| #542 |
|
2001 |
There’s been a stack of top releases appearing over the last few weeks but actually a lot of my time has been spent seeing what is out there on Napster. Its quite entertaining to see what goes on at Napster, especially as the variety of music has massively increased since 18 months ago. In the past it was impossible to find anything remotely exciting or of interest but now, especially with the spread of broadband to the UK, there are a lot of classic hard-to-find tracks appearing there amongst the Britneys and Puffys. With the recent court decision in America it looks like Napster will fast track their proposed ‘subscription’ model where you pay to share your files, and this is sure to please the big labels, but also be a huge turn off to many users. Unfortunately its likely that this will once again return Napster to the dark days of mainstream-only file sharing as those sharing the more eclectic stuff move to other sharing systems. Quality-wise MP3 is not a very good format and it becomes quickly apparent if you start doing comparative listens to originals and compressed reproductions. People used to reckon that 128k compression was good and 192k was CD quality but nothing could be further from the truth. It certainly isn’t going to “kill the music industry”. With broadband spreading, the number of higher bitrate files at 192k is increasing. The reality is that 192k is the equivalent of FM radio equivalent and that if you can afford it you will probably still go out and buy the originals if they are still available. Of course these days there is a lot of crap out there and record companies and a large number of artists benefit from people buying albums for the one or two good tracks they know or like, and Napster and other file-sharing clients, totally bypasses this. And for people trying to track down old electronic classics long deleted and previously only on vinyl there’s some gems to be found – if you want a quite amusing collection of ‘old favourites’ to track down there’s a UK site Bassquake that will bring some memories back (www.bassquake.co.uk). Saul Williams’ long awaited Amethyst Rock Star album should be out and about shortly. Its been out in France for a little while already and for some strange reason its release there has even preceded its American release. The voice on DJ Krust’s Coded Language and a reasonably well known New York performance poet and son of a preacher, Williams’ debut is quite striking. His fierce vocal delivery rides over beats that range from skewed hip hop to drum&bass and some more standard rock influenced tracks. Williams has made an enormous and audible emotional investment in the tracks, something which gives the vocal climax of Coded Langauge its spine chilling energising quality which is captured again on the first single Penny For A Thought – a straight-up attack on the slavery of hyper-capitalist life (“what have we bought in to? How much will it cost to buy you out?”). Other than that, I’m off to the States for work so the next Perilous comes straight outta San Francisco. Luke and Robbo will keep Frigid running with the launch of the Ultimo-based Couchblip! compilation on March 4 with Robokoneko, Bloq and Disjunction Reunion live and Melbourne’s live house project Lava Musique Ensemble on the 11th. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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