tunequest

This is exactly what a sophomore album should be. It has everything that made the debut so fresh and engaging, while adding nuance and complexity that show a clear maturation of sound, yet is not so over-indulgent so as to become foreign and off-putting. I refer, of course to Ratatat's recently released second album: Classics. One might argue that it takes a particularly confident or arrogant band to ...

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I came of musical age during the so-called alternative era, when "alternative" was more of an actual alternative to the mainstream rock/pop of the early 90s. However, due to my relatively young age and relative cultural backwater, the movement was well on its way to mainstream-ization by the time it swung through my burg. The year was 1993 and at the tender age of 14 I ...

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According to Super Analyser for iTunes, the most common word in the song titles of my library is "love." Unfortunately, the program doesn't tell how it generates that number. Does it include variations like "lovely," "loves" and "lover"? Probably not. It's probably a straight-up word-pattern match. Still, that result surprises me. Certainly it filters out "a," "an," "the," "that," etc, but I would have expected some kind of ...

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allow me to recommend: tom jones and the cardigans.

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In celebration of numbers that end in sequential zeros, I present the 8000th song played on the tunequest: Breakbeat Era's sex change from the 1999 album Ultra-Obscene. This achievement comes as part of my Roni Size weekend. I spent a good portion of yesterday listening to his sprawling 2 and half hour double disc New Forms. That was the record, along with The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your ...

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This would be interesting. UPDATE: Turns out this was an attempt at parody. Apple is NOT buying last.fm Oh well. It's a nice wishlist though. I still think GenreFolksonomies are cool. And even though I don't put together many playlists manually these days (viva randomization!), SmartTransitions is an intriguing idea. I, for one, wouldn't mind seeing: GenreFolksonomies No longer will iTunes tracks be chained to single categories. Users will be ...

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Trans Am's brand of future-rock has been of constant interest since the day I first heard it in early 2002. I appreciate their hard-drive rhythms and computerized effects. In fact, before i knew any better, I thought the group was from Germany. Turns out they're actually from Washington, DC, which is why I also appreciate that they tackle political material in a way that's direct ...

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I knew this day would eventually come, since the tunequest made it into the "i"s many months ago. Back in 2001, I ran across a posting on the usenets called Italian Cinema Lounge. It was 225 songs taking up 700 MB and spanning eleven and a half hours of music culled from various Italian film composers from the 60s and 70s ranging from Alberto Baldan Bembo to ...

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One minute and 44 seconds worth to be precise. And the subject of this perfection is The Breeders' Fortunately Gone from their 1990 debut record, Pod. The song is a paragon of simplicity, with a gentle, upbeat, bobbing rhythm and seductively playful singing that doesn't hesitate to draw you in. My only complaint is its length. It is so perfect, yet so tantalizingly short, that I can't help ...

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