How I listen to, manage and get my music

Posted on December 12th, 2009 by thiswayup.
Categories: Music, cool stuff, justgeek.

Over the past year, I have started to notice I tend to use alot of the different musical services/bits. In this blog entry, I’ll try and outline the different ones I use and the main motivation I use them. By the way, I am based in the UK so all you American’s, I am a bit jealous you have Pandora!

I have an Ipod 160gb classic and Iphone on me pretty much everytime I’m moving around. My main machine is running Win XP and keep itunes synched to my Apple hardware.

last.fm – I started using last.fm a couple of years ago to try figure out what I actually listen to as it builds a whole bunch of statistics on the music you are listening to. It does this by having a “scrobbler” software that sits in your desktop and tracks the music you play on your then sends it to last.fm. The fun part of this is that once you get some of your data up there, you can then start comparing musical tastes to other people through looking at your “neighbours” who based on their scrobbling, you may have a common interest then go on a bit of a peek on what they listen to. This actually works surprisingly well and it allows you to explore people with some potential quirky tastes! Along with that there’s the usual groups, web 2.0 chiat and wot not.

Itunes - Ok, not exactly revolutionary I know but I have been using itunes since I got my ipod a few years ago. It’s my main hub for my music and I synch the whole contents to my Ipod. I lost all my music once and oh boy, once you loose your music, you get paranoid about loosing it again!

With recent updates to Itunes, you can now build a genius mix based on a single tune plus it even automatically builds Genius lists based on genre, at this exact moment I am listening to a dance mix playing Xpaner, Sasha :) Works really well when I can’t be arsed to decide what to listen to from my library and go into “radio-play-something-to-me” mode.

The Godfather – Not related to the Mafia film but a very cool music tagging piece of kit. Before Itunes, I didn’t cared about placing decent ID2 tags on my music but as Itunes is kinda naff if you don’t, having a good piece of kit to do it is VERY important. The Itunes tagging kinda sucks as it cant do things like query other sites for data to put into your albums. Highly recommended for people with large aounts of untagged music.

Spotify – If you haven’t heard of Spotify then get it now! Essentially, imagine having an Itunes style interface with a library of a millions of songs which is streamed (and some sometimes allowed to be stored), that’s Spotify. But that’s not the only selling point, another great selling point is the playlists you can build, share and collaborate on. If you wish to share your playlist, you can instantly get a web address that in another spotify, it will open and see it as a new playlist. Genius (even more so then the Itunes offering)! It is a brilliant system and I’m glad the record industry are waking up to this model. Spotify fund this by either interjecting your listening with ads or you pay a monthly £10 subscription, which incidentally also allows you access to the Iphone App that gives you ability to download playlists to plat offline. WOW!!! I’m not too far from getting a subscription!

7digital – I thought I would include my fave online digital store as well. One of the reasons is that they offer free music to download (legally) from their website in a regular subscribed email plus they offer the downloads as Mp3 in 320kbps with a nifty desktop app to manage downloads. The prices are very competitive compared to Itunes and I am all for some further competition to push the music stores on. I was thinking at looking at the Amazon offering, but meh, why try fix it if its not broken!

So peeps, how about you? What do you use? Listen

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Meeting Vitalic and seeing him at O2 Matter

Posted on November 29th, 2009 by thiswayup.
Categories: Music.

I had the biggest shock earlier this week when I was informed I had won a prize to meet Vitalic before his set at the O2 Matter after entering a competition on http://www.vitalic-terminateurbenelux.com/ . The UK’s Vitalic Ambassador (a lovely lass called Freya) emailed me on the wednesday which had put me in a bit of a position as I was organising a DS:London joint ready-up.net meetup that same day! Oh well, it’s not every day you get a chance to meet your music idol!

On the day, we ended up meeting in a very nice but quite random pub near Canary Wharf. Ended up almost getting totally loss (thank you google maps! and Iphn compass) but made it in time to meet Freya, Mike(Freya’s flat mate and writer for http://www.zapbangmagazine.com/), a french couple plus another guy called Micha. Pretty amazing the French couple had caught a flight across from France to attend this! We were also waiting on another girl who was flying in from Germany! We had a quick drink and started heading to the hotel where Pascal was staying. Turns out Pascal had some trouble with the set up of the light show so he couldn’t make it to the hotel! Slightly deflated we carried on regardless, had some food in one of the restaurants in the rather lifeless interior of the O2.

My first time coming to Matter and I actually kind of like it. The second room was closed off but that was ok as the main event was happening in the main room and it didnt pack out as much as I expected. The night kicked off properly when we actually got to meet Vitalic backstage before his set. I was a little bit star struck but really enjoyed the conversations on his work, hanging out with some cool peeps, drinks and wot not.

The best part of the night was of course the set itself. As per usual he played a true stomper series of tracks, had a a problem with the first track with computing problems by looks of things but was plain sailing from then on. My personal highlight has got to be a remix of “My friend Dario” and a cheeky Chemical Brothers/Le rock mini mashup.

The following set of DJ’s was going to have a real hard act to follow from Vitalic but they did a pretty good job with some great electro basslines that kept the old spring in my shoe working over time! Finally decided to head home on the bus. Overall, bloody good night!

Vitalic's head and me
Vitalic’s head and me back stage

Some other links as well :

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Camden Pub Crawl 2008 – Saturday

Posted on May 25th, 2008 by thiswayup.
Categories: London gems, Music.

God I been so slack! Nearly a month on and I’ve just managed to get this up!

Anyways, just thought I’ll drop a couple more of the fading memories before it becomes a mere mist in the recesses of my mind. The saturday was definitely another great follower on from friday! We started fairly a bit later then yesterday and headed straight to see Lady Hawk@ The cuban bar. Unfortunately it was pack to the rafters and we were stuck some where in the middle of a heaving crowd with a low set stage, so we couldn’t see squat for most of it. It was a great set but we decided to leave towards the end to check out the Proud Galleries@Stables Market, very nice venue with some real fine sexy staff! It was literally a horse stable with each stable being small separate area, I would think it would be great for private parties. One quick drink and wonder around then off we go again.

Next we to try and catch a mysterious TBC@Bug Bear. On the way, we bumped into a good friend Chicago Dave who we convinced to join us to try and find out who this ‘TBC’ was, we were working on a rumor that the TBC was actually Madness! When we got there, it seemed like quite a few people had the same idea and we couldn’t get in! Oh well, we never got to find out who was the mysterious TBC. Shame. So we then headed to see Effi Briest@Underworld, a gothy experimental 6 girl band from New York. Not generally the type of band I would see but good non the less with a very appealing bass player. Managed to chat with the PR for the UK and gave her my Londonist badge.

Then jumping to the next one slagsmalaklubben (or SMK for short) @bar fly, a very quirky electro chaotic blip-bleep swedish 6 man team and FECKING brill. If ever there was a group of nerdy geek kids who grew up playing with too many computer games then going onto playing with synths, these would be the guys! Simply put, loved them. Their sense of humour and stage show is something I definitely want to check out again!

Then finally the icing on the cake was Crystal Castles@Dingwalls. After reading the blab in the book guide, I decided to try catch them. Failed yesterday and my second chance was definitely not going to be missed! Thank gawed we didn’t! Oh my gawed to say it was nothing but BRILLIANT would be an under statement! Sounded like a dark twisty 80’s/games electronica inspired by some really angry punky edge, potentially something that Wario/Walugi would bang out if they were in a energetic and particularly jumpy mood! Reminded me of the Fratellis gig with an almighty mosh pit halfway that included Alice (the female singer) trying to climb over the bouncer to reach into the crowd at one stage. Madness!

So overall, fantastic experience! Managed to find some new music I would otherwise not find and even went on to itunes to nab a few! Can;t wait for next year for the same again!

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Camden Pub Crawl 2008 – Friday

Posted on April 20th, 2008 by thiswayup.
Categories: London gems, Music.

I’ve just started to recover the 2 day pub crawl that is the Red Stripe Camden Crawl 2008. Essentially it is a two day event where 30 pubs/bars/club and loads of bands play music around Camden. I managed to get some 2 day tickets from ebay at a slight premium after it was sold out. I went to the crawl with my flat mate, Minh, and another friend, Chicago Dave.

My whole crawl experience started with getting the wrist bands need to gain entry to all the venues. All things considered, it didn’t take too long considering the queue went down all of Kentish Town Road and getting there at 3ish, I was merrily off soon after. Our first stop was the gasto pub, Edingbrugh Castle for the music bingo. It was a fantastic pub with a brilliant outside seating and nice cozy interior, we didnt spend too much time outside and admire the beer garden as there was a slight chill in the air plus the music wasn’t being sent outside, not really helpful!. Music bingo was really good fun as we managed to grab a table with a group girls who was more musically in tune then us. We didn’t win anything and come closer to 6.45pm slot when the first bands coming, the pub was starting empty out so we started heading out ourselves.

Our first stop was to see Royworld at The Crescent. Ok pub venue with a good band. They remind me of a more rocky dreamy version of Coldplay for some reason and with a REALLY tall lead singer. I managed to grab the playlist with a couple of autographs from the drummer and singer. Good stuff!

Next we headed to the big ol club of Camden, KoKo. To this day I still think of it as the Camden Palace, my nostalgic old clubbing days comes flooding back back with every glance. We saw the band Does It Offend You, Yeah? from the side boxes from above. It was really good tune selection with the whole crowd going crazy. We didn’t stay till the end to try get into Ladyhawke at the Earl Of Camden but the queue seemed a bit epic so we ended up in the Electric Ballroom to catch Metronomy. Sounded very deep house with a 80’s disturbance back track thrown in. My first time there and I haven’t been so confused at a venue in ages!

Next was the Fratellis @ Koko, my personal favorite wake up in the morning band to really start your day! I knew it was going to be a bit potty but I never knew it was going to be so maddddddd! Their up beat style that made the whole of Koko rock and really sparked off the mosh pit in the main standing arena with elbows and hands flaying everywhere. Some of which connected with Minh who felt a bit squished and suffering for a fair while after! Dropping out of the Koko we then went across the road in hope to try catch the ending set of the Crystal Castles but ended up chatting with the queue, all full up! Dang. Our night ended with a few more drinks at the Purple turtle! Overall the friday experience made for a good start to it, found a couple of new places and good bands.

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Video Games Live – Oh what a night!

Posted on October 24th, 2007 by thiswayup.
Categories: Music, Other gaming, cool stuff.

On Monday 22nd October at the South Bank Royal festival hall, there was (IMHO) the highlight of the games calendar (no not Halo 3 release I’m afraid), the Video Games Live concert. Essentially it was an evening of classic video games music played live! Well to be more precise there was the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing game tracks.
It was hosted by the two creators Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall. Both are gaming composers who team up a couple of years ago to create an event drawing in music from the 30 odd years of gaming. So we got to hear music from Frogger, Tron, Halo, Metal Gear, Civilization, Chrono Cross along with others.

The night started with a group of us DS:london crowd meeting in hall of the South Bank center. I was really looking forward to this night given that I been meaning to check out the South Bank Center hall since it’s refurbishment, plus last year was just bloody good fun when it was at the Hammersmith Apollo. There was a nice cos play in the hall whilst we waited for the show to start. When it did, I think the sell out show (the first sell out show since the refurb) was enjoyed by everyone. The cencert was comprised of the cosplay comp (nice) ,the blind folded pianist’s of youtube fame (brilliant) who could play the tracks thrown at him at amazing speeds, the composer of outrun (was ok), a couple of stage comps (frogger and space invaders) along with just a whole bunch of tracks. My personal favorites was the Final Fantasy, War Craft, Halo and Tetris tracks. Simply amazing.

Can’t bloody wait for next year.

Tommy and Jack jump for joy

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A night of music and video games…

Posted on September 20th, 2007 by thiswayup.
Categories: Drinking, Music, Nintendo DS, Other gaming, review.

On the 19th September, on a school night, in a little pub near the all so trendy area of Hoxton/Shoreditch in East london, it was the first Delete Yourself and Handheld night. The night was co-hosted by Ste from the One Life Left and was presented as a night of…
Handheld videogames, multiplayer madness and sweet, sweet game-related music to the backdrop of DY's anti-traditional nu-future night.

And it certainly was that! A nice mixture of DS’s and PSP’s was on display through out within the rather charming pub, The Macbeth. Our group arrived fairly early before the intended time of 9pm to do some warming up before hand. The real party kicked off closer to 10pm when the 10 player bomberman kicked in on the projector. As one would hope, it was mayhem! There is just something about playng bomberman with a bunch of people. Ofcourse the DS players were near the pool table at the back of the pub enjoying some rather loud games of tetris and mario kart as well. Gotta love it!

There was also much merriment of chit chatter between a whole host of different characters with different interests in gaming including a Phd student in games of some sort (hi allie!), a Gamestation store manager (hey Daniel!) along with his posse and the famous DS:London gang (I know, I know…shameless plug). Discussuing the real important subjects to a gamers heart including how best to squeeze in Halo 3 on release next weekend (drink, drugs, pulling sickies or all?), Mario Galaxy – all hype?, gaming music one should have on their Ipod, 2nd life – easier to make money in then real life? and as well lots of other things that would take longer then my attention span can handle to write about.

All in all, a damn great night and round of applause for the organisers. Can’t wait for the next one!

PS it would have been a better night if it wasn’t for the fact my camera’s memory card corrupted and I lost ALL my pictures I took!!!! Not happy joey at all :( (

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Blues + Human beat box + amazing = Son Of Dave

Posted on September 9th, 2007 by thiswayup.
Categories: Music, cool stuff.

The other day I was at the very excellent Big Chill House to see a simply amazing one man band, Son of Dave! Simply put, imagine having a guy who uses a bit of recorded human beat box on the go singing the blues whilst playingthe harmonica and stamping his foot alot. Sounds chaotic and it seems to be but just simply put, amazing. Check out the 6min documentary about the guy in this youtube video else just check him about below. Bloody good stuff!

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Portable speakers

Posted on August 2nd, 2007 by thiswayup.
Categories: Gadgets, Music.

I been looking for some cool speakers and have had these babies for a couple of weeks and have found the JBL Ontour iPod Speaker System – Black. Even thought it says ipod, it actually includes a normal 3.5 jack that fits all mp3 players. Don’t trust the title, it doesnt have the specific ipod connector thing one would assume.

Did a battery test and they must’ve lasted about 8-10 hours on 4 AAA! Amazing and the sound quiality is much better then my old (lost) travel speakers

JBL Ontour Black

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