring 2008″ which works as a good preparation for the bubble and pop of the album’s stand-out track “Owls Go,” a fast-paced, but innocent song, whose verses are peppered with alternating shouts and whispers of “Owls Go!” And with a charmingly deceptive chorus sung by the female vocalist “Finding a replacement with a heart sedated, I’ll forget you/Attic in the basement with a knife serrated, I’ll protect you.” Who knows what it means? It’s oddly sweet.

“Kindling” is another up-beat, building tune, whose tendency for the epic is surprising, considering it’s less than two minutes long. Its horns are powerful. Following “Kindling,” the album seems to wind down, with the slower paced “It’s almost a trap” and “Like a Call,” leading into the beautiful and simple duet “Where you’ve been hiding.”

“City Calm Down” seems like a lullaby, and works as a counterpoint to “Owls Go,” reprising some its musical motifs, and asking us to calm down, before it gains momentum and takes on a symphonic quality, building to a climax that drops off at the end.

The final track “Vanishing” is a favourite of mine, with the simple lyric “Is this a fling? It’s [been] seven days and you’re already vanishing.” It begins in a similar fashion to the album opener, with a bouncy, somewhat optimistic sounding instrumental theme before easing out into a slow, contemplative movement. The question asked in the lyrics forebodes a broken heart, but the music is laced with hope and optimism, as though the question were asked with fingers crossed...

No Label, No Problem

This is old news, but here it is for posterity. 

Originally published in MacMedia Magazine

No doubt many of you have heard about Radiohead releasing their new album In Rainbows online as a digital mp3 download for whatever price you thought it was worth. To many this seemed to be a marvellous step forward in combating both tyrannical labels and music piracy – simultaneously catering to the age of digital music distribution. Of course, little did anybody know that the band had secretly planned to release the album later through a major label on CD (presumably for the usual high price determined by that label). What appeared to be an honest ‘eff you’ to the system, turned out to be a marketing ploy, and perhaps even a case of cheating fans out their money (some poor people paid hundreds of dollars as a sign of support).

Then, Trent Reznor (you know, that NIN guy) and up-and-coming spoken word/hip-hop artist Saul Williams did the real deal. They released their (amazing) collaborative album for free with higher quality than Radiohead’s downloads, no strings attached, and giving the option to pay 5 dollars in support of the artists. I think there are two main reasons why artists have turned to self-distribution in a digital format.

The first reason is probably somewhere near you right now: your mp3player or iPod (I’ll just call them all iPods from here on, for convenience’s sake). It is clear to me that we have reached a stage at which it is impossible to live without digital music. Since Napster, we’ve been using our computers as jukeboxes, and with Apple’s help, we can carry those jukeboxes around. However, a large problem was created by these technologies: piracy. Sure, we had the mix-tape problem in the 80s, but once it came to CDs and the Internet, the sheer scale of the problem made the blank-tape tax seem like a drop in the bucket. Now that the damage is nigh irreversible, it’s only logical that the fumbling record labels would join us after failing to beat us.

In this age of the mp3, we face a burgeoning frontier of music marketing. The labels want to keep you from stealing music so they can make huge bucks, and the artists want to get heard by as many people as possible without losing money. After recognizing that money could still be made on the Internet, the labels and Apple got together and formed the iTunes Store as a way of allowing the music industry (mostly the Recording Industry Association of America or RIAA) to make you pay for songs that you would otherwise have acquired illegally. Of course, this helps the labels more than it helps the artists. A much larger percentage of the money you spend with iTunes is going to the label, than to the artist (more than is usual, I’d guess, though I couldn’t say specifically how much).

The reason is this: you are not paying for the music; you are paying the label for the ability to hear the music (note that due to copy-protection, many songs are subject to harsh limitations, in terms of sharing and backups). Were you to pirate it instead, you could be sued by that label for sums well outside of your price range– regardless of whether you were someone’s dead granny, or someone’s nine-year-old grandson.

Obviously, some artists are not pleased with the way this system works. Allegedly the Zappa Family Trust had all of Frank Zappa’s material removed from the iTunes store. The action certainly follows from a quote by Frank Zappa himself: 

“The manner in which [people] ‘consume’ music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie– it’s consumed that way without any regard for how and why it was made.”

I’d venture to say that many artists feel this way. The pop-single mentality, which seems not only to be supported, but also endorsed by iTunes, is the kind of mentality that completely disregards the artistic process, and the effort that goes into making a cohesive album. So, if we are to continue living in an age of digital music distribution, and we want to support the artist, it seems that perhaps we need a better business model than what we have right now.

The second reason for self-distribution follows from that poor model. Artists would love to be heard, and by many, many people. Obviously, they can’t very well distribute their physical albums to the entire world efficiently. They must pay a label to distribute it, allowing the label to set a price (in some cases, unnecessarily high), and further delay their albums without good reason in order to somehow satisfy their label’s wishes. The Internet provides the kind of global market they want, without the money-grubbing middlemen. However, the digital age poses the problem of losing the physical aspect of the album, including the artwork, the lyrics, and obviously the disc itself. However, if the music is all that’s important, maybe people like Trent Reznor and Saul Williams can still get by. Without releasing their album through iTunes, and without going through middlemen, they have released an album with lossless quality, for as much money as an overpriced cup of coffee, or alternatively, for free! Such a low price potentially allows that the casual music pirate might actually consider paying for the album, as a sign of support for the artist. Certainly this is the best way we have to support the artist, and only the artist, in return for giving us some great music.

That said, I do have problems with the self-distributed model. For one thing, I like having the physical album. Here’s a little fact for you: the blank CD-Rs that are sold to us are missing something crucial. Whereas on commercial CDs, there is a lacquer finish over the burned music, increasing both the duration of its fidelity and its durability, blank CD-Rs do not have this lacquer finish, which significantly decreases both. This means, that if I don’t have an iPod, and I want to listen to digitally distributed album in my eight-year-old discman, then I’ll have less chance of maintaining the quality of that recording. I also like having the artwork, and the little booklet with all the lyrics in it. Sure, they can give me a .jpeg or a .pdf file with all of that stuff and more, but there’s something to be said for having an album and its artwork; appreciating it in the context it was made for.

In order to reconcile the physical album with the digital age, I propose a method that I’ve borrowed from Rob Sheridan (artwork designer for Nine Inch Nails). Basically, if we want to support the artists who aren’t ready or able to innovate to the level that Radiohead pretended, or that Saul Williams succeeded, without supporting the greediness of the RIAA, we should simply not buy CDs released by labels under the RIAA. Sure, you’ll be deprived of some good music, but maybe they’ll learn a lesson if enough people try, and maybe, just maybe, the labels and the artists can cooperate in creating a marketable system, that will benefit both the label, the artist, and most of all, the consumer of the digital age.

Addendum: For the record, I did buy the physical release of In Rainbows, and it was worth it. Saul Williams’ Niggy Tardust saw a physical release with added tracks, which made me feel somewhat betrayed, having written this big honking article about how revolutionary the method was. That said, I will buy it. The importance of the physical album is too great to hold grudges about the 5 bucks I spent. That said, I also coughed up five bucks and fourteen more bucks for both the digital and physical versions of Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts (but there were no secrets about that physical release). To some extent, my desire for the physical album far outweighs any impulse to hear the music as soon as possible, and wherever I am.

Furthermore, at the risk of revealing myself as a hypocrite, I ended up getting an iPod (and later, an iPhone!). It has many flaws (iTunes is crap software - especially on  a PC). That said, it makes for good listening when it comes to albums I’ve downloaded because they’re out of print or unavailable… or simply not bought yet. I still carry a box of CDs with me everywhere I go, for stationary listening.

It's a lion!

So, this is an experiment.

I had been working on a music/whatever blog over at Wordpress, and eventually, I kinda gave up on it.

Then, I had this new idea for a blog. A blog that would explain my personal philosophy after building on it for years in University. After working on that for a while, I realized that it's fun, and commenting on other blogs is fun, and most importantly - most people I care about are using blogspot, not wordpress.

So, for your entertainment, I'm moving the wordpress blog over here, and hopefully updating it a little more often than I used to.

Here is a much improved version of the first post I made back on May 1st, 2008:

Well, I have a blog. That would be exciting, if I knew anyone would read it.

Imagine, if you will (you must!), the kind of blog that talks about things that don’t necessarily interest you, but in a terribly interesting way. 

While you're imagining that, go ahead and read this blog.

It's gonna be chock-full(ish) of articles about my opinions on the music industry today, the woes of being an amateur photographer, top-ten lists, and movie/album reviews, and dumb videos. Hopefully by the time you realize that you the kind of blog I mentioned up there doesn't really exist, you'll have figured out that this is the kind of blog that actually does interest you in a non terrible sort of way.