GRABBINGSAND

More awesome than Robert Plant, too. And certainly better than resurrected CGI chipmunks.

Amazon.com MP3 Downloads Bestsellers: The most popular items in MP3 Albums. Updated hourly. via kwout

(The Orange Box (Original Soundtrack) includes “Still Alive,” the end-game credits song from Portal, written by geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton.)

Four-Way Waveform Comparison, originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Inspired by Rolling Stone’s article on the steady decline of high fidelity in music, I loaded four tracks into Adobe Audition to compare the waveforms. According to RS, waveforms are getting bigger over time, in effect replacing depth of sound with loudness.

The smallest waveform (yellow) is the oldest, “Sunshine” by Jonathan Edwards from 1971. The red waveform is Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” from 1984. In both cases, the source files were ripped directly from my own CDs, though “Sunshine” was encoded as a V0 MP3 while “Sexual Healing” remained an uncompressed WAV.

The blue waveform is Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” released earlier this year. It is obviously bigger than either of the two previous, though it is curious (and purely coincidental) that the general shape of the three tracks favor one another.

But the one that surprised me most, even before I read the article, is the last on my list. The pink area is “How Do You Want It?,” first recorded in 1996 by Tupac Shakur. The waveform you see here, however, is from the 2007 re-release on a greatest hits compilation. This track is a perfect example of the phenomenon that Rolling Stone references, the way that a track’s loudness can be manipulated to take advantage of any available volume — much like a television commercial when it is so much louder than the show you’re watching.

Here’s something I missed in 2007.

Do I agree entirely? No. It will take more than a bearded MC to steer me clear of Coca-Cola. But on the whole, the fellow — he goes by the name Scroobius Pip — makes some brilliant points. He and his partner-in-crime, Dan Le Sac, have a few other offerings on almighty YouTube: “The Beat My Heart Skipped” and “Letter From God.”

The Electronic Secretary Answering Unit, originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

We’re heading out of town for the day to celebrate the holiday, so if anyone needs anything, just leave a message.

(Isn’t the Electronic Secretary awesome? I’d love to find one of these things in a junk shop. I mean, it uses a 45! Did you have to arrange with General Telephone to record your own greeting? Or did everybody get the same one?)

Anyway. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Be good.

Merry Eve Eve, originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Just about all of the wrapping is done, though the cats would prefer that we just leave the house for a few hours, just long enough for them to make their selections of tasty, tasty ribbon.

Another Friday, another random twenty. This time, the iPod was uncharacteristically eclectic. Well done, iPod.

1. “Believe In Something” – The Choir Practice
2. “Believe Me, I’m A liar” – Tomoyasu Hotei – You might not know the name, but if you’ve seen Kill Bill, then you’ve heard what he can do with a guitar. His work is Lucy Liu’s awesome entrance music.
3. “August & September” – The The
4. “The Needle Has Landed” – Neko Case
5. “Cross My Heart” – Phil Ochs
6. “The Mighty Ship” – The Housemartins
7. “Tom Cruise Crazy” – Jonathan Coulton – You can have this one for free. Really.
8. “In McDonalds” – Burial
9. “When I Get The Time” – Johnny Hartman
10. “Behind The Wheel (L.P. Mix)” – Depeche Mode
11. “Cadillac” – T. Rex
12. “Bamboo Banger” – M.I.A. – This is the only M.I.A. track on my iPod. Every critic loves her. Almost. Rolling Stone gave her their top spot for 2007. But I just can’t do it.
13. “The Man In Love With You” – George Strait – Shut up.
14. “Satisfaction” – Cat Power
15. “I Wonder” – Kanye West
16. “The Wind” – Cat Stevens
17. “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” – Donny Hathaway
18. “Lenda” – CéU
19. “Summertime” – Miles Davis
20. “Moonglow, Lamp Low” – Eleni Mandell – Not to be confused with Idina Menzel.

And since I don’t want to leave you with just a simple list, here’s some additional greatness featuring Patrick Stewart.

“But I’ve seen everything.”

We’re not heading to Venus, but still we stand strong. And so, here’s the final ten:

10. “Pressure Suit” – Aqualung (Memory Man) – Here’s the first of two guilty pleasures creeping amongst my top ten. I can’t really explain it, but once I heard this song, I put it on repeat for a couple of mornings straight. I hadn’t done that with a song since high school.
9. “Misery Business” – Paramore (Riot!) – I could explain away Aqualung by citing the instrumental prowess of a one-man band or maybe the pathos inherent in the lyrics, but I have no excuse at all for liking Paramore so much. They’re just this band out of Franklin, Tennessee. Not a one of them is old enough to drink, I’m sure. But they’ve got this energy and passion, all of it channeled through the throat of their red-headed lead singer girl. And more power to ‘em. (Bonus YouTube-ry)
8. “My Moon My Man” – Feist (The Reminder) – Feist didn’t disappoint me the first time I heard her. And she didn’t this time either. (Bonus YouTube-ry)
7. “Do I Disappoint You?” – Rufus Wainwright (Release The Stars) – Best concert I saw this year. Maybe the best I’ve seen in five years. The man is George Gershwin reincarnated … or maybe Cole Porter.
6. “Who Am I Kiddin’ But Me?” – Over The Rhine (The Trumpet Child) – Finally, an Over The Rhine disc that ought to be bright enough to catch the attention of more than just the handful of us that’ve followed them since the early nineties.
5. “Got Up This Morning (featuring Jolie Holland)” – Sage Francis (Human The Death Dance) – This was an odd one. I didn’t expect to find this on my final list, but here it is. There is probably some rule being broken here about placing a white-boy hip-hop artist above the likes of Kanye (who we saw in the upper teens) and Common (who I didn’t even list at all), but Sage Francis is someone all together different. Signed to the punk-friendly Epitaph label, what he does has been categorized as emo rap, perhaps unfairly. But categories aside, there is something brutally honest about the man’s way with a rhyme. And yes, he did score points with me by name-checking Ginsberg and Bukowski in “Got Up This Morning.” The production is nothing to dismiss either. And hey, anybody who can manage to bring in Jolie Holland on not one but two tracks … he’s got to be doing something right. (Bonus YouTube-ry)
4. “Used To Did” – J Roddy Walston & The Business (Hail Mega Boys) – Without Dorie Turner, I’d have no idea this band existed. This speaks volumes about their need for better marketing. But that aside, J Roddy and company flat out rock. Keep your Kings Of Leon. I’ll stick to this four-man wrecking crew from Cleveland, Tennessee (via Baltimore, Maryland). (Bonus YouTube-ry)
3. “All I Need” – Radiohead (In Rainbows) – Too much hype, sure. And man, did their e-commerce site suck the mightiest of winds. But I love me some Radiohead. Hail To The Thief wasn’t my cup of tea, but the two previous saw me through some interesting times. In Rainbows picks up the pieces that fell behind Amnesiac and reassembles them with something that Thom Yorke never seemed to possess previously: a little optimism. “All I Need” is the lyrical and structural proof of it.
2. “Rich Woman” – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss (Raising Sand) – If I see only one concert in 2008, let it be this one.
1. “Archangel” – Burial (Untrue) – Something Warren Ellis said in an email about the first release from Untrue. “It’s antediluvian South London three years from now. It’s cold and it’s underwater.” While I don’t wish floods or catastrophe on London anytime soon, Ellis was right. Untrue is music from an uncertain future, dark and mechanical in places, but still undeniably human. Choosing to remain anonymous, only Burial’s producer knows his identity. For the rest of us, he’s everybody out there in the darkness, using whatever technology is available to make even the simplest of connections. I like rock and roll and Americana and jazz and hip-hop as much as the next person, but Untrue is the soundtrack that pulses beneath every text message, every email, every online video game, every podcast, every blog entry … well, for this year it is. (Bonus YouTube-ry)

I’ve a few others stashed away. Some runners-up and also-rans. I’ll get to those within the week. In the meantime, tell me what you think. What did you have on repeat? Or better yet, what lodged unwelcome in your brain for weeks on end?

(Previously: 20-16 and 15-11.)

Mah Pencils Has A Smell, originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

Thank you, Secret MeFi Santa Quonsar!

Everybody is putting out lists of bests for 2007 (here’s one, here, here’s another, and here’s still another), and it looks like we’ll have more bests this year amongst our merry band of local bloggers than previously. This pleases me to no end, and not just because seeing other people making lists contributes to the justification of my own nascent obsession with lists.

Of all of them so far, I’m most intrigued by Tony’s list. Aside from his admonishment that we’ve all the collective taste of an empty Dixie cup (or something like that), what makes his list worth reading is that I’ve heard (of) so few of the albums listed (the ubiquitous Arcade Fire release excepted). My first reaction was something like, “Well, damn … who are these bands? Are you just trying to be Captain Obscurity?”

My second reaction, however, was better. After all, the man’s taste in beer has never steered me wrong, so why shouldn’t I give his taste in music the same courtesy?

Thusly, I’ve decided to spend some time this week with as many of Mr Simon’s selections as possible, just to see what I’ve been missing. First up …

Battles, Mirrored. I wasn’t completely ignorant of Battles, though I didn’t know it. Their sound was a mystery, but I’d seen the album art during some visit to Pitchfork and liked it. It turns out that Pitchfork liked it, too. (The album, that is, not just the art.)

Mirrored shares a lot in common with another from my best of list, an album that sits in the top five. I’ll elaborate more when that one is revealed, but suffice it to say that the music that Battles is creating is way beyond what passes for rock or pop in 2007. On one track, Mirrored sounds like Yes circa Going For The One or Tormato, but on the next, the studio is invaded by Santa’s elves towing Gary Glitter in chains behind them.

It’s like someone sent Mirrored back in time from twenty years from now, an inevitable age where participatory rock and roll is no longer an entertaining novelty limited to Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but something simply expected of every artist by every listener. A future where every new CD can be mashed and reconstructed according to the listener’s whim. For instance, track four (“Tonto”) has little bits in it that sound like they were lifted directly from Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, and though nobody will ever classify this album under jazz fusion, these dashes of Miles just work.

Not all of Mirrored works as well for me. The “dry heave” human percussion (it sounds just like that) of “Tij” is too distracting to be ignored in an otherwise good track. And maybe “Rainbow” — clocking in at 8 minutes and change — is just a bit too long, though that kind of track length does put them back into the early 70s Miles Davis camp.

All in all, Mirrored is good. Would I’ve put it on my list had I heard it earlier? Maybe. Is it too everybody’s taste? Probably not, but the kung-fu soundtrack funk of “Leyendecker” is worth the time to find, if nothing else.

"Same Old Lang Syne", originally uploaded by grabbingsand.

I’ve always liked Dan Fogelberg. And I always will.